Mind and work

6xJ^bris

PROFESSOR J. S.WILL

/'.

MIND AND WORK

Mind and Work

By
LUTHER H. GULICK, M. D,

Director of Physical Training in the
New York City Schools

Author of
'The Efficient Life"

New York

Doublcday, Page & Company

1908

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, IQ08, BYDOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COilPANY
PUBLISHED OCTOBER, I908

S98964-

TO THOSE WHO WOULD COMPEL, RATHER THAN BE
COMPELLED, BY CIRCUMSTANCE ;

WHO WOULD DRIVE, RATHER THAN BE DRIVEN,
BY THEIR FEELINGS ;

WHO WOULD BE MASTERS OF THEMSELVES AND SO
OF FATE

PREFACE

It is not by accident that this volume is
addressed mainly to a consideration of the
feelings. Our hopes, fears, ambitions, loves,
and likes are the controlling factors of our
lives. The purely mental, logical, or
reasoning function is chiefly the servant
of our desires and fears.

The success that I am really talking
about is primarily internal. It may, and
I believe usually does, secure external
success, but the real thing is inside. It
consists of real self-control, the ability
to see and live in what is true. It results
in health, sanity, wholesomeness, friendli-
ness, usefulness, happiness.

These chapters have nearly all of them
had their beginning as informal talks given
on various occasions; Subsequently they
were given as one part of a lecture course
in the School of Pedagogy of New York
University, where they were stenographically
reported. I am indebted to the editors
of The World's Work, The Ladies' Home

vii

viii Preface

Journal, The Outlook, and Good House-
keeping for permission to reprint articles
which appeared in their journals. After
another revision and carpentering to fit
each other, they are as they appear here.
To the friend who aided in the revision, I
am indebted as I was in the preparation of
*'The Efficient Life," Harry James Smith.

Luther H. Gulick

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE

Preface

vii

I.

The Habit of Success . . . .

3

II.

What Is Real

. 19

III.

Resolutions — Good and Bad .

. 33

IV.

Mental Effects of a Flat Top Desk .

. 45

V.

Thinking That Arrives

. 57

VI.

Put It on Paper ....

. 67

VII.

JManagement of the Feelings

. 75

VIII.

The Time to Quit ....

. 89

IX.

Fatigue and Character

101

X.

Will-fatigue

. 113

XI.

Rest the Will

129

XII.

Will-economy

143

XIII.

The Need of Adequate Work .

157

XIV.

Handicaps .....

175

XV.

The Spirit of the Game . .

. 191

JX

THE HABIT OF SUCCESS

CHAPTER I

A GOOD mouser at first will bring
dead mice for the kittens to play
with. The little ones will growl and stick
their tiny teeth into the bodies of the un-
resisting mice. Later on, mice that are
only disabled will be brought and the kittens
will have some resistance to overcome.
Finally uninjured mice are brought, and if
these escape from the kittens, they are
caught by the mother and brought back.
In this way confidence and real ability
develop.

It is said that this same process is carried
on by foxes in the training of their young;
and that those who train terriers to catch
rats follow a similar course. They bring
rats whose teeth have either been drawn
or become so dulled that they are incapable
of effective biting. It is only after the
pups have learned the knack of killing these
unarmed rats that they are allowed to attack
rats that have not been disabled. Some-

4 Mind and Work

times it happens that a puppy not so trained
in its first attack on a rat will be badly
bitten; and the effect will be that the puppy
is spoiled as a good rat catcher, because it
has been frightened so thoroughly. The
memory of the bite interferes with that
active courage which is an essential element
in a good rat catcher.

Of course, no notions of psychology are
supposed to reside, either in the animals or
in those who train the terriers; but it is
true in all these cases tliat the beginners
are given work to do in which they can suc-
ceed, so that they know they can do what
is before them. Where this is not done,
habits of failure are established : and habits
of failure are ruinous.

Puppies, foxes, and terriers do not differ
in this fundamental respect from children,
and the following may be considered a

typical case. A little girl named S was

doing wretched work in school. She seemed
to be trying and yet she could not spell
the words she was asked to spell, she could
not remember her multiplication table;
her whole attitude was one of conscious-

The Habit of Success 5

ness of inability. Because of her lack of
success she was frequently punished at
home, sometimes severely. Then a con-
ference took place between the mother
and the principal, which resulted in all
punishment at home being discontinued.
Special work was then given to the child,
work which was easy for her to do really
well. In the course of a few days her
whole attitude changed : she became happy,
confident that she could do the work
that she had to do. She continued her
work and when gradually she was put back
on the regular work of the grade in which
she belonged, she discovered that she
could do that work. She went on there-
after and stood high in her class. The
difference was primarily a difference in
her attitude toward herself, her attitude
toward success. She knew she could suc-
ceed, while before she knew that she was
going to fail. It seemed as if her whole
moral nature had been made over. Her
mother said in a letter to the teacher: "S 's
entire demeanour has changed for the better.
Her language is improving, her manner is

6 Mind and Work

sprightly. She seems totally free from
nervousness, in fact a changed girl."

I knew a boy of seventeen who was failing
in his high school work. He was rather
lazy, and his family unceasingly told him
how lazy he was, how his older brothers
had done brilliant work, how they were
Phi Beta Kappa men in college, and how
he was the *' black sheep" of the family.
The boy believed it all ; he knew he was a
failure. And he kept on being a failure
until somebody discovered something that
he could do. Then he succeeded, and he
has been succeeding ever since.

This principle of the habit of success is
constantly demonstrated in athletics. In
practising for the high jump, the begin-
ner will start with the stick at that height
at which he can jump it easily, and he will
raise it every time that he clears the stick,
so that he must always jump higher. And
when by the greatest effort he succeeds in
clearing the stick at his approximately
greatest height, he will put it still an inch
higher — at a point where he must almost
of necessity fail. For a long time he will

The Habit of Success 7

struggle under conditions where failure is
almost inevitable. This excess of effort
always means the use of unnecessary
muscles and combination of muscles in
the endeavor to find some better way to
jump. That disturbs that precision of
movement which is essential to any first-
class athletic performer. It is known as
"form." The result is that through this
excess of effort he never learns to jump as
well as does a boy who most of the time
jumps within his ability and who thus
acquires perfect form, perfect control. This
is not to say that a good jumper never
tests himself; he does. But the bulk of
his work is done under conditions where
he can succeed, where he can carry his
body in the most perfect "form."

Successful teachers of backward or feeble-
minded children have discovered that this
principle is fundamental in the education
of these unfortunates. The most impor-
tant, and at the same time the most difficult
thing to do is to convince these children
that they can succeed. So long as they
are sure that they cannot succeed, they

8 Mind and Work

are hopeless failures. You may as well
give them up unless you can awaken
this belief in themselves, belief in their
own success. If you take a child that is
really mentally subnormal and put him
in school with normal children, he cannot
do well, no matter how hard he tries. He
tries again and again, and fails. Then he
is scolded and punished, kept after school,
and held up to the ridicule of the teacher
and other students. When he goes out
to the playground he cannot play with the
vigour and skill and force of other children.
In the plays he is not wanted on either side ;
he is always ** it " in tag. So he soon acquires
the presentiment that he is going to fail no
matter what he does, that he cannot do as
the others do, and^that there is no use in try-
ing. So he gives up trying; he quits. That is
the largest element in the lives of the feeble-
minded, that conviction that they cannot
do like others, and is the first thing that
must be overcome if they are to be helped.
There is no hope whatever of growth so
long as they foresee that they are going to
fail. The first problem of the teacher of

The Habit of Success 9

feeble-minded children is, then, to discover
tasks that are within the grasp of these
children. The things must be so simple
that they can be accomplished, and at the
same time so interesting as to awaken
enthusiasm and the willingness to make
effort. Then the teacher gives more and
more difficult work, but never allows
them to establish any other habit than that
of success.

President Eliot, of Harvard University,
some time ago, in a notable address, said that
in his judgment the majority of the failures
of pupils in the elementary schools are
due to the fact that the children were
given work to do in which they could not
succeed at first, or else not given enough
work in which they could succeed, so as
to create this atmosphere of success. This
is the case, for instance, when motor-
minded boys are put upon work which is
primarily intellectual. These boys cannot
do it well and hence they become discouraged
and think they cannot do anything well.
This habit of success. Dr. Eliot says, is in
itself a major factor for making success.

10 Mind and Work

He says that the unpardonable sin in
educational administration is to give the
child things to do that it cannot do, or that
it cannot do well.

In the business world this principle is
understood pretty well. For instance, a
man who has failed in business two or three
times is rarely again trusted to manage
a business, even though everybody knows
that the failures have been unavoidable.
The reason is that the man's own confidence
in himself has been undermined. Without
confidence there can be no success.

The great majority of those who fall
victims of neurasthenia are people who are
unable to do the things that they have to
do. As a rule, people do not become
nervous wrecks while they are succeeding;
but they go to pieces when they begin to
fail. They begin to worry and they go
down. A major part of the art of success-
ful living consists in adjusting the prob-
lems of daily life and taking them in bundles
so that they may be completed and done
successfully, instead of having them forever
hanging over us as incomplete work and

The Habit of Success 11

unattainable ideals. How would you feel
if you were pretty sure that everything you
attempted, you would fail in — every
hour, every day, every week? That is
the attitude of the untrained feeble-minded
person, and it applies also to many other
people. Through every failure, the faculty
of endeavour, of trying, is lessened — that
is the sad and serious thing. When you
are succeeding, you can try harder, but
when you are failing, you ultimately suffer
a paralysing effect.

That child is in a well-nigh hopeless
condition in whom we can find nothing to
approve. That man makes the greatest,
the most successful, ventures in business or
in science or in friendship who is confident of
success, and whose confidence is based upon
experience. As in the case of the feeble-
minded, so with normal pupils — the way
to bring out their best efforts is by giving
them work which is so adjusted to their
powers that they can succeed in it; and then
letting them understand that you know
they are succeeding. The attempting of
work which cannot be done, which is beyond

12 Mind and Work

the power of the individual — that creates
the mental atmosphere of failure.

When the whole world is against you
and there is one friend who believes in you
way down — this one friend may save your
soul. We cannot entirely trust our own
judgment about ourselves; we must depend,
to a considerable extent, upon the judgment
of our friends. That is illustrated in the
relations of teacher and pupils — the
difference between the teacher who believes
in his pupils and the teacher who is con-
stantly endeavouring to find failures. One
is trying to discover the strong points of
the children and the other is trying to show
up the weak points. It is only by dwelling
on the strong points that we can get rid
of most of the failures.

Everyone of us has at times come up
against inevitable failure. We have failed
sometimes even when we have done our
level best. Then the world looks black.
You want to sit down and quit; and if the
failure has been bad enough, you want to
die. Life does not seem worth while. You
lie awake at night, you- do not relish your

The Habit of Success 13

food, you do not digest it, you do not talk,
and you will not take exercise. This is
the universal condition of every person who
believes himself to be a failure.

It is the right of every one to choose that
part of life which is successful. Even the
feeble-minded have a right to hold in
consciousness the measure of power which
they have, rather than to hold in mind
those attainments which they do not have;
and in this respect they do not differ at all
from normal people. As compared with
geniuses, the normal are feeble-minded.
Take for instance in music, Bach, Mozart,
Wagner — as compared with ourselves.
There can be little comparison. And yet,
should that put us in a state of hopelessness
with reference to the enjoyment of music,
or even the performance of it ? By no
means. It is so with reference to the
feeble-minded. Because the feeble-minded
person cannot jump as far as I can —
mentally — should he therefore sit down
and make no endeavour ? No ; the relation
is just the same as our relation to the
genius. Attainment is not an absolute

14 Mind and Work

thing. There is no such thing as absolute
success, nor such a thing as absolute
failure. The success or failure depends
predominantly upon your point of view
or standard. The person who adapts
his work to his power can have success;
and he has a right to hold that success
in mind. That is normal, that is whole-
some, that makes for good work. Every
one has failed to such an extent that
if he chose to dwell on those failures, they
could dominate his whole mental life; and
with some people that is the case. They
are the pessimists — ineffective, psychically
disagreeable people. They are the people
who, whenever they see you do something
hopefully and confidently, **know better."
No teacher, no employer, no parent should
impress children with the fact that they
are failures. It is wicked, and dreadful
in its effect. On the other hand, it is not
right that no person should ever be told
that he has failed, for that is sometimes
necessary; but to impress upon a person
that he is a failure makes for a lower level
of life. If a teacher or a parent could really

The Habit of Success 15

succeed in convincing the child that he is a
failure, nothing could be so fatal toward
really making him a failure as this know-
ledge.

The conclusions are:

(1) In order to get the best out of both
adults and children the most important
thing to do is to believe in them, to give
them work that they can do, and then
frankly to recognise their success.

(2) In dealing with ourselves, while
occasionally it is necessary to examine
our own failures in order that we may
detect our weak spots, the thing to keep
in mind constantly is our successes. It is
of no great significance that we should try
nine times to solve a problem and fail if
when we try the tenth time we succeed.
The one success means more than the nine
failures. That is the thing to be kept in
mind.

WHAT IS REAL

CHAPTER II

IT is possible to select the bulk, as
well as the most real part, of one's
mental atmosphere. This may be more
readily illustrated than proved. For ex-
ample, I have in mind a certain image of a
house, the windows of which overlook in
the far distance some beautiful hills. In
front of those hills there may be seen in the
fall waving fields of yellow wheat. In the
immediate foreground of the picture is a
great stretch of smooth green grass. But in
the middle distance is a row of horrid little
tenements — five - room houses — built as
cheaply and kept as wretchedly as possible.
The inhabitants of that house, whenever
they looked out of the windows, at first saw
very prominently the dirty little tenements.
They stared at them in all their ugliness.
Presently, however, these people discovered
that it was possible not to perceive the tene-
ments at all, but, by deliberately directing
the vision beyond, to enjoy the hills and the

19

20 Mind and Work

waving wheat and the green grass. It was
not so much a question as to which view
first caught the eye, as it was a question of
which view should take hold and endure.
The view from those windows became a
symbol in that family of the resolute holding
in mind of the things in life that are beautiful
instead of those that are ugly, of things
that -are pleasant as contrasted with those
that are disagreeable, of the things that are
true as opposed to those that are untrue.

That picture is life itself. It is not
something out of a laboratory — or some-
thing out of a text-book. Deliberately to
see the hills in the distance lies within our
control.

There is probably no one person in the
world but has tragedy enough and pain
enough straight along to warrant — yes,
absolutely to warrant — pretty complete
discouragement. And I imagine that there
is no person who is so perfectly adjusted
by nature, so entirely balanced in health,
that there are not times when he finds it
necessary to hold himself by deliberate will-
power— to forget how he has been hurt,

What is Real 21

to turn aside from some things ugly in a
friend's character, to turn aside from the
bad in his own character, for every one of
us has in his character that which is bad.
Our characters are ugly enough in part, so
that if we were to dwell constantly on that
part, the prospect would seem pretty dis-
heartening, and justifiably so.

I met a young man once who told me he
was studying music. He said that his
teacher had trained him to hear every
defect in the voices of singers. And he
added, "Now I am able to detect defects
in the finest singers." Of this he was
very proud !

This, I believe, is the primary point with
reference to the whole subject of the sanity
and clearness of one's mental operations:
we can have the fine things of life, or we
can have the opposite — just as we choose.
The type of person who is habitually
seeing faults in others, who is constantly
feeling for pain, who is always imagining
slights, loses the sense of balance and pro-
portion.

Our friends are people who see the good

22 Mind and Work

in us and who believe in that good. That
is not to say that they do not see the other
side. They probably see it, and they ought
to; but by holding in mind the good in us,
they help us to realise it more fully in our-
selves and to hold ourselves to this vision
of the ideal.

This world is about what we choose to
make it. There are enough meannesses
in every one — ourselves included — to
make for us a contemptible world, if we
select the meannesses and let our minds
dwell upon them. This twists and perverts
our thinking. And, on the other hand,
there is enough beauty in the world and
enough sanity in life, that if we choose
deliberately to put our minds on that beauty
and sanity, we shall react directly toward
wholesomeness.

The accomplishing of this lies essentially
in an attitude of deliberate thought; and
with a good many people it is an attitude of
deliberate choice. I know of invalids who
in spite of pain determine to see the beauty
of life. I know men and women who have
been tremendously wronged, but have de-

What is Real 23

liberately forgotten themselves, have just
gone straight on, seeking the beauty and
the truth in life.

My first point, then, is this — the atmos-
phere which makes for sane, simple, straight-
forward thinking is predominantly one that
can be chosen by each individual for himself.

