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

increase his inhibitions, make clearer his choice. But that will

is an entity, existing by itself and pulling at levers of conduct

without itself being organic, need not be entertained by any

serious-minded student of his kind.

Is there a unit, will? A will power? I can see no good evidence

for this belief except the generalizing trend of human thought

and the fallacy that raises abstractions into realities. Napoleon

had a strong will in regard to his battles and a weak one

regarding women. Pitt was a determined statesman but could not

resist the lure of drink. Socrates found no difficulty in dying

for his beliefs, but asked not to be tempted by a beautiful

youth. Francis Bacon took all knowledge to be his province, and

his will was equal to the task, but he found the desire for

riches too great for him. In reality, man is a mosaic of wills;

and the will of each instinct, each desire, each purpose, is the

intensity of that instinct, desire or purpose. In each of us

there is a clash of wills, as the trends in our character oppose

one another. The united self harmonizes its purposes and wills

into as nearly one as possible; the disunited self is standing

unsteadily astride two or more horses. We all know that it is

easy for us to accomplish certain things and difficult to make up

our minds to do others. Like and dislike, facility or difficulty

are part of each purpose and enter into each will as parts.

Such a view does not commit one to fatalism, at least in conduct.

Desiring to accomplish something or desiring to avoid doing

something, both of which are usually considered as part of

willing, we must seek to find motives and influences that will

help us. We must realize that each choice, each act, changes the

world for us and every one else and seek to harmonize our choice

and acts with the purposes we regard as our best. If we seek to

influence others, then this view of the will is the only hopeful

one, for if will is a free entity how can it possibly be

influenced by another agent? The very essence of freedom is to be

noninfluenced. Seeking to galvanize the will of another, there is

need to search for the influences that will increase the energy

of his better purposes, to “appeal to his better self,” meaning

that the spurs to his good conduct are applied with greater

force, but that first the nature of the particular things that

spur him on must be discovered. Praise? Blame? Reward?

Punishment? Education? Authority? Logic? Religion? Emotional

appeal? Substitution of new motives and associations?

The will is therefore no unit, but a sum total of things

operating within the sphere of purpose. Purpose we have defined

as arising from instinct and desire and intellectualized and

socialized by intelligence, education, training, tradition, etc.

Will is therefore best studied under the head of purpose and is

an outgrowth of instinct. Each instinct, in its energy, its

fierceness, its permanence, has its will. He who cannot desire

deeply, in whom some powerful instinct does not surge, cannot

will deeply.

If we look at character from the standpoint of emotion, instinct,

purpose and intelligence, we find that emotion is an internal

discharge of energy, which being FELT by the individual becomes

an aim or aversion of his life; that instinctive action is the

passing over of a stimulus directly into hereditary conduct along

race-old motor pathways for purposes that often enough the

individual does not recognize and may even rebel against; that

instinct is without reflection, but that purpose, which is an

outgrowth of instinct guided and controlled by intelligence, is

reflective and self-conscious. Purpose seeks the good of the

individual as understood by him and is often against the welfare

of the race, whereas instinct seeks the good of the race, often

against the welfare of the individual. Intelligence is the path

of the stimulus or need cerebrally directed, lengthened out,

inhibited, elaborated and checked. Often enough faulty, it is the

chief instrument by which man has become the leading figure on

the world stage.

CHAPTER VII. EXCITEMENT, MONOTONY AND INTEREST

No matter what happens in the outside world, be it something we

see, hear or feel, in any sense-field there is an internal

reverberation in our bodies,—excitement. Excitement is the

undifferentiated result of stimuli, whether these come from

without or from within. For a change in the glands of the body

heaps up changes within us, which when felt, become excitement.

Thus at the mating period of animals, at the puberty of man,

there is a quite evident excitement demonstrated in the conduct

of the animal and the adolescent. He who remembers his own

adolescence, or who watches the boy or girl of that age, sees the

excitement in the readiness to laugh, cry, fight or love that is

so striking.

Undoubtedly the mother-stuff of all emotion is the feeling of

excitement. Before any emotion reaches its characteristic

expression there is the preparatory tension of excitement. Joy,

sorrow, anger, fear, wonder, surprise, etc., have in them as a

basis the same consciousness of an internal activity, of a world

within us beginning to seethe. Heart, lungs, blood stream, the

great viscera and the internal glands, cerebrum and sympathetic

nervous system, all participate in this activity, and the outward

visage of excitement is always the wide-open eye, the slightly

parted lips, the flaring nostrils and the slightly tensed muscles

of the whole body. Shouts, cries, the waving of arms and legs,

taking the specific direction of some emotion, make of excitement

a fierce discharger of energy, a fact of great importance in the

understanding of social and pathological phenomena. On the other

hand, excitement may be so intensely internal that it shifts the

blood supply too vigorously from the head and the result is a

swoon. This is more especially true of the excitement that

accompanies sorrow and fear than joy or anger, but even in these

emotions it occurs.

