Part 6 (2/2)

The scientific psychologists started on a new road yesterday. For a long time their chief interest was to study the laws of the mind. The final goal was a textbook which would contain a system of laws to which every human mind is subjected. But in recent times a change has set in. The trend of much of the best work nowadays is toward the study of individual differences. The insight into individual personalities was indeed curiously neglected in modern psychology.

This does not mean that the declaration of psychological independence insisted that all men are born equal, nor did any psychologist fancy that education or social surroundings could form all men in equal moulds. But as scientists they felt no particular interest in the richness of colours and tints. They intentionally neglected the question of how men differ, because they were absorbed by the study of the underlying laws which must hold for every one. It is hardly surprising that the psychologists chose this somewhat barren way; it was a kind of reaction against the fantastic flights of the psychology of olden times. Speculations about the soul had served for centuries.

Metaphysics had reigned and the observation of the real facts of life and experience had been disregarded. When the new time came in which the psychologists were fascinated by the spirit of scientific method and exact study of actual facts, the safest way was for them to imitate the well-tested and triumphant procedures of natural science.

The physicist and the chemist seek the laws of the physical universe, and the psychologist tried to act like them, to study the elements from which the psychical universe is composed and to find the laws which control them. But while it was wise to make the first forward march in this one direction, the psychologist finally had to acknowledge that a no less important interest must push him on an opposite way. The human mind is not important to us only as a type.

Every social aim reminds us that we must understand the individual personality. If we deal with children in the cla.s.sroom or with criminals in the courtroom, with customers in the market or with patients in the hospital, we need not only to know what is true of every human being; we must above all discover how the particular individual is disposed and composed, or what is characteristic of special groups, nations, races, s.e.xes, and ages. It is clear that new methods were needed to approach these younger problems of scientific psychology, but the scientists have eagerly turned with concerted efforts toward this unexplored region and have devoted the methods of test experiments, of statistics, and of laboratory measurements to the examination of such differences between various individuals and groups.

But in all these new efforts the psychologist meets a certain public resistance, or at least a certain disregard, which he is not accustomed to find in his routine endeavours. As long as he was simply studying the laws of the mind, he enjoyed the approval of the wider public. His work was appreciated as is that of the biologist and the chemist. But when it becomes his aim to discover mental features of the individual, and to foresee what he can expect from the social groups of men, every layman tells him condescendingly that it is a superfluous task, as instinct and intuition and the nave psychology of the street will be more successful than any measurements with chronoscopes and kymographs. Do we not know how the skilful politician or the efficient manager looks through the mind of a man at the first glance? The life insurance agent has hardly entered the door before he knows how this particular mind must be handled. Every commercial traveller knows more than any psychologist can tell him, and even the waiter in the restaurant foresees when the guest sits down how large a tip he can expect from him. In itself it would hardly be convincing to claim that scientific efforts to bring a process down to exact principles are unnecessary because the process can be performed by instinct. We all can walk without needing a knowledge of the muscles which are used, and can find nourishment without knowing the physiology of nutrition. Yet the physiologist has not only brought to light the principles according to which we actually eat, but he has been able to make significant suggestions for improved diet, and in not a few cases his knowledge can render services which no instinctive appet.i.te could replace. The psychological study of human traits, too, may not only find out the principles underlying the ordinary knowledge of men, but may discover means for an insight which goes as far beyond the instinctive understanding of man as the scientific diet prescribed by a physician goes beyond the fancies of a cook. The manager may believe that he can recognize at the first glance for which kind of work the labourer is fit: and yet the psychological a.n.a.lysis with the methods of exact experiments may easily demonstrate that his judgment is entirely mistaken. Moreover, although such practical psychologists of the street or of the office may develop a certain art of recognizing particular features in the individual, they cannot formulate the laws and cannot lay down those permanent relations from which others may learn.