It is not playing a false part to deliber-
ately choose for one's self the truest thing
and to hold to it constantly, even when the
thing that is less true presses at the moment
and seems to dominate. That is, the
deliberate assumption of the attitude of
health in mind and body is not a false thing.
It is the essentially true thing, because
unless we were predominantly healthy both
in mind and in body, we could not live: if
the sum total of our lives were mainly
defective, we should be dead or insane.
So it is absolutely fair during the upstroke
of life to formulate that attitude and car-
riage of the body, those words which one
will use when the downstroke comes. And
every person, crippled or not crippled,
who has an upstroke in life also has a
downstroke.

24 Mind and Work

Many people believe that to assume this
attitude of health is playing falsely. They
believe that the only thing to do is to be
honest, and that to be honest means to
pour out all the blackness of your own
soul on your friends. But that is not
really honest; it is dishonest to your best,
your biggest, self. It is an untruth — and
I am not using words carelessly or without
accuracy. It is untrue because it gives the
impression of permanency to a state which
is ephemeral. The old phrase "Burn your
own smoke" is applicable here.

This attitude does not mean turning
away from the world's suffering and the
evil of life. People have made that criticism.
They have said that this deliberate assump-
tion of the position of health and happiness
when one does not have health and happi-
ness is just turning away from the suffer-
ing and evil in the world. But it is not.
This can only be done when one looks
with wide-open eyes at the wickedness
and the suffering within and about one's self,
but sees at the same time the good and
realises that the good is the thing to hold;

What is Real 25

believes that the deliberate selection of
the best is possible; that one can to the
extent of one's will — whether it be a
strong will or a weak will, but at least to
the extent of one's will — select the thing
that is strong.

People sometimes say that those persons
who deliberately choose to look at the
good of life are dodging life's responsibilities
and its realities. I think that is wholly a
mistake. The hills in the picture that I
have described are a great deal more real,
more enduring, than those dirty little
houses. The houses could not last very
long; the hills endure a long, long time.
The thing that was real in that situation
was the beauty, not the ugliness of it.

I think that is true about most of life.
Every one of us has things in life that are
wretched. We are sick in some way, we
are in trouble, or we have friends, those
who are dear to us, relatives, who are in
sorrow, pain, or trouble. We do not
have to go far to find pain and sickness
and evil in the world; and there are people
of that temperament and that philosophy

26 Mind and Work

who pick out all the evil things and who
perseveringly hold them in mind. They
thus maintain about themselves an atmos-
phere of depression. We call them pes-
simists. They are the people who of two
evils will choose both. But is such a person
dealing with reality in the world more than
the person who takes life's good deliber-
ately and conscientiously, and daily holds
it in mind ?

It seems to me to be a question of ultimate
reality. So far as I see, the ultimate
reality is one toward good far more than
toward evil. Evil tends toward its own
extinction. It is becoming more and more
ephemeral. I do not think we shall ever
get away from it entirely, but it tends
toward its own elimination.

The person who spends all his time
fighting evil, misses the good of the world.
You have something in your life that you
do not want and you go to work to fight
it. The more you resist it, the stronger
it becomes, for that is the law of habit. The
very intensity of one's thought tends to
magnify the evil. You fall in love with

What is Real 27

somebody with whom you should not
fall in love, and you make up your mind
that you will not think about her. You
find that you are thinking about her all the
time and the very conflict accentuates that
which you are trying not to do. Life's
battles are not fought in that way. They
are fought in a positive way. You cannot
say, "I won't think"; you can say, "I
will do the other thing."

It is our right to select from life those
things that we want to look at. We can
select pain or happiness; and the primary
difference, I think, between people who are
wholesome in their mental make-up, who
are efficient in their mental processes, and
those who are not, is in the kinds of things
that they choose to have before their mental
visions. You know the good friend who
is in earnest about your character and who
thinks that good character is only to be
won by throwing out the evil. He sees
some fault that needs removal, and he is
probably right, and he tells you of it. The
critic who is constantly looking for evil
finds it and his life is filled with evil; he

28 Mind and Work

lives in an atmosphere of it. The other
friend — far less philosophic, but far more
of a friend, and you welcome him — is the
person who whenever he sees something
good, something happy, says so, dwells
upon it, and welcomes it.

You know the teacher who is looking for
disturbances in the dlassroom and every
time a child makes a noise is looking for
that child. That teacher lives in an atmos-
phere of disturbance; she is choosing a
mental environment of disturbance; she
is living in a psychic state of disturbance.
You know the other teacher, who is looking
for the positive good, for obedience, for
courtesy, who whenever she sees obedience,
courtesy, honesty, faithfulness, commends
them. That teacher lives in an atmosphere
of obedience, courtesy, and honesty, and all
the children around her do the same thing.
One it is a pleasure to know; the other it is
a pleasure to avoid. We avoid the one
steadily, persistently, unconsciously, and
we seek the other — thus showing that
this deliberate selection of our mental
atmosphere is not an artificial thing we

What is Real 29

think about and bring to consciousness,
but it is the natural and wholesome reaction
of every sane and normal temperament.
The philosopher is in search of truth,
and truth is not supposed to be a matter
of temperament. During the last few years
a new phase of philosophy has arisen which
is most prominently known in America in
connection with the names of James and
Dewey, and in England with that of Schiller.
The fundamental proposition of this — the
pragmatic philosophy — is that that thing
is true which holds true when applied to
life. Pessimism does n't work out. The
pessimist has relatively poor circulation,
digests food less well, is less muscular, and
particularly has fewer motives in life than
the optimist. Pessimism is negation, denial,
believing that the evil is more than the good,
that life is not worth while ; it is the dampen-
ing down of life. Pessimism tends to its
own annihilation, because it takes away
life's motives, life's vigour, life's power.
Optimism tends toward the increase of
life, increases the joy of living. If one
accepts the pragmatic point of view, opti-

30 Mind and Work

mism is justified. Hence I for one believe
in the optimistic point of view — believe
in it as absolutely and in the same sense
as I believe that two times two make four.
It operates to make life a better thing;
it makes for sanity as distinguished from
insanity.

Optimism does not mean being satisfied.
It says, "Here is a good thing. What is
better .P" Optimism is the pursuit of the
better, and the attitude which it takes is the
attitude of success, as distinguished from
the attitude of failure. The realities of
life are its successes, its dreams and hopes,
its health and love.

RESOLUTIONS — GOOD AND BAD

CHAPTER III

A GOOD resolution may be treated
as a sort of labor-saving device.
Its usefulness lies in the fact that it deals
with certain practical issues in advance of
their actual presentation. Thus, the course
of action being already determined, the
situation does not need to be canvassed
later — at a time when unprejudiced de-
cision will probably be more difficult than
now.

Looking calmly at his past life from some
point of vantage (a fortnight's vacation,
say, in the woods), a man may be impressed
with the fact that he does not get enough
exercise in the city ; he may admit to himself
that this is largely through his own fault,
that he could get a decent amount if only he
would make up his mind that way. For
example, he could be walking in the open
air for at least half or three-quarters of an
hour every day during the week, and on
Saturday or Sunday he could put in several

33

34 Mind and Work

hours of wholesome physical recreation;
help his digestion, his temper, his brain,
and his business by so doing. A sober
resolution to test out the practical value of
such a schedule — to give it a definite
trial of a certain number of weeks — is
a running start at achieving a very useful
habit.

When responsibilities press upon him,
when the day seems crowded to capacity
with engagements, and all the obstacles
set by natural inertia, bad ventilation,
laziness, and so forth, block his way out of
doors, then his resolution may be his
salvation. His only alternatives are to
get there somehow, or else to make a sacrifice
of his self-respect. The issue does not need
to be overhauled and discussed afresh
every day; the moral courage required is
of a simple kind; merely a matter of living
up to your word.

The most important test of a good reso-
lution is whether or not it is attainable.
Good resolutions broken are the kind of
thing that paves hell. Resolutions that
can be lived up to consistently in the cor-

Resolutions — Good and Bad 35

rupted currents of this world, here in the
midst of all the actual impediments, inhibi-
tions, and distractions of our earthly environ-
ment — those are good resolutions in the
true sense. Every resolution that cannot
be kept weakens moral grip. In other
words, good resolutions are resolutions
that are not too good.

Not but that a man's reach should exceed
his grasp; that is another matter. What
I am emphasising here is that, first of all,
a man must have a grasp, must be able to
hold with a bull-dog grip to something.
To make up one's mfnd to do a thing,
without taking sober account of what it
involves, is mere foolhardiness. Every
time you take hold of a thing, meaning to
keep hold, and then let go because you
can't help it, you are worse off than you
were before. You are simply getting prac-
tice in failure; and failure is a vicious
habit.

Scrutinised by common sense, many so-
called good resolutions turn out to be
preposterous. To adhere to them might
compel a man to move into an entirely

36 Mind and Work

different environment, away from his family
and friends. They might interfere with his
health or with his neighbours or with his
happiness in life.

A man says, for instance, when the re-
pentant fit is heavy upon him: *'It's all
wrong for me to lie abed in the morning
as I do. During the coming year I '11
do better. I 'II get up at 6.45."

What happens? We all know perfectly
well. And when you sigh, "Well, there
goes another of those good resolutions!'*
— ^you are in consequence weaker, less
self-respecting, less qualified for under-
taking a new venture. In short, less of
a man.

The fact is that you have grossly imposed
upon yourself. You have not taken into
account your experience in the past; you
have not considered the "psychological
climate" in which you live. These are
important and not-to-be-neglected factors
of the situation. Your sense of values is
perverted. To be quite candid, what real
use is there in your getting up at 6.45?
Very likely you have some inherited senti-

Resolutions — Good and Bad 37

ment about it; it seems more virtuous to
you than a more protracted sojourn in bed.
But an analysis of the ease will probably
lead you to the conclusion that your senti-
ment lacks a logical basis. You did not
take into consideration the specialised con-
ditions of modern city life — the late even-
ing hours, the nervous strain, the day's
work-schedule, and all that. You were
merely fighting against the stars in their
courses. You aimed at a theatrical brand
of goodness, not at the steady, workable,
everyday sort of thing that has a part to
play in practical life.

At epochs of moral housecleaning, such
as are supposed to occur at the end of the
old year and the beginning of the new, we
are sure to become aware of many undesir-
able habits in our lives; we see faults that
ought to be eradicated; new lines of conduct
that might helpfully be pursued. The
natural tendency is to undertake too much
at once in the way of regeneration; to
attempt the impossible task of making
one's self over complete — from A to Z.
In the end, that swarm of old habits, things

38 Mind and Work

ingrained, some of them, into the very mar-
row of our constitutions, are bound to get the
better of us. They can be pushed back for
a time, so long as our wills can stand up to
the task we have set for them; but eventu-
ally the will gets tired — ** will-fatigue"
— and relaxes its hold on the door; and
then all the wicked old habits come pell-
mell back again, much like the devil of the
parable, who, after being cast out, and the
house swept and garnished, returned,
bringing seven other devils worse than him-
self. Thus the latter state of that man
shall be worse than the first.

The resolution most to be commended
directs itself at doing, not at being: or, to
put it more precisely, at being as an end,
through doing as a means. Upon a con-
crete, objective thing-to-be-done, one can
fix attention — aim the attack : here is
a particular habit to be cultivated in this
or that particular way.

Pious resolutions to lead a better life
during the coming months are not usually
of great efficiency, just because they do
not supply one with a handle that can be

Resolutions — Good and Bad 39

gripped; it is a "fuzzy-minded" programme
of self-betterment.

By the same token, a resolution to be more
cheerful is not so commendable as a reso-
lution to tell at least one breezy story at
the breakfast table every day for a month.
A resolution to be a better neighbour has less
to say for itself than a resolution to make
at least one call per week. A resolution
to take better care of one's health has
less chance of holding its own against
the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune than a resolution to spend at
least half an hour in the open air every
week day.

In estimating our capacity, however,
we should not forget that there are various
external props and safeguards to take
advantage of. Not everything need depend
on the will-to-be-good.

A man ought, perhaps, to go to his
office every day. But that is n't why he
does it. It does not occur to him to ask
himself whether he ought to go or not. He 's
got to go: his salary, his reputation, his
self-respect — all these are forces that give

40 Mind and Work

him a shove out of the front door, even
when he feels the least ambitious.

So with certain good resolutions. I once
asked a man who stands to-day in the fore-
front of contemporary philosophic thought,
how he managed to get as much accom-
plished as he did. I knew him well. I
knew that he was normally lazy.

He said: "I load my waggon at the top
of the hill; then I get in front of it, and
we start down. I have to keep ahead —
that's all."

What he meant was, not that he loaded
his waggon foolishly; but that, taking his
health, his strength, his other obligations
into account, he decided what more it was
wise for him to undertake, and then he put
himself under bond, as it were, to under-
take it. He would accept certain invita-
tions to lecture; then he had to do it; and
he was a splendid lecturer. He would
agree with his publishers to have a book
ready by such and such a time — then he
got it ready. There was no way out of it.
He would pay a certain fee to take a course
at a. university; and then he was sure of

Resolutions — Good and Bad 41

going to the lectures, not only to get his
money's worth, but also to save his pride.

That man's resolutions were practical
— constructive — because he provided him-
self with the machinery of carrying them
through. He did n't let the matter depend
upon the nagging of a frail and too easily
seduced conscience. It was good campaign
tactics: estimating the exact strength of
the energy, and then making the utmost
of available resources.

Resolutions like that, made under sane
conditions of perspective and self-knowledge,
are aids, never hindrances, to efficiency.

MENTAL EFFECTS OF A FLAT-TOP
DESK

CHAPTER IV

NOT long ago in the office of a leading
American publishing house I noticed
that the roll-top desks had all been removed,
and that instead, the entire force, from sten-
ographer to head of department, sat before
desks with flat tops. When I asked about
it, they said :

'*Tt expedites business. Take the case
of a claim that must be passed along from
one hand to another until it has been
corrected and O. K.'d five different times.
Now if that claim can get stuck in a pigeon-
hole anywhere — a thing that used to hap-
pen right along — it 's likely to be forgotten.
The result is delays and confusion and
ragged business generally. But if there
are n't any pigeonholes and it has to lie
in plain view on top of the desk, it can't
be forgotten until it 's attended to."

"But it must make a mess on the desks,"
I objected.

"That's the very point," was the* answer.

45

46 Mind and Work

**No chance for a mess. We get things
cleaned up."

Since that conversation my own desk
has been a different affair. The occasions
have been few when I have left it at night
without knowing exactly what was there
and why it was there and what was to be
done with it next. At the end of each day
I can render a rough inventory of the
contents. The convenient dark corners
where I liked to stuff things out of sight
— out of mind — do not exist any more.

For those who have ears to hear, the
flat-top desk has a moral. It stands for
a principle which is applicable throughout
one's mental life. It stands for definite,
clearly marked stages — stopping-points —
breaking-off places.

Dr. Adolph Meyer, one of the most dis-
tinguished alienists of the present day,
has made the observation that among the
untransmitted causes of insanity none
counts for mOre than the big idea, the
idea that can never be fully made over
into concrete reality for the very reason
that it is so big. The far-reaching scheme,

Mental Effects of a Flat-Top Desk 47

the still unsubstantiated venture, the revo-
lutionary theory, the momentous but unper-
fected invention — all have it in them to
take possession of a man; they hold him
day and night; he can't get away.

The man with the small everyday ideas
keeps his balance not primarily because
his nervous system is of a more stable
character — though that may be true too
— but chiefly because his Httle ideas work
out directly and successfully; he can get
them done with and out of the way. His
jobs are finishable. He enjoys good mental
health.

The man who is working over a big,
complex, engrossing proposition shuts him-
self away from liberty until he can put his
q. e. d, to the end of it. His thoughts
are never free. The thing in his mind
tends to grow more real to him than the
concrete things outside; it drives other
realities out of the field; it upsets his mental
equilibrium.

The way back to healthy-mindedness is
to be learned from the man with the finish-
able jobs. His habits of definite accom-

48 Mind and Work

plishment — and then freedom — must be
acquired somehow. But this is not to be
done by sacrificing the big affairs on the
schedule. It 's a matter of getting at them
right.

The big problems can be split up. They
are always reducible to fractions — at least
for practical purposes they are — and each
fraction can be dealt with separately. We
do not need always to keep ourselves
staring at the whole, worried by its mag-
nitude and its difficulty and its imperative
claims.

