The Foundations of Personality by Abraham Myerson (color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

street corner waiting for a car caught his eye. Signaling to his

companions, he walked up to her, put his arms around her and

kissed her. The girl stood as if petrified, then she pushed him

off and looked him up and down deliberately with cold scorn in

her eyes. Then she took off her glove and slapped him across the

face with it, as if disdaining to use her hand. With that she

walked away.

The man was a gentleman, and he stood there stricken. The laugh

of his companions aroused him. He saw them as if they were

himself, with a horror and disgust that made him suddenly run

away from them.

“From that moment I never again had the slightest desire for

drink. The slap sobered me for good.”

While these conversions occur now and then there are certain

practical points in the breaking of a habit that need attention

in each case.

In the first place it is best in the majority of instances to

avoid the particular stimuli and associations that set off the

habit. The stimulus is a kind of trigger; pull it and the habit

can hardly be checked. Whatever the situation is that acts as the

temptation, avoid it. Not for nothing do men pray, “Lead us not

into temptation.” The will needs no such exercise and rarely

stands up well against such strain. This may mean a removal for

the time being from the source of temptation, a flying away to

gain strength.

Further, a substitution of habit, of purpose, is necessary. Some

line of activities must be selected to fill in the vacuum. A

hobby is needed, a devotion to some larger purpose, whether it be

in work or social activity. “Nature abhors a vacuum”; boredom

must be avoided, for that is a pain, awakening desire. The

gymnasium, golf, sports of all kinds are substitute pleasures of

great value.

Third, harness a friend, a superior or a respected equal to the

yoke with you. Pull double harness; let him lend his strength to

yours. Throw away pride; confess and receive new energy from his

sympathy and wisdom. If you are lucky enough to have such a

friend, or some wise counselor, thank God for him. For here is

where the true friend finds his highest value.

In the analysis of any character the question of the kind of

habits formed demands attention. Since almost all traits become

matters of habit, such an inquiry would sooner or later lead to a

catalogue of qualities. What is here pertinent is this,—that one

might inquire into the kind of habits that are easily formed by

the individual and the kind that are not. Habits fall into groups

such as these:

1. Relating to care of the body: cleanliness, diet, exercise,

bowel function, sleep. Here we learn about personal tidiness or

the reverse, foppery, dandyism, gluttony, asceticism, etc.

2. Relating to method, efficiency, neatness in work: some people

find it almost impossible to become methodical or neat; others

become obsessed by these qualities to the exclusion of mobility.

3. Relating to the pursuit of pleasure: type of pleasure sought,

time given to it, hobbies.

4. Relating to special habits: alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex

perversions.

5. Relating to study and advancement: love of books, attendance

at lectures.

Especially in the study of children is some such scheme

essential, for then one gets a definite idea of their defects and

takes definite efforts to make habitual the desired practice, or

else one sees the special trend, and, if it is good, fosters it.

This, of course, is the long and short of character development.

CHAPTER IV. STIMULATION, INHIBITION, ORGANIZING ENERGY, CHOICE

AND CONSCIOUSNESS

There are three fundamental factors in the relation of any

organism to the environment and in the relation of the various

parts of an organism to each other which we must now consider. To

consider a living thing of any kind as something separate from

the stimuli the world streams in on it, or to consider it as a

real unit, is a mistake that falsifies most of the thinking of

the world.

On us, as living things, the universe pours in stimuli of a few

kinds. Or rather there are few kinds of stimuli we are

specialized to receive and react to; there may be innumerable

other kinds to which we cannot react because they do not reach

us. The world for us is a collection of things that we see, hear,

smell, taste and feel, but there may be vast reaches of things

for which we have no avenues of approach,—completely

unimaginable things because our images are built upon our senses.

To some of the stimuli the world pours in on us we must react

properly or die. Certain “mechanisms” with which we are equipped

must respond to these stimuli or the forces of the world destroy

us. A lion on the horizon must awaken flight, or concealment, or

the modified fight reaction of using weapons; extreme cold or

heat must start up impulses and reflexes leading away from their

disintegrating effects. Food must, when smelled or seen, lead us

to conduct whereby we supply ourselves or we die from hunger.

Dangers and needs awaken reactions, both through instinctive

responses and through intelligence. The main activities of life

are to be classed as “averting” and “acquiring,” for if life

showers us with the things we would or need to have, it also

pelts us with the things we fear, hate or despise. It would be

interesting to know which activities are the most numerous;

presumably the lucky or successful man is busy acquiring while

the unlucky or unsuccessful finds himself busiest averting. The

averting activities are directed largely against the

disagreeable, disgusting, dangerous and the undesired; the

acquiring activities are directed toward the pleasant, the

necessary, the desired. The problems of life are to know what is

really good or bad for us and how to acquire the one and avert

the other. While there are certain things that “naturally”[1] are

deemed good or bad, there are more that are so regarded through

training and education. Morality and Taste are alike concerned

with bringing about attitudes that will determine the “right”

response to the stimuli of the world.

