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

applications of the principles of movement and force are high,

special functions of the intelligence. That people differ

enormously in this skill, that it is not necessarily associated

with other phases of intelligence are commonplaces. The dealer in

abstract ideas of great value to the race may be unable to drive

a nail straight, while the man who can build the most intricate

mechanism out of crude iron, wood and metal may be unable to

express any but the commonplaces of existence. Intelligence,

acting through skill, has evolved machinery and the industrial

evolution; acting to discover constant principles operating in

experience, it has established science. Seeking to explain and

control the world of unknown forces, it has evolved theory and

practice. A very essential division of people is on the one hand

those whose effort is to explain things, and who are called

theorists, and those who seek to control things, the practical

persons. There is a constant duel between these two types of

personalities, and since the practical usually control the power

of the world, the theorists and explainers have had rather a hard

time of it, though they are slowly coming into their own.

Another difference between minds is this: that intelligence deals

with the relations between things (this being a prime function of

speech), and intelligence only becomes intellect when it is able

to see the world from the standpoint of abstract ideas, such as

truth, beauty, love, honor, goodness, evil, justice, race,

individual, etc. The wider one can generalize correctly, the

higher the intellect. The practical man rarely seeks wide

generalizations because the truth of these and their value can

only be demonstrated through the course of long periods of time,

during which no good to the individual himself is seen. Besides

which, the practical man knows that the wide generalization may

be an error. Practical aims are usually immediate aims, whereas

the aims of intellect are essentially remote and may project

beyond the life of the thinker himself.

We speak of people as original or as the reverse, with the

understanding that originality is the basis of the world’s

progress. To be original in thought is to add new relationships

to those already accepted, or to substitute new ones for the old.

The original person is not easily credulous; he applies to

traditional teaching and procedure the acid test of results. Thus

the astronomers who rejected the theological idea that the earth

was the center of the universe observed that eclipses could not

be explained on such a basis, and Harvey, as he dissected

bullocks’ hearts and tied tourniquets around his arms, could not

believe that Galen’s teaching on circulation fitted what he saw

of the veins and valves of his arm. The original observer refuses

to slide over stubborn facts; authority has less influence with

him than has an apple dropping downward. In another way the

original thinker is constantly taking apart his experiences and

readjusting the pieces into new combinations of beauty,

usefulness and truth. This he does as artist, inventor and

scientist. Most originality lies in the rejection of old ideas

and methods as not consonant with results and experience; in the

taking apart and the isolation of the components of experience

(analysis) and in their reassemblage into new combinations

(synthesis). The organizing activity of the original mind is

high, and curiosity and interest are usually well maintained.

Unless there is with these traits the quality called good

judgment (i.e., good choice), the original is merely one of those

“pests” who launch half-baked reforms and projects upon a weary

world.

We have spoken of intelligence as controlling and directing

instinct and desire, as inhibiting emotion, as exhibiting itself

in handicraftsmanship, as the builder up of abstractions and the

principles of power and knowledge; we have omitted its

relationship to speech. Without speech and its derivatives, man

would still be a naked savage and not so well off in his struggle

for existence as most of the larger animals. It is possible that

we can think without words, but surely very little thinking is

possible under such circumstances. One might conduct a business

without definite records, but it would be a very small one.

Speech is a means not only of designating things but of the

manifest relations between things. It “short-cuts” thought so

that we may store up a thousand experiences in one word. But its

stupendous value and effects lie in this, that in words not only

do we store up ourselves (could we be self-conscious without

words?) and things, but we are able to interchange ourselves and

our things with any one else in the world who understands our

speech and writings. And we may truly converse with the dead and

be profoundly changed by them. If the germ plasm is the organ of

biological heredity, speech and its derivatives are the organs of

social heredity!

The power of expressing thought in words, of compressing

experiences into spoken and written symbols, of being eloquent or

convincing either by tongue or pen, is thus a high function of

intelligence. The able speaker and writer has always been

powerful, and he has always found a high social value in

promulgating the ideas of those too busy or unfitted for this

task, and he has been the chief agent in the unification of

groups.

The danger that lies in words as the symbols of thought lies in

the fact pointed out by Francis Bacon[1] (and in our day by Wundt

and Jung) that words have been coined by the mass of people and

have come to mean very definitely the relations between things as

conceived by the ignorant majority, so that when the philosopher

or scientist seeks to use them, he finds himself hampered by the

false beliefs inherent in the word and by the lack of precision

in the current use of words. Moreover, words are also a means of

stirring up emotions, hate, love, passion, and become weapons in

a struggle for power and therefore obscure intelligence.

