Thinking and learning to think, Nathan C. Schaeffer [each kindness read aloud txt] 📗
- Author: Nathan C. Schaeffer
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Sometimes the feeling that a given way of looking at things is undoubtedly correct prevents the mind from thinking at all. A lady claimed that she had been taught to accept the statements of the Bible in their literal sense, and that in this belief she was going to live and die. She was asked to read the twenty-third Psalm. At the end of the first verse she was asked whether she could be anything else than a sheep if the Lord was literally her Shepherd. When, a little farther on, she was asked in what green pastures she had been lying down, she burst into tears. Her condition, and that of hundreds of thousands of others, is correctly given in the opening pages of J. S. Mill’s “Subjection of Women.”[52]
“So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as the result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to fill any breach made in the old.”
When a man’s opinions are, as he thinks, grounded in first principles, it is but natural that he should be unwilling to abandon them without a struggle to intrench himself behind impregnable arguments. If he has reached his conclusions as the result of long and careful inquiry, he has a right to hold on to them with more than ordinary tenacity. The same regard for truth which led him to form an opinion should, however, make him willing to change whenever he finds himself in the wrong. He should avoid the frame of mind of the Scotch lady who, when it was charged that she was not open to conviction, exclaimed, “Not open to conviction! I scorn the imputation. But,” added she, after a moment’s pause, “show me the man who can convince me.” The secret of this tenacity of opinion is not love of truth, but love of self,—in one word, pride.
In view of the hinderances which certain kinds or degrees of feeling throw into the way of thinking, it might be inferred that the thinker must suppress the element of feeling in his inner life. No greater mistake could be made. If the Creator endowed man with the power to think, to feel, and to will, these several activities of the mind are not designed to be in conflict, and so long as any one of them is not perverted or allowed to run to excess, it necessarily aids and strengthens the others in their normal functions. Whilst it is a duty to overcome prejudice, fear, embarrassment, anxiety, and other emotions or degrees of emotion which interfere with our ability to think correctly, especially when face to face with an audience or with our peers and superiors, it is equally a duty to cultivate the emotions which stimulate thinking and strengthen the will. Without the ability to feel strongly, it is impossible to stir the hearts of an audience. A strong character is impossible without strong emotion. Jesus could weep and denounce. He showed the strongest emotion in his public discourses and at all the great turning-points of his life. The men and women who have done most for the race showed the element of strong feeling in their thinking and in their efforts at philanthropy and reform. It is the feeling of patriotism that sustains the soldier on the field of battle and the statesman in the midst of public criticism and personal abuse. According to Plato, the feeling with which education begins is wonder. “The elementary school,” says Dr. Brumbaugh, “does its best work when it creates a desire to learn, not when it satisfies the learner.” Teachers everywhere are beginning to see that it is the mission of the elementary school to beget a desire for knowledge that will carry the pupil onward and upward, and not to make him feel satisfied with a mere knowledge of the rudiments, so that he will leave the school at the first opportunity to earn a penny.
Dr. Brumbaugh further says,—
“We must recognize the emotional life as the basis of appeal for all high acting and high thinking. We can never make men by ignoring an essential element in manliness. To live well, we must know clearly, feel keenly, and act nobly; and, indeed, we shall have noble action only as we have gladsome action,—action inspired of feeling, not of thought. The church made men of great power because it made men of great feeling.”
The close connection between thinking and feeling cannot be ignored without serious detriment to the intellectual development of the pupil. Some teachers play upon the feelings in ways that prevent accurate and effective thinking. The tones of voice in which they speak, their manner of putting questions and administering discipline, their lack of self-control, and their frantic efforts to get and keep order cause the pupils to feel ill at ease and destroy the calmness of soul, which is the first condition of logical thinking. The skilful teacher calls into play feelings like joy, hope, patriotism, that stimulate and invigorate the whole intellectual life; he is extremely careful not to stir emotions like fear, anger, and hate, which hinder clear and vigorous thinking.
Feeling plays an important part in the examinations by superintendents for the promotion of pupils, or by State boards whose function it is to license persons to teach or preach, to practise law, medicine, or dentistry, or to test the fitness of applicants for some branch of civil or military service. Examiners are often responsible for the failure of those whom they examine. If the first questions arouse the fear of failure, causing the mind to picture the disappointment and displeasure of parents and teachers and friends, and the other evils which result from a loss of class standing, the resulting emotions hinder effective thinking and thus prevent the pupil from doing justice to himself and his teachers. The expert seeks to lift those whom he examines above all feelings of embarrassment. With a friendly smile, a kind word, and a few easy questions he puts the mind at ease, dissipates the dread of failure, and gets results which are an agreeable surprise to all concerned. If he cannot otherwise make those before him work to the best advantage, he will even sacrifice his dignity by the use of a good-natured joke which turns the laugh upon himself or upon some other member of the board of examiners. Jokes at the expense of any one of those examined are a species of cruelty which cannot be too severely condemned, to say nothing of the effect upon the results of the examination.
Within certain limits thinking begets feeling, and feeling stimulates thinking. Beyond these limits each interferes with the other. When feeling rises to the height of passion it beclouds the judgment and prevents reflection. Certain kinds of speculative thinking leave the heart cold and ultimately destroy the better emotions and the warmer affections. “It is terrible,” said the daughter of a voluminous writer on theology, “when a man feels a perpetual impulse to write. It makes him a stranger in his own house, and deprives wife and children of their husband and father.” Abstract thinking may be indulged in to the exclusion of the tastes and emotions which help to make life worth living. The oft-quoted experience of Darwin is a case in point. In his autobiography he gives his experience, showing the effect of his exclusive devotion to scientific pursuits upon his ability to enjoy poetry, music, and pictures. “Up to the age of thirty and beyond it poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure.... My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.... If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”[53]
Every teacher has both felt and witnessed the effect of embarrassment upon ability to think. To face an audience of a thousand people was embarrassing to some excellent thinkers like Melanchthon and Washington. On the other hand, the sight of a multitude of listening, upturned faces stimulates natures and temperaments like that of Martin Luther and Patrick Henry, causing them to think more vigorously and to feel more deeply.
Great thoughts spring from the heart. This is certainly true of thoughts which have lifted men to higher planes of effort. And it is true of the best thoughts and volitions which a pupil puts forth. The desire for knowledge may develop into the love of truth. The student is half made as soon as he seeks knowledge for its own sake and values the possession of truth above all other worldly possessions.
The Herbartians deserve praise for the attention they have given the doctrine of interest. The older text-books on psychology seldom refer to interest as an important element in the education of the child. The greatest boon which can come to a child is happiness, and this was impossible in the days when fear of the rod held sway in the school-room. Then children looked forward to the school with feelings of dread; they went with fear and trembling. From the day that the children became interested in their lessons the rod was no longer required. Instead of crying because they must go to school, they now cry because they cannot go. Through interest the school becomes the place to which children best like to go.
A boy who was pronounced incorrigible, and who had been transferred from school to school because he could not get along with his teachers, at last met a teacher who discovered that he could take apart and put together watches and clocks. She allowed him to fix her clock, and thus won his heart. She asked him to explain to the school the mechanism of instruments for keeping time. His interest in clocks she connected with the numbers twelve and sixty, then with the time-table, with denominate numbers, and finally with the
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