I remember when I had a first book to
write. I kept trying to get at it; but every
time I began to put my mind seriously on
the business, the very size of the under-
taking, the amount of labour involved,
scared me away. The thing grew to be a
sort of nightmare. Then finally I made
a discovery: I did not have to write that
whole book at once. It was to be made up
of chapters, and I had the material for a
first chapter all in hand. I thought only
of that chapter — a perfectly practicable
and attractive occupation — and almost

Mental Effects of a Flat-Top Desk 49

before I knew it, the chapter was written.
It was not at all the hard work I had
imagined. And then the second chapter
became practicable, and the third; and thus
the book came into being.

So long as I looked at that work in the
lump, I was rendered helpless by it; but so
soon as I broke it up into parts, and gave
myself definitely to the accomplishment
of a part, I was master.

Taking one's work in reasonable "stints"
is the thing I am recommending: bundles
of work that can be finished. Set yourself
at some definite subdivision of the total
problem; something that you are able
to put through in a piece; and then put it
through. Make the breaking-off place sure.
When you reach that point, you have a
specific accomplishment to your credit;
and that 's an encouragement for the thing
that 's ahead.

If you have ever gone on walking expe-
ditions you know how important it is to
make goals. Suppose it 's a tramp of three
hundred miles or so that you are setting
out on. Your first impulse, especially if

50 Mind and Work

your time is limited, is to walk as far as
your strength allows each day. But that
does not work. Every afternoon you have
to decide afresh when you have really
reached the fatigue-point. Perhaps you
are not quite tired enough to stop yet, you
think. On the other hand, perhaps you
are. How determine? You think of the
hundreds of miles still to be covered, and
you decide to keep on a while longer. A
day comes when you are excited, or unduly
ambitious and, without perceiving it at the
time, you overwalk yourself. The subse-
quent night you do not rest; fatigue becomes
cumulative; and your pilgrimage is likely
to end in disaster.

Old trampers get the habit of studying
a map carefully before they start, blocking
out the route into reasonable walking days,
with ample allowances for grades and bad
roads and the like. Of course the plan
often goes awry in certain details; but in its
main outlines it is practicable; it can be
followed, and it works where the plan of
go-as-you-please fails.

Fatigue does not come so quickly when

Mental Effects of a Flat-Top Desk 51

you have set your eye on a certain definite
point of attainment, something you know
to be within your compass. The proxi-
mate goal is as much a psychological
necessity as the ultimate goal.

A conclusion may be arrived at either by
positive or by negative means; the main
thing is that you do arrive at it. Some-
times it happens that you run foul of a
problem that you can't solve at all. In
that case you are better off for admitting
to yourself that it 's beyond you. That 's
an intelligent breaking-off place. You can
let the problem go by, at least for the
present, without further concern.

The finishable-bundle habit guarantees
between-strain intervals. When you quit
your desk at night with the assurance that
everything has been brought to a definite
stopping-place, and that to-morrow you '11
know just where you stand with reference
to the day's work, you can really rest.
It 's a very different state of mind from the
one that comes when you pull down the
cover over a mussy array of odds and ends,
and run. "Something accomplished, some-

52 Mind and Work

thing done, has earned a night's repose" —
that 's what they said, you remember,
about the Village Blacksmith; and a truer
word was never spoken.

It 's precisely this repose that gives you
the first lien on to-morrow. You have a
chance to stand off and take a look at things
and size them up. You can estimate cash
values.

The greater the pressure under which a
man works — the greater the actual count
of his responsibilities — the more essential
is it that he should be able to get away
from them. The consciousness of freedom
is a thing that stays there in the back of
your mind, even when you are smashing
and driving away at your work; and it 's a
saving knowledge. It brings confidence,
helps you keep balance — this sureness
that there's a rest-time ahead which nothing
short of fire and flood and another break
in stocks can disturb.

The flat-top desk, cleared of the day's
debris, clean and fresh for to-morrow's new
duties, or for its new instalments of old
duties, is a symbol worth bearing in mind.

Mental Effects of a Flat-Top Desk 53

The brain of the man who has taken its moral
to heart keeps fresh and clear because it
earns its night's repose. The joy of success
is in just this daily conquest of definite
problems; and every such conquest is an
inspiration for the next. Most of the big
victories when looked at closely turn out
to be only the piled-up result of many small
victories, such as are always achievable
in the well-directed manoeuvres of each
separate day.

THINKING THAT ARRIVES

CHAPTER V

A GREAT many people are afraid of
the complexity of modern life. They
long for the wings of a dove — for any-
thing, in fact, which would enable them
to flee from our many-sided and highly-
organised world of to-day and get back
to simple habits and simple needs — in
short, **back to nature," whatever that
may mean. Such longings are wasted for
the most part. In a day of apartment-
houses and telephones and prepared foods
and domestic science, complexity must be
accepted.

And after all, why should we hesitate to
accept it.^ Every new complexity means
a new opportunity. The myriads of new
ties that modern civilisation thrusts upon us
make possible a life fuller and richer than
ever before. All the finest products of the
past are at our disposal. All the knowledge
and beauty of the world lie at our doors.
Nothing is to be gained by fleeing: every-

57

58 Mind and Work

thing is to be gained by joyfully recognising
these possibilities and taking hold of them.

The other side of the case is clear enough,
of course. It is undeniable that every new
complexity means not only a new oppor-
tunity but a new problem as well; and it
is no fault of ours if sometimes we experience
a sort of dazed and helpless feeling in the
face of it all. I have a woman friend who
impresses me as being always in that state
of mind. You feel as if somehow she had
lost her place in the procession, and were in
a perpetual scramble to catch up once more.
But the procession keeps on the move; and
there she is, invariably a little distance be-
hind, panting, and out of breath, and red
in the face. She never seems quite sure of
what she's after; everything confuses her.
It 's an aggravated case of what we have
referred to as *'fuzzymindedness."

Scarcely one of us whose life is n't crowded
with plans and responsibilities to the point of
being altogether swamped by them — if once
they actually get the upper hand. Things
will exercise that tyranny if we let them.

Take the case of the mother in a modern

Thinking that Arrives 59

home. Merely the care of the children's
clothes is enough to use up all her time —
the planning and buying and making over.
But there is the house to be looked after,
too, and the table to be provided for. As
a housewife she needs to be informed about
modern sanitation and hygiene — ster-
ilisation, antiseptics, disinfectants, some-
thing of dietetics; and she ought to under-
stand the special constitution of each member
of her family — what foods bring the results,
what predispositions and weaknesses must
be guarded against. She must have some
share in her children's school-life as well
as in their outside interests — music lessons,
perhaps, or athletics, or dancing class.
Then there is the never-to-be-solved
^'domestic problem." And a woman's own
personal needs; how much reading shall
she make time for ? — how much recreation,
and of what sort ? — how can she best
help her husband in his business ? — shall
she be active in club or parish work ? —
and so on. There is no end. In the midst
of so many cross-currents it is not easy
always to keep one's bearings.

60 Mind and Work

Fuzzymindedness, I dare say, is as old
an affection as appendicitis; but modern
conditions seem to favor both of them.
Fuzzymindedness is a loss of perspective;
it means that there are no clear edgqs to
what we see or think or feel. A penny,
if you hold is close enough — will shut out
the sun. Fuzzyminded persons can't tell
the difference between what is big and
important and what is of no more account
than a cent.

The conclusion of the whole matter is,
that if one kind of simple life — the kind
that longs for a cot in the wilderness —
is out of the question for us to-day, there 's
another kind that we must make our own,
or else live in a chaos. We must get hold
of some workable, everyday, simplification-
process which will help us keep our balance.

The first step, I believe, in mental
hygiene is to sort over the loose material of
one's mind and tie it up, as it were, in
separate parcels, with labels on them. Life
is too big and too complicated to cope with
as a whole: it simply overwhelms and daz-
zles. Wheat and tares, junk and jewels.

Thinking that Arrives 61

the important and the worthless, are all
there; every day flings them before us in
utter confusion; and there is no meaning in
it all until we have picked it over. Then
the worthless things and the trivial things
can be put where they belong. The number
of them is astonishing; and if one gets
tangled up in them it is hard to break free.
More little jobs, for example, are lying
around, waiting to be done, than can by any
possibility ever get done — that is, if the
big remainder of life is going to receive
any decent amount of attention; and if the
relative unimportance of these little jobs
is not understood; if one cannot keep them
under control, deprive them of power to
harass and torment, they destroy per-
spective — sanity — faster than anything
else.

The way to master them is to resolve to
let them go. Not all of them, of course,
but enough of them — and the right ones
— so that there will be room in your life
for other things, things that mean growth
and happiness. There is a type of house-
keeper that insists upon scrubbing the

62 Mind and Work

steps every time they have been profaned.
We do not greatly admire that type of
housekeeper. True, the steps may actually
have the marks of feet upon them; but
how about relative values? Life goes on
tolerably well even so.

To keep a house perfectly clean is more
than any woman can do ; and a woman whose
sense of achievement in life is dependent
upon that impossible ideal — fails. The
details of life so utterly surpass all human
power that we can never dream of com-
pleting them; and if we never stand back
to view things, as they say, ^'in scale,"
we are lost.

One mother of my acquaintance has found
a very practical means of getting her
problems into perspective. There are
several girls in her family — the oldest
of them nearly through the high-school —
and their home is an eight-room apartment
in the city. To an untrained masculine
eye no fault is to be found with the look of
things there; but apparently that is not
the whole story. One day she said to me:

"Nobody knows how I dislike to see my

Thinking that Arrives 63

house in such a condition. I was brought
up, you know, to be a model housekeeper.
And I should so enjoy doing a lot of dainty
work on the girls' clothes. But I have
learned to put it this way to myself:
Ten years from now what will my girls
be most grateful for in their mother's
thought for them — that she made them
lots of pretty dresses, or that she tried in
every possible way to be their comrade
and inspiration, keeping her own mind
alive and growing, and having a real share
in their various interests?"

That woman has found herself. She
is living a rich, beautiful, efficient life, and
her children and her husband are proud
of her.

There is virtue in daring to put up with
imperfection. The ability to select what is
of main importance and to keep from worry-
ing about the rest — there 's nothing more
fundamental in the whole art of living.

The practical conclusion is take some
unhurried time and think through the
relative importance of the various parts of
your work, of your life. Think it out

64 Mind and Work

and put it on paper. Make a drawing in
perspective, assign the proper time to each
element, then even when so hurried or
worried that the plan seems distorted,
stick to it. Know that the plan was made
when you had your best planning ability
at work and that it is a better guide than
the immediate impressions of hurried hours
and days.

PUT IT ON PAPER"

CHAPTER VI

FUZZYMINDEDNESS is just as likely
to attack our feelings — the emo-
tional part of us — as it is our brains.
Feelings tend all the time to be vague and
irresponsible; and that means that they are
more likely to lead us off on a wrong scent.
They must somehow be subjected to the
same clearing process as our thoughts; they
must be sifted, judged, criticised. But
it is even more puzzling to get at them
effectively, because they seem to be so
intensely a part of our very nature ; we can-
not separate them from us easily, and put
them under inspection.

Feelings that do not give us a push
toward useful action, of one sort or another,
are not worth having. To yield to them
means weakness — self-indulgence. Sup-
pose I get out of bed in the morning with a
feeling of great depression ; everything looks
dark; I am sure that the day is going to be
a failure. Does that feeling point me any-

67

68 Mind and Work

where? Does yielding to it increase the
value of my day's output ?

It may be a danger-signal, of course;
it may tell me that my digestive processes are
not right. If so, that is a fact that I must
take into consideration in laying out my
day's programme. I may choose an after-
noon of golf or some other outdoor occu-
pation instead of the indoor work I had
thought of. But that is not giving place to
the emotion.

It is simply examining it, asking what
it means — what its '*cash value" is. I
have proved myself the master of that
emotion just as when I weeded out my
useless ideas. It 's another attack on
f uzzymindedness .

Suppose any one of us comes suddenly
face to face with a flagrant case of child-
slavery — some thin shrunken boy or girl
whose life is being sapped by harsh work.
That sight rouses in us, if we are normal
human beings, and most of all if we have
children of our own, a burning indignation;
and the indignation will find vent somehow.
One way is to let it blow itself off in an

"Put it on Paper" 69

explosion of hasty words, and to let that
be the end of it. But it is n't by such means
as that that child-labour laws have been
put through hostile legislatures.

I can make my emotion count con-
structively if I will only turn it into the
effective channel; but it needs the direction
of intelligence. Theatrical emotions do
not count in real life. Emotions can be
made to accomplish work just as the heat
of a fire can be made to turn an engine,
or, on the other hand, that heat may be
allowed to drift uselessly out of the chimney
and accomplish nothing.

The thing that I must try for is the ability
to *' externalise" my feelings, and judge
them squarely.

That can be done, if one is determined
to do it. The best rule I know for getting
a grip on them is this: "Put them on
paper." Make a written statement of your
feelings — not for the literary benefit of
posterity, but for your own profit right here
and now.

Take the case of sudden anger. The
stimuli toward shutting the jaws tight and

70 Mind and Work

clenching the hands go out instantly from
the lower brain and spinal cord. But
remember the formula. Get a sheet of
paper, take out a pencil, and write down
the cause of your anger — whether it is
justified or not — and what appears to be
the best way of treating it — not merely
what you feel like doing on the impulse of
the moment, but taking into due consider-
ation your own character and place and the
other person's character and place, and
the ultimate result you want to come out
of it. You may find that your anger is
amply justified, and that a certain course
of action is involved; but you are doing a
very different thing in that case from making
a blind plunge.

You see the advantage right away. In-
stead of running the emotion directly into
action — a process which we might call the
short-circuit process — we long-circuit it,
run it up through the brain fibres, pass it
through the intellectual sieve, and then
turn it back again into action. And if the
emotion was an unworthy one, it will very
likely have died out in the process. And

"Put it on Paper" 71

if it was the real thing — sincere, and
reasonable, and constructive — it will only
have gained reinforcement.

I don't mean, of course, that exactly this
programme is always practicable. If the
house is afire, you can't stop to count your
heart-rate and write it down. But even
then, if you want to act effectively, you
must do something more than simply give
way to your instinctive "reactions" —
which might very well be to run away or
to lose all self-control through excitement.
The people who bravely rescue sofa-pillows
at a fire, and throw crockery from the
sixth-story windows are the people who
cannot get outside their feelings.

But the things that usually disturb our
emotional balance are the small worries
of daily life : remarks people make to us that
we feel sure are unjustified; the small impo-
sitions to which we are — or think we are
— subjected; the momentary impulses of
generosity that may be entirely unwise
and useless when we look at them closer.
If we can control these things we shall
have gained a notable victory.

72 Mind and Work

Put them into written words. The very
putting them into words defines and clarifies
the view. Putting them into written words
seems to make them objective. You can
look at them as if they belonged to some
one else and judge of their real value.

MANAGEMENT OF THE FEELINGS

CHAPTER VII

IN a given space of time you can waste
more energy through the medium of
an undesirable emotion than in any other
way I know. It is worse than wasted too.
Without even considering how a fit of
anger may hurt one's friends, how it may
mar the most beautiful relationships of
one's life, it is enough just to take into
account the disastrous effects it may have
upon one's own physical and mental well-
being.

Here is the first-hand record of a woman
of my acquaintance, a woman who has
trained herself to an intelligent under-
standing of her own mental life — she is
the opposite of *'fuzzyminded" — and is
thus able to give an adequate documentary
account of an emotional crisis.

She had been living for some time, she
writes, under the strain of unusually hard
work — she is a teacher and an eager
student.

75

76 Mind and Work

"It was on a Saturday evening at the end
of the day and week. I was tired out and
in low spirits. I was in the mood to 'let
things go'; and that is just what I needed.
If I could have had a day or two of relaxation
and quiet, I believe it would have brought
back my balance; but instead I was con-
fronted with a domestic problem that
demanded judgment and decision. My
mind did not readily follow. Various plans
were discussed between my sister and
myself; but it was apparent that our views
were irreconcilable. My sister's plan was
not really practicable, and I am sure
ultimately she would not have followed
it; but in my unreasonable mood her
persistence was the last straw.

"Instantly came the impulse to say some-
thing cutting and, irritated as I felt, I made
no effort of resistance. I do not recall
the exact words — perhaps it is just as
well; in effect they were that I did not care
in the least what might be my sister's
opinion, that I would have nothing more
whatever to do with the matter, that she
need not mention it to me again. My

Management of the Feelings 77

voice was raised in pitch and I think I
screamed. I know that I stamped my
foot, and that my hands were clenched.
Although I did not see my face in a mirror,
I feel sure that I was pale."

