The Story of the Mind

J >> James Mark Baldwin >> The Story of the Mind

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Psychologically such a person is dominated by habit. And this means
that his nervous system sets, either by its hereditary tendencies or
by the undue predominance of certain elements in his education,
quickly in the direction of motor discharge. The great channels of
readiest out-pouring from the brain into the muscles have become fixed
and pervious; it is hard for the processes once started in the sense
centres, such as those of sight, hearing, etc., to hold in their
energies. They tend to unstable equilibrium in the direction of
certain motor combinations, which in their turn represent certain
classes of acts. This is habit; and the person of the extreme motor
type is always a creature of habit.

Now what is the line of treatment that such a child should have? The
necessity for getting an answer to this question is evident from what
was said above--i. e., that the very rise of the condition itself is
due, apart from heredity, oftener than not to the fact that he has not
had proper treatment from his teachers.

The main point for a teacher to have in mind in dealing with such a
boy or girl--the impulsive, active one, always responsive, but almost
always in error in what he says and does--is that here is a case of
habit. Habit is good; indeed, if we should go a little further we
should see that all education is the forming of habits; but here, in
this case, what we have is not habits, but habit. This child shows a
tendency to habit _as such_: to habits of any and every kind. The
first care of the teacher in order to the control of the formation of
habits is in some way to bring about a little inertia of habit, so to
speak--a short period of organic hesitation, during which the reasons
pro and con for each habit may be brought into the consciousness of
the child.

The means by which this tendency to crude, inconsiderate action on the
part of the child is to be controlled and regulated is one of the most
typical questions for the intelligent teacher. Its answer must be
different for children of different ages. The one thing to do, in
general, however, from the psychologist's point of view, is in some
way to bring about greater complications in the motor processes which
the child uses most habitually, and with this complication to get
greater inhibition along the undesirable lines of his activity.
Inhibition is the damming up of the processes for a period, causing
some kind of a "setback" of the energies of movement into the sensory
centres, or the redistribution of this energy in more varied and less
habitual discharges. With older children a rational method is to
analyze for them the mistakes they have made, showing the penalties
they have brought upon themselves by hasty action. This requires great
watchfulness. In class work, the teacher may profitably point out the
better results reached by the pupil who "stops to think." This will
bring to the reform of the hasty scholar the added motive of
semi-public comparison with the more deliberate members of the class.
Such procedure is quite unobjectionable if made a recognised part of
the class method; yet care should be taken that no scholar suffer
mortification from such comparisons. The matter may be "evened up" by
dwelling also on the merit of promptness which the scholar in question
will almost always be found to show.

For younger pupils as well as older more indirect methods of treatment
are more effective. The teacher should study the scholar to find the
general trend of his habits. Then oversight should be exercised over
both his tasks and his sports with certain objects in view. His
habitual actions should be made as complicated as his ability can cope
with; this in order to educate his habits and keep them from working
back into mere mechanism. If he shows his fondness for drawing by
marking his desk, see that he has drawing materials at hand and some
intelligent tasks in this line to do; not as tasks, but for himself.
Encourage him to make progress always, not simply to repeat himself.
If he has awkward habits of movement with his hands and feet, try to
get him interested in games that exercise these members in regular and
skilful ways.

Furthermore, in his intellectual tasks such a pupil should be trained,
as far as may be, on the more abstract subjects, which do not give
immediate openings for action. Mathematics is the best possible
discipline for him. Grammar also is good; it serves at once to
interest him, if it is well taught, in certain abstract relationships,
and also to send out his motor energies in the exercise of speech,
which is the function which always needs exercise, and which is always
under the observation of the teacher. Grammar, in fact, is one of the
very best of primary-school subjects, because instruction in it issues
at once in the very motor functions which embody the relationships
which the teacher seeks to impress. The teacher has in his ear, so to
speak, the evidence as to whether his instruction is understood or
not. This gives him a valuable opportunity to keep his instruction
well ahead of its motor expression--thus leading the pupil to think
rather than to act without thinking--and at the same time to point out
the errors of performance which follow from haste in passing from
thought to action.