[1] I place in quotations NATURALLY because it is difficult to

know what is “natural” and what is cultural. In the widest sense

everything is natural; in the narrowest very few things are

natural. Cooked food, clothing, houses, marriages, education,

etc., are not found in a state of nature, any more than clocks

and plays by Ibsen are. Our judgment as to what is good and bad

is mainly instinctive leaning directed or smothered by education.

The stimuli that thus pour in upon the individual, and to which

he must react, must find an organism ready to respond in some way

or other. A sleeping man naturally does not adjust himself to

danger, nor does a paralyzed man fly. The most attractive female

in the world causes no response in the very young male child and

perhaps stirs only reminiscences in the aged. Food, which causes

the saliva to flow in the mouth of the hungry, may disgust the

full. Throughout life there are factors in the internal life of

the organism instantly changing one’s reaction to things of

physical, mental and moral significance. He talks loudest of

restraint and control who has no desire; and in satiation even

the sinner sees the beauty of asceticism. There must be a

coincidence of stimulus, readiness and opportunity for the full,

successful response to take place.[1]

[1] A slang epigram puts it better: The time, the place, and the

girl.

The simplest response to any stimulus from the outer world is the

reflex act. Theoretically a reflex act is dependent upon the

interaction of a sensory surface, a sensory nerve cell, a motor

nerve cell and a muscle, i. e., a receptive apparatus and a motor

apparatus in such close union that the will and intelligence play

no part. Thus if one puts his finger on a hot stove he withdraws

it immediately, and such responses are present even in the

decapitated frog and human for a short time. So if light streams

in on the wide-open pupil of the eye, it contracts, grows

smaller, without any effort of the will, and in fact entirely

without the consciousness of the individual. Swallowing is a

series of reflexes in a row, so that food in the back part of the

mouth sets a reflex going that carries it beyond the epiglottis;

another reflex carries it to the esophagus and then one reflex

after the other transports the food the rest of the way. Except

for the first effort of swallowing, the rest is entirely

involuntary and even unconscious. Those readers who are

interested would do well to read the work of Pavlow on the

conditioned reflex, in which the great Russian physiologist

builds up all action on a basis of a modification of the

primitive reflex which he calls the “conditioned reflex.”[1]

[1] Pavlow is one of the scientists who regard all mental life as

built up out of reflexes. The immediate reflex is only one

variety; thought, emotion, etc., are merely reflexes placed end

to end. Pavlow divides action into two trends, one due to an

unconditioned reflex, of innate structure, and the other a

modified or conditioned reflex which arises because some stimulus

has become associated with the reflex act. Thus saliva dripping

from a dog’s mouth at the smell of food is an unconditioned

reflex; if a bell is heard at the same time the food is smelled

then in the course of time the saliva flows at the sound of the

bell alone,—a conditioned reflex. A very complex system has been

built up of this kind of facts, which I have criticized

elsewhere.

The simple reflex, immediate response to a stimulus, has only a

limited field in human life or adult life. Sherrington points out

in his notable book, “The Integrative Action of the Nervous

System,” that there is a play of the entire organism on each

responding element, and there is also a competition throughout

each pathway to action. Let us examine this a little closer.

A man is hungry, let us say; i. e., there arise from his

gastro-intestinal tract and from the tissues stimuli which arouse

motor mechanisms to action and the man seeks food. The need of

the body arouses desire in the form of an organic sensation and

this arouses mechanisms whose function is to satisfy that desire.

Let us assume that he finds something that looks good and he is

about to seize it when an odor, called disagreeable, assails his

nostrils from the food, which stops him. Then there arises a

competition for action between the desire for food and the visual

stimulus, associated memories, etc., on the one hand, and the

odor, the awakened fear, memories, disgust, etc., on the other

hand. This struggle for action, for use of the mechanisms of

action, is the struggling of choosing, one of the fundamental

phenomena of life. In order for a choice to become manifest, what

is known as inhibition must come into play; an impulse to action

must be checked in order that an opposing action can be

effective. The movement of rejection uses muscles that oppose the

movement of acquirement; e. g., one uses the triceps and the

other the biceps, muscles situated in opposite sides of the upper

arm and having antagonistic action. In order for triceps to act,

biceps must be inhibited from action, and in that inhibition is a

fundamental function of the organism. In every function of the

body there are opposing groups of