There are some very important phases of excitement that have not

been given sufficient weight in most of the discussions.

1. In the very young, excitement is diffuse and spreads

throughout the organism. An infant starts with a jump at a sudden

sound and shivers at a bright light. A young child is

unrestrained and general in his expression of excitement, no

matter what emotional direction that excitement takes. Bring

about any tension of expectation in a child—have him wait for

your head to appear around the corner as you play peek-a-boo, or

delay opening the box of candy, or pretend you are one thing or

another—and the excitement of the child is manifested in what is

known as eagerness. Attention in children is accompanied by

excitement and is wearying as a natural result, since excitement,

means a physical discharge of energy. A child laughs all over and

weeps with his entire body; his anger involves every muscle of

his body and his fear is an explosion. The young organism cannot

inhibit excitement.

As life goes on, the capacity for localizing or limiting

excitement increases. We become better organized, and the

disrupting force of a stimulus becomes less. Attention becomes

less painful, less tense, i.e., there is less general muscular

and emotional reaction. Expectation is less a physical

matter—perhaps because we have been so often disappointed—and

is more cerebral and the emotions are more reflective and

introspective in their expression and less a physical outburst.

Indeed, the process often enough goes too far, and we long for

the excitement of anticipation and realization. We do not start

at a noise, and though a great crowd will “stir our blood”

(excitement popularly phrased and accurately), we still limit

that excitement so that though we cheer or shout there is a core

of us that is quiet.

This is the case in health. In sickness, especially in that

condition known as neurasthenia, where the main symptoms cluster

around an abnormal liability to fatigue, and also in many other

conditions, there is an increase in the diffusion of excitement

so that one starts all over at a noise, instead of merely turning

to see what it is, so that expectation and attention become

painful and fatiguing. Crowds, though usually pleasurable, become

too exciting, and there is a sort of confusion resulting because

attention and comprehension are interfered with. The neurasthenic

finds himself a prey to stimuli, his reaction is too great and he

fatigues too readily. He finds sleep difficult because the little

noises and discomforts make difficult the relaxation that is so

important. The neurasthenic’s voluntary attention is lowered

because of the excitement he feels when his involuntary attention

is aroused.

In the condition called anhedonia, which we shall hear of from

time to time, there is a blocking or dropping out of the sense of

desire and satisfaction even if through habit one eats, drinks,

has sexual relationship, keeps up his work and carries out his

plans. This lack of desire for the joys of life is attended by a

restlessness, a seeking of excitement for a time, until there

arises a curious over-reaction to excitement. The anhedonic

patient finds that noises are very troublesome, that he becomes

unpleasantly excited over music, that company is distressing

because he becomes confused and excited, and crowds, busy scenes

and streets are intolerable. Many a hermit, I fancy, who found

the sensual and ambitious pleasure of life intolerable, who

sought to fly from crowds to the deserts, was anhedonic but he

called it renunciation. (Whether one really ever renounces when

desire is still strong is a nice question. I confess to some

scepticism on this point.)

2. Seeking excitement is one of the great pleasure-trends of

life. In moderation, tension, expectation and the diffuse bodily

reactions are agreeable; there is a feeling of vigor, the

attention is drawn from the self and there is a feeling of being

alive that is pleasurable. The tension must not be too long

sustained, nor the bodily reaction too intense; relaxation and

lowered attention must relieve the excitement from time to time;

but with these kept in mind, it is true that Man is a seeker of

excitement.

This is a factor neglected in the study of great social

phenomena. The growth of cities is not only a result of the

economic forces of the time; it is made permanent by the fact

that the cities are exciting. The multiplicity and variety of the

stimuli of a city—social, sexual, its stir and bustle—make it

difficult for those once habituated ever to tolerate the quiet of

the country. Excitement follows the great law of stimulation; the

same internal effect, the same feeling, requires a greater and

greater stimulus, as well as new stimuli. So, the cities grow

larger, increase their modes of excitement, and the dweller in

the city, unless fortified by a steady purpose, becomes a seeker

of excitement.

Not only is excitement pleasurable when reached through the

intrinsically agreeable but it can be obtained from small doses

of the intrinsically disagreeable. This is the explanation of the

pleasure obtained from the gruesome, from the risk of life or

limb, or from watching others risk life or limb. Aside from the

sense of power obtained by traveling fast, it is the risk, THE

SLIGHT FEAR, producing excitement, that makes the speed maniac a

menace to the highways. And I think that part of the pleasure

obtained from bitter foods is that the disagreeable element is

just sufficient to excite the gastro-intestinal tract. The

fascination of the horrible lies in the excitement produced, an

excitement that turns to horror and disgust if the disagreeable

is presented too closely. Thus we can read with pleasurable

excitement of things that