These indirect methods of reaching the impulsive pupil should never be
cast aside for the direct effort to "control" such a scholar. The very
worst thing that can be done to such a boy or girl is to command him
or her to sit still or not to act; and a still worse thing--to make a
comparative again on the head of the superlative--is to affix to the
command painful penalties. This is a direct violation of the principle
of Suggestion. Such a command only tends to empty the pupil's mind of
other objects of thought and interest, and so to keep his attention
upon his own movements. This, then, amounts to a continual suggestion
to him to do just what you want to keep him from doing. On the
contrary, unless you give him suggestions and interests which lead his
thought away from his acts, it is impossible not to aggravate his bad
tendencies by your very efforts. This is the way, as I intimated
above, that many teachers create or confirm bad habits in their
pupils, and so render any amount of well-intended positive instruction
abortive. It seems well established that a suggestion of the
negative--that is, not to do a thing--has no negative force; but, on
the contrary, in the early period, it amounts only to a stronger
suggestion in the positive sense, since it adds emphasis, to the thing
which is forbidden. The "not" in a prohibition is no addition to the
pictured course to which it is attached, and the physiological fact
that the attention tends to set up action upon that which is attended
to comes in to put a premium on disobedience. Indeed, the philosophy
of all punishment rests in this consideration, i. e., that unless the
penalty tends to fill the mind with some object other than the act
punished, it does more harm than good. The punishment must be actual
and its nature diverting; never a threat which terminates there, nor a
penalty which fixes the thought of the offence more strongly in mind.
This is to say, that the permanent inhibition of a movement at this
period is best secured by establishing some different movement.

The further consideration of the cases of great motility would lead to
the examination of the kinds of memory and imagination and their
treatment; to that we return below. We may now take up the instances
of the sensory type considered with equal generality.

The sensory children are in the main those which seem more passive,
more troubled with physical inertia, more contemplative when a little
older, less apt in learning to act out new movements, less quick at
taking a hint, etc.

These children are generally further distinguished as being--and here
the antithesis to the motor ones is very marked--much less
suggestible. They seem duller when young. Boys often get credit for
dulness compared with girls on this account. Even as early as the
second year can this distinction among children be readily observed in
many instances. The motor child will show sorrow by loud crying and
vigorous action, while the sensory child will grieve in quiet, and
continue to grieve when the other has forgotten the disagreeable
occurrence altogether. The motor one it is that asks a great many
questions and seems to learn little from the answers; while the
sensory one learns simply from hearing the questions of the other and
the answers given to them. The motor child, again, gets himself hurt a
great many times in the same way, without developing enough
self-control to restrain himself from the same mistake again and
again; the sensory child tends to be timid in the presence of the
unknown and uncertain, to learn from one or a few experiences, and to
hold back until he gets satisfactory assurances that danger is absent.
The former tends to be more restless in sitting, standing, etc., more
demonstrative in affection, more impulsive in action, more forgiving
in disposition.

As to the treatment of the sensory child, it is a problem of even
greater difficulty and danger than that of his motor brother. The very
nature of the distinction makes it evident that while the motor
individual "gives himself away," so to speak, by constantly acting out
his impressions, and so revealing his progress and his errors, with
the other it is not so. All knowledge that we are ever able to get of
the mental condition of another individual is through his movements,
expressive, in a technical sense, or of other kinds, such as his
actions, attitudes, lines of conduct, etc. We have no way to read
thought directly. So just in so far as the sensory individual is less
active, to that degree he is less expressive, less self-revealing. To
the teacher, therefore, he is more of an enigma. It is harder to tell
in his case what instruction he has appreciated and made his own; and
what, on the other hand, has been too hard for him; what wise, and
what unwise. Where the child of movement speaks out his impulsive
interpretations, this one sinks into himself and gives no answer. So
we are deprived of the best way of interpreting him--that afforded by
his own interpretation of himself.

