The Story of the Mind
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James Mark Baldwin >> The Story of the Mind
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This is what we mean by Self-consciousness. It is not an inborn thing
with the child. He gradually acquires it. And it is not a sense of a
distinct and separate self, first known and then compared with other
persons. On the contrary, it is gradually built up in the child's mind
from the same material exactly as that of which he makes up his
thought of other persons. The deeds he can do he first sees others
doing; only then can he imitate them and find out that he also is a
being who can perform them.
So it goes all through our lives. Our sense of Self is constantly
changing, constantly being enriched. We have not the same thought of
self two days in succession. To-day I think of myself as something to
be proud of, to-morrow as something to be ashamed of. To-day I learn
something from you, and the thought that it is common to you and to me
is the basis of my sympathy with you. To-morrow I learn to commit the
unworthy act which Mr. A. commits, and the thought that he and I are
so far the same is the basis of the common disapproval which I feel of
him and me.
2. The second result of this imitative learning about personality is
of equal importance. When the child has taken up an action by
imitation and made it subjective, finding out that personality has an
inside, something more than the mere physical body, then he reads this
fact back into the other persons also. He says to himself: "He too, my
little brother, must have _in him_ a sense of agency similar to this
of mine. He acts imitatively, too; he has pleasures and pains; he
shows sympathy for me, just as I do for him. So do all the persons
with whom I have become so far acquainted. They are, then, 'subjects'
as I am--something richer than the mere 'projects' which I had
supposed." So other persons become essentially like himself; and not
only like himself, but identical with himself so far as the particular
marks are concerned which he has learned from them. For it will be
remembered that all these marks were at first actually taken up by
imitation from these very persons. The child is now giving back to his
parents, teachers, etc., only the material which he himself took from
them. He has enriched it, to be sure; with it he now reads into the
other persons the great fact of subjective agency; but still whatever
he thinks of them has come by way of his thought of himself, and that
in turn was made up from them.
This view of the other person as being the same in the main as the
self who thinks of the other person, is what psychologists mean when
they speak of the "ejective" self. It is the self of some one else as
I think of it; in other words, it is myself "ejected" out by me and
lodged in him.
_The Social and Ethical Sense._--From this we see what the Social
Sense is. It is the feeling which arises in the child or man of the
real identity, through its imitative origin, of all possible thoughts
of self, whether yourself, myself, or some one else's self. The bond
between you and me is not an artificial one; it is as natural as is
the recognition of personal individuality. And it is doing violence to
this fundamental fact to say, as social science so often assumes, that
the individual naturally separates himself or his interests from the
self or the interests of others. He is, on the contrary, bound up with
others from the start by the very laws of his growth. His social
action and feeling are natural to him. The child can not be selfish
only nor generous only; he may seem to be this or that, in this
circumstance or that, but he is really social all the time.
Furthermore, his sense of right and wrong, his Ethical Sense, grows up
upon this sense of the social bond. This I can not stop to explain
further. But it is only when social relationships are recognised as
essential in the child's growth that we can understand the mutual
obligations and duties which the moral life imposes upon us all.
_How to Observe Children, with Especial Reference to Observations of
Imitation._--There are one or two considerations of such practical
importance to all those who wish to observe children that I venture to
throw them together--only saying, by way of introduction, that nothing
less than the child's personality is at stake in the method and matter
of its imitations. The Self is really the form in which the personal
influences surrounding the child take on their new individuality.
1. No observations are of much importance which are not accompanied by
a detailed statement of the personal influences which have affected
the child. This is the more important since the child sees few
persons, and sees them constantly. It is not only likely--it is
inevitable--that he _make up his personality_, under limitations of
heredity, by imitation, out of the "copy" set in the actions, temper,
emotions, of the persons who build around him the social enclosure of
his childhood. It is only necessary to watch a two-year-old closely to
see what members of the family are giving him his personal "copy"--to
find out whether he sees his mother constantly and his father seldom;
whether he plays much with other children, and what in some degree
their dispositions are; whether he is growing to be a person of
subjection, equality, or tyranny; whether he is assimilating the
elements of some low unorganized social personality from his foreign
nurse. The boy or girl is a social "monad," to use Leibnitz's figure
in a new context, a little world, which reflects the whole system of
influences coming to stir his sensibility. And just in so far as his
sensibilities are stirred, he imitates, and forms habits of imitating;
and habits?--they are character!