From the psychologist's point of view,
this is almost an ideal case of the anger
crisis — ^'^ brain-storm" — if you like. All the
preliminary stages are clearly indicated
— the prolonged irritation, the sullen
resistance, the consequent "will-fatigue,"
and finally the break-down of self-control,
and the volcanic upheave of emotion —
the shrill voice, clenched hands, incoherent
language, and all. She goes on:

"The effect of this outburst was not so
marked as I had expected. Indeed I dis-
covered that I had been merely childish
and ridiculous; and that discovery did not
improve my state of mind. Without fur-
ther words I hurried from the house and
walked very fast to the nearest subway
station, wondering where I should go.
While waiting for a train I paced rapidly

78 Mind and Work

up and down the platform; but then,
reahsing that this might make me con-
spicuous, I stood still, feeling very helpless
and miserable."

After doing an unimportant errand up-
town, she went back home, still excited
and unstrung, and retired to her room.
She tried to read but could not. She
wrote an apologetic letter to her sister.
"I was apparently calm, but held tena-
ciously to my opinion; it was a cold letter,
and I knew I was doing an utterly senseless
thing to write it, that I should regret it
later; but in my unbalanced state of mind,
I did not listen to judgment."

After that she went to bed, and though
she fell asleep at last, the sleep brought no
rest. Sunday she went to church, but got
no help from so doing. All through the
day her exhaustion and depression in-
creased; and that night she was taken
ill with headache. This condition was
aggravated on Monday. On Wednesday
a sore throat and cough developed —
and it was not until the following Sunday

Management of the Feelings 79

that she was in a normal condition once
more.

**And so," she concludes, **I have
practically paid by a whole week's indis-
position for a fit of anger, the crisis of which
lasted only a few minutes."

This does not mean, of course, that the
emotional disturbance was the whole cause
of the illness. If the woman's condition
had been up to par at the start, she could
perhaps have recovered from the shock
without physical disaster. But even then
it would have been a costly experience,
followed — as would inevitably have been
the case — by exhaustion, mortification,
and remorse — all of which are "sick"
states of mind.

How are we going to get these injurious
emotions into our power.? We can give
direction to our thoughts by an effort of
will, but feelings continually override us:
a fit of anger sweeps us away before we
realise what has happened: a fear bowls
us over, renders us impotent.

Emotions are baffling things, but we
know a good deal more about their real

80 Mind and Work

nature to-day than we used to. To the
older psychologists they were mysterious
"states of mind" — ''properties of the
soul" — vague, intangible phenomena with
which calm philosophy did not concern
itself more than was necessary.

The chief discovery of recent years in
regard to the emotions is that they are
first of all "states of body." The mind
has only a second-hand relation to them.
It enters at the end, not at the beginning.

Think of any emotional "storm" you
like in your own experience, and see if what
revives most distinctly in your memory
(apart from what you may have said or
done as a result of the emotion) is not the
queer "physical" quality of it; the rapid,
violent heart-beats, perhaps, or the trem-
bling of the knees, or the spinal "chill,"
the paralysed tongue, and certain obscure,
hard-to-define disturbances in the abdomen.

In point of fact these bodily "signs"
are the fundamental, the ground-bottom
elements of an emotion.

It is just as true — and perhaps a little
truer — to say we are embarrassed because

Management of the Feelings 81

we blush, as to say we blush because we
are embarrassed. In sensitive people the
rush of blood to the face may actually
precede any definite awareness of their
state of mind.

You have seen small chickens crouch
motionless in the grass when a hawk flew
by overhead. Incubator chickens have not
had a chance to learn anything about the
nature of hawks. They cannot first realise
that there is danger; then — consequent
upon that knowledge — undergo the emo-
tion of fear. All that happens is that their
leg and neck muscles suddenly grow limp;
and down they drop, in a perfectly instinc-
tive *' fear-reaction." It's born in them.
They will act just the same way if you
raise an umbrella near by. In the latter case
there is no danger; but the fear is identical.

I have seen a small child at a railway
station, when the locomotive came up,
stand absolutely motionless, with fixed
eyes, paralysed by terror. There was no
"thinking" in that. It was the same type
of emotional reflex as in the chickens; a
purely bodily thing; a fear-reaction.

82 Mind and Work

We have already noticed a capital illus-
tration of the anger-reaction. Some typical
elements in anger are increased heart-
rate, quickened respiration, dry mouth,
clenched hands, tense arm muscles, spine
drawn back into a more or less crouch-
ing posture, tight shut jaws, contracted
pupils, shrill voice. And it goes much
deeper than that, too.

It has been proved that every emotional
state involves changes — greater or less —
in the action of the intestines, the bladder,
the various glands. The whole body alters
under every emotional wave. The size of
the arteries and capillaries fluctuates under
their influence. The emotional life is all
tied up in these organic changes. It has
no existence apart from them.

Wliich gives us our cue to the control
of the emotion.

So soon as we have followed back this
vague and baffling "state of mind" to its
origin in certain groups of bodily muscles,
we have secured a concrete base of
operations — a point of departure.

Some of our muscles are not within our

Management of the Feelings 83

voluntary control — the heart, for example,
and the muscles of stomach and intestines.
Others we may control partially, such as
the muscles of the eyes and lungs. Still
others we have practically complete control
over; the arm muscles, for instance, and
those of the back, the legs, the face, the
larynx, the tongue, the neck. These are
subject to our will-power; we can make
them do what we choose.

We have seen that under the sway of
emotion these muscles tend to act in certain
ways. But we can make them act in other
ways if we choose.

Assume the bodily positions and move-
ments and manners and tones of voice that
belong to the emotional state you desire.

Set the switch right, and the train can
be counted upon to take it.

If you are frightened and feel like running
away — stand still and whistle. If you
can do that — and you can — you will
have broken the series of organic reactions
that has been getting under way in your
body.

The faster you run, the more terrified you

84 Mind and Work

get. The louder you whistle, the more
your courage grows.

Panic is the most helpless of all states
of mind; it is the paralysis of intelligence.
The boy with the drum — the man who
whistles — the doctor who sings the comic
song — that is what saves the day. And
it is ultimately through muscular control that
the thing is accomplished.

The woman whose record was given at
the outset of this chapter had treated her
first angry impulses in exactly the wrong
way. She had fought against them. She
had grown tense and heated in a struggle
to stave them off. If, instead, she had
consciously allowed her hands to hang
quietly at her sides, instead of clenching
them; if she had let the jaw muscles be
easy and relaxed, instead of tight; if she
had let herself drop limply into a chair,
with yielding spine, and quietly remarked
that she was tired and had better not
try to work the problem that night — it is
safe to say that the crisis would have
been avoided. She would have been
saved a humiliating experience and much

Management of the Feelings 85

bodily suffering. And she could have
done it.

Most of the undesirable emotions that we
go through in the course of everyday life
are not violent in any such degree; they
come to us in diluted and mixed form.
But they can be controlled by exactly the
.same method. Suppose you are sad and
discouraged. Stand up straight; take deep
breaths ; discover what tone of voice is most
cheerful, and make your larynx say ''Good-
morning" to somebody in that tone. Tell
a funny story at the breakfast table, and
manage your facial muscles into a smile.

That is not heroic; it is the merest
common sense.

The muscles of your larynx are within
your control, as are those of your jaws, lips,
and face. You can make them say what
you want. And if you carry the thing
through consistently — persistently — you
have dissipated the bodily symptoms of
sadness; and the right mental state will
surely follow. That can be relied upon.

The wrong attitude of mind is that which
fights against the bad thing. The right

86 Mind and Work

attitude is that which acts out the good
thing.

Our muscles can be made to express the
positive, the constructive, the joyful attitude.
This is sincerity of a high type. We
become the thing that we act; and if we
always act the best thing that we have
within our power, we are on the road to
actually becoming that thing. We are
living our best selves — that is all.

THE TIME TO QUIT

CHAPTER VIII

WHEN we have set out on a piece
of muscular work or head work,
we might expect to find a steady, regular
increase in the fatigue that resulted from
it — so much work, so much fatigue. But
that is not the case. The "'fatigue curve"
is not a straight line sloping evenly upward
from one corner of the chart diagonally
to the opposite. Instead, it goes sharply
upward at the start ; then for a long distance
it runs along on an approximate level;
and then it takes a sharp upward turn
again.

The level stage — the plateau of steady,
calculable working power — where the cost
in energy does not perceptibly vary, is the
"second wind."

You know how it is in long-distance
running. At first the fatigue increases
very rapidly; a man has to push himself
with all the will-power he can muster.
Then all of a sudden it gets easier. It

89

90 Mind and Work

seems as if he had tapped a big new supply
of energy; and he can keep running for a
long time without any great increase in his
feeling of fatigue. But at last he reaches
a point where the exertion tells hard again;
fatigue piles up terribly fast now — so
fast that unless the runner knows just how
much he is good for and has figured the
thing out in advance, he is likely to be "all
in" before he gets to the tape. Every step
makes an inroad on his reserve. The last
spurt costs more than all the rest together.

If a man has covered his ground without
hitting his final grade of the fatigue cure,
he will get rested in a reasonably short
time, and be able to do the same thing
again. But if, instead, he has had to keep
on, forcing every last ounce of energy into
his effort, until he rolls over on the ground
from exhaustion, it may take weeks for him
to get into good form again. In a big
race, naturally, he must be ready to do that.

There are emergencies — in everybody's
life — when the merely prudent thing isn't
the right thing.

If a house is afire, and a family on the

The Time to Quit 91

top floor is in danger, and you are the only
person on the premises, you can't stand
quietly aside and study your fatigue-curve.
There 's a necessity for action — at any
cost whatever, even of life.

A man may have a big proposition to
put through, some important combination
to effect, a new movement to get under way.
Perhaps he is the only person fully in
touch with the situation : success may depend
on him. In such a case, he 's got to disre-
gard the counsels of mere prudence. But
when the price of his overstrain is demanded
of him, he must stand ready to pay it.

Fortunately such emergencies are not
affairs of every day. In the ordinary
course of things one day's business is not
very different in importance from another's,
and we have no right to neglect to-morrow
for the sake of to-day. The quality of to-
morrow's output must not be impaired.

As a general rule, then, the time to quit
is when we have come in sight of that last
costly lap.

A great deal of interesting information
about the nature of fatigue has been made

92 Mind and Work

available through the ergograph. This is
an ingenious recording apparatus devised
by Professor Angelo Mosso, the great
Italian scientist. It works something after
this plan: you lay your hand, back down,
on a little table, and to the end of one
finger is attached a cord which connects
horizontally over a pulley with a small
hanging weight. The motion of closing
the finger lifts the weight; and as this
simple act is repeated over and over again,
the fatigue symptoms in the finger can be
observed and recorded in detail.

Now one of the significant discoveries
that Professor Mosso has made is that if
you keep raising the weight until your
finger is exhausted, it will take just about
two hours to rest it; that is, in two hours'
time you can do the same amount of finger-
work over again, and the least bit more.

You would imagine from this that if the
experiment were repeated at the end of one
hour instead of two, you could do just half
the amount of work. But it 's only one-
quarter as much.

That 's the price of work on top of fatigue.

The Time to Quit 93

It is capable of statement in the form of a
ratio: One unfatigued man is to his
work as four semi-fatigued men to the
same work. Using all the strength you
have, you can't begin to get normal results;
and the strain on will and nervous energy
is terrific. Carrying a thing through on
** nerve" is about as costly an undertaking
as a man can venture upon.

Not long ago I had some responsibility
in connection with two important conven-
tions, one of which followed close on the
heels of the other. By the end of the first
I was thoroughly tired out and knew that
I had reached the point where, by the
principles of hygiene, I ought to make a
stop. But that was impossible. I had
my already accumulating work in the
city to get into some sort of order once
more; and then came the second con-
ventioi^ with its speeches and conferences.
I could n't quit until the end.

At the end of the convention I had to
go to bed for three weeks. It had taken
only three days ; but they were just the three
days that, physically speaking, I could not

94 Mind and Work

afford. They had cost as much energy
as a month of hard work under normal
conditions. Having nothing left to react
with, I went to smash. If I had spent those
three fatal days in bed, I should unques-
tionably have been in good shape at the end
of them. But it took three weeks, instead.

Some people, especially those of nervous
make-up, find it hard to tell when the break-
ing-off point has been reached — that is,
just where the dividing line comes between
energy-funds available for investment, and
a capital which cannot safely be tampered
with. If they get interested in their work,
they lose sight of everything else, and are
going on sheer nerve before they realise it.

Though fatigue symptoms vary greatly
in different people, it may be worth while
to mention a few of them here. Sometimes
there is a flushing at the temples. That is
the case with myself when I have been read-
ing hard for two or three hours; and then I
know that I ought to call a halt. I could
keep on reading with undiminished interest
for a good deal longer, but it would be at
the price of a sleepless night.

The Time to Quit 95

With some persons a sure sign is the
increased circulation of blood in the ears
or cheeks. Others have queer sensations
in the pit of the stomach — not nausea,
but something akin to it.

One of the most reliable tests is the control
test — holding the arms out horizontally
at the sides, and noticing whether or not
the hands tremble. The fatigue-condition
raises the nerve-pressure gate and allows
flow-overs from one nerve into another.
Normally a nervous impulse goes along its
nerve directly to the point of strain; but
when you are fatigued the stimulus spreads
into other nerves as well, and is not dis-
tinctly transmitted.

Sir Francis Galton, the great statistician,
says that the best test he knows is thai of
restlessness, shown by muscular movements.
Many times, he says, he has sat in a position
where he could watch an audience as it
listened to some long scientific memoir.
He took notes of how people acted under
the strain of protracted attention — how
often they moved. At the beginning of
the hour they would sit quietly; then they

96 Mind and Work

would begin to move on the average of once
every four seconds ; then every three seconds ;
and he says that it is possible to trace right
through any audience every degree of fatigue
by the number of muscular movements
made.

He has simply put together mathemati-
cally some data that are familiar to all
of us. We have all seen — and, alas, been
an integral part of — some audience that
was trying to endure the last half-hour of
an unendurable speech. Everybody was
shifting his position, crossing one leg over
the other or back again, moving the fingers,
playing with watch-charms or chains, yawn-
ing, twitching, folding programmes, wiping
eye-glasses, twisting moustaches. Those
were all fatigue signs.

A loss of self-control in small things;
that 's the symptom in different terms ;
and another name for it is irritability.

At first it seems odd that this undue
sensitiveness to slight stimuli should be so
sure an effect of fatigue; but it means that
the resistance-gates are down, and we
become aware of sensations pouring in from

The Time to Quit 97

all sides, slight sensations that ordinarily
we take no note of because — by the laws
of attention — they are quietly shut out
from our consciousness. But when our
attention is tired — no longer focussed,
but scattering — all these slight nerve-
pricks attack us insistently, and we cannot
neglect them.

A noise that you will not hear when you
are rested will be perfectly distracting when
you are tired. You will go over and shut
a window; you will walk around aimlessly;
the faint cackle of a distant gramophone
will make you furious. If there is a light
above you at an evening lecture, it will
hurt your eyes almost beyond endurance.

Instead of making the nervous system
a less responsive instrument, fatigue makes
it more responsive. More responsive, but
less serviceable.

For at the same time that you have in-
creased irritability you have decreased
power. You can take things up, but you
cannot do them hard. You can't put vim
and snap into anything. You can't mem-
orise well. You can't think consecutively;

98 Mind and Work

your mind will constantly wander to some-
thing else; you have to take it by the scruff
of the neck and force it on to the scent
again.

Irritability: weakness — 'those two words
belong together. A man who is constantly
fatigued can't work well or live well; and
he is very hard to live with.

To know when it 's time to quit, and to
quit when it 's time, is an important lesson
in the primer of eflBciency.

FATIGUE AND CHARACTER

CHAPTER IX

WHEN a man is fatigued, he is literally
"not himself." The qualities that
go into his make-up are not the same quali-
ties ; his disposition, his tastes, his intellectual
faculties, are all modified.

Into my own experience has come this
case of a young college girl, and it is not
an exceptional case either. Through her
freshman year she did unusually good
work ; she stood in the upper quarter of her
class — a normal, high-spirited, energetic
young person of seventeen years.

During the summer vacation following
that first year, she worked very hard, rising
every morning at five o'clock; for in her
family they had no domestic, and she
always aimed to surprise her mother by
getting the washing and ironing out of the
way herself. She made all her own clothes
for the year to come. During that whole
vacation she kept herself under this strain.
Then she went back to college. She

101

102 Mind and Work

had never been a timid girl; but now, oddly
enough, she suddenly developed a terrible
dread of going upstairs to her room alone.
Some one always had to go with her. She
would look under the bed, behind the door,
in the closet. The thing kept her awake
at night. She stood low in her classes,
but that did not seem to make any difference
to her; she appeared to have lost all interest
in her marks. She neglected her studies
in a way that completely bewildered her
friends. She had made up her mind to enjoy
herself at all costs; and she succeeded in
being very wretched. It was a bad year.
You would not have known her for the girl
of the year before.

