the will of samuel appleton; with remarks by one of the executors. boston: printed by john wilson & son, 22, school street. 1853. remarks. samuel appleton was born at new ipswich, n.h., june 22, 1766, and died, without issue, at his residence in boston, on tuesday, july 12, 1853; having just entered on the eighty-eighth year of his age. in november, 1819, he married mrs. mary gore, who was much younger than himself. this union has been marked, on his side, by the most unvarying confidence and sincere affection. he has ever found his own delight in gratifying each wish of his wife with an almost boundless indulgence. and she--the brilliant and happy mistress of his hospitable mansion--has been alike admirable, when presiding over its social circle, or its more public gayeties; and when, in its private recesses, she has devoted herself to what she has ever felt to be her highest duty and her chief privilege,--that of guarding the declining years of her husband with the most kind and thoughtful care; cheering his pathway to the tomb by those considerate attentions, which, both in life and in death, he so gratefully appreciated and acknowledged. on the last morning of his life, he enjoyed his usual health. during the day, however, he suffered pain and uneasiness, apparently the result of indigestion. mrs. appleton, therefore, remained constantly with him, but without feeling any serious apprehensions. he at length seemed to be entirely relieved by the means used, and said, "i will now try to go to sleep." in a few moments, mrs. appleton was alarmed by hearing him breathe once or twice much more loudly than usual. she ran to his bedside, and his favorite female attendant was immediately summoned. he was still lying in the same attitude of repose. the sleep that had fallen upon him so gently was the sleep of death! this event at once called forth a universal and spontaneous expression of regard for the deceased from the community in which he had so long lived. it was unrestrained by any differences of political opinion or of religious sentiment. thus, in the "boston post," the organ of the democratic party of boston, there appeared the following communication:- "samuel appleton is dead! never has there been summoned from among us a purer man or a more public-spirited citizen. possessing strong natural sense and the most plain and unaffected manners, he was truly simple-hearted and noble-minded. there was nothing about him of ostentation or pretence. all his _acts_, during a long life, praise him. beginning with humble prospects, by industry and intelligence he became one of our wealthiest merchants. as a country schoolmaster, during the winter months, he was once, when a young man, '_put up at auction_, to be boarded out in the family that would consent to take him at the lowest rate.'[1] latterly, for many years, probably not a day has passed without the performance of some deed of kindness great or small,--some act of public or private munificence; and each evening saw him sink to rest, happy in the consciousness that he had made others happy. in a notice of him, as a benefactor of one of our chief charitable institutions, published not long since, it is said: 'in advanced age, and unable to walk from his house, he continues in the highest and best sense to enjoy life. he has, indeed, no children; but a numerous band of nephews and nieces look up to him with truly filial regard. indeed, the community itself ventures to apply to him _their_ familiar and affectionate appellation of "uncle sam." this name, in the abstract so dear to every patriot, could not be more worthily bestowed.'[2] that life, so honorable and so useful, rendered sweet by the daily blessings of those whose necessities or sufferings have been relieved by his bounty, has been fitly closed by a calm and peaceful death." obituary notices of a like favorable character, and characteristic anecdotes, &c., were inserted in the "daily evening transcript," the "boston courier," and the "christian register," and also in various other journals. public funeral services were held at the stone chapel, on friday afternoon, at four o'clock. the hon. thomas h. perkins, and a few other surviving contemporaries of the deceased, were present among the assemblage of relatives and friends by which the church was filled. he was buried at mount auburn, in a lot which he had purchased many years ago, and on which he had erected a costly monument. designing to embellish that field of the dead, he had authorized an artist in a foreign country to execute this work without regard to expense. when completed, it was not in accordance with the simple tastes of mr. appleton. he even desired that he might be buried in his tomb, under a church in boston, rather than in the beautiful spot which he had thus selected and adorned. the existing ordinance of the city rendered it impossible to comply with this suggestion; and indeed it seemed to be, on other grounds, inexpedient. at a stated quarterly meeting of the trustees of the massachusetts general hospital, held on the same day, the following preamble and votes, as proposed by the chairman, were unanimously adopted, viz.:- "the funeral of the late hon. samuel appleton takes place this afternoon; and the bells of the city are now tolling as a public expression of respect for one of its worthiest sons and its noblest benefactors, who, at the advanced age of eighty-seven years, has died universally beloved and regretted. "formerly a trustee of this institution, and ever cherishing a lively interest in its welfare, we are happy to acknowledge our indebtedness to him, alike for his valuable personal services, and for a large share of that bounty which he has always so wisely and so liberally bestowed. "this board would present to the widow of the deceased, by whose affectionate attentions and devoted care his life has been for so many years prolonged and rendered happy, the assurances of their profound sympathy, now that she has lost a companion and friend by whom she was most tenderly beloved. "_voted_, that this board do now adjourn to attend the funeral of the deceased." mr. appleton left a will and codicil, of which a few copies are printed for the use of his executors and legatees. these documents were opened and read in the presence of the widow and some of the relatives, on saturday, july 16; and the following anecdote was then related by one of the executors:-the late isaac appleton jewett was a favorite nephew of the deceased, and, as such, had a bequest of $30,000, and was eventually to receive besides one-tenth part of the residuary property. he died in january last, leaving as his heir-at-law a half-sister, who, by the terms of the will, became entitled to these bequests. there was no blood-relationship between her and the testator. _a comparative stranger would thus be a larger legatee than any one of his own kindred._ the executor called mr. appleton's attention to this fact. his reply was: "i am much obliged for the suggestion: it was a proper one for you to make. i will consider, and let you know my decision to-morrow." the next day he said: "i have been thinking of what you mentioned to me; and if, in the other world, there is any knowledge of what is done in this, i should not like to have my nephew, whom i so loved and trusted, find that my first act, on learning his death, is the revocation or curtailment of a bequest made in his favor, and which, if he had survived me, would have eventually benefited her who was nearest and dearest to him. _the will must stand as it is._" this confirmation of a private bequest is no less honorable to the memory of mr. appleton, than are those other two provisions of his will by which he so bountifully remembers the servants of his household, and appropriates to public uses so large a part of his princely fortune. n.i.b. * * * * * footnotes: [1] "history of the massachusetts hospital," 1851. [2] "history of the massachusetts hospital," 1851. * * * * * will of samuel appleton. the last will and testament of samuel appleton. be it remembered, that i, samuel appleton, of boston, in the county of suffolk and state of massachusetts, merchant, being of sound disposing mind and memory, and in good health, but aware of the uncertainty of life, and desirous of making a disposition of such property as i may leave at the time of my decease, do make, publish, and declare this my last will and testament, in manner and form following, to wit:- [sidenote: to his wife, $122,000.] i give and bequeath to my beloved wife, mary appleton, one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, in the manner following, to wit:- [sidenote: viz. $100,000.] 1st. the sum of one hundred thousand dollars in cash, to be paid to her by my executors. [sidenote: house, 53, beacon-street, at $14,000;] 2d. my land and house in beacon-street, boston, numbered fifty-three, now occupied by mrs. goodwin, and valued by me at fourteen thousand dollars, to hold to her and her heirs. [sidenote: and $6000 to put said house in order.] 3d. the sum of six thousand dollars in cash to be paid to her by my executors for the purpose of putting said house in good order and condition. [sidenote: or the $20,000 in cash, if she prefers.] if, however, my wife do elect to accept the sum of twenty thousand dollars in cash, instead of said land and house in beacon-street, and said six thousand dollars, then and in that case it is my will that the sum of twenty thousand dollars in cash be paid to her by my executors. [sidenote: a clause revoked by the codicil.] [4th. any of the plate and furniture belonging to me at the time of my decease, at the appraised value thereof, to the amount of eight thousand dollars.] [sidenote: pew, horses, &c., shares in athenæum, $2000.] 5th. my pew in king's chapel in boston, numbered two; also two shares in the boston athenæum; also the horses and carriages belonging to me at the time of my decease,--all valued by me at two thousand dollars. [sidenote: all in lieu of dower.] the provision thus made for my beloved wife is designed to be in full satisfaction of her right of dower, or thirds, in my estate. [sidenote: to the children of isaac appleton, $60,000; viz.:--] i give and bequeath to the heirs of my brother isaac appleton, of dublin, state of new hampshire, the sum of sixty thousand dollars, to be distributed among them in the manner following, to wit:- [sidenote: to mrs. todd, $3000;] 1st. to mrs. sarah todd, of byron, state of new york, daughter of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars. [sidenote: and to each of her six children, $3000.] to the six children of the said sarah todd, grandchildren of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars to each and every one of them. [sidenote: to mrs. mary davis, $3000;] 2d. to mrs. mary davis, of lee county, state of illinois, daughter of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars. [sidenote: and her son, $3000.] to cyrus a. davis, son of the said mary davis, grandson of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars. [sidenote: to mrs. kendall, $3000.] 3d. to mrs. harriet g. kendall, of dublin, state of new hampshire, daughter of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars. [sidenote: to her three children, each $3000.] to the three children[3] of the said harriet g. kendall, grandchildren of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars to each and every one of them. [sidenote: to david appleton, $3000.] 4th. to david appleton, of dublin, state of new hampshire, son of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars. [sidenote: to joseph's four children, each $3000; viz. joseph b., eugene, mrs. bagley, mrs. preston.] 5th. to joseph b. appleton, of lee county, state of illinois; to eugene appleton; to mrs. celestia bagley; to mrs. mary preston; being the four children of joseph appleton deceased, and grandchildren of my brother isaac appleton,--the sum of three thousand dollars to each and every one of them. [sidenote: to mrs. sarah davis, $3000.] 6th. to mrs. sarah davis, of ashby, state of massachusetts, daughter of mrs. emily eastabrooks deceased, and granddaughter of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars. [sidenote: to mrs. marr, $3000.] 7th. to mrs. mary jane marr, of scarboro', state of maine, daughter of samuel appleton deceased, and granddaughter of my brother isaac appleton, the sum of three thousand dollars. [sidenote: to the children of dr. moses appleton, $60,000; viz.:] i give and bequeath to the four children of my late brother, doctor moses appleton, of waterville, state of maine, the sum of sixty thousand dollars, to be distributed among them in the manner following, to wit:- [sidenote: samuel, $15,000.] 1st. to samuel appleton, of waterville, state of maine, son of my late brother, doctor moses appleton, the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. [sidenote: moses l., $15,000.] 2d. to moses l. appleton, of bangor, state of maine, son of my late brother, doctor moses appleton, the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. [sidenote: mrs. wells, $15,000.] 3d. to mrs. ann louisa wells, of portland, state of maine, daughter of my late brother, dr. moses appleton, the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. [sidenote: mrs. plaisted, $15,000.] 4th. to mrs. mary jane plaisted, of waterville, state of maine, daughter of my late brother, doctor moses appleton, the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. [sidenote: to eben appleton's children, $60,000; viz.:--] i give and bequeath to the three children of my deceased brother eben appleton, the sum of sixty thousand dollars, to be distributed among them in the manner following, to wit: [sidenote: s.a. appleton, $25,000.] 1st. to samuel a. appleton, of boston, son of my deceased brother eben appleton, the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. [sidenote: wm. s. appleton, $25,000.] 2d. to william s. appleton, of baltimore, state of maryland, son of my deceased brother eben appleton, the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars. [sidenote: mrs. blatchford, $10,000.] 3d. to mrs. caroline f. blatchford, of auburn, state of new york, daughter of my deceased brother eben appleton, the sum of ten thousand dollars. [sidenote: to the children of nathan appleton, $60,000; viz.:] i give and bequeath to the six children of my brother nathan appleton, of boston, the sum of sixty thousand dollars, to be distributed among them in the manner following, to wit:- [sidenote: mrs. mackintosh, $10,000.] 1st. to mrs. mary mackintosh, daughter of my brother nathan appleton, the sum of ten thousand dollars. [sidenote: mrs. longfellow, $10,000.] 2d. to mrs. fanny e. longfellow, daughter of my brother nathan appleton, the sum of ten thousand dollars. [sidenote: thomas g., $10,000.] 3d. to thomas g. appleton, son of my brother nathan appleton, the sum of ten thousand dollars. [sidenote: harriot, $10,000.] 4th. to harriot appleton, daughter of my brother nathan appleton, the sum of ten thousand dollars. [sidenote: william s., $10,000.] 5th. to william s. appleton, son of my brother nathan appleton, the sum of ten thousand dollars. [sidenote: nathan, $10,000.] 6th. to nathan appleton, son of my brother nathan appleton, the sum of ten thousand dollars. [sidenote: to mrs. barrett's children, $30,000, viz.:] i give and bequeath to the two children of my sister, mary barrett, of new ipswich, state of new hampshire, the sum of thirty thousand dollars, to be distributed between them in the manner following, to wit:- [sidenote: mrs. bent, $15,000.] 1st. to mrs. mary narcissa bent, daughter of my sister mary barrett, the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. [sidenote: mrs. spalding, $15,000.] 2d. to mrs. dora e. spalding, daughter of my sister mary barrett, the sum of fifteen thousand dollars. [sidenote: to mrs. jewett's son, isaac a. jewett, $30,000.] i give and bequeath to isaac appleton jewett, son of my deceased sister emily jewett, the sum of thirty thousand dollars. [sidenote: to maria goodwin, $7000.] i give and bequeath to miss maria goodwin, niece of my beloved wife, who has for many years resided in my house as one of my family, the sum of seven thousand dollars. [sidenote: mrs. goodwin, $1000.] i give and bequeath to mrs. maria goodwin, sister of my beloved wife, the sum of one thousand dollars. [sidenote: mary goodwin, $1000.] i give and bequeath to miss mary goodwin, daughter of the said mrs. maria goodwin, the sum of one thousand dollars. [sidenote: delia goodwin, $1000.] i give and bequeath to miss delia goodwin, daughter of the said mrs. maria goodwin, the sum of one thousand dollars. [sidenote: rev. e. peabody, $5000.] i give and bequeath to my friend and pastor, the rev. ephraim peabody, of boston, the sum of five thousand dollars. [sidenote: the servants, $5000.] i give and bequeath to the servants who may be living with me at the time of my decease the sum of five thousand dollars, to be distributed among them in the manner and according to proportions fixed upon by my beloved wife. [sidenote: to his executors, $200,000 for public uses.] and i do also hereby give and bequeath to my executors hereinafter named--or such of them as shall accept the trust, the survivors or survivor of them, to be by them applied, disposed of, and distributed, for scientific, literary, religious, or charitable purposes--the following manufacturing stocks at their par value, estimated at two hundred thousand dollars, and situated as follows, to wit:-1st. _at manchester, state of new hampshire._ fifty shares in the amoskeag manufacturing company. forty shares in the stark mills. ten shares in the manchester print works. 2d. _at lowell, state of massachusetts._ twenty shares in the merrimac manufacturing company. twenty shares in the appleton manufacturing company. twenty shares in the hamilton manufacturing company. twenty shares in the suffolk manufacturing company. twenty shares in the massachusetts cotton mills. my wishes in regard to the particular institutions or objects to which the aforesaid manufacturing stocks are to be applied, and also the time and mode of the application thereof, i intend to make known to my executors; and i feel sure that they will strictly comply with the same; and, in default of any such directions from me, i have confidence in their making such a disposition and distribution of said property as they will think would be most likely to meet my approbation. [sidenote: powers of sale, &c.] [sidenote: estate to be settled in 2 years.] i hereby fully authorize and empower and direct my executors hereinafter named, or such of them as shall accept the trust, the survivors or survivor of them, or any administrator on my estate, to sell and convey at public auction, or by private sale, at such times and on such conditions as they shall judge best, any and all estate and property, real, personal, and mixed, of which i may die seized or possessed, saving and excepting only such as herein is specifically given to my beloved wife; and likewise the said land and house devised to my beloved wife, in case she shall elect not to take the same; and to make and deliver good and sufficient conveyances and transfers thereof; the purchasers to be in nowise bound to see to the appropriation of the purchase-money: it being my wish that my estate should be settled as soon as convenient after my decease, and, if practicable, within two years thereafter. [sidenote: residue to his nephews, nieces, &c. in sums corresponding to their specific bequests respectively.] if, after the conversion of the residue of my estate into money, and the payment of all my debts, and the distribution and payment of all the bequests in this my will, contained in accordance with the foregoing dispositions, any residue should remain, it is my will that the amount of said residue be distributed among the children and grandchildren of my brother isaac appleton, and among the children of my late brother doctor moses appleton, and among the children of my deceased brother eben appleton, and among the children of my brother nathan appleton, and among the children of my sister mary barrett, and of my deceased sister emily jewett, hereinbefore named, in proportions corresponding to the amounts or sums which said heirs are respectively entitled to receive by virtue of the original dispositions in this my will. [sidenote: no legacy to lapse by death of legatee.] if any of the legatees named in this will should die in my lifetime, then and in that case, whatever is herein given to such legatee i give to and among those who at my decease may be heirs-at-law of such legatee by the statute of distributions of this commonwealth, as to any real estate of which said legatee should then have died seized. [sidenote: liability of executors.] i direct that my executors shall each be liable only for his own actual receipts and his own wilful defaults, and not the one for the other or others. [sidenote: executors named.] i appoint nathan appleton, william appleton, nathaniel ingersoll bowditch, and isaac appleton jewett, to be the executors of this my last will and testament, hereby revoking all wills by me heretofore made. in witness whereof, i have hereunto set my hand and seal on this twenty-eighth day of february, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one. (signed) saml. appleton [and a seal]. signed, sealed, published, and declared by said testator to be his last will and testament, in presence of us, who, at his request, and in his presence, and in presence of each other, have hereunto set our names as witnesses. joseph tilden. moses l. hale. franklin h. story. * * * * * footnotes: [3] one of these children died before the testator. the father, as his heir, is entitled to his share, by a subsequent provision of the will. * * * * * codicil. i, samuel appleton, of boston, in the county of suffolk, and state of massachusetts, merchant, having further considered my last will and testament, bearing date the twenty-eighth day of february, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-one, do think proper to make and publish the following as a codicil thereunto. [sidenote: revokes a clause of the will;] i do hereby revoke and cancel that clause in said last will and testament, giving unto my beloved wife "any of the plate and furniture belonging to me at the time of my decease, at the appraised value thereof, to the amount of eight thousand dollars;" and in lieu thereof i do make the following dispositions:- [sidenote: and gives to widow his mansion-house, 37, beacon-street,] i give and devise unto my beloved wife the dwelling-house, with the stables, lands, and appurtenances thereunto belonging, now occupied by me, being the dwelling-house numbered thirty-seven in beacon-street, boston, to have and to hold the same to her, her heirs and assigns for ever. [sidenote: and all the plate, &c. therein.] and i do also give and bequeath unto my beloved wife all the plate, furniture, pictures, statuary, books, stores, and other household articles, belonging to me at the time of my decease; and it is my wish that no inventory be taken of the same. [sidenote: legatees may take property at appraisement, &c.] and it is also my wish that each and every of the legatees, in said last will and testament named, may, with the advice and consent of my executors, take, in lieu of the money to which they are entitled by said last will and testament, any of the property, left by me at the time of my decease, at the appraised value thereof. [sidenote: bonds of executors to be only in a penalty adequate to protect creditors.] and i do also direct that the executors of my said last will and testament shall give bonds in such sum only as the judge of probate may consider sufficient for the payment of the amount of my debts. in witness whereof, i have hereto set my hand and seal, this eighth day of october, in the year of our lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-two. (signed) saml. appleton [and a seal]. signed, sealed, published, and declared by said testator to be a codicil to his last will and testament, in presence of us, who, at his request, and in his presence, and in presence of each other, hereto set our names as witnesses. joseph tilden. franklin h. story. francis c. lowell. recapitulation. recapitulation. to the widow (by the will), $108,000 in personal property, and $14,000 in real estate; or all in personal property, at her option; and (by the codicil), his mansion-house, and all in it; of the value of $200,000 to the descendants of each of his four brothers (isaac, moses, eben, and nathan appleton), $60,000. to the descendants of each of his two sisters (mary barrett and emily jewett), $30,000. in all 300,000 to maria goodwin, $7000; her mother and two sisters, $1000 each 10,000 to rev. ephraim peabody, $5000; and to the servants in the family, $5000 10,000 to public uses 200,000 all the residue to the said descendants of his brothers and sisters, in sums corresponding to their respective specific bequests. the residuary legatees will be therefore entitled to claim in the following proportions, viz.:- isaac apppleton's descendants, $60,000 out of $300,000, or 1/5; viz.:- 1. mrs. sarah todd, wife of james b. todd, of byron, n.y., a legatee of $3000, has 1/100 2. isaac a. todd, of byron, n.y. 1/100 3. mrs. rachel d. moore, wife of tom moore, of medina, michigan 1/100 4. mrs. emily a. hall, wife of alfred d. hall, of sheridan, calhoun county, michigan 1/100 5. dr. daniel todd, of canandaigua, lenawee county, michigan 1/100 6. samuel a. todd, a minor, of byron, n.y. 1/100 7. francis james todd, a minor, of byron, n.y. 1/100 8. mrs. mary davis, now wife of asa holt, of ashby, mass. 1/100 9. her son, cyrus a. davis, of palestine grove, lee county, illinois 1/100 10. mrs. harriet g. kendall, wife of rev. henry a. kendall, of concord, n.h. 1/100 11. her husband, as heir of a deceased daughter 1/100 12. their minor son, henry kendall 1/100 13. their minor son, samuel kendall 1/100 14. david appleton, of dublin, n.h. 1/100 15. joseph b. appleton, of palestine grove, lee county, illinois 1/100 16. eugene f. appleton, fifteen years old, of new ipswich, n.h. 1/100 17. mrs. celestia bagley, wife of gilman bagley, of sharon, n.h. 1/100 18. mrs. mary preston, wife of edward f. preston, of new ipswich, n.h. 1/100 19. mrs. sarah davis, wife of john u. davis, of new ipswich, n.h. 1/100 20. mrs. mary jane marr, wife of dennis w. marr, of portland, maine 1/100 moses appleton's children, $60,000 out of $300,000, or 1/5; viz.:- 21. samuel appleton, of waterville, maine, a legatee of $15,000, has 1/20 22. moses l. appleton, of bangor, maine 1/20 23. mrs. ann louisa wells, wife of hon. samuel wells, of portland, maine 1/20 24. mrs. mary jane plaisted, wife of dr. samuel plaisted, of waterville, maine 1/20 eben appleton's children, $60,000 out of $300,000, or 1/5; viz.:- 25. samuel a. appleton, of boston, being a legatee of $25,000, has 1/12 26. william s. appleton, of baltimore, m.d. 1/12 27. mrs. caroline f. blatchford, wife of samuel blatchford, of auburn, n.y., a legatee of $10,000 1/30 nathan appleton's children, $60,000 out of $300,000, or 1/5; viz.:- 28. mrs. mary mackintosh, wife of his excellency robert james mackintosh, governor of the island of antigua, &c. a legatee of $10,000, has 1/30 29. mrs. fanny e. longfellow, wife of prof. henry w. longfellow, of cambridge, mass. 1/30 30. thomas g. appleton, of boston 1/30 31. harriot appleton, of boston, a minor 1/30 32. william s. appleton, of boston, a minor 1/30 33. nathan appleton, of boston, a minor 1/30 mrs. barrett's and mrs. jewett's children, $60,000 out of $300,000, or 1/5; viz.:- 34. mrs. mary narcissa bent, wife of samuel w. bent, of middlebury, vt., a legatee of $15,000, has 1/20 35. mrs. dora e. spalding, wife of dr. edward spalding, of nashua, n.h. 1/20 36. isaac appleton jewett's half-sister and heir-at-law, mrs. harriet e. ide, wife of dr. william e. ide, of columbus, ohio, a legatee of $30,000 1/10 * * * * * what you can do with your will power _by_ russell h. conwell volume i national extension university 597 fifth avenue, new york what you can do with your will power copyright, 1917, by harper & brothers printed in the united states of america [illustration: russell h. conwell] preface other writers have fully and accurately described _the road_, and my only hope is that these hastily written lines will inspire the young man or young woman to arise _and go_. russell h. conwell. [the author is much indebted to mr. merle crowell of the _american magazine_ who assisted most efficiently in the preparation of the facts herein contained.] what you can do with your will power success has no secret- i success has no secret. her voice is forever ringing through the market-place and crying in the wilderness, and the burden of her cry is one word--will. any normal young man who hears and heeds that cry is equipped fully to climb to the very heights of life. the message i would like to leave with the young men and women of america is a message i have been trying humbly to deliver from lecture platform and pulpit for more than fifty years. it is a message the accuracy of which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in thousands of lives whose progress i have been privileged to watch. and the message is this: your future stands before you like a block of unwrought marble. you can work it into what you will. neither heredity, nor environment, nor any obstacles superimposed by man can keep you from marching straight through to success, provided you are guided by a firm, driving determination and have normal health and intelligence. determination is the battery that commands every road of life. it is the armor against which the missiles of adversity rattle harmlessly. if there is one thing i have tried peculiarly to do through these years it is to indent in the minds of the youth of america the living fact that when they give will the reins and say "drive" they are headed toward the heights. the institution out of which temple university, of philadelphia, grew was founded thirty years ago expressly to furnish opportunities for higher education to poor boys and girls who are willing to work for it. i have seen ninety thousand students enter its doors. a very large percentage of these came to philadelphia without money, but firmly determined to get an education. i have never known one of them to go back defeated. determination has the properties of a powerful acid; all shackles melt before it. conversely, lack of will power is the readiest weapon in the arsenal of failure. the most hopeless proposition in the world is the fellow who thinks that success is a door through which he will sometime stumble if he roams around long enough. some men seem to expect ravens to feed them, the cruse of oil to remain inexhaustible, the fish to come right up over the side of the boat at meal-time. they believe that life is a series of miracles. they loaf about and trust in their lucky star, and boldly declare that the world owes them a living. as a matter of fact the world owes a man nothing that he does not earn. in this life a man gets about what he is worth, and he must render an equivalent for what is given him. there is no such thing as inactive success. my mind is running back over the stories of thousands of boys and girls i have known and known about, who have faced every sort of a handicap and have won out solely by will and perseverance in working with all the power that god had given them. it is now nearly thirty years since a young english boy came into my office. he wanted to attend the evening classes at our university to learn oratory. "why don't you go into the law?" i asked him. "i'm too poor! i haven't a chance!" he replied, shaking his head sadly. i turned on him sharply. "of course you haven't a chance," i exclaimed, "if you don't make up your mind to it!" the next night he knocked at my door again. his face was radiant and there was a light of determination in his eyes. "i have decided to become a lawyer," he said, and i knew from the ring of his voice that he meant it. many times after he became mayor of philadelphia he must have looked back on that decision as the turning-point in his life. i am thinking of a young connecticut farm lad who was given up by his teachers as too weak-minded to learn. he left school when he was seven years old and toiled on his father's farm until he was twenty-one. then something turned his mind toward the origin and development of the animal kingdom. he began to read works on zoology, and, in order to enlarge his capacity for understanding, went back to school and picked up where he left off fourteen years before. somebody said to him, "you can get to the top _if you will_!" he grasped the hope and nurtured it, until at last it completely possessed him. he entered college at twenty-eight and worked his way through with the assistance that we were able to furnish him. to-day he is a respected professor of zoology in an ohio college. such illustrations i could multiply indefinitely. of all the boys whom i have tried to help through college i cannot think of a single one who has failed for any other reason than ill health. but of course i have never helped any one who was not first helping himself. as soon as a man determines the goal toward which he is marching, he is in a strategic position to see and seize everything that will contribute toward that end. whenever a young man tells me that if he "had his way" he would be a lawyer, or an engineer, or what not, i always reply: "you can be what you will, provided that it is something the world will be demanding ten years hence." this brings to my mind a certain stipulation which the ambition of youth must recognize. you must invest yourself or your money in a _known demand_. you must select an occupation that is fitted to your own special genius and to some actual want of the people. choose as early as possible what your life-work will be. then you can be continually equipping yourself by reading and observing to a purpose. there are many things which the average boy or girl learns in school that could be learned outside just as well. almost any man should be able to become wealthy in this land of opulent opportunity. there are some people who think that to be pious they must be very poor and very dirty. they are wrong. not money, but the _love_ of money, is the root of all evil. money in itself is a dynamic force for helping humanity. in my lectures i have borne heavily on the fact that we are all walking over acres of diamonds and mines of gold. there are people who think that their fortune lies in some far country. it is much more likely to lie right in their own back yards or on their front door-step, hidden from their unseeing eye. most of our millionaires discovered their fortunes by simply looking around them. recently i have been investigating the lives of four thousand and forty-three american millionaires. all but twenty of them started life as poor boys, and all but forty of them have contributed largely to their communities, and divided fairly with their employees as they went along. but, alas, not one rich man's son out of seventeen dies rich. but if a man has dilly-dallied through a certain space of wasted years, can he then develop the character--the motor force--to drive him to success? why, my friend, will power cannot only be developed, but it is often dry powder which needs only a match. very frequently i think of the life of abraham lincoln--that wonderful man! and i am thankful that i was permitted to meet him. yet abraham lincoln developed the splendid sinews of his will after he was twenty-one. before that he was just a roving, good-natured sort of a chap. always have i regretted that i failed to ask him what special circumstance broke the chrysalis of his life and loosened the wings of his will. many years ago some of the students of temple university held a meeting in a building opposite the bellevue-stratford hotel. as they were leaving the building they noticed a foreigner selling peanuts on the opposite curb. while buying peanuts they got to talking with the fellow, and told him that any one could obtain an education if he was willing to work for it. eagerly the poor fellow drank up all the information he could get. he enrolled at temple university and worked his way through, starting with the elementary studies. he is to-day an eminent practising physician in the national capital. often i think of an office clerk who reached a decision that the ambitions which were stirring in his soul could be realized if he could only get an education. he attended our evening classes and was graduated with a b.s. degree. he is now the millionaire head of one of the largest brokerage houses in the country. "where there's a will there's a way!" but one needs to use a little common sense about selecting the way. a general may determine to win a victory, but if he hurls his troops across an open field straight into the leaden sweep of the enemy's artillery he invites disaster and defeat. the best general lays his plans carefully, and advances his troops in the way that will best conserve their strength and numbers. so must a man plan his campaign of life. no man has a right, either for himself or for others, to be at work in a factory, or a store, or anywhere else, unless he would work there from choice--money or no money--if he had the necessities of life. "as a man thinks, so he is," says the writer of proverbs; but as a man adjusts himself, so really is he, after all. one great trouble with many individuals is that they are made up of all sorts of machinery that is not adjusted, that is out of place--no belts on the wheels, no fire under the boiler, hence no steam to move the mechanism. some folk never take the trouble to size themselves up--to find out what they are fitted to do--and then wonder why they remain way down at the bottom of the heap. i remember a young woman who told me that she did not believe she could ever be of any particular use in the world. i mentioned a dozen things that she ought to be able to do. "if you only knew yourself," i said, "you would set yourself to writing. you ought to be an author." she shook her head and smiled, as if she thought i was making fun of her. later, force of circumstances drove her to take up the pen. and when she came to me and told me that she was making three thousand dollars a year in literary work, and was soon to go higher, i thought back to the time when she was a poor girl making three dollars a week when she failed accurately to estimate herself. there is a deplorable tendency- ii there is a deplorable tendency among many people to wait for a particularly favorable opportunity to declare themselves in the battle of life. some people pause for the rap of opportunity when opportunity has been playing a tattoo on their resonant skulls for years. hardly a single great invention has been placed on the market without a number of men putting forth the claim that they had the idea first--and in most cases they proved the fact. but while they were sitting down and dreaming, or trying to bring the device to a greater perfection, a man with initiative rose up and acted. the telegraph, telephone, sewing-machine, air-brake, mowing-machine, wireless, and linotype-machine are only a few illustrations. the most wonderful idea is quite valueless until it is put into practical operation. the government rewards the man who first gets a patent or first puts his invention into practical use--and the world does likewise. thus the dreamer must always lag behind the door. true will power also predicates concentration. i shall never forget the time i went to see president lincoln to ask him to spare the life of one of my soldiers who was sentenced to be shot. as i walked toward the door of his office i felt a greater fear than i had ever known when the shells were bursting all about us at antietam. finally i mustered up courage to knock on the door. i heard a voice inside yell: "come in and sit down!" the man at the table did not look up as i entered; he was busy over a bunch of papers. i sat down at the edge of a chair and wished i were in peking or patagonia. he never looked up until he had quite finished with the papers. then he turned to me and said: "i am a very busy man and have only a few minutes to spare. tell me in the fewest words what it is you want." as soon as i mentioned the case he said: "i have heard all about it, and you do not need to tell me any more. mr. stanton was talking to me about that only a few days ago. you can go to the hotel and rest assured that the president never did sign an order to shoot a boy under twenty, and never will. you may tell his mother that." then, after a short conversation, he took hold of another bunch of papers and said, decidedly, "good morning!" lincoln, one of the greatest men of the world, owed his success largely to one rule: whatsoever he had to do at all he put his whole mind into, and held it all there until the task was all done. that makes men great almost anywhere. too many people are satisfied if they have done a thing "well enough." that is a fatal complacency. "well enough" has cursed souls. "well enough" has wrecked enterprises. "well enough" has destroyed nations. if perfection in a task can possibly be reached, nothing short of perfection is "well enough." governor talbot of massachusetts got his high office because general swift made a happy application of the truth in saying to the convention, "i nominate for governor of this state a man who, when he was a farmer's boy, hoed to the end of the row." that saying became a campaign slogan all up and down the state. "he hoed to the end of the row! he hoed to the end of the row!" when the people discovered that this was one of the characteristics of the man, they elected him by one of the greatest majorities ever given a governor in massachusetts. yet we must bear in mind that there is such a thing as overdoing anything. young people should draw a line between study that secures wisdom and study that breaks down the mind; between exercise that is healthful and exercise that is injurious; between a conscientiousness that is pure and divine and a conscientiousness that is over-morbid and insane; between economy that is careful and economy that is stingy; between industry that is a reasonable use of their powers and industry that is an over-use of their powers, leading only to destruction. the best ordered mind is one that can grasp the problems that gather around a man constantly and work them out to a logical conclusion; that sees quickly what anything means, whether it be an exhibition of goods, a juxtaposition of events, or the suggestions of literature. a man is made up largely of his daily observations. school training serves to fit and discipline him so that he may read rightly the lesson of the things he sees around him. men have made mighty fortunes by just using their eyes. several years ago i took dinner in new york with one of the great millionaires of that city. in the course of our talk he told me something about his boyhood days--how, with hardly a penny in his pocket, he slung a pack on his back and set out along the erie canal, looking for a job. at last he got one. he was paid three dollars a week to make soft soap for the laborers to use at the locks in washing their hands. one can hardly imagine a more humble occupation; but this boy kept his eyes open. he saw the disadvantages of soft soap, and set to work to make a hard substitute for it. finally he succeeded, and his success brought him many, many millions. every person is designed for a definite work in life, fitted for a particular sphere. before god he has a right to that sphere. if you are an excellent housekeeper you should not be running a loom, and it is your duty to prepare yourself to enter at the first opportunity the sphere for which you are fitted. george w. childs, who owned the philadelphia _ledger_, once blacked boots and sold newspapers in front of the _ledger_ building. he told me how he used to look at that building and declare over and over to himself that some day he would own the great newspaper establishment that it housed. when he mentioned his ambition to his associates they laughed at him. but childs had indomitable grit, and ultimately he did come to own that newspaper establishment, one of the finest in the country. another thing very necessary to the pursuit of success is the proper employment of waiting moments. how do you use your waiting time for meals, for trains, for business? i suppose that if the average individual were to employ wisely these intervals in which he whistles and twiddles his thumbs he would soon accumulate enough knowledge to quite make over his life. i went through the united states senate in 1867 and asked each of the members how he got his early education. i found that an extremely large percentage of them had simply properly applied their waiting moments. even charles sumner, a university graduate, told me that he learned more from the books he read outside of college than from those he had studied within. general burnside, who was then a senator, said that he had always had a book beside him in the shop where he worked. before leaving the subject of the power of the will, there is one thing i would like to say: a true will must have a decent regard for the happiness of others. do not get so wrapped up in your own mission that you forget to be kind to other people, for you have not fulfilled every duty unless you have fulfilled the duty of being pleasant. enemies and ignorance are the two most expensive things in a man's life. i never make unnecessary enemies--they cost too much. every one has within himself the tools necessary to carve out success. consecrate yourself to some definite mission in life, and let it be a mission that will benefit the world as well as yourself. remember that nothing can withstand the sweep of a determined will--unless it happens to be another will equally as determined. keep clean, fight hard, pick your openings judiciously, and have your eyes forever fixed on the heights toward which you are headed. if there be any other formula for success, i do not know it. the biography of that great patriot- iii the biography of that great patriot and statesman, daniel manin of venice, italy, contains a very romantic example of the possibilities of will force. he was born in a poor quarter of the city; his parents were without rank or money. venice in 1805 was under the austrian rule and was sharply divided into aristocratic and peasant classes. he was soon deserted by his father and left to the support of his mother. he was a dull boy, and could not keep along with other boys in the church schools; his mind labored as slowly as did the childhood intellects of many of the greatest men of history. daniel seemed destined to earn his living digging mud out of the canals, if he supported himself at all. no american boy can be handicapped like that. but the children who learn slowly learn surely, and history, which is but the biography of great men, mentions again and again the fact that the great characters began to be able to acquire learning late in life. napoleon and wellington were both dull boys, and lincoln often said that he was a dunce through his early years. daniel manin seems to have been utterly unable to learn from books until he was eight or ten years old. but his latent will power was suddenly developed to an unexpected degree when he was quite a youth. kossuth, who was a personal friend of manin, said in an address in new york that the american republic was responsible for the awakening of manin, and through him had made italy free. it appears that an american sea-captain, while discharging a cargo in venice, employed daniel as an errand-boy, and when the ship sailed the captain made daniel a present of a gilt-edged copy of the lives of george washington and john hancock in one volume. the captain, who had greatly endeared himself to daniel, made the boy promise solemnly that he would learn to read the book. but daniel was utterly ignorant of the english language in print and had learned only a few phrases from the captain. the gift of that book made venice a republic, led to the adoption of sections of the united states constitution by that state and carried the principles on into the constitution of united italy. that book awakened the sleeping will power of the industrious dull boy. even his mother protested against his waste of time in trying to read english when he was unable to conquer the primers in italian. but he secured a phrase-book and a grammar, and paid for them in hard labor. with those crude implements, without a teacher, he determined to read that book. only one friend, a young priest in st. mark's cathedral, gave him any word or look of encouragement. but his candle burned late, and the returning daylight took him to his book to study until time for breakfast. then came the daily task as a messenger, or gondolier. some weeks or months after he began his seemingly foolish problem he rushed into his mother's room at night, excited and noisy, shouting to her: "i can read that book! i can read that book!" there comes a moment in the life of every successful student of a foreign language when he suddenly awakens to the consciousness that he can think in that language. from that point on the work is always easy. it must have been a similar psychological change which came into daniel's intellect. so sudden was it, so amazing the change, that the priest reported the case as a miracle, and the little circle of the poor people who knew the boy looked on him with awe. consul-general sparks, who represented the united states at venice in 1848, wrote that "manin often mentions his intellectual new birth, and his success in reading the life of washington in english spurs him on in the difficult and dangerous undertakings connected with the efforts of venice to get free." when daniel began to appreciate his ability to determine to do and to persevere, his ambition and hope brought to him larger views of life. he resolved to learn in other ways. he took up school books and mastered them thoroughly, and he became known as "a boy who works slowly, but what he does at all he does well." he soon found helpers among kind gentlemen and secured employment in a bookstall. the accounts of his persistence and his achievements are as thrilling and as fascinating as any finished romance. he managed to get a college education, recognized by padua university; he studied law and was admitted to the bar when he was twenty-two years of age. the austrian judges would not admit him to their courts, and it is said he visited his law-office regularly and daily for nearly two years before he had a paying client. but his strong will, shown in his perseverance in the presence of starvation, won the respect and love of the daughter of a wealthy patrician. they had been married but a short time when the austrians confiscated the property of his father-in-law because of suspicions circulated concerning his secret connection with the "americani." that patriotic secret society was called the "carbonari" by the austrians, and manin became the leading spirit in the venetian branch. his will seemed resistless. he refused the presidency in 1832, when revolution shook the tyrannies of all europe and venice fell back under austrian control. but in 1848 he was almost unanimously elected president of the "american republic of venice"; and in his second proclamation before the great siege began he issued a call for the election, using, as consul-general sparks records, the following language (as translated): "and until the election is held and the officers installed the following sections of the constitution of the united states of america shall be the law of the city." he was determined to secure an "american republic" in italy. he lived to see it in venice. statues of daniel manin are seen now in all the great cities of italy; and when the statue was dedicated at venice and a city park square named after him, he was called the father of the new kingdom of italy. general garibaldi said that when manin made a draft of the constitution he proposed for united italy, he quoted the american declaration of independence. the general also said that manin insisted the government of italy should be like the american republic, and that it was difficult to convince manin that a king--so called--could be as limited as a president. even mazzini, the extremist, and both cavour and gavazzi finally came to accept manin's demands for freedom and equality as they were set forth in the constitution of the american republic. manin did not live to see the final union, nor to see his son a general in the italian army, but his vigorous will gave a momentum to freedom in italy which is still pressing the people on to his noblest ideals. "what man has done man can do," and what manin did can be done again in other achievements. the normal reader never was anxious that the north pole should be located, and he does not care now whether it has been discovered. mathematicians and geographers may find delight in the solution of some abstract problem, but the busy citizen who seizes his paper with haste to see if peary has found the north pole has no interest in the spot. he would not visit the place if some authority would give him a thousand acres or present him with a dozen ice-floes. what the reader desires is to learn how the will power in those discoverers worked out through hair-breadth escapes, long winters, and starvation's pangs. it is a great game, and the world is a grand stand. the man with the strongest will attracts the admiration of the world. all the world which loves a lover also admires a hero, and a hero is always a man of forceful will. when we read of louis joliet and james marquette in their terrible experience tracing the mississippi river--indians as savage as wild beasts, marshes, lakes, forests, mountains, burdens, illness, wounds, exhaustion, seeming failures--all testify to their sublime strength of purpose. peter lemoyne, jonathan carver, captain lewis, lieutenant clark, montgomery pike, general fremont, elisha kent kane, charles francis hall, david livingstone, captain cook, paul du chaillu, and henry m. stanley carved their names deep in walls of history when differing from other men only in the cultivation of a mighty will. mary lyon, the heroine of mount holyoke, used to quote frequently the saying of doctor beecher that he once had "a machine admirably contrived, admirably adjusted, but it had one fault; _it wouldn't go!