2. A point akin to the first is this: the observation of each child
should describe with great accuracy the child's relations to other
children. Has he brothers or sisters? how many of each, and of what
age? Does he sleep in the same bed or room with them? Do they play
much with one another alone? The reason is very evident. An only child
has only adult "copy." He can not interpret his father's actions, or
his mother's, oftentimes. He imitates very blindly. He lacks the more
childish example of a brother or sister near himself in age. And this
difference is of very great importance to his development. He lacks
the stimulus, for example, of games in which personification is a
direct tutor to selfhood, as I shall remark further on. And while he
becomes precocious in some lines of instruction, he fails in variety
of imagination, in richness of fancy, at the same time that his
imaging processes are more wild and uncontrolled. The dramatic, in his
sense of social situations, is largely hidden. It is a very great
mistake to isolate children, especially to separate off one or two
children. One alone is perhaps the worse, but two alone are subject to
the other element of social danger which I may mention next.
3. Observers should report with especial care all cases of unusually
close relationship between children in youth, such as childish
favoritism, "platonic friendships," "chumming," in school or home,
etc. We have in these facts--and there is a very great variety of
them--an exaggeration of the social or imitative tendency, a narrowing
down of the personal sensibility to a peculiar line of well-formed
influences. It has never been studied by writers either on the genesis
of social emotion or on the practice of education. To be sure,
teachers have been alive to the pros and cons of allowing children and
students to room together; but that has been with view to the
possibility of direct immoral or unwholesome contagion. This danger is
certainly real; but we, as psychological observers, and above all as
teachers and leaders of our children, must go deeper than that.
Consider, for example, the possible influence of a school chum and
roommate upon a girl in her teens; for this is only an evident case of
what all isolated children are subject to. A sensitive nature, a girl
whose very life is a branch of a social tree, is placed in a new
environment, to engraft upon the members of her mutilated self--her
very personality; it is nothing less than that--utterly new channels
of supply. The only safety possible, the only way to conserve the
lessons of her past, apart from the veriest chance, and to add to the
structure of her present character, lies in securing for her the
greatest possible variety of social influences. Instead of this, she
is allowed to meet, eat, walk, talk, lie down at night, and rise in
the morning, with one other person, a "copy" set before her, as
immature in all likelihood as herself, or, if not so, yet a single
personality, put there to wrap around her growing self the confining
cords of unassimilated and foreign habit. Above all things, fathers,
mothers, teachers, elders, give the children room! They need all that
they can get, and their personalities will grow to fill it. Give them
plenty of companions, fill their lives with variety; variety is the
soul of originality, and its only source of supply. The ethical life
itself, the boy's, the girl's, conscience, is born in the stress of
the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imitative
hesitations; and just this is the analogy which he must assimilate and
depend upon in his own conflicts for self-control and social
continence. So impressively true is this from the human point of view
that, in my opinion--formed, it is true, from the very few data
accessible on such points, still a positive opinion--friendships of a
close exclusive kind should be discouraged or broken up, except when
under the immediate eye of the wise parent or guardian; and even when
allowed, these relationships should, in all cases, be used to entrain
the sympathetic and moral sentiments into a wider field of social
exercise.
One of the merits of the great English schools and of the free schools
of America is that in them the boys acquire, from necessity, the
independence of sturdy character, and the self-restraint which is
self-imposed. The youth brought up to mind a tutor often fails of the
best discipline.
4. The remainder of this section may be devoted to the further
emphasis of the need of close observation of children's games,
especially those which may be best described as "society games." All
those who have given even casual observation to the doings of the
nursery have been impressed with the extraordinary facility of the
child's mind, from the second year onward, in imagining and plotting
social and dramatic situations. It has not been so evident, however,
to these casual observers, nor to many really more skilled, that they
were observing in these fancy plays the putting together anew of
fragments, or larger pieces, of the adult's mental history. Here, in
these games, we see the actual use which our children make of the
personal "copy" material which they get from you and me. If a man
study these games patiently in his own children, and analyze them out,
he gradually sees emerge from within the inner consciousness a picture
of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be like, and whose actions
he seeks to generalize and apply. The picture is poor, for the child
takes only what he is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele
pathetically notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster
divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and home-coming
point of it, that he takes more of the bad in us for reproduction than
of the good! But, be this as it may, what we give him is all he gets.
Heredity does not stop with birth; it is then only beginning. And the
pity of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the
fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the new-forming
personality from the heritage of past commonness or impurity, is
simply left to take its course for the further establishing and
confirmation of it. Was there ever a group of school children who did
not leave the real school to make a play school, setting up a box for
one of their number to sit on and "take off" the teacher? Was there
ever a child who did not play "church," and force the improvised
"papa" into the pulpit? Were there ever children who did not "buy"
things from fancied stalls in every corner of the nursery, after they
had once seen an elder drive a trade in the market? The point is this:
the child's personality grows; growth is always by action; he clothes
upon himself the scenes of the parent's life and acts them out; so he
grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he is able to
perform.
In order to be of more direct service to observers of games of this
character, let me give a short account of an observation of the kind
made some time ago--one of the simplest of many actual situations
which my two little girls, Helen and Elizabeth, have acted out
together. It is a very commonplace case, a game the elements of which
are evident in their origin; but I choose this rather than one more
complex, since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find
the elementary the more instructive.