Another summer came. She had a per-
fect vacation. Most of the time she lived
out of doors in camp, sleeping well, eat-
ing heartily, dressing comfortably, taking
plenty of moderate exercise with wholesome
companions.

Back in college one more — she was a
junior now — she took the lead in her
class. There was not the slightest trace of
that fear of the dark; she never thought of

Fatigue and Character 103

hesitating to go upstairs alone. She had
a splendid time all through the year —
without making any effort for it either.

The difference between those two years
was merely a difference in fatigue. Cumu-
lative fatigue in the one case had reduced
the girl's whole personality — mentally,
morally, physically — to lower and cruder
terms; in the other case the personality
was lifted. In that junior year she was
not only a better person — she was a
different person. She possessed happiness,
independence, and self-control. She be-
longed to another level of civilisation, one
which not only held the lower things in
subjection, but added higher things thereto.

Fatigue has a definite order in which it
disintegrates us. It begins at the top and
works down. Although this has been
pointed out elsewhere, it is, I believe, worthy
of re-emphasis.

In minor ways we observe the workings
of the principle in ourselves every time we
get thoroughly tired. The first thing that
slips out of our control is the power or
strength or skill that we have most recently

104 Mind and Work

acquired; earlier acquisitions stick by us
longer. A tired man will stumble in speak-
ing a foreign language, while still able to
talk English readily. School-children at
the multiplication-table stage of their
education will, when tired, forget their
advanced tables long before they slip up
on the earlier ones — not because the later
tables have not been successfully committed,
but because they have not sunk in so deeply;
they are not ingrained yet; do not go of
themselves. The earlier tables are rattled
off w^ith the almost unconscious facility of
a perfect reflex; the later ones still involve
a certain deliberate effort.

I have seen the same thing repeatedly in
musicians. After severe muscular exertion,
they would still be able to play correctly
difficult pieces that they had long been
familiar with; but they went entirely to
pieces with simple things that they had
been recently working on and constantly
practising. Under similar circumstances I
have noticed dancers forget their more
newly practised steps.

These people could all do something more

Fatigue and Character 105

difficult than the thing they were unable
to do; but the more difficult thing had
been learned earlier and had become
thoroughly mechanised — more like an in-
stinct, which never fails to go through its
part with automatic precision once the
cue is given.

Now take the racial side of it. Certain
of the elements that enter into the making
of us are as old as life itself — hunger,
for example, the sexual instinct, self-interest,
fear, and the like. Those are rock-bottom
things. It is on the basis of them that
countless generations of community life
and parental responsibility have built up
a superstructure of finer qualities; unself-
ishness, for example, sympathy, devotion
to an idea (such as the God-idea), chastity,
self-control, judgment. These are acqui-
sitions that have been fought and suffered
for, and we only hold on to them by constant
exertion.

But when we are fatigued we don't
exert ourselves very hard. All these less
secure holdings are promptly attacked and
demoralised. Fatigue lowers our control-

106 Mind and Work

ability far sooner than it lowers our ability
to be angry.

Tired men go on sprees. That is one
result of overwork.

Just as fatigue lessens our ability to
withstand diseases — which attack the
physical man — so it lessens our ability
to withstand temptations — which attack
the moral man. This is not because the
temptations are more numerous in them-
selves, but because there is less energy of
resistance. The fact that typhoid fever
takes hold of people who are overworked is,
generally speaking, not because they have
an excessive proportion of typhoid bacilli
in their milk, but because they have not
enough white corpuscles in their blood.
They lack the resistance power.

The girl I was speaking of had gone back
whole epochs in the history of civilisation.
The fear that had laid hold of her was
the world-old racial fear; the fear of the
dark. And she had nothing to combat
it with, having lost her self-control through
fatigue. Instinct had supplanted reason.

Fatigue promptly attacks and destroys

Fatigue and Character 107

our sense of proportion. I know no better
illustration of this than the way we will
leave our professional work. When I am
really fatigued it is very difficult for me
to go home when the time comes. It is,
of course, true that there are always little
things remaining to be done; but when I
am especially tired" I cannot distinguish
between those which are important enough
to keep me and those which are not. I
only see how many things are still undone;
and I tend to go on and on.

If I see a scrap of paper on the floor, I
cannot help going out of my chair and
taking time to pick up that wretched thing
and put it in my waste-basket. It assumes,
somehow, the same importance in my
mind with that of thinking out my to-
morrow's schedule. I will stay and putter
about little things that do not need attention.
My sense of balance, of proportion, and
perspective is gone. I 've lost my eye for
the cash value of things.

A man whose mind is in good condition
can stand off from his work, look at it in the
bulk, and say to this item, "You need

108 Mind and Work

doing right away"; to another, ''You're
of no account now, you can wait"; and to
another, "Somebody else can look out for

you."

No fatigued person can see things straight.

And the moral of that is, "Don't make
any important decisions except when your
mind is fresh."

With the best intentions in the world
many men commit an economic sin right
here. When they first reach the office in
the morning they are conscious of a certain
mental keenness and snap and power.
And so they say, "Here is a good chance
to do something that takes extra courage.
I will begin the day by trying to get rid of
these million and one small left-overs. Then
the road will be clear for the big concerns
on the schedule."

There 's nothing that uses up nervous
energy faster than a long series of fussy
responsibilities. When it comes time
for the big things — the important decision,
the diplomatic letter — these conscientious
spendthrifts have neither heart nor head
left for them.

Fatigue and Character 109

The big things should be done first.

Every man at his best is a man of mark,
if he only knew it. When he is up to his
top range he is a man with a special power
and with a special opportunity. It is a
pity that he should throw away that special
power on the fulfilment of small, every-
day duties that do not require special
power — on drudgery that could be put
through with equal success when the first fine
cutting edge of his mind has been dulled —
for when he has done this — he has thrown
away his special opportunity as well. The
big thing is the opportunity for the big
man.

WILI^FATIGUE

CHAPTER X

THIS driving power, this push of Ufe,
which makes a young person reach
out and desire and explore, is about the
most precious thing in the world. It is a
thing that becomes exhausted as do other
parts of ourselves. A saving of this most
important function is supremely worth
while. Fatigue of the will is just as real
a form of fatigue as is muscular fatigue.

One of the greatest differences between
individuals is this difference in the will.
If people are classified according to the
success which they have achieved, it will
not be a classification according to their
mental powers. Some of the most success-
ful people have no more than average
mental power, but they have more than
average driving power — the power for
hanging on. They drive themselves hard.
That makes for strength of character. It
is like taking an ordinary piece of machinery
and making it do extraordinary work.

113

114 Mind and Work

The same holds true in the business
world. The difference between the men
who have made great successes and those
who have not, is not usually a mere differ-
ence in mental power. It is more often
a difference in will-power. Some people
are easily discouraged and they will quit
easily. This is constantly noticed in the
training of athletes. The men who can run
the mile at a good gait are the ones who
resolutely keep on. It is not so much a
question as to the size of chest, leverage of
the legs, height of body, or size and power
of the heart. It is fundamentally a question
of the willingness of the individual to force
himself, not to stop, not to yield to the in-
fluences that make one lie down. Of
course, a person with this strong driving
power, through the use of this power will
develop muscle, will develop the heart,
the ability to run; whereas the person who
already has a well-developed body but
who lacks this driving power not only will
fail to push himself, but will soon lose
even the normal capacity of this high powered
machine.

Will-Fatigue 115

When a man has gone to his office and
has had presented to him one problem after
another, all involving certain decisions; has
met many people and talked with them
on subjects involving decisions and direc-
tions — there comes a time when he is
fatigued in making choices, when he is
fatigued in his will.

You are studying hard and the work is
rather monotonous. You watch a fly on
the wall. Then you have to start over
again on your work. This getting under
way a second time is enormously fatiguing.
Study under conditions of mind wander-
ing is a most expensive affair. Study
should be done only under conditions of
consecutive attention, without having to
bring the mind back. It is then much less
exhausting.

With many people the most serious part
of any intellectual work is the getting at it.
This making up of the mind many times is
one of the most fatiguing things. A day's
work of that type is exhausting. In climb-
ing a mountain, the person who stops every
few minutes and rests and then continues

116 Mind and Work

has to overcome that initial inertia repeat-
edly. He does not do more muscular
work than the person who climbs steadily,
but he has taxed his will by having to get
at his work many times.

The big things should be done when the
will is fresh. The tendency is to do just
the other way; we all tend to do the little
things first. This is particularly so with
regard to work of a creative type. Perhaps
you are going to write an important report,
an advertisement, a lecture, or plan out a
campaign. Nearly all of us do such work
better the first thing in the morning, before
the routine of the day has commenced.

Fatigue is not the simple phenomenon
we sometimes think it. It has many varie-
ties, occurs in many combinations, each of
which bears in its own way upon the prob-
lems of eflBcient living.

Take the most obvious type of all —
muscular fatigue. In the laboratory you
can stimulate a bit of separated muscle to
contract over and over again, until finally
it stops giving you any response. But if
you take the muscle out of the apparatus

Will-Fatigue 117

and give it a bath in a warm salt solution,
it will begin reacting again with almost
as much vigour as it had in the first place.
You have washed out the fatigue. It
won't keep up so long, however, this time;
and a second bath will have less effect than
the first. Finally you come to a point
where even a bath is without effect. That
is muscular exhaustion — physiologically
speaking, a sharply distinct condition.

But as we are accustomed to use the term,
'* muscular" fatigue is not fatigue of the
muscle tissue; it is merely a ready-to-hand
label for a condition whose real cause is to
be found elsewhere. When a nerve centre
has worked a group of muscles until they
refuse to respond any longer, the exhaustion
may be traced back to the controlling bat-
tery; it does not lie in the muscle tissue with
which it is *' connected up." If you apply
an electric current directly to the nerve
that feeds the "fatigued" muscle, at once
the muscle will respond to the stimulus;
begin to work again.

Strictly speaking, then, we do not exhaust
our muscles; we exhaust the controlling

118 Mind and Work

batteries. The part of us that goes under
first is the nervous part.

Emotional fatigue lies a little more
"inward" — somewhat closer, perhaps, to
our very personality — than muscular
fatigue. Several times in my life I have
been through one hard experience after
another, losses in the family for example;
and when the first shock came it seemed
as if I could not endure it. Then the next
came, and the next. I had no emotional
force left to react with. I simply felt numb.

Another type of emotional fatigue is
often in evidence at Christmas time among
children. Long before the tree is unloaded
of its treasures they are usually so exhausted
by their burden of joy that the last additioi^s
of their pile of presents arouse in them only
a languid interest.

Children make excellent laboratory
material in the field of emotional fatigue,
because their emotions are allowed full
play as long as they last. I have seen
children yield to blazing anger until they
reached a point where, out of sheer exhaus-
tion, the anger disappeared, even though

Will-Fatigue 119

the exciting cause of it was just as much
in evidence as ever. This was n't the kind
of exhaustion that follows intense physical
effort, such as the violent use of hands,
body-muscles, motor areas. The emotional
engine had simply run down. The fuel
was burnt out.

Still more central in our nature is
fatigue of the will. It presents some of
the biggest problems a man has to face.

If it were not for will-fatigue we could all
of us lead perfect lives. Any minute that
I choose to do so, I can live perfectly. I
can live perfectly for an hour, if I keep at it
hard enough. But I am pretty sure that
I could n't do it for a week. I have made
the experiment more than once, unsuc-
cessfully. The strain is too great. My
will gets tired; and then it gives way. I
slump down to a lower level for awhile,
and my volitional faculties take a rest.
There is then a leisurely stoking process.

So far as my knowledge of such things
goes, there is nothing outside of us that
forces us to do wrong. We fail from the
inside; we haul down the flag deliberately.

120 Mind and Work

by our own consent, just because we have
got tired of fighting; and then the enemy
walks in. I am not now referring to the
making of mistakes: our ignorance often
compels us to do that. Making mistakes
is not an item that can fairly be debited to
conscience. But I mean the conscious,
open-eyed doing of a thing that we know
is n't in line with sound morals.

Everybody is guilty of such faults; he
does what he ought n't to do, and knows
he oughtn't to do. He says, "Bother it
all, anyway! What's the harm.?" — and
lets himself go. He allows himself some
indulgence which he knows is injurious.
Or he deliberately gives way to bad temper,
after living up consistently for a long time
to the Golden Rule. He could do other-
wise if he tried. But he does n't try any
longer; he 's tired of trying. He wants a
"day off" from trying. I 'm not defending
this specific variety of holiday habit, but
am simply noting its existence.

For right here lies the fallacy of the
doctrine of perfect living. The will can't —
or "won't" — stand up to the doctrine.

Will-Fatigue 121

It caves in. It yields to anger, to worry, to
fear, to appetite, to interest — to whatever
makes the loudest call at the moment of
relaxation.

Afterward a time comes when we take
serious account of things once more — we
feel ashamed of ourselves, and make up
our minds — if we are normal human
beings — to put up a stiffer fight next time.
And perhaps we do. That's the way life
goes.

But if it were not for fatigue of the will,
we could stay all the time on that best level
of ours. We could always keep doing the
highest thing of which we are capable,
without a let-down.

I do not wish to give the impression that
fatigue, whatever be its special form, is
an abnormal thing, an enemy always seek-
ing our destruction. On the contrary.
It 's a perfectly inevitable and normal feature
of active life. Indeed, it is the price of
growth. The muscle, to be vigorous and
strong, must be put to hard use; and hard
use means fatigue. But it is equally neces-
sary that the muscle should be given a fair

122 Mind and Work

chance to get rested, and to rebuild its
broken-down tissues. Destruction: recon-
struction — reconstruction on a larger scale
— that is the fundamental law of growth,
bodily or mental.

If we were never tired, we should never
be strong.

Unquestionably, however, it is important
that a man should know the dangers to
which fatigue exposes him — where it makes
him weak for the time being, where and how
it reduces his power of resistance, what
things it unfits him for, how it alters his
personality. . Since it is a thing which
each of us has to deal with, whether he wants
to or not, it 's worth our while to deal with
it intelligently.

A fatigued will exposes us on every side.
When there is big business on hand we
cannot aflFord to have our powers of
decision reduced or distorted. And they
need not be if we have learned the lesson
of will economy.

Will is a commodity that can be wasted,
just like any other. You can throw it
away on little things that don't count, on

Will-Fatigue 123

petty decisions, trivialities; and when the
moment comes for the important decision,
it 's exhausted, and either balks, or goes
wrong.

It happens occasionally, I hope, that
after the close of the day's work somebody
takes you out to dinner. If it 's a service
a la carte, you know what a sweet relief it
is to sit back in your chair, at perfect peace
with the world, and watch your friend do the
ordering. How you relish the privilege
of not having to make up your mind again
about anything. You look with divine
pity upon him as he wanders in a daze of
indecision among a hundred or two interest-
ing-looking eatables and drinkables, each
of which may well make some claim upon
the attention.

Right in that matter, I take it, lies the
great attraction for most of us in the table
d'hote meal. It relieves the mind of a
problem which, after all 's said and done,
is n't worth the bother of solution. In
passive, care-free satisfaction you simply
watch for the appearance of the various
good things; and you know that the process

124 Mind and Work

will go on to the end without any demands
upon your decision-making faculties.

The table d'hote dinner is not a very
weighty illustration of my point; but it is
not inappropriate, because it is just in
such relatively trivial matters as that
that the principle of will-economy can be
most easily applied. Similar occasions
recur over and over again every day in a
man's work.

Everyone knows how much will-fatigue
he often brings on in the effort of "getting
down to business," most of all if the special
business on hand is hard or unattractive.
You find yourself becoming intensely in-
terested in a conversation that is taking
place across the room. Then you decide
to take a few minutes off and glance through
the paper again; or else you remember a
certain note that ought to be got off at once.
And you tell yourself that after you have
got that out of the way, it will be easier
to attack the other thiiig. But in your heart
you know it won't.

So it goes on; and in the end you have lost
far more than mere time. You have lost

Will-Fatigue 125

the impetus of a good start. You have been
making a long, slow, dribbling expenditure
of your will-power; and when you finally
do get to the job itself, you are already out
of temper for it.

Needless to say, such is not the result in
every ease. It takes some people a long
time to get warmed up to an undertaking;
they always have to go through that period
of preliminary fuss and bother. When
this is known to be so, economy certainly
requires of a man, once he is actually
under way, to keep up steam on a long
stretch; not to let down until he has a positive
accomplishment to show. He cannot afford
to have to put himself through those first
costly and painful steps again; it 's an inex-
cusable extravagance.