_" while catherine beecher would retort that miss lyon had "too much go for so small a machine." but what a monumental triumph was the dedication of the first building of mount holyoke college at south hadley, massachusetts. mrs. deacon porter wrote to henry ward beecher: "i wish you could have seen miss lyon's face as the procession moved up the street. it was indeed the face of an angel." from that immortal hour when that little woman, peeling potatoes as her brother's housekeeper at buckland, massachusetts, suddenly determined to start a movement for the higher education of young women, she had written, had traveled, had begged, had given all her inheritance, had visited colleges and schools, going incessantly, working, praying, appealing, until the material embodiment of her martyr sacrifices was opened to women. all women in all countries are greatly in her debt. men feel grateful for what the higher education of women has done for men. one cannot now walk over the embowered campus of mount holyoke college without meditating on what a forceful will of a frail woman, set toward the beautiful and good, can do within the severest limitations. vassar, wellesley, smith, bryn mawr, and the thirty-five other colleges for women in western and southern states are the children of mount holyoke. one lone woman, one single will, a large heart! god sees her and orders his forces to aid her! richard arkwright, stephenson, and edison in the pursuit of an invention, with stern faces and clenched teeth, work far into the morning. john wesley, whitfield, and the list of religious reformers from st. augustine to dwight l. moody have been men of dynamic confidence in the triumph of a great idea. neal dow, elizabeth fry, and their disciples, urging on the cause of temperance with that motive force which they discovered in themselves, aroused the people wherever they went to assistance or to opposition. fulton said, "i will build a steamboat." cyrus field said, "i will lay a telegraph cable to europe." sir christopher wren, imitating the builders of st. peter's, said, "i will build the dome of st. paul's cathedral." general washington said, "i will venture all on final victory," and general grant said, "i will fight it out on this line." when abraham lincoln gave his eloquent tribute to henry clay in 1852 he said, "henry clay's example teaches us that one can scarcely be so poor but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably." to such men log cabins were universities. daniel webster decided, at the end of his day's work plowing a stony field in the new hampshire hills, that he would be a statesman. thomas h. benton, when nearly all men supposed the wilderness unconquerable, decided to push the republic west to the rocky mountains. salmon p. chase, from the time he ran the ferryboat on the cuyahoga river, kept in his pocket-book a motto, "where there is a will there is a way." charles sumner had a disagreeable habit of talking about himself and boasting of his learning. he was frankly told one day by james t. fields that it was a "weakening trait." mr. sumner thanked mr. fields and told him that he had determined "to discontinue such foolish talk." "he fought himself," wrote mr. fields, "and he conquered." james g. blaine, in college at washington, pennsylvania, saw a student who had been too devoted to football weeping over his failure to pass an examination. warned by the failure of this student, james told his mother that he would not play another game of football while he was in college. he kept his resolution unbroken throughout the course. when james a. garfield was earning his tuition as a bell-ringer at hiram college he resolved that the first stroke of the bell should be exactly on the minute throughout the year. the president of the college stated that the people in the village set their clocks by that bell, and not once in the year was it one minute ahead or behind time. grover cleveland at eighteen was drifting about from one job to another, and men prophesied that he would be a disgrace to his "over-pious" father, who was a preacher. mr. cleveland said in a speech that, "like martin luther, i was stopped in my course by a stroke of lightning." it does not appear to what he referred, but it does appear that he decided firmly that he would choose some calling and stick to it. he decided upon the law, and was so fixed in his determination to know law that he stayed in his tutor's office three years after he had been admitted to the bar, and there continued persistently in his studies. in a small town in western massachusetts- iv in a small town in western massachusetts, forty years ago, a young, pale youth was acting as cashier of the savings bank. he was dyspeptic, acutely nervous, and often ill-natured. one day several large factories closed their doors, and the corporations to whom the bank had loaned money gave notice of bankruptcy. the president of the bank was in europe and the people did not know that the bank was a loser by the failure. the cashier was almost overcome by the sense of danger, for he could not meet a run on the bank with the funds he had on hand. he entered the bank after a sleepless night, fearing that the people might in some way learn of the bank's responsibility. he was sleepy, faint, discouraged. an old farmer came in to get a small check cashed, and the glum cashier did not answer the farmer's usual salutation. his face was cloudy, his eyes bloodshot, and his whole manner irritating. he counted out the money and threw it at the farmer. the old man counted his money carefully and then called out to the cashier: "what's the matter? is your bank going to fail?" when the farmer had left the bank the young cashier could see that his manner was letting out that which he wished to conceal. he then paced up and down the bank and fought it all out with himself. he determined he would be cheerful, brave, and strong. he forced himself to smile, and soon was able to laugh at himself for presenting such a ridiculous appearance. he met the next customer with a hearty greeting of good cheer. all the forenoon he grew stronger in his determination to let nothing move him to gloom again. about noon the daily boston paper came and announced the possible failure of that bank. almost instantly the news flew about town, and a wild mob assailed the bank, screaming for their money. but the cheerful cashier met them with a smile and made fun of their excitement. the eighteenth man demanding his money was an old german, who, seeing the cashier count out the money so coolly and cheerfully, drew back his bank-book and said: "if you have the money, we don't want it now! but we thought you didn't have it!" that suggestion made the crowd laugh, and in half an hour the crowd had left and those who had drawn their money in many cases asked the cashier to take it back. the cashier now is a most successful manufacturer and railroad director, stout-hearted and cheerful. he often refers to the fight he had that morning with his "insignificant, flabby little self." to appreciate one's power at command is the first consideration. a man from cooperstown, new york, visited st. anthony falls, minnesota, in the early fifties of the last century and laughed loud and long at the ridiculous little mill which turned out a few bags of flour and sawed a few thousand feet of lumber. it was indeed ludicrous. he could think of no comparison except an elephant drawing a baby's tin toy. his laughter led to a heated discussion and investigation. an army officer at fort snelling, who was a civil engineer, was asked to make an estimate of the mississippi river's horse-power at st. anthony falls. his report was beyond the civilian's belief. he said there was power enough to turn the wheels to grind out ten thousand barrels of flour a day and to cut logs into millions of square feet of board every hour. the estimate was below the facts, but was not accepted for ten years. then was constructed the strong dam which built up the great city of minneapolis and represents the finest and most vigorous civilization of our age. nevertheless, there still runs to waste ten thousand horse-power. in the first paper-mill erected at south hadley falls, massachusetts, the horse-power used was less than one hundred, yet an engineer employed by mr. chapin, of springfield, to determine the possible power of the connecticut river at that point reported it so great that unbelief in his figures postponed for a long time all the proposed enterprises. but one poor man, determined "to do something about it," promoted a system of canals which now so utilizes the water that a large city, manufacturing annually products worth many millions, draws from it comfort and riches. massive as are the present works at holyoke, regret is often expressed that so much of the water-power still goes over the mighty dam and ridicules the smallness of the faith of those who tried to harness it. such is the intellectual force in a young person's mind. it is reasonable to conclude that no mind ever did its very best, and that no will power was ever exerted continuously to its greatest capacity. but the first essential in the making of noble character is to gain a full appreciation of the latent or unused force which each individual possesses. when one without foolish egotism realizes how much can be done with his wasting energies, then he must carefully consider to what object he will turn his power. great wills are often wasted on unworthy objects, and the strong current of the mind, which could be applied to the making of world-enriching machinery, is used to manufacture some unsalable toy. the mind is often compared to an electric dynamo. the figure is accurate. it is an automatic, self-charging battery which, when applied to worthy occupation or to a high purpose, distributes happiness, progress, and intelligence to mankind, and as a natural consequence brings riches and honor to the industrious possessor. forty years ago there was on the lips of nearly every teacher and father a fascinating story of a massachusetts boy whose history illustrates forcibly the "power to will" which is latent in us all. i need not state the details of the life, as it is only the illustration which we need here. a young fellow sat on a barrel at the door of a country grocery-store in a small village not far from boston. he was the son of an industrious mechanic who had opened a small shop for making and repairing farm utensils, such as rakes, hoes, and shovels. but the son, encouraged by an indulgent mother, would not work. he gave way to cards, drink, and bad company. he would not go to school, and was a continual source of alarm to his parents, and he became the talk of the neighbors. he either was ill with a cough or pretended to fear consumption; the doctor's advice to set him at work in the open air was not enforced by his anxious mother. he was a fair sample of the many thousand young men seen now about the country stores and taverns. he had, however, the unusual disadvantage of having his board and clothing furnished to him without earning them. if he exercised his will, it was to turn it against himself in a determined self-indulgence. i heard him once refer to those days and quote virgil in saying that "the descent to avernus is easy." one evening with his hands in his pockets he strolled up to the store and post-office to meet some other young men for a game of checkers. under the only street lamp near the store a patent-medicine peddler had opened one side of his covered wagon and was advertising his "universal cure." the boy--then about nineteen years old--listened listlessly to the songs and stories, but was not interested enough to learn what was offered for sale. the vender of medicines held up a chain composed of several seemingly solid rings which he skilfully took apart. he then offered a dollar to any one who would put the rings together as they were before. the puzzle caught the eye and interest of the careless boy; as the rings were passed from one to another they came to him. he looked them over and said, "i can't do it," and passed them on. the yankee peddler yelled at the boy, "if you talk like that you will land in the poorhouse!" the young fellow was cut to the heart with the short rebuke. he was inclined to answer hotly, but lacked the courage. after the other boys had had their chance to see the rings, he asked to examine them again; but he still saw no way to cut or open the solid steel and contemptuously threw them at the peddler and shouted, "you're fooling; that can't be done!" the smiling vender rolled the rings into a chain in an instant and, throwing it to the boy, said, sarcastically: "take it home to your mother; she can do it!" the young fellow, ashamed, angry, and crushed, caught the chain and crept out of the crowd and went home, entering his room by the back stairs. he hated the peddler with a murderous passion, but despised himself and must have wept great tears far into the night. the next morning he sat on the side of his bed, gazing at the chain, long after his father had gone to work. that was a terrible battle! all who succeed must fight that battle to victory at some time, or life is a failure. he who conquers himself can conquer other men. he who does not rule himself cannot control other people. for the first time that boy was conscious of his lack of will. he was painfully ashamed. he could not again meet the boys, or the one girl who was at the post-office, unless he solved that riddle. it was far worse to him than the riddles of the ancient oracles or the questions of samson had been to the ancients. no victory so glorious to any man as that when he rises over his dead self and can shout with unwavering confidence, i will. that young man's battle was furious and a strain on body and soul; he kept saying over and over again, "i will solve that riddle." he was sorely tempted by hunger, as he would not stop to eat. he determined to win out alone, and did not ask aid even of his mother. that night the rings fell apart in his hands and rolled on the floor. he had won! life has few joys like that hour of victory. the rings had little value as pieces of steel, but his triumph over self was worth millions to him, and worth a thousand millions to his country. the next morning his parents were surprised to see him the first one at the breakfast-table. he told of his solution of the puzzle, and said to his astonished but delighted parents that he had loafed around long enough and that he had determined to take hold and do things. he asked for an especially hard place in the shop, and entered that week on a noble, triumphant career, having few equals save those of like experience. his health became robust, his work became profitable, new business ideas were developed, and in a few years he controlled the inside business and far distanced all outside competitors. he said to his wife, "i will have a million dollars, and every dollar shall be a clean and honest dollar." in those days a million looked like a mountain of gold. but he secured the million and steadily raised the pay of his workmen. he became the sheik of the town, the father and adviser of every local enterprise. he was sent to congress by a nearly unanimous vote. for eleven years he was a safe counselor of the administration at washington and was a close friend and trusted supporter of president lincoln. one day in 1864 the federal armies had been defeated by the confederate forces and gloom shadowed the faces of the people. president lincoln had a sleepless night--it looked like defeat and disunion. the danger was greatly increased by the abandonment of the scheme to hold california to the union by building a railroad through the mountainous wilderness of the sierra nevada and rocky mountains. the chief engineer who surveyed the route said that it could not be done because of the great cost. three great financiers had been consulted and refused to undertake the hopeless task. the great massachusetts senator told mr. lincoln that there was just one man who could do that gigantic feat. the senator said to lincoln: "if that congressman makes up his mind to do it, and it is left to him, he will do it. he is a careful man, but he has a will which seems to be irresistible." president lincoln sent for the congressman and said: "a railroad to california now will be more than an army, and it will be an army--in the saving of the union. will you build it?" the congressman asked for three weeks to think. before the end of that time he asked the secretary of war to take his card to president lincoln, then in philadelphia; on the card was written, "i will." what a startlingly fascinating story from real life is the history of that mighty undertaking. now, when the traveler passes the highest point on that transcontinental railroad, 8,550 feet above the sea at sherman, wyoming, and lifts his hat before the monument erected to the memory of that civil nobleman and hero, he is paying his respect to the self-giving heart and mighty brain of the boy who conquered _the three links_. it may not be necessary to multiply illustrations of this vital question, but no one who lived in the journalistic circles of washington subsequent to the civil war can forget the power and fame of that feminine literary genius who, as the washington correspondent of the _new york independent_, wrote such brilliant letters. the fact that she bore the same name as the congressman we have mentioned, though no relative of his, does not account for this reference to her. she was nearly thirty-three years old when a divorce and the breaking up of her home left her poor, ill, and under the cloud of undeserved disgrace. her acquaintances predicted obscurity, daily toil with her hands, and a life of lonely sorrow. poor victim of sad circumstances! she had but little education, and had been too full of cares to read the books of the day. her start in the profession which she later so gracefully and forcibly adorned was the foremost topic in corners and cloakrooms at her largely attended literary receptions in washington. she had been told by those who loved her that a divorced woman would be shunned by all cultured women and be the butt of ridicule for fashionable men; and that as she must earn a living she should sew or embroider or act as a nurse. she certainly was too weak to wash clothes or care for a kitchen. but within her soul there was that yearning to do something worth while which seems given to almost every woman. few women reach old age without feeling that somehow the great object of living has not been attained. the ambitions to which a man can give free wings, a woman must suppress or hide in deference to custom or competition. as yet she has seldom under our civilization seemed to do her best or accomplish the one great ideal of her heart and intellect. while she has the same god-given impulses, visions, and sense of power, she builds no cathedrals, spans no rivers, digs no mines, founds no nations, builds no steamships, and seldom appears in painting, sculpture, banking, or oratory. she is conscious of the native talent, sees the ideals, but must hide them until it is too late. but this woman from the interior of new york state was an exception; like charlotte brontã«, she said, "i will write." like the same great author, she had her rebuffs and returned manuscripts, and all the more since at that time women were unknown in the newspaper business. but her invariable answer to critics and discouraged friends was, "i will." when in 1883 she said, "i will," to the great editor who became her second husband, the president of the united states wrote a personal letter to say that, while he wished her joy, he could but admit that it would be a "distinct loss to humanity to have such a brilliant genius hidden by marriage." in an automobile ride from lake champlain to new york i saw the city of burlington, vermont, with its university, where barnes had said, "i will." at st. johnsbury the whole city advertises fairbanks, who said, "i will." at brattleboro the hum of industry ever repeats the name of the boy esty, who said, "i will"; at holyoke, the powerful canals seem to reflect the faces of chase and whitney, who, when poor men, said, "i will." at springfield the signs on the stores, banks, and factories suggest the young chapin, who made the city prosperous with his "i will." at new haven whitney's determination stands out in great streets and university buildings. chicago, denver, los angeles, new orleans, atlanta, raleigh, niagara, pittsburg and a hundred american cities like them are the outcome of ideas with wills behind them in the heads of common men. if every man had in the last generation done all that it was in his power to do, what sublime things would stand before us now in architecture, commerce, art, manufactures, education, and religion. the very glimpse of that vision bewilders the mind. but the many will not to do, while the few great benefactors of the race will to do. my young friend, be thou among those who will with noble motives to do. the end [illustration: benjamin franklin, american philosopher, statesman, diplomatist, and author. _b. boston, 1706; d. philadelphia, 1790_.] an iron will _by_ orison swett marden author of "pushing to the front," etc. with the assistance of abner bayley _illustrated with portraits_ new york: thomas y. crowell company publishers 1901 by thomas y. crowell & company. an iron will. chapter i. training the will. "the education of the will is the object of our existence," says emerson. nor is this putting it too strongly, if we take into account the human will in its relations to the divine. this accords with the saying of j. stuart mill, that "a character is a completely fashioned will." in respect to mere mundane relations, the development and discipline of one's will-power is of supreme moment in relation to success in life. no man can ever estimate the power of will. it is a part of the divine nature, all of a piece with the power of creation. we speak of god's fiat "_fiat lux_, let light be." man has his fiat. the achievements of history have been the choices, the determinations, the creations, of the human will. it was the will, quiet or pugnacious, gentle or grim, of men like wilberforce and garrison, goodyear and cyrus field, bismarck and grant, that made them indomitable. they simply would do what they planned. such men can no more be stopped than the sun can be, or the tide. most men fail, not through lack of education or agreeable personal qualities, but from lack of dogged determination, from lack of dauntless will. "it is impossible," says sharman, "to look into the conditions under which the battle of life is being fought, without perceiving how much really depends upon the extent to which the will-power is cultivated, strengthened, and made operative in right directions." young people need to go into training for it. we live in an age of athletic meets. those who are determined to have athletic will-power must take for it the kind of exercise they need. this is well illustrated by a report i have seen of the long race from marathon in the recent olympian games, which was won by the young greek peasant, sotirios louès. a struggle in the race of life. there had been no great parade about the training of this champion runner. from his work at the plough he quietly betook himself to the task of making greece victorious before the assembled strangers from every land. he was known to be a good runner, and without fuss or bustle he entered himself as a competitor. but it was not his speed alone, out-distancing every rival, that made the young greek stand out from among his fellows that day. when he left his cottage home at amarusi, his father said to him, "sotiri, you must only return a victor!" the light of a firm resolve shone in the young man's eye. the old father was sure that his boy would win, and so he made his way to the station, there to wait till sotiri should come in ahead of all the rest. no one knew the old man and his three daughters as they elbowed their way through the crowd. when at last the excitement of the assembled multitude told that the critical moment had arrived, that the racers were nearing the goal, the old father looked up through eyes that were a little dim as he realized that truly sotiri was leading the way. he _was_ "returning a victor." how the crowd surged about the young peasant when the race was fairly won! wild with excitement, they knew not how to shower upon him sufficient praise. ladies overwhelmed him with flowers and rings; some even gave him their watches, and one american lady bestowed upon him her jewelled smelling-bottle. the princes embraced him, and the king himself saluted him in military fashion. but the young sotirios was seeking for other praise than theirs. past the ranks of royalty and fair maidenhood, past the outstretched hands of his own countrymen, past the applauding crowd of foreigners, his gaze wandered till it fell upon an old man trembling with eagerness, who resolutely pushed his way through the excited, satisfied throng. then the young face lighted, and as old louès advanced to the innermost circle with arms outstretched to embrace his boy, the young victor said, simply: "you see, father, i have obeyed." mental discipline. the athlete trains for his race; and the mind must be put into training if one will win life's race. "it is," says professor mathews, "only by continued, strenuous efforts, repeated again and again, day after day, week after week, and month after month, that the ability can be acquired to fasten the mind to one subject, however abstract or knotty, to the exclusion of everything else. the process of obtaining this self-mastery--this complete command of one's mental powers--is a gradual one, its length varying with the mental constitution of each person; but its acquisition is worth infinitely more than the utmost labor it ever costs." "perhaps the most valuable result of all education," it was said by professor huxley, "is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson which he learns thoroughly." doing things once. when henry ward beecher was asked how it was that he could accomplish so much more than other men, he replied: "i don't do more, but less, than other people. they do all their work three times over: once in anticipation, once in actuality, once in rumination. i do mine in actuality alone, doing it once instead of three times." this was by the intelligent exercise of mr. beecher's will-power in concentrating his mind upon what he was doing at a given moment, and then turning to something else. any one who has observed business men closely, has noticed this characteristic. one of the secrets of a successful life is to be able to hold all of our energies upon one point, to focus all of the scattered rays of the mind upon one place or thing. centralizing force. the mental reservoir of most people is like a leaky dam which we sometimes see in the country, where the greater part of the water flows out without going over the wheel and doing the work of the mill. the habit of mind-wandering, of worrying about this and that, "genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes, is oft but perseverance in disguise." many a man would have been a success had he connected his fragmentary efforts. spasmodic, disconnected attempts, without concentration, uncontrolled by any fixed idea, will never bring success. it is continuity of purpose alone that achieves results. learning to swim. the way to learn to run is to run, the way to learn to swim is to swim. the way to learn to develop will-power is by the actual exercise of will-power in the business of life. "the man that exercises his will," says an english essayist, "makes it a stronger and more effective force in proportion to the extent to which such exercise is intelligently and perseveringly maintained." the forth-putting of will-power is a means of strengthening will-power. the will becomes strong by exercise. to stick to a thing till you are master, is a test of intellectual discipline and power. dr. cuyler. "it is astonishing," says dr. theodore cuyler, "how many men lack this power of 'holding on' until they reach the goal. they can make a sudden dash, but they lack grit. they are easily discouraged. they get on as long as everything goes smoothly, but when there is friction they lose heart. they depend on stronger personalities for their spirit and strength. they lack independence or originality. they only dare to do what others do. they do not step boldly from the crowd and act fearlessly." the big trees. what is needed by him who would succeed in the highest degree possible is careful planning. he is to accumulate reserved power, that he may be equal to all emergencies. thomas starr king said that the great trees of california gave him his first impression of the power of reserve. "it was the thought of the reserve energies that had been compacted into them," he said, "that stirred me. the mountains had given them their iron and rich stimulants, the hills had given them their soil, the clouds had given their rain and snow, and a thousand summers and winters had poured forth their treasures about their vast roots." no young man can hope to do anything above the commonplace who has not made his life a reservoir of power on which he can constantly draw, which will never fail him in any emergency. be sure that you have stored away, in your power-house, the energy, the knowledge that will be equal to the great occasion when it comes. "if i were twenty, and had but ten years to live," said a great scholar and writer, "i would spend the first nine years accumulating knowledge and getting ready for the tenth." "i will." "there are no two words in the english language which stand out in bolder relief, like kings upon a checker-board, to so great an extent as the words 'i will.' there is strength, depth and solidity, decision, confidence and power, determination, vigor and individuality, in the round, ringing tone which characterizes its delivery. it talks to you of triumph over difficulties, of victory in the face of discouragement, of will to promise and strength to perform, of lofty and daring enterprise, of unfettered aspirations, and of the thousand and one solid impulses by which man masters impediments in the way of progression." as one has well said: "he who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to become greater, becomes smaller; he who leaves off gives up; the stationary is the beginning of the end--it precedes death; to live is to achieve, to will without ceasing." be thou a hero; let thy might tramp on eternal snows its way, and through the ebon walls of night, hew down a passage unto day. _park benjamin_. chapter ii. the rulers of destiny. there is no chance, no destiny, no fate, can circumvent, or hinder, or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. gifts count for nothing; will alone is great; all things give way before it soon or late. what obstacle can stay the mighty force of the sea-seeking river in its course, or cause the ascending orb of day to wait? each well-born soul must win what it deserves. let the fool prate of luck. the fortunate is he whose earnest purpose never swerves, whose slightest action or inaction serves the one great aim. _ella wheeler wilcox_. there is always room for a man of force.--_emerson_. the king is the man who can.--_carlyle_. a strong, defiant purpose is many-handed, and lays hold of whatever is near that can serve it; it has a magnetic power that draws to itself whatever is kindred.--_t.t. munger_. what is will-power, looked at in a large way, but energy of character? energy of will, self-originating force, is the soul of every great character. where it is, there is life; where it is not, there is faintness, helplessness, and despondency. "let it be your first study to teach the world that you are not wood and straw; that there is some iron in you." men who have left their mark upon the world have been men of great and prompt decision. the achievements of will-power are almost beyond computation. scarcely anything seems impossible to the man who can will strongly enough and long enough. one talent with a will behind it will accomplish more than ten without it, as a thimbleful of powder in a rifle, the bore of whose barrel will give it direction, will do greater execution than a carload burned in the open air. "the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts." "there are three kinds of people in the world," says a recent writer, "the wills, the won'ts, and the can'ts. the first accomplish everything; the second oppose everything; the third fail in everything." the shores of fortune, as foster says, are covered with the stranded wrecks of men of brilliant ability, but who have wanted courage, faith, and decision, and have therefore perished in sight of more resolute but less capable adventurers, who succeeded in making port. were i called upon to express in a word the secret of so many failures among those who started out with high hopes, i should say they lacked will-power. they could not half will: and what is a man without a will? he is like an engine without steam. genius unexecuted is no more genius than a bushel of acorns is a forest of oaks. will has been called the spinal column of personality. "the will in its relation to life," says an english writer, "may be compared at once to the rudder and to the steam engine of a vessel, on the confined and related action of which it depends entirely for the direction of its course and the vigor of its movement." strength of will is the test of a young man's possibilities. can he will strong enough, and hold whatever he undertakes with an iron grip? it is the iron grip that takes and holds. what chance is there in this crowding, pushing, selfish, greedy world, where everything is pusher or pushed, for a young man with no will, no grip on life? the man who would forge to the front in this competitive age must be a man of prompt and determined decision. a tailor's needle. it is in one of ben jonson's old plays: "when i once take the humor of a thing, i am like your tailor's needle--i go through with it." this is not different from richelieu, who said: "when i have once taken a resolution, i go straight to my aim; i overthrow all, i cut down all." and in business affairs the counsel of rothschild is to the same effect: "do without fail that which you determine to do." gladstone's children were taught to accomplish _to the end_ whatever they might begin, no matter how insignificant the undertaking might be. what is worse than rashness it is irresolution that is worse than rashness. "he that shoots," says feltham, "may sometimes hit the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. irresolution is like an ague; it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit." the man who is forever twisting and turning, backing and filling, hesitating and dawdling, shuffling and parleying, weighing and balancing, splitting hairs over non-essentials, listening to every new motive which presents itself, will never accomplish anything. but the positive man, the decided man, is a power in the world, and stands for something; you can measure him, and estimate the work that his energy will accomplish. opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her. "vigilance in watching opportunity," said phelps, "tact and daring in seizing upon opportunity; force and persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of possible achievement--these are the martial virtues which must command success." "the best men," remarked chapin, "are not those who have waited for chances, but who have taken them; besieged the chance; conquered the chance; and made chance the servitor." is it not possible to classify successes and failures by their various degrees of will-power? a man who can resolve vigorously upon a course of action, and turns neither to the right nor to the left, though a paradise tempt him, who keeps his eyes upon the goal, whatever distracts him, is sure of success. "not every vessel that sails from tarshish will bring back the gold of ophir. but shall it therefore rot in the harbor? no! give its sails to the wind!" conscious power. "conscious power," says mellès, "exists within the mind of every one. sometimes its existence is unrealized, but it is there. it is there to be developed and brought forth, like the culture of that obstinate but beautiful flower, the orchid. to allow it to remain dormant is to place one's self in obscurity, to trample on one's ambition, to smother one's faculties. to develop it is to individualize all that is best within you, and give it to the world. it is by an absolute knowledge of yourself, the proper estimate of your own value." "there is hardly a reader," says an experienced educator, "who will not be able to recall the early life of at least one young man whose childhood was spent in poverty, and who, in boyhood, expressed a firm desire to secure a higher education. if, a little later, that desire became a declared resolve, soon the avenues opened to that end. that desire and resolve created an atmosphere which attracted the forces necessary to the attainment of the purpose. many of these young men will tell us that, as long as they were hoping and striving and longing, mountains of difficulty rose before them; but that when they fashioned their hopes into fixed purposes aid came unsought to help them on the way." do you believe in yourself? the man without self-reliance and an iron will is the plaything of chance, the puppet of his environment, the slave of circumstances. are not doubts the greatest of enemies? if you would succeed up to the limit of your possibilities, must you not constantly hold to the belief that you are success-organized, and that you will be successful, no matter what opposes? you are never to allow a shadow of doubt to enter your mind that the creator intended you to win in life's battle. regard every suggestion that your life may be a failure, that you are not made like those who succeed, and that success is not for you, as a traitor, and expel it from your mind as you would a thief from your house. there is something sublime in the youth who possesses the spirit of boldness and fearlessness, who has proper confidence in his ability to do and dare. the world takes us at our own valuation. it believes in the man who believes in himself, but it has little use for the timid man, the one who is never certain of himself; who cannot rely on his own judgment, who craves advice from others, and is afraid to go ahead on his own account. it is the man with a positive nature, the man who believes that he is equal to the emergency, who believes he can do the thing he attempts, who wins the confidence of his fellow-man. he is beloved because he is brave and self-sufficient. those who have accomplished great things in the world have been, as a rule, bold, aggressive, and self-confident. they dared to step out from the crowd, and act in an original way. they were not afraid to be generals. there is little room in this crowding, competing age for the timid, vacillating youth. he who would succeed to-day must not only be brave, but must also dare to take chances. he who waits for certainty never wins. "the law of the soul is eternal endeavor, that bears the man onward and upward forever." "a man can be too confiding in others, but never too confident in himself." never admit defeat or poverty. stoutly assert your divine right to hold your head up and look the world in the face; step bravely to the front whatever opposes, and the world will make way for you. no one will insist upon your rights while you yourself doubt that you have any. believe you were made for the place you fill. put forth your whole energies. be awake, electrify yourself; go forth to the task. a young man once said to his employer, "don't give me an easy job. i want to handle heavy boxes, shoulder great loads. i would like to lift a big mountain and throw it into the sea,"--and he stretched out two brawny arms, while his honest eyes danced and his whole being glowed with conscious strength. [illustration: charles robert darwin, english naturalist. _b. shrewsbury, 1809; d. down, 1882_.] the world in its heart admires the stern, determined doer. "the world turns aside to let any man pass who knows whither he is going." "it is wonderful how even the apparent casualties of life seem to bow to a spirit that will not bow to them, and yield to assist a design, after having in vain attempted to frustrate it." "the man who succeeds," says prentice mulford, "must always in mind or imagination live, move, think, and act as if he gained that success, or he never will gain it." "we go forth," said emerson, "austere, dedicated, believing in the iron links of destiny, and will not turn on our heels to save our lives. a book, a bust, or only the sound of a name shoots a spark through the nerves, and we suddenly believe in will. we cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution." chapter iii. force of will in camp and field. oh, what miracles have been wrought by the self-confidence, the self-determination of an iron will! what impossible deeds have been performed by it! it was this that took napoleon over the alps in midwinter; it took farragut and dewey past the cannons, torpedoes, and mines of the enemy; it led nelson and grant to victory; it has been the great tonic in the world of discovery, invention, and art; it has helped to win the thousand triumphs in war and science which were deemed impossible. the secret of jeanne d'arc's success was not alone in rare decision of character, but in the seeing of visions which inspired her to self-confidence--confidence in her divine mission. it was an iron will that gave nelson command of the british fleet, a title, and a statue at trafalgar square it was the keynote of his character when he said, "when i don't know whether to fight or not, i always fight." it was an iron will that was brought into play when horatius with two companions held ninety thousand tuscans at bay until the bridge across the tiber had been destroyed--when leonidas at thermopylæ checked the mighty march of xerxes--when themistocles off the coast of greece shattered the persian's armada--when cæsar finding his army hard pressed seized spear and buckler and snatched victory from defeat--when winkelried gathered to his breast a sheaf of austrian spears and opened a path for his comrades--when wellington fought in many climes without ever being conquered--when ney on a hundred fields changed apparent disaster into brilliant triumph--when sheridan arrived from winchester as the union retreat was becoming a route and turned the tide--when sherman signaled his men to hold the fort knowing that their leader was coming. history furnishes thousands of examples of men who have seized occasions to accomplish results deemed impossible by those less resolute. prompt decision and whole-souled action sweep the world before them. who was the organizer of the modern german empire? was he not the man of iron? napoleon and grant. "what would you do if you were besieged in a place entirely destitute of provisions?" asked the examiner, when napoleon was a cadet. "if there were anything to eat in the enemy's camp, i should not be concerned." when paris was in the hands of a mob, and the authorities were panic-stricken, in came a man who said, "i know a young officer who can quell this mob." "send for him." napoleon was sent for; he came, he subjugated the mob, he subjugated the authorities, he ruled france, then conquered europe. may 10, 1796, napoleon carried the bridge at lodi, in the face of the austrian batteries, trained upon the french end of the structure. behind them were six thousand troops. napoleon massed four thousand grenadiers at the head of the bridge, with a battalion of three hundred carbineers in front. at the tap of the drum the foremost assailants wheeled from the cover of the street wall under a terrible hail of grape and canister, and attempted to pass the gateway to the bridge. the front ranks went down like stalks of grain before a reaper; the column staggered and reeled backward, and the valiant grenadiers were appalled by the task before them. without a word or a look of reproach, napoleon placed himself at their head, and his aids and generals rushed to his side. forward again over heaps of dead that choked the passage, and a quick run counted by seconds only carried the column across two hundred yards of clear space, scarcely a shot from the austrians taking effect beyond the point where the platoons wheeled for the first leap. _the guns of the enemy were not aimed at the advance. the advance was too quick for the austrian gunners_. so sudden and so miraculous was it all, that the austrian artillerists abandoned their guns instantly, and their supports fled in a panic instead of rushing to the front and meeting the french onslaught. this napoleon had counted on in making the bold attack. what was napoleon but the thunderbolt of war? he once journeyed from spain to paris at seventeen miles an hour in the saddle. "is it _possible_ to cross the path?" asked napoleon of the engineers who had been sent to explore the dreaded pass of st. bernard. "perhaps," was the hesitating reply, "it is within the limits of _possibility_." "_forward, then_." yet ulysses s. grant, a young man unknown to fame, with neither money nor influence, with no patrons or friends, in six years fought more battles, gained more victories, captured more prisoners, took more spoils, commanded more men, than napoleon did in twenty years. "the great thing about him," said lincoln, "is cool persistence." "don't swear--fight." when the spanish fire on san juan hill became almost unbearable, some of the rough riders began to swear. colonel wood, with the wisdom of a good leader, called out, amid the whistle of the mauser bullets: "don't swear--fight!" in a skirmish at salamanca, while the enemy's guns were pouring shot into his regiment, sir william napier's men became disobedient. he at once ordered a halt, and flogged four of the ringleaders under fire. the men yielded at once, and then marched three miles under a heavy cannonade as coolly as if it were a review. when pellisier, the crimean chief of zouaves, struck an officer with a whip, the man drew a pistol that missed fire. the chief replied: "fellow, i order you a three days' arrest for not having your arms in better order." the man of iron will is cool in the hour of danger. "i had to run like a cyclone." this was what roosevelt said about his pushing on up san juan hill ahead of his regiment: "i had to run like a cyclone to stay in front and keep from being run over." the personal heroism of hobson, or of cushing, who blew up the "albemarle" forty years ago, was but the expression of a magnificent will power. it was this which was the basis of general wheeler's unparalleled military advancement: a second lieutenant at twenty-three, a colonel at twenty-four, a brigadier-general at twenty-five, a major-general at twenty-six, a corps commander at twenty-seven, and a lieutenant-general at twenty-eight. general wheeler had sixteen horses killed under him, and a great number wounded. his saddle equipments and clothes were frequently struck by the missiles of the enemy. he was three times wounded, once painfully. he had thirty-two staff officers, or acting staff officers, killed or wounded. in almost every case they were immediately by his side. no officer was ever more exposed to the missiles of death than joseph wheeler. what is this imperial characteristic of manhood, an iron will, but that which underlies all magnificent achievement, whether by heroes of the "light brigade" or the heroic fire-fighters of our great cities? chapter iv. will power in its relation to health and disease. i. there is no doubt that, as a rule, great decision of character is usually accompanied by great constitutional firmness. men who have been noted for great firmness of character have usually been strong and robust. as a rule it is the strong physical man who carries weight and conviction. take, as an example, william the conqueror, as he is pictured by green in his history: "the very spirit of the sea-robbers from whom he sprang seemed embodied in his gigantic form, his enormous strength, his savage countenance, his desperate bravery. no other knight under heaven, his enemies confessed, was william's peer. no other man could bend william's bow. his mace crashed through a ring of english warriors to the foot of the standard. he rose to his greatest heights in moments when other men despaired. no other man who ever sat upon the throne of england was this man's match." or, take webster. sydney smith said: "webster is a living lie; because no man on earth can be as great as he looks." carlyle said of him: "one would incline at sight to back him against the world." his very physique was eloquent. men yielded their wills to his at sight. the great prizes of life ever fall to the robust, the stalwart, the strong,--not to a huge muscle or powerful frame necessarily, but to a strong vitality, a great nervous energy. it is the lord broughams, working almost continuously one hundred and forty-four hours; it is the napoleons, twenty hours in the saddle; it is the franklins, camping out in the open air at seventy; it is the gladstones, firmly grasping the helm of the ship of state at eighty-four, tramping miles every day, and chopping down huge trees at eighty-five,--who accomplish the great things of life. to prosper you must improve your brain power; and nothing helps the brain more than a healthy body. the race of to-day is only to be won by those who will study to keep their bodies in such good condition that their minds are able and ready to sustain that high pressure on memory and mind, which our present fierce competition engenders. it is health rather than strength that is now wanted. health is essentially the requirement of our time to enable us to succeed in life. in all modern occupations--from the nursery to the school, from the school to the shop or world beyond--the brain and nerve strain go on, continuous, augmenting, and intensifying. as a rule physical vigor is the condition of a great career. stonewall jackson, early in life, determined to conquer every weakness he had, physical, mental, and moral. he held all of his powers with a firm hand. to his great self-discipline and self-mastery he owed his success. so determined was he to harden himself to the weather that he could not be induced to wear an overcoat in winter. "i will not give in to the cold," he said. for a year, on account of dyspepsia, he lived on buttermilk and stale bread, and wore a wet shirt next his body because his doctor advised it, although everybody else ridiculed the idea. this was while he was professor at the virginia military institute. his doctor advised him to retire at nine o'clock; and, no matter where he was, or who was present, he always sought his bed on the minute. he adhered rigidly through life to this stern system of discipline. such self-training, such self-conquest, gives one great power over others. it is equal to genius itself. "i can do nothing," said grant, "without nine hours' sleep." what else is so grand as to stand on life's threshold, fresh, young, hopeful, with a consciousness of power equal to any emergency,--a master of the situation? the glory of a young man is his strength. our great need of the world to-day is for men and women who are good animals. to endure the strain of our concentrated civilization, the coming man and woman must have an excess of animal spirits. they must have a robustness of health. mere absence of disease is not health. it is the overflowing fountain, not the one half full, that gives life and beauty to the valley below. only he is healthy who exults in mere animal existence; whose very life is a luxury; who feels a bounding pulse throughout his body; who feels life in every limb, as dogs do when scouring over the field, or as boys do when gliding over fields of ice. ii. yet in spite of all this, in defiance of it, we know that an iron will is often triumphant in the contest with physical infirmity. "brave spirits are a balsam to themselves: there is a nobleness of mind that heals wounds beyond salves." "one day," said a noted rope-walker, "i signed an agreement to wheel a barrow along a rope on a given day. a day or two before i was seized with lumbago. i called in my medical man, and told him i must be cured by a certain day; not only because i should lose what i hoped to earn, but also forfeit a large sum. i got no better, and the doctor forbade my getting up. i told him, 'what do i want with your advice? if you cannot cure me, of what good is your advice?' when i got to the place, there was the doctor protesting i was unfit for the exploit. i went on, though i felt like a frog with my back. i got ready my pole and my barrow, took hold of the handles and wheeled it along the rope as well as i ever did. when i got to the end i wheeled it back again, and when this was done i was a frog again. what made me that i could wheel the barrow? it was my reserve will." "what does he know," asks the sage, "who has not suffered?" did not schiller produce his greatest tragedies in the midst of physical suffering almost amounting to torture? handel was never greater than when, warned by palsy of the approach of death, and struggling with distress and suffering, he sat down to compose the great works which have made his name immortal in music. beethoven was almost totally deaf and burdened with sorrow when he produced his greatest works. milton writing "who best can suffer, best can do," wrote at his best when in feeble health, and when poor and blind. "... yet i argue not against heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot of heart or hope; but still bear up and steer right onward." the rev. william h. milburn, who lost his sight when a child, studied for the ministry, and was ordained before he attained his majority. he has written half a dozen books, among them a very careful history of the mississippi valley. he has long been chaplain of the lower house of congress. blind fanny crosby, of new york, was a teacher of the blind for many years. she has written nearly three thousand hymns, among which are: "pass me not, o gentle saviour," "rescue the perishing," "saviour more than life to me," and "jesus keep me near the cross." "the truest help we can render one who is afflicted," said bishop brooks, "is not to take his burden from him, but to call out his best energy, that he may be able to bear." what a mighty will darwin had! he was in continual ill health. he was in constant suffering. his patience was marvellous. no one but his wife knew what he endured. "for forty years," says his son, "he never knew one day of health;" yet during those forty years he unremittingly forced himself to do the work from which the mightiest minds and the strongest constitutions would have shrunk. he had a wonderful power of sticking to a subject. he used almost to apologize for his patience, saying that he could not bear to be beaten, as if it were a sign of weakness. bulwer advises us to refuse to be ill, never to tell people we are ill, never to own it ourselves. illness is one of those things which a man should resist on principle. do not dwell upon your ailments nor study your symptoms. never allow yourself to be convinced that you are not complete master of yourself. stoutly affirm your own superiority over bodily ills. we should keep a high ideal of health and harmony constantly before the mind. is not the mind the natural protector of the body? we cannot believe that the creator has left the whole human race entirely at the mercy of only about half a dozen specific drugs which always act with certainty. there is a divine remedy placed within us for many of the ills we suffer. if we only knew how to use this power of will and mind to protect ourselves, many of us would be able to carry youth and cheerfulness with us into the teens of our second century. the mind has undoubted power to preserve and sustain physical youth and beauty, to keep the body strong and healthy, to renew life, and to preserve it from decay, many years longer than it does now. the longest-lived men and women have, as a rule, been those who have attained great mental and moral development. they have lived in the upper region of a higher life, beyond the reach of much of the jar, the friction, and the discords which weaken and shatter most lives. every physician knows that courageous people, with indomitable will, are not half as likely to contract contagious diseases as the timid, the vacillating, the irresolute. a thoughtful physician once assured a friend that if an express agent were to visit new orleans in the yellow-fever season, having forty thousand dollars in his care, he would be in little danger of the fever so long as he kept possession of the money. let him once deliver that into other hands, and the sooner he left the city the better. napoleon used to visit the plague hospitals even when the physicians dreaded to go, and actually put his hands upon the plague-stricken patients. he said the man who was not afraid could vanish the plague. a will power like this is a strong tonic to the body. such a will has taken many men from apparent death-beds, and enabled them to perform wonderful deeds of valor. when told by his physicians that he must die, douglas jerrold said: "and leave a family of helpless children? i won't die." he kept his word, and lived for years. chapter v. the romance of achievement under difficulties. what doth the poor man's son inherit? stout muscles, and a sinewy heart, a hardy frame, a hardier spirit! king of two hands he does his part in every useful toil and art: a heritage it seems to me, a king might wish to hold in fee. _lowell_. has not god given every man a capital to start with? are we not born rich? he is rich who has good health, a sound body, good muscles; he is rich who has a good head, a good disposition, a good heart; he is rich who has two good hands, with five chances on each. equipped? every man is equipped as only god could equip him. what a fortune he possesses in the marvellous mechanism of his body and mind. it is individual effort that has achieved everything worth achieving. the fun of the little game. a big australian, six feet four, james tyson, died not long since, with a property of $25,000,000, who began life as a farm hand. tyson cared little for money. he used to say of it: "i shall just leave it behind me when i go. i shall have done with it then, and it will not concern me afterwards. but," he would add, with a characteristic semi-exultant snap of the fingers, "the money is nothing. it was the little game that was the fun." being asked, "what was the little game?" he replied with an energy of concentration peculiar to him: "_fighting the desert_. that has been my work. i have been fighting the desert all my life, and i have won. i have put water where was no water, and beef where was no beef. i have put fences where there were no fences, and roads where there were no roads. nothing can undo what i have done, and millions will be happier for it after i am long dead and forgotten." has not self-help accomplished about all the great things of the world? how many young men falter, faint, and dally with their purpose because they have no capital to start with, and wait and wait for some good luck to give them a lift. but success is the child of drudgery and perseverance. it cannot be coaxed or bribed; pay the price, and it is yours. a constant struggle, a ceaseless battle to bring success from inhospitable surroundings, is the price of all great achievements. conquerors of fortune. benjamin franklin had this tenacity of purpose in a wonderful degree. when he started in the printing business in philadelphia, he carried his material through the streets on a wheelbarrow. he hired one room for his office, work-room, and sleeping-room. he found a formidable rival in the city and invited him to his room. pointing to a piece of bread from which he had just eaten his dinner, he said: "unless you can live cheaper than i can, you cannot starve me out." it was so that he proved the wisdom of edmund burke's saying, that "he that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill: our antagonist is our helper." the poor and friendless lad, george peabody, weary, footsore, and hungry, called at a tavern in concord, n.h., and asked to be allowed to saw wood for lodging and breakfast. yet he put in work for everything he ever received, and out-matched the poverty of early days. gideon lee could not even get shoes to wear in winter, when a boy, but he went to work barefoot in the snow. he made a bargain with himself to work sixteen hours a day. he fulfilled it to the letter, and when from interruption he lost time, he robbed himself of sleep to make it up. he became a wealthy merchant of new york, mayor of the city, and a member of congress. commercial courage. the business affairs of a gentleman named rouss were once in a complicated condition, owing to his conflicting interests in various states, and he was thrown into prison. while confined he wrote on the walls of his cell: "i am forty years of age this day. when i am fifty, i shall be worth half a million; and by the time i am sixty, i shall be worth a million dollars." he lived to accumulate more than three million dollars. "the ruin which overtakes so many merchants," says whipple, "is due not so much to their lack of business talent as to their lack of business nerve." cyrus w. field had retired from business with a large fortune when he became possessed with the idea that by means of a cable laid upon the bottom of the atlantic ocean, telegraphic communication could be established between europe and america. he plunged into the undertaking with all the force of his being. it was an incredibly hard contest: the forests of newfoundland, the lobby in congress, the unskilled handling of brakes on his agamemnon cable, a second and a third breaking of the cable at sea, the cessation of the current in a well-laid cable, the snapping of a superior cable on the great eastern--all these availed not to foil the iron will of field, whose final triumph was that of mental energy in the application of science. four new york journalists. to horace greeley, the founder of the "tribune," i need not allude; his story is or ought to be in every school-book. james brooks, once the editor and proprietor of the "daily express," and later an eminent congressman, began life as a clerk in a store in maine, and when twenty-one received for his pay a hogshead of new england rum. he was so eager to go to college that he started for waterville with his trunk on his back, and when he was graduated he was so poor and plucky that he carried his trunk on his back to the station as he went home. when james gordon bennett was forty years old he collected all his property, three hundred dollars, and in a cellar with a board upon two barrels for a desk, himself his own typesetter, office boy, publisher, newsboy, clerk, editor, proofreader, and printer's devil, he started the "new york herald." he did this, after many attempts and defeats in trying to follow the routine, instead of doing his own way. never was any man's early career a better illustration of wendell phillips' dictum: "what is defeat? nothing but education; nothing but the first steps to something better." thurlow weed, who was a journalist for fifty-seven years, strong, sensible, genial, tactful, and of magnificent physique, who did so much to shape public policy in the empire state, tells a most romantic story of his boyhood:-"i cannot ascertain how much schooling i got at catskill, probably less than a year, certainly not a year and a half, and this was when i was not more than five or six years old. i felt a necessity, at an early age, of trying to do something for my own support. "my first employment was in sugar-making, an occupation to which i became much attached. i now look with great pleasure upon the days and nights passed in the sap-bush. the want of shoes (which, as the snow was deep, was no small privation) was the only drawback upon my happiness. i used, however, to tie pieces of an old rag carpet around my feet, and got along pretty well, chopping wood and gathering up sap. but when the spring advanced, and bare ground appeared in spots, i threw off the old carpet encumbrance and did my work barefoot. "there is much leisure time for boys who are making maple sugar. i devoted this time to reading, when i could obtain books; but the farmers of that period had few or no books, save their bibles. i borrowed books whenever and wherever i could. "i heard that a neighbor, three miles off, had borrowed from a still more distant neighbor a book of great interest. i started off, barefoot, in the snow, to obtain the treasure. there were spots of bare ground, upon which i would stop to warm my feet. and there were also, along the road, occasional lengths of log-fence from which the snow had melted, and upon which it was a luxury to walk. the book was at home, and the good people consented, upon my promise that it should be neither torn nor soiled, to lend it to me. in returning with the prize, i was too happy to think of the snow or my naked feet. "candles were then among the luxuries, not the necessaries, of life. if boys, instead of going to bed after dark, wanted to read, they supplied themselves with pine knots, by the light of which, in a horizontal position, they pursued their studies. in this manner, with my body in the sugar-house, and my head out of doors, where the fat pine was blazing, i read with intense interest the book i had borrowed, a 'history of the french revolution.'" weed's next earning was in an iron foundry at onondaga: "my business was, after a casting, to temper and prepare the molding 'dogs,' myself. this was night and day work. we ate salt pork and rye and indian bread, three times a day, and slept on straw in bunks. i liked the excitement of a furnace life." when he went to the "albany argus" to learn the printing business he worked from five in the morning till nine at night. from humblest beginnings. the more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.