Psychology and Achievement, Warren Hilton [good books to read for young adults .txt] 📗
- Author: Warren Hilton
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The fact is, every mental state whether you consider it as involving an act of the will or not, is followed some kind of bodily effect, and every bodily action is preceded by some distinct kind of mental activity. From the practical science point of view every thought causes its particular bodily effects.
This is true of simple sensations. It is true of impulses, ideas and emotions. It is true of pleasures and pains. It is true of conscious mental activity. It is true of unconscious mental activity. It is true of the whole range of mental life.
Since the mental conditions that produce bodily effects are not limited to those mental conditions in which there is a conscious exercise of the will, it follows that the bodily effects produced by mental action are not limited to movements of what are known as the voluntary muscles.
On the contrary, they include changes and movements in all of the so-called involuntary muscles, and in every kind of bodily structure. They include changes and movements in every part of the physical organism, from changes in the action of heart, lungs, stomach, liver and other viscera, to changes in the secretions of glands and in the caliber of the tiniest blood-vessels. A few instances such as are familiar to the introspective experience of everyone will illustrate the scope of the mind's control over the body.
Emotion always causes numerous and intense bodily effects. Furious anger may cause frowning brows, grinding teeth, contracted jaws, clenched fists, panting breath, growling cries, bright redness of the face or sudden paleness. None of these effects is voluntary; we may not even be conscious of them.
Fright may produce a wild beating of the heart, a death-like pallor, a gasping motion of the lips, an uncovering or protruding of the eye-balls, a sudden rigidity of the body as if "rooted" to the spot.
Grief may cause profuse secretion of tears, swollen, reddened face, red eyes and other familiar symptoms.
Shame may cause that sudden dilation of the capillary blood-vessels of the face known as "blushing."
The sight of others laughing or yawning makes us laugh or yawn. The sound of one man coughing will become epidemic in an audience. The thought of a sizzling porter-house steak with mushrooms, baked potatoes and rich gravy makes the mouth of a hungry man "water."
Suppose I show you a lemon cut in half and tell you with a wry face and puckered mouth that I am going to suck the juice of this exceedingly sour lemon. As you merely read these lines you may observe that the glands in your mouth have begun to secrete saliva. There is a story of a man who wagered with a friend that he could stop a band that was playing in front of his office. He got three lemons and gave half of a lemon to each of a number of street urchins. He then had these boys walk round and round the band, sucking the lemons and making puckered faces at the musicians. That soon ended the music.
A distinguished German scientist, named Pavlov, has recently demonstrated in a series of experiments with dogs that the sight of the plate that ordinarily bears their food, or the sight of the chair upon which the plate ordinarily stands, or even the sight of the person who commonly brings the plate, may cause the saliva to flow from their salivary glands just as effectively as the food itself would do if placed in their mouths.
There was a time, and that not long ago, when the contact of food with the lining of the stomach was supposed to be the immediate cause of the secretion of the digestive fluids. Yet recent observation of the interior of the stomach through an incision in the body, has shown that just as soon as the food is tasted in the mouth, a purely mental process, the stomach begins to well forth those fluids that are suitable for digestion.
The press recently contained an account of a motorcycle race in Newark, New Jersey. The scene was a great bowl-shaped motor-drome. In the midst of cheering thousands, when riding at the blinding speed of ninety-two miles an hour, the motorcycle of one of the contestants went wrong. It climbed the twenty-eight-foot incline, hurled its rider to instant death and crashed into the packed grandstand. Before the whirling mass of steel was halted by a deep-set iron pillar four men lay dead and twenty-two others unconscious and severely injured. Then the twisted engine of death rebounded from the post and rolled down the saucer-rim of the track.
Around the circular path, his speed scarcely less than that of his ill-fated rival, knowing nothing of the tragedy, hearing nothing of the screams of warning from the crowd, came another racer. The frightened throng saw the coming of a second tragedy. The sound that came from the crowd was a low moaning, a sighing, impotent, unconscious prayer of the thousands for the mercy that could not come. The second motorcycle struck the wreck, leaped into the air, and the body of its rider shot fifty feet over the handlebars and fell at the bottom of the track unconscious. Two hours later he was dead.
What was the effect of this dreadful spectacle upon the onlookers? Confusion, cries of fright and panic, while throughout the grandstand women fainted and lay here and there unconscious. Many were afflicted with nausea. With others the muscles of speech contracted convulsively, knees gave way, hearts "stopped beating." Observe that these were wholly the effects of mental action, effects of sight and sound sensations.