Most of us Americans, however, have
the ability — if we will only take advantage
of it — to jump into a job quick and hard
without dawdling over preliminaries. There-
fore it 's the only right way for us to do.
A man who takes his hard jobs on this
principle will be likely to carry them
through brilliantly, for his mind still has

126 Mind and Work

its first freshness and keenness when he
makes the attack. He is still the captain
of his soul. Afterward, if he likes, he can
give himself the luxury of dawdling.

Stick to the job till it is done. Do the
hardest work when fresh.

REST THE WILL

CHAPTER XI

TO a person who has been suffering
from a toothache or any other form
of pain or disease, rest means a very different
thing from what it means to the person who
has been working the ergograph and has in
his forearm a pain that demands rest. The
thing to be rested from is always involved
in any question as to the nature of rest.

When one considers the great variety of
conditions that is embraced in the state of
rest, the complexity of it is evident. For
instance, there are many effects of fatigue
— the anatomical changes produced by
fatigue, changes in muscle, brain cells,
glands. There are the physiological
changes which occur under fatigue — the
functions which when carried on too long
become fatigued without any apparent
material basis. Then there are forms of
psychic fatigue which are due to holding
one's mind consecutively upon a given sub-
ject; we think about it, think about it, until

129

130 Mind and Work

we are fatigued. You yourself, I hope,
have been in a state where you have laughed
until you were so fatigued that you were
exhausted and could not think of anything
funny enough to make you laugh more,
unless you went into irritable, hysterical
laughter, which is another thing.

All these forms of fatigue require some
form of rest. There are as many kinds of
rest as there are kinds of fatigue. The
forms of fatigue of which I have been
speaking so far are forms of partial fatigue.
In every form of partial fatigue there is
some form of rest that is better than idleness.
For example, you have worked at mathe-
matics until you are partially fatigued.
That mathematical activity is better rested
by walking, tennis, music, dancing, or some-
thing else that keeps the mind positively away
from the mathematical line and calls for
some other power than it is by sitting down
and doing nothing. The muscles of the
right leg have been exhausted by some
test. After suitable care, massage, cold
and hot water, that leg will rest better if
one does something else — exercises some

Rest the Will 131

mental activity which will keep the whole
self in good trim — than if one sits down
and does nothing.

This law of rest seems to hold right
straight through the whole of the physical,
intellectual, emotional, and volitional self;
but the most difficult form is in the will —
rest of the will. Probably to everyone
there come times when he is tired of trying.
You have tried to do everything that has
come along, every day, just as well as you
could. You have been courteous when the
children that you were teaching have been
steadily and persistently mean. You have
been steadfast and faithful with reference
to your work. You have kept your temper
when you have been misrepresented and
placed in a false position perhaps by the
head of the business or the principal of the
school. You have kept steady grip on your-
self a long, long time. Then there comes
a time when you must get off alone. You
feel you must; if you didn't you would
yield. That is plain, straight will-fatigue.

Or take another case. You have studied
mathematics, then music, history, language.

132 Mind and Work

and have done some gymnastics. You
have done everything, one thing after
another, and you have tired that driving
force which is way, way back. That is
will-fatigue. You are not tired because
your muscles are fatigued or because any
part of the brain is particularly fatigued,
but your very self is fatigued.

Life's level may be gradually changed,
but in the main it stays pretty even. The
waves upon its surface do not disturb its
general level. Fatigue is the down-stroke
of the wave. Rest is the up-stroke, and the
measure of the up-stroke must be equal to
the measure of the down-stroke, unless
the balance of one's life is going to be
lowered. After every muscular, mental,
moral, volitional effort there must come a
corresponding [rest — not necessarily a rest
in point of time, but there must be a
rest, so that the self will at least come
up to as high a level of efficiency as there
was before.

That is illustrated in the distance races
— the five mile run, for example. Athletes
cannot do that every day. They cannot

Rest the Will 133

possibly rest in one night enough so as to
recuperate from the results of such a run.
It is possible to rest sufficiently from a
twenty-five yard sprint, but not from a
distance run. So if they run the five miles
as fast as possible, they are making every
down-stroke of life's wave longer than the
up-stroke. They are wasting power. In
the old days of football training we all did
that, and it was a ruining thing. When we
spend more energy every day than we are
able to make up, whether in mental work or
in the emotional realm, then life's efficiency
is going down.

Under that going down of the general
trend of life, one is more susceptible to any
germs that come along, to typhoid, to colds,
to measles, to indigestion, tQ^beirig^ross_ —
psychic inoculation or suggestion. The
basal law is the one I have just mentioned:
that rest for any given part or the whole
of one's self must correspond to the nature
and extent of the fatigue involved.

There is no such thing as avoiding fatigue
and being healthy and vigorous, because
power is only developed by using power.

134 Mind and Work

by getting fatigued, by pushing one's power,
which is the stimulus to the protoplasmic
basis of life. Fatigue and rest must balance.
If you rest too much, you are not going to
develop power. If you use too much
power, you will go to waste. This is the
delicate balance to preserve. We ought to
know ourselves well enough so that we
can say, "It will pay to push ourselves so
hard," just as if we were going into a five
mile run. You will not race the first hundred
yards as if it were a quarter of a mile. You
will plan your speed, plan the expenditure
of energy in accordance with the distance
and time to be done; and so you will plan
with reference to the length and character
of the work you have to do.

Recovery must be complete. That is
the evil of our city life, that we do not allow
the recovery to be complete ; and so we grow
exhausted toward the end of the year. We
do not make up. We have six days of busi-
ness life and one day of rest. Every night
we recover somewhat, but we work more
than we can recover each day, and so we
become tired on Sunday. If this one day

Rest the Will 135

is used wisely, we can probably make up
what we are behind and be fresh again at
the beginning of the week. If we drive
on that day too, it is pretty sure that we are
going down and not recovering.

I know a woman, a mother of a large
family, who does her own work, and who
has preserved her balance and health and
strength under conditions where people
generally do not. When I first became
acquainted with her, I asked her how she
could do the muscular work, the mental
work, the bringing up of the family, and not
have that jaded look which most women
have under those conditions. She said
that she took an hour and a half to two
hours per day after luncheon to lie down.
Those times were inviolable; nothing could
break in on them. I said, "But how are
you able to do your work?" And she
replied, '*I get more done in two hours
per day less, than I do when I work all day.
I work at higher speed." She had merely
discovered for herself what nearly all
employers of large establishments have
discovered — that a working day of fourteen

136 Mind and Work

hours is ruinous ; ten hours of work per day
is much more effective. A man does more
work in ten hours per day than he does
in fourteen. I was talking with the owner
of a large factory about this. He had just
reduced the time from ten hours to nine,
and he said that they were getting more
work out of their men at nine hours than
they did at ten hours per day. With a
longer period of rest their work was more
efficient. It is again a question of planning
the up-stroke and the down-stroke. High
grade work is better than low grade work.
In the Bank of England in London, where
there is great responsibility, it has been
discovered that it is cheaper to employ the
clerks only three or four hours per day.
It was found to be cheaper to employ more
men than it was to have these men work
longer and make costly mistakes. And this
is a general trend in all the civilised world:
to work fewer hours.

The successful individual is that person
who, among other things, has sufficient
strength of will to stop working. To do
this takes a degree of conscientiousness

Rest the Will 137

which is pretty rare. The easy thing for
a faithful person is to keep on working;
the hard thing is to stop, to have the
intelligence to know when the time has
come.

People vary much in their reaction to
rest. There are some people who can lie
down for a few moments and get a real
effect; other people cannot. Some people
profit by working steadily, straight at a
thing until it is done, and then having a
long period of rest. Other people split up
their periods of rest. Every person should
find out if a few minutes' rest is profitable.
For me the most futile way is to sit down
and try to rest; I get no rest and it is an
aggravation. Every time that I commence
again, I must make up my mind once
more, and that is fatigue. For me to
take a fair gait and then to hold on to
it — no matter how tired I get — till
the work is done and then to rest is the
more economical course. But individuals
differ in things of this kind; there is no
such thing as a *'best way" for every-
body. When you rest, rest long enough

138 Mind and Work

to have it count. With some individuals
that may be a brief period. With others
it may be very much longer.

Every form of work has its corresponding
form of rest, and for each partial fatigue
there is some kind of activity which favors
rest more than complete idleness would.
Let me apply that. A person who has been
doing work involving constant choice, who
has been deciding matters all day, whose
will is fatigued, will jBnd most complete
rest in some form of activity that does not
exercise the will — light reading, where
merely the imagination is active, or in some
form of exercise in which there is little will
or choice demanded. In tennis there are
constant decisions; in swimming there are
few. Exercise that part which has not
been used. Solitaire is good for those who
can play it. Two of the most brilliant
men I know — intellectually brilliant —
one a man of international reputation and
the other of national medical reputation —
spend much of their free time in playing
solitaire. It is purely an automatic process ;
it does not involve the making of choices,

I

Rest the Will 139

and yet it occupies the attention. Some
people can get rested by playing chess.
Chess for me is exactly like the problems
of daily work, where there is always a
situation and where I have to get out of it
if I can and as well as I can.

WILLr-ECONOMY

CHAPTER XII

WHEN sitting in the rear of a hall
listening to an address, by giving
my whole, conscious attention to what is
being said, I am able to hear everything
said; but at the end of the lecture I always
find myself in a state of genuine fatigue.
It is not a state of fatigue incident to the
difficulty of comprehending. It is a fatigue
wholly different from that which results
when I sit in the front part of the room
where I can hear easily. It is a fatigue which
is due entirely to the giving of attention —
a fatigue of strain, not a fatigue of the ear.
A form of the same fatigue is experienced
by short-distance runners — when a man
starts at the pistol shot many times and each
time gets down to the mark, straining very
muscle and waiting with his whole mind
fixed upon the pistol shot, to the exclusion
of everything else in the universe. He must
give his undivided attention, for if he is
thinking of his friends in the grand-stand,

143

144 Mind and Work

or of the prize to be won, or of the nature
of the work that he is going to do, or of any
other thing, the period that will elapse
between the pistol shot and his start will
be a little longer than it would be if his
attention were not divided — and it is this
rapid response that settles most races
between men that are evenly matched.
Hence the strain of starting is primarily
attention strain.

If I should draw a spot on the black-
board and ask a class of children to look at
it for five minutes without wavering, it
would be an exceedingly fatiguing thing for
them to do, even though I allowed them to
think of other things at the same time.
Mere conscious control is one measure of
this fatigue of the attention — consciously
controlled attention. In taking this example
I have chosen the simplest thing that I could
possibly choose. It is not like working a
muscle that is often not used consecutively
for longer than five minutes; the eyes are
used constantly and are always balanced.
It does not require an effort to hold them up
to the height of the board. If I asked the

Will-Economy 145

children to look for five minutes at something
above the range of the eyes, it would be
another problem; but if I ask them to
look straight ahead, in a position in which
the eyes are in balance I am not requiring
them to do anything that is muscularly
exhausting, but I am asking them to do a
thing which demands attention.

A friend, a soldier in the Civil War, once
said that when he was seventeen years of
age he had to watch a certain hole where
it was expected that a Confederate spy
would creep through, and he was ordered
to shoot the man before he got through.
He watched for a whole hour, keeping his
eyes on that hole, with his gun cocked, all
ready to shoot. He says that this was
one of the most profoundly fatiguing ex-
periences in his life. The feeling was not
caused by the prospective shooting of a
man, because he had been obliged to do
that before; he was a soldier and had been
in action; but it was that constant attention
that was so fatiguing. He could not look off.

It is suggestive to set alongside of this
the singular fact that a man can go hunting

146 Mind and Work

through autumn woods from morning till
night, walking like a cat among the dead
leaves, ear and eye strained to the last
degree — and come home at night, actually
fresher than when he went out, eager for
another day of it. In a case like this the
attention is held just as taut as it was with
the man who watched the hole in the wall
through that single hour. But the differ-
ence is that, in so far as will-power has a
part to play, that part is perfectly sponta-
neous. Attention needs no stays to hold
it where it belongs. There is no conflict
of opposing forces. Interest works toward
the same end as will; they run parallel.

When will-power must do police service,
prodding duty on, it is quick to get tired.
You have had the experience, I presume,
of trying to "do" some great art collection
in a single visit — your only opportunity.
For the first hour, or hour and a half, it
was an unqualified pleasure. Your atten-
tion fixes upon each object in turn with a
fresh zest; examines, compares, dissects its
material; all your perceptions are quick
and vivid. Then you approach what might

Will-Economy 147

be termed the point of aesthetic saturation.
You cannot soak up any more. And
forthwith your pilgrimage ceases to be a
self-propelled thing. Interest serves as a
magnet no longer. Indifference rapidly
turns into distaste — finally agony. Noth-
ing but sheer will-power will keep you going
the round; and the expenditure increases
in geometrical ratio.

When one is going through a familiar
dance, one that has been learned thoroughly,
attention to it is unnecessary. When chil-
dren are playing tag, there is no doubt
there about their giving attention, for in
playing tag if a boy does not give attention
he is lost. There is no question about a
person giving attention who is on the field
in a baseball game. If he does not pay
attention all of the time, he does not play
well. This applies to every man on the
field. When the batter starts to bat, he is
doing just the same thing that the sprinter
is doing when he gets down ready to start.
But all this extreme attention given to games
is not fatiguing in the sense that consciously
controlled attention is fatiguing.

148 Mind and Work

A function, then, of true teaching is to dis-
cover that mode of giving attention which will
create a minimum of fatigue. People say
that this makes everything easy for children;
that they do not have to hold their attention ;
that it is "pampering" them; and that it
is like giving them whatever they want — if
they want candy, why give them candy.
People say that there is nothing of the strenu-
ous in it; and that the fine, strong fibre of
the generation to which we belong was
produced by doing the things that we did
not want to do, but that we were made to
do. Yet upon investigation it w^ill be found
that the fine men of the^ay, that are said
to be the product of the old education,
came through in a very different way from
what is usually supposed. When asked
as to their early education, many men
will say that they found some teacher, or
some teacher found them and discovered
their power — gave them books, gave
them inspiration, gave them vision that
awakened genuine interest, so that they
themselves, of their own interest, did the
work. That is the contrast between the

Will-Economy 149

fatiguing method and the relatively non-
fatiguing method.

Compare the efforts of a boy who is being
made to saw wood, who is not doing it
willingly, with the efforts of a boy who is
sawing wood because he wants to, because
it is interesting.

People say that there is no heroism in
doing the thing that one wishes to do.
Severe football training is not fun. The
hard routine and the banging and the
bruising have in them few, if any, elements
of pleasure. And yet, boys who have
never had anything but mush in their back-
bones will develop spine under this gruelling
process.

No one would be willing to drive a boy
to continue riding in a five-mile bicycle
race when at the end of the third or fourth
miles he is exhausted, when things are going
black before his eyes, when his heart is
pounding and it seems as if the walls of his
ears would burst, and the back of his tkroat
hurts. And yet that boy will drive himself.
Here, certainly, are great attention and
effort. He is calling upon the very founda-

150 Mind and Work

tion of his self-control. Is this a state of
character less strong than if he were ambling
along gently at a pace of six miles per hour,
going along at that rate because he would
be "licked" if he didn't? The question
is absurd. The ultimate question is this:
Is he going to master life and drive himself,
or is he going to yield to others ?

A victorious army can march and march
with relatively little exhaustion, while the
men in a defeated army will fall and die
by the thousands. The reason is that one
is under the inspiration of interest, and the
other is under a feeling of compulsion. One
army is dominated by fear and discourage-
ment — the other by victory. Which army
is doing the harder work? The one that
is working under interest.

Professor Maggiora, as was pointed
out in referring to Mosso's study of
"Fatigue," discovered that if he worked his
forearm muscle in the ergograph until it
was exhausted, it took him two hours
to become completely rested, that is, in
two hours he could do just as much work

Will-Economy 151

again. He also discovered that with but
one hour's rest, he could only do one-quarter
as much work. That is, expressed mathe-
matically, the power to work increases as
the square of one's recovery from fatigue.
Will and nerve power are needed in some
such ratio as the square of fatigue. The
meaning of that with reference to conduct
is that it is unwise to work to the point of
exhaustion. I once had the grippe and had
to go to bed for three weeks — because I
did not quit when I was thoroughly tired.
I went on for only three days, but those
were three days that I could not afford. I
went on to exhaustion from which it took
a long time to recover. No doubt those
three days took as much energy out of me
as would a month of the hardest kind of
work. That is, the amount of will and
nerve that was needed to take me through
those three days increased as the square of
fatigue. I was done for; I had nothing to
react with. If I had spent those three days
in bed, I should have been well. As a
policy in life, there are rare occasions which
demand our working to the limit of our

152 Mind and Work

ability, but the conditions which compel us
to this point of exhaustion are rare. For
example, the house is on fire and the family
all upstairs. You want to go and get them,
whether you are nearly exhausted or not.