[1] This is Bacon’s “Idols of the Market Place.”

Words, themselves, arise in our social relations, for the

solitary human would never speak, and the thought we think of as

peculiarly our own is intensely social. Indeed, as Cooley pointed

out, our thought is usually in a dialogue form with an auditor

who listens and whose applause we desire and whose arguments we

meet. In children, who think aloud, this trend is obvious, for

they say, “you, I, no, yes, I mustn’t, you mustn’t,” and terms of

dialogue and social intercourse appear constantly. Thought and

words offer us the basis of definite internal conflict: one part

of us says to the other, “You must not do that,” and the other

answers, “What shall I do?” Desire may run along smoothly without

distinct, internal verbal thought until it runs into inhibition

which becomes at once distinctly verbal in its, “No! You musn’t!”

But desire obstructed also becomes verbal and we hear within us,

“I will!”

We live secure in the belief that our thoughts are our own and

cannot be “read” by others. Yet in our intercourse we seek to

read the thoughts of others—the real thoughts—recognizing that

just as we do not express ourselves either accurately or

honestly, so may the other be limited or disingenuous. Whenever

there occurs a feeling of inferiority, the face is averted so the

thoughts may not be read, and it is very common for people

mentally diseased to believe that their thoughts are being read

and published. Indeed, the connection between thoughts and the

personality may be severed and the patient mistakes as an outside

voice his own thoughts.

A large part of ancient and modern belief and superstition hinges

on the feeling of power in thought and therefore in words.

Thought CAUSES things as any other power does. Think something

hard, use the appropriate word, and presto,—what you desire is

done. “Faith moves mountains,” and the kindred beliefs of the

magic in words have plunged the world into abysses of

superstition. Thought is powerful, words are powerful, if

combined with the appropriate action, and in their indirect

effects. All our triumphs are thought and word products; so, too,

are our defeats.

It is not profitable for us at this stage to study the types of

intelligence in greater detail. In the larger aspects of

intelligence we must regard it as intimately blended with

emotions, mood, instincts, and in its control of them is a

measurement of character. We may ask what is the range of memory,

what is the capacity for choosing, how good is the planning

ability, how active is the organizing ability, what is the type

of associations that predominate and how active is the stream of

thought? What is the skill of the individual? How well does he

use words and to what end does he use them? Intelligence deals

with the variables of life, leaving to instinct the basic

reactions, but it is in these variables that intelligence meets

situations that of themselves would end disastrously for the

individual.

Not a line, so far, on Will. What of the will, basic force in

character and center of a controversy that will never end? Has

man a free will? does his choice of action and thought come from

a power within himself? Is there a uniting will, operating in our

actions, a something of an integral indivisible kind, which is

non-material yet which controls matter?

Taking the free-will idea at its face value leads us nowhere in

our study of character. If character in its totality is organic,

so is will, and it therefore resides in the tissues of our

organism and is subject to its laws. In some mental diseases the

central disturbance is in the will, as Kraepelin postulates in

the disease known as Dementia Praecox. The power of choice and

the power of acting according to choice disappear gradually,

leaving the individual inert and apathetic. The will may alter

its directions in disease (or rather be altered) so that BECAUSE

of a tumor mass in the brain, or a clot of blood, or the

extirpation of his testicles, he chooses and acts on different

principles than ever before in his life. Or you get a man drunk,

introduce into his organism the soluble narcotic alcohol, and you

change his will in the sense that he chooses to be foolish or

immoral or brutal, and acts accordingly. When from Philip drunk

we appeal to Philip sober, we acknowledge that the two Philips

are different and will different things. And the will of the

child is not the will of the adult, nor is that the will of the

old man. If will is organic it cannot be free, but is conditioned

by health, glandular activity, tissue chemistry, age, social

setting, education, intelligence.

Moreover, behind each choice and each act are motives set up by

the whole past of the individual, set up by heredity and

training, by the will of our ancestors and our contemporaries.

Logically and psychologically, we cannot agree that a free agent

has any conditions; and if it has any conditions, it cannot in

any phase be free. To set up an argument for free will one has to

appeal to the consciousness or have a deep religious motive. But

even the ecclesiastical psychologists and even so strong a

believer in free will as Munsterberg take the stand that we may

have two points of view, one—as religiously minded—that there

is a free will, and the other—as scientists—that will is

determined in its operations by causes that reach back in an

endless chain. The power to choose and the power to act may be

heightened by advice and admonitions. In this sense we may

properly tell a man to use his will, and we may seek to introduce