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Page 47
I. THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION
I wish in the following hour to take certain psychological doctrines and
show their practical applications to mental hygiene,--to the hygiene of
our American life more particularly. Our people, especially in academic
circles, are turning towards psychology nowadays with great
expectations; and, if psychology is to justify them, it must be by
showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines.
The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions,
commonly referred to in psychological literature as the Lange-James
theory. According to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those
organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus
of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or
surprise, is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind,
but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which
the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion
suppressed, we should not so much _feel_ fear as call the situation
fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the
object was indeed astonishing. One enthusiast has even gone so far as to
say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid
it is because we run away, and not conversely. Some of you may perhaps
be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. Now, whatever exaggeration
may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions (and I doubt myself
whether the exaggeration be very great), it is certain that the main
core of it is true, and that the mere giving way to tears, for example,
or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment
in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. There is,
accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept in the
moral training of youth, or in one's personal self-discipline, than that
which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not
to care too much for what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse
in time, for example, or if we only _don't_ strike the blow or rip out
with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as
we live, our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and
better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. Action
seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and
by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the
will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous
cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully,
and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such
conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that
occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we _were_ brave, use all our
will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of
fear. Again, in order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have
been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to
make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things.
One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of
heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental
demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins
our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas,
if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon
folds its tent like an Arab, and silently steals away.
The best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate the maxim
that we must let our feelings go, and pay no regard to them whatever. In
an admirable and widely successful little book called 'The Christian's
Secret of a Happy Life,' by Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, I find this
lesson on almost every page. _Act_ faithfully, and you really have
faith, no matter how cold and even how dubious you may feel. "It is your
purpose God looks at," writes Mrs. Smith, "not your feelings about that
purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need
attend to.... Let your emotions come or let them go, just as God
pleases, and make no account of them either way.... They really have
nothing to do with the matter. They are not the indicators of your
spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament or of
your present physical condition."
But you all know these facts already, so I need no longer press them on
your attention. From our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring
currents of sensation come, which help to determine from moment to
moment what our inner states shall be: that is a fundamental law of
psychology which I will therefore proceed to assume.
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