Relatively short periods of high tension
work accomplish better results than the long
periods of low level, dawdling work. To
work hard and then rest thoroughly is sane
and wholesome.

The conclusion of the whole matter seems
to be that when you do what you want to
do, you do more, and do it more effectively,
than when you do what you don't want to
do. The man who drives his work counts
for more, succeeds better, than the man who
is driven by it. The great men sweep for-
ward, surmounting every obstacle, on a
high, buoyant wave of belief, of passionate
enthusiasm. No sacrifice is too great in
their eyes, because of the devotion they have
to the thing aimed at.

^ vVhen a man is engaged in a work that he
does not believe in, heart and soul, a work
that does not draw him in a large sense,
calling out the best efforts of which he is

Will-Economy 153

capable, he has not yet found his right
sphere. The constant summoning of will-
power, sense of duty, moral resolution,
what not, to help one, is a constant tax upon
one's central resources — keeps up a state
of mental maladjustment, prevents the most
praiseworthy endeavors from attaining any-
thing like adequate fruition. Will power
working parallel with interest, love, ambition,
curiosity, is tenfold more efficient than will
power working counter to any of these great
inner propulsions. Great results come when
they mutually reinforce each other.

I have attempted to show in this chapter,

(1) That there are two sorts of atten-
tion, one the conscious kind, exceedingly
fatiguing; the other the unconscious kind,
not fatiguing to the will. One of the
great arts of life consists in so interesting
one's self in one's work that it is accom-
plished under the directions of unconscious
effort, rather than by the tight rein of a
consciously driving will.

(2) That the will is taxed far more when
it works under conditions of fatigue than
when it is rested.

154 Mind and Work

This whole question of fatigue is a ques-
tion of one's attitude toward life. It is a
question whether you are going to do things
because you have got to do them and thus
exert conscious control, or whether upspring-
ing from necessity there is this love that just
sweeps you along. And this is measurably
within one's control.

THE NEED OF ADEQUATE WORK

CHAPTER XIII

A MUSCLE to be healthy must con-
tract, a gland to be healthy must
secrete, a nerve cell to be healthy must dis-
charge. That is, health in each of these cases
depends on their doing work that is adapted
in kind and extent to the power available.
This is a general law applicable to all of
one's powers, mental, moral, social, and
indeed to one's self as a whole. Every
person to be really healthy, balanced, and
sane needs adequate work of such a char-
acter as to occasionally call for all of his
power.

^^Hence the truth of the old saying,
/"Blessed is the man who has found his
job." He is blessed not merely because he
is going to help the world, although he may
do that too, but blessed because he has
found his job and in this discovery has gotten
onto a level of sanity. The person who has
not something to do that will give him the
consciousness of being needed, who feels

157

158 Mind and Work

that he can stay out of the game of life
and nobody would miss him, is in an
unwholesome state of mind. We all need
to be needed. It is one of the great stimuli
of life. Every once in a while we hear
of some one committing suicide because
there was a feeling of not being necessary.
This consciousness of being needed is one
of the great moral ballasts of life.

It is worth noting that in the most intelli-
gent treatment of the insane it is the custom,
where the condition of the patient allows it,
to assign him regular work and regular
responsibilities suited to his powers. This
method has proved efficacious in many cases
in restoring mental balance. It re-arouses
in the patient's mind the feeling of being
needed; it helps him to fit into the rational
scheme of things again. His power of
assuming responsibility is small, of course;
but as his power increases, the responsibili-
ties increase likewise.

Again, in saying, "Blessed is the man
who has found his job," the important word
is his, the job that was intended for him,
that comes up to his measure, or just so

The Need of Adequate Work 159

far exceeds it as to draw out the very best
that is in him; the job that could n't have
been done so effectively by anyone else in
the world. To have discovered a job like
that is about the most blessed thing that
can happen to a man.

Suppose a man is known to be endowed
with unusual executive ability. If he allows
himself to stick to a bookkeeper's desk
year after year, we cannot help regarding
him with a certain contempt. Perhaps he
lacks the courage to take a risk and to throw
himself with vigour and confidence upon the
bigger problem; perhaps he has persuaded
himself that the big thing is n't so important
after all, that in the end one job is as good
as another; or perhaps he is ** plain lazy."
Anyway, he does not win our admiration,
because we know that he has missed being
the man he might be; that by so much as
he fails to make use of his special gifts, he
has failed to realise himself. A man has no
right to stay in a little work if a bigger work
is waiting for him.

The man who hid his talent away in a
napkin (he had the talent) was not praised

160 Mind and Work

for it. No kingdom was given to him. Yet
it is easy to imagine the excuses he might
have made to himself — and plausible ones,

"There is always so much that needs
doing in my garden," he might have said.
" My onion bed is so large that just as soon
as I get it weeded once, I always have to
begin over again. How can I be expected
to be studying the market or planning
investments ? Perhaps next year I may
have a little more leisure."

And so he failed. He had had talent
entrusted to him, and it was his business
to make the most of it. Instead he neglected
it for the sake of small responsibilities which,
while perhaps real, might nevertheless have
been born, just as well by somebody else.
He could have hired a small boy to work
in his garden.

That oft-recommended motto about doing
"ye nexte thing" has a measure of truth in
it; but it also hides a fallacy. If we always
stop to do the next thing, we shall never get
on to the most important thing of all. Next
things can often wait.

The Need of Adequate Work 161

What every person needs to know is that
there is some one superimportant thing for
him. He has a special place in the world,
and a special work to do, no matter how
hopelessly "average" he has got into the
habit of thinking himself. **Averageness"
is merely a habit of mind, an excuse we have
devised to account for our lack of enterprise
and achievement; and in nine cases out of
ten it is not true to the inner facts of our
nature.

But most men will sooner or later find
work that is adequate to their powers.
A man in a small position here in America,
if he has genuine power, has pretty good
opportunity for that power to show itself
in the end. There are for him many oppor-
tunities for outside study, so that he may
progress in his work and advance in various
directions. The case of women, however, is
rather more diflficult.

There is at the present time in this
country and all over the civilised world a
great feeling of unrest among women.
People are so troubled about it that it seems
worthy of serious consideration. Women

162 Mind and Work

are forming clubs. They are reaching out
into all the cultural elements of civilisation.
They are taking hold of charities as never
before. There is more unrest than there
ever has been with reference to married
conditions, with reference to financial con-
ditions, with reference to the relations of
people to each other — so much so that
the situation has produced the "woman's
movement" of the age. The conditions of
the home have been so modified, the work
of the world has been so largely taken out
of the hands of women, that the sense of
responsibility does not rest equally upon
the man and the woman in the family.

Of course, the diflficulty can be very
prettily stated as Lowell gives it in the lines :

He sings to the wide world

And she to her nest;
But in the nice ear of nature

Which song is the best ?

But that does not solve the problem, for
when the man organises the great bulk of
women's activities and takes them away
from her, so that the home is no longer the
centre of the family life, then it is most

The Need of Adequate Work 163

inevitable that woman — not because she
is woman — but because she is human,
shall seek opportunity for the exercise of
her power elsewhere.

Far back in the primitive days of the
hunting tribes it was the women of the com-
munity who superintended and carried out
its agricultural undertakings — planting and
tilling and harvesting. It was an exacting
responsibility, one that developed power.
In Homeric times the women of the house-
hold did the weaving; it was a work of
infinite dexterity.

Our grandmothers and great-grand-
mothers had a large share of the actual
work of the community. There was carding
and spinning and weaving, dairying, garden-
ing, quilting, tailoring, candle-making, and
carpet-making. There was work which
made strict demands upon every faculty;
imagination, enterprise, endurance, loyalty
— it was an adequate medium of self-ex-
pression.

Since then conditions have changed to
an almost inconceivable degree. The
probability is that woman still has the plan-

164 Mind and Work

ning to do; there is an infinite number of
details that she must have an eye to; there
is the routine of the housework to be gone
through with. But she is far from being
in the older sense, the "home-maker."

What is there in the modern home that
she can do to express her sense of beauty ?
In the old days the women wove the cloth
and determined the colours. In the old days,
women had artistic opportunities in con-
nection with the making of fancy work.
Women nowadays have no time for
creative fancy work — that demanding a
knowledge of design and color, and where
these are applied, as for example, to a dress.
It is getting to be more and more customary
for women to go down to the shops and buy
— not only the cloth, but the made shirt-
waists and dresses. Less and less does
woman's aesthetic self have opportunity
to show itself in the American home. Of
course, she can hang the pictures on the
wall; she can arrange the rugs on the floor;
but she has had nothing to do with the
manufacture of the rugs, the creating of
the patterns, and the making of the goods.

The Need of Adequate Work 165

Few women do handwork of an aesthetic
character.

The modern woman does no skilled
handwork of an industrial character.
Sweeping and dusting are not skilled hand-
work. The sewing that is done in the
home cannot be called skilled. The skilled
work is done by the dressmaker, by the
tailor. The cooking that is done in the home
is not the skilled cooking of our grand-
mothers; it is relatively unskilled. The
modern American woman does not put up
her preserves in summer from fruit that she
herself has gathered. She buys food already
cooked and canned. The modern woman
does not have to take care of a coal fire ;
she turns on the lever and lights the gas.
The modern woman is fast losing even the
spring housecleaning. She has one of these
vacuum machines come around to clean
the house for her.

So the work that has in the past afforded
opportunity for the expression of her per-
sonality is rapidly being taken away. There
is less and less opportunity in the modern
home for power to show itself. Notice the

166 Mind and Work

relation of the mother to her children.
Education has pretty well gone out of the
home, while formerly it was predominantly
carried on by the mothers. We have now
given it to men and women who have
specialised on teaching. Not much moral
instruction is now given in the home.
Children are supposed to get it through
the Sunday school. The home is no longer
a religious centre as it was for many ages.
The home is no longer the centre of the play
of the children; city children must play
either in the playground or in the street.

So woman's work apparently has been
changed. She has had most of the oppor-
tunities that bring out the higher qualities
taken away, leaving chiefly the drudgery.
Hence restlessness is inevitable, and it is
a desirable restlessness, because it makes
women reach out to bring to bear the other
powers that they have. The personality
is feeling out for the opportunity to
live a higher life. A woman becomes
wearied of doing small things, of doing
drudgery, when she has power to do higher
things.

The Need of Adequate Work 167

As far as I know, this feeling of unrest
is stronger among women than it is among
men, and the feeling exists among women
who have not found adequate work, women
who could do greater things if they had the
opportunity. When a man with large
power is doing a routine, clerkship job he,
too, is restless. He feels power which he is
not using, and life does not seem as if it
meant much. He is restless, not because
he is a man, but because he is a human
being with power.

It is equally so with a woman. For the
attainment of balance, steadiness, self-
control — all the higher powers of the
personality — one must assume adequate
responsibilities. Every human being needs
the adequate demand upon his whole nature,
his whole power; and if the work of the home
or the work of the school, or the work of
the office does not demand it, then there
will result a mental and emotional dis-
turbance and constant unrest. That feeling
must be satisfied, that fundamental service
to humanity must be found which will call
into play all the energies of a woman's

168 Mind and Work

nature, because wholesome, sane living
is not achievable in any other way.

I am not assailing the old-fashioned
doctrine that woman's sphere is the home.
But that the home is all of woman's sphere
is by no means a corollary. A woman has
to work out her own salvation as well as a
man; she has talents and possibilities of
accomplishment which may be altogether
outside of the home.

If a woman is doing work which any
woman could do just as well as she, she has
not found her job. There is waste in her
efforts; she is missing her chance to do
something which because it exactly coin-
cides with her own special talents, tastes,
training, or opportunity, is — or would be
— a more real contribution to the total
work of the world. To tie one's self down
to work which does not call forth one's
very best is, in the end, to diminish the range
and worth of one's life.

In every community are to be found
women who have "found their jobs," in
philanthropic work, in educational service,
in household decoration, or in any other

The Need of Adequate Work 169

piece of work that fits them, work in which
they can express themselves fully. Then
there is quietness, rest, strength.

Look at the work of such women as
Virginia Potter in connection with Stony-
wold, of Grace Dodge, who has accom-
plished so much in organising the working
girls of New York, of Catharine Leverich,
who got under way all that soldier's "first-
aid" work at the time of the Cuban War.
These women found growth through their
effort; they are steadier, bigger, better-
balanced individuals because of it. Ade-
quate responsibility was the fundamental
thing. It is demanded by all of us, whether
we happen to be men or women, and no
matter how great or how small our "native"
talents, just because we are human beings
with developable faculties, power of, and
need for, growth.

Of all the foolish, crazy, unbalanced sets
of students I have ever had anything to do
with, medical students are the worst. But
medical practitioners, as a class, are pretty
responsible, sane men. I believe in them
thoroughly, and if I had a difficult enter-

170 Mind and Work

prise demanding plain straightforwardness,
and had to select any one group of men —
I think I would just as soon have a group of
physicians in the community, men who
possess daring, willingness to take their
lives in their hands, ability to think solidly,
men who are not blinded by their passions.
The steadying force has been responsibility.

I have seen girls, apparently flippant,
empty-headed as butterflies, steady right
down under the pressure of a hard job and
become women you could admire and trust.
Again it was the developing power of
adequate work.

We hear a great deal nowadays of the
increase of hysterias among women. Hys-
terias are closely related in their origin to
that mental condition which results from
inadequate responsibility. They are far
more prevalent among women who are not
playing a full part in the work of the world
than among those who have found their
"job" and the blessedness that comes
through the performance of it.

Self-realisation results from living on our
best level. Living on our best level is pos-

The Need of Adequate Work 171

sible only when we are in right relations
with our work. The matter lies within our
control, whether we shall allow ourselves
to be held back and dragged down by it, or
give ourselves the chance of finding in it
the daily stimulus we need for growth. That
is what each individual will get from his
work so soon as he is sure that it is his.

HANDICAPS

CHAPTER XIV

IT has been estimated that one-tenth of
all civilised people have some physical
disability serious enough to cripple them for
life in one way or another. Defects of
vision, for instance, beyond the oculist's
power to correct, defects of internal organs,
such as a bad heart- valve or a stomach that
will not do its work adequately; defects of
frame, such as a misshapen skeleton, an
imperfect limb — I am only mentioning a
few of the most familiar types.

With but a nominal difference in the
degree of defectiveness, we should all of
us find ourselves included somewhere or
other among the incurables. Honesty com-
pels us to recognise in ourselves certain
infirmities — of body or mind or estate
— that we can't get rid of, and that are
bound always to handicap us in the race.

Whether or not any of us in his particular
scheme of the universe has a satisfying
explanation for such handicaps — and even

175

176 Mind and Work

the least of them, looked at intently, brings
one face to face with the whole eternal
problem of suffering and disaster — it is at
least our business to try to find out what
their place is in our own lives — what
attitude we should take toward them, how
much concession we should give them.
That is a terribly practical problem for each
of us, and an intensely personal one, too,
for in the last analysis each individual's
disabilities are utterly his own, not to
be shared, or even fully realised, by any
other.

It is a simple matter to point to the great
numbers of men and women who have
brilliantly surmounted the most serious
impediments, and achieved great things
for mankind. "Masters of Fate" is the
name accorded them by Mrs. Lucy Shaler
in a recent volume ; and she tells the thrilling
story of some of these Masters.

To mention but a few from our own
times, there was Prescott, one of the greatest
of historians, who from boyhood was all but
helplessly blind. Charles Darwin suffered
acutely almost every day of his life. Steven-

Handicaps 177

son's record is known to everyone. Herbert
Spencer went through tortures with head-
ache. Harriet Martineau lacked the senses
of hearing, taste, and smell. John Adding-
ton Symonds was a consumptive. George
Eliot was for much of her life an invalid;
so was Mrs. Browing; so was Mrs. Isabella
Bird Bishop, the noted traveller. At forty-
six Louis Pasteur, then in the very midst
of his life-work, had a stroke which left
one side completely paralysed. Yet it was
during the following twenty-seven years,
under this incalculable bodily handicap,
that he worked out the theories of bacterial
infection and inoculation which have
revolutionised medical and surgical science.
But for some of us, I have discovered, such
superb instances as these are quite as likely
to contain discouragement as inspiration.
They only seem to accentuate the impass-
able differences that separate us from them.
After all, great achievements are for the
few, irrespective of circumstances. With
all their physical impediments, these Masters
yet possessed certain native gifts of intellect,
imagination, which set them in a sense

178 Mind and Work

apart from common humanity. Their
equipment was not like ours. They were
fortified by their great ambitions, and by
their consciousness of superior power.