--_horace bushnell_. the story of weed and of greeley is not an uncommon one in america. some of the most eminent men on the globe have struggled with poverty in early life and triumphed over it. the astronomer kepler, whose name can never die, was kept in constant anxieties; and he told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood, saying that astrology, as the daughter of astronomy, ought to keep her mother. all sorts of service he had to accept; he made almanacs and worked for any one who would pay him. linnæus was so poor when getting his education that he had to mend his shoes with folded paper, and often had to beg his meals of his friends. during the ten years in which he made his greatest discoveries, isaac newton could hardly pay two shillings a week to the royal society of which he was a member. some of his friends wanted to get him excused from this payment, but he would not allow them to act. humphry davy had but a slender chance to acquire great scientific knowledge, yet he had true mettle in him, and he made even old pans, kettles, and bottles contribute to his success, as he experimented and studied in the attic of the apothecary store where he worked. george stephenson was one of eight children whose parents were so poor that all lived in a single room. george had to watch cows for a neighbor, but he managed to get time to make engines of clay, with hemlock sticks for pipes. at seventeen he had charge of an engine, with his father for fireman. he could neither read nor write, but the engine was his teacher, and he a faithful student. while the other hands were playing games or loafing in liquor shops during the holidays, george was taking his machine to pieces, cleaning it, studying it, and making experiments in engines. when he had become famous as a great inventor of improvements in engines, those who had loafed and played called him lucky. it was by steadfastly keeping at it, by indomitable will power, that these men won their positions in life. "we rise by the things that are under our feet; by what we have mastered of good or gain." talent in tatters. among the companions of sir joshua reynolds, while he was studying his art at rome, was a fellow-pupil of the name of astley. they made an excursion, with some others, on a sultry day, and all except astley took off their coats. after several taunts he was persuaded to do the same, and displayed on the back of his waistcoat a foaming waterfall. distress had compelled him to patch his clothes with one of his own landscapes. james sharpies, the celebrated blacksmith artist of england, was very poor, but he often rose at three o'clock to copy books he could not buy. he would walk eighteen miles to manchester and back after a hard day's work, to buy a shilling's worth of artist's materials. he would ask for the heaviest work in the blacksmith shop, because it took a longer time to heat at the forge, and he could thus have many spare minutes to study the precious book, which he propped up against the chimney. he was a great miser of spare moments, and used every one as though he might never see another. he devoted his leisure hours for five years to that wonderful production, "the forge," copies of which are to be seen in many a home. it was by one unwavering aim, carried out by an iron will, that he wrought out his life triumph. "that boy will beat me one day," said an old painter as he watched a little fellow named michael angelo making drawings of pot and brushes, easel and stool, and other articles in the studio. the barefoot boy did persevere until he had overcome every difficulty and become the greatest master of art the world has known. although michael angelo made himself immortal in three different occupations,--and his fame might well rest upon his dome of st. peter as an architect, upon his "moses" as a sculptor, or upon his "last judgment" as a painter,--yet we find by his correspondence, now in the british museum, that when he was at work on his colossal bronze statue of pope julius ii., he was so poor that he could not have his younger brother come to visit him at bologna, because he had but one bed in which he and three of his assistants slept together. yet "the star of an unconquered will arose in his breast, serene, and resolute and still, and calm and self-possessed." concentrated energy. the struggles and triumphs of those who are bound to win is a never-ending tale. nor will the procession of enthusiastic workers cease so long as the globe is turning on its axle. say what we will of genius, specialized in a hundred callings, yet the fact remains that no amount of genius has ever availed upon the earth unless enforced by will power to overcome the obstacles that hedge about every one who would rise above the circumstances in which he was born, or become greater than his calling. was not virgil the son of a porter, horace of a shopkeeper, demosthenes of a cutler, milton of a money scrivener, shakespeare of a wool stapler, and cromwell of a brewer? [illustration: thurlow weed, american journalist and politician. _b. cairo, n.y., 1797; d. new york, 1882_.] ben jonson, when following his trade of a mason, worked on lincoln's inn in london with trowel in hand and a book in his pocket. joseph hunter was a carpenter in youth, robert burns a plowman, keats a druggist, thomas carlyle and hugh miller masons. dante and descartes were soldiers. cardinal wolsey, defoe, and kirke white were butchers' sons. faraday was the son of a hostler, and his teacher, humphry davy, was an apprentice to an apothecary. kepler was a waiter boy in a german hotel, bunyan a tinker, copernicus the son of a polish baker. they rose by being greater than their callings, as arkwright rose above mere barbering, bunyan above tinkering, wilson above shoemaking, lincoln above rail-splitting, and grant above tanning. by being first-class barbers, tinkers, shoemakers, rail-splitters, tanners, they acquired the power which enabled them to become great inventors, authors, statesmen, generals. john kay, the inventor of the fly-shuttle, james hargreaves, who introduced the spinning-jenny, and samuel compton, who originated mule-spinning, were all artisans, uneducated and poor, but were endowed with natural faculties which enabled them to make a more enduring impression upon the world than anything that could have been done by the mere power of scholarship or wealth. it cannot be said of any of these great names that their individual courses in life would have been what they were, had there been lacking a superb will power resistless as the tide to bear them upward and onward. let fortune empty her whole quiver on me, i have a soul that, like an ample shield, can take in all, and verge enough for more; fate was not mine, nor am i fate's: souls know no conquerors. _dryden_. chapter vi. staying power. "never give up, there are chances and changes, helping the hopeful, a hundred to one; and, through the chaos, high wisdom arranges ever success, if you'll only hold on. never give up; for the wisest is boldest, knowing that providence mingles the cup, and of all maxims, the best, as the oldest, is the stern watchword of 'never give up!'" be firm; one constant element of luck is genuine, solid, old teutonic pluck. _holmes_. success in most things depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.--_montesquieu_. the power to hold on is characteristic of all men who have accomplished anything great; they may lack in some other particular, have many weaknesses or eccentricities, but the quality of persistence is never absent from a successful man. no matter what opposition he meets or what discouragement overtakes him, drudgery cannot disgust him, obstacles cannot discourage him, labor cannot weary him; misfortune, sorrow, and reverses cannot harm him. it is not so much brilliancy of intellect, or fertility of resource, as persistency of effort, constancy of purpose, that makes a great man. those who succeed in life are the men and women who keep everlastingly at it, who do not believe themselves geniuses, but who know that if they ever accomplish anything they must do it by determined and persistent industry. audubon after years of forest life had two hundred of his priceless drawings destroyed by mice. "a poignant flame," he relates, "pierced my brain like an arrow of fire, and for several weeks i was prostrated with fever. at length physical and moral strength awoke within me. again i took my gun, my game-bag, my portfolio, and my pencils, and plunged once more into the depths of the forests." all are familiar with the misfortune of carlyle while writing his "history of the french revolution." after the first volume was ready for the press, he loaned the manuscript to a neighbor, who left it lying on the floor, and the servant girl took it to kindle the fire. it was a bitter disappointment, but carlyle was not the man to give up. after many months of poring over hundreds of volumes of authorities and scores of manuscripts, he reproduced that which had burned in a few minutes. proceed, and light will dawn. the slightest acquaintance with literary history would bring to light a multitude of heroes of poverty or misfortune, of men and women perplexed and disheartened, who have yet aroused themselves to new effort at every new obstacle. it is related by arago that he found under the cover of a text book he was binding a short note from d'alembert to a student: "go on, sir, go on. the difficulties you meet with will resolve themselves as you advance. proceed; and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path." "that maxim," said arago, "was my greatest master in mathematics." had balzac been easily discouraged he would have hesitated at the words of warning given by his father: "do you know that in literature a man must be either a king or a beggar?" "very well," was the reply, "_i will be a king_." his parents left him to his fate in a garret. for ten years he fought terrible battles with hardship and poverty, but won a great victory at last. he won it after producing forty novels that did not win. zola's early manhood witnessed a bitter struggle against poverty and deprivation. until twenty he was a spoiled child; but, on his father's death, he and his mother began the battle of life in paris. of his dark time, zola himself says: "often i went hungry for so long, that it seemed as if i must die. i scarcely tasted meat from one month's end to another, and for two days i lived on three apples. fire, even on the coldest nights, was an undreamed-of luxury; and i was the happiest man in paris when i could get a candle, by the light of which i might study at night." samuel johnson's bare feet at oxford showed through the holes in his shoes, yet he threw out at his window the new pair that some one left at his door. he lived for a time in london on nine cents a day. for thirteen years he had a hard struggle with want. john locke once lived on bread and water in a dutch garret, and heyne slept many a night on a barn floor with only a book for his pillow. it was to poverty as a thorn urging the breast of harriet martineau that we owe her writings. there are no more interesting pages in biography than those which record how emerson, as a child, was unable to read the second volume of a certain book, because his widowed mother could not afford the amount (five cents) necessary to obtain it from the circulating library. "poor fellow!" said emerson, as he looked at his delicately-reared little son, "how much he loses by not having to go through the hard experiences i had in my youth." it was through the necessity laid upon him to earn that emerson made his first great success in life as a teacher. "i know," he said, "no such unquestionable badge and ensign of a sovereign mind as that tenacity of purpose, which, through all change of companions or parties or fortunes, changes never, bates no jot of heart or hope, but wearies out opposition and arrives at its port." "she can never succeed." louisa alcott earned two hundred thousand dollars by her pen. yet, when she was first dreaming of her power, her father handed her a manuscript one day that had been rejected by mr. fields, editor of the "atlantic," with the message: "tell louisa to stick to her teaching; she can never succeed as a writer." "tell him i _will_ succeed as a writer, and some day i shall write for the 'atlantic.'" not long after she wrote for the "atlantic" a poem that longfellow attributed to emerson. and there came a time when she wrote in her diary: "twenty years ago i resolved to make the family independent if i could. at forty, that is done. debts all paid, even the outlawed ones, and we have enough to be comfortable. it has cost me my health, perhaps." "i trample on impossibilities": so it was said by lord chatham. "why," asked mirabeau, "should we call ourselves men, unless it be to succeed in everything everywhere?" "it is all very well," said charles j. fox, "to tell me that a young man has distinguished himself by a brilliant first speech. he may go on satisfied with his first triumph; but show me a young man who has not succeeded at first, and has then gone on, and i will back that man to do better than those who succeeded at the first trial." cobden broke down completely the first time he appeared on a platform in manchester, and the chairman apologized for him; but he did not give up speaking until every poor man in england had a larger, better, and cheaper loaf. young disraeli sprung from a hated and persecuted race, pushed his way up through the middle classes and upper classes, until he stood self-poised upon the topmost round of political and social power. at first he was scoffed at, ridiculed, rebuffed, hissed from the house of commons; he simply said, "the time will come when you will hear me." the time did come, and he swayed the sceptre of england for a quarter of a century. how massive was the incalculable reserve power of lincoln as a youth; or of president garfield, wood-chopper, bell-ringer, and sweeper-general in college! persistent purpose. we hear a great deal of talk about genius, talent, luck, chance, cleverness, and fine manners playing a large part in one's success. leaving out luck and chance, all these elements are important factors. yet the possession of any or all of them, unaccompanied by a definite aim, a determined purpose, will not insure success. men drift into business. they drift into society. they drift into politics. they drift into what they fondly and but vainly imagine is religion. if winds and tides are favorable, all is well; if not, all is wrong. stalker says: "most men merely drift through life, and the work they do is determined by a hundred different circumstances; they might as well be doing anything else, or they would prefer to be doing nothing at all." yet whatever else may have been lacking in the giants of the race, the men who have been conspicuously successful have all had one characteristic in common--doggedness and persistence of purpose. it does not matter how clever a youth may be, whether he leads his class in college or outshines all the other boys in his community, he will never succeed if he lacks this essential of determined persistence. many men who might have made brilliant musicians, artists, teachers, lawyers, able physicians or surgeons, in spite of predictions to the contrary, have fallen short of success because deficient in this quality. persistency of purpose is a power. it creates confidence in others. everybody believes in the determined man. when he undertakes anything his battle is half won, because not only he himself, but every one who knows him, believes that he will accomplish whatever he sets out to do. people know that it is useless to oppose a man who uses his stumbling-blocks as stepping-stones; who is not afraid of defeat; who never, in spite of calumny or criticism, shrinks from his task; who never shirks responsibility; who always keeps his compass pointed to the north star of his purpose, no matter what storms may rage about him. the persistent man never stops to consider whether he is succeeding or not. the only question with him is how to push ahead, to get a little farther along, a little nearer his goal. whether it lead over mountains, rivers, or morasses, he must reach it. every other consideration is sacrificed to this one dominant purpose. the success of a dull or average youth and the failure of a brilliant one is a constant surprise in american history. but if the different cases are closely analyzed we shall find that the explanation lies in the staying power of the seemingly dull boy, the ability to stand firm as a rock under all circumstances, to allow nothing to divert him from his purpose. three necessary things. "three things are necessary," said charles sumner, "first, backbone; second, backbone; third, backbone." a good chance alone is nothing. education is nothing without strong and vigorous resolution and stamina to make one accomplish something in the world. an encouraging start is nothing without backbone. a man who cannot stand erect, who wabbles first one way and then the other, who has no opinion of his own, or courage to think his own thought, is of very little use in this world. it is grit, it is perseverance, it is moral stamina and courage that govern the world. at the trial of the seven bishops of the church of england for refusing to aid the king to overthrow the protestant faith, it was necessary to watch the officers at the doors, lest they send food to some juryman, and aid him to starve the others into an agreement. nothing was allowed to be sent in but water for the jurymen to wash in, and they were so thirsty they drank it up. at first nine were for acquitting, and three for convicting. two of the minority soon gave way; the third, arnold, was obstinate. he declined to argue. austin said to him, "look at me. i am the largest and the strongest of the twelve; and before i will find such a petition as this libel, here will i stay till i am no bigger than a tobacco pipe." arnold yielded at six in the morning. success against odds. yes, to this thought i hold with firm persistence; the last result of wisdom stamps it true: he only earns his freedom and existence who daily conquers them anew. _goethe_. "it is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves," says irving, "springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles." opposing circumstances create strength. opposition gives us greater power of resistance. to overcome one barrier gives us greater ability to overcome the next. history is full of examples of men and women who have redeemed themselves from disgrace, poverty, and misfortune, by the firm resolution of an iron will. success is not measured by what a man accomplishes, but by the opposition he has encountered, and the courage with which he has maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds. not the distance we have run, but the obstacles we have overcome, the disadvantages under which we have made the race, will decide the prizes. "it is defeat," says henry ward beecher, "that turns bone to flint, and gristle to muscle, and makes men invincible, and formed those heroic natures that are now in ascendency in the world. do not, then, be afraid of defeat. you are never so near to victory as when defeated in a good cause." governor seymour of new york, a man of great force and character, said, in reviewing his life: "if i were to wipe out twenty acts, what should they be? should it be my business mistakes, my foolish acts (for i suppose all do foolish acts occasionally), my grievances? no; for, after all, these are the very things by which i have profited. so i finally concluded i should expunge, instead of my mistakes, my triumphs. i could not afford to dismiss the tonic of mortification, the refinement of sorrow; i needed them every one." "every condition, be it what it may," says channing, "has hardships, hazards, pains. we try to escape them; we pine for a sheltered lot, for a smooth path, for cheering friends, and unbroken success. but providence ordains storms, disasters, hostilities, sufferings; and the great question whether we shall live to any purpose or not, whether we shall grow strong in mind and heart, or be weak and pitiable, depends on nothing so much as on our use of the adverse circumstances. outward evils are designed to school our passions, and to rouse our faculties and virtues into intenser action. sometimes they seem to create new powers. difficulty is the element, and resistance the true work of man. self-culture never goes on so fast as when embarrassed circumstances, the opposition of men or the elements, unexpected changes of the times, or other forms of suffering, instead of disheartening, throw us on our inward resources, turn us for strength to god, clear up to us the great purpose of life, and inspire calm resolution. no greatness or goodness is worth much, unless tried in these fires." [illustration: benjamin disraeli (earl of beaconsfield), english statesman and novelist. _b. london, 1804; d. london, 1881_.] better to stem with heart and hand the roaring tide of life, than lie, unmindful, on its flowery strand, of god's occasions drifting by! better with naked nerve to bear the needles of this goading air, than in the lap of sensual ease forego the godlike power to do, the godlike aim to know. _whittier_. chapter vii. the degree of "o.o." when moody first visited ireland he was introduced by a friend to an irish merchant who asked at once: "is he an o.o.?" "out and out"--that was what "o.o." stood for. "out and out" for god--that was what this merchant meant. he indeed is but a wooden man, and a poor stick at that, who is decided in everything else, but who never knows "where he is at" in all moral relations, being religiously nowhere. the early books of the hebrews have much to say about "the valley of decision" and the development of "out and out" moral character. wofully lacking in a well-balanced will power is the man who stands side by side with moral evil personified, in hands with it, to serve it willingly as a tool and servant. morally made in god's image, what is more sane, more wholesome, more fitting, for a man than his rising up promptly, decidedly, to make the divine will his own will in all moral action, to take it as the supreme guide to go by? it is the glory of the human will to coincide with the divine will. doing this, a man's iron will, instead of being a malignant selfish power, will be useful in uplifting mankind. god has spoken, or he has not spoken. if he has spoken, the wise will hear. we search the world for truth; we cull the good, the pure, the beautiful, from graven stone and written scroll, from all the flower-fields of the soul: and, weary seekers of the best, we come back laden from our quest, to find that all the sages said is in the book our mother read. _whittier_. o earth that blooms and birds that sing, o stars that shine when all is dark! in type and symbol thou dost bring the life divine, and bid us hark, that we may catch the chant sublime, and, rising, pass the bounds of time; so shall we win the goal divine, our immortality. _carrol norton_. the marden inspirational books be good to yourself every man a king exceptional employee getting on he can who thinks he can how to get what you want joys of living keeping fit love's way making life a masterpiece miracle of right thought optimistic life peace, power, and plenty progressive business man pushing to the front rising in the world secret of achievement self-investment selling things training for efficiency victorious attitude woman and the home young man entering business success booklets an iron will good manners economy ambition do it to a finish opportunity cheerfulness character thrift power of personality special books and booklets hints for young writers success nuggets i had a friend why grow old? not the salary but the opportunity _send for publishers' special circular of these great books_ opinions of the exceptional employee uplifting to humanity "i assure you that the present and future generations must look upon such a work as most uplifting to humanity." charles francis, _charles francis press, new york city_. fresh efforts after reading "no one will fail to put forth fresh and better directed efforts to work to the front after reading the book." _good health_. the ladder of success "the author writes with a purpose in view; that purpose is found on the topmost rungs of the ladder of success. in order to find the purpose the reader must ascend this ladder. the rest is easy." _chamber of commerce bulletin_ (_portland, ore_.). a wise investment "any one who employs labor where it requires character and intelligence would make a wise investment by presenting his employees a copy of this book. it has been some time since i have read a more wholesome, inspiring, and fascinating volume." j.j. cole, in _christian standard_. brimful of anecdote and illustration "the book is not all theory and principle. it is brimful of the anecdote and illustration from actual business life which gives vigor and acceptance to the writer's ideas." _christian advocate_. thomas y. crowell company opinions and reviews of dr. marden's the secret of achievement exasperating "'the secret of achievement' is one of those exasperating books which you feel you ought to present to your young friends, yet find yourself unwilling to part with." william b. warren, _former president boston university_. art of putting things "i have studied dr. marden's books with deep interest. he has the art of putting things; of planting in the mind convictions that will live. i know of no works that contain equal inspiration for life." hezekiah butterworth. a great service "i thoroughly feel that you are rendering a great service to young men and women in america and throughout the world." rev. r.s. mcarthur, d.d., _new york city_. the difference "'pushing to the front' is a great book and 'rising in the world' is a magnificent book, but 'the secret of achievement' is a superb book." success against odds "this volume contains a series of stimulating anecdotes and advice showing how energy, force of well-directed will, application, lofty purpose, and noble ideals serve to win success even against the greatest odds. many a young man will draw inspiration from it which will aid him in making his life work a success." _school journal_. thomas y. crowell company press reviews of the young man entering business "a readable volume on a substantial topic, which discusses actual questions. the counsel of an experienced person." _pittsburgh post_. abounds in specific advice "we can easily conceive that a young man who gets this book into his hands may, in after life, date his success from reading it. it is sound, wholesome, stimulating. the treatment is concrete. it abounds in specific advice and telling illustration." _southern observer_. stimulates and encourages "packed as it is with sensible, practical counsels, this volume can be cordially recommended to stimulate and encourage young men starting out in business life." _brooklyn times_. a necessity to earnest young men "there is such a thing as the science of success. dr. marden has made a study of it. he writes in simple, attractive style. he deals with facts. the book should be in the hands of every earnest young man." _christian advocate_. entertaining as well as helpful "so interwoven with personal incident and illustration that it is an entertaining as well as a helpful book." _christian observer_. thomas y. crowell company opinions of the miracle of right thought dr. sheldon leavitt says: "i wish to state that i am unusually well pleased with dr. marden's 'miracle of right thought.' it is the best work of the author." ralph waldo trine says: "this is one of those inspiring, reasonable and valuable books that are bringing new life and new power to so many thousands all over our country and all over the world to-day." "you have formulated a philosophy which must sooner or later be universally accepted. your book shows how the right mental attitude helps one in the realization of every laudable ambition, and the value of cultivating a bright, self-reliant habit of thought. i congratulate you on it." g.h. sandison, _editor, the christian herald_. "it is marked by sanctified common sense; it is in line with the advance thought of to-day, and yet it is so simple in statement that unlettered men and untrained youths can master its best thoughts and translate them into their daily lives." rev. r.s. macarthur, d.d., _new york city_. rev. f.e. clark, president united society of christian endeavor, says: "i regard 'the miracle of right thought' as one of dr. marden's very best books, and that is saying a great deal. he has struck the modern note of the power of mind over bodily conditions in a fresh and most interesting way, while he has not fallen into the mistake of some new thought writers of eliminating the personal god from the universe. no one can read this book sympathetically, i believe, without being happier and better." thomas y. crowell company selling things by orison swett marden a book for salesmen "deals with the training of salesmen and the necessary attributes to make them successful. all phases of the subject are considered: clothes, presence, ability to talk, persuasive powers, tact, helping and getting the customer to buy." _bookseller_. will be welcome "a book that will be gladly welcomed by sales managers and salesmen in every field." _philadelphia public ledger_. helps to prosperity "one of the best things that you have written, and ought to be in the hands of every man who would call himself a salesman. there are many points therein that will certainly help him to prosperity." _samuel brill_. a masterful work "a masterful work and is filled from cover to cover with practical usable information for young men and women. i consider this book one of the best things you have done, and that is saying a great deal when the excellence of your previous works is taken into consideration." _hudson maxim_. a powerful factor "in our opinion, if 'selling' would be given more thought by such world famous writers as you, it would be a powerful factor in the complete revolution of business, and eliminate to a great extent the waste of time, money and human life that is so recklessly thrown away under the present ignorance of true salesmanship." _n.a. corking, sales mgr., ford motor company_. thomas y. crowell company opinions of rising in the world "a storehouse of incentive, a treasury of precious sayings; a granary of seed-thoughts capable, under proper cultivation, of a fine character harvest."--edward a. horton. "a stimulating book which is pitched at a high note and rings true."--edwin m. bacon. "has all the excellences of style and matter that gave to 'pushing to the front' its signal success. dr. marden's power of pithy statement and pertinent illustration seems inexhaustible."--w.f. warren, _former president of boston university_. touches the springs of life "dr. marden has touched the springs of life and set forth with marvellous and convincing power the results obtained by those inspired by high resolves, lofty aspirations, and pure motives. no one can rise from reading this book without cleaner desires, firmer resolutions, and sublime ambition."--myron t. pritchard, _master of everett school, boston_. its immortal possibilities "has the same iron in the blood, the same vigorous constitution, the same sanguine temperament, the same immortal possibilities as 'pushing to the front.'"--thomas w. bicknell, _ex-u.s. commissioner of education_. thomas y. crowell company letters to dr. marden concerning every man a king success vs. failure "one of the most inspiring books i have ever read. i should like to purchase a thousand and distribute them, as i believe the reading of this book would make the difference between success and failure in many lives." chas. e. schmick, _house of representatives, mass_. worth one hundred dollars "i would not take one hundred dollars for your book, 'every man a king,' if no other were available." willard merriam, _new york city_. unfailing optimism "the unfailing note of optimism which rings through all your works is distinctly sounded here." w.e. huntington, _pres., boston university_. the keynote of life "'every man a king' strikes the keynote of life. any one of its chapters is well worth the cost of the book." e.j. teagarden, _danbury, conn_. simply priceless "i have just read it with tremendous interest, and i frankly say that i regard it as simply priceless. its value to me is immeasurable, and i should be glad if i could put it in the hands of every intelligent young man and woman in this country." chas. stokes wayne, _chappaqua, n.y._ renewed ambition "i have read and re-read it with pleasure and renewed ambition. i shall ever keep it near at hand as a frequent reminder and an invaluable text-book." h.h. williams, _brockton, mass_. thomas y. crowell & co., new york the victorious attitude by orison swett marden a soul doctor "this book should be read by all discouraged people. it is a tonic--and a moral bracer of the first order. most of us need to have our self-confidence stimulated, and dr. marden stimulates it. he is a soul doctor." _richmond times dispatch_. buoyant and breezy "full of fresh ideas couched in straightforward language. buoyant, breezy and highly stimulating. _san francisco bulletin_. a wallet of truth "there is a crammed wallet of truth in your book. may it go forth to inspire men with the fine courage of life." _edwin markham_. excellent advice "the homely truths and excellent bits of advice contained is dr. marden's book will make instructive reading. it is written in forcible and easily understandable style." _buffalo commercial_. cannot fail to help "clear, direct and vigorous in expression, and so uplifting and wholesome in subject matter, that it cannot fail to be of help to many people who are in need of just such advice." _des moines register_. nothing more valuable "one of the very best books that you ever produced. the book is like a medicine to me. i commended it to our students put it in our library and it has been in great demand. i know of nothing finer or more valuable for young people who are struggling for an education." _rev. o.s. krisbel, d.d._ thomas y. crowell company letters to dr. marden concerning he can who thinks he can will do amazing good "i believe 'he can who thinks he can,' comprising some of your editorials, which appear akin to divine inspiration in words of cheer, hope, courage and success, will do amazing good." james peter, _independence, kas_. greatest things ever written "your editorials on the subjects of self-confidence and self-help are the greatest things ever written along that line." h.l. dunlap, _waynesburg, pa_. gripping power "presents the truth in a remarkably clear and forcible manner, with a gripping power back of the writing. it is beautiful and inspiring." c.w. smelser, _coopertown, okla_. beginning of my success "your editorials have helped me mere than any other reading. the beginning of my success was when i commenced to practise your teachings." bruce hartman, _honolulu, t.h._ wishes to reprint it "i have been very much impressed by the chapter on 'new thought, new life.' i would like to send a copy of it to two thousand of my customers, giving due credit of course." john d. morris, _philadelphia, pa_. full of light and joy "i have studied the subject of new thought for ten years, but have never seen anything so comprehensive, so full of light and joy, as your treatment of it. when i think of the good it will do, and the thousands it will reach, my heart rejoices." louise markscheffel, _toledo, o_. thomas y. crowell & co., new york opinions of the joys of living in every sense worth while "a ringing call for a joyful life is just what this old world needs to hear and to heed. a saner, wiser, more helpful book than this we have rarely read.... in every sense well worth the while." _the examiner_. wholesome reading "the book makes wholesome reading. one lays it down with a resolve to find more happiness in his life and a determination to live more in the present." _springfield republican_. one of the author's best "the author has been doing uniformly good work, work that has elicited warmest commendations from leading men of the country. 'the joys of living' is one of dr. marden's best books." _chicago standard_. more such teachers wanted "give us more such teachers and writers, more such heralds of the new and ever present kingdom of good, of joy, of opulence! just read this book yourself and you will change your whole mental attitude." _the truth-seeker_. a book for the nerve-worn "the book is one that our rushing american world needs. if you feel compassion for any nerve-worn, unhappy man or woman, tell them of this message. better still, send the book to some one who needs it." _portland oregonian_. thomas y. crowell company press reviews of dr. marden's be good to yourself "the author is a wonder,-one of the very best preachers, through the pen, of our time." _zion's herald_. "just such a discussion of personality as we all need. the titles of the chapters are appetizing and the advice and lessons taught are good. it will help many a reader to understand himself better." _the advance_. "the kind counsel of a new book by orison swett marden, who says there are many people who are good to others but not to themselves this is a fine volume from every point of view." _the religious telescope_. "of a thoroughly inspirational character, these essays are calculated to awaken and sustain the right sort of ambition and evolve a manly type of character. they are surcharged with faith, optimism, and common sense." _the boston herald_. "dr. marden's friends, who are to be found in all quarters of the globe, wait eagerly for such advice as this, on how to be happy, hearty, and healthy." _seattle post intelligencer_. thomas y. crowell company contents dedicatory preface footnotes doctrine of the will. by rev. a. mahan, president of the oberlin collegiate institute. "not man alone, all rationals heaven arms with an illustrious, but tremendous power, to counteract its own most gracious ends; and this, of strict necessity, not choice; that power denied, men, angels, were no more but passive engines void of praise or blame. a nature rational implies the power of being blest, or wretched, as we please. man falls by man, if finally he falls; and fall he must, who learns from death alone, the dreadful secret--that he lives for ever." young. new york: mark h. newman, 199 broadway. oberlin; ohio: r. e. gillet. 1845. entered according to an act of congress, in the year 1844, by asa mahan, in the clerk's office of the district court of the united states, for the southern district of new york. s. w. benedict & co., ster. & print., 16 spruce street. contents. chapter i. introductory observations.--importance of the subject--true and false methods of inquiry--common fault--proper method of reasoning from revelation to the system of mental philosophy therein pre-supposed--errors of method chapter ii. classification of the mental faculties.--classification verified chapter iii. liberty and necessity.--terms defined--characteristics of the above definitions--motive defined--liberty as opposed to necessity, the characteristic of the will--objections to doctrine of necessity--doctrine of liberty, direct argument--objection to an appeal to consciousness--doctrine of liberty argued from the existence of the idea of liberty in all minds--the doctrine of liberty, the doctrine of the bible--necessity as held by necessitarians--the term certainty, as used by them--doctrine of ability, according to the necessitarian scheme--sinful inclinations--necessitarian doctrine of liberty--ground which necessitarians are bound to take in respect to the doctrine of ability--doctrine of necessity, as regarded by necessitarians of different schools chapter iv. extent and limits of the liberty of the will.--strongest motive--reasoning in a circle chapter v. greatest apparent good.--phrase defined--its meaning according to edwards--the will not always as the dictates of the intelligence--not always as the strongest desire--nor as the intelligence and sensibility combined--necessitarian argument--motives cause acts of the will, in what sense--particular volitions, how accounted for--facts wrongly accounted for--choosing between objects known to be equal, how treated by necessitarians--palpable mistake chapter vi. doctrine of liberty and the divine prescience.--dangers to be avoided--mistake respecting divine prescience--inconsistency of necessitarians--necessitarian objection chapter vii. doctrine of liberty and the divine purposes and agency.--god's purposes consistent with the liberty of creatures--senses in which god purposed moral good and evil--death of the incorrigible preordained, but not willed--god not responsible for their death--sin a mystery--conclusion from the above chapter viii. obligation predicable only of the will.--men not responsible for the sin of their progenitors--constitutional ill-desert--present impossibilities not required chapter ix. standard of moral character.--sincerity, and not intensity, the true standard chapter x. moral acts never of a mixed character.--acts of will resulting from a variety of motives--loving with a greater intensity at one time than another--momentary revolutions of character chapter xi. relations of the will to the intelligence and sensibility, in states morally right, or wrong.--those who are and are not virtuous, how distinguished--selfishness and benevolence--common mistake--defective forms of virtue--test of conformity to moral principle--common mistake--love as required by the moral law--identity of character among all beings morally virtuous chapter xii. element of the will in complex phenomena.--natural propensities--sensation, emotion, desire, and wish defined--anger, pride, ambition, &c.--religious affections--repentance--love--faith-convictions, feelings and external actions, why required or prohibited-our responsibility in respect to such phenomena--feelings how controlled by the will--relation of faith to other exercises morally right chapter xiii. influence of the will in intellectual judgments.--men often voluntary in their opinions--error not from the intelligence, but will--primary faculties cannot err--so of the secondary faculties--assumptions-pre-judgments--intellect not deceived in pre-judgments--mind, how influenced by them--influences which induce false assumptions--cases in which we are apparently, though not really, misled by the intelligence chapter xiv. liberty and servitude.--liberty as opposed to moral servitude--mistake of german metaphysicians--moral servitude of the race chapter xv. liberty and dependence.--common impression--spirit of dependence--doctrine of necessity tends not to induce this spirit--doctrine of liberty does--god controls all influences under which creatures act--dependence on account of moral servitude chapter xvi. formation of character.--commonly how accounted for--the voluntary element to be taken into the account--example in illustration-diversities of character chapter xvii. concluding reflections.--objection, the will has its laws--objection, god dethroned from his supremacy if the doctrine of liberty is true--great and good men have held the doctrine of necessity--last resort--willing and aiming to perform impossibilities--thought at parting dedicatory preface. to one whose aim is, to "serve his generation according to the will of god," but two reasons would seem to justify an individual in claiming the attention of the public in the capacity of an author--the existence in the public mind of a want which needs to be met, and the full belief, that the work which he has produced is adapted to meet that want. under the influence of these two considerations, the following treatise is presented to the public. whether the author has judged rightly or not, it is not for him to decide. the decision of that question is left with the public, to whom the work is now presented. it is doubtful, whether any work, prepared with much thought and pains-taking, was ever published with the conviction, on the part of the author, that it was unworthy of public regard. the community, however, may differ from him entirely on the subject; and, as a consequence, a work which he regards as so imperiously demanded by the public interest, falls dead from the press. many an author, thus disappointed, has had occasion to be reminded of the admonition, "ye have need of patience." whether the following treatise shall succeed in gaining the public ear, or not, one consolation will remain with the writer, the publication of the work has satisfied his sense of duty. to his respected associates in the institution over which he presides, associates with whose approbation and counsel the work was prepared, the author would take this occasion publicly to express his grateful acknowledgments for the many important suggestions which he received from them, during the progress of its preparation. having said thus much, he would simply add, that, to the lovers of truth, the work is now respectfully dedicated, with the kind regards of the author. chapter i. introductory observations. importance of the subject. the doctrine of the will is a cardinal doctrine of theology, as well as of mental philosophy. this doctrine, to say the least, is one of the great central points, from which the various different and conflicting systems of theological, mental, and moral science, take their departure. to determine a man's sentiments in respect to the will, is to determine his position, in most important respects, as a theologian, and mental and moral philosopher. if we turn our thoughts inward, for the purpose of knowing what we are, what we ought to do, and to be, and what we shall become, as the result of being and doing what we ought or ought not, this doctrine presents itself at once, as one of the great pivots on which the resolution of all these questions turns. if, on the other hand, we turn our thoughts from ourselves, to a study of the character of god, and of the nature and character of the government which he exercises over rational beings, all our apprehensions here, all our notions in respect to the nature and desert of sin and holiness, will, in many fundamental particulars, be determined by our notions in respect to the will. in other words, our apprehensions of the nature and character of the divine government, must be determined, in most important respects, by our conceptions of the nature and powers of the subjects of that government. i have no wish to conceal from the reader the true bearing of our present inquiries. i wish him distinctly to understand, that in fixing his notions in respect to the doctrine of the will, he is determining a point of observation from which, and a medium through which, he shall contemplate his own character and deserts as a moral agent, and the nature and character of that divine government, under which he must ever "live, and move, and have his being." true and false methods of inquiry. such being the bearing of our present inquiries, an important question arises, to wit: what should be the influence of such considerations upon our investigations in this department of mental science it should not surely induce us, as appears to be true in the case of many divines and philosophers even, first to form our system of theology, and then, in the light of that, to determine our theory of the will. the true science of the will, as well as that of all ether departments of mental philosophy, "does not come by observation," but by internal reflection. because our doctrine of the will, whether true or false, will have a controlling influence in determining the character of our theology, and the meaning which we shall attach to large portions of the bible, that doctrine does not, for that reason, lose its exclusively psychological character. every legitimate question pertaining to it, still remains purely and exclusively a psychological question. the mind has but one eye by which it can see itself, and that is the eye of consciousness. this, then, is the organ of vision to be exclusively employed in all our inquiries in every department of mental science, and in none more exclusively than in that of the will. we know very well, for example, that the science of optics has a fundamental bearing upon that of astronomy. what if a philosopher, for that reason, should form his theory of optics by looking at the stars? this would be perfectly analogous to the conduct of a divine or philosopher who should determine his theory of the will, not by psychological reflection, but by a system of theology formed without such reflection. suppose again, that the science of geometry had the same influence in theology, that that of the will now has. this fact would not change at all the nature of that science, nor the mode proper in conducting our investigations in respect to it. it would still remain a science of demonstration, with all its principles and rules of investigation unchanged. so with the doctrine of the will. whatever its bearings upon other sciences may be, it still remains no less exclusively a psychological science. it has its own principles and laws of investigation, principles and laws as independent of systems of theology, as the principles and laws of the science of optics are of those of astronomy. in pursuing our investigations in all other departments of mental science, we, for the time being, cease to be theologians. we become mental philosophers. why should the study of the will be an exception? the question now returns--what should be the bearing of the fact, that our theory of the will, whether right or wrong, will have an important influence in determining our system of theology? this surely should be its influence. it should induce in us great care and caution in our investigations in this department of mental science. we are laying the foundation of the most important edifice of which it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive--an edifice, all the parts, dimensions, and proportions of which, we are required most sedulously to conform to the "pattern shown us in the mount." under such circumstances, who should not be admonished, that he should "dig deep, and lay his foundation upon a rock?" i will therefore, in view of what has been said above, earnestly bespeak four things of the reader of the following treatise. 1. that he read it as an honest, earnest inquirer after truth. 2. that he give that degree of attention to the work, that is requisite to an _understanding_ of it. 3. that when he dissents from any of its fundamental principles, he will distinctly state to his own mind the reason and ground of that dissent, and carefully investigate its validity. if these principles are wrong, such an investigation will render the truth more conspicuous to the mind, confirm the mind in the truth, and furnish it with means to overturn the opposite error. 4. that he pursue his investigations with _implicit confidence in the distinct affirmations of his own consciousness in respect to this subject_. such a suggestion would appear truly singular, if made in respect to any other department of mental science but that of the will. here it is imperiously called for so long have philosophers and divines been accustomed to look without, to determine the characteristics of phenomena which appear exclusively within, and which are revealed to the eye of consciousness only. having been so long under the influence of this pernicious habit, it will require somewhat of an effort for the mind to turn its organ of self-vision in upon itself, for the purpose of correctly reporting to itself, what is really passing in that inner sanctuary. especially will it require an effort to do this, with a fixed determination to abandon all theories formed from external observation, and to follow implicitly the results of observations made internally. this method we must adopt, however, or there is at once an end of all real science, not only in respect to the will, but to all other departments of the mind. suppose an individual to commence a treatise on _colors_, for example, with a denial of the validity of all affirmations of the intelligence through the eye, in respect to the phenomena about which he is to treat. what would be thought of such a treatise? the moment we deny the validity of the affirmations of any of our faculties, in respect to the appropriate objects of those faculties, all reasoning about those objects becomes the height of absurdity. so in respect to the mind. if we doubt or deny the validity of the affirmations of consciousness in respect to the nature and characteristics of all mental operations, mental philosophy becomes impossible, and all reasoning in respect to the mind perfectly absurd. implicit confidence in the distinct affirmations of consciousness, is a fundamental law of all correct philosophizing in every department of mental science. permit me most earnestly to bespeak this confidence, as we pursue our investigations in respect to the will. common fault. it may be important here to notice a common fault in the method frequently adopted by philosophers in their investigations in this department of mental science. in the most celebrated treatise that has ever appeared upon this subject, the writer does not recollect to have met with a single appeal to _consciousness_, the only adequate witness in the case. the whole treatise, almost, consists of a series of syllogisms, linked together with apparent perfectness, syllogisms pertaining to an abstract something called will. throughout the whole, the facts of consciousness are never appealed to. in fact, in instances not a few, among writers of the same school, the right to make such an appeal, on the ground of the total inadequacy of consciousness to give testimony in the case, has been formally denied. would it be at all strange, if it should turn out that all the fundamental results of investigations conducted after such a method, should be wholly inapplicable to _the_ will, the phenomena of which lie under the eye of consciousness, or to stand in plain contradiction to the phenomena thus affirmed? what, from the method adopted, we see is very likely to take place, we find, from experience, to be actually true of the treatise above referred to. this is noticed by the distinguished author of the natural history of enthusiasm, in an essay introductory to edwards on the will. "even the reader," he says, "who is scarcely at all familiar with abstruse science, will, if he follow our author attentively, be perpetually conscious of a vague dissatisfaction, or latent suspicion, that some fallacy has passed into the train of propositions, although the linking of syllogisms seems perfect. this suspicion will increase in strength as he proceeds, and will at length condense itself into the form of a protest against certain conclusions, notwithstanding their apparently necessary connection with the premises." what should we expect from a treatise on mental science, from which the affirmations of consciousness should be formally excluded, as grounds of any important conclusions? just what we find to be true, in fact, of the above named treatise on the will; to wit: all its fundamental conclusions positively contradicted by such affirmations. what if the decisions of our courts of justice were based upon data from which the testimony of all material witnesses has been formally excluded? who would look to such decisions as the exponents of truth and justice? yet all the elements in those decisions may be the necessary logical consequents of the data actually assumed. such decisions may be all wrong, however, from the fact that the data which ought to be assumed in the case, were excluded. the same will, almost of necessity, be true of all treatises, in every department of mental science, which are not based upon the facts of consciousness. proper method of reasoning from revelation to the system of mental philosophy therein pre-supposed. by what has been said, the reader will not understand me as denying the propriety of comparing our conclusions in mental science with the bible. though no system of mental philosophy is directly revealed in the bible, some one system is therein pre-supposed, and assuming, as we do, that the scriptures are a revelation from god, we must suppose that the system of mental science assumed in the sacred writings, is the true system. if we could find the system pre-supposed in the bible, we should have an infallible standard by which to test the validity of any conclusions to which we have arrived, as the results of psychological investigation. it is therefore a very legitimate, interesting, and profitable inquiry--what is the system of mental science assumed as true in the bible? we may very properly turn our attention to the solution of such a question. in doing this, however, two things should be kept distinctly in mind. 1. in such inquiries, we leave the domain of mental philosophy entirely, and enter that of theology. in the latter we are to be guided by principles entirely distinct from those demanded in the former. 2. in reasoning from the bible to the system of mental philosophy pre-supposed in the scriptures, we are in danger of assuming wrong data as the basis of our conclusions that is, we are in danger of drawing our inferences from those truths of scripture which have no legitimate bearing upon the subject, and of overlooking those which do have such a bearing. while there are truths of inspiration from which we may properly reason to the theory of the will, pre-supposed in the bible, there are other truths from which we cannot legitimately thus reason. now suppose that we have drawn our conclusions from truths of inspiration which have no legitimate bearing upon the subject, truths which, if we do reason from them in the case, will lead us to wrong conclusions; suppose that in the light of such conclusions we have explained the facts of consciousness, assuming that such must be their true character, else we deny the bible. shall we not then have almost inextricably lost ourselves in the labyrinth of error? the following principles may be laid down as universally binding, if we would reason correctly, as philosophers and theologians, on the subject under consideration. 1. in the domain of philosophy, we must confine ourselves strictly and exclusively to the laws of psychological investigation, without reference to any system of theology. 