The science of life : fully illustrated in tone and line and including many diagrams

BOOK 8

MODERN IDEAS

§ 1. The Conduct of Life. § 2. What is the Self We Conduct ? Biological Duties. § 4. Of Self-knowledge and Moods. 8 § 7. Evasion, Indolence, and Fear.

straint and Poise.

§ 1 The Conduct of Life

\ X 7 have already warned, and several

times reminded our readers of the warning, that with the introduction of the subjective element into our account of vital phenomena we have departed from that atmosphere of clear, cold statement, proof, and certainty we were able to maintain so long as our method was still wholly objective. But to shirk questions of feeling and will because they did not admit of the hard precision of a purely objective treatment would be to rob our Science of Life of half its interest and two-thirds of its practical value.

We have already said something of the essential paradox in things. We have pointed out how comparatively easy it is for us to regard the whole world, including our fellow-creatures, as a fated system of cause and effect, as a system entirely mechanical and determinate, until we come to ourselves. But within ourselves we find it is at least equally true that we choose, that we will to do this and refuse to do that; that we are not fated, but free. Your sense of your own freedom is as primary as your sense of my complete subjection to controlling causes. You may deny this practically, but your every act will assert it. For all practical ends your liberty and your sense of your personal responsibility for what you do are ineradicable. Even if you fling yourself down and say, “I am the toy of destiny ; I can do nothing that I am not compelled to do,’ you know all the time that you will be doing and saying this of your own free will. So soon as you have said it, you can say: “ That wassilly ofme. I did not mean to say that.”

“ Kismet,” says the good Moslem, and stands hesitating what next he shall say or do, still under the plainest necessity of making a decision.

So, whatever logical juggling we may do in this matter, in reality you and we, the present trinity of authors, and Mr. and Mrs. Everyman and the whole Everyman family find ourselves making up our minds, deciding what to do, forming our plans and

GHAPTER 8 OF CONDUCT

8 3. The Primary 5. Candour. § 6. Re-

occupying ourselves with hopes, determinations, reflections, self-congratulations or remorse, and the general conduct of our lives.

It must be poor biology, feeble psychology, and indifferent science we have been dealing out to Mr. Everyman if we cannot draw from this accumulation of fact some clear directions and helps and reinforcements for him and Mrs. Everyman, in this essential problem in their lives : What to do and how to do it.

§ 2 What is the Self We Conduct ?

Throughout the larger part of the preceding chapter we have been elaborating a picture of the mind as it is revealed by the introspective and comparative methods of psychology. We have talked in metaphors, about levels and strata, searchlight (of attention) and focus, images, complexes, repressions, threshold of consciousness, and the like. Thereby we have been able to convey and to bring to a considerable coherence an important mass of fact about divided personality, mental inhibitions, hypnotism, and impulse. But the reader will have been haunted throughout, as we, the writers, have been haunted, by the feeling of metaphorical vagueness and the dangers of misconception that accompany metaphor. The reader will have been moved to ask again and again: ‘‘Where precisely in this seething mass of mental activity does the self begin and end?” Or, “Am I all my mind or only some of my mind raiding about amidst the rest of itself?’ At times it has been almost as if we described the coming and going, the conflicts, overlappings, and replacements of clouds in the sky. This sort of indistinctness is not confined to psychology. Has the reader ever troubled

to ask: What exactly is the state? What exactly is the nation? What is public opinion ?

The leading psycho-analysts have evidently been haunted by the same dissatisfaction as the reader. They have made, and they are still making, attempts to mark off the regions or activities of the mental stir

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