On May 2 I was sitting on the porch alone with the children--the two
mentioned above, aged respectively four and a half and two and a half
years. Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby;
that is, Helen became "mamma," and Elizabeth the "baby." The younger
responded by calling her sister "mamma," and the play began.
"You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get up," said mamma.
Baby rose from the floor--first falling down in order to rise!--was
seized upon by "mamma," taken to the railing to an imaginary
washstand, and her face washed by rubbing. Her articles of clothing
were then named in imagination, and put on, one by one, in the most
detailed and interesting fashion. During all this "mamma" kept up a
stream of baby talk to her infant: "Now your stockings, my darling;
now your skirt, sweetness--O! no--not yet--your shoes first," etc.,
etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility which
real infants usually show. When this was done--"Now we must go tell
papa good-morning, dearie," said mamma. "Yes, mamma," came the reply;
and hand in hand they started to find papa. I, the spectator,
carefully read my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality of
papa, seeing that he was so much in evidence, would break in upon the
imagined situation. But not so. Mamma led her baby directly past me to
the end of the piazza, to a column in the corner. "There's papa," said
mamma; "now tell him good-morning."--"Good-morning, papa; I am very
well," said baby, bowing low to the column. "That's good," said mamma,
in a _gruff, low voice_, which caused in the real papa a thrill of
amused self-consciousness most difficult to contain. "Now you must
have your breakfast," said mamma. The seat of a chair was made a
breakfast table, the baby's feigned bib put on, and her porridge
carefully administered, with all the manner of the nurse who usually
directs their breakfast. "Now" (after the meal, which suddenly became
dinner instead of breakfast), "you must take your nap," said mamma.
"No, mamma; I don't want to," said baby. "But you must."--"No; you be
baby, and take the nap."--"But all the other children have gone to
sleep, dearest, _and the doctor says you must_," said mamma. This
convinced baby, and she lay down on the floor. "But I haven't
undressed you." So then came all the detail of undressing; and mamma
carefully covered her up on the floor with a light shawl, saying:
"Spring is coming now; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, and go
to sleep."--"But you haven't kissed me, mamma," said the little one.
"Oh, of course, my darling!"--so a long siege of kissing! Then baby
closed her eyes very tight, while mamma went on tiptoe away to the end
of the porch. "Don't go away, mamma," said baby. "No; mamma wouldn't
leave her darling," came the reply.
So this went on. The nap over, a walk was proposed, hats put on, etc.,
the mamma exercising great care and solicitude for her baby. One
further incident to show this: when the baby's hat was put on--the
real hat--mamma tied the strings rather tight. "Oh! you hurt, mamma,"
said baby. "No; mamma wouldn't draw the strings too tight. Let mamma
kiss it. There, is that better, my darling?"--all comically true to a
certain sweet maternal tenderness which I had no difficulty in
tracing.
Now in such a case what is to be reported, of course, is the facts.
Yet knowledge of more than the facts is necessary, as I have said
above, in order to get the full psychological lesson. We need just the
information which concerns the rest of the family and the social
influences of the children's lives. I recognised at once every phrase
which the children used in this play, where they got it, what it meant
in its original context, and how far its meaning had been modified in
this process, called in a figure "social heredity." But as that story
is reported to strangers who have no knowledge of the children's
social antecedents, how much beyond the mere facts of imitation and
personification do they get from it? And how much the more is this
true when we examine those complex games of the nursery which show the
brilliant fancy for situation and drama of the wide-awake
four-year-old?
Yet we psychologists are free to interpret; and how rich the lessons
even from such a simple scene as this! As for Helen, what could be a
more direct lesson--a lived-out exercise--in sympathy, in altruistic
self-denial, in the healthy elevation of her sense of self to the
dignity of kindly offices, in the sense of responsibility and agency,
in the stimulus to original effort and the designing of means to
ends--and all of it with the best sense of the objectivity which is
quite lost in wretched self-consciousness in us adults, when we
personate other characters? What could further all this highest mental
growth better than the game by which the lessons of her mother's daily
life are read into the child's little self? Then, in the case of
Elizabeth also, certain things appear. She obeys without command or
sanction, she takes in from her sister the elements of personal
suggestion in their simpler childish forms. Certainly such scenes,
repeated every day with such variation of detail, must give something
of the sense of variety and social equality which real life afterward
confirms and proceeds upon; and lessons of the opposite character are
learned by the same process.
All this exercise of fancy must strengthen the imaginative faculty
also. The prolonged situations, maintained sometimes whole days, or
possibly weeks, give strength to the imagination and train the
attention. I think, also, that the sense of essential reality, and its
distinction from the unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this
sort of symbolic representation. Play has its dangers also--very
serious ones. The adults sometimes set bad examples. The game gives
practise in cunning no less than in forbearance. Possibly the best
service of observation just now is to gather the facts with a view to
the proper recognition and avoidance of the dangers.