Why multiply instances? All that you need to do to be satisfied that the mind is directly responsible for any and every kind of bodily activity is to examine your own experiences and those of your friends. They will afford you innumerable illustrations.
You will find that not only is your body constantly doing things because your mind wills that it should do them, but that your body is incessantly doing things simply because they are the expression of a passing thought.
The law that Every idea tends to express itself in some form of bodily activity, is one of the most obviously demonstrable principles of human life.
Bear in mind that this is but another way of expressing the second of our first two fundamental principles of mental efficiency, and that we are engaged in a scientific demonstration of its truth so that you will not confuse it with mere theory or speculation.
To recall these fundamental principles to your mind and further impress them upon you, we will restate them:
I. All human achievement comes about through some form of bodily activity.
II. All bodily activity is caused, controlled and directed by the mind.
PHYSIOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF MENTAL MASTERY
We have been considering the relationship between mind and body from the standpoint of the mind. Our investigation has been largely introspective; that is to say, we simply looked within ourselves and considered the effects of our mental operations upon our own bodies. The facts we had before us were facts of which we had direct knowledge. We did not have to go out and seek them in the mental and bodily activities of other persons. We found them here within ourselves, inherent in our consciousness. To observe them we had merely to turn the spotlight into the hidden channels of our own minds.
We come now to examine the mind's influence upon the body from the standpoint of the body. To do this we must go forth and investigate. We must use eye, ear and hand. We must use the forceps and scalpel and microscope of the anatomist and physiologist.
But it is well worth while that we should do this. For our investigation will show a bodily structure peculiarly adapted to control by a governing consciousness. It will reveal to the eye a physical mechanism peculiarly fitted for the dissemination of intelligence throughout the body. And, most of all, it will disclose the existence within the body of subordinate mental units, each capable of receiving, understanding and acting upon the intelligence thus submitted. And we shall have strongly corroborative evidence of the mind's complete control over every function of the body.
Examine a green plant and you will observe that it is composed of numerous parts, each of which has some special function to perform. The roots absorb food and drink from the soil. The leaves breathe in carbonic acid from the air and transform it into the living substance of the plant. Every plant has, therefore, an anatomical structure, its parts and tissues visible to the naked eye.
Put one of these tissues under a microscope and you will find that it consists of a honeycomb of small compartments or units. These compartments are called "cells," and the structure of all plant tissues is described as "cellular." Wherever you may look in any plant, you will find these cells making up its tissues. The activity of any part or tissue of the plant, and consequently all of the activities of the plant as a whole, are but the combined and co-operating activities of the various individual cells of which the tissues are composed. The living cell, therefore, is at the basis of all plant life.
In the same way, if you turn to the structure of any animal, you will find that it is composed of parts or organs made up of different kinds of tissues, and these tissues examined under a microscope will disclose a cellular structure similar to that exhibited by the plant.
Look where you will among living things, plant or animal, you will find that all are mere assemblages of cellular tissues.
Extend your investigation further, and examine into forms of life so minute that they can be seen only with the most powerful microscope and you will come upon a whole universe of tiny creatures consisting of a single cell.
Indeed, it is a demonstrable fact that these tiny units of life consisting of but a single cell are far more numerous than the forms of life visible to the naked eye. You will have some idea of their size and number when we tell you that millions may live and die and reproduce their kind in a single thimbleful of earth.
Every plant, then, or every animal, whatever its species, however simple or complicated its structure, is in the last analysis either a single cell or a confederated group of cells.
All life, whether it be the life of a single cell or of an unorganized group of cells or of a republic of cells, has as its basis the life of the cell.
For all the animate world, two great principles stand established. First, that every living organism, plant or animal, big or little, develops from a cell, and is itself a composite of cells, and that the cell is the unit of all life. Secondly, that the big and complex organisms have through long ages developed out of simpler forms, the organic life of today being the result of an age-long process of evolution.
What, then, is the cell, and what part has it played in this process of evolution?
To begin with, a cell is visible only through a microscope. A human blood cell is about one-three-thousandth of an inch across, while a bacterial cell may be no more than one-twenty-five-thousandth of an inch in diameter.
Yet, small as it is, the cell exhibits all of the customary phenomena of independent life; that is to say, it
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