2. in the domain of theology, when we would reason from the truths of inspiration to the theory of the will pre-supposed in the bible, we should be exceedingly careful to reason from those truths only which have a direct and decisive bearing upon the subject, and not from those which have no such bearing. 3. we should carefully compare the conclusions to which we have arrived in each of these domains, assuming that if they do not harmonize, we have erred either as philosophers or theologians. 4. in case of disagreement, we should renew our independent investigations in each domain, for the purpose of detecting the error into which we have fallen. in conducting an investigation upon such principles, we shall, with almost absolute certainty, find ourselves in each domain, following rays of light, which will converge together in the true theory of the will. errors of method. two errors into which philosophers and divines of a certain class have fallen in their method of treating the department of our subject now under consideration, here demand a passing notice. 1. the two methods above referred to, the psychological and theological, which should at all times be kept entirely distinct and separate, have unhappily been mingled together. thus the subject has failed to receive a proper investigation in the domain, either of theology or of philosophy. 2. in reasoning from the scriptures to the theory of the will pre-supposed in the same, _the wrong truth_ has been adduced as the basis of such reasoning, to wit: _the fact of the divine foreknowledge_. as all events yet future are foreknown to god, they are in themselves, it is said, alike certain. this certainty necessitates the adoption of a particular theory of the will. now before we can draw any such conclusion from the truth before us, the following things pertaining to it we need to know with absolute certainty, things which god has not revealed, and which we never can know, until he has revealed them, to wit: the _mode_, the _nature_, and the _degree_ of the divine foreknowledge. suppose that god should impart to us apprehensions perfectly full and distinct, of the mode, nature and degree of his foreknowledge of human conduct. how do we know but that we should then see with the most perfect clearness, that this foreknowledge is just as consistent with the theory of the will, denied by the philosophers and divines under consideration, as with that which they suppose necessarily to result from the divine foreknowledge? this, then, is not the truth from which we should reason to the theory of the will pre-supposed in the bible. there are truths of inspiration, however, which appear to me to have a direct and decisive bearing upon this subject, and upon which we may therefore safely base our conclusions. in the scriptures, man is addressed as a moral agent, the subject of commands and prohibitions, of obligation, of merit and demerit, and consequently of reward and punishment. now when we have determined the powers which an agent must possess, to render him a proper subject of command and prohibition, of obligation, of merit and demerit, and consequently of reward and punishment, we have determined the philosophy of the will, really pre-supposed in the scriptures. beneath these truths, therefore, and not beneath that of the divine foreknowledge, that philosophy is to be sought for. this i argue-1. because the former has a _direct_, while the latter has only an _indirect_ bearing upon the subject. 2. of the former our ideas are perfectly clear and distinct, while of the mode, the degree, and the nature of the divine foreknowledge we are profoundly ignorant. to all eternity, our ideas of the nature of commands and prohibitions, of obligations, of merit and demerit, and of reward and punishment grounded on moral desert, can never be more clear and distinct than they now are. from such truths, then, and not from those that we do not understand, and which at the utmost have only an indirect bearing upon the subject, we ought to reason, if we reason at all, to the philosophy of the will pre-supposed in the scriptures. the reader is now put in possession of the _method_ that will be pursued in the following treatise, and is consequently prepared to enter upon the investigation of the subject before us. chapter ii. classification of the mental faculties. every individual who has reflected with any degree of interest upon the operations of his own mind, cannot have failed to notice three classes of mental phenomena, each of which is entirely distinct from either of the others. these phenomena, which comprehend the entire operations of the mind, and which may be expressed by the terms _thinking_, _feeling_, and _willing_, clearly indicate in the mind three faculties equally distinct from one another. these faculties are denominated the intellect, the sensibility or sensitivity, and the will. to the first, all intellectual operations, such as perceiving, thinking, judging, knowing, &c., are referred. to the second, we refer all sensitive states, all feelings, such as sensations, emotions, desires, &c. to the will, or the active voluntary faculty, are referred all mental determinations, such as purposes, intentions, resolutions, choices and volitions. classification verified. 1. the classes of phenomena, by which this tri-unity of the mental powers is indicated, differ from one another, not in _degree_, but in _kind_. thought, whether clear or obscure, in all degrees, remains equally distinct, in its nature, from feelings and determinations of every class. so of feelings. sensations, emotions, desires, all the phenomena of the sensibility, in all degrees and modifications, remain, in their nature and essential characteristics, equally distinct from thought on the one hand, and the action of the will on the other. the same holds true of the phenomena of the will. a resolution, for example, in one degree, is not a thought in another, a sensation, emotion, or desire and in another a choice, purpose, intention, or volition. in all degrees and modifications, the phenomena of the will, in their nature and essential characteristics, remain equally distinct from the operations of the intelligence on the one hand, and of the sensibility on the other. 2. this distinction is recognized by universal consciousness. when, for example, one speaks of _thinking_ of any particular object, then of _desiring_ it, and subsequently of _determining_ to obtain the object, for the purpose of gratifying that desire, all mankind most clearly recognize his meaning in each of the above-named affirmations, and understand him as speaking of three entirely distinct classes of mental operations. no person, under such circumstances, ever confounds one of these states with either of the others. so clearly marked and distinguished is the three-fold classification of mental phenomena under consideration, in the spontaneous affirmations of universal consciousness. 3. in all languages, also, there are distinct _terms_ appropriated to the expression of these three classes of phenomena, and of the mental power indicated by the same. in the english language, for example, we have the terms _thinking_, _feeling_, and _willing_, each of which is applied to one particular class of these mental phenomena, and never to either of the others. we have also the terms intellect, sensibility, and will, appropriated, in a similar manner, to designate the mental powers indicated by these phenomena. in all other languages, especially among nations of any considerable advancement in mental culture, we find terms of precisely similar designation. what do such facts indicate? they clearly show, that in the development of the universal intelligence, the different classes of phenomena under consideration have been distinctly marked, and distinguished from one another, together with the three-fold division of the mental powers indicated by the same phenomena. 4. the clearness and particularity with which the universal intelligence has marked the distinction under consideration, is strikingly indicated by the fact, that there are _qualifying terms_ in common use which are applied to each of these classes of phenomena, and never to either of the others. it is true that there are such terms which are promiscuously applied to all classes of mental phenomena. there are terms, however, which are never applied to but one class. thus we speak of _clear thoughts_, but never of clear feelings or determinations. we speak of _irrepressible feelings and desires_, but never of irrepressible thoughts or resolutions. we also speak of _inflexible determinations_, but never of inflexible feelings or conceptions. with what perfect distinctness, then, must universal consciousness have marked thoughts, feelings, and determinations of the will, as phenomena entirely distinct from one another--phenomena differing not in _degree_, but in _kind_, and as most clearly indicating the three-fold division of the mental powers under consideration. 5. so familiar are mankind with this distinction, so distinctly marked is it in their minds, that in familiar intercourse, when no particular theory of the mental powers is in contemplation, they are accustomed to speak of the intellect, sensibility, and will, and of their respective phenomena, as entirely distinct from one another. take a single example from scripture. "what i shall _choose_, i wot not--having a _desire_ to depart." here the apostle evidently speaks of _desire_ and _choice_ as phenomena differing in kind, and not in degree. "if you engage his heart" [his feelings], says lord chesterfield, speaking of a foreign minister, "you have a fair chance of imposing upon his _understanding_, and determining his will." "_his will_," says another writer, speaking of the insane, "is no longer restrained by his _judgment_, but driven madly on by his passions." "when wit is overruled by _will_, and will is led by fond _desire_, then _reason_ may as well be still, as speaking, kindle greater fire."[1] in all the above extracts the tri-unity of the mental powers, as consisting of the intellect, sensibility, and will, is distinctly recognized. yet the writers had, at the time, no particular theory of mental philosophy in contemplation. they speak of a distinction of the mental faculties which all understand and recognize as real, as soon as suggested to their minds. the above considerations are abundantly sufficient to verify the three-fold distinction above made, of mental phenomena and powers. two suggestions arise here which demand special attention. 1. to confound either of these distinct powers of the mind with either of the others, as has been done by several philosophers of eminence, in respect to the will and sensibility, is a capital error in mental science. if one faculty is confounded with another, the fundamental characteristics of the former will of course be confounded with the same characteristics of the latter. thus the worst forms of error will be introduced not only into philosophy, but theology, too, as far as the latter science is influenced by the former. what would be thought of a treatise on mental science, in which the will should be confounded with the intelligence, and in which _thinking_ and _willing_ would be consequently represented as phenomena identical in kind? this would be an error no more capital, no more glaring, no more distinctly contradicted by fundamental phenomena, than the confounding of the will with the sensibility. 2. we are now prepared to contemplate one of the great errors of edwards in his immortal work on the will--an error which we meet with in the commencement of that work, and which lays a broad foundation for the false conclusions subsequently found in it. he has confounded the will with the sensibility. of course, we should expect to find that he has subsequently confounded the fundamental characteristics of the phenomena of the former faculty, with the same characteristics of the latter. "god has endowed the soul," he says, "with two faculties: one is that by which it is capable of perception and speculation, or by which it discerns, and views, and judges of things; which is called the _understanding_. the other faculty is that by which the soul does not merely perceive and view things, but is some way inclined _to_ them, or is disinclined and averse _from_ them; or is the faculty by which the soul does not behold things as an indifferent, unaffected spectator; but either as liking or disliking, pleased or displeased, approving or rejecting. this faculty, as it has respect to the actions that are determined by it, is called the will." from his work on the affections, i cite the following to the same import: "the affections of the soul," he observes, "are not properly distinguished from the will, as though they were two faculties of the soul. all acts of the affections of the soul are, in some sense, acts of the will, and all acts of the will are acts of the affections. all exercises of the will are, in some degree or other, exercises of the soul's appetition or aversion; or which is the same thing, of its love or hatred. the soul wills one thing rather than another, or chooses one thing rather than another, no otherwise than as it loves one thing more than another." "the affections are only certain modes of the exercise of the will." "the affections are no other than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul." whether he has or has not subsequently confounded the fundamental characteristics of the phenomena of the will with those of the phenomena of the sensibility will be seen in the progress of the present treatise. chapter iii. liberty and necessity. we come now to consider the great and fundamental characteristic of the will, that by which it is, in a special sense, distinguished from each of the other mental faculties, to wit: that of liberty. sec. i. terms defined. our first inquiry respects the meaning of the term liberty as distinguished from that of necessity. these terms do not differ, as expressing genus and species; that is, liberty does not designate a species of which necessity expresses the genus. on the other hand, they differ by way of _opposition_. all correct definitions of terms thus related, will possess these two characteristics. 1. they will mutually exclude each other that is, what is affirmed of one, will, in reality, be denied of the other. 2. they will be so defined as to be universal in their application. the terms _right_ and _wrong_, for example, thus differ from each other. in the light of all correct definitions of these terms, it will be seen with perfect distinctness, 1st, that to affirm of an action that it is right, is equivalent to an affirmation that it is not wrong; and to affirm that it is wrong, is to affirm that it is not right; 2d, that all moral actions, actual and conceivable, must be either right or wrong. so of all other terms thus related. the meaning of the terms liberty and necessity, as distinguished the one from the other, may be designated by a reference to two relations perfectly distinct and opposite, which may be supposed to exist between an _antecedent_ and its _consequent_. 1. the antecedent being given, one, and only one, consequent can possibly arise, and that consequent _must_ arise. this relation we designate by the term necessity. i place my finger, for example, constituted as my physical system now is, in the flame of a burning candle, and hold it there for a given time. the two substances in contact is the antecedent. the feeling of intense pain which succeeds is the consequent. now such is universally believed to be the correlation between the nature of these substances, that under the circumstances supposed, but one consequent can possibly arise, and that consequent must arise; to wit--the feeling of pain referred to. the relation between such an antecedent and its consequent, therefore, we, in all instances, designate by the term necessity. when the relation of necessity is pre-supposed, in the presence of a new consequent, we affirm absolutely that of a new antecedent. 2. the second relation is this. the antecedent being given, either of two or more consequents is equally possible, and therefore, when one consequent does arise, we affirm that either of the others might have arisen in its stead. when this relation is pre-supposed, from the appearance of a new consequent, we do not necessarily affirm the presence of a new antecedent. this relation we designate by the term liberty. characteristics of the above definitions. on the above definitions i remark: 1. that they mutually exclude each other. to predicate liberty of any phenomenon is to affirm that it is not necessary. to predicate necessity of it, is equivalent to an affirmation that it is not free. 2. they are strictly and absolutely universal in their application. all antecedents and consequents, whatever the nature of the subjects thus connected may be, must fall under one or the other of these relations. as the terms right and wrong, when correctly defined, will express the nature of all moral actions, actual and conceivable, so the terms liberty and necessity, as above defined, clearly indicate the nature of the relation between all antecedents and consequents, real and supposable. take any antecedent and consequent we please, real or conceivable, and we know absolutely, that they must sustain to each other one or the other of these relations. either in connection with this antecedent, but this one consequent is possible, and this must arise, or in connection with the same antecedent, either this, or one or more different consequents are possible, and consequently equally so: for possibility has, in reality, no degrees. 3. all the phenomena of the will, sustaining, as they do, the relation of _consequents_ to motives considered as antecedents, must fall under one or the other of these relations. if we say, that the relation between motives and acts of will is that of _certainty_, still this certainty must arise from a necessary relation between the antecedent and its consequent, or it must be of such a nature as consists with the relation of liberty, in the sense of the term liberty as above defined. 4. the above definitions have this great advantage in our present investigations. they at once free the subject from the obscurity and perplexity in which it is often involved by the definitions of philosophers. they are accustomed, in many instances, to speak of moral necessity and physical necessity, as if these are in reality different kinds of necessity: whereas the terms moral and physical, in such connections, express the nature of the _subjects_ sustaining to each other the relations of antecedents and consequents, and not at all that of the _relation_ existing between them. this is exclusively expressed by the term necessity--a term which designates a relation which is always one and the same, whatever the nature of the subjects thus related may be. an individual in a treatise on natural science, might, if he should choose, in speaking of the relations of antecedents and consequents among solid, fluid, and aeriform substances, use the words, solid necessity, fluid necessity, and aeriform necessity. he might use as many qualifying terms as there are different subjects sustaining to each other the relation under consideration. in all such instances no error will arise, if these qualifying terms are distinctly understood to designate, not the nature of the _relation_ of antecedent and consequent in any given case (as if there were as many different kinds of necessity as there are qualifying terms used), but to designate the nature of the _subjects_ sustaining this relation. if, on the other hand, the impression should be made, that each of these qualifying terms designates a necessity of a peculiar kind, and if, as a consequence, the belief should be induced, that there are in reality so many different kinds of necessity, errors of the gravest character would arise--errors no more important, however, than actually do arise from the impression often induced, that moral necessity differs in kind from physical necessity. 5. i mention another very decisive advantage which the above definitions have in our present investigations. in the light of the terms liberty and necessity, as above defined, the two great schools in philosophy and theology are obliged to join issue directly upon the real question in difference between them, without the possibility on the part of either, of escaping under a fog of definitions about moral necessity, physical necessity, moral certainty, &c., and then claiming a victory over their opponents. these terms, as above defined, stand out with perfect clearness and distinctness to all reflecting minds. every one must see, that the phenomena of the will cannot but fall under the one or the other of the relations designated by these terms inasmuch as no third relation differing in _kind_ from both of these, is conceivable. the question therefore may be fairly put to every individual, without the possibility of misapprehension or evasion--do you believe, whenever a man puts forth an act of will, that in those circumstances, this one act only is possible, and that this act cannot but arise? in all prohibited acts, for example, do you believe that an individual, by the resistless providence of god, is placed in circumstances in which this one act only is possible, and this cannot but result, that in these identical circumstances, another and a different act is required of him, and that for not putting forth this last act, he is justly held as infinitely guilty in the sight of god, and of the moral universe? to these questions every one must give an affirmative or negative answer. if he gives the former, he holds the doctrine of necessity, and must take that doctrine with all its consequences. if he gives the latter, he holds the doctrine of liberty in the sense of the term as above defined. he must hold, that in the identical circumstances in which a given act of will is put forth, another and different act might have been put forth; and that for this reason, in all prohibited acts, a moral agent is held justly responsible for different and opposite acts. much is gained to the cause of truth, when, as in the present instance, the different schools are obliged to join issue directly upon the real question in difference between them, and that without the possibility of misapprehension or evasion in respect to the nature of that question. motive defined. having settled the meaning of the terms liberty and necessity, as designating two distinct and opposite relations, the only relations conceivable between an antecedent and its consequent, one other term which may not unfrequently be used in the following treatise, remains to be defined; to wit--_motive_--a term which designates that which sustains to the phenomena of the will, the relation of antecedent. volition, choice, preference, intention, all the phenomena of the will, are considered as the consequent. whatever within the mind itself may be supposed to influence its determinations, whether called susceptibilities, biases, or anything else; and all influences acting upon it as incentives from without, are regarded as the antecedent. i use the term motive as synonymous with antecedent as above defined. it designates _all the circumstances and influences_ from within or without the mind, which operate upon it to produce any given act of will. the term antecedent in the case before us, in strictness of speech, has this difference of meaning from that of motive as above defined: the former includes all that is designated by the latter, together with the _will_ itself. no difficulty or obscurity, however, will result from the use of these terms as synonymous, in the sense explained. sec. ii. liberty, as opposed to necessity, the characteristic of the will. we are now prepared to meet the question, to which of the relations above defined shall we refer the phenomena of the will? if these phenomena are subject to the law of necessity, then, whenever a particular antecedent (motive) is given, but one consequent (act of will) is possible, and that consequent must arise. it cannot possibly but take place. if, on the other hand, these phenomena fall under the relation of liberty, whenever any particular motive is present, either of two or more acts of will is equally possible; and when any particular consequent (act of will) does arise, either of the other consequents might have arisen in its stead. before proceeding directly to argue the question before us, one consideration of a general nature demands a passing notice. it is this. the simple statement of the question, in the light of the above relations, settles it, and must settle it, in the judgment of all candid, uncommitted inquirers after the truth. let any individual contemplate the action of his voluntary powers in the light of the relations of liberty and necessity as above defined, and he will spontaneously affirm the fact, that he is a free and not a necessary agent, and affirm it as absolutely as he affirms his own existence. wherever he is, while he retains the consciousness of rational being, this conviction will and must be to him an omnipresent reality. to escape it, he must transcend the bounds of conscious existence. objections to the doctrine of necessity. such is the importance of the subject, however, that a more extended and particular consideration of it is demanded. in the further prosecution of the argument upon the subject, we will-i. in the first place, contemplate the position, that the phenomena of the will are subject to the laws of necessity. in taking this position we are at once met with the following palpable and insuperable difficulties. 1. the conviction above referred to--a conviction which remains proof against all apparent demonstrations to the contrary. we may pile demonstration upon demonstration in favor of the doctrine of necessity, still, as the mind falls back upon the spontaneous affirmations of its own intelligence, it finds, in the depths of its inner being, a higher demonstration of the fact, that that doctrine is and must be false--that man is not the agent which that doctrine affirms him to be. in the passage already cited, and which i will take occasion here to repeat, the writer has, with singular correctness, mapped out the unvarying experience of the readers of edwards on the will. "even the reader," he says, "who is scarcely at all familiar with abstruse science, will, if he follow our author attentively, be perpetually conscious of a vague dissatisfaction, or latent suspicion, that some fallacy has passed into the train of propositions, although the linking of syllogisms seems perfect. this suspicion will increase in strength as he proceeds, and will at length condense itself into the form of a protest against certain conclusions, notwithstanding their apparently necessary connection with the premises." what higher evidence can we have that that treatise gives a false interpretation of the facts of universal consciousness pertaining to the will, than is here presented? any theory which gives a distinct and true explanation of the facts of consciousness, will be met by the intelligence with the response, "that's true; i have found it." any theory apparently supported by adequate evidence, but which still gives a false interpretation of such facts, will induce the internal conflict above described--a conflict which, as the force of apparent demonstration increases, will, in the very centre of the intelligence, "condense itself into the form of a protest against the conclusions presented, notwithstanding their apparently necessary connection with the premises." the falsity of the doctrine of necessity is a first truth of the universal intelligence. 2. if this doctrine is true, it is demonstrably evident, that in no instance, real or supposable, have men any power whatever to will or to act differently from what they do. the connection between the determinations of the will, and their consequents, external and internal, is absolutely necessary. constituted as i now am, if i will, for example, a particular motion of my hand or arm, no other movement, in these circumstances, was possible, and this movement could not but take place. the same holds true of all consequents, external and internal, of all acts of will. let us now suppose that these acts themselves are the necessary consequents of the circumstances in which they originate. in what conceivable sense have men, in the circumstances in which providence places them, power either to will or to act differently from what they do? the doctrine of ability to will or to do differently from what we do is, in every sense, false, if the doctrine of necessity is true. men, when they transgress the moral law, always sin, without the possibility of doing right. from this position the necessitarian cannot escape. 3. on this theory, god only is responsible for all human volitions together with their effects. the relation between all antecedents and their consequents was established by him. if that relation be in all instances a necessary one, his will surely is the sole responsible antecedent of all consequents. 4. the idea of obligation, of merit and demerit, and of the consequent propriety of reward and punishment, are chimeras. to conceive of a being deserving praise or blame, for volitions or actions which occurred under circumstances in which none others were possible, and in which these could not possibly but happen, is an absolute impossibility. to conceive him under obligation to have given existence, under such circumstances, to different consequents, is equally impossible. it is to suppose an agent under obligation to perform that to which omnipotence is inadequate. for omnipotence cannot perform impossibilities. it cannot reverse the law of necessity. let any individual conceive of creatures placed by divine providence in circumstances in which but one act, or series of acts of will, can arise, and these cannot but arise--let him, then, attempt to conceive of these creatures as under obligation, in these same circumstances, to give existence to different and opposite acts, and as deserving of punishment for not doing so. he will find it as impossible to pass such a judgment as to conceive of the annihilation of space, or of an event without a cause. to conceive of necessity and obligation as fundamental elements of the same act, is an absolute impossibility. the human intelligence is incapable of affirming such contradictions. 5. as an additional consideration, to show the absolute incompatibility of the idea of moral obligation with the doctrine of necessity, permit me to direct the attention of the reader to this striking fact. while no man, holding the doctrine of liberty as above defined, was ever known to deny moral obligation, such denial has, without exception, in every age and nation, been avowedly based upon the assumption of the truth of the doctrine of necessity. in every age and nation, in every solitary mind in which the idea of obligation has been denied, this doctrine has been the great maelstrom in which this idea has been swallowed up and lost. how can the necessitarian account for such facts in consistency with his theory? 6. the commands of god addressed to men as sinners and requiring them in all cases of transgression of the moral law, to choose and to act differently from what they do, are, if this doctrine is true, the perfection of tyranny. in all such cases men are required-(1.) to perform absolute impossibilities; to reverse the law of necessity. (2.) to do that to which omnipotence is inadequate. for omnipotence, as we have seen, cannot reverse the law of necessity. not only so, but-(3.) men in all such instances are required, as a matter of fact, to resist and overcome omnipotence. to require us to reverse the relation established by omnipotence, between antecedents and consequents, is certainly to require us to resist and overcome omnipotence, and that in the absence of all power, even to attempt the accomplishment of that which we are required to accomplish. 7. if this doctrine is true, at the final judgment the conscience and intelligence of the universe will and must be on the side of the condemned. suppose that when the conduct of the wicked shall be revealed at that day, another fact shall stand out with equal conspicuousness, to wit, that god himself had placed these beings where but one course of conduct was possible to them, and that course they could not but pursue, to wit, the course which they did pursue, and that for having pursued this course, the only one possible, they are now to be "punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of god and the glory of his power," must not the intelligence of the universe pronounce such a sentence unjust? all this must be true, or the doctrine of necessity is false. who can believe, that the pillars of god's eternal government rest upon such a doctrine? 8. on this supposition, probation is an infinite absurdity. we might with the same propriety represent the specimens in the laboratory of the chemist, as on probation, as men, if their actions are the necessary result of the circumstances in which omnipotence has placed them. what must intelligent beings think of probation for a state of eternal retribution, probation based on such a principle? 9. the doctrine of necessity is, in all essential particulars, identical with _fatalism_ in its worst form. all that fatalism ever has maintained, or now maintains, is, that men, by a power which they cannot control nor resist, are placed in circumstances in which they cannot but pursue the course of conduct which they actually are pursuing. this doctrine has never affirmed, that, in the necessitarian sense, men cannot "do as they please." all that it maintains is, that they cannot but please to do as they do. thus this doctrine differs not one "jot or tittle," from necessity. no man can show the want of perfect identity between them. fatalists and necessitarians may differ in regard to the origin of this necessity. in regard to its nature, the only thing material, as far as present inquiries are concerned, they do not differ at all. 10. in maintaining the necessity of all acts of the will of _man_, we must maintain, that the will of _god_ is subject to the same law. this is universally admitted by necessitarians themselves. now in maintaining the necessity of all acts of the divine will, the following conclusions force themselves upon us: (1.) motives which necessitate the determinations of the divine will, are the sole originating and efficient causes in existence. god is not the first cause of anything. (2.) to motives, which of course exist independently of the divine will, we must ascribe the origin of all created existences. the glory of originating "all things visible and invisible," belongs not to him, but to motives. (3.) in all cases in which creatures are required to act differently from what they do, as in all acts of sin, they are in reality required not only to resist and overcome the omnipotent determinations of the divine will, but also the _motives_ by which the action of god's will is necessitated. we ask necessitarians to look these consequences in the face, and then say, whether they are prepared to deny, or to meet them. 11. finally, if the doctrine under consideration is true, in all instances of the transgression of the moral law, men are, in reality, required to produce an event which, when it does exist, shall exist without a cause. in circumstances where but one event is possible, and that cannot but arise, if a different event should arise, it would undeniably be an event without a cause. to require such an event under such circumstances, is to require an event without a cause, the most palpable contradiction conceivable. now just such a requirement as this is laid upon men, in all cases of disobedience of the moral law, if the doctrine of necessity is true. in all such cases, according to this doctrine men are placed in circumstances in which but one act is possible, and that must arise, to wit: the act of disobedience which is put forth. if, in these circumstances, an act of obedience should be put forth, it would be an event without a cause, and in opposition also to the action of a necessary cause. in these identical circumstances, the act of obedience is required, that is, an act is required of creatures, which, if it should be put forth, would be an event without a cause. has a god of truth and justice ever laid upon men such a requisition as that? how, i ask, can the doctrine of necessity be extricated from such a difficulty? doctrine of liberty--direct argument. ii. we will now, as a second general argument, consider the position, that the will is subject in its determinations to the relation of liberty, in opposition to that of necessity. here i would remark, that as the phenomena of the will must fall under one or the other of these relations, and as it has been shown, that they cannot fall under that of necessity, but one supposition remains. they must fall under that of liberty, as opposed to necessity. the intrinsic absurdity of supposing that a being, all of whose actions are necessary, is still accountable for such actions, is sufficient to overthrow the doctrine of necessity for ever. a few additional considerations are deemed requisite, in order to present the evidence in favor of the liberty of the will. 1. the first that i present is this. as soon as the doctrine of liberty, as above defined, is distinctly apprehended, it is spontaneously recognized by every mind, as the true, and only true exposition of the facts of its own consciousness pertaining to the phenomena of the will. this doctrine is simply an announcement of the spontaneous affirmations of the universal intelligence. this is the highest possible evidence of the truth of the doctrine. 2. the universal conviction of mankind, that their former course of conduct might have been different from what it was. i will venture to affirm, that there is not a person on earth, who has not this conviction resting upon his mind in respect to his own past life. it is important to analyze this conviction, in order to mark distinctly its bearing upon our present inquiries. this conviction is not the belief, that if our circumstances had been different, we might have acted differently from what we did. a man, for example, says to himself--"at such a time, and in such circumstances, i determined upon a particular course of conduct. i might have determined upon a different and opposite course. why did i not?" these affirmations are not based upon the conviction, that, in different circumstances, we might have done differently. in all such affirmations we take into account nothing but the particular circumstances in which our determinations were formed. it is in view of these circumstances exclusively, that we affirm that our determinations might have been different from what they were. let the appeal be made to any individual whatever, whose mind is not at the time under the influence of any particular theory of the will. you say, that at such a time, and under such circumstances, you determined upon a particular course, that you might then have resolved upon a different and opposite course, and that you blame yourself for not having done so. is not this your real meaning? "if my circumstances had been different, i might have resolved upon a different course." no, he would reply. that is not my meaning. i was not thinking at all of a change of circumstances, when i made this affirmation. what i mean is, that in the circumstances in which i was, i might have done differently from what i did. this is the reason why i blame myself for not having done so. the same conviction, to wit: that without any change of circumstances our past course of life might have been different from what it was, rests upon every mind on earth in which the remembrance of the past dwells. now this universal conviction is totally false, if the doctrine of necessity is true. the doctrine of the liberty of the will must be true, or the universal intelligence is a perpetual falsehood. 3. in favor of the doctrine of liberty, i next appeal to the direct, deliberate, and universal testimony of consciousness. this testimony is given in three ways. (1.) in the general conviction above referred to, that without any change of circumstances, our course of conduct might have been the opposite of what it was. nothing but a universal consciousness of the liberty of the will, can account for this conviction. (2.) whenever any object of choice is submitted to the mind, consciousness affirms, directly and positively, that, under these identical circumstances, either of two or more acts of will is equally possible. every man in such circumstances is as conscious of such power as he is of his own existence. in confirmation of these affirmations, let any one make the appeal to his own consciousness, when about to put forth any act of will. he will be just as conscious that either of two or more different determinations is, in the same circumstances, equally possible, as he is of any mental state whatever. (3.) in reference to all deliberate determinations of will in time past, the remembrance of them is attended with a consciousness the most positive, that, in the same identical circumstances, determinations precisely opposite might have been originated. let any one recall any such determination, and the consciousness of a power to have determined differently will be just as distinctly recalled as the act itself. he cannot be more sure that he acted at all, than he will be, that he might have acted [determined] differently. all these affirmations of consciousness are false, if the doctrine of liberty is not true. 4. a fundamental distinction which all mankind make between the phenomena of the will, and those of the other faculties, the sensibility for example, is a full confirmation of the doctrine of liberty, as a truth of universal consciousness. a man is taken out of a burning furnace, with his physical system greatly injured by the fire. as a consequence, he subsequently experiences much suffering and inconvenience. for the injury done him by the fire, and for the pain subsequently experienced, he never blames or reproaches himself. with self-reproach he never says, why, instead of being thus injured, did i not come out of the furnace as the three worthies did from that of nebuchadnezzar? why do i not now experience pleasure instead of pain, as a consequence of that injury? suppose, now, that his fall into the furnace was the result of a determination formed for the purpose of self-murder. for that determination, and for not having, in the same circumstances, determined differently, he will ever after reproach himself, as most guilty in the sight of god and man. how shall we account for the absence of self-reproach in the former instance, and for its presence in the latter? if the appeal should be made to the subject, his answer would be ready. in respect to the injury and pain, in the circumstances supposed, they could not but be experienced. such phenomena, therefore, can never be the occasion of self-reproach. in the condition in which the determination referred to was formed, a different and opposite resolution might have been originated. that particular determination, therefore, is the occasion of self-reproach. how shall we account for this distinction, which all mankind agree in making, between the phenomena of the sensibility on the one hand, and of the will on the other? but one supposition accounts for this fact, the universal consciousness, that the former are necessary, and the latter free that in the circumstances of their occurrence the former may not, and the latter may, be different from what they are. 5. on any other theory than that of liberty, the words, obligation, merit and demerit, &c., are words without meaning. a man is, we will suppose, by divine providence, placed in circumstances in which he cannot possibly but pursue one given course, or, which is the same thing, put forth given determinations. when it is said that, in these identical circumstances, he ought to pursue a different and opposite course, or to put forth different and opposite determinations, what conceivable meaning can we attach to the word _ought_, here? there is nothing, in the circumstances supposed, which the word, _ought_, or obligation, can represent. if we predicate merit or demerit of an individual thus circumstanced, we use words equally without meaning. obligation and moral desert, in such a case, rest upon "airy nothing," without a "local habitation or a name." on the other hand, if we suppose that the right and the wrong are at all times equally possible to an individual; that when he chooses the one, he might, in the same identical circumstances, choose the other; infinite meaning attaches to the words, ought, obligation, merit and demerit, when it is said that an individual thus circumstanced ought to do the right and avoid the wrong, and that he merits reward or punishment, when he does the one, or does not do the other. the ideas of obligation, merit and demerit, reward and punishment, and probation with reference to a state of moral retribution, are all chimeras, on any other supposition than that of the liberty of the will. with this doctrine, they all perfectly harmonize. 6. all moral government, all laws, human and divine, have their basis in the doctrine of liberty; and are the perfection of tyranny, on any other supposition. to place creatures in circumstances which necessitate a given course of conduct, and render every other course impossible, and then to require of them, under the heaviest sanctions, a different and opposite course--what can be tyranny if this is not? objection in bar of an appeal to consciousness. an objection which is brought by necessitarians, in perpetual bar of an appeal to consciousness, to determine the fact whether the phenomena of the will fall under the relation of liberty or necessity, here demands special attention. consciousness, it is said, simply affirms, that, in given circumstances, we do, in fact, put forth certain acts of will. but whether we can or cannot, in these circumstances, put forth other and opposite determinations, it does not and cannot make any affirmation at all. it does not, therefore, fall within the province of consciousness to determine whether the phenomena of the will are subject to the relation of liberty or necessity; and it is unphilosophical to appeal to that faculty to decide such a question. this objection, if valid, renders null and void much of what has been said upon this subject; and as it constitutes a stronghold of the necessitarian, it becomes us to examine it with great care. in reply, i remark, 1. that if this objection holds in respect to the phenomena of the will, it must hold equally in respect of those of the other faculties the intelligence, for example. we will, therefore, bring the objection to a test, by applying it to certain intellectual phenomena. we will take, as an example, the universal and necessary affirmation, that "it is impossible for the same thing, at the same time, to be and not to be." every one is conscious, in certain circumstances, of making this and other kindred affirmations. now, if the objection under consideration is valid, all that we should be conscious of is the fact, that, under the circumstances supposed, we do, in reality, make particular affirmations; while, in reference to the question, whether, in the same circumstances, we can or cannot make different and opposite affirmations, we should have no consciousness at all. now, i appeal to every man, whether, when he is conscious of making the affirmation, that it is impossible for the same thing, at the same time, to be and not to be, he is not equally conscious of the fact, that it is impossible for him to make the opposite affirmation whether, when he affirms that three and two make five, he is not conscious that it is impossible for him to affirm that three and two are six? in other words, when we are conscious of making certain intellectual affirmations, are we not equally conscious of an impossibility of making different and opposite affirmations? every man is just as conscious of the fact, that the phenomena of his intelligence fall under the relation of necessity, as he is of making any affirmations at all. if this is not so, we cannot know but that it is possible for us to affirm and believe perceived contradictions. all that we could say is, that, as a matter of fact, we do not do it. but whether we can or cannot do it, we can never know. do we not know, however, as absolutely as we know anything, that we _cannot_ affirm perceived contradictions? in other words, we do and can know absolutely, that our intelligence is subject to the law of necessity. we do know by consciousness, with absolute certainty, that the phenomena of the intelligence, and i may add, of the sensibility too, do fall under the relation of necessity. why may we not know, with equal certainty, whether the phenomena of the will do or do not fall under the relation of liberty? what then becomes of the objection under consideration? 2. but while we are conscious of the fact, that the intellect is under the law of necessity, we are equally conscious that will is under that of liberty. we make intellectual affirmations; such, for example, as the propositions, things equal to the same things are equal to one another, there can be no event without a cause, &c., with a consciousness of an utter impossibility of making different and opposite affirmations. we put forth acts of will with a consciousness equally distinct and absolute, of a possibility, in the same circumstances, of putting forth different and opposite determinations. even necessitarians admit and affirm the validity of the testimony of consciousness in the former instance. why should we doubt or deny it in the latter? 3. the question, whether consciousness can or cannot give us not only mental phenomena, but also the fundamental characteristics of such phenomena, cannot be determined by any pre-formed theory, in respect to what consciousness can or cannot affirm. if we wish to know to what a witness is able to testify, we must not first determine what he can or cannot say, and then refuse to hear anything from him, except in conformity to such decisions. we must first give him a full and attentive hearing, and then judge of his capabilities. so in respect to consciousness. if we wish to know what it does or does not, what it can or cannot affirm, we must let it give its full testimony, untrammelled by any pre-formed theories. now, when the appeal is thus made, we find, that, in the circumstances in which we do originate given determinations, it affirms distinctly and absolutely, that, in the same identical circumstances, we might originate different and opposite determinations. from what consciousness does affirm, we ought surely to determine the sphere of its legitimate affirmations. 4. the universal solicitude of necessitarians to take the question under consideration from the bar of consciousness is, in fact, a most decisive acknowledgment, on their part, that at that tribunal the cause will go against them. let us suppose that all men were as conscious that their will is subject to the law of necessity, as they are that their intelligence is. can we conceive that necessitarians would not be as solicitous to carry the question directly to the tribunal of consciousness, as they now are to take it from that tribunal? when all men are as conscious that their will is under the law of liberty, as they are that their other faculties are under the relation of necessity, no wonder that necessitarians anticipate the ruin of their cause, when the question is to be submitted to the bar of consciousness. no wonder that they so solemnly protest against an appeal to that tribunal. let the reader remember, however, that the moment the validity of the affirmations of consciousness is denied, in respect to any question in mental science, it becomes infinite folly in us to reason at all on the subject; a folly just as great as it would be for a natural philosopher to reason about colors, after denying the validity of all affirmations of the eye, in respect to the phenomena about which he is to reason. doctrine of liberty argued from the existence of the idea of liberty in all minds. iii. i will present a third general argument in favor of the doctrine of liberty; an argument, which, to my mind, is perfectly conclusive, but which differs somewhat from either of the forms of argumentation above presented. i argue the liberty of the will _from the existence of the idea of liberty in the human mind, in the form in which it is there found_. if the will is not free, the idea of liberty is wholly inapplicable to any phenomenon in existence whatever. yet this idea is in the mind. the action of the will in conformity to it is just as conceivable as its action in conformity to the idea of necessity. it remains with the necessitarian to account for the existence of this idea in the human mind, in consistency with his own theory. here the following considerations present themselves demanding special attention. 1. the idea of liberty, like that of necessity, is a _simple_, and not a _complex_ idea. this all will admit. 2. it could not have come into the mind from observation or reflection because all phenomena, external and internal, all the objects of observation and reflection, are, according to the doctrine of necessity, not free, but necessary. 3. it could not have originated, as _necessary_ ideas do, as the logical antecedents of the truths given by observation and reflection. for example, the idea of space, time, substance, and cause, are given in the intelligence, as the logical antecedents of the ideas of body, succession, phenomena, and events, all of which are truths derived from observation or reflection. now the idea of liberty, if the doctrine of necessity is true, cannot have arisen in this way because all the objects of observation and reflection are, according to this doctrine, necessary, and therefore their logical antecedents must be. how shall we account, in consistency with this theory, for the existence of this idea in the mind? it came not from perception external, nor internal, nor as the logical antecedent or consequent of any truth thus perceived. now if we admit the doctrine of liberty as a truth of universal consciousness, we can give a philosophical account of the existence of the idea of liberty in all minds. if we deny this doctrine, and consequently affirm that of necessity, we may safely challenge any theologian or philosopher to give such an account of the existence of that idea in the mind. for all ideas, in the mind, do and must come from observation or reflection, or as the logical antecedents or consequents of ideas thus obtained. we have here an event without a cause, if the doctrine of necessity is true. 4. all _simple_ ideas, with the exception of that of liberty, have realities within or around us, corresponding to them. if the doctrine of necessity is true, we have one solitary idea of this character, that of liberty, to which no reality corresponds. whence this solitary intruder in the human mind? the existence of this idea in the mind is proof demonstrative, that a reality corresponding to it does and must exist, and as this reality is found nowhere but in the will, there it must be found. almost all necessitarians are, in philosophy, the disciples of locke. with him, they maintain, that all ideas in the mind come from observation and reflection. yet they maintain that there is in the mind one idea, that of liberty, which never could thus have originated; because, according to their theory, no objects corresponding do or can exist, either as realities, or as the objects of observation or reflection. we have again an event without a cause, if the doctrine of liberty is not true. 5. the relation of the ideas of liberty and necessity to those of obligation, merit and demerit, &c., next demand our attention. if the doctrine of necessity is true, the idea of liberty is, as we have seen, a chimera. with it the idea of obligation can have no connection or alliance; but must rest exclusively upon that of necessity. now, how happens it, that no man holding the doctrine of liberty was ever known to deny that of obligation, or of merit and demerit? how happens it, that the validity of neither of these ideas has ever, in any age or nation, been denied, except on the avowed authority of the doctrine of necessity? sceptics of the class who deny moral obligation, are universally avowed necessitarians. we may safely challenge the world to produce a single exception to this statement. we may challenge the world to produce an individual in ancient or modern times who holds the doctrine of liberty, and denies moral obligation, or an individual who denies moral obligation on any other ground than that of necessity. now, how can this fact be accounted for, that the ideas of obligation, merit and demerit, &c., universally attach themselves to a chimera, the idea of liberty, and stand in such irreconcilable hostility to the only idea by which, as necessitarians will have it, their validity is affirmed? 6. finally, if the doctrine of necessity is true, the phenomena of the intelligence, sensibility, and the will, are given in consciousness as alike necessary. the idea of liberty, then, if it does exist in the mind, would not be likely to attach itself to either of these classes of phenomena; and if to either, it would be just as likely to attach itself to one class as to another. now, how shall we account for the fact, that this idea always attaches itself to one of these classes of phenomena, those of the will, and never to either of the others? how is it that all men agree in holding, that, in the circumstances of their occurrence, the phenomena of the intelligence and sensibility cannot but be what they are, while those of the will may be otherwise than they are? why, if this chimera, the idea of liberty, attaches itself to either of these classes, does it not sometimes attach itself to the phenomena of the intelligence or sensibility, as well as to those of the will? here, once again, we have an event without a cause, a distinction without a difference, if the doctrine of necessity is true. the facts before us can be accounted for only on the supposition, that the phenomena of the intelligence and sensibility are given in consciousness as necessary, while those of the will are given as free. the doctrine of liberty, the doctrine of the bible. iv. we will now, in the fourth place, raise the inquiry, an inquiry very appropriate in its place, and having an important bearing upon our present investigations, whether the doctrine of the will, above established, is the doctrine pre-supposed in the bible? the following considerations will enable us to give a decisive answer to this inquiry. 