Yet even this claim of the psychological scholar seems idle pride. Had the world really to wait for his exact statistics and his formulae of correlation of mental traits in order to get general statements and definite descriptions of the human types and of the mental diversities? Are not the writings of the wise men of all times full of such psychological observations? Has not the consciousness of the nations expressed itself in an abundance of sayings and songs, of proverbs and philosophic words, which contains this nave psychological insight into the characters and temperaments of the human mind? We may go back thousands of years to the contemplations of oriental wisdom, we may read the poets of cla.s.sic antiquity, or Shakespeare, or Goethe, we may study what the great religious leaders and statesmen, the historians and the jurists, have said about man and his behaviour; and we find an over-abundance of wonderful sayings with which no textbooks of psychology can be compared.

This is all true. And yet, is it not perhaps all entirely false? Can this nave psychology of the ages, to which the impressionism and the wisdom of the finest minds have so amply contributed, really make superfluous the scientific efforts for the psychology of groups and correlations and individual traits? It seems almost surprising that this overwhelmingly rich harvest of prescientific psychology has never been examined from the standpoint of scientific psychology, and that no one has sifted the wheat from the chaff. The very best would be not only to gather such material, but to combine the sayings of the nave psychologists in a rounded system of psychology. In all ages they surely must have been among the best observers of mankind, as even what is not connected with the name of an individual author, but is found in proverbs or in the folk-epics of the nations, must have originated in the minds of individual leaders. My aim here is more modest: I have made my little pilgrimage through literature to find out in a tentative fas.h.i.+on whether the supply of psychology, outside of science, is really so rich and valuable as is usually believed.

What I wish to offer, therefore, is only a first collection of psychological statements, which the prescientific psychologists have proclaimed, and surely will go on proclaiming, and ought to go on proclaiming, as they do it so beautifully, where we scientists have nothing but tiresome formulae.

Let us begin at the beginning. There has never been a nation whose contemplation was richer in wisdom, whose view of man was subtler and more suggestive, than those of old India. The sayings of its philosophers and poets and thinkers have often been gathered in large volumes of aphorisms. How many of these fine-cut remarks about man contain real psychology? The largest collection which I could discover is that of Boehtlinck, who translated seventy-five hundred Indian sayings into German. Not a few of them refer to things of the outer world, but by far the largest part of them speaks of man and of man's feeling and doing. But here in India came my first disappointment, a disappointment which repeated itself in every corner of the globe.

After carefully going through those thousands of general remarks, I could not find more than a hundred and nine in which the observation takes a psychological turn. All those other thousands of reflections on men are either metaphors and comparisons of distinctly aesthetic intent, or rules of practical behaviour with social or moral or religious purpose. Yet even if we turn to this 1 per cent. which has a psychological flavour, we soon discover that among those hundred and nine, more than a half are simply definitions of the type of this: ”Foolish are they who trust women or good luck, as both like a young serpent creep hither and thither,” or this: ”Men who are rich are like those who are drunk; in walking they are helped by others, they stagger on smooth roads and talk confusedly.” It cannot be said that any psychological observations of the fool's or of the rich man's mind are recorded here. If I sift those maxims more carefully, I cannot find more than two score which, stripped of their picturesque phrasing, could really enter into that world system of nave psychology. And yet even this figure is still too high. Of those forty, most are after all epigrams, generalizations of some chance cases, exaggerations of a bit of truth, or expressions of a mood of anger, of love, of cla.s.s spirit, or of male haughtiness. The a.n.a.lysis of woman's mind is typical. ”Inclination to lies, falsehood, foolishness, greediness, hastiness, uncleanliness, and cruelty are inborn faults of the woman”; or ”Water never remains in an unbaked vessel, flour in a sieve, nor news in the mind of women”; or ”The mind of a woman is less stable than the ear of an elephant or the flash of lightning.” On the other hand we read: ”True women have twice as much love, four times as much endurance, and eight times as much modesty as men”; or ”The appet.i.te of women is twice as large, their understanding four times as large, their spirit of enterprise six times as large, and their longing for love eight times as large as that of men.” Again we read: ”The character of women is as changeable as a wave of the sea; their affection, like the rosy tint of a cloud in the evening sky, lasts just for a moment”; or ”When women have a man's money, they let him go, as he is no longer of any use to them.”