A general policy of caution is therefore strongly to be recommended.
Let the teacher wait in every case for some positive indication of the
child's real state of mind. Even the directions given the child may
not have been understood, or the quick word of admonition may have
wounded him, or a duty which is so elementary as to be a commonplace
in the mental life of the motor child may yet be so vaguely
apprehended that to insist upon its direct performance may cost the
teacher all his influence with the pupil of this type. It is better to
wait even at the apparent risk of losing valuable days than to proceed
a single step upon a mistaken estimate of the child's measure of
assimilation. And, further, the effect of wrong treatment upon this
boy or girl is very different from that of a similar mistake in the
other case. He becomes more silent, retired, even secretive, when once
an unsympathetic relationship is suggested between him and his elder.

Then more positively--his instruction should be well differentiated.
He should in every possible case be given inducements to express
himself. Let him recite a great deal. Give him simple verses to
repeat. Keep him talking all you can. Show him his mistakes with the
utmost deliberation and kindliness of manner; and induce him to repeat
his performances in your hearing after the correction has been
suggested. Cultivate the imitative tendency in him; it is the handmaid
to the formation of facile habits of action. In arranging the
children's games, see that he gets the very active parts, even though
he be backward and hesitating about assuming them. Make him as far as
possible a leader, in order to cultivate his sense of responsibility
for the doing of things, and to lead to the expression of his
understanding of arrangements, etc. In it all, the essential thing is
to bring him out in some kind of expression; both for the sake of the
improved balance it gives himself, and as an indication to the
observant teacher of his progress and of the next step to be taken in
his development.

It is for the sensory child, I think, that the kindergarten has its
great utility. It gives him facility in movement and expression, and
also some degree of personal and social confidence. But for the same
reasons the kindergarten over-stimulates the motor scholars at the
corresponding age. There should really be two kindergarten
methods--one based on the idea of deliberation, the other on that of
expression.

The task of the educator here, it is evident, is to help nature
correct a tendency to one-sided development; just as the task is this
also in the former case; but here the variation is on the side of
idiosyncrasy ultimately, and of genius immediately. For genius, I
think, is the more often developed from the contemplative mind, with
the relatively dammed-up brain, of this child, than from the
smooth-working machine of the motor one. But just for this reason, if
the damming-up be liberated, not in the channels of healthy
assimilation, and duly correlated growth, but in the forced discharges
of violent emotion, followed by conditions of melancholy and by
certain unsocial tendencies, then the promise of genius ripens into
eccentricity, and the blame is possibly ours.

It seems true--although great caution is necessary in drawing
inferences--that here a certain distinction may be found to hold also
between the sexes. It is possible that the apparent precocious
alertness of girls in their school years, and earlier, may be simply a
predominance among them of the motor individuals. This is borne out by
the examination of the kinds of performance in which they seem to be
more forward than boys. It resolves itself, so far as my observation
goes, into greater quickness of response and greater agility in
performance; not greater constructiveness, nor greater power of
concentrated attention. The boys seem to need more instruction because
they do not learn as much for themselves by acting upon what they
already know. In later years, the distinction gets levelled off by the
common agencies of education, and by the setting of tasks requiring
more thought than the mere spontaneities of either type avail to
furnish. Yet all the way through, I think there is something in the
ordinary belief that woman is relatively more impulsive and more prone
to the less reflective forms of action.

What has now been said may be sufficient to give some concrete force
to the common opinion that education should take account of the
individual character at this earliest stage. The general distinction
between sensory and motor has, however, a higher application in the
matter of memory and imagination at later stages of growth, to which
we may now turn.

_Second Period._--The research is of course more difficult as the
pupil grows older, since the influences of heredity tend to become
blurred by the more constant elements of the child's home, school, and
general social environment. The child whom I described just above as
sensory in his type is constantly open to influences from the
stimulating behaviour of his motor companion, as well as from the
direct measures which parent and teacher take to overcome his
too-decided tendencies and to prevent one-sided development. So, too,
the motor child tends to find correctives in his environment.