1. if the doctrine of the will here maintained is not, and consequently that of necessity is, the doctrine pre-supposed in the scriptures, then we have two revelations from god, the external and internal, in palpable contradiction to each other. as the _works_ of god (see rom. 1: 19, 20) are as real a revelation from him as the bible, so are the necessary affirmations of our intelligence. now, in our inner being, in the depths of our intelligence, the fact is perpetually revealed and affirmed--a fact which we cannot disbelieve, if we would--that we are not _necessary_ but _free_ agents. suppose that, in the external revelation, the scriptures, the fact is revealed and affirmed that we are _not free_ but _necessary_ agents. has not god himself affirmed in one revelation what he has denied in another? of what use can the internal revelation be, but to render us necessarily sceptical in respect to the external? has the most high given two such revelations as this? 2. in the scriptures, man is presented as the subject, and, of course, as possessing those powers which render him the proper subject of command and prohibition, of obligation, of merit and demerit, and consequently of reward and punishment. let us suppose that god has imparted to a being a certain constitution, and then placed him in a condition in which, in consequence of the necessary correlation between his constitution and circumstances, but one series of determinations are possible to him, and that series cannot but result. can we conceive it proper in the most high to prohibit that creature from pursuing the course which god himself has rendered it impossible for him not to pursue, and require him, under the heaviest sanctions, to pursue, under these identical circumstances, a different and opposite course--a course which the creator has rendered it impossible for him to pursue? is this the philosophy pre-supposed in the bible? does the bible imply a system of mental philosophy which renders the terms, obligation, merit and demerit, void of all conceivable meaning, and which lays no other foundation for moral retributions but injustice and tyranny? 3. let us now contemplate the doings of the great day revealed in the scriptures, in the light of these two opposite theories. let us suppose that, as the righteous and the wicked stand in distinct and separate masses before the eternal one, the most high says to the one class, "you, i myself placed in circumstances in which nothing but obedience was possible, and that you could not but render; and you, i placed in a condition in which nothing but disobedience was possible to you, and that you could not but perpetrate. in consequence of these distinct and opposite courses, each of which i myself rendered unavoidable, _you_ deserve and shall receive my eternal smiles; and _you_ as richly deserve and shall therefore endure my eternal frowns." what would be the response of an assembled universe to a division based upon such a principle? is this the principle on which the decisions of that day are based? it must be so, if the doctrine of liberty is not, and that of necessity is, the doctrine of the bible? 4. we will now contemplate another class of passages which have a bearing equally decisive upon our present inquiries. i refer to that class in which god expresses the deepest regret at the course which transgressors have pursued, and are still pursuing, and the most decisive unwillingness that they should pursue that course and perish. he takes a solemn oath, that he is not willing that they should take the course of disobedience and death, but that they should pursue a different and opposite course. god expresses no regret that they are in the _circumstances_ in which they are, but that in those circumstances they should take the path of disobedience, and not that of obedience. now, can we suppose, what must be true, if the doctrine of necessity is the doctrine pre-supposed in the bible, that god places his creatures in circumstances in which obedience is to them an impossibility, and in which they cannot but disobey, and then takes a solemn oath that he is not willing that they should disobey and perish, "but that they should turn from their evil way and live?" what is the meaning of the exclamation, "o that thou hadst hearkened to my commandment," if god himself had so conditioned the sinner as to render obedience an impossibility to him? is this the philosophy of the will pre-supposed in the bible? on the other hand, how perfectly in place are all the passages under consideration, on the supposition that the doctrine of liberty is the doctrine therein pre-supposed, and that consequently the obedience which god affirms himself desirous that sinners should render, and his regret that they do not render, is always possible to them! one of the seven pillars of the gospel is this very doctrine. take it from the bible, and we have "another gospel." 5. one other class of passages claims special attention here. in the scriptures, the most high expresses the greatest _astonishment_ that men should sin under the influences to which he has subjected them. he calls upon heaven and earth to unite with him in astonishment at the conduct of men under those influences. "hear, o heavens, and give ear, o earth," he exclaims, "for the lord hath spoken; i have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me." now, let us suppose, as the doctrine of necessity affirms, that god has placed sinners under influences under which they cannot but sin. what must we think of his conduct in calling upon the universe to unite with him in astonishment, that under these influences they should sin--that is, take the only course possible to them, the course which they cannot but take? with the same propriety, he might place a mass of water on an inclined plane, and then call upon heaven and earth to unite with him in astonishment at the downward flow of the fluid. is this the philosophy pre-supposed in the bible? sec. 3. views of necessitarians. we are now prepared for a consideration of certain miscellaneous questions which have an important bearing upon our present inquiries. necessity as held by necessitarians. i. the first inquiry that presents itself is this: do necessitarians hold the doctrine of necessity as defined in this chapter? do they really hold, in respect to every act of will, that, in the circumstances of its occurrence, that one act only is possible, and that cannot but arise? is this, for example, the doctrine of edwards? is it the doctrine really held by those who professedly agree with him? i argue that it is: 1. because they unanimously repudiate the doctrine of liberty as here defined. they must, therefore, hold that of necessity; inasmuch as no third relation is even conceivable or possible. if they deny that the phenomena of the will fall under either of these relations, and still call themselves necessitarians, they most hold to an inconceivable something, which themselves even do not understand and cannot define, and which has and can have no real existence. 2. edwards has confounded the phenomena of the will with those of the sensibility which are necessary in the sense here defined. he must, therefore, hold that the characteristics of the latter class belong to those of the former. 3. edwards represents the relation between motives and acts of will, as being the same in _kind_ as that which exists between _causes_ and _effects_ among external material substances. the former relation he designates by the words _moral necessity_; the latter, by that of natural, or _philosophical_, or _physical necessity_. yet he says himself, that the difference expressed by these words "does not lie so much in the nature of the _connection_ as in the two terms _connected_." the qualifying terms used, then, designate merely the nature of the antecedents and consequents, while the nature of the connection between them is, in all instances, the same, that of naked necessity. 4. edwards himself represents moral necessity as just as absolute as physical, or natural necessity. "moral necessity may be," he says, "as absolute as natural necessity. that is, the effect may be as perfectly connected with its moral cause as a natural necessary effect is with its natural cause." 5. necessitarians represent the relation between motives and acts of will as that of _cause_ and _effect_; and for this reason necessary. "if," says edwards, "every act of will is excited by some motive, then that motive is the _cause_ of that act of will." "and if volitions are properly the effects of their motives, then they are _necessarily_ connected with their motives." now as the relation of cause and effect is necessary, in the sense of the term necessity as above defined, edwards must hold, and design to teach, that all acts of will are necessary in this sense. 6. necessitarians represent the connection between motives and acts of will as being, in all instances, the same in kind as that which exists between volitions and external actions. "as external actions," says president day, "are directed by the will, so the will itself is directed by influence." now all admit, that the connection between volitions and external actions is necessary in this sense, that when we will such action it cannot but take place. no other act is, in the circumstances, possible. in the same sense, according to necessitarians, is every act of will necessarily connected with influence, or motives. we do necessitarians no wrong, therefore, when we impute to them the doctrine of necessity as here defined. in all cases of sin, they hold, that an individual is in circumstances in which none but sinful acts of will are possible, and these he cannot but put forth; and that in these identical circumstances the sinner is under obligation infinite to put forth different and opposite acts. the term, certainty, as used by necessitarians. ii. we are prepared for another important inquiry, to wit: whether the words, _certainty_, _moral certainty_, &c., as used by necessitarians, are identical in their meaning with that of necessity as above defined? the doctrine of necessity would never be received by the public at all, but for the language in which it is clothed, language which prevents the public seeing it as it is. at one time it is called moral, in distinction from natural necessity. at another, it is said to be nothing but certainty, or moral certainty, &c. now the question arises, what is this certainty? is it or is it not, real necessity, and nothing else? that it is, i argue, 1. from the fact, as shown above, that there can possibly be no certainty, which does not fall either under the relation of liberty or necessity as above defined. the certainty of necessitarians does not, according to their own showing, fall under the former relation: it must, therefore, fall under the latter. it must be naked necessity, and nothing else. 2. while they have defined the term necessity, and have not that of certainty, they use the latter term as avowedly synonymous with the former. the latter, therefore, must be explained by the former, and not the former by the latter. 3. the certainty which they hold is a certainty which avowedly excludes the possibility of different and opposite acts of will under the influences, or motives, under which particular acts are put forth. the certainty under consideration, therefore, is not necessity of a particular kind, a necessity consistent with liberty and moral obligation. it is the necessity above defined, in all its naked deformity. iii. we are now prepared for a distinct statement of the doctrine of ability, according to the necessitarian scheme. even the necessitarians, with very few exceptions, admit, that in the absence of all power to do right or wrong, we can be under no obligation to do the one or avoid the other. "a man," says pres. day, "is not responsible for remaining in his place if he has no power to move. he is not culpable for omitting to walk, if he has no strength to walk. he is not under obligation to do anything for which he has not what edwards calls _natural_ power." it is very important for us to understand the _nature_ of this ability, which lies at the foundation of moral obligation; to understand, i repeat, what this ability is, according to the theory under consideration. this ability, according to the doctrine of liberty, has been well stated by cousin, to wit: "the moment we take the resolution to do an action, we take it with a consciousness of being able to take a contrary resolution;" and by dr. dwight, who says of a man's sin, that it is "chosen by him unnecessarily, _while possessed of a power to choose otherwise_." the nature of this ability, according to the necessitarian scheme, has been stated with equal distinctness in the christian spectator. "if we take this term [ability or power] in the absolute sense, as including _all_ the antecedents to a given volition, there is plainly no such thing as power to the contrary; for in this sense of the term," as president day states, "a man never has power to do anything but what he actually performs." "in this comprehensive, though rather unusual sense of the word," says president day, "a man has not power to do anything which he does not do." the meaning of the above extracts cannot be mistaken. nor can any one deny that they contain a true exposition of the doctrine of necessity, to wit: that under the influences under which men do will, and consequently act, it is absolutely impossible for them to will and act differently from what they do. in what sense, then, have they power to will and act differently according to this doctrine? to this question president day has given a correct and definite answer. "the man who wills in a particular way, under the influence of particular feelings, might will differently under a different influence." now, what is the doctrine of ability, according to this scheme? a man, for example, commits an act of sin. he ought, in the stead of that act, to have put forth an act of obedience. without the power to render this obedience, as president day admits, there can be no obligation to do it. when the necessitarian says, that the creature, when he sins, has power to obey, he means, not that under the influence under which the act of sin is committed, the creature has power to obey; but that _under a different influence he might obey_. but mark, it is under the identical influence under which a man does sin, and under which, according to the doctrine of necessity, he cannot but sin, that he is required not to sin. now how can a man's ability, and obligation not to sin under a given influence, grow out of the fact, that, under a different influence, an influence under which he cannot but do right, he might not sin? this is all the ability and ground of obligation as far as ability, natural ability as it is called, is concerned, which the doctrine of necessity admits. a man is, by a power absolutely irresistible, placed in circumstances in which he cannot possibly but sin. in these circumstances, it is said, that he has _natural ability_ not to sin, and consequently ought not to do it. why? because, to his acting differently, no change in his nature or powers is required. these are "perfect and entire, wanting nothing." all that is required is, that his _circumstances_ be changed, and then he might not sin. "in what sense," asks president day, "is it true, that a man has power to will the contrary of what he actually wills? he has such power that, with a _sufficient inducement_, he will make an opposite choice." is not this the strangest idea of natural ability as constituting the foundation of obligation, of which the human mind ever tried to conceive? in illustration, let us suppose that a man, placed in the city of new york, cannot but sin; placed in that of boston, he cannot but be holy, and that the fact whether he is in the one or the other city depends upon the irresistible providence of god. he is placed in new york where he cannot but sin. he is told that he ought not to do it, and that he is highly guilty for not being perfectly holy. it is also asserted that he has all the powers of moral agency, all the ability requisite to lay the foundation for the highest conceivable obligation to be holy. what is the evidence? he asks. is it possible for me, in my present circumstances, to avoid sin? and in my present circumstances, you know, i cannot but be. i acknowledge, the necessitarian says, that under present influences, you cannot but sin, and that you cannot but be subject to these influences. still, i affirm, that you have all the powers of moral agency, all the natural ability requisite to obedience, and to the highest conceivable obligation to obedience. because, in the first place, even in new york, you could obey if you chose. you have, therefore, _natural_, though not _moral_, power to obey. but stop, friend, right here. when you say that i might obey, if i chose, i would ask, if choosing, as in the command, "choose life," is not the very thing required of me? when, therefore, you affirm that i might obey, if i chose, does it not mean, in reality, that i might choose, if i should choose? is not your natural ability this, that i might obey if i did obey?[2] i cannot deny, the necessitarian replies, that you have correctly stated this doctrine. permit me to proceed in argument, however. in the next place, all that you need in order to be holy as required, is a change, not of your _powers_, but of the _influences_ which control the _action_ of those powers. with no change in your constitution or powers, you need only to be placed in boston instead of new york, and there you cannot but be holy. is it not as clear as light, therefore, that you have now all the powers of moral agency, all the ability requisite to the highest conceivable obligation to be holy instead of sinful? i fully understand you, the sinner replies. but remember, that it is not in boston, where, as you acknowledge, i cannot be, that i am required not to sin; but here, in new york, where i cannot but be, and cannot possibly but sin. it is here, and not somewhere else, that i am required not to sin. how can the fact, that if i were in boston, where i could not but be holy, i might not sin, prove, that here, in new york, i have any ability, either natural or moral--am under any obligation whatever--not to sin? these are the difficulties which press upon me. how do you remove them according to your theory? i can give no other answer, the necessitarian replies, than that already given. if that does not silence for ever every excuse for sin in your mind, it is wholly owing to the perverseness of your heart, to its bitter hostility to the truth. i may safely appeal to the necessitarian himself, whether i have not here given an uncaricatured expose of his theory. sinful inclinations. iv. when pressed with such appalling difficulties as these, the necessitarian falls back, in self-justification, upon the _reason why_ the sinner cannot be holy. the only reason, it is said, why the sinner does not do as he ought is, not the want of power, but the strength of his sinful inclinations. shall he plead these in excuse for sin? by no means. they constitute the very essence of the sinner's guilt. let it be borne in mind, that, according to the doctrine of necessity, such is the connection between the nature, or constitution of the sinner's mind--a nature which god has given him, and the influences under which he is placed by divine providence--that none but these very inclinations are possible to him, and these cannot but exist. from these inclinations, sinful acts of will cannot but arise. how is the matter helped, as far as ability and obligation, on the part of the sinner, are concerned, by throwing the guilt back from acts of will upon inclinations equally necessary? necessarian doctrine of liberty. the real liberty of the will, according to the necessitarian scheme, next demands our attention. all admit that liberty is an essential condition of moral obligation. in what sense, then, is or is not, man free, according to the doctrine of necessity? "the plain and obvious meaning of the words freedom and liberty," says president edwards, "is power, opportunity, or advantage, that any one has to do as he pleases. or, in other words, his being free from hinderance or impediment in the way of doing or conducting in any respect as he wills. and the contrary to liberty, whatever name we please to call that by, is a person's being hindered, or unable to conduct as he will, or being necessitated to do otherwise." "the only idea, indeed, that we can form of free-agency, or of freedom of will," says abercrombie, "is, that it consists in a man's being able to do what he wills, or to abstain from doing what he will not. necessary agency, on the other hand, would consist in a man's being compelled, by a force from without, to do what he will not, or prevented from doing what he wills." with these definitions all necessitarians agree. this is all the liberty known, or conceivable, according to their theory. liberty does not consist in the power to choose in one or the other of two or more different and opposite directions, under the same influence. it is found wholly and exclusively in the connection between the act of will, considered as the antecedent, and the effort, external or internal, considered as the consequent. on this definition i remark, 1. that it presents the idea of liberty as distinguished from _servitude_, rather than liberty as distinguished from necessity. a man is free, in the first sense of the term, when no external restraints hinder the carrying out of the choice within. this, however, has nothing to do with liberty, as distinguished from necessity. 2. if this is the only sense in which a man is free, then, in the language of a very distinguished philosopher, "if you cut off a man's little finger, you thereby annihilate so much of his free agency;" because, in that case, you abridge so much his power to do as he chooses. is this liberty, the only liberty of man, a liberty which may be destroyed by chains, bolts, and bars? is this liberty as distinguished from necessity the liberty which lays the foundation of moral obligation? 3. if this is the only sense in which man is free, then dire necessity reigns throughout the entire domain of human agency. if all acts of will are the necessary consequents of the influences to which the mind is at the time subjected, much more must a like necessity exist between all acts of will and their consequents, external and internal. this has been already shown. the mind, then, with all its acts and states, exists in a chain of antecedents and consequents, causes and effects, linked together in every part and department by a dire necessity. this is all the liberty that this doctrine knows or allows us; a liberty to choose as influences necessitate us to choose, and to have such acts of will followed by certain necessary consequents, external and internal. in this scheme, the idea of liberty, which all admit must have a location somewhere, or obligation, is a chimera; this idea, i say, after "wandering through dry places, seeking rest and finding none," at length is driven to a location where it finds its grave, and not a living habitation. 4. it is to me a very strange thing, that liberty, as the foundation of moral obligation, should be located here. because that acts of will are followed by certain corresponding necessary consequents external and internal, therefore we are bound to put forth given acts of will, whatever the influences acting upon us may be, and however impossible it may be to put forth those acts under those influences! did ever a greater absurdity dance in the brain of a philosopher or theologian? 5. the public are entirely deceived by this definition, and because they are deceived as to the theory intended by it, do they admit it as true? suppose any man in the common walks of life were asked what he means, when he says, he can do as he pleases, act as he chooses, &c. does this express your meaning? when you will to walk, rather than sit, for example, no other volition is at the time possible, and this you must put forth, and that when you have put forth this volition, you cannot but walk. is this your idea, when you say, you can do as you please? no, he would say. that is not my idea at all. if that is true, man is not a free agent at all. what men in general really mean when they say, they can do as they please, and are therefore free, is, that when they put forth a given act of will, and for this reason conduct in a given manner, they may in the same circumstances put forth different and opposite determinations, and consequently act in a different and opposite manner from what they do. vi. the argument of necessitarians in respect to the _practical tendencies_ of their doctrine demands a passing notice. all acts of the will, they say, are indeed necessary under the circumstances in which they occur; but then we should learn the practical lesson not to place ourselves in the circumstances where we shall be liable to act wrong. to this i reply: 1. that on the hypothesis before us, our being in the circumstances which originate a given choice, is as necessary as the choice itself. for i am in those circumstances either by an overruling providence over which i have no control, or by previous acts of the will rendered necessary by such providence. hence the difficulty remains in all its force. 2. the solution assumes the very principle denied, that is, that our being in circumstances which originate particular acts of choice is not necessary. else why tell an individual he is to blame for being in such circumstances, and not to place himself there again? ground which necessitarians are bound to take in respect to the doctrine of ability. vii. we are now fully prepared to state the ground which necessitarians of every school are bound to take in respect to the doctrine of ability. it is to deny that doctrine wholly, to take the open and broad ground, that, according to any appropriate signification of the words, it is absolutely impossible for men to will, and consequently to act, differently from what they do; that when they do wrong, they always do it, with the absolute impossibility of doing right; and that when they do right, there is always an equal impossibility of their doing wrong. if men have not power to _will_ differently from what they do, it is undeniably evident that they have no power whatever to act differently: because there is an absolutely necessary connection between volitions and their consequents, external actions. the doctrine of necessity takes away wholly all ability from the creature to will differently from what he does. it therefore totally annihilates his ability to _act_ differently. what, then, according to the theory of necessity, becomes of the doctrine of ability? it is annihilated. it is impossible for us to find for it a "local habitation or a name." as honest men, necessitarians are bound to proclaim the fact. they are bound to proclaim the doctrine, that, in requiring men to be holy, under influences under which they do sin, and cannot but sin (as it is true of all sinful acts according to their theory), god requires of them absolute impossibilities, and then dooms them to perdition for not performing such impossibilities. the subterfuge to which necessitarians resort here, will not avail them at all, to wit: that men are to blame for not doing right, because, they might do it if they chose. to will right is the thing, and the only thing really required of them. the above maxim therefore amounts, as we have already seen, to this: men are bound to do, that is, to will, what is right, because if they should will what is right, they would will what is right. doctrine of necessity, as regarded by necessitarians of different schools. viii. two schools divide the advocates of necessity. according to one class, god produces in men all their volitions and acts, both sinful and holy, by the direct exertion of his own omnipotence. without the divine agency, men, they hold, are wholly incapable of all volitions and actions of every kind. with it, none but those which god produces can arise, and these cannot but arise. this is the scheme of divine efficiency, as advocated by dr. emmons and others. according to the other school, god does not, in all instances, produce volitions and actions by his own direct agency, but by creating in creatures a certain nature or constitution, and then subjecting them to influences from which none but particular volitions and acts which they do put forth can result, and these must result. according to a large portion of this school, god, either by his own direct agency, or by sustaining their laws of natural generation, produces in men the peculiar nature which they do possess, and then imputes to them infinite guilt, not only for this nature, but for its necessary results, sinful feelings, volitions, and actions. such are these two schemes. in the two following particulars, they perfectly harmonize. 1. all acts of will, together with their effects, external and internal, in the circumstances of their occurrence, cannot but be what they are. 2. the ground of this necessity is the agency of god, in the one instance producing these effects directly and immediately, and in the other producing the same results, mediately, by giving existence to a constitution and influences from which such results cannot but arise. they differ only in respect to the _immediate_ ground of this necessity, the power of god, according to the former, producing the effects directly, and according to the latter, indirectly. according to both, all our actions sustain the same essential relation to the divine will, that of necessity. now while these two theories so perfectly harmonize, in all essential particulars, strange to tell, the advocates of one regard the other as involving the most monstrous absurdities conceivable. for god to produce, through the energies of his own omnipotence, human volitions, and then to impute infinite guilt to men for what he himself has produced in them, what a horrid sentiment that is, exclaims the advocate of constitutional depravity. for god to create in men a sinful nature, and then impute to them infinite guilt for what he has himself created, together with its unavoidable results, what horrid tyranny such a sentiment imputes to the most high, exclaims the advocate of divine efficiency, in his turn. the impartial, uncommitted spectator, on the other hand, perceives most distinctly the same identical absurdities in both these theories. he knows perfectly, that it can make no essential difference, whether god produces a result directly, or by giving existence to a constitution and influences from which it cannot but arise. if one theory involves injustice and tyranny, the other must involve the same. let me here add, that the reprobation with which each of the classes above named regards the sentiments of the other, is a sentence of reprobation passed (unconsciously to be sure) upon the doctrine of necessity itself which is common to both. for if this one element is taken out of either theory, there is nothing left to render it abhorrent to any mind. it is thus that necessitarians themselves, without exception, pass sentence of condemnation upon their own theory, by condemning it, in every system in which they meet with it except their own. there is not a man on earth, that has not in some form or other passed sentence of reprobation upon this system. let any man, whatever, contemplate any theory but the one he has himself adopted, any theory that involves this element, and he will instantly fasten upon this one feature as the characteristic which vitiates the whole theory, and renders it deserving of universal reprobation. it is thus that unsophisticated nature expresses her universal horror at a system which "binding nature fast in fate, enslaves the human will." unsophisticated nature abhors this doctrine infinitely more than she was ever conceived to abhor a vacuum. can a theory which the universal intelligence thus agrees in reprobating, as involving the most horrid absurdity and tyranny conceivable, be the only true one? chapter iv. extent and limits of the liberty of the will. while it is maintained, that, in the sense defined in the preceding chapter, the will is free, it is also affirmed that, in other respects, it is not free at all. it should be borne distinctly in mind, that, in the respects in which the will is subject to the law of liberty, its liberty is absolute. it is in no sense subject to the law of necessity. so far, also, as it is subject to the law of necessity, it is in no sense free. what then are the extent and limits of the liberty of the will? 1. in the absence of motives, the will cannot act at all. to suppose the opposite would involve a contradiction. it would suppose the action of the will in the direction of some object, in the absence of all objects towards which such action can be directed. 2. the will is not free in regard to what the motives presented shall be, in view of which its determinations shall be formed. motives exist wholly independent of the will. nor does it depend at all upon the will, what motives shall be presented for its election. it is free only in respect to the particular determinations it shall put forth, in reference to the motives actually presented. 3. whenever a motive, or object of choice, is presented to the mind, the will is necessitated, by the presentation of the object, to act in some direction. it must yield or refuse to yield to the motive. but such refusal is itself a positive act. so far, therefore, the will is wholly subject to the law of necessity. it is free, not in respect to whether it shall, or shall not, choose at all when a motive is presented; but in respect to _what_ it shall choose. i, for example, offer a merchant a certain sum, for a piece of goods. now while it is equally possible for him to receive or reject the offer, one or the other determination he _must_ form. in the first respect, he is wholly free. in the latter, he is not free in any sense whatever. the same holds true in respect to all objects of choice presented to the mind. motive necessitates the will to act in some direction; while, in all deliberate moral acts at least, it leaves either of two or more different and opposite determinations equally possible to the mind. 4. certain particular volitions may be rendered necessary by other, and what may be termed _general_, determinations. for example, a determination to pursue a particular course of conduct, may render necessary all particular volitions requisite to carry this general purpose into accomplishment. it renders them necessary in this sense, that if the former does exist, the latter must exist. a man, for example, determines to pass from boston to new york with all possible expedition. this determination remaining unchanged, all the particular volitions requisite to its accomplishment cannot but exist. the general and controlling determination, however, may, at any moment, be suspended. to perpetuate or suspend it, is always in the power of the will. 5. i will here state a conjecture, viz.: that there are in the primitive developments of mind, as well as in all primary acts of attention, certain necessary spontaneities of the will, as well as of other powers of the mind. is it not in consequence of such actions, that the mind becomes first conscious of the power of volition, and is it not now necessary for us under certain circumstances to give a certain degree of attention to phenomena which appear within and around us? my own convictions are, that such circumstances often do occur. nor is such a supposition inconsistent with the great principle maintained in this treatise. this principle is, that liberty and accountability, in other words, free, and moral agency, are co-extensive. 6. nor does liberty, as here defined, imply, that the mind, antecedently to all acts of will, shall be in a state of _indifference_, unimpelled by feeling, or the affirmations of the intelligence, more strongly in one direction than another. the will exists in a tri-unity with the intelligence and sensibility. its determinations may be in harmony with the sensibility, in opposition to intelligence, or with the intelligence in opposition to the sensibility. but while it follows either in distinction from the other, under the same identical influences, different and opposite determinations are equally possible. however the will may be influenced, whether its determinations are in the direction of the strongest impulse, or opposed to it, it never, in deliberate moral determination, puts forth particular acts, because, that in these circumstances, no others are possible. in instances comparatively few, can we suppose that the mind, antecedently to acts of will, is in a state of indifference, unimpelled in one direction in distinction from others, or equally impelled in the direction of different and opposite determinations. indifference is in no such sense an essential or material condition of liberty. how ever strongly the will may be impelled in the direction of particular determinations, it is still in the possession of the highest conceivable freedom, if it is not thereby _necessitated_ to act in one direction in distinction from all others. 7. i now refer to one other fixed law under the influence of which the will is always necessitated to act. it is the law of _habit_. action in any one direction always generates a tendency to subsequent action in the same direction under similar influences. this tendency may be increased, till it becomes so strong as to render action in the same direction in all future time really, although contingently, certain. the certainty thus granted will always be of such a nature as consists fully with the relation of liberty. it can never, while moral agency continues, come under the relation of necessity. still the certainty is real. thus the mind, by a continued course of well or ill doing, may generate such fixed habits, as to render subsequent action in the same direction perfectly certain, during the entire progress of its future being. every man, while conscious of freedom, should be fully aware of the existence of this law, and it should surely lead him to walk thoughtfully along the borders of "the undiscovered country," his location in which he is determining by the habits of thought, feeling, and action, he is now generating. strongest motive--reasoning in a circle. a singular instance of reasoning in a circle on the part of necessitarians, in respect to what they call the _strongest motive_, demands a passing notice here. one of their main arguments in support of their doctrine is based upon the assumption, that the action of the will is always in the direction of the strongest motive. when, however, we ask them, which is the strongest motive, their reply in reality is, that it is the motive in the direction of which the will does act. "the strength of a _motive_," says president day, "is not its prevailing, but the power by which it prevails. yet we may very properly _measure_ this power by the actual result." again, "we may measure the comparative strength of motives of different kinds, from the results to which they lead; just as we learn the power of different causes, from the effects which they produce:" that is, we are not to determine, _a priori_, nor by an appeal to consciousness, which of two or more motives presented is the strongest. we are to wait till the will does act, and then assume that the motive, in the direction of which it acts, is the strongest. from the action of the will in the direction of that particular motive, we are finally to infer the truth of the doctrine of necessity. the strongest motive, according to the above definition, is the motive to which the will does yield. the argument based upon the truism, that the will always acts in the direction of this motive, that is, the motive towards which it does act, the argument, i say, put into a logical form, would stand thus. if the action of the will is always in the direction of the strongest motive, that is, if it always follows the motive it does follow, it is governed by the law of necessity. its action is always in the direction of this motive, that is, it always follows the motive it does follow. the will is therefore governed by the law of necessity. how many philosophers and theologians have become "rooted and grounded" in the belief of this doctrine, under the influence of this sophism, a sophism which, in the first instance, assumes the doctrine as true, and then moves round in a vicious circle to demonstrate its truth. chapter v. the greatest apparent good. section i. we now come to a consideration of one of the great questions bearing upon our personal investigations--the proposition maintained by necessitarians, as a chief pillar of their theory, that "_the will always is as the greatest apparent good_." phrase defined. the first inquiry which naturally arises here is what is the proper meaning of this proposition? in reply, i answer, that it must mean one of these three things. 1. that the will is always, in all its determinations, conformed to the dictates of the intelligence, choosing those things only which the intelligence affirms to be best. or, 2. that the determinations of the will are always in conformity to the impulse of the sensibility, that is, that its action is always in the direction of the strongest feeling. or, 3. in conformity to the dictates of the intelligence, and the impulse of the sensibility combined, that is that the will never acts at all, except when impelled by the intelligence and sensibility both in the same direction. meaning of this phrase according to edwards. the following passage leaves no room for doubt in respect to the meaning which edwards attaches to the phrase, "the greatest apparent good." "i have chosen," he says, "rather to express myself thus, that the will always is as the greatest apparent good, or as what appears most agreeable, than to say, that the will is _determined_ by the greatest apparent good, or by what seems most agreeable; because an appearing most agreeable or pleasing to the mind, and the mind's preferring and choosing, seem hardly to be properly and perfectly distinct." here undeniably, the words, choosing, preferring, "appearing most agreeable or pleasing," and "the greatest apparent good," are defined as identical in their meaning. hence in another place, he adds, "if strict propriety of speech be insisted on, it may more properly be said, that the _voluntary action_ which is the immediate consequence and fruit of the mind's volition and choice, is determined by that which appears most agreeable, than by the preference or choice itself." the reason is obvious. appearing most agreeable or pleasing, and preference or choice, had been defined as synonymous in their meaning. to say, therefore, that preference or choice is determined by "what appears most agreeable or pleasing," would be equivalent to the affirmation, that choice determines choice. "the act of volition itself," he adds, "is always determined by that in or about the mind's view of an object, which causes it to appear most agreeable," or what is by definition the same thing, causes it to be chosen. the phrases, "the greatest apparent good," and "appearing most agreeable or pleasing to the mind," and the words, choosing, preferring, &c., are therefore, according to edwards, identical in their meaning. the proposition, "the will is always as the greatest apparent good," really means nothing more nor less than this, that will always chooses as it chooses. the famous argument based upon this proposition in favor of the doctrine of necessity may be thus expressed. if the will always is as the greatest apparent good, that is, if the will always chooses as it chooses, it is governed by the law of necessity. the will is as the greatest apparent good, that is, it always chooses as it chooses. therefore it is governed by this law. by this very syllogism, multitudes have supposed that the doctrine of necessity has been established with all the distinctness and force of demonstration. the question now returns, is "the will always as the greatest apparent good," in either of the senses of the phrase as above defined? the will not always as the dictates of the intelligence. i. is the will then as the greatest apparent good in this sense, that all its determinations are in conformity to the dictates of the intelligence. does the will never harmonize with the sensibility in opposition to the intelligence? has no intelligent being, whether sinful or holy, ever done that which his intellect affirmed at the time, that he ought not to do, and that it was best for him not to do? i answer, 1. every man who has ever violated moral obligation knows, that he has followed the impulse of desire, in opposition to the dictates of his intelligence. what individual that has ever perpetrated such deeds has not said, and cannot say with truth, "i know the good, and approve it; yet follow the bad?" take a matter of fact. a spanish nobleman during the early progress of the reformation, became fully convinced, that the faith of the reformers was true, and his own false, and that his salvation depended upon his embracing the one and rejecting the other. yet martyrdom would be the result of such a change. while balancing this question, in the depths of his own mind, he trembled with the greatest agitation. his sovereign who was present, asked the cause. the reply was, "the martyr's crown is before me, and i have not christian fortitude enough to take it." he died a few weeks subsequent, without confessing the truth. did he obey his intelligence, or sensibility there? was not the conflict between the two, and did not the latter prevail? in john 12: 42, 43, we have a fact revealed, in which men were convinced of the truth, and yet, because "they loved the praise of men more than the praise of god," they did not confess, but denied the truth, a case therefore in which they followed the impulse of desire, in opposition to the dictates of the intelligence. the will then is not "always as the greatest apparent good," in this sense, that its action is always in the direction of the dictates of the intelligence. 2. if this is so, sin, in all instances, is a mere blunder, a necessary result of a necessary misjudgment of the intelligence? is it so? can the intelligence affirm that a state of moral impurity is better than a state of moral rectitude? how easy it would be, in every instance, to "convert a sinner from the error of his way," if all that is requisite is to carry his intellect in favor of truth and righteousness? who does not know, that the great difficulty lies in the enslavement of the will to a depraved sensibility? 3. if the will of all intelligents is always in harmony with the intellect, then i affirm that there is not, and never has been, any such thing as sin, or ill desert, in the universe. what more can be said of god, or of any being ever so pure, than that he has always done what his intellect affirmed to be best? what if the devil, and all creatures called sinners, had always done the same thing? where is the conceivable ground for the imputation of moral guilt to them? 4. if all acts of will are always in perfect harmony with the intelligence, and in this sense, "as the greatest apparent good," then, when the intellect affirms absolutely that there can be no ground of preference between two objects, there can be no choice between them. but we are, in fact, putting forth every day just such acts of will, selecting one object in distinction from another, when the intellect affirms their perfect equality, or affirms absolutely, that there is and can be no perceived ground of preference between them. i receive a letter, i will suppose, from a friend, informing me that he has just taken from a bank two notes, perfectly new and of the same value, that one now lies in the east and the other in the west corner of his drawer, that i may have one and only one of them, the one that i shall name by return of mail, and that i must designate one or the other, or have neither. here are present to my intelligence two objects absolutely equal. their location is a matter of indifference, equally absolute. now if as the proposition "the will is _always_ as the greatest apparent good," affirms, i cannot select one object in distinction from another, without a perceived ground for such selection, i could not possibly, in the case supposed, say which bill i would have. yet i make the selection without the least conceivable embarrassment. i might mention numberless cases, of daily occurrence, of a nature precisely similar. every child that ever played at "odd or even," knows perfectly the possibility of selecting between objects which are, to the intelligence, absolutely equal. i will now select a case about which there can possibly be no mistake. space we know perfectly to be absolutely infinite. space in itself is in all parts alike. so must it appear to the mind of god. now when god determined to create the universe, he must have resolved to locate its centre in some one point of space in distinction from all others. at that moment, there was present to the divine intelligence an infinite number of points, all and each absolutely equally eligible. neither point could have been selected, because it was better than any other: for all were equal. so they must have appeared to god. now if the "will is always as the greatest apparent good," in the sense under consideration, god could not in this case make the selection, and consequently could not create the universe. he did make the selection, and did create. the will, therefore, is not, in this sense, "always as the greatest apparent good." the will not always as the strongest desire. ii. is the "will always as the greatest apparent good" in this sense, that it is always as the strongest desire, or as the strongest impulse of the sensibility? does the will never harmonize with the intelligence, in opposition to the sensibility, as well as with the sensibility in opposition to the intelligence? if this is not so, then-1. it would be difficult to define self-denial according to the ordinary acceptation of the term. what is self-denial but placing the will with the intelligence, in opposition to the sensibility? how often in moral reformations do we find almost nothing else but this, an inflexible purpose placed directly before an almost crushing and overwhelming tide of feeling and desire? 2. when the will is impelled in different directions, by conflicting feelings, it could not for a moment be in a state of indecision, unless we suppose these conflicting feelings to be absolutely equal in strength up to the moment of decision. who believes that? who believes that his feelings are in all instances in a state of perfect equilibrium up to the moment of fixed determination between two distinct and opposite courses? this _must_ be the case, if the action of the will is always as the strongest feeling, and in this sense as the "greatest apparent good." how can necessitarians meet this argument? will they pretend that, in all instances, up to the moment of decisive action, the feelings impelling the will in different directions are always absolutely equal in strength? this must be, if the will is always as the strongest feeling. 3. when the feelings are in a state of perfect equilibrium, there can possibly, on this supposition, be no choice at all. the feelings often are, and must be, in this state, even when we are necessitated to act in some direction. the case of the bank notes above referred to, presents an example of this kind. as the objects are in the mind's eye absolutely equal, to suppose that the feelings should, in such a case, impel the will more strongly in the direction of the one than the other, is to suppose an event without a cause, inasmuch as the sensibility is governed by the law of necessity. if a and b are to the intelligence, in all respects, absolutely equal, how can the sensibility impel the will towards a instead of b? what is an event without a cause, if this is not? contemplate the case in respect to the location of the universe above supposed. each point of space was equally present to god, and was in itself, and was perceived and affirmed to be, equally eligible with all the others. how could a stronger feeling arise in the direction of one point in distinction from others, unless we suppose that god's sensibility is not subject to the law of necessity, a position which none will assume, or that here was an event without a cause? when, therefore, god did select this one point in distinction from all the others, that determination could not have been either in the direction of what the intelligence affirmed to be best, nor of the strongest feeling. the proposition, therefore, that "the will _always_ is as the greatest apparent good," is in both the senses above defined demonstrably false. 4. of the truth of this every one is aware when he appeals to his own consciousness. in the amputation of a limb, for example, who does not know that if an individual, at the moment when the operation commences, should yield to the strongest feeling, he would refuse to endure it? he can pass through the scene, only by placing an inflexible purpose directly across the current of feeling. how often do we hear individuals affirm, "if i should follow my _feelings_, i should do this; if i should follow my _judgment_, i should do that." in all such instances, we have the direct testimony of consciousness, that the action of the will is not always in the direction of the strongest feeling: because its action is sometimes consciously in the direction of the intelligence, in opposition to such feelings; and at others, in the conscious presence of such feelings, the will remains, for periods longer or shorter, undecided in respect to the particular course which shall be pursued. the will not always as the intelligence and sensibility combined. iii. is not the will always as the greatest apparent good in this sense, that its determinations are always as the affirmations of the intelligence and the impulse of the sensibility combined? that it is not, i argue for two reasons. 1. if this was the case, when the intelligence and sensibility are opposed to each other--a fact of very frequent occurrence,--there could be no acts of will in either direction. the will must remain in a state of absolute inaction, till these belligerent powers settle their differences, and unite in impelling the will in some particular direction. but we know that the will can, and often does, act in the direction of the intelligence or sensibility, when the affirmations of one and the impulses of the other are in direct opposition to each other. 2. when both the intellect and sensibility, as in the cases above cited, are alike indifferent, there can be, on the present hypothesis, no acts of will whatever. under these identical circumstances, however, the will does act. the hypothesis, therefore, falls to the ground. i conclude, then, that the proposition, "the will is always as the greatest apparent good," is either a mere truism, having no bearing at all upon our present inquiries, or that it is false. in the discussion of the above propositions, the doctrine of liberty has received a full and distinct illustration. the action of the will is sometimes in the direction of the intelligence, in opposition to the sensibility, and sometimes in the direction of the sensibility, in opposition to the intelligence, and never in the direction of either, because it must be. sometimes it acts where the sensibility and intelligence both harmonize, or are alike indifferent. when also the will acts in the direction of the intelligence or sensibility, it is not necessitated to follow, in all instances, the highest affirmation, nor the strongest desire. sec. ii--miscllaneous topics. necessitarian argument. i. we are now prepared to appreciate the necessitarian argument, based upon the assumption, that "the will always is as the greatest apparent good." this assumption is the great pillar on which that doctrine rests. yet the whole argument based upon it is a perpetual reasoning in a circle. ask the necessitarian to give the grand argument in favor of his doctrine. his answer is, because "the will _always_ is as the greatest apparent good." cite now such facts as those stated above in contradiction of his assumption, and his answer is ready. there must be, in all such cases, some perceived or felt ground of preference, or there could be no act of will in the case. there must have been, for example, some point in space more eligible than any other for the location of the universe, and this must have been the reason why god selected the one he did. ask him why he makes this declaration? his reply is, because "the will is always as the greatest apparent good." thus this assumption becomes premise or conclusion, just as the exigence of the theory based upon it demands. nothing is so convenient and serviceable as such an assumption, when one has a very difficult and false position to sustain. but who does not see, that it is a most vicious reasoning in a circle? to assume the proposition, "the will always is as the greatest apparent good," in the first instance, as the basis of a universal theory, and then to assume the truth of that proposition as the basis of the explanation of particular facts, which contradict that theory, what is reasoning in a circle if this is not? no one has a right to assume this proposition as true at all, until he has first shown that it is affirmed by all the phenomena of the will. on its authority he has no right to explain a solitary phenomenon. to do it is not only to reason in a circle, but to beg the question at issue. motives cause acts of will, in what sense. ii. we are also prepared to notice another assumption of president edwards, which, if admitted in the sense in which he assumes it as true, necessitates the admission of the necessitarian scheme, to wit: that the determination of the will is always _caused_ by the motive present to the mind for putting forth that determination. "it is that motive," he says, "which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest which determines the will." again, "that every act of the will has some cause, and consequently (by what has been already proved) has a necessary connection with its cause, and so is necessary by a necessity of connection and consequence, is evident by this, that every act of will, whatsoever, is excited by some motive." "but if every act of the will is excited by some motive, then that motive is the cause of that act of the will." "and if volitions are properly the effects of their motives, then they are necessarily connected with their motives." if we grant the principle here assumed, the conclusion follows of necessity. but let us inquire in what sense motive and volition sustain to each other the relation of cause and effect. _the presence and action of one power causes the action of another, so far, and so far only, as it necessitates such action; and causes its action in a particular direction, so far only as it necessitates its action in that direction, in opposition to every other_. now the action of one power may cause the action of another, in one or both these ways. 1. it may necessitate its action, and necessitate it in one direction in opposition to any and every other. in this sense, fire causes the sensation of pain. it necessitates the action of the sensibility, and in that one direction. or, 2. one power may necessitate the _action_ of another power, but not necessitate its action in one direction in opposition to any or all others. we have seen, in a former chapter, that the motive causes the action of the will in this sense only, that it necessitates the will to act in some direction, but not in one direction in distinction from another. now the error of president edwards lies in confounding these two senses of the word _cause_. he assumes that when one power causes the action of another in any sense, it must in every sense. it is readily admitted, that in one sense the motive causes the action of the will. but when we ask for the reason or cause of any one particular choice in distinction from another, we find it, not in the motive, but in the power of willing itself. objection--particular volition, how accounted for. iii. we are also prepared to notice the great objection of necessitarians to the doctrine of liberty as here maintained. how, it is asked, shall we account, on this theory, for _particular_ volitions? the power to will only accounts for acts of will in _some_ direction, but not for one act in distinction from another. this distinction must be accounted for, or we have an event without a cause. to this argument i reply, 1. it assumes the position in debate, to wit: that there cannot be consequents which are not necessarily connected with particular antecedents, which antecedents necessitate these particular consequents in distinction from all others. 