For that reason many of us are likely to
discover a larger number of practical sug-
gestions in the lives of some of those more
everyday and common-lot Masters of Fate
who are to be found probably — almost
surely — within our own circle of acquain-
tances. A physician especially has the
privilege of knowing many of them, and
with a good deal of intimacy.

One of the loveliest women I know is an
epileptic hunchback. She goes through
life with what appears to be complete
unconsciousness of her physical deformity.
It is not that she does not know all about it;
but she has simply placed it in the back-
ground of her mental life. She is doing her
part in the world's business ; her work inter-
ests her and fills her heart.

She has periods of intolerable pain, and
then she simply goes to bed, gives up every-
thing; but when she is on her feet again,
she plunges directly into her work without

Handicaps 179

any loss of time. Her life is predominantly
happy; it is victorious and beautiful.

This solution of her special problem
seems so natural and obvious, that one
does not at first appreciate that other
solutions would be equally natural and
obvious. She is a sick woman There
are terrible deficiencies in her bodily equip-
ment which might, with utter plausibility,
seem to cut her off from the rest of humanity,
to make an exception of her. It would be
easy — excusable too, in a certain sense —
for her to keep the attitude of sickness all
the time, considering herself incapable of
ordinary responsibilities, looking forward
during her periods of comparative well-
being to the periods to come of intense
suffering.

But after all, the alternative she has
chosen is the very simplest, most sane and
far-sighted solution. It avoids the most
pain, brings the most happiness, helps her
friends the most.

Another woman of my acquaintance has
a mitral valve that probably leaks more than
half; her heart is enlarged and seriously

180 Mind and Work

hypertrophied. She has a woman's normal
desire for children; but some years ago she
had to undergo the ordeal of an ovarian
operation — which proved later not to have
been needed. She has experienced periods
of depression so intense that but for her
own previous calculation and placing of
safeguards, she would have ended her own
life. Yet that woman is the main force
in preserving wholesomeness and kindness
of feeling in a diflBcult circle of a dozen or
more persons. It would take more than
a casual acquaintance with her to give you
any suspicion of the handicap under which
she lives; she is so cheerful, so efficient in
all her responsibilities, so needed by her
family and her friends.

In a recent letter a correspondent writes
me of a type of handicap scarcely less
disheartening, though it is not bodily. *'I
do not know," she says, "any mortal
impediment harder to live with in the right
spirit than mere undisguised poverty —
it 's so unpicturesque, so crudely realistic;
it pinches and limits in so many different
directions. I wish you could know Mrs.

Handicaps 181

M . Her husband has never suc-
ceeded. Already well past middle age,
he is earning barely seventy-five dollars a
month as a draughtsman, and there are
several children. She is a college-bred
woman, sensitive, high-spirited, and am-
bitious, and in delicate health. In order
to eke out the income she has turned her
hand to all sorts of things — music lessons,
elocution, newspaper correspondence. Yet
I think I have never seen a woman who
entered, so to speak, so vitally into life. Out

here in this O town — you don't know

what O is ! — we could not possibly

get on without her. People — all sorts
of people — go to her with their troubles,
and she gives them just what they need
most, whether it be mere understanding
and sympathy, or something more positive,
such as practical counsel or a friendly
scolding."

A victory of this sort is not so dramatic
as some, but it arouses, somehow, quite as
deep an admiration. It does not make
much of a story — any more than does the
case of my crippled friend — but in that it

182 Mind and Work

resembles many of the costliest and finest
of life's achievements.

We are all familiar with the easy-going
ready-to-hand explanation for any sort of
moral achievement that overtops the average
level. " What will-power ! " people exclaim,
— and wonder why they have not themselves
a larger endowment of that mystic virtue.

I have the idea that the more we examine
this thing, ** will-power" — which covers
such a multitude of successes — the clearer
we see that it is not a single thing, but a
composite, a sort of amalgam of several
everyday qualities, not one of which is at
all beyond the reach of any of us. Common
sense, for example, enters into it, and
decision, and patience, and a certain amount
of philosophy.

Not long ago I went to a matinee of
'' Peter Pan " with a woman who has suffered
all her life with terrible headaches. She
is the mother of four happy, healthy children,
and necessity has taught her how to suffer
and act at the same time. A headache
had come on during the morning; but she
stuck to her plan, for she rarely has a chance

Handicaps 183

to go to the theatre, and she did not want
to lose thisi So we attended the performance.
On the way to the train afterward she did
not say much. One eye was already half-
closed; every motion of the car made her
wince. But when I left her she made this
remark to me.

''By the day after to-morrow," she said,
**I shall be enjoying Peter Pan immensely.
I 'm so glad I went."

I am sure that this woman has no more
than the ordinary endowment of "will-
power"; but she knows how to make it
count. She has learned to see the future
in the present; to balance one thing against
another. She calculates her programme while
she can see clearly what is worth while;
and then she holds by it through fire and
water.

She knew that the headache was inevi-
table. But she also knew that it would pass.
The delight and imaginative stimulus of
Mr. Barrie's charming play, on the other
hand, would be a permanent part of her
experience. Why should she deprive her-
self of it ?

184 Mind and Work

It is the same calm perception of values
that enables her, when confined to her bed
by pain, to see that the children are neatly
dressed and to send them cheerfully off to
school. It is simply doing the obviously
common-sense thing, after all.

The attitude that makes for weakness
and inefficiency is the attitude of self-
pity. " There are some people," says Mrs.
Shaler, "who seem to have a vocation for
invalidism."

These are the people who, sick or well,
are fatally prolific in excuses. For every
failure of theirs they bring forth a per-
fectly adequate and plausible explanation.
They always keep a scapegoat tethered in
their neighbourhood.

"The woman tempted me" said Adam.

"The serpent tempted me," murmured
Eve.

"I 'm so awfully temperamental," sighed
a woman of more recent date.

"I never had a fair chance," apologised
one man who had not made good; and his
university-educated brother, who had let
opportunities slip through his fingers, said

Handicaps 185

that his inherited inhibitions were stronger
than his motor impulses.

One and all they were cast out of Eden.

The course of our ordinary mental life
is something like the graph of a heart-beat.
There are up-strokes, apexes, down-strokes
— all following each other in endless suc-
cession. Each stroke is inevitable. Every
one of us, crippled or not crippled, who
has an up-stroke has also, to an appreciable
degree, a down-stroke.

To deny the existence of the down-
stroke is foolishness; but to assume that, just
because it is part of life, it is the most
characteristic and most important part of
it, is foolishness no less. It is not playing
a false part to choose the truest moments
you know in your own life, to hold to them
constantly, to act by them consistently,
even when things that are less true press
upon you. The deliberate choice of healthy-
minded and healthy-bodied attitudes is
only loyalty to that which is best in our-
selves. It is extending the control of the
top moments over the lower ones.

Our defects, our impediments, are after all

186 Mind and Work

only a small fraction of our life as a whole.
We are predominantly good, predominantly
healthy, even the worst off of us; and it is
right that we should bear that in mind.
'* Think on these things." When Paul said
that, he enunciated a fundamental principle
of mental hygiene.

I believe that the crippled person (I use
the term here in the very broadest sense)
has as much need of life's responsibilities
as the person of perfect physique. Invalids
who have no life work, who have no one
dependent on them, — I do not refer to
financial dependence, because that is the
least important variety — who do not have
characters dependent on them, but whose
only business is to record symptoms and
think about methods of treatment — they
are in the very worst state. The professional
pursuit of health is not one of the noble
professions.

To make an exception of one's self is the
surest way to defeat in life. Excuses —
adequate excuses, too, for that matter —
can always be found, even by the dullest,
if excuses are what one is looking for. What

Handicaps 187

is most of all important is to keep in natural
and wholesome relationships with the com-
mon responsibilities of life, not necessarily
great responsibilities, but responsibilities
that measure up to one's capacity to carry
them out.

THE SPIRIT OF THE GAME

CHAPTER XV

COMPULSION fails to account for
the greatest things in the world.
One cannot imagine, for example, that
those poems which bless us with their beauty
and strength, with their vision and inspira-
tion, were written under a compelling sense
of duty. Such poems as Mrs. Browning's
Portuguese Sonnets spring from sources
other than those of necessity.

It is so with the world's great statues.
There was a vision of beauty, an ideal
within the souls of the men who made them,
and this ideal was so compelling that they
worked it out often times at great personal
sacrifice. One cannot dream of this being
done through a sense of duty.

The great literature of the world has
been produced through motives other than
those of duty. I do not mean that it is
not the duty of great men to serve their
world, their time. But a sense of duty
and nothing further in the soul of Abraham

191

192 Mind and Work

Lincoln could not have inspired the words
of some of his classical utterances, of his
Gettysburg address.

It has been my privilege to see how
several inventors work. After one has seen
them, it does not seem so much that the
inventor is doing the work as that an idea
has laid forcible hold upon him, has har-
nessed and bridled him, and is driving him
day and night, during meal times and during
rest times, to embody itself in visible form.
It is not duty. Something else produces
this result. !

So I might go on and speak of statesmen
who discharge their duties to their states
and the records of whose lives will quite
fail to indicate that the doing of this was
the result of a desire simply to do their duty.

It is so with those who have built up great
fortunes. Great fortunes are not won
because of a sense of duty. There is some-
thing else back of them, which is driving
these men persistently. They do not stop
when they have earned enough money for
their own sustenance and for the sustenance
of their families; nor do they stop earning

The Spirit of the Game 193

money when they have accomplished certain
desired ends. They keep on.

It is so with teachers. No teacher is
great — or rather accompHshes great results
— who is driven by the lash of duty. Arnold
not only transformed the character of
his school, but he also transformed the
character of thousands of boys. He was
a genius, an artist in this special line.

Passionate accomplishment in all these
directions is something other than that
compulsion which we call duty. It is the
fireman's duty to risk his life; on occasions
it is his duty to rescue others. The life-
saver, too, is under such obligations and
we call him coward if he does not meet them.
Yet, when we read of actual achievement of
this kind, we are aware of something
besides duty, something which thrills us
as the mere discharge of duty rarely does.
The Hessian troops hired by the English
years ago to fight us may have been dis-
charging their duty to their employers. Our
forefathers also were discharging their duty
in fighting for their homes and their country.
The attitude of the two was different. The

194 Mind and Work

Americans were doing their duty — and
something else.

I am perfectly aware that the word
"duty" has many shades of meaning and
that I have deliberately selected one. This
selection is, however, I believe the most
profound meaning of the word. But in
any case, whether it is the word duty that
I ought to be talking about or not is not to
the point. What I mean is : There are two
attitudes — one the doing of things because
of some obligation or necessity, and the
other the doing of them for other reasons.

Play accounts for many of the greatest
things of the world. When Walt Whitman
was writing his great poems, he was doing
that which pleased his own self. He was
working to satisfy his own inner need. The
boy who plays with paddle wheels in the
little stream and devises a way by which a
thread may be attached to the axle and the
stick hauled up against the current, is doing
precisely the same thing that Edison does
when because of the absorbing interests of
the work he too, like the boy, will '*skip"
meals, forgetting them utterly in the enthu-

The Spirit of the Game 195

siasm and joy that lie in the pursuit of the
ideal.

The mother who is on the watch day and
night and who even while asleep is aware
when her sick baby moves in bed, is the
daughter of the little girl who plays with
and loves her dolls. The attitude of the
mother to the baby is the same attitude
as the attitude of the girl to the doll. The
attitude of the woman who takes care of the
sick baby because she is employed to do so,
or because it is her duty to do so, and who
is not actuated by any further motive of
love or sympathy — who merely does her
duty — is easily contrasted with the attitude
of the mother who responds to her own
deepest need, to her own wholesome feel-
ing, which far surpasses the obligations of
duty.

Why did the Duke of Abruzzi desire to
reach the North Pole ? Why are the highest
and the most dangerous mountains in every
part of the world being successfully scaled by
daring and able men ? What is it that drives
our great financiers and our great states-
men .? What is it that actuates most people

196 Mind and Work

who are sufficiently effective to enjoy life?
It is the love of the game — the game of
life which is played in so many different ways.
I like that stirring poem of Henry New-
bolt's where the spirit of the cricket match
saves the day for the British regiment —
makes a hero of every man.

There 's a breathless hush in the Close to-night —

Ten to make the match to win —

A bumping pitch and a blinding light,

An hour to play the last man in.

And it*s not for the sake of a ribboned coat

Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,

But his captain's hand on his shoulder smote —

"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

The sand of the desert is sodden red, —
Red with the wreck of the square that broke; —
The Gatling's jammed and the colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with the dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks
And England's far and Honour a name
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the rank;
*'Play up! play up! and play the game!"

This is the word that year by year.
While in her place the school is set.
Every one of her sons must hear
And none that hears it dare forget.

The Spirit of the Game 197

This they all with a joyful mind
Bear through life like a torch in flame.
And falling fling to the host behind —
"Play up! play up! and play the game! **

Why is it that play accounts for these
great things when duty will not? It is
because a higher state of the personality is
involved in play than in duty. Under the
stimulus and enthusiasm of play the muscles
will contract more powerfully and longer
than when the other conditions obtain.
Blood pressure is higher in play. The fact
that food digests better under the influence
of happy meals and laughter is a common-
place. The man who plays at his meals
has a far better chance of having a good
digestion than the man who simply does
his duty by eating.

The great things of the world and the
great things in the life of each one of us
are accomplished only when we can bring
to bear all the forces, the best forces within
us. This cannot be done by force of will
alone. There must come in love and
enthusiasm, the kind of interest that absorbs
and dominates us. This cannot be produced

198 Mind and Work

by effort. There must come that kind of
insistent watchfulness which when necessary
holds the mother so perfectly in its grasp.

All these forces work together in the play
of men and women, as well as in the play of
children. The difference between doing
one's duty because it is duty, and following
out the highest lines of one's interest and
enthusiasm — which is just what the child
does when he plays — is that in the one
state we are living at the top notch of our
personality, while in the other state we are
not. It is not a difference in the things
done. The mother who loves her child
will do the same things for it as the mother
who is merely doing her duty. It is a differ-
ence in attitude.

Work — in the sense in which I am now
using the word — is that which is done
under compulsion — whether it is the com-
pulsion of duty, physical compulsion like
that of slavery, compulsion of public opinion,
or any other compulsion. By play I mean
that which is done from an inner need, that
which expresses the higher and best self.

We play not by jumping the traces of

The Spirit of the Game 199

life's responsibilities, but by going so far
beyond life's compulsions as to lose all
sight of the compulsion element.

It is far more interesting to play the game
than to work at it. When you work, you
are being driven. When you play, you
drive yourself. And we all enjoy being
our own master better than being mastered.
Then besides, it is more fun to do our best,
to do the thing artistically and well than to
do what we know to be a make-shift job.
Some of the old violin makers could hardly
bear to part with the instruments upon
which they had worked the most, because
they loved them. These men were con-
scious of doing fine work. It was fun;
they liked it. So it is with every piece of
work that is done at our level best. We
like it. It satisfies us most profoundly.

Two sisters were overheard saying, " Let 's
play sisters." So they played and had such
a lovely time as little girls frequently have
together. What was the difference between
flaying sisters and being sisters ? The
difference is just the same as the difference
between those British soldiers fighting

200 Mind and Work

and playing that they were iSghting —
playing the game, playing up!

When we say of a man that he is not
"playing the game," or when we say to a
man, "Play the game!" we mean, "treat
the situation as ideal." A man may be
tired and we say to him, "Play the game!
Play the game!" It may be a game of
football or a game of finance. We mean
that he shall drop his sense of fatigue. If
he is sulky because his feelings have been
hurt, we mean that he shall drop all that
feeling of self which is interfering. We mean
that he shall treat the situation as ideal.
If a man is "up against" some big propo-
sition, as was Parsons when he undertook
to build the subway of New York City,
we say, "He has a big game to play." He
may have stupid or inefficient subordinates.
He may have traits in his own character —
for instance a memory weakness of a certain
kind — upon which he cannot rely. All
these are factors in the big game that he
is playing. He cannot lie down, quit, and
say that his subordinates were inefficient.
These are all parts of the game he is playing.

The Spirit of the Game

201

It is so with every successful man, with
every principal, with every teacher, every
business man, every salesman.

To "play the game" is to treat the situa-
tion as ideal. It means to drop all selfish,
individual considerations, and to meet the
real situation by ideal means.

RA

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