The same one-sidedness and epigrammatic exaggeration can always be felt where whole groups of men are to be characterized. ”The faults of the dwarf are sixty, of the red-haired man eighty, of the humpback a hundred, and of the one-eyed man innumerable.”

But let us rather turn to sayings in which the subtlety of psychological observation deserves admiration: ”The drunkard, the careless, the insane, the fatigued, the angry, the hungry, the greedy, the timid, the hasty, and the lover know no law”; ”If a man commits a crime, his voice and the colour of his face become changed, his look becomes furtive, and the fire is gone from his eye”; ”The best remedy for a pain is no longer to think of it; if you think of it, the pain will increase”; ”A greedy man can be won by money, an angry man by folding the hands, a fool by doing his will, and an educated man by speaking the truth”; ”The wise man can recognize the inner thoughts of another from the colour of his face, from his look, from the sound of his words, from his walk, from the reflections in his eyes, and from the form of his mouth”; ”The good and bad thoughts, however much they are hidden, can be discovered from a man when he talks in his sleep or in his drunkenness”; ”The ignorant can be satisfied easily, and still more easily the well educated, but a man who has become confused by a little knowledge cannot be won over even by Brahma”; ”Good people are pacified by fair treatment, even if they have been very angry, but not common people; gold, though it is hard, can be melted, but not gra.s.s”; ”By too great familiarity we produce low esteem, by too frequent visits, indifference; in the Malaja mountains a beggar woman uses the sandalwood tree for firewood”; ”The silly man steps in without being invited, talks much without being questioned, and trusts him who does not deserve confidence”; ”New knowledge does not last in the mind of the uneducated any more than a string of pearls about the neck of a monkey”; ”The inner power of great men becomes more evident in their misfortune than in their fortune; the fine perfume of aloes wood is strongest when it falls into the fire”; ”The anger of the best man lasts an instant, of the mediocre man six hours, of the common man a day and a night, and the rascal will never get rid of it”; ”The scholar laughs with his eyes, mediocre people show their teeth when they laugh, common people roar, and true men of wisdom never laugh”; ”Truthfulness and cleverness can be found out in the course of a conversation, but modesty and restraint are visible at the first glance”; ”Grief destroys wisdom, grief destroys scholars.h.i.+p, grief destroys endurance; there is no perturbation of the mind like grief.”

Often we hardly know whether a psychological observation or a metaphor is given to us. In any case we may appreciate the fineness of a saying like this: ”Even a most translucent, beautiful, perfectly round and charming pearl can be strung on a thread as soon as it has been pierced; so a mind which longs for salvation, perfectly pure, free from quarrel with any one and full of goodness, will nevertheless be bound down to the earthly life as soon as it quarrels with itself.” On the borderland of psychology we may find sayings like these: ”As a tailor's needle fastens the thread in the garment, so the thread of our earthly life becomes fastened by the needle of our desires”; ”An elephant kills us if he touches us, a snake even if he smells us, a prince even if he smiles on us, and a scoundrel even if he adores us.”

But there is one saying which the most modern psychologist would accept, as it might just as well be a quotation from a report of the latest exact statistics. The Indian maxim says: ”There is truth in the claim that the minds of the sons resemble more the minds of the fathers, those of the daughters more those of the mothers.”