2. to account for any effect, all that can properly be required is, to assign the existence and operation of a cause adequate to the production of such effects. free-agency itself is such a cause in the case now under consideration. we have here given the existence and operation of a cause which must produce one of two effects, and is equally capable, under the circumstances, of producing either. such a cause accounts for the existence of such an effect, just as much as the assignment of an antecedent necessarily producing certain consequents, accounts for those consequents. 3. if, as this objection affirms, an act of will, when there is no perceived or felt reason for that act in distinction from every other, is equivalent to an event without a cause; then it would be as impossible for us to _conceive_ of the former as of the latter. we cannot even conceive of an event without a cause. but we can conceive of an act of will when no reason, but the power of willing, exists for that particular act in distinction from others. we cannot conceive of an event without a cause. but we _can_ conceive of the mind's selecting odd, for example, instead of even, without the intellect or sensibility impelling the will to that act in distinction from others. such act, therefore, is not equivalent to an event without a cause. the objection under consideration is consequently wholly baseless. facts like the above wrongly accounted for. iv. the manner in which necessitarians sometimes endeavor to account for acts of will in which a selection is made between objects perceived and felt to be perfectly equal, requires attention. suppose that a and b are before the mind. one or the other is to be selected, or no selection at all is to be made. these objects are present to the mind as perfectly equal. the intelligence and sensibility are in a state of entire equilibrium between them. now when one of these objects is selected in distinction from the other, this act of will is to be accounted for, it is said, by referring back to the determination to make the selection instead of not making it. the will does not choose between a and b, at all. the choice is between choosing and not choosing. but mark: to determine to select a or b is one thing. to select one in distinction from the other, is quite another. the former act does not determine the will towards either in distinction from the other. this last act remains to be accounted for. when we attempt to account for it, we cannot do it, by referring to the intelligence or sensibility for these are in a state of perfect equilibrium between the objects. we can account for it only by falling back upon the power of willing itself, and admitting that the will is free, and not subject to the law of necessity. choosing between objects known to be equal--how treated by necessitarians. v. the manner in which necessitarians treat facts of this kind, to wit, choosing between things perceived and felt to be equal, also demands a passing notice. such facts are of very little importance, one way or the other, they say, in mental science. it is the height of folly to appeal to them to determine questions of such moment as the doctrine of liberty and necessity. i answer: such facts are just as important in mental science, as the fall of a piece of gold and a feather, in an exhausted receiver, is in natural philosophy. the latter reveals with perfect clearness the great law of attraction in the material universe. the former reveals with equal conspicuousness the great law of liberty in the realm of mind. the necessitarian affirms, that no act of will is possible, only in the direction of the dictates of the intelligence, or of the strongest impulse of the sensibility. facts are adduced in which, from the necessity of the case, both faculties must be in a state of perfect equilibrium. neither can impel the will in one direction, in distinction from the other. in such circumstances, if the doctrine of necessity is true, no acts of will are possible. in precisely these circumstances acts of will do arise. the doctrine of necessity therefore is overthrown, and the truth of that liberty is demonstrated. so important are those facts which necessitarians affect to despise. true philosophy, it should be remembered, never looks contemptuously upon facts of any kind. palpable mistake. vi. we are prepared to notice a palpable mistake into which necessitarians have fallen in respect to the use which the advocates of the doctrine of liberty design to make of the fact, that the will can and does select between objects perceived and felt to be equal. "the reason why some metaphysical writers," says president day, "have laid so much stress upon this apparently insignificant point, is probably the _inference_ which they propose to draw from the position which they assume. if it be conceded that the mind decides one way or the other indifferently, when the motives on each side are perfectly equal, they infer that this may be the fact, in all _other_ cases, even though the motives to opposite choices may be ever so unequal. but on what ground is this conclusion warranted? if a man is entirely indifferent which of two barley-corns to take, does it follow that he will be indifferent whether to accept of a guinea or a farthing; whether to possess an estate or a trinket?" the advocates of the doctrine of liberty design to make, and do make, no such use of the facts under consideration, as is here attributed to them. they never argue that, because the will can select between a and b, when they are perceived and felt to be equal, therefore, when the will acts in one direction, in distinction from another, it is always, up to the moment of such action, impelled in different directions by feelings and judgments equally strong. what they do argue from such facts is, that the will is subject to the law of liberty and not to that of necessity. if the will is subject to the latter, then, when impelled in different directions by motives equally strong (as in the cases above cited), it could no more act in the direction of one in distinction from the other, than a heavy body can move east instead of west, when drawn in each direction by forces perfectly equal. if the will is subject to the law of necessity, then, in all instances of selection between objects known and felt to be equal, we have an event without a cause. even the necessitarians, many of them at least, dare not deny that, under these very circumstances, selection does take place. they must, therefore, abandon their theory, or admit the dogma, of events without causes. chapter vi. connection of the doctrine of liberty with the divine prescience. the argument on which necessitarians chiefly rely, against the doctrine of liberty, and in support of that of necessity, is based upon the divine prescience of human conduct. the argument runs thus: all acts of the will, however remote in the distant future, are foreknown to god. this fact necessitates the conclusion, that such acts are in themselves certain, and, consequently, not free, but necessary. either god cannot foreknow acts of will, or they are necessary. the reply to this argument has already been anticipated in the introduction. the divine prescience is not the truth to which the appeal should be made, to determine the philosophy of the will pre-supposed in the bible. this i argue, for the obvious reason, that of the _mode_, _nature_, and _degree_, of the divine prescience of human conduct we are profoundly ignorant. these we must know with perfect clearness, before we can affirm, with any certainty, whether this prescience is or is not consistent with the doctrine of liberty. the divine prescience is a truth of inspiration, and therefore a fact. the doctrine of liberty is, as we have seen, a truth of inspiration, and therefore a fact. it is also a fact, as affirmed by the universal consciousness of man. how do we know that these two facts are not perfectly consistent with each other? how do we know but that, if we understood the _mode_, to say nothing of the nature and degree of the divine prescience, we should not perceive with the utmost clearness, that this truth consists as perfectly with the doctrine of liberty, as with that of necessity. if god foresees events, he foreknows them as they are, and not as they are not. if they are free and not necessary, as free and not necessary he foresees them. having ascertained by consciousness that the acts of the will are free, and having, from reason and revelation, determined, that god foreknows such acts, the great truth stands revealed to our mind, that god does and can foreknow human conduct, and yet man in such conduct be free; and that the mode, nature, and degree, of the former are such as most perfectly to consist with the latter. i know with perfect distinctness, that i am now putting forth certain acts of will. with equal distinctness i know, that such acts are not necessary, but free. my present knowledge is perfectly consistent with present freedom. how do i know but that god's foreknowledge of future acts is equally consistent with the most perfect freedom of such acts. perhaps a better presentation of this whole subject cannot be found than in the following extract from jouffroy's "introduction to ethics." the extract, though somewhat lengthy, will well repay a most attentive perusal. danger in reasoning from the manner in which we foreknow events to that of divine prescience. "to begin, then, with a very simple remark: if we conceive that foreknowledge in the divine being acts as it does in us, we run the risk of forming a most incorrect notion of it, and consequently, of seeing a contradiction between it and liberty, that would disappear altogether had we a truer notion. let us consider that we have not the same faculty for foreseeing the future as we have of reviewing the past; and even in cases where we do anticipate it, it is by an induction from the past. this induction may amount either to certainty, or merely to probability. it will amount to certainty when we are perfectly acquainted with necessary causes, and their law of operation. the effects of such causes in given circumstances having been determined by experience, we can predict the return of similar effects under similar circumstances with entire certainty, so long at least as the present laws of nature remain in force. it is in this way that we foresee, in most cases, the physical occurrences, whose law of operation is known to us; and such foresight would extend much further, were it not for unexpected circumstances which come in to modify the result. this induction can never go beyond probability, however, when we consider the acts of free causes; and for the very reason that they are free, and that the effects which arise from such causes are not of necessary occurrence, and do not invariably follow the same antecedent circumstances. where the question is, then, as to the acts of any free cause, we are never able to foresee it with certainty, and induction is limited to conjectures of probability. such is the operation, and such are the limits of human foresight. our minds foresee the future by induction from the past; this foresight can never attain certainty except in the case of causes and effects connected by necessary dependence; when the effects of free causes are to be anticipated, as all such effects are contingent, our foresight must be merely conjecture." mistake respecting the divine prescience. "if, now, we attempt to attribute to the deity the same mode of foresight of which human beings are capable, it will follow, as a strict consequence, that, as god must know exactly and completely the laws to which all the necessary causes in nature are subject--laws which change only according to his will,--he can foresee with absolute certainty all events which will take place in future. the certain foresight of effects, therefore, which is to us possible only in particular cases, and which, even then, is always liable to the limitation that the actual laws of nature are not modified,--this foresight, which, even when most sure, is limited and contingent, must be complete and absolute certainty in god, supposing his foreknowledge to be of like kind with ours. but it is evident that, according to this hypothesis, the deity cannot foresee with certainty the volitions of free causes any more than we can; for, as his foresight is founded, as ours is, upon the knowledge of the laws which govern causes, and as the law of free causes is precisely this, that their volitions are not necessary, god cannot calculate, any more than a human being can, the influence of motives, which, in any given case, may act upon such causes. even his intelligence can lead no further than to conjectures, more probable, indeed, than ours, but never amounting to certainty. according to this hypothesis, we must, therefore, say either that god can foresee, certainly, the future volitions of men, and that man, therefore, is not a free being, or that man is free, and that god, therefore, cannot, any more than we can, foresee his volitions with certainty; and thus divine prescience and human free-will are brought into direct contradiction. but, gentlemen, why must there be this contradiction? merely because we suppose that god foresees the future in the same way in which we foresee it; that his foreknowledge operates like our own. now, is this, i ask, such an idea as we ought to form of divine prescience, or such an idea as even the partisans of this system, which i am opposing, form? have we any reason for thus imposing upon the deity the limitation of our own feebleness? i think not. unendowed as we are, with any faculty of foreseeing the future, it may be difficult for us to conceive of such a faculty in god. but yet can we not from analogy form such an idea? we have now two faculties of perception--of the past by memory, of the present by observation; can we not imagine a third to exist in god--the faculty of perceiving the future, as we perceive the past? what would be the consequence? this: that god, instead of conjecturing, by induction, the acts of human beings from the laws of the causes operating upon them, would see them simply as the results of the free determinations of the will. such perception of future acts no more implies the necessity of those actions, than the perception of similar acts in the past. to see that effects arise from certain causes is not to force causes to produce them; neither is it to compel these effects to follow. it matters not whether such a perception refers to the past, present, or future; it is merely a perception; and, therefore, far from producing the effect perceived, it even presupposes this effect already produced. i do not pretend that this vision of what is to be is an operation of which our minds easily conceive. it is difficult to form an image of what we have never experienced; but i do assert, that the power of seeing what no longer exists is full as remarkable as that of seeing what has as yet no being, and that the reason of our readily conceiving of the former is only the fact that we are endowed with such a power: to my reason, the mystery is the same. but whatever may or may not be in reality the mode of divine foreknowledge, or however exact may be the image which we attempt to form of it, it always, i say,--and this is the only point i am desirous of proving,--it always remains a matter of uncertainty, which cannot be removed, whether the divine foreknowledge is of a kind like our own, or not; and as, in the one case, there would not be the same contradiction that there is in the other, between our belief in divine foreknowledge and human freedom, it is proved true, i think, that no one has a right to assert the existence of such a contradiction, and the necessity that human reason should choose between them." singular inconsistency of necessitarians. there is no class of men who dwell with more frequency and apparent reverence, upon the truth, that "secret things belong to god," and those and those only, "that are revealed to us;" that "none by searching can find out god;" that "as the heavens are high above the earth, so are his ways above our ways, and his thoughts above our thoughts;" and that it is the height of presumption in us, to pretend to understand god's mode of knowing and acting. none are more ready to talk of mysteries in religion than they. yet, strange as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that their whole argument, drawn from the divine foreknowledge, against the doctrine of liberty, and in favor of that of necessity, is based entirely upon the assumption that they have found out and fully understand the _mode_ of the divine prescience of human conduct; that they have so measured and determined the "ways and thoughts" of god, that they _know_ that he cannot foresee any but _necessary_ events; that among many events, all in themselves equally possible, and none of them necessary in distinction from others, he cannot foreknow which, in fact, will arise. we may properly ask the necessitarian whence he obtained this knowledge, so vast and deep; whence he has thus "found out the almighty to perfection?" to me, the pretension to such knowledge appears more like presumption than that deep self-distrust and humiliation which becomes the finite in the presence of the infinite. this knowledge has not been obtained from revelation. god has never told us that he can foresee none but necessary events. whether he can or cannot foresee events free as well as necessary, is certainly one of the "secret things" which god has not revealed. if we admit ourselves ignorant of the _mode_ of god's fore-knowledge of future events (and who will dare deny the existence of such ignorance in his own case?), the entire argument of the necessitarian, based upon that fore-knowledge, in favor of his doctrine, falls to the ground at once. necessitarian objection to the above argument. to all that has been said above, the necessitarian brings an objection which he deems perfectly unanswerable. it is this: if actions are free in the sense maintained in this treatise, then in themselves they are uncertain. if they are still certainly known to god, they are both certain and uncertain, at the same time. true, i answer, but not in the same sense. as far as the _powers_ of the agent are concerned, the action may be uncertain, while god at the same time may know certainly how he will exert his powers. in reference merely to the _powers_ of the agent, the event is uncertain. in reference to the mind of god, who knows instinctively how he will exert these powers, the event is certain. chapter vii. bearing of the doctrine of liberty upon the purposes and agency of god, in respect to human conduct. all truth is in harmony with itself. every particular truth is, and must be, in harmony with every other truth. if the doctrine of necessity be assumed as true, we must take one view of the relation of god's purposes and agency in respect to the conduct of moral agents. if, on the other hand, we assume as true the doctrine of liberty, quite another and a different view, in respect to this whole subject, must be taken. in the remarks which i have to make upon this subject, i shall assume the truth of the doctrine of liberty, together with those of the perfect divine omniscience, wisdom, and benevolence. the question now arises, in the light of all these great truths, what relation do the divine purposes and agency sustain to human action? in what sense does god purpose, preordain, and bring to pass, the voluntary conduct of moral agents? to this question but one answer can be given, in the light of the truths before us. god purposes human action in this sense only: he determines himself to act in a given manner, because it is wisest and best for him to act in that manner, and in that manner only. he determines this, knowing how intelligent beings will act under the influence brought to bear upon them by the divine conduct. he purposes and brings about, or causes human action in this sense only, that in the counsels of eternity, he, in the exercise of infinite wisdom and goodness, preordains, and at the time appointed, gives existence to the _motives_ and _influences_ under which moral agents do act, and in the light of which they voluntarily determine their own character and conduct. conclusions from the above. gods purposes consistent with the liberty of creatures. 1. we perceive the perfect consistency of god's purposes and agency with human liberty. if the motives and influences in view of which men do act, do not destroy their free agency,--a fact which must be true from the nature of the will,--then god's purposes to give existence, and his agency in giving existence, to these motives and influences, cannot in any sense destroy, or interfere with such agency. this is a self-evident truth. senses in which god purposed moral good and evil. 2. we also perceive the senses in which god purposed the existence of moral good and evil, in the universe. he purposed the existence of the motives, in view of which he knew that a part of his subjects would render themselves holy, and a part would render themselves sinful. but when we contemplate all the holiness and consequent happiness which do exist, we then perceive the reason why god gave existence to these motives. the sin consequent, in the sense above explained, constitutes no part of the reason for their existence, but was always, in the divine mind, a reason against their existence; which reason, however, was overpowered by infinitely more important reasons on the other side. the good which results from creation and providence is the great and exclusive object of creation and providence. the evil, god always regretted, and would have prevented, if possible, i. e. if compatible with the existence of the best possible system. death of the incorrigible preordained but not willed. 3. we also perceive the perfect consistency of those scriptures which represent god as, on the whole, _purposing_ the death of incorrigible transgressors, and yet as not _willing_ it, but as willing the opposite. the purpose to destroy is based upon the foreseen incorrigibleness of the transgressor,--a purpose demanded by perfect wisdom and benevolence, in view of that foreseen incorrigibleness. the incorrigibleness itself, however, and the perdition consequent, are evils, the existence of which god never willed; but are the opposite of what he willed, are evils which a being of perfect wisdom and goodness never could, and never can will. it is with perfect consistency, therefore, that the scriptures represent god, in view of incorrigibleness foreseen, as purposing the death of the transgressor, and at the same time, in view of the fact that such incorrigibleness is the opposite of what he wills the creature to do, as affirming, that he is not "willing that any should perish, but that all should come to a knowledge of the truth." god not responsible for the death of the incorrigible. 4. we see, also, how it is, that, while god does that, and eternally purposed to do that, in view of which he eternally knew that certain of his creatures would for ever destroy themselves, none but themselves are in fault for such destruction. the reasons are these: (1.) god never did anything in view of which men ought to act thus, nor which did not lay them under obligations infinite, to act differently, and which was not best adapted to secure that end. (2.) their destruction constituted no part of the _object_ of god in creation and providence, the opposite of this being true. (3.) the great object of god in creation and providence was and is, to produce the greatest possible amount of holiness and consequent happiness, and to prevent, in every possible way consistent with this end, the existence of sin, and consequently of misery.--now if creatures perish under such an influence, they perish by their own fault. sin a mystery. 5. i have a single remark to make upon those phenomena of the will, in which evil is chosen instead of good, or sin instead of holiness. that all intelligent beings possess the power to make such a choice, is a fact affirmed by universal consciousness. but that any being, under any circumstances, should make such a choice, and that he should for ever refuse to return to the paths of virtue, notwithstanding his experience of the consequences of sin, is an abuse of human liberty, which must for ever remain an inexplicable mystery. when a being assigns the real reason in view of which right is chosen, we are always satisfied with such reason. but we are never satisfied with the reason for the opposite course. conclusion from the above. one conclusion forces itself upon us, from that view of the divine government which consists with the doctrine of liberty. the aspect of that government which results from this view of the subject commends itself to the reason and conscience of the intelligent universe. _mysteries_ we do and must find in it; but _absurdities_ and _contradictions_, never. under such a government, no being is condemned for what he cannot avoid, nor rewarded for what he could but do. while "god sits on no precarious throne, nor borrows leave to be," the destiny of the creature turns upon his own deserts, his own choice of good or evil. the elucidation of the principles of such a government "commends itself to every man's conscience in the sight of god." chapter viii. obligation predicable only of the will. section i. the will, as i have already said, exists in a trinity with the intelligence and sensibility. in respect to the operations of the different departments of our mental being, i lay down the two following propositions: 1. obligation, moral desert, &c., are directly predicable only of the action of the will. 2. for the operations of the other faculties we are accountable so far forth only as the existence and character of such operations depend upon the will. in other words, it is for voluntary acts and states only that we are accountable. this i argue because, 1. obligation, as we have seen, consists only with liberty. all the phenomena of the intelligence and sensibility, in the circumstances of their occurrence, are not free, but necessary. accountability, therefore, cannot be predicated of such phenomena. we may be, and are, accountable for such phenomena, so far forth as their existence and character depend upon the will: in other words, so far forth as they are voluntary, and not involuntary, states of mind. 2. the truth of the above proposition, and of that only, really corresponds with the universal conviction of the race. this conviction is expressed in two ways. (1.) when blame is affirmed of the operations of the intelligence or sensibility, it is invariably thus affirmed: "you have no right to _entertain_ such thoughts or sentiments. you have no right _indulge_ such feeling's." in other words, praise or blame is never directly predicated of these operations themselves, but of the action of the will relatively to them. (2.) all men agree, that the moral character of all actions, of all states of mind whatever; depends upon _intention_. in no point is there a more universal harmony among moral philosophers than in respect to this. but intention is undeniably a phenomenon of the will, and of that exclusively. we must therefore admit, that moral obligation is predicable of the will only, or deny the fundamental convictions of the race. 3. the truth of the above propositions is intuitively evident, the moment the mind apprehends their real import. a man, as he steps out of a warm room, amid the external frosts of winter, feels an involuntary chill over his whole system. we might with the same propriety attribute blame to him for such feelings, as for any other feelings, thoughts, or perceptions which exist alike independent of his will, and especially in opposition to its determinations. 4. if we suppose all the voluntary acts and states of a moral agent to be, and always to have been, in perfect conformity to moral rectitude, it is impossible for us to impute moral guilt to him for any feelings or thoughts which may have risen in his mind independently of his will. we can no more conceive him to have incurred ill desert, than we can conceive of the annihilation of space. we may safely put it to the consciousness of every man whether this is not the case. this renders demonstrably evident the truth, that moral obligation is predicable only of the will. 5. with the above perfectly harmonize the positive teachings of inspiration. for example. "lust, when it is _conceived_, bringeth forth sin." the involuntary feeling does not constitute the sin, but the action of the will in harmony with that feeling. 6. a single supposition will place this whole subject in a light perfectly conspicuous before the mind. we can readily conceive that the will, or voluntary states of the mind, are in perfect harmony with the moral law, while the sensibility, or involuntary states, are opposed to it. we can also with equal readiness make the opposite supposition, to wit, that the sensibility, or involuntary states, are in harmony with the law, while the determinations of the will are all opposed to it. what shall we think of these two states? let us suppose a case of no unfrequent occurrence, that the feelings, or involuntary state of the mind, are in perfect harmony with the law, while the action of this will, or the voluntary states, are in determined opposition to the law, the individual being inflexibly determined to quench such feelings, and act in opposition to them. is there any virtue at all in such a state of mind? who would dare to say that there is? is not the guilt of the individual aggravated in proportion to the depth and intensity of the feeling which he is endeavoring to suppress? now if, as all will admit, there is no virtue at all, when the states of the sensibility are in harmony with the law, and the determinations of the will, or voluntary states of the mind, are opposed to it, how can there be guilt when the will, or voluntary states, are in perfect harmony with the law, and the sensibility or involuntary states, opposed to it? this renders it demonstrably evident that obligation and moral desert of praise or blame are predicable only of the will, or voluntary states of mind. 7. we will make another supposition; one, if possible, still more to the point. the tiger, we well know, has received from his maker, either directly or through the laws of natural generation sustained by the most high, a ferocious nature. why do we not blame the animal for this nature? the answer, perhaps, would be, that he is not a rational being, and is therefore not responsible for anything. let us suppose, then, that with this nature, god had associated intelligence and free-will, such as man possesses. why should the animal now be held responsible for the bare existence of this nature, any more than in the first instance, when the effect, in both instances, exists, alike independent of his knowledge, choice, and agency? a greater absurdity than this never lay upon the brain of a theologian, that the mere existence of rationality renders the subject properly responsible for what god himself produces in connection with that rationality, and produces wholly independent of the knowledge, choice, and agency of that subject. let us suppose, further, that the animal under consideration, as soon as he becomes aware of the existence and tendencies of this nature, holds all its impulses in perfect subjection to the law of love, and never suffers them, in a single instance, to induce a voluntary act contrary to that law. is it in the power of the intelligence to affirm guilt of that creature? do we not necessarily affirm his virtue to be great in proportion to the strength of the propensity thus perfectly subjected to the moral law? the above illustration renders two conclusions demonstrably evident: 1. for the mere _existence_ of any constitutional propensity whatever, the creature is not and cannot be responsible. 2. when all the actions of the will, or voluntary power, are in perfect harmony with the moral law, and all the propensities are held in full subjection to that law, the creature stands perfect and complete in the discharge of his duty to god and man. for the involuntary and necessary actings of those propensities, he cannot be responsible. it is no part of my object to prove that men have not derived from their progenitors, propensities which impel and induce them to sin; but that, for the mere _existence_ of these propensities, together with their necessary involuntary action, they are not guilty. sec. ii. dogmas in theology. certain dogmas in theology connected with the subject above illustrated here claim our attention. men not responsible for the sin of their progenitors. i. the first that i notice is the position, that creatures are now held responsible, even as "deserving god's wrath and curse, not only in this life, but in that which is to come," not merely for their own voluntary acts of disobedience, nor for their involuntary exercises, but for the act of a progenitor, performed when they had no existence. if god holds creatures responsible for such an act, we may safely affirm that it is absolutely impossible for them to conceive of the justice of such a principle; and that god has so constituted them, as to render it impossible for them to form such a conception. can a being who is not a _moral_ agent sin? is not _existence_ necessary to moral agency? how then can creatures "sin _in_ and _through_ another" six thousand years before their own existence commenced? we cannot conceive of creatures as guilty for the involuntary and necessary exercises of their own minds. how can we conceive of them as guilty for the act of another being,--an act of which they had, and could have, no knowledge, choice, or agency whatever? how can intelligent beings hold such a dogma, and hold it as a revelation from him who has declared with an oath, that the "son shall not bear the iniquity of the father," but that "every man shall die for his own sins?" constitutional ill-desert. ii. the next dogma deserving attention is the position, that mankind derive from our first progenitor a corrupt nature, which renders obedience to the commands of god impossible, and disobedience necessary, and that for the mere _existence_ of this nature, men "deserve god's wrath and curse, not only in this world, but in that which is to come." if the above dogma is true, it is demonstrably evident, that this corrupt nature comes into existence without the knowledge, choice, or agency of the creature, who, for its existence, is pronounced deserving of, and "bound over to the wrath of god." equally evident is it, that this corrupt nature exists as the result of the direct agency of god. he proclaims himself the maker of "every soul of man." as its maker, he must have imparted to that soul the constitution or nature which it actually possesses. it does not help the matter at all, to say, that this nature is derived from our progenitor: for the laws of generation, by which this corrupt nature is derived from that progenitor, are sustained and continued by god himself. it is a truth of reason as well as of revelation, that, even in respect to plants, derived "by ordinary generation" from the seed of those previously existing, it is god who "giveth them a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed its own body." if this is true of plants, much more must it be so of the soul of man. if, then, the above dogma is true, man, in the first place, is held as deserving of eternal punishment for that which exists wholly independent of his knowledge, choice, or agency, in any sense, direct or indirect. he is also held responsible for the result, not of his own agency, but for that which results from the agency of god. on this dogma, i remark, 1. it is impossible for the intelligence to affirm, or even to conceive it to be true, that a creature deserves eternal punishment for that which exists wholly independent of his knowledge, choice, or agency; for that which results, not from his own agency, but from that of another. the intelligence can no more affirm the truth of such propositions, than it can conceive of an event without a cause. 2. this dogma is opposed to the intuitive convictions of the race. present the proposition to any mind, that, under the divine government, the creature is held responsible for his own voluntary acts and states of minds only, and such a principle "commends itself to every man's conscience in the sight of god." present the dogma, on the other hand, that for a nature which renders actual obedience impossible, a nature which exists as the exclusive result of the agency of god himself, independently of the knowledge, choice, or agency of the creature, such creature is justly "bound over to the wrath of god, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries, spiritual, temporal, and eternal," and there is not a conscience in the universe which will not reprobate with perfect horror such a principle. the intuitive convictions of the race are irreconcilably opposed to it. 3. if mankind, as this dogma affirms, have a nature from which voluntary acts of a given character necessarily result, to talk of real _growth_ or _confirmation_ in holiness or sin, is to use words without meaning. all that influence, or voluntary acts, can do in such a case, is to develope the nature already in existence. they can do nothing to confirm the soul in its tendencies, one way or the other. what should we think of the proposition, that a certain tree had formed and confirmed the habit of bearing particular kinds of fruits, when it commenced bearing, with the necessity of bearing this kind only, and with the absolute impossibility of bearing any other? so the soul, according to this dogma, commences action with the absolute impossibility of any but sinful acts, and with the equal necessity of putting forth sinful ones. now, necessity and impossibility know and can know no degrees. how then can a mind, thus constituted, generate and confirm the habit of sinning? what, on this supposition, is the meaning of the declaration, "how can ye, who are _accustomed_ to do evil, learn to do well?" all such declarations are without meaning, if this dogma is true. 4. if god imputes guilt to the creature, for the existence of the nature under consideration, he must have required the creature to prevent its existence. for it is a positive truth of reason and inspiration both, that as "sin is a transgression of the law;" that "where there is no law, there is no transgression;" and that "sin is not imputed where there is no law," that is, where nothing is required, no obligation does or can exist, and consequently no guilt is imputed. the existence of the nature under consideration, then, is not and cannot be sin to the creature, unless it is a transgression of the law; and it cannot be a transgression of the law, unless the law required the creature to prevent its existence, and prevent it when that existence was the exclusive result of god's agency, and when the creature could have no knowledge, choice, or agency, in respect to what god was to produce. can we conceive of a greater absurdity than that? god is about to produce a certain nature by his own creative act, or by sustaining the laws of natural generation. he imputes infinite guilt to the creature for not preventing the result of that act, and inducing a result precisely opposite, and that in the absence of all knowledge of what was required of him, and of the possibility of any agency in respect to it. is this a true exposition of the government of god? present impossibilities required. iii. the last dogma that i notice is the position, that the moral law demands of us, as sinners, not what is now possible to us on the ground of natural powers and proffered grace, but what would be possible, had we never sinned. it is admitted by all, that we have not now a capacity for that degree of virtue which would be possible to us, had we always developed our moral powers in harmony with the divine law. still it is maintained, that this degree of virtue, notwithstanding our present total incapacity to exercise it, is demanded of us. for not rendering it, we are justly bound over to the wrath and curse of god. in reply, i remark: 1. that this dogma, which is professedly founded on the express teachings of inspiration, has not even the shadow of a foundation in any direct or implied affirmation of the bible. i may safely challenge the world to adduce a single passage of holy writ, that either directly or indirectly asserts any such thing. 2. this dogma is opposed not only to the _spirit_, but to the _letter_ of the _law_. the law, addressing men, enfeebled as their powers now are, in consequence of sin previously committed, requires them to love god with all their "mind and strength," that is, not with the power they would have possessed, had they never sinned, but with the power they now actually possess. on what authority does any theologian affirm, when the law expressly makes one demand upon men, that it, in reality, makes another, and different demand? in such an assertion, is he not wise, not only _above_, but _against_ what is written? 3. this dogma is opposed to the express and positive teachings of inspiration. the scriptures expressly affirm, rom. xiii. 8, that every one that exercises love, "hath fulfilled the law," hath done all that the law requires of him. this would not be true, did the law require a degree of love not now practicable to the creature. again, in deut. x. 12, it is positively affirmed, that god requires nothing of his creatures but to "love him with all the heart and with all the soul," that is, with all the powers they actually possess. this could not be true, if the dogma under consideration is true. 4. if we conceive an individual to yield a voluntary conformity to moral obligations of every kind, to the full extent of his present capacities, it is impossible for us to conceive that he is not now doing all that he really ought to do. no person would ever think of exhorting him to do more, nor of charging him with guilt for not doing it. we may properly blame him for the past, but as far as the present is concerned, he stands guiltless in the eye of reason and revelation both. 5. let us suppose that an individual continues for fifty years in sin. he is then truly converted, and immediately after dies. all admit that he enters heaven in a state of perfect holiness. yet no one supposes that he now exercises, or has the capacity to exercise, as high a degree of holiness, as he would, had he spent those fifty years in obedience, instead of disobedience to god. this shows that even those who theoretically hold the dogma under consideration do not practically believe it themselves. the conclusion to which our inquiries lead us is this: holiness is a voluntary conformity to all perceivable obligation. sin is a similar violation of such obligation. nothing else is or can be holiness. nothing else is or can be sin. chapter ix. the standard by which the moral character of voluntary states of mind, or acts of will, should be determined. in the remarks which i have to make in elucidation of this subject, i shall, on the authority of evidence already presented, take two positions for granted: 1. moral obligation and moral desert are predicable only of acts of will. 2. it is only of those acts of will denominated _intentions_, and of course ultimate intentions, that obligation, merit and demerit, are predicable. in this last position, as i have already said, there is a universal agreement among moral philosophers. we may also safely assume the same as a first truth of the universal intelligence. the child, the philosopher, the peasant, men of all classes, ages, and conditions, agree in predicating obligation and moral desert of intention, and of ultimate intention only. by ultimate intention, i, of course, refer to those acts, choices, or determinations of the will, to which all other mental determinations are subordinate, and by which they are controlled. thus, when an individual chooses, on the one hand, the divine glory, and the highest good of universal being, as the end of his existence; or, on the other, his own personal gratification; and subordinates to one or the other of these acts of choice all the law of his being, here we find his ultimate intention. in this exclusively all mankind agree in finding the moral character of all mental acts and states. now an important question arises, by what _standard_ shall we judge of the moral character of intentions? of course, they are to be placed in the light of the two great precepts of the moral law by which we are required to love god with all our powers, and our neighbor as ourselves. but two distinct and opposite explanations have been given of the above precepts, presenting entirely different standards of moral judgment. according to one, the precept requiring us to love god with _all our heart and strength_, requires a certain degree of _intensity_ of intention and feeling. on no other condition, it is said, do we love god with _all_ the heart. according to the other explanation, the precept requiring us to love god with _all_ the heart, &c., means, that we devote our entire powers and interests to the glory of god and the good of his creatures, with the sincere intention to employ these powers and interests for the accomplishment of these objects in the _best possible manner_. when all our powers are under the exclusive control of such an intention as this, we then, it is affirmed, love god according to the letter and spirit of the above precept, "with all our heart, and with all our strength." sincerity, and not intensity, the true standard. my object now is to show, that this last is the right exposition, and presents the only true standard by which to judge of all moral acts and states of mind. this i argue from the following considerations. 1. if _intensity_ be fixed upon as the standard, no one can define it, so as to tell us what he means. the command requiring us to love with _all_ the heart, if understood as requiring a certain degree of intensity of intention, may mean the highest degree of tension of which our nature is susceptible. or it may mean the highest possible degree, consistent with our existence in this body; or the highest degree consistent with the most perfect health; or some inconceivable indefinable degree, nobody knows what. it cannot include all, and may and must mean some one of the above-named dogmas. yet no one would dare to tell us which. has god given, or does our own reason give us, a standard of moral judgment of which no one can form a conception, or give us a definition? 2. no one could practically apply this standard, if he could define it, as a test of moral action. the reason is obvious. no one, but omniscience, can possibly know what degree of tensity our nature is capable of; nor precisely what degree is compatible with life, or with the most perfect health. if intensity, then, is the standard by which we are required to determine definitely the character of moral actions, we are in reality required to fix definitely the value of an unknown quantity, to wit: moral action, by a standard of which we are, and of necessity must be, most profoundly ignorant. we are required to find the definite by means of the indefinite; the plain by means of the "palpable obscure." has god, or our own reason, placed us in such a predicament as this, in respect to the most momentous of all questions, the determination of our true moral character and deserts? 3. while the standard under consideration is, and must be, unknown to us, it is perpetually varying, and never fixed. the degree of intensity of mental effort of which we are capable at one moment, differs from that which is possible to us at another. the same holds equally of that which is compatible with life and health. can we believe that "the judge of all the earth" requires us to conform, and holds us responsible for not conforming to a standard located we cannot possibly know where, and which is always movable, and never for a moment remaining fixed? 4. the absurdity of attempting to act in conformity to this principle, in reference to particular duties, will show clearly that it cannot be the standard of moral obligations in any instance. suppose an individual becomes convinced that it is his duty, that is, that god requires him to walk or travel a given distance, or for a time to compose himself for the purpose of sleeping. now he must will with all his heart to perform the duty before him. what if he should judge himself bound to will to sleep, for example, and to will it with all possible intensity, or with as great an intensity as consists with his health? how long would it take him to compose himself to sleep in this manner? what if he should with all possible intensity will to walk? what if, when with all sincerity, he had intended to perform, in the best manner, the duty devolved upon him, he should inquire whether the intention possessed the requisite intensity? it would be just as rational to apply this standard in the instances under consideration, as in any other. 5. that _sincerity_, and not intensity of intention, presents the true standard of moral judgment, is evident from the fact, that the former commends itself to every man's conscience as perfectly intelligible, of ready definition in itself, and of consequently ready application, in determining the character and moral desert of all moral actions. we can readily conceive what it is to yield all our powers and interests to the will of god, and to do it with the sincere intention of employing them in the wisest and best manner for the accomplishment of the highest good. we can conceive, too, what it is to employ our powers and interests under the control of such an intention. we can also perceive with perfect distinctness our obligation to live and act under the supreme control of such an intention. if we are bound to yield to god at all, we are bound to yield our entire being to his supreme control. if we are bound to will and employ our powers and resources to produce any good at all, we are bound to will and aim to produce the highest good. this principle also is equally applicable in, determining the character and deserts of all moral actions. every honest mind can readily determine the fact, whether it is or is not acting under the supreme control of the intention under consideration. if we adopt this principle, as expressing the meaning of the command requiring us to love with _all_ the heart, perfect sunlight rests upon the divine law. if we adopt any other standard, perfect midnight hangs over that law. 6. if we conceive a moral agent really to live and act in full harmony with the intention under consideration, it is impossible for us to conceive, or affirm, that he has not done his entire duty. what more ought a moral agent to intend than the highest good he can accomplish? should it be said, that he ought to intend this with a certain degree of intensity, the reply is, that sincerity implies an intention to will and act, at all times, with that degree of intensity best adapted to the end to be accomplished. what more can properly or wisely be demanded? is not this loving with all the heart? 7. on this principle, a much greater degree of intensity, and consequent energy of action, will be secured, than on the other principle. nothing tends more effectually to palsy the energies of the mind, than the attempt always to act with the greatest intensity. it is precisely like the attempt of some orators, to speak, on all subjects alike, with the greatest possible pathos and sublimity. on the other hand, let an individual throw his whole being under the control of the grand principle of doing all the good he can, and his powers will energize with the greatest freedom, intensity, and effect. if, therefore, the standard of moral obligation and moral desert has been wisely fixed, sincerity, and nothing else, is that standard. 8. i remark, once more, that sincerity is the standard fixed in the scriptures of truth. in jer. iii. 16, the jews are accused of not "turning to the lord with _the whole heart_, but feignedly," that is, with insincerity. if they had turned sincerely, they would, according to this passage, have done it with the _whole heart_. the whole heart, then, according to the express teachings of the bible, is synonymous with sincerity and sincerity according to the above definition of the term. this is the true standard, according to revelation as well as reason. i have other arguments, equally conclusive as the above, to present, but these are sufficient. the importance of the subject, together with its decisive bearing upon the momentous question to be discussed in the next chapter, is my apology for dwelling thus long upon it. chapter x. intuitions, or moral acts, never of a mixed character; that is, partly right and partly wrong. we are now prepared to consider the question, whether each moral act, or exercise, is not always of a character purely unmixed? in other words, whether every such act, or intention, is not always perfectly right or perfectly wrong i would here be understood to speak of single acts, or intuitions, in distinction from a series, which continues through some definite period, as an hour or a day. such series of acts may, of course, be of a mixed character; that is, it may be made up of individual acts, some of which are right and some wrong. but the question is, can distinct, opposite, and contradictory elements, such as sin and holiness, right and wrong, selfishness and benevolence, enter into one and the same act no one will pretend that an individual is virtuous at all, unless he _intends_ obedience to the moral law. the question is, can an individual intend to obey and to disobey the law, in one and the same act? on this question i remark, 1. that the principle established in the last chapter really settles the question. no one, to my knowledge, pretends, that, as far as sincerity is concerned, the same moral act can be of a mixed character. very few, if any, will be guilty of the folly of maintaining, that an individual can sincerely intend to obey and to disobey the law at one and the same time. when such act is contemplated in this point of light, it is almost universally admitted that it cannot be of a mixed character. but then another test is applied--that of intensity. it is conceivable, at least, it is said, that the intention might possess a higher degree of intensity than it does possess. it is, therefore, pronounced defective. on the same supposition, every moral act in existence might be pronounced defective. for we can, at least, conceive, that it might possess a higher degree of intensity. it has been abundantly established in the last chapter, however, that there is no such test of moral actions as this, a test authorized either by reason or revelation. sincerity is the only standard by which to determine the character and deserts of all moral acts and states. in the light of this standard, it is intuitively evident, that no one act can combine such contradictory and opposite elements as sin and holiness, right and wrong, an intention to obey and to disobey the moral law. 2. the opinions and reasonings of distinguished philosophers and theologians on the subject may be adduced in confirmation of the doctrine under consideration. let it be borne in mind, that if the same act embraces such contradictory and opposite elements as sin and holiness, it must be, in reality, opposed to itself, one element constituting the act, being in harmony with the law, and in opposition to the other element which is opposed to the law. now the remark of edwards upon this subject demands our special attention. "it is absurd," he says, "to suppose the same individual will to oppose itself in its present act; or the present choice to be opposite to and resisting present choice; as absurd as it is to talk of two contrary motions in the same moving body at the same time." does not the common sense of the race affirm the truth of this statement sin and holiness cannot enter into the same act, unless it embraces a serious intention to obey and not to obey the moral law at the same time. is not this, in the language of edwards, as "absurd as it is to talk of two contrary motions in the same moving body at the same time." equally conclusive is the argument of kant upon the same subject. having shown that mankind are divided into two classes, the morally good and the morally evil; that the distinguishing characteristic of the former is, that they have adopted the moral law as their maxim, that is, that it is their serious intention to comply with all the claims of the law; and of the latter, that they have not adopted the law as their maxim; he adds, "the sentiment of mankind is, therefore, never indifferent relatively to the law, and he never can be neither good nor evil." then follows the paragraph to which special attention is invited. "in like manner, mankind cannot be, in some points of character, morally good, while he is, at the same time, in others evil; for, is he in any point good, then the moral law is his maxim (that is, it is his serious intention to obey the law in the length and breadth of its claims); but is he likewise, at the same time, in some points bad, then quoad [as to] these, the moral law is not his maxim, (that is, in these particulars, it is his intention not to obey the law). but since the law is one and universal, and as it commands in one act of life, so in all, then the maxim referring to it would be, at the same time universal and particular, which is a contradiction;" (that is, it would be his intention to obey the law universally, and at the same time, not to obey it in certain particulars, one of the most palpable contradictions conceivable.) to my mind the above argument has all the force of demonstration. let it be borne in mind, that no man is morally good at all, unless it is his intention to obey the moral law universally. this being his intention, the law has no higher claims upon him. its full demands are, and must be, met in that intention. for what can the law require more, than that the voluntary powers shall be in full harmony with its demands, which is always true, when there is a sincere intention to obey the law universally. now, with this intention, there can be nothing in the individual morally evil; unless there is, at the same time, an intention not to obey the law in certain particulars; that is, not to obey it universally. a mixed moral act, or intention, therefore, is possible, only on this condition, that it shall embrace these two contradictory elements--a serious determination to obey the law universally, and a determination equally decisive, at the same time, to disobey it in certain particulars; that is, not to obey it universally. i leave it with the advocates of the doctrine of mixed moral action to dispose of this difficulty as they can. 3. if we could conceive of a moral act of a mixed character, the moral law could not recognize it as holy at all. it presents but one scale by which to determine the character of moral acts, the command requiring us to love with all the heart. it knows such acts only as conformed, or not conformed, to this command. the mixed action, if it could exist, would, in the light of the moral law, be placed among the not-conformed, just as much as those which are exclusively sinful. the moral law does not present two scales, according to one of which actions are classed as conformed or not-conformed, and according to the other, as partly conformed and partly not-conformed. such a scale as this last is unknown in the circle of revealed truth. the moral law presents us but one scale. those acts which are in full conformity to its demands, it puts down as holy. those not thus conformed, it puts down as sinful; as holy or sinful is the only light in which actions stand according to the law. 4. mixed actions, if they could exist, are as positively prohibited by the law, and must therefore be placed under the category of total disobedience, just as much as those which are in themselves entirely sinful. while the law requires us to love with _all_ the heart, it positively prohibits everything short of this. the individual, therefore, who puts forth an act of a mixed character, puts forth an act as totally and positively prohibited as the man who puts forth a totally sinful one. both alike must be placed under the category of total disobedience. a father requires his two sons to go to the distance of ten rods, and positively prohibits their stopping short of the distance required. one determines to go nine rods, and there to stop. the other determines not to move at all. one has put forth an act of total disobedience just as much as the other. so of all moral acts which stop short of loving with all the heart. 