Finally, I may be allowed a word to interested parents. You can be of
no use whatever to psychologists--to say nothing of the actual damage
you may be to the children--unless you _know your babies through and
through_. Especially the fathers! They are willing to study everything
else. They know every corner of the house familiarly, and what is done
in it, except the nursery. A man labours for his children ten hours a
day, gets his life insured for their support after his death, and yet
he lets their mental growth, the formation of their characters, the
evolution of their personality, go on by absorption--if no worse--from
common, vulgar, imported and changing, often immoral attendants! Plato
said the state should train the children; and added that the wisest
man should rule the state. This is to say that the wisest man should
tend his children! Hugo gives us, in Jean Valjean and Cosette, a
picture of the true paternal relationship. We hear a certain group of
studies called the _humanities_, and it is right. But the best school
in the humanities for every man is in his own house.
With this goes, finally, the highest lesson of sport, drama,
make-believe, even when we trace it up into the art-impulse--the
lesson of _personal freedom_. The child himself sets the limitations
of the game, makes the rules, and subjects himself to them, and then
in time pierces the bubble for himself, saying, "I will play no more."
All this is the germ of self-regulation, of the control of the
impulses, of the voluntary adoption of the ideal, which becomes in
later life--if so be that he cling to it--the pearl of great price.
CHAPTER V.
THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND--PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY--MENTAL
DISEASES.
In the foregoing pages we have had intimations of some of the
important questions which arise about the connection of mind with
body. The avenues of the senses are the normal approaches to the mind
through the body; and, taking advantage of this, experiments are made
upon the senses. This gives rise to Experimental Psychology, to which
the chapter after this is devoted. Besides this, however, we find the
general fact that a normal body must in all cases be present with a
normal mind, and this makes it possible to arrange so to manipulate
the body that changes may be produced in the mind in other ways than
through the regular channels of sense. For example, we influence the
mind when we drink too much tea or coffee, not to mention the greater
changes of the same kind which are produced in the mind of the drinker
of too much alcohol or other poisonous substances. All the methodical
means of procedure by which the psychologist produces effects of this
kind by changing the condition or functions of the body within itself
belong to Physiological Psychology. So he modifies the respiration,
changes the heart beat, stimulates or slows the circulation of the
blood, paralyzes the muscles, etc. The ways of procedure may be
classified under a few heads, each called a method.
1. _Method of Extirpation._--This means simply the cutting away of a
part of the body, so that any effect which the loss of the part makes
upon the mind may be noted. It is used especially upon the brain.
Pieces of the brain, great or small--indeed, practically the whole
brain mass--may be removed in many animals without destroying life.
Either of the cerebral hemispheres entire, together with large
portions of the other, may be taken from the human brain without much
effect upon the vital processes, considered as a whole; the actual
results being the loss of certain mental functions, such as sight,
hearing, power of movement of particular limbs, etc., according to the
location of the part which is removed. Many of the facts given below
under the heading of Localization were discovered in this way, the
guiding principle being that if the loss of a function follows the
removal of a certain piece of the brain, then that portion of the
brain is directly concerned in the healthy performance of that
function.
2. _Method of Artificial Stimulation._--As the term indicates, this
method proceeds by finding some sort of agent by which the
physiological processes may be started artificially; that is, without
the usual normal starting of these processes. For example, the
physician who stimulates the heart by giving digitalis pursues this
method. For psychological purposes this method has also been fruitful
in studying the brain, and electricity is the agent customarily used.
The brain is laid bare by removing part of the skull of the animal,
and the two electrodes of a battery are placed upon a particular point
of the brain whose function it is wished to determine. The current
passes out along the nerves which are normally set in action from this
particular region, and movements of the muscles follow in certain
definite parts and directions. This is an indication of the normal
function of the part of the brain which is stimulated.
Besides this method of procedure a new one, also by brain stimulation,
has recently been employed. It consists in stimulating a spot of the
brain as before, but instead of observing the character of the
movement which follows, the observer places galvanometers in
connection with various members of the body and observes in which of
the galvanometers the current comes out of the animal's body (the
galvanometer being a very delicate instrument for indicating the
presence of an electric current). In this way it is determined along
what pathways and to what organs the ordinary vital stimulation passes
from the brain, provided it be granted that the electric current takes
the same course.
3. _Method of Intoxication, called the "Toxic Method._"--The remarks
above may suffice for a description of this method. The results of the
administration of toxic or poisonous agents upon the mind are so
general and serious in their character, as readers of De Quincy know,
that very little precise knowledge has been acquired by their use.
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