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Page 46
Let me say one more final word now about the will, and therewith
conclude both that important subject and these lectures.
There are two types of will. There are also two types of inhibition. We
may call them inhibition by repression or by negation, and inhibition by
substitution, respectively. The difference between them is that, in the
case of inhibition by repression, both the inhibited idea and the
inhibiting idea, the impulsive idea and the idea that negates it, remain
along with each other in consciousness, producing a certain inward
strain or tension there: whereas, in inhibition by substitution, the
inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits, and
the latter quickly vanishes from the field.
For instance, your pupils are wandering in mind, are listening to a
sound outside the window, which presently grows interesting enough to
claim all their attention. You can call the latter back again by
bellowing at them not to listen to those sounds, but to keep their minds
on their books or on what you are saying. And, by thus keeping them
conscious that your eye is sternly on them, you may produce a good
effect. But it will be a wasteful effect and an inferior effect; for the
moment you relax your supervision the attractive disturbance, always
there soliciting their curiosity, will overpower them, and they will be
just as they were before: whereas, if, without saying anything about the
street disturbances, you open a counter-attraction by starting some very
interesting talk or demonstration yourself, they will altogether forget
the distracting incident, and without any effort follow you along.
There are many interests that can never be inhibited by the way of
negation. To a man in love, for example, it is literally impossible, by
any effort of will, to annul his passion. But let 'some new planet swim
into his ken,' and the former idol will immediately cease to engross his
mind.
It is clear that in general we ought, whenever we can, to employ the
method of inhibition by substitution. He whose life is based upon the
word 'no,' who tells the truth because a lie is wicked, and who has
constantly to grapple with his envious and cowardly and mean
propensities, is in an inferior situation in every respect to what he
would be if the love of truth and magnanimity positively possessed him
from the outset, and he felt no inferior temptations. Your born
gentleman is certainly, for this world's purposes, a more valuable being
than your "Crump, with his grunting resistance to his native devils,"
even though in God's sight the latter may, as the Catholic theologians
say, be rolling up great stores of 'merit.'
Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that anything that a man can avoid
under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that
something else is good. He who habitually acts _sub specie mali_, under
the negative notion, the notion of the bad, is called a slave by
Spinoza. To him who acts habitually under the notion of good he gives
the name of freeman. See to it now, I beg you, that you make freemen of
your pupils by habituating them to act, whenever possible, under the
notion of a good. Get them habitually to tell the truth, not so much
through showing them the wickedness of lying as by arousing their
enthusiasm for honor and veracity. Wean them from their native cruelty
by imparting to them some of your own positive sympathy with an animal's
inner springs of joy. And, in the lessons which you may be legally
obliged to conduct upon the bad effects of alcohol, lay less stress than
the books do on the drunkard's stomach, kidneys, nerves, and social
miseries, and more on the blessings of having an organism kept in
lifelong possession of its full youthful elasticity by a sweet, sound
blood, to which stimulants and narcotics are unknown, and to which the
morning sun and air and dew will daily come as sufficiently powerful
intoxicants.
I have now ended these talks. If to some of you the things I have said
seem obvious or trivial, it is possible that they may appear less so
when, in the course of a year or two, you find yourselves noticing and
apperceiving events in the schoolroom a little differently, in
consequence of some of the conceptions I have tried to make more clear.
I cannot but think that to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive,
impulsive, associative, and reactive organism, partly fated and partly
free, will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways. Understand
him, then, as such a subtle little piece of machinery. And if, in
addition, you can also see him _sub specie boni_, and love him as well,
you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers.
#TALKS TO STUDENTS#
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