DIVISIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.--The nervous system may be considered in two divisions: (1) The central system, which consists of the brain and spinal cord, and (2) the peripheral...
Although imagination enters every field of human experience, and busies itself with every line of human interest, yet all its activities can be classed under two different types. T...
EVEN GOOD HABITS NEED TO BE MODIFIED.--But even in good habits there is danger. Habit is the opposite of attention. Habit relieves attention of unnecessary strain. Every habitual a...
The term think, or thinking, is employed in so many different senses that it will be well first of all to come to an understanding as to its various uses. Four different types of t...
No individual enters the world with a large enough stock of instincts to start him doing all the things necessary for his welfare. Instinct prompts him to eat when he is hungry, bu...
Probably in no instinct more than in that of fear can we find the reflections of all the past ages of life in the world with its manifold changes, its dangers, its tragedies, its s...
There is no other mental factor which has more to do with the enjoyment we get out of life than our feelings and emotions. THE EMOTIONS AND ENJOYMENT.--Few of us would care to live...
1. What instincts have you noticed developing in children? What ones have you observed to fade away? Can you fix the age in both cases? Apply these questions to your own developmen...
1. What are the characteristic bodily expressions by which you can recognize a state of anger? Fear? Jealousy? Hatred? Love? Grief? Do you know persons who are inclined to be too e...
1. Watch your own thinking for examples of each of the four types described. Observe a class of children in a recitation or at study and try to decide which type is being employed...
1. Are you subject to the blues, or other forms of depressed feeling? Are your moods very changeable, or rather constant? What kind of a disposition do you think you have? How did...
1. Try making a list of your most important interests in order of their strength. Suppose you had made such a list five years ago, where would it have differed from the present lis...
1. Carefully consider your own powers of memory and see whether you can decide which of the four types of brain you have. Apply similar tests to your classmates or a group of schoo...
1. Test the uncontrolled associations of a group of pupils by pronouncing to the class some word, as blue, and having the members write down 20 words in succession as rapidly as th...
1. Test your power of observation by walking rapidly past a well-filled store window and then seeing how many of the objects you can name. 2. Suppose a tailor, a bootblack, a physi...
1. Which fatigues you more, to give attention of the nonvoluntary type, or the voluntary? Which can you maintain longer? Which is the more pleasant and agreeable to give? Under whi...
1. Select some act which you have recently begun to perform and watch it grow more and more habitual. Notice carefully for a week and see whether you do not discover some habits wh...
One should always keep in mind that psychology is essentially a laboratory science, and not a text-book subject. The laboratory material is to be found in ourselves and in those ab...
1. Observe a schoolroom of children at work with the aim of discovering any that show defects of vision or hearing. What are the symptoms? What is the effect of inability to hear o...
1. Give illustrations from your own experience of the various types of action mentioned in this discussion. From your own experience of the last hour, what examples of impulsive ac...
We are all provided by nature with some instincts which, while they may serve a good purpose in our development, need to be suppressed or at least modified when they have done thei...
Emotion is always dynamic, and our feelings constitute our strongest motives to action and achievement. HOW OUR EMOTIONS COMPEL US.--Love has often done in the reformation of a fal...
Many people when they speak or think of habit give the term a very narrow or limited meaning. They have in mind only certain moral or personal tendencies usually spoken of as one's...
We may have an interest either (1) in the doing of an act, or (2) in the end sought through the doing. In the first instance we call the interest immediate or direct; in the second...
THE THREE TYPES OF ATTENTION.--Attention may be secured in three ways: (1) It is demanded by some sudden or intense sensory stimulus or insistent idea, or (2) it follows interest,...
SENSATION GIVES US OUR WORLD OF QUALITIES.--In actual experience sensations are never known apart from the objects to which they belong. This is to say that when we see yellow or r...
All the mental processes which we have so far described find their culmination and highest utility in reasoning. Not that reasoning comes last in the list of mental activities, and...
While attention is no doubt partly a natural gift, yet there is probably no power of the mind more susceptible to training than is attention. And with attention, as with every othe...
Let us next inquire how this mechanism of the nervous system is acted upon in such a way as to give us sensations. In order to understand this, we must first know that all forms of...
Someone has said that if our attention is properly trained we should be able to look at the point of a cambric needle for half an hour without winking. But this is a false idea of...