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Page 43
Certain melancholiacs furnish the extreme example of the over-inhibited
type. Their minds are cramped in a fixed emotion of fear or
helplessness, their ideas confined to the one thought that for them life
is impossible. So they show a condition of perfect 'abulia,' or
inability to will or act. They cannot change their posture or speech or
execute the simplest command.
The different races of men show different temperaments in this regard.
The Southern races are commonly accounted the more impulsive and
precipitate: the English race, especially our New England branch of it,
is supposed to be all sicklied over with repressive forms of
self-consciousness, and condemned to express itself through a jungle of
scruples and checks.
The highest form of character, however, abstractly considered, must be
full of scruples and inhibitions. But action, in such a character, far
from being paralyzed, will succeed in energetically keeping on its way,
sometimes overpowering the resistances, sometimes steering along the
line where they lie thinnest.
Just as our extensor muscles act most truly when a simultaneous
contraction of the flexors guides and steadies them; so the mind of him
whose fields of consciousness are complex, and who, with the reasons for
the action, sees the reasons against it, and yet, instead of being
palsied, acts in the way that takes the whole field into
consideration,--so, I say, is such a mind the ideal sort of mind that we
should seek to reproduce in our pupils. Purely impulsive action, or
action that proceeds to extremities regardless of consequences, on the
other hand, is the easiest action in the world, and the lowest in type.
Any one can show energy, when made quite reckless. An Oriental despot
requires but little ability: as long as he lives, he succeeds, for he
has absolutely his own way; and, when the world can no longer endure the
horror of him, he is assassinated. But not to proceed immediately to
extremities, to be still able to act energetically under an array of
inhibitions,--that indeed is rare and difficult. Cavour, when urged to
proclaim martial law in 1859, refused to do so, saying: "Any one can
govern in that way. I will be constitutional." Your parliamentary
rulers, your Lincoln, your Gladstone, are the strongest type of man,
because they accomplish results under the most intricate possible
conditions. We think of Napoleon Bonaparte as a colossal monster of
will-power, and truly enough he was so. But, from the point of view of
the psychological machinery, it would be hard to say whether he or
Gladstone was the larger volitional quantity; for Napoleon disregarded
all the usual inhibitions, and Gladstone, passionate as he was,
scrupulously considered them in his statesmanship.
A familiar example of the paralyzing power of scruples is the inhibitive
effect of conscientiousness upon conversation. Nowhere does conversation
seem to have flourished as brilliantly as in France during the last
century. But, if we read old French memoirs, we see how many brakes of
scrupulosity which tie our tongues to-day were then removed. Where
mendacity, treachery, obscenity, and malignity find unhampered
expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. But its flame waxes dim where
the mind is stitched all over with conscientious fear of violating the
moral and social proprieties.
The teacher often is confronted in the schoolroom with an abnormal type
of will, which we may call the 'balky will.' Certain children, if they
do not succeed in doing a thing immediately, remain completely
inhibited in regard to it: it becomes literally impossible for them to
understand it if it be an intellectual problem, or to do it if it be an
outward operation, as long as this particular inhibited condition lasts.
Such children are usually treated as sinful, and are punished; or else
the teacher pits his or her will against the child's will, considering
that the latter must be 'broken.' "Break your child's will, in order
that it may not perish," wrote John Wesley. "Break its will as soon as
it can speak plainly--or even before it can speak at all. It should be
forced to do as it is told, even if you have to whip it ten times
running. Break its will, in order that its soul may live." Such
will-breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous wear and
tear on both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, and the
victory not always with the would-be will-breaker.
When a situation of the kind is once fairly developed, and the child is
all tense and excited inwardly, nineteen times out of twenty it is best
for the teacher to apperceive the case as one of neural pathology rather
than as one of moral culpability. So long as the inhibiting sense of
impossibility remains in the child's mind, he will continue unable to
get beyond the obstacle. The aim of the teacher should then be to make
him simply forget. Drop the subject for the time, divert the mind to
something else: then, leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of
association, spring it on him again before he has time to recognize it,
and as likely as not he will go over it now without any difficulty. It
is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse: we divert his
attention, do something to his nose or ear, lead him round in a circle,
and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him
more invincible. A tactful teacher will never let these strained
situations come up at all.
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