5. a moral act of a mixed character cannot possibly proceed from that regard to moral obligation which is an essential condition of the existence of any degree of virtue at all. virtue, in no degree, can exist, except from a sacred regard to moral obligation. the individual who thus regards moral obligation in one degree, will regard it equally in all degrees. the individual, therefore, who, from such regard, yields to the claims of the law at all, will and must conform to the full measure of its demands. he cannot be in voluntary opposition to any one demand of that law. a mixed moral act, then, cannot possibly proceed from that regard to moral obligation which is the essential condition of holiness in any degree. this leads me to remark, 6. that a moral act of a mixed character, if it could exist, could arise from none other than the most purely selfish and wicked intention conceivable. three positions, we will suppose, are before the mind--a state of perfect conformity to the law, a state of total disobedience, and a third state combining the elements of obedience and disobedience. by a voluntary act of moral election, an individual places himself in the last state, in distinction from each of the others. what must have been his intention in so doing? he cannot have acted from a regard to moral rectitude. in that case, he would have elected the state of total obedience. his intention must have been to secure, at the same time, the reward of holiness and the "pleasures of sin"--a most selfish and wicked state surely. the supposition of a moral act, that is, intention combining the elements of holiness and sin--is as great an absurdity as the supposition, that a circle has become a square, without losing any of its properties as a circle. 7. i remark again that the doctrine of mixed moral action is contradicted by the express teachings of inspiration. "whosoever cometh after me," says christ, "and forsaketh not _all_ that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." the bible knows men only as the disciples, or not disciples, of christ. all who really comply with the condition above named are his disciples. all others, however near their compliance, are not his disciples, any more than those who have not conformed in any degree. if an individual has really conformed to this condition, he has surely done his entire duty. he has loved with all his heart. what other meaning can we attach to the phrase, "forsaketh all that he hath?" all persons who have not complied with this principle are declared to be wholly without the circle of discipleship. what is this, but a positive assertion, that a moral action of a mixed character is an impossibility? again. "no man can serve two masters." "ye cannot serve god and mammon." let us suppose that we can put forth intentions of a mixed character--intentions partly sinful and partly holy. so far as they are in harmony with the law, we serve god. so far as they are not in harmony with the law, we serve mammon. now, if all our moral exercises can be of a mixed character, then it is true that, at every period of our lives, we can serve god and mammon. the service which we can render also to each, may be in every conceivable degree. we may render, for example, ninety-nine degrees of service to god and one to mammon, or ninety-nine to mammon and one to god. or our service may be equally divided between the two. can we conceive of a greater absurdity than this? what also is the meaning of such declarations as this, "no fountain can send forth both sweet water and bitter," if the heart of man may exercise intentions combining such elements as sin and holiness? declarations of a similar kind abound in the bible. they are surely without meaning, if the doctrine of mixed moral actions is true. 8. finally. it may be questioned whether the whole range of error presents a dogma of more pernicious tendency than the doctrine of mixed moral actions. it teaches moral agents that they may be selfish in all their moral exercises, and yet have enough of moral purity mingled with them to secure acceptance with the "judge of all the earth." a man who has adopted such a principle will almost never, whatever his course of life may be, seem to himself to be destitute of real virtue. he will always seem to himself to possess enough of it, to render his acceptance with god certain. the kind of virtue which can mingle itself with selfishness and sin in individual intentions or moral acts, may be possessed, in different degrees, by the worst men on earth. if this be assumed as real holiness--that holiness which will stand the ordeal of eternity, who will, who should conceive himself destitute of a title to heaven? here is the fatal rock on which myriads of minds are wrecked for ever. let it ever be borne in mind, that the same fountain cannot, at the same time and place, "send forth both sweet water and bitter." "ye cannot serve god and mammon." objections. two or three objections to the doctrine above established demand a passing notice here. an act of will may result from a variety of motives. 1. it is said that the mind may act under the influence of a great variety of motives at one and the same time. the same intention, therefore, may be the result of different and opposite motives, and as a consequence, combine the elements of good and evil. in reply, i remark, that when the will is in harmony with the moral law, it respects the good and rejects the bad, alike in _all_ the motives presented. the opposite is true when it is not in harmony with the law. the same regard or disregard for moral obligation which will induce an individual to reject the evil and choose the good, or to make an opposite choice, in respect to one motive, will induce the same in respect to all other motives present at the same time. a mixed moral act can no more result from a combination of motives, than different and opposite motions can result in the same body at the same time, from forces acting upon it from different directions. loving with greater intensity at one time than another. 2. it is said that we are conscious of loving our friends, and serving god, with greater strength and intensity at one time than at another. yet our love, in all such instances, is real. love, therefore, may be real, and yet be greatly defective--that is, it may be real, and embrace elements morally wrong. it is true, that love may exist in different degrees, as far as the action of the sensibility is concerned. it is not so, however, with love in the form of intention--intention in harmony with moral obligation, the only form of love demanded by the moral law. such intention, in view of the same degrees of light, and under the same identical influences, cannot possess different degrees of intensity. the will always yields, when it really does yield at all to moral obligation, with all the intensity it is, for the time being, capable of, or the nature of the case demands. momentary revolutions of character. 3. on this theory, it is said, an individual may become perfectly good and perfectly bad, for any indefinite number of instances, in any definite period of time. this consequence, to say nothing of what is likely to take place in fact, does, as far as possibility is concerned, follow from this theory. but let us contemplate it, for a moment, in the light of an example or two. an individual, from regard to moral obligation, maintains perfect integrity of character, up to a given period of time. then, under the influence of temptation, he tells a deliberate falsehood. did his previous integrity so fuse itself into that lie, as to make it partly good and partly bad?--as to make it anything else than a _total_ falsehood? did the prior goodness of david make his acts of adultery and murder partly good and partly bad? let the advocate of mixed moral action extract the elements of moral goodness from these acts if he can. he can just as well find these elements here, as in any other acts of disobedience to the moral law. "the righteousness of the righteous cannot save him" from total sinfulness, any more than from condemnation "in the day of his transgression." chapter xi. relation of the will to the intelligence and sensibility, in all acts or states, morally right or wrong. the will, sustaining the relation it does to the intelligence and sensibility, must yield itself to the control of one or the other of these departments of our nature. in all acts and states morally right, the will is in harmony with the intelligence, from respect to moral obligation or duty; and all the desires and propensities, all the impulses of the sensibility, are held in strict subordination. in all acts morally wrong, the will is controlled by the sensibility, irrespective of the dictates of the intelligence. impulse, and not a regard to the just, the right, the true and the good, is the law of its action. in all such cases, as the impulses which control the will are various, the external forms through which the internal acts, or intentions, will manifest themselves, will be equally diversified. yet the _spring_ of action is in all instances one and the same, impulse instead of a regard to duty. virtue does not consist in being controlled by _amiable_, instead of _dissocial_ and _malign_ impulses, and in a consequent exterior of a corresponding beauty and loveliness. it consists in a voluntary harmony of intention with the just, the right, the true and the good from a sacred respect to moral obligation, instead of being controlled by mere impulse of any kind whatever. on the principle above illustrated, i remark: those who are or are not truly virtuous, how distinguished. 1. that the real distinction between those who are truly virtuous, and those who are not, now becomes apparent. it does not consist, in all instances, in the mere exterior _form_ of action, but in the _spring_ or _intention_ from which all such action proceeds. in most persons, and in all, at different periods, the amiable and social propensities predominate over the dissocial and malign. hence much of the exterior will be characterized by much that is truly beautiful and lovely. in many, also, the impulsive power of conscience--that department of the sensibility which is correlated to the idea of right and wrong, and impels to obedience to the moral law--is strongly developed, and may consequently take its turn in controlling the will. in all such instances, there will be the external forms of real virtue. it is one thing, however, to put on the exterior of virtue from mere impulse, and quite another, to do the same thing from an internal respect and sacred regard for duty. how many individuals, who may be now wearing the fairest forms of virtue, will find within them, as soon as present impulses are supplanted by the strong action of others, in opposition to rectitude, no maxims of will, in harmony with the law of goodness, to resist and subject such impulses. their conduct is in conformity to the requirements of virtue, not from any internal intention to be in universal harmony with moral obligation, but simply because, for the time being, the strongest impulse happens to be in that direction. no individual, it should ever be kept in mind, makes any approach to real virtue, whatever impulses he may be controlled by, till, by a sealing act of moral election, the will is placed in harmony with the universal law of duty, and all external action of a moral character proceeds from this internal, all-controlling intention. here we find the broad and fundamental distinction between those who are truly virtuous, and those who are not. selfishness and benevolence. 2. we are also prepared to explain the real difference between _selfishness_ and _benevolence_. the latter expresses and comprehends all the forms of real virtue of every kind and degree. the former comprehends and expresses the forms of vice or sin. benevolence consists in the full harmony of the will or intention with the just, the right, the true, and the good, from a regard to moral obligation. selfishness consists in voluntary subjection to _impulse_, irrespective of such obligation. whenever self-gratification is the law of action, there is pure selfishness, whatever the character or direction of the impulse may be. selfishness has sometimes been very incorrectly defined, as a supreme regard to our own interest or happiness. if this is a correct definition, the drunkard is not selfish at all; for he sacrifices his present and future happiness, to gratify a beastly appetite, and destroys present peace in the act of self-gratification. if selfishness, however, consists in mere subjection to impulse, how supreme his selfishness at once appears! a mother who does not act from moral obligation, when under the strong influence of maternal affection, appears most distinguished in her assiduous care of her offspring. now let this affection be crossed by some plain question of duty, so that she must violate the latter, or subject the former, and how soon will selfishness manifest itself, in the triumph of impulse over duty! a gift is not more effectual in blinding the eyes, than natural affection uncontrolled by a regard to moral obligation. men are just as selfish, that is, as perfectly subject to the law of self-gratification, when under the influence of the social and amiable propensities, as when under that of the dissocial and malign, when, in both instances alike, impulse is the law of action. moral agents were made, and are required to be, social and amiable, from higher principles than mere impulse. common mistake. 3. i notice a mistake of fundamental importance into which many appear to have fallen, in judging of the moral character of individuals. as we have seen, when the will is wholly controlled by the sensibility irrespective of moral obligation, the impulsive department of conscience takes its turn, among the other propensities, in controlling the action of the voluntary power. now because, in all such instances, there are the exterior forms of virtue, together with an apparently sincere internal regard for the same, the presence of real virtue is consequently inferred. now before such a conclusion can be authorized, one question needs to be determined, the _spring_ from which such apparent virtues originate. they may arise from that regard to moral obligation which constitutes real virtue. or they may be the result purely of excited sensibility, which, in such instances happens to be in the direction of the forms of virtue. defective forms of virtue. 4. another very frequent mistake bearing upon moral character deserves a passing notice here. men sometimes manifest, and doubtless with a consciousness of inward sincerity, a very high regard for some one or more particular principles of virtue, while they manifest an equal disregard of all other principles. every real reform, for example, has its basis in some great principle of morality. men often advocate, with great zeal, such reforms, together with the principle on which they rest. they talk of virtue, when called to defend that principle, of a regard to moral obligation, together with the necessity of self-sacrifice at the shrine of duty, as if respect for universal rectitude commanded the entire powers of their being. yet but a slight observation will most clearly evince, that their regard for the right, the true, and the good, is wholly circumscribed by this one principle. still, such persons are very likely to regard themselves as virtuous in a very high degree. in reality, however, they have not made the first approach to real virtue. their respect for this one principle, together with its specific applications, has its spring in some other department of their nature, than a regard for what is right in itself. otherwise their respect for what is right, would be co-extensive with the entire range of moral obligation. sec. ii. test of conformity to moral principle. in preceding chapters, the great truth has been fully established, that the moral law addresses its commands and prohibitions to the will only, and that moral obligation is predicable only of the action of the voluntary power, other states being required, only as their existence and character are conditioned on the right exercise of that power. from this, it undeniably follows, that the moral law, in all the length and breadth of its requirements, finds its entire fulfilment within the sphere of the will. a question of great importance here presents itself: by what test shall we determine whether the will is, or is not, in full harmony with the law? in the investigation of this question, we may perhaps be thought to be intruding somewhat into the domain of moral philosophy. reasons of great importance, in the judgment of the writer, however, demand its introduction here. the moral law is presented to us through two comprehensive precepts. yet, a moment's reflection will convince us that both these precepts have their basis in one common principle, and are, in reality, the enunciation of that one principle. the identical reason why we are bound to love god with all the heart, requires us to love our neighbors as ourselves. so the subject is presented by our saviour himself. after speaking of the first and great commandment, he adds, "the second is like unto it," that is, it rests upon the same principle as the first. now the question is, what is this great principle, obedience to which implies a full discharge of all obligation, actual and conceivable; the principle which comprehends all other principles of the moral law, and of which each particular precept is only the enunciation of this one common principle in its endlessly diversified applications? this principle has been announced in forms somewhat different, by different philosophers. i will present two or three of these forms. the first that i notice is this. _it shall be the serious intention of all moral agents to esteem and treat all persons, interests, and objects according to their perceived intrinsic and relative importance, and out of respect for their intrinsic worth, or in obedience to the idea of duty, or moral obligation._ every one will readily apprehend, that the above is a correct enunciation of the principle under consideration. it expresses the fundamental reason why obedience to each and every moral principle is binding upon us. the reason and only reason why we are bound to love god with _all the heart_, is the intrinsic and relative importance of the object presented to the mind in the contemplation of the infinite and perfect. the reason why we are bound to love our neighbor as ourselves, is the fact, that his rights and interests are apprehended, as of the same value and sacredness as our own. in the intention under consideration, all obligation, actual and conceivable, is really met. god will occupy his appropriate place in the heart, and the creature his. no real right or interest will be dis-esteemed, and each will intentionally command that attention and regard which its intrinsic and relative importance demands. every moral agent is under obligation infinite ever to be under the supreme control of such an intention, and no such agent can be under obligation to be or to do anything more than this. the same principle has been announced in a form somewhat different by kant, to wit: "so act that thy maxim of will (intention) might become law in a system of universal moral obligation"--that is, let your controlling intention be always such, that all intelligents may properly be required ever to be under the supreme control of the same intention. by cousin, the same principle is thus announced: "the moral principle being universal, the sign, the external type by which a resolution may be recognized as conformed to this principle, is the impossibility of not erecting the immediate motive (intention) of the particular act or resolution, into a maxim of universal legislation"--that is, we cannot but affirm that every moral agent in existence is bound to act from the same motive or intention. it will readily be perceived, that each of these forms is really identical with that above announced and illustrated. it is only when we are conscious of the supreme control of the intention, to esteem and treat all persons and interests according to their intrinsic and relative importance, from respect to the idea of duty, that, in conformity with the principle as announced by kant, our maxim of will might become law in a system of universal legislation. when we are conscious of the control of such an intention, it is impossible for us not to affirm, according to the principle, as announced by cousin, that all intelligents are bound always to be under the control of the same intention. two or three suggestions will close what i have to say on this point. common mistake. 1. we notice the fundamental mistake of many philosophers and divines in treating of moral exercises, or states of mind. such exercises are very commonly represented as consisting wholly in excited states of the sensibility. thus dr. brown represents all moral exercises and states as consisting in emotions of a given character. one of the most distinguished professors of theology in this country laid down this proposition, as the basis of a course of lectures on moral philosophy, that "everything right or wrong in a moral agent, consists exclusively of right or wrong _feelings_"--feelings as distinguished from volitions as phenomena of will. now precisely the reverse of the above proposition is true, to wit: that _nothing_ right or wrong, in a moral agent, consists in any states of the sensibility irrespective of the action of the will. who would dare to say, when he has particular emotions, desires, or involuntary feelings, that the moral law has no further claim upon him, that all its demands are fully met in those feelings? who would dare to affirm, when he has any particular emotions, that all moral agents in existence are bound to have those identical feelings? if the demands of the moral law are fully met in any states of the sensibility--which would be true, if everything right or wrong, in moral agents, consists of right or wrong feelings--then all moral agents, at all times, and under all circumstances, are bound to have these same feelings. for what the law demands, at one time, it demands at all times. all the foundations of moral obligation are swept away by the theory under consideration. love as required by the moral law. 2. we are now prepared to state distinctly the _nature_ of that _love_ which is the "fulfilling of the law." it does not, as all admit, consist in the mere external act. nor does it consist, for reasons equally obvious and universally admitted, in any mere _convictions_ of the intelligence. for reasons above assigned, it does not consist in any states of the sensibility. no man, when he is conscious of such feelings, can affirm that all intelligents are bound, under all circumstances, to have the same feelings that he now has. this would be true, if the love under consideration consists of such feelings. but when, from, a regard to the idea of duty, the whole being is voluntarily consecrated to the promotion, in the highest degree, of universal good and when, in the pursuit of this end, there is a serious intention to esteem and treat all beings and interests according to their intrinsic and relative importance; _here_ is the love which is the fulfilling of the law. here is the intention by which all intelligents, in reference to all interests and objects, are, at all times, bound to be controlled, and which must be imposed, as universal law, upon such intelligents in every system of righteous moral legislation. here is the intention, in the exercise of which all obligation is fully met. here, consequently, is that love which is the fulfilling of the law. in a subsequent chapter, my design is to show that this is the view of the subject presented in the scriptures of truth. i now present it merely as a necessary truth of the universal intelligence. identity of character among all beings morally virtuous. 3. we now perceive clearly in what consists the real identity of moral character, in all intelligents of true moral rectitude. their occupations, forms of external deportment, and their internal convictions and feelings, may be endlessly diversified. yet one omnipresent, all-controlling intention, an intention which is ever one and identical, directs all their moral movements. it is the intention, in the promotion of the highest good of universal being, to esteem and treat all persons and interests according to their intrinsic and relative importance, from regard to moral obligation. thus moral virtue, in all intelligents possessed of it, is perfectly one and identical. in this sense only are all moral agents capable of perfect identity of character. they cannot all have, at all times, or perhaps at any time, precisely the same thoughts and feelings. but they can all have, at all times, one and the same intention. the omnipresent influence and control of the intention above illustrated, constitutes a perfect identity of character in god and all beings morally pure in existence. for this reason, the supreme control of this intention implies, in all moral agents alike, a perfect fulfilment of the law, a full discharge of all obligation of every kind. chapter xii. the element of the will in complex phenomena. section i. every perception, every judgment, every thought, which appears within the entire sphere of the intelligence; every sensation, every emotion, every desire, all the states of the sensibility, present objects for the action of the will in one direction or another. the sphere of the will's activity, therefore, is as extensive as the vast and almost boundless range of the intelligence and sensibility both. now while all the phenomena of these two last named faculties are, in themselves, wholly destitute of moral character, the action of the will, in the direction of such phenomena, constitutes _complex_ states of mind, which have a positive moral character. in all instances, the _moral_ and _voluntary_ elements are one and identical. as the distinction under consideration has been overlooked by the great mass of philosophers and theologians, and as very great errors have thereby arisen, not only in philosophy, but in theology and morals both, i will dwell at more length upon the subject than i otherwise should have done. my remarks will be confined to the action of the will in the direction of the _natural propensities_ and _religious affections_. action of the will in the direction of the natural propensities.--emotion, desire, and wish defined. 1. in respect to the action of the will in the direction of the natural propensities, such as the appetites, the love of esteem, of power, &c., i would remark, that the complex states thence resulting, are commonly explained as simple feelings or states of the sensibility. in presenting this subject in a proper light, the following explanations are deemed necessary. when any physical power operates upon any of the organs of sense, or when any thought is present in the intelligence, the state of the sensibility immediately and necessarily resulting is called a _sensation_ or _emotion_. when any feeling arises impelling the will to seek or avoid the object of that sensation or emotion, this impulsive state of the sensibility is called a _desire_. when the will concurs with the desire, a complex state of mind results, called a _wish_. wish is distinguished from desire in this, that in the former, the desire is cherished and perpetuated by the concurrence of the will with the desire. when the desire impels the will towards a prohibited object, the action of the will, in concurrence with the desire, constitutes a wish morally wrong. when the desire impels the will in a required direction, and the will, from a respect to the idea of duty, concurs with the desire, a wish arises which is morally virtuous. this principle holds true in regard to the action of all the propensities. the excitement of the propensity, as a state of the sensibility, constitutes desire--a feeling in itself destitute of all moral qualities. the action of the will in concurrence with, or opposition to, this feeling, constitutes a complex state of mind morally right or wrong. anger, pride, ambition, &c. anger, for example, as prohibited by the moral law, is not a mere _feeling_ of displeasure awakened by some injury, real or supposed, perpetrated by another. this state, on the other hand, consists in the surrendering of the will to the control of that feeling, and thus acting from malign impulse. pride also is not the mere _desire_ of esteem. it consists in voluntary subjection to that propensity, seeking esteem and admiration as the great end of existence. ambition, too, is not mere desire of power, but the voluntary surrendering of our being to the control of that propensity. the same, i repeat, holds true in respect to all the propensities. no mere excitement of the sensibility, irrespective of the action of the will, has any moral character. in the action of the will in respect to such states--action which must arise in some direction under such circumstances--moral guilt, or praiseworthiness, arises. i might here adduce other cases in illustration of the same principle; as, for example, the fact that intemperance in food and drink does not consist, as a moral act or state, in the mere strength of the appetite--that is, in the degree in which it is excited in the presence of its appropriate objects. nor does it consist in mere excess in the quantity partaken of--excess considered as an external act. it consists, on the other hand, in the surrendering of the voluntary power to the control of the appetite. the excess referred to is the _consequent_ and _index_ of such voluntary subjection. the above examples, however, are abundantly sufficient to illustrate the principle. religious affections. 2. we will now contemplate the element of the will in those complex phenomena denominated _religious affections_. the position which i here assume is this, that whatever in such affections is morally right and praiseworthy, that which is directly referred to, where such affections are required of us, is the voluntary element to be found in them. the voluntary element is directly required. other elements are required only on the ground that their existence is conditioned upon, and necessarily results from, that of the voluntary element. this must be admitted, or we must deny the position established in the last chapter, to wit: that all the requirements of the moral law are fully met in the right action of the will. scripture testimony. my object now is to show, that this is the light in which the subject is really presented in the scriptures. i will cite, as examples, the three cardinal virtues of christianity, repentance, love, and faith. the question is, are these virtues or affections, presented in the bible as mere convictions of the intelligence, or states of the sensibility? are they not, on the other hand, presented as voluntary states of mind, or as acts of will? are not the commands requiring them fully met in such acts? repentance. in regard to repentance, i would remark, that the term is scarcely used at all in the old testament. other terms and phrases are there employed to express the same thing; as for example, "turn ye;" "let the wicked forsake his way;" "let him turn unto the lord;" "he that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall find mercy," &c. in all such passages repentance is most clearly presented as consisting exclusively of voluntary acts or intentions. the commands requiring it are, therefore, fully met in such acts. in the new testament this virtue is distinguished from godly sorrow, the state of the sensibility which accompanies its exercise. as distinguished from the action of the sensibility, what can it be, but a voluntary state, as presented in the old testament? when the mind places itself in voluntary harmony with those convictions and feelings which attend a consciousness of sin as committed against god and man, this is the repentance recognized and required as such in the bible. it does not consist in the mere _conviction_ of sin; for then the worst of men, and even devils, would be truly repentant. nor does it consist in the states of the sensibility which attend such convictions; else repentance would be godly sorrow, from which the bible, as stated above, definitely distinguishes it. it must consist in a voluntary act, in which, in accordance with those convictions and feelings, the mind turns from sin to holiness, from selfishness to benevolence, from the paths of disobedience to the service of god. love. a single passage will distinctly set before us the nature of _love_ as required in the bible--that love which comprehends all other virtues, and the exercise of which is the "fulfilling of the law." "hereby," says the sacred writer, "we perceive the love of god." the phrase "_of god_" is not found in the original. the passage, as it there stands, reads thus: "by this we know _love;_" that is, we know the nature of the love which the scriptures require, when they affirm, that "love is the fulfilling of the law." what is that in which, according to the express teaching of inspiration, we learn the nature of this love? "because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." in the act of "laying down his life for us," we are here told, that the love required of us is embodied and revealed. what is the nature of this love? i answer, 1. it is not a conviction of the intelligence, nor any excited state of the sensibility. no such thing is here referred to. 2. it does and must consist exclusively in a voluntary act, or intention. "he laid down his life for us." what is this but a voluntary act? yet this is love, the "love which is the fulfilling of the law." 3. as an act of will, love must consist exclusively in a voluntary devotion of our entire powers to one end, the highest good of universal being, from a regard to the idea of duty. "he laid down his life for us." "we _ought_ to lay down our lives for the brethren." in each particular here presented, a universal principle is expressed and revealed. christ "laid down his life for us," because he was in a state of voluntary consecration to the good of universal being. the particular act was put forth, as a means to this end. in a voluntary consecration to the same end, and as a means to this end, it is declared, that "we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren." when, therefore, the scriptures require love of us, they do not demand the existence of particular convictions of the intelligence, nor certain states of the sensibility. they require the voluntary consecration of our entire being and interests to the great end of universal good. in this act of consecration, and in the employment of all our powers and interests, under the control of this one intention, we fulfil the law. we fully discharge all obligations, actual and conceivable, that are devolved upon us. the exercise of love, like that of repentance, is attended with particular convictions and feelings. these feelings are indirectly required in the precepts demanding love, and required, because when the latter does exist, the former will of course exist. of faith. but little need be said in explanation of the nature of faith. it is everywhere presented in the bible, as synonymous with _trust_, reposing confidence, committing our interests to god as to a "faithful creator." now trust is undeniably a voluntary state of mind. "i know," says paul, "in whom i have believed," that is, exercised faith, "that he is able to keep that which i have _committed_ to him against that day." here the act of committing to the care of another, which can be nothing else than an act of will, is presented as synonymous with faith. faith, then, does not consist in conviction, nor in any excited feelings. it is a voluntary act, _entrusting_ our interests to god as to a faithful creator. the principle above established must apply to all religious affections of every kind. sec. ii. general topics suggested by the truth illustrated in the preceding section. few truths are of greater practical moment than that illustrated in the preceding section. my object, now, is to apply it to the elucidation of certain important questions which require elucidation. convictions, feelings and external actions--why required, or prohibited. 1. we see why it is, that, while no mere external action, no state of the intelligence or sensibility, has any moral character in itself, irrespective of the action of the will, still such acts and states are specifically and formally required or prohibited in the bible. in such precepts the _effect_ is put for the _cause_. these acts and states are required, or prohibited, as the natural and necessary results of right or wrong intentions. the thing really referred to, in such commands and prohibitions, is not the acts or states specified, but the _cause_ of such acts and states, to wit: the right or wrong action of the will. suppose, that a certain loathsome disease of the body would necessarily result from certain intentions, or acts of will. now god might prohibit the intention which causes that disease, in either of two ways. he might specify the intention and directly prohibit that; or he might prohibit the same thing, in such a form as this: thou shalt not have this disease. every one will perceive that, in both prohibitions, the same thing, precisely, would be referred to and intended, to wit: the intention which sustains to the evil designed to be prevented, the relation of a cause. the same principle, precisely, holds true in respect to all external actions and states of the intelligence and sensibility, which are specifically required or prohibited. our responsibility in respect to such phenomena. 2. we also distinctly perceive the ground of our responsibility for the existence of external actions, and internal convictions and feelings. whatever effects, external or internal, necessarily result, and are or may be known to result, from the right or wrong action of the will, we may properly be held responsible for. now, all external actions and internal convictions and feelings which are required of or prohibited to us, sustain precisely this relation to the right or wrong action of the will. the intention being given, the effect follows as a consequence. for this reason we are held responsible for the effect. feelings how controlled by the will. 3. we now notice the _power of control_ which the will has over the feelings. (1.) in one respect its control is unlimited. it may yield itself to the control of the feelings, or wholly withhold its concurrence. (2.) in respect to all feelings, especially those which impel to violent or unlawful action, the will may exert a direct influence which will either greatly modify, or totally suppress the feeling. for example, when there is an inflexible purpose of will not to yield to angry feelings, if they should arise, and to suppress them, as soon as they appear, feelings of a violent character will not result to any great extent, whatever provocations the mind may be subject to. the same holds true of almost all feelings of every kind. whenever they appear, if they are directly and strongly willed down, they will either be greatly modified, or totally disappear. (3.) over the action and states of the sensibility the will may exert an indirect influence which is all-powerful. if, for example, the will is in full harmony with the infinite, the eternal, the just, the right, the true and the good, the intelligence will, of course, be occupied with "whatsoever things are true, honest, just, pure, lovely and of good report," and the sensibility, continually acted upon by such objects, will mirror forth, in pure emotions and desires, the pure thoughts of the intelligence, and the hallowed purposes of the will. the sensibility will be wholly isolated from all feelings gross and sensual. on the other hand, let the will be yielded to the control of impure and sensual impulse, and how gross and impure the thoughts and feelings will become. in yielding, or refusing to yield, to the supreme control of the law of goodness, the will really, though indirectly, determines the action of the intelligence and sensibility both. (4.) to present the whole subject in a proper light, a fixed law of the _affections_ demands special attention. a husband, for example, has pledged to his wife, not only kind intentions, but the exclusive control of those peculiar affections which constitute the basis of the marriage union. let him cherish a proper regard for the sacredness of that pledge, and the wife will so completely and exclusively fill and command her appropriate sphere in the affections, that, under no circumstances whatever, will there be a tendency towards any other individual. the same holds true of every department of the affections, not only in respect to those which connect us with the creature, but also with the creator. the affections the will may control by a fixed and changeless law. such being the relation of the will to the sensibility, while it is true that there is nothing right or wrong in any feelings, irrespective of the action of the will, still the presence of feelings impure and sensual, may be a certain indication of the wrong action of the voluntary power. in such a light their presence should always be regarded. relation of faith to other exercises morally right. 4. in the preceding section it has been fully shown, that love, repentance, faith, and all other religious exercises, are, in their fundamental and characteristic elements, phenomena of the will. we will now, for a few moments, contemplate the relations of these different exercises to one another, especially the relation of _faith_ to other exercises of a kindred character. while it is true, as has been demonstrated in a preceding chapter, that the will cannot at the same time put forth intentions of a contradictory character, such as sin and holiness, it is equally true, that it may simultaneously put forth acts of a homogeneous character. in view of our obligations to yield implicit obedience to god, we may purpose such obedience. in view of the fact, that, in the gospel, grace is proffered to perfect us in our obedience, at the same time that we purpose obedience with all the heart, we may exercise implicit trust, or faith for "grace whereby we may serve god acceptably with reverence and godly fear." now, such is our condition as sinners, that without a revelation of this grace, we should never purpose obedience in the first instance. without the continued influence of that grace, this purpose would not subsequently be perfected and perpetuated. the purpose is first formed in reliance upon divine grace; and but for this grace and consequent reliance, would never have been formed. in consequence of the influence of this grace relied upon, and received by faith, this same purpose is afterwards perfected and perpetuated. thus, we see, that the purpose of obedience is really conditioned for its existence and perpetuity upon the act of reliance upon divine grace. the same holds true of the relation of faith to all acts or intentions morally right or holy. one act of will, in itself perfectly pure, is really conditioned upon another in itself equally pure. this is the doctrine of moral purification, or sanctification by faith, a doctrine which is no less true, as a fact in philosophy, than as a revealed truth of inspiration. chapter xiii. influence of the will in intellectual judgments. men often voluntary in their opinions. it is an old maxim, that the will governs the understanding. it becomes a very important inquiry with us, to what extent, and in what sense, is this maxim true? it is undeniable, that, in many important respects, mankind are voluntary in their opinions and judgments, and therefore, responsible for them. we often hear the declaration, "you ought, or ought not, to entertain such and such opinions, to form such and such judgments." "you are bound to admit, or have no right to admit, such and such things as true." men often speak, also, of _pre-judging_ particular cases, and thus incurring guilt. a question may very properly be asked here, what are these opinions, judgments, admissions, pre-judgments, &c.? are they real affirmations of the intelligence, or are they exclusively phenomena of the will? error not from the intelligence, but the will. the proposition which i lay down is this, _that the intelligence, in its appropriate exercise, can seldom if ever, make wrong affirmations; that wrong opinions, admissions, pre-judgments, &c., are in most, if not all instances, nothing else than phenomena, or assumptions of will_. if the intelligence can make wrong affirmations, it is important to determine in what department of its action such affirmations may be found. primary faculties cannot err. let us first contemplate the action of the _primary_ intellectual faculties--sense, or the faculty of _external_ perception; consciousness, the faculty of _internal_ observation; and reason, the faculty which gives us _necessary_ and _universal truths_. the two former faculties give us phenomena external and internal. the latter gives us the logical antecedents of phenomena, thus perceived and affirmed, to wit: the ideas of substance, cause, space, time, &c. in the action of these faculties, surely, real error is impossible. so of the secondary faculties. let us now contemplate the action of the secondary faculties, the understanding and judgment. the former unites the elements given by the three primary faculties into _notions_ of particular objects. the latter classifies these notions according to qualities perceived. here, also, we find no place for wrong affirmations. the understanding can only combine the elements actually given by the primary faculties. the judgment can classify only according to qualities actually perceived. thus i might go over the entire range of the intelligence, and show, that seldom, if ever, in its appropriate action, it can make wrong affirmations. error, where found.--assumption. where then is the place for error, for wrong opinions, and pre-judgments? let us suppose, that a number of individuals are observing some object at a distance from them. no qualities are given but those common to a variety of objects, such as a man, horse, ox, &c. the perceptive faculty has deceived no one in this case. it has given nothing but real qualities. the understanding can only form a notion of it, as an object possessing these particular qualities. the judgment can only affirm, that the qualities perceived are common to different classes of objects, and consequently, that no affirmations can be made as to what class the object perceived does belong. the intelligence, therefore, makes no false affirmations. still the inquiry goes round. "what is it?" one answers, "it is a man." that is my opinion. another: "it is a horse." that is my judgment. another still says, "i differ from you all. it is an ox." that is my notion. now, what are these opinions, judgments, and notions? are they real affirmations of the intelligence? by no means. the intelligence cannot affirm at all, under such circumstances. they are nothing in reality, but mere _assumptions_ of the will. a vast majority of the so called opinions, beliefs, judgments, and notions among men, and all where _error_ is found, are nothing but assumptions of the will. assumptions are sometimes based upon real affirmations of the intelligence, and sometimes not. suppose the individuals above referred to approach the object, till qualities are given which are peculiar to the horse. the judgment at once classifies the object accordingly. as soon as this takes place, they all exclaim, "well, it is a horse." here are assumptions again, but assumptions based upon real affirmations of the intelligence. in the former instance we had assumptions based upon no such affirmations. false assumptions do not always imply moral guilt. much of the necessary business of life has no other basis than prudent or imprudent _guessing_. when the farmer, for example, casts any particular seed into the ground, it is only by balance of probabilities that he often determines, as far as he does or can determine, what is best; and not unfrequently is he necessitated to assume and act, when all probabilities are so perfectly balanced, that he can find no reasons at all for taking one course in distinction from another. yet no moral guilt is incurred when one is necessitated to act in some direction, and when all available light has been sought and employed to determine the direction which is best. as false assumptions, however, often involve very great moral guilt, it may be important to develope some of the distinguishing characteristics of assumptions of this class. 1. all assumptions involve moral guilt, which are in opposition to the real and positive affirmations of the intelligence. as the will may assume in the absence of such affirmations, and in the direction of them, so it may in opposition to them. when you have carried a man's intellect in favor of a given proposition, it is by no means certain that you have gained his assent to its truth. he may still assume, that all the evidence presented is inadequate, and consequently refuse to admit its truth. when the will thus divorces itself from the intelligence, guilt of no ordinary character is incurred. men often express their convictions of the guilt thus incurred, by saying to individuals, "you are bound to admit that fact or proposition as true. you are already convinced. what excuse have you for not yielding to that conviction?" yet individuals will often do fatal violence to their intellectual and moral nature, by holding on to assumptions, in reality known to be false. 2. assumptions involve moral guilt which are formed without availing ourselves of all the light within our reach as the basis of our assumptions. for us to assume any proposition, or statement, to be true or false, in the absence of affirmations of the intelligence, as the basis of such assumptions, when adequate light is available, involves the same criminality, as assumptions in opposition to the intelligence. hence we often have the expression in common life, "you had no right to form a judgment under such circumstances. you were bound, before doing it, to avail yourself of all the light within your reach." 3. _positive_ assumptions, without intellectual affirmations as their basis, equally positive, involve moral guilt of no ordinary character. as remarked above, we are often placed in circumstances in which we are necessitated to act in some direction, and to select some particular course without any perceived reasons in favor of that one course in distinction from another. now while _action_ is proper in such a condition, it is not proper to make a positive assumption that the course selected is the best. suppose, that all the facts before my mind bearing upon the character of a neighbor, are equally consistent with the possession, on his part, of a character either good or bad. i do violence to my intellectual and moral nature, if, under such circumstances, i make the assumption that his character is either the one or the other, and especially, that it is the latter instead of the former. how often do flagrant transgressions of moral rectitude occur in such instances! pre-judgments. a few remarks are deemed requisite on this topic. a pre-judgment is an assumption, that a proposition or statement is true or false, before the facts, bearing upon the case, have been heard. such assumptions are generally classed under the term prejudice. thus it is said of individuals, that they are prejudiced in favor or against certain persons, sentiments, or causes. the real meaning of such statements is, that individuals have made assumptions in one direction or another, prior to a hearing of the facts of the case, and irrespective of such facts. intellect not deceived in pre-judgments. it is commonly said, that such prejudices, or pre-judgments, blind the mind to facts of one class, and render it quick to discern those of the other, and thus lead to a real mis-direction of the intelligence. this i think is not a correct statement of the case. pre-judgments may, and often do, prevent all proper investigation of a subject. in this case, the intelligence is not deceived at all. in the absence of real data, it can make no positive affirmations whatever. so far also as pre-judgments direct attention from facts bearing upon one side of a question, and to those bearing upon the other, the intelligence is not thereby deceived. all that it can affirm is the true bearing of the facts actually presented. in respect to those not presented, and consequently in respect to the real merits of the whole case, it makes no affirmations. if an individual forms an opinion from a partial hearing, that opinion is a mere assumption of will, and nothing else. the mind how influenced by pre-judgments. but the manner in which pre-judgments chiefly affect the mind in the hearing of a cause, still remains to be stated. in such pre-judgments, or assumptions, an assumption of this kind is almost invariably included, to wit: that all facts of whatever character bearing upon one side of the question, are wholly indecisive, while all others bearing upon the other side are equally decisive. in pre-judging, individuals do not merely pre-judge the real merits of the case, but the character of all the facts bearing upon it. they enter upon the investigation of a given subject, with an inflexible determination to treat all the facts and arguments they shall meet with, according to previous assumptions. let the clearest light poured upon one side of the question, and the reply is, "after all, i am not convinced," while the most trivial circumstances conceivable bearing upon the other side, will be seized upon as perfectly decisive. in all this, we do not meet with the operations of a deceived intelligence, but of a "deceived heart," that is, of a depraved will, stubbornly bent upon verifying its own unauthorized, pre-formed assumptions. such assumptions can withstand any degree of evidence whatever. the intelligence did not give them existence, and it cannot annihilate them. they are exclusively creatures of will, and by an act of will, they must be dissolved, or they will remain proof against all the evidence which the tide of time can roll against them. influences which induce false assumptions. the influences which induce false and unauthorized assumptions, are found in the strong action of the sensibility, in the direction of the appetites, natural affections, and the different propensities, as the love of gain, ambition, party spirit, pride of character, of opinion, &c. when the will has long been habituated to act in the direction of a particular propensity, how difficult it is to induce the admission, or assumption, that action in that direction is wrong! the difficulty, in such cases, does not, in most instances, lie in convincing the intelligence, but in inducing the will to admit as true what the intelligence really affirms. cases in which we are apparently, though not really, misled by the intelligence. as there are cases of this kind, it is important to mark some of their characteristics. among these i cite the following: 1. the qualities of a particular object, actually perceived, as in the case above cited, may be common to a variety of classes which we know, and also to others which we do not know. on the perception of such qualities, the intelligence will suggest those classes only which we know, while the particular object perceived may belong to a class unknown. if, in such circumstances, a positive assumption, as to what class it does belong, is made, a wrong assumption must of necessity be made. the _intelligence_ in this case is not deceived. it places the will, however, in such a relation to the object, that if a positive assumption is made, it must necessarily be a wrong one. in this manner, multitudes of wrong assumptions arise. 2. when facts are before the mind, an _explanation_ of them is often desired. in such circumstances, the intelligence may suggest, in explanation, a number of hypotheses, which hypotheses may be all alike false. if a positive assumption is made in such a case, it must of necessity be a false one; because it must be in the direction of some one hypothesis before the mind at the time. here, also, the intelligence necessitates a wrong assumption, if any is made. yet it is not itself deceived; because it gives no positive affirmations as the basis of positive assumptions. in such circumstances, error very frequently arises. 3. _experience_ often occasions wrong assumptions, which are attributed incorrectly to real affirmations of the intelligence. a friend, for example, saw an object which presented the external appearance of the apple. he had never before seen those qualities, except in connection with that class of objects. he assumed, at once, that it was a real apple; but subsequently found that it was an artificial, and not a real one. was the intelligence deceived in this instance? by no means. that faculty had never affirmed, that those qualities which the apple presents to the eye, never exist in connection with any other object, and consequently, that the apple must have been present in the instance given. _experience_, and not a positive affirmation of the intelligence, led to the wrong assumption in this instance. the same principle holds true, in respect to a vast number of instances that might be named. 