The analogy, however, between the more organic and hereditary
differences in individuals, and the intellectual and moral variations
which they tend to develop with advance in school age, is very
marked; and we find a similar series of distinctions in the later
period. The reason that there is a correspondence between the
variations given in heredity and those due in the main to the
educative influences of the single child's social environment is in
itself very suggestive, but space does not permit its exposition here.

The fact is this: the child tends, under the influence of his home,
school, social surroundings, etc., to develop a marked character
either in the sensory or in the motor direction, in his memory,
imagination, and general type of mind.

Taking up the "motor" child first, as before, we find that his
psychological growth tends to confirm him in his hereditary type. In
all his social dealing with other children he is more or less
domineering and self-assertive; or at least his conduct leads one to
form that opinion of him. He seems to be constantly impelled to act so
as to show himself off. He "performs" before people, shows less
modesty than may be thought desirable in one of his tender years,
impresses the forms of his own activity upon the other children, who
come to stand about him with minds constrained to follow him. He is an
object lesson in both the advantages and the risks of an aggressive
life policy. He has a suggestion to make in every emergency, a line of
conduct for each of his company, all marked out or supplied on the
spur of the moment by his own quick sense of appropriate action; and
for him, as for no one else, to hesitate is to be lost.

Now what this general policy or method of growth means to his
consciousness is becoming more and more clear in the light of the
theory of mental types. The reason a person is motor is that his mind
tends always to be filled up most easily with memories or revived
images of the twitchings, tensions, contractions, expansions, of the
activities of the muscular system. He is a motor because the means of
his thought generally, the mental coins which pass current in his
thought exchange, are muscular sensations or the traces which such
sensations have left in his memory. The very means by which he thinks
of a situation, an event, a duty, is not the way it looked, or the way
it sounded, or the way it smelt, tasted, or felt to the touch--in any
of the experiences to which these senses are involved--but the means,
the representatives, the instruments of his thought, are the feelings
of the way he has acted. He has a tendency--and he comes to have it
more and more--to get a muscular representation of everything; and his
gauge of the value of this or that is this muscular measure of it, in
terms of the action which it is calculated to draw out.

It is then this preference for one particular kind of mental imagery,
and that the motor, or muscular kind, which gives this type of child
his peculiarity in this more psychological period. When we pass from
the mere outward and organic description of his peculiarities,
attempted above in the case of very young children, and aim to
ascertain the mental peculiarity which accompanies it and carries on
the type through the individual's maturer years, we see our way to its
meaning. The fact is that a peculiar kind of mental imagery tends to
swell up in consciousness and monopolize the theatre of thought. This
is only another way of saying that the attention is more or less
educated in the direction represented by this sort of imagery. Every
time a movement is thought of, in preference to a sound or a sight
which is also available, the habit of giving the attention to the
muscular equivalents of things becomes more firmly fixed. This
continues until the motor habit of attention becomes the only easy and
normal way of attending; and then the person is fixed in his type for
one, many, or all of his activities of thinking and action.

So now it is no longer difficult to see, I trust, why it is that the
child or youth of this sort has the characteristics which he has. It
is a familiar principle that attention to the thought of a movement
tends to start that very movement. I defy any of my readers to think
hard and long of winking the left eye and not have an almost
irresistible impulse to wink that eye. There is no better way to make
it difficult for a child to sit still than to tell him to sit still;
for your words fill up his attention, as I had occasion to say above,
with the thought of movements, and these thoughts bring on the
movements, despite the best intentions of the child in the way of
obedience. Watch an audience of little children--and children of an
older growth will also do--when an excited speaker harangues them with
many gestures, and see the comical reproduction of the gestures by the
children's hands. They picture the movements, the attention is fixed
on them, and appropriate actions follow.