We may leave the banks of the Ganges and listen to the wisdom of Europe. Antiquity readily trusted the wonderful knowledge of men which Homer displays. He has instinctively delineated the characters with the inner truth of life. How far was this art of the creative poet accompanied by the power of psychological abstraction? I do not think that we can find in the forty-eight books of Homer even a dozen contributions to our unwritten system of the nave psychology of the nations. To be sure we ought not to omit in such a system the following reflections from the ”Odyssey”: ”Wine leads to folly, making even the wise to love immoderately, to dance, and to utter what had better have been kept silent”; or ”Too much rest itself becomes a pain”; or still better, ”The steel blade itself often incites to deeds of violence.” We may have more doubt whether it is psychologically true when we read: ”Few sons are equal to their sires, most of them are less worthy, only a few are superior to their fathers”; or, ”Though thou lovest thy wife, tell not everything which thou knowest to her, but unfold some trifle while thou concealest the rest.” From the ”Iliad” we may quote: ”Thou knowest the over-eager vehemence of youth, quick in temper, but weak in judgment”; or, ”n.o.blest minds are easiest bent”; or, ”With everything man is satiated-sleep, sweet singing, and the joyous dance; of all these man gets sooner tired than of war.” Some may even doubt whether Homer's psychology is right when he claims: ”Even though a man by himself may discover the best course, yet his judgment is slower and his resolution less firm than when two go together.” And in the alcohol question he leaves us a choice: ”Wine gives much strength to wearied men”; or if we prefer, ”Bring me no luscious wines, lest they unnerve my limbs and make me lose my wonted powers and strength.”

It is not surprising that the theoretical psychology of the Bible is no less meagre. Almost every word which deals with man's mind reflects the moral and religious values and is thus removed from pure psychology into ethics. Or we find comparisons which suggestively illuminate the working of the mind without amplifying our psychological understanding. We approach empirical psychology most nearly in verses like these: ”Foolishness is bound in the heart of the child, but the word of correction should drive it far from him”; or ”He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much”; or ”Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant”; or ”The full soul loatheth an honeycomb, but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet”; or ”For if any man be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in a gla.s.s, for he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was”; or ”Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.” But here we have almost overstepped the limits of real psychology; we are moving toward ethics. Nor can we call metaphors like this psychology: ”He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.”

Let us turn for a moment to the greatest knower of men in mediaeval days, to Dante. How deeply his poetic eye looked into the hearts of men, how living are the characters in his ”Divine Comedy”; and yet he left us hardly any psychological observations. Some psychology may be acknowledged in words like these: ”The man in whose bosom thought on thought awakes is always disappointed in his object, for the strength of the one weakens the other”; ”When we are wholly absorbed by feelings of delight or of grief, our soul yields itself to this one object, and we are no longer able to direct our thoughts elsewhere”; ”There is no greater grief than to remember our happy time in misery.”

It is hardly psychology if we hear, ”The bad workman finds fault with his tools”; or, ”Likeness ever gives birth to love”; or ”The wisest are the most annoyed to lose time.”

From Dante we naturally turn to Shakespeare. We have so often heard that he is the greatest psychologist, and yet we ought not to forget that such a popular cla.s.sification does not in itself really mean that Shakespeare undertakes the work of the psychologist. It does mean that he creates figures with the temperament, character, thought, and will so similar to life and so full of inner mental truth that the psychologist might take the persons of the poet's imagination as material for his psychological studies. But this by no means suggests that Shakespeare phrased abstract judgments about mental life; and as we seek his wisdom in his dramatic plays, it may be taken for granted that in this technical sense he must be a poor psychologist, because he is a great dramatist. Does not the drama demand that every word spoken be spoken not from the author's standpoint, but from the particular angle of the person in the play? And this means that every word is embedded in the individual mood and emotion, thought, and sentiment of the speaker. A truly psychological statement must be general and cannot be one thing for Hamlet and another for Ophelia.

The dramatist's psychological sayings serve his art, unfolding before us the psychological individuality of the speaker, but they do not contribute to the textbooks of psychology, which ought to be independent of personal standpoints. And yet what a stream of verses flows down to us, which have the ring of true psychology!

”Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep.”

”Trifles light as air Are to the jealous confirmation strong As proofs of holy writ.”

”Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such sharp fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends.”

”Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.”

”Present fears Are less than horrible imagining.”

”Too swift runs as tardy as too slow.”

”Never anger made good guard for itself.”

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