It is only the generalizing of these phenomena that we find realized
in the boy or girl of the motor type. Such a child is constantly
thinking of things by their movement equivalents. Muscular sensations
throng up in consciousness at every possible signal and by every train
of association; so it is not at all surprising that all informations,
instructions, warnings, reproofs, suggestions, pass right through such
a child's consciousness and express themselves by the channels of
movement. Hence the impulsive, restless, domineering, unmeditative
character of the child. We may now endeavour to describe a little more
closely his higher mental traits.

1. In the first place the motor mind tends to _very quick
generalization_. Every teacher knows the boys in school who anticipate
their conclusions, on the basis of a single illustration. They reach
the general notion which is most broad in extent, in application, but
most shallow in intent, in richness, in real explaining or descriptive
meaning. For example, such a boy will hear the story of Napoleon,
proceed to define heroism in terms of military success, and then go
out and try the Napoleon act upon his playfellows. This tendency to
generalize is the mental counterpart of the tendency to act seen in
his conduct. The reason he generalizes is that the brain energies are
not held back in the channels of perception, but pour themselves right
out toward the motor equivalents of former perceptions which were in
any way similar; then the present perceptions are lost in the old ones
toward which attention is held by habit, and action follows. To the
child all heroes are Napoleons because Napoleon was the first hero,
and the channels of action inspired by him suffice now for the
appropriate conduct.

2. Such a scholar is very _poor at noting and remembering
distinctions_. This follows naturally from the hasty generalizations
which he makes. Having once identified a new fact as the same as an
old one, and having so reached a defective sense of the general
class, it is then more and more hard for him to retrace his steps and
sort out the experiences more carefully. Even when he discovers his
mistake, his old impulse to act seizes him again, and he rushes to
some new generalization wherewith to replace the old, again falling
into error by his stumbling haste to act. The teacher is oftener
perhaps brought to the verge of impatience by scholars of this class
than by any others.

3. Following, again, from these characteristics, there is a third
remark to be made about the youth of this type; and it bears upon a
peculiarity which it is very hard for the teacher to estimate and
control. These motor boys and girls have what I may characterize as
_fluidity of the attention_. By this is meant a peculiar quality of
mind which all experienced teachers are in some degree familiar with,
and which they find baffling and unmanageable.

By "fluidity" of the attention I mean the state of hurry, rush,
inadequate inspection, quick transition, all-too-ready-assimilation,
hear-but-not-heed, in-one-ear-and-out-the-other habit of mind. The
best way to get an adequate sense of the state is to recall the pupil
who has it to the most marked degree, and picture his mode of dealing
with your instructions. Such a pupil hears your words, says "yes,"
even acts appropriately so far as your immediate instructions go; but
when he comes to the same situation again, he is as virginly innocent
of your lesson as if his teacher had never been born. Psychologically,
the state differs from preoccupation, which characterizes quite a
different type of mind. The motor boy is not preoccupied. Far from
that, he is quite ready to attend to you. But when he attends, it is
with a momentary concentration--with a rush like the flow of a
mountain stream past the point of the bank on which you sit. His
attention is flowing, always in transition, leaping from "it to that,"
with superb agility and restlessness. But the exercise it gains from
its movements is its only reward. Its acquisitions are slender in the
extreme. It illustrates, on the mental plane, the truth of the
"rolling stone." It corresponds, as a mental character, to the
muscular restlessness which the same type of child shows in the
earlier period previously spoken of.

The psychological explanation of this "fluid attention" is more or
less plain, but I can not take space to expound it. Suffice it to say
that the attention is itself, probably, in its brain seat, a matter of
the motor centres; its physical seat both "gives and takes" in
co-operation with the processes which shed energy out into the
muscles. So it follows that, in the ready muscular revivals,
discharges, transitions, which we have seen to be prominent in the
motor temperament the attention is carried along, and its "fluidity"
is only an incident to the fluidity of the motor symbols of which this
sort of a mind continually makes use.

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