4. finally, the intelligence may not only make positive affirmations in the presence of qualities perceived, but it may affirm _hypothetically_, that is, when a given proposition is _assumed_ as true, the intelligence may and will present the logical _antecedents_ and _consequents_ of that assumption. if the assumption is false, such will be the character of the antecedents and consequents following from it. an individual, in tracing out these antecedents and consequents, however, may mistake the hypothetical, for the real, affirmations of the intelligence. one wrong assumption in theology or philosophy, for example, may give an entire system, all of the leading principles of which are likewise false. in tracing out, and perfecting that system, how natural the assumption, that one is following the _real_, and not the _hypothetical_, affirmations of the intelligence! from this one source an infinity of error exists among men. in an enlarged treatise on mental science, the subject of the present chapter should receive a much more extensive elucidation than could be given to it in this connection. few subjects would throw more clear light over the domains of truth and error than this, if fully and distinctly elucidated. in conclusion, i would simply remark, that one of the highest attainments in virtue which we can conceive an intelligent being to make, consists in a continued and vigorous employment of the intelligence in search of the right, the just, the true, and the good, in all departments of human investigation; and in a rigid discipline of the will, to receive and treat, as true and sacred, whatever the intelligence may present, as possessed of such characteristics, to the full subjection of all impulses in the direction of unauthorized assumptions. chapter xiv. liberty and servitude. liberty of will as opposed to moral servitude. there are, among others, two senses of the term liberty, which ought to be carefully distinguished from each other. in the first sense, it stands opposed to necessity; in the second, to what is called moral servitude. it is in the last sense that i propose to consider the subject in the present chapter. what, then, is liberty as opposed to moral servitude? _it is that state in which the action of will is in harmony with the moral law, with the idea of the right, the just, the true, and the good, while all the propensities are held in perfect subordination--a state in which the mind may purpose obedience to the law of right with the rational hope of carrying that determination into accomplishment_. this state all mankind agree in calling a state of moral freedom. the individual who has attained to it, is not in servitude to any propensity whatever. he "rules his own spirit." he is the master of himself. he purposes the good, and performs it. he resolves against the evil, and avoids it. "greater," says the maxim of ancient wisdom, "is such a man than he that taketh a city." moral servitude, on the other hand, is _a state in which the will is so ensnared by the sensibility, so habituated to subjection to the propensities, that it has so lost the prerogative of self-control, that it cannot resolve upon action in the direction of the law of right, with any rational expectation of keeping that resolution_. the individual in this condition "knows the good, and approves of it, yet follows the bad." "the good that he would (purposes to do), he does not, but the evil that he would not (purposes not to do), that he does." all men agree in denominating this a state of moral servitude. whenever an individual is manifestly governed by appetite, or any other propensity, by common consent, he is said to be a slave in respect to his propensities. the reason why the former state is denominated liberty, and the latter servitude, is obvious. liberty, as opposed to servitude, is universally regarded as a good in itself. as such, it is desired and chosen. servitude, on the other hand, may be submitted to, as the least of two evils. yet it can never be desired and chosen, as a good in itself. every man who is in a state of servitude, is there, in an important sense, against his will. the _state_ in which he is, is regarded as in itself the greatest of evils, excepting those which would arise from a vain attempt at a vindication of personal freedom. the same principle holds true in respect to moral liberty and servitude. when any individual contemplates the idea of the voluntary power rising to full dominion over impulse of every kind, and acting in sublime harmony with the pure and perfect law of rectitude, as revealed in the intelligence, every one regards this as a state, of all others, the most to be desired and chosen as a good in itself. to enter upon this state, and to continue in it, is therefore regarded as a realization of the idea of liberty in the highest and best sense of the term. subjection to impulse, in opposition to the pure dictates of the intelligence, to the loss of the high prerogative of "ruling our own spirits," on the other hand, is regarded by all men as in itself a state the most abject, and least to be desired conceivable. the individual that is there, cannot but despise his own image. he, of necessity, loathes and abhors himself. yet he submits to self-degradation rather than endure the pain and effort of self-emancipation. no term but servitude, together with others of a kindred import, expresses the true conception of this state. no man is in a state of moral servitude from choice--that is, from choice of the state as a good in itself. the _state_ he regards as an evil in itself. yet, in the exercise of free choice, he is there, because he submits to self-degradation rather than vindicate his right to freedom. remarks. mistake of german metaphysicians. 1. we notice a prominent and important mistake common to metaphysicians, especially of the german school, in their treatises on the will. liberty of will with them is liberty as distinguished from moral servitude, and not as distinguished from necessity. hence, in all their works, very little light is thrown upon the great idea of liberty, which lies at the foundation of moral obligation, to wit: liberty as distinguished from necessity. "a free will," says kant, "and a will subjected to the moral law, are one and identical." a more capital error in philosophy is not often met with than this. moral servitude of the race. 2. in the state of moral servitude above described, the bible affirms all men to be, until they are emancipated by the influence of the remedial system therein revealed--a truth affirmed by what every man experiences in himself, and by the entire mass of facts which the history of the race presents. where is the individual that, unaided by an influence out of himself, has ever attained to a dominion over his own spirit? where is the individual that, without such an influence, can resolve upon acting in harmony with the law of pure benevolence, with any rational hope of success? to meet this great want of human nature; to provide an influence adequate to its redemption, from what the scriptures, with great propriety, call the "bondage of corruption," is a fundamental design of the remedial system. chapter xv. liberty and dependence. common impression. a very common impression exists,--an impression universal among those who hold the doctrine of necessity,--that the doctrine of liberty, as maintained in this treatise, renders man, really, in most important respects, independent of his creator, and therefore, tends to induce in the mind, that spirit of haughty independence which is totally opposite and antagonistic to that spirit of humility and dependence which lies at the basis of all true piety and virtue. if this is the real tendency of this doctrine, it certainly constitutes an important objection against it. if, on the other hand, we find in the nature of this doctrine, essential elements totally destructive of the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and tending most strongly to induce the opposite spirit,--a spirit of humility and dependence upon the grace proffered in the remedial system; if we find, also, that the doctrine of necessity, in many fundamental particulars, lacks these benign tendencies, we have, in such a case, the strongest evidence in favor of the former doctrine, and against the latter. the object of the present chapter, therefore, is to _elucidate the tendency of the doctrine of liberty to destroy the spirit of pride, haughtiness, and self-dependence, and to induce the spirit of humility and dependence upon divine grace_. spirit of dependence defined. before proceeding directly to argue this question, we need to settle definitely the meaning of the phrase _spirit of dependence_. the _conviction_ of our dependence is one thing. the _spirit_ of dependence is quite another. what is this spirit? in its exercise, the mind _rests in voluntary dependence upon the grace of god_. the heart is fully set upon doing the right, and avoiding the wrong, while the mind is in the voluntary exercise of _trust_ in god for "grace whereby we may serve him acceptably." the _spirit_ of dependence, then, implies obedience actually commenced. the question is, does the belief of the doctrine of liberty tend intrinsically to induce the exercise of this spirit? in this respect, has it altogether a superiority over the doctrine of necessity? doctrine of necessity tends not to induce the spirit of dependence. 1. in accomplishing my object, i will first consider the tendency, in this one respect, of the doctrine of necessity. an individual, we will suppose, finds himself under influences which induce him to sin, and which consequently, if this doctrine is true, render it impossible for him, without the interposition of divine power, not to sin. a consideration of his condition tends to _convince_ him, that is, to induce the intellectual conviction, of his entire dependence upon divine grace. but the intellectual _conviction_ of our dependence, as above shown, is one thing. the _spirit_ of dependence, which, as there stated, consists in actually trusting the most high for grace to do what he requires, and implies actual obedience already commenced, is quite another thing. now the doctrine of necessity has a tendency to produce this _conviction_, but none to induce the _spirit_ of dependence: inasmuch as with this conviction, it produces another equally strong, to wit: that the creature, without a divine interposition, will not, and cannot, exercise the _spirit_ of dependence. in thus producing the conviction, that, under present influences, the subject does not, and cannot exercise that spirit, this doctrine tends exclusively to the annihilation of that spirit. when an individual is in a state of actual obedience, the tendency of this doctrine upon him is no better; since it produces the conviction, that while a divine influence, independently of ourselves, produces in us a spirit of dependence, we shall and must exercise it; and that while it does not produce that spirit, we do not and cannot exercise it. where is the tendency to induce a spirit of dependence, in such a conviction? according to the doctrine of necessity, nothing but the actual interposition of divine grace has any tendency to induce a spirit of dependence. the _belief_ of this doctrine has no such tendency whatever. the grand mistake of the necessitarian here, consists in the assumption, that, because his _doctrine has a manifest tendency to produce the_ conviction _of dependence, it has a tendency equally manifest to induce the_ spirit _of dependence;_ when, in fact, it has no such tendency whatever. 2. we will now contemplate the intrinsic tendencies of the doctrine of liberty to induce the spirit of humility and dependence. every one will see, at once, that the consciousness of liberty cannot itself be a ground of dependence, in respect to action, in favor of the right and in opposition to the wrong: for the possession of such liberty, as far as the power itself is concerned, leaves us, at all times, equally liable to do the one as the other. how can an equal liability to two distinct and opposite courses, be a ground of assurance, that we shall choose the one, and avoid the other? thus the consciousness of liberty tends directly and intrinsically to a total annihilation of the spirit of self-dependence. let us now contemplate our relation to the most high. he knows perfectly in what direction we shall, in our self-determination, exert our powers under any influence and system of influences brought to bear upon us. it is also in his power to subject us to any system of influences he pleases. he has revealed to us the great truth, that if, in the exercise of the spirit of dependence, we will trust him for grace to do the good and avoid the evil which he requires us to do and avoid, he will subject us to a divine influence, which shall for ever secure us in the one, and against the other. the conviction, therefore, rises with full and perfect distinctness in the mind, that, in the exercise of the spirit of dependence, action in all future time, in the direction of purity and bliss, is secure; and that, in the absence of this spirit, action, in the opposite direction, is equally certain. in the belief of the doctrine of liberty, another truth becomes an omnipresent reality to our minds, that the _exercise_ of this spirit, thus rendering our "calling and election sure," is, at all times, practicable to us. what then is the exclusive tendency of this doctrine? to destroy the spirit of self-dependence, on the one hand, and to induce the exercise of the opposite spirit, on the other. the doctrine of necessity reveals the _fact_ of dependence, but destroys the _spirit_, by the production of the annihilating conviction, that we neither shall nor can exercise that spirit, till god, in his sovereign dispensations, shall subject us to an influence which renders it impossible for us not to exercise it. the doctrine of liberty reveals, with equal distinctness, the _fact_ of dependence; and then, while it produces the hallowed conviction of the perfect practicability of the exercise of the _spirit_ of dependence, presents motives infinitely strong, not only to induce its exercise, but to empty the mind wholly of everything opposed to it. god controls all influences under which creatures do act. 3. while the existence and continuance of our powers of moral agency depend wholly upon the divine will, and while the most high knows, with entire certainty, in what direction we shall exert our powers, under all influences, and systems of influences, brought to bear upon us, all these influences are entirely at his disposal. what tendency have such convictions, together with the consciousness of liberty, and ability to exercise, or not to exercise, the spirit of dependence, but to induce us, in the exercise of that spirit, to throw our whole being into the petition, "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?" if god knows perfectly under what influences action in us shall be in the direction of the right, or the wrong, and holds all such influences at his own control, what attitude becomes us in the presence of the "high and lofty one," but dependence and prayer? dependence on account of the moral servitude of the will. 4. finally, a consciousness of a state of moral servitude, together with the conviction, that in the exercise of the spirit of dependence, we can rise to the "glorious liberty of the sons of god;" that in the absence of this spirit, our moral servitude is perfectly certain; all these, together with the conviction which the belief of the doctrine of liberty induces (to wit: that the exercise of the spirit of dependence is always practicable to us), tends only to one result, to induce the exercise of that spirit, and to the total annihilation of the opposite spirit. while, therefore, the doctrine of liberty sanctifies, in the mind, the feeling of obligation to do the right and avoid the wrong, a feeling which the doctrine of necessity tends to annihilate, the former (an effect which the latter cannot produce) tends only to the annihilation of the spirit of pride and self-confidence, and to induce that spirit of filial dependence which cries "abba, father!" chapter xvi. formation of character. element of will in formation of character. character commonly how accounted for. in accounting for the existence and formation of peculiarities of character, individual, social, and national, two elements only are commonly taken into consideration, the _natural propensities_, and the _circumstances and influences_ under which those propensities are developed and controlled. the doctrine of necessity permits us to take nothing else into the account. undoubtedly, these elements have very great efficacy in determining character. in many instances, little else need to be taken into consideration, in accounting for peculiarities of character, as they exist around us, in individuals, communities, and nations. the voluntary element to be taken into the account. in a vast majority of cases, however, another, and altogether a different element, that of the will, or voluntary element, must be taken into the reckoning, or we shall find ourselves wholly unable to account for peculiarities of mental and moral development, everywhere visible around us. it is an old maxim, that "every man is the arbiter of his own destiny." as character determines destiny, so the will determines character; and man is the arbiter of his own destiny, only as he is the arbiter of his own character. the element of free will, therefore, must be taken into the reckoning, if we would adequately account for the peculiarities of character which the individual, social, and national history of the race presents. even where mental and moral developments are as the propensities and external influences, still the voluntary element must be reckoned in, if we would account for facts as they exist. in a majority of instances, however, if the two elements under consideration, and these only, are taken into the account, we shall find our conclusions very wide from the truth. an example in illustration. i will take, in illustration of the above remarks, a single example--a case with which i became so familiarly acquainted, that i feel perfectly safe in vouching for the truth of the statements which i am about to make. i knew a boy who, up to the age of ten or twelve years, was under the influence of a most ungovernable temper--a temper easily and quickly excited, and which, when excited, rendered him perfectly desperate. seldom, if ever, was he known to yield in a conflict, however superior in strength his antagonist might be. death was always deliberately preferred to submission. during this period, he often reflected upon his condition, and frequently wished that it was otherwise. still, with melancholy deliberation, he as often said to himself, i never can and never shall subdue this temper. at the close of this period, as he was reflecting upon the subject again, he made up his mind, with perfect fixedness of purpose, that, to the control of that temper, he would never more yield. the will rose up in the majesty of its power, and assumed the reins of self-government, in the respect under consideration. from that moment, that temper almost never, even under the highest provocations, obtained the control of the child. a total revolution of mental developments resulted. he afterwards became as distinguished for natural amiability and self-control, in respect to his temper, as before he had been for the opposite spirit. this total revolution took place from mere prudential considerations, without any respect whatever to moral obligation. now suppose we attempt to account for these distinct and opposite developments of character--developments exhibited by the same individual, in these two periods--by an exclusive reference to natural propensities and external influences. what a totally inadequate and false account should we give of the facts presented! that individual is just as conscious, that it was the element of free will that produced this revolution, and that when he formed the determination which resulted in that revolution, he might have determined differently, as he is, or ever has been, of any mental states whatever. all the facts, also, as they lie out before us, clearly indicate, that if we leave out of the account the voluntary element, those facts must remain wholly unexplained, or a totally wrong explanation of them must be given. the same principle holds true in all other instances. though natural propensities and external influences greatly _modify_ mental developments, still, the _distinguishing_ peculiarities of character, in all instances, receive their form and coloring from the action of the voluntary power. this is true, of the peculiarities of character exhibited, not only by individuals, but communities and nations. we can never account for facts as they are, until we contemplate man, not only as possessed of intelligence and sensibility, but also of free will. all the powers and susceptibilities must be taken into the account, if men would know man as he is. diversities of character. a few important definitions will close this chapter. a _decisive_ character exists, where the will acts in harmony with propensities strongly developed. when a number of propensities of this kind exist, action, and consequently character, may be changeable, and yet decisive. _unity_ and _decision_ of character result, when the will steadily acts in harmony with some one over-shadowing propensity. character is _fluctuating_ and _changeable_, when the will surrenders itself to the control of different propensities, each easily and highly excited in the presence of its appropriate objects, and yet the excitement but temporary. thus, different propensities, in rapid succession, take their turn in controlling the will. _indecision_ and _feebleness_ of character result, when the will uniformly acts under the influence of the principle of _fear_ and _caution_. to such a mind, in all important enterprises especially, there is always "a lion in the way." such a mind, therefore, is continually in a state of distressing indecision when energetic action is necessary to success. chapter xvii. concluding reflections. a few reflections of a general nature will conclude this treatise. objection. the will has its laws. 1. an objection, often adduced, to the entire view of the subject presented in this treatise, demands a passing notice here. all things in existence, it is said, and the will among the rest, are governed by _laws_. it is readily admitted, that all things have their laws, and that the will is not without law. it is jumping a very long distance to a conclusion, however, to infer from such a fact, that necessity is the only law throughout the entire domain of existence, physical and mental. what if, from the fact, that the will has its law, it should be assumed that liberty is that law? this assumption would be just as legitimate as the one under consideration. objection. god dethroned from his supremacy, if the doctrine of liberty is true. 2. another objection of a general nature, is the assumption, that the doctrine of liberty destroys the divine supremacy in the realm of mind. "if man," says dr. chalmers, "is not a necessary agent, god is a degraded sovereign." a sentiment more dishonorable to god, more fraught with fatal error, more revolting to a virtuous mind, when unperverted by a false theory, could scarcely be uttered. let us, for a moment, contemplate the question, whether the doctrine of liberty admits a divine government in the realm of mind. the existence and perpetuity, as stated in a former chapter, of free and moral agency in creatures, depend wholly upon the divine will. with a perfect knowledge of the direction in which they will exert their powers, under every kind and degree of influence to which they may be subjected, he holds all these influences at his sovereign disposal. with such knowledge and resources, can god exercise no government, but that of a degraded sovereignty in the realm of mind? can he not exercise the very sovereignty which infinite wisdom and love desire? who would dare affirm the contrary? if the doctrine of liberty is true, god certainly does not sit upon the throne of iron destiny, swaying the sceptre of stern fate over myriads of subjects, miscalled moral agents; subjects, all of whom are commanded, under infinite sanctions, to do the right and avoid the wrong, while subjected to influences by the most high himself, which render obedience in some, and disobedience in others, absolute impossibilities. still, in the light of this doctrine, god has a government in the domain of mind, a government wisely adapted to the nature of moral agents--agents capable of incurring the desert of praise or blame; a government which all approve, and under the benign influence of which, all who have not forfeited its protection by crime, may find "quietness and assurance for ever." objection. great and good men have held the doctrine of necessity. 3. in reply to what has been said in respect to the _tendencies_ of the doctrine of necessity, the fact will doubtless be adduced, that the greatest and best of men have held this doctrine, without a development of these tendencies in their experience. my answer is, that the goodness of such men, their sense of moral obligation, &c., did not result from their theory, but existed in spite of its intrinsic tendencies. they held this doctrine in theory, and yet, from a _consciousness_ of liberty, they practically adopted the opposite doctrine. here, we have the source of the deep feeling of obligation in their minds, while the intrinsic and exclusive tendency of their _theory_, even in them, was to weaken and annihilate this hallowed feeling. the difference between such men and sceptics is this: the piety of the former prevents their carrying out their theory to its legitimate results; while the impiety of the latter leads them to march boldly up to those results--a fearless denial of moral obligation in every form. last resort. 4. the final resort of certain necessitarians, who may feel themselves wholly unable to meet the arguments adduced against their own and in favor of the opposite theory, and are determined to remain fixed in their opinions, may be readily anticipated. it is an assumption which may be expressed in language somewhat like the following: "after all, the immortal work of edwards still lives, and will live, when those of his opponents will be lost in oblivion. that work still remains unanswered." a sweeping assumption is a very easy and summary way of disposing of a difficulty, which we might not otherwise know what to do with. let us for a moment contemplate some of the facts which have been undeniably established in reference to this immortal work. (1.) at the outset, edwards stands convicted of a fundamental error in philosophy, an error which gives form and character to his whole work--the confounding of the will with the sensibility, and thus confounding the characteristics of the phenomena of the former faculty with those of the phenomena of the latter. (2.) his whole work is constructed without an appeal to consciousness, the only proper and authoritative tribunal of appeal in the case. thus his reasonings have only an accidental bearing upon his subject. (3.) all his fundamental conclusions have been shown to stand in direct contradiction to the plainest and most positive testimony of universal consciousness. (4.) his main arguments have been shown to be nothing else but reasoning in a circle. he defines, for example, the phrase "greatest apparent good," as synonymous with _choosing_, and then argues, from the fact that the "will always is as the greatest apparent good," that is, that it always chooses as it chooses, that it is subject to the law of necessity. so in respect to the argument from the strongest motive, which, by definition, is fixed upon as the motive in the direction of which the will, in each particular instance, acts. from the fact that the action of the will is always in the direction of this motive, that is, in the direction of the motive towards which it does act, the conclusion is gravely drawn, that the will is and must be subject, in all its determinations, to the law of necessity. i find my mind acted upon by two opposite motives. i cannot tell which is the strongest, from a contemplation of what is intrinsic in the motives themselves, nor from their effects upon my intelligence or sensibility. i must wait till my will has acted. from the fact of its action in the direction of one motive, in distinction from the other, i must then draw two important conclusions. 1. the motive, in the direction of which my will did act, is the strongest. the evidence is, the _fact_ of its action in that direction. 2. the will must be subject to the law of necessity. the proof is, the action of the will in the direction of the strongest motive, that is, the motive in the direction of which it did act. sage argument to be regarded by philosophers and theologians of the 19th century, as possessing the elements of immortality! (5.) his argument from the divine fore-knowledge has been shown to be wholly based upon an _assumption_ unauthorized by reason, or revelation either, to wit: that he understands the _mode_ of that fore-knowledge,-an assumption which cannot be made except through ignorance, as was true in his case, without the greatest impiety and presumption. (6.) the theory which edwards opposes has been shown to render sacred, in all minds that hold it, the great idea of _duty_, of moral obligation; while the validity of that idea has never, in any age or nation, been denied, excepting on the avowed authority of his theory. (7.) all the arguments in proof of the doctrine of necessity, with the single exception of that from the divine fore-knowledge--an argument resting, as we have seen, upon an assumption equally baseless,--involve a begging of the question at issue. take any argument we please, with this one exception, and it will be seen at once that it has no force at all, unless the truth of the doctrine designed to be established by it, be assumed as the basis of that argument. shall we pretend that a theory, that has been fully demonstrated to involve, fundamentally, the errors, absurdities, and contradictions above named, has not been answered? willing, and aiming to perform impossibilities. 5. we are now prepared to answer a question about which philosophers have been somewhat divided in opinion--the question, whether the will can act in the direction of perceived and affirmed impossibilities? the true answer to this question, doubtless is, that the mind may _will_ the occurrence of a known impossibility, but it can never _aim_ to produce such an occurrence. the mind, for example, while it regards the non-existence of god as that which cannot possibly occur, may come into such a relation to the most high, that the _desire_ shall arise that god were not. with this desire, the will may concur, in the _wish_, that there were no god. here the mind wills a known impossibility. in a similar manner, the mind may will its own non-existence, while it regards its occurrence, on account of its relation to the divine will, as impossible. but while the mind may thus _will_ the occurrence of an impossibility, it never can, nor will aim, that is, intend, to produce what it regards as an impossibility. a creature may will the non-existence of god; but even a fallen spirit, regarding the occurrence as an absolute impossibility, never did, nor will aim to annihilate the most high. to suppose the will to set itself to produce an occurrence regarded as impossible, involves a contradiction. for the same reason, the will will never set itself upon the accomplishment of that which it is perfectly assured it never shall accomplish, however sincere its efforts towards the result may be. all such results are, to the mind, _practical_ impossibilities. extinguish totally in the mind the _hope_ of obtaining the divine favor, and the divine favor will never be sought. produce in the mind the conviction, that should it aim at the attainment of a certain end, there is an infallible certainty that it will not attain it, and the subject of that conviction will no more aim to attain that end, than he will aim to cause the same thing, at the same time, to be and not to be. in reply, it is sometimes said, that men often aim at what they regard even as an impossible attainment. the painter, for example, aims to produce a _perfect_ picture, while he knows well that he cannot produce one. i answer, the painter is really aiming at no such thing. he is not aiming to produce a perfect picture, which he knows he cannot, and will not produce, but to produce one as _nearly_ perfect as he can. this is what he is really aiming at. question the individual critically, and he will confirm what is here affirmed. remind him of the fact, that he cannot produce a perfect picture. i know that, he replies. i am determined, however, to produce one as _nearly_ perfect as possible. here his real aim stands revealed. the same principle holds true in all other instances. thought at parting. 6. in taking leave of the reader, i would simply say, that if he has distinctly apprehended the great doctrine designed to be established in this work, and has happily come to an agreement with the author in respect to it, the following hallowed impression has been left very distinctly upon his mind. while he finds himself in a state of profound and most pleasing dependence upon the author of his being, in the holy of holies of the inner sanctuary of his mind, one idea, the great over-shadowing idea of the human intelligence, has been fully sanctified--the idea of _duty_, of _moral obligation_. with the consciousness of liberty, that idea must be to the mind an omnipresent reality. from it we can never escape and in all states, and in all worlds, it must and will be to us, as a guardian angel, or an avenging fiend. but one thing remains, and that is, through the grace proffered in the remedial system, to "live and move, and have our being," in harmony with that idea, thus securing everlasting "quietness and assurance" in the sanctuary of our minds, and ever enduring peace and protection under, the over-shadowing perfections of the author of our existence, and amid all the arrangements and movements of his eternal government. footnotes [1] see upham on the will, pp. 32-35. [2] the above is a perfectly correct statement of the famous distinction between natural and moral ability made by necessitarians. the sinner is under obligation to do right, they say, because he might do what is required of him, if he chose to do it. he has, therefore, _natural_ but not _moral_ power to obedience. but the choice which the sinner wants, the absence of which constitutes his moral inability, is the very thing required of him. when, therefore, the necessitarian says, that the sinner is under obligation to obey, because he might obey if he chose to do it, the real meaning is, that the sinner is under obligation to obedience, because if he should choose to obey he would choose to obey. in other words he is under obligation to obedience, because, if he did obey, he would obey. [transcriber's notes] page numbers in this book are indicated by numbers enclosed in curly braces, e.g. {99}. they have been located where page breaks occurred in the original book. this book is derived from a copy on the internet archive: http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924012175505 obvious spelling or typographical errors have been corrected. inconsistent spelling of names and inventive and alternative spelling is left as printed. extended quotations and citations are indented such as reports, letters and interviews. [end transcriber's notes] health through will power by james j. walsh, m.d., ph.d., sc.d., etc. medical director of fordham university school of sociology; professor of physiological psychology at cathedral college; lecturer on psychology, marywood college, etc. boston little, brown, and company 1919 _copyright, 1919,_ by little, brown, and company. _all rights reserve_ published, november, 1919 _norwood press_ set up and electrotyped by j. s. cushing co., norwood, mass., u.s.a. _to_ j. h. w. ex animo et corde j. j. w. {vii} preface a french surgeon to whom the remark was made in the third year of the war that france was losing an immense number of men replied: "yes, we are losing enormously, but for every man that we lose we are making two men." what he meant, of course, was that the war was bringing out the latent powers of men to such an extent that every one of those who were left now counted for two. the expression is much more than a mere figure of speech. it is quite literally true that a man who has had the profound experience of a war like this becomes capable of doing ever so much more than he could before. he has discovered his own power. he has tapped layers of energy that he did not know he possessed. above all, he has learned that his will is capable of enabling him to do things that he would have hesitated about and probably thought quite impossible before this revelation of himself to himself had been made. {viii} in a word, the war has proved a revival of appreciation of the place of the human will in life. marshal foch, the greatest character of the war, did not hesitate even to declare that "a battle is the struggle of two wills. it is never lost until defeat is accepted. they only are vanquished who confess themselves to be." our generation has been intent on the development of the intellect. we have been neglecting the will. "shell shock" experiences have shown us that the intellect is largely the source of unfavorable suggestion. the will is the controlling factor in the disease. many another demonstration of the power of will has been furnished by the war. this volume is meant to help in the restoration of the will to its place as the supreme faculty in life, above all the one on whose exercise, more than any other single factor, depends health and recovery from disease. the time seems opportune for its appearance and it is commended to the attention of those who have recognized how much the modern cult of intellect left man unprepared for the ruder trails of life yet could not see clearly what the remedy might be. {ix} contents page preface vii chapter i the will in life 1 ii dreads 19 iii habits 42 iv sympathy 57 v self-pity 69 vi avoidance of conscious use of the will 80 vii what the will can do 102 viii pain and the will 112 ix the will and air and exercise 133 x the will to eat 148 xi the place of the will in tuberculosis 167 xii the will in pneumonia 187 xiii coughs and colds 196 xiv neurotic asthma and the will 207 xv the will in intestinal function 215 xvi the will and the heart 227 xvii the will in so-called chronic rheumatism 240 xvii psycho-neuroses 258 xix feminine ills and the will 270 index 285 {1} health through will power chapter i the will in life "what he will he does and does so much that proof is called impossibility." _troilus and cressida._ the place of the will in its influence upon health and vitality has long been recognized, not only by psychologists and those who pay special attention to problems of mental healing, but also, as a rule, by physicians and even by the general public. it is, for instance, a well-established practice, when two older folk, near relatives, are ill at the same time, or even when two younger persons are injured together and one of them dies, or perhaps has a serious turn for the worse, carefully to keep all knowledge of it from the other one. the reason is a very definite conviction that in the revulsion of feeling caused by learning of the fatality, or as {2} a result of the solicitude consequent upon hearing that there has been a turn for the worse, the other patient's chances for recovery would probably be seriously impaired. the will to get better, even to live on, is weakened, with grave consequences. this is no mere popular impression due to an exaggeration of sympathetic feeling for the patient. it has been noted over and over again, so often that it evidently represents some rule of life, that whenever by inadvertence the serious condition or death of the other was made known, there was an immediate unfavorable development in the case which sometimes ended fatally, though all had been going well up to that time. this was due not merely to the shock, but largely to the "giving up", as it is called, which left the surviving patient without that stimulus from the will to get well which means so much. it is surprising to what an extent the will may affect the body, even under circumstances where it would seem impossible that physical factors could any longer have any serious influence. we often hear it said that certain people are "living on their wills", and when they are of the kind who take comparatively little food and yet succeed in accomplishing {3} a great deal of work, the truth of the expression comes home to us rather strikingly. the expression is usually considered, however, to be scarcely more than a formula of words elaborated in order to explain certain of these exceptional cases that seem to need some special explanation. the possibility of the human will of itself actually prolonging existence beyond the time when, according to all reason founded on physical grounds, life should end, would seem to most people to be quite out of the question. and yet there are a number of striking cases on record in which the only explanation of the continuance of life would seem to be that the will to live has been so strongly aroused that life was prolonged beyond even expert expectation. that the will was the survival factor in the case is clear from the fact that as soon as this active willing process ceased, because the reason that had aroused it no longer existed, the individuals in question proceeded to reach the end of life rapidly from the physical factors already at work and which seemed to portend inevitably an earlier dissolution than that which happened. probably a great many physicians know of striking examples of patients who have lived beyond the time when ordinarily death would {4} be expected, because they were awaiting the arrival of a friend from a distance who was known to be coming and whom the patient wanted very much to see. dying mothers have lived on to get a last embrace of a son or daughter, and wives have survived to see their husbands for a last parting--though it seemed impossible that they should do so, so far as their physical condition was concerned--and then expired within a short time. of course there are any number of examples in which this has not been true, but then that is only a proof of the fact that the great majority of mankind do not use their wills, or perhaps, having appealed to them for help during life never or but slightly, are not prepared to make a definite serious call on them toward the end. i am quite sure, however, that a great many country physicians particularly can tell stories of incidents that to them were proofs that the will can resist even the approach of death for some time, though just as soon as the patients give up, death comes to them. professor stokes, the great irish clinician of the nineteenth century, to whom we owe so much of our knowledge of the diseases of the heart and lungs, and whose name is enshrined in terms commonly used in medicine in {5} connection with these diseases, has told a striking story of his experiences in a dublin hospital that illustrates this very well. an old irishman, who had been a soldier in his younger years and had been wounded many times, was in the hospital ill and manifestly dying. professor stokes, after a careful investigation of his condition, declared that he could not live a week, though at the end of that time the old soldier was still hanging on to life, ever visibly sinking. stokes assured the students who were making the rounds of his wards with him that the old man had at most a day or two more to live, and yet at the end of some days he was still there to greet them on their morning visits. after the way of medical students the world over, though without any of that hard-heartedness that would be supposed ordinarily to go with such a procedure, for they were interested in the case as a medical problem, the students began to bet how long the old man would live. finally, one day the old man said to stokes in his broadest brogue: "docther, you must keep me alive until the first of the month, because me pension for the quarther is then due, and unless the folks have it, shure they won't have anything to bury me with." {6} the first of the month was some ten days away. stokes said to his students, though of course not in the hearing of the patient, that there was not a chance in the world, considering the old soldier's physical condition, that he would live until the first of the month. every morning, in spite of this, when they came in, the old man was still alive and there was even no sign of the curtains being drawn around his bed as if the end were approaching. finally on the morning of the first of the month, when stokes came in, the old pensioner said to him feebly, "docther, the papers are there. sign them! then they'll get the pension. i am glad you kept me alive, for now they'll surely have the money to bury me." and then the old man, having seen the signature affixed, composed himself for death and was dead in the course of a few hours. he had kept himself alive on his will because he had a purpose in it, and once that purpose was fulfilled, death was welcome and it came without any further delay. there is a story which comes to us from one of the french prisons about the middle of the nineteenth century which illustrates forcibly the same power of the will to maintain life after it seemed sure, beyond peradventure, {7} that death must come. it was the custom to bury in quicklime in the prison yard the bodies of all the prisoners who died while in custody. the custom still survives, or did but twenty years ago, even in english prisons, for those who were executed, as readers of oscar wilde's "ballad of reading gaol" will recall. irish prisons still keep up the barbarism, and one of the reasons for the bitterness of the irish after the insurrection of 1916 in dublin was the burial of the executed in quicklime in the prison yard. the celtic mind particularly revolts at the idea, and it happened that one of the prisoners in a certain french prison, a breton, a celt of the celts, was deeply affected by the thought that something like this might happen to him. he was suffering from tuberculosis at a time when very little attention was paid to such ailments in prisoners, for the sooner the end came, the less bother there was with them; but he was horrified at the thought that if he died in prison his body would disappear in the merciless fire of the quicklime. so far as the prison physician could foresee, the course of his disease would inevitably reach its fatal termination long before the end of his sentence. in spite of its advance. {8} however, the prisoner himself declared that he would never permit himself to die in prison and have his body face such a fate. his declaration was dismissed by the physician with a shrug and the feeling that after all it would not make very much difference to the man, since he would not be there to see or feel it. when, however, he continued to live, manifestly in the last throes of consumption, for weeks and even months after death seemed inevitable, some attention was paid to his declaration in the matter and the doctors began to give special attention to his case. he lived for many months after the time when, according to all ordinary medical knowledge, it would seem he must surely have died. he actually outlived the end of his sentence, had arrangements made to move him to a house just beyond the prison gate as soon as his sentence had expired, and according to the story, was dead within twenty-four hours after the time he got out of prison and thus assured his breton soul of the fact that his body would be given, like that of any christian, to the bosom of mother earth. but there are other and even more important phases of the prolongation of life by the will that still better illustrates its power. {9} it has often been noted that men who have had extremely busy lives, working long hours every day, often sleeping only a few hours at night, turning from one thing to another and accomplishing so much that it seemed almost impossible that one man could do all they did, have lived very long lives. men like alexander humboldt, for instance, distinguished in science in his younger life, a traveler for many years in that hell-hole of the tropics, the region around panama and central america, a great writer whose books deeply influenced his generation in middle age. prime minister of prussia as an older man, lived to be past ninety, though he once confessed that in his forties he often slept but two or three hours a night and sometimes took even that little rest on a sofa instead of a bed. leo xiii at the end of the nineteenth century was just such another man. frail of body, elected pope at sixty-four, it was thought that there would soon be occasion for another election; he did an immense amount of work, assumed successfully the heaviest responsibilities, and outlived the years of peter in the papal chair, breaking all the prophecies in that regard and not dying till he was ninety-three. many other examples might be cited. {10} gladstone, always at work, probably the greatest statesman of the nineteenth century in the better sense of that word, was a scholar almost without a peer in the breadth of his scholarly attainments, a most interesting writer on multitudinous topics, keen of interest for everything human and always active, and yet he lived well on into the eighties. bismarck and von moltke, who assumed heavier responsibilities than almost any other men of the nineteenth century, saw their fourscore years pass over them a good while before the end came. bismarck remarked on his eighty-first birthday that he used to think all the good things of life were confined to the first eighty years of life, but now he knew that there were a great many good things reserved for the second eighty years. i shall never forget sitting beside thomas dunn english, the american poet, at a banquet of the alumni of the university of pennsylvania, when he repeated this expression for us; at the time he himself was well past eighty. he too had been a busy man and yet rejoiced to be with the younger alumni at the dinner. my dear old teacher, virchow, of whom they said when he died that four men died, for he was distinguished not only as a pathologist, {11} which was the great life-work for which he was known, but as an anthropologist, a historian of medicine and a sanitarian, was at seventy-five actively accomplishing the work of two or three men. he died at eighty-one, as the result of a trolley injury, or i could easily imagine him alive even yet. von ranke, the great historian of the popes, began a universal history at the age of ninety which was planned to be complete in twelve volumes, one volume a year to be issued. i believe that he lived to finish half a dozen of them. i have some dear friends among the medical profession in america who are in their eighties and nineties, and all of them were extremely busy men in their middle years and always lived intensely active lives. stephen smith and thomas addis emmet, john w. gouley, william hanna thompson, not long dead, and s. weir mitchell, who lived to be past eighty-five, are typical examples of extremely busy men, yet of extremely long lives. all of these men had the will power to keep themselves busily at work, and their exercise of that will power, far from wearing them out, actually seemed to enable them to tap reservoirs of energy that might have remained {12} latent in them. the very intensiveness of their will to do seemed to exert an extensive influence over their lives, and so they not only accomplished more but actually lived longer. hard work, far from exhausting, has just the opposite effect. we often hear of hard work killing people, but as a physician i have carefully looked into a number of these cases and have never found one which satisfied me as representing exhaustion due to hard work. insidious kidney disease, rheumatic heart disease, the infections of which pneumonia is a typical example, all these have been the causes of death and not hard work, and they may come to any of us. they are just as much accidents as any other of the mischances of life, for it is as dangerous to be run into by a microbe as by a trolley car. using the will in life to do all the work possible only gives life and gives it more abundantly, and people may rust out, that is be hurt by rest, much sooner than they will wear out. here, then, is a wellspring of vitality that checks for a time at least even lethal changes in the body and undoubtedly is one of the most important factors for the prolongation of life. it represents the greatest force for health and power of accomplishment that we have. {13} unfortunately, in recent years, it has been neglected to a great extent for a number of reasons. one of these has been the discussions as to the freedom of the will and the very common teaching of determinism which seemed to eliminate the will as an independent faculty in life. while this affected only the educated classes who had received the higher education, their example undoubtedly was pervasive and influenced a great many other people. besides, newspaper and magazine writers emphasized for popular dissemination the ideas as to absence of the freedom of the will which created at least an unfortunate attitude of mind as regards the use of the will at its best and tended to produce the feeling that we are the creatures of circumstances rather than the makers of our destiny in any way, or above all, the rulers of ourselves, including even to a great extent our bodily energies. even more significant than this intellectual factor, in sapping will power has been the comfortable living of the modern time with its tendency to eliminate from life everything that required any exercise of the will. the progress which our generation is so prone to boast of concerns mainly this making of people {14} more comfortable than they were before. the luxuries of life of a few centuries ago have now become practically the necessities of life of to-day. we are not asked to stand cold to any extent, we do not have to tire ourselves walking, and bodily labor is reserved for a certain number of people whom we apparently think of as scarcely counting in the scheme of humanity. making ourselves comfortable has included particularly the removal of nearly all necessity for special exertion, and therefore of any serious exercise of the will. we have saved ourselves the necessity for expending energy, apparently with the idea that thus it would accumulate and be available for higher and better purposes. the curious thing with regard to animal energy, however, is that it does not accumulate in the body beyond a certain limited extent, and all energy that is manufactured beyond that seems to have a definite tendency to dissipate itself throughout the body, producing discomfort of various kinds instead of doing useful work. the process is very like what is called short-circuiting in electrical machinery, and this enables us to understand how much harm may be done. making ourselves comfortable, therefore, may in the {15} end have just exactly the opposite effect, and often does. this is not noted at first, and may escape notice entirely unless there is an analysis of the mode of life which is directed particularly to finding out the amount of exertion of will and energy that there is in the daily round of existence. the will, like so many other faculties of the human organism, grows in power not by resting but by use and exercise. there have been very few calls for serious exercise of the will left in modern life and so it is no wonder that it has dwindled in power. as a consequence, a good deal of the significance of the will in life has been lost sight of. this is unfortunate, for the will can enable us to tap sources of energy that might otherwise remain concealed from us. professor william james particularly called attention to the fact, in his well-known essay on "the energies of men", that very few people live up to their _maximum_ of accomplishment or their _optimum_ of conduct, and that indeed "_as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate conditions._" it is with the idea of pointing out how much the will can accomplish in changing things for {16} the better that this volume is written. professor james quoted with approval prince pueckler-muskau's expression, "i find something very satisfactory in the thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent." [footnote 1] [footnote 1: "tour in england, ireland and france."] it is this power, thus daringly called omnipotent, that men have not been using to the best advantage to maintain health and even to help in the cure of disease, which needs to be recalled emphatically to attention. the war has shown us in the persons of our young soldiers that the human will has not lost a single bit of its pristine power to enable men to accomplish what might almost have seemed impossible. one of the heritages from the war should be the continuance of that fine use of the will which military discipline and war's demands so well brought into play. men can do and stand ever so much more than they realize, and in the very doing and standing find a satisfaction that surpasses all the softer pleasant feelings that come from mere comfort and lack of necessity for physical and {17} psychical exertion. their exercise of tolerance and their strenuous exertion, instead of exhausting, only makes them more capable and adds to instead of detracting from their powers. how much this discipline and training of the will meant for our young american soldiers, some of whom were raised in the lap of luxury and almost without the necessity of ever having had to do or stand hard things previously in their lives, is very well illustrated by a letter quoted by miss agnes repplier in the _century_ for december. it is by no means unique or even exceptional. there were literally thousands of such letters written by young officers similarly circumstanced, and it is only because it is typical and characteristic of the spirit of all of these young men that i quote it here. miss repplier says that it came from "a young american lieutenant for whom the world had been from infancy a perilously pleasant place." he wrote home in the early spring of 1918: "it has rained and rained and rained. i am as much at home in a mud puddle as any frog in france, and i have clean forgotten what a dry bed is like. but i am as fit as a fiddle and as hard as nails. i can eat scrap iron and sleep standing. aren't there things {18} called umbrellas, which you pampered civilians carry about in showers?" if we can secure the continuance of this will exertion, life will be ever so much heartier and healthier and happier than it was before, so that the war shall have its compensations. {19} chapter ii dreads "o, know he is the bridle of your will. there's none but asses will be bridled so." _a comedy of errors._ it must be a surprise to most people, after the demonstration of the power of the will in the preceding chapter, that so many fail to make use of it. indeed, the majority of mankind are quite unable to realize the store of energy for their health and strength and well-being which is thus readily available, though so often unused or called upon but feebly. the reason why the will is not used more is comparatively easy to understand, however, once its activity in ordinary conditions of humanity is analyzed a little more carefully. the will is unfortunately seldom permitted to act freely. brakes are put on its energies by mental states of doubt and hesitation, by contrary suggestion, and above all by the dreads which humanity has allowed to fasten {20} themselves on us until now a great many activities are hampered. there is the feeling that many things cannot be done, or may be accomplished only at the cost of so much effort and even hardship that it would be hopeless for any but those who are gifted with extremely strong wills to attempt them. people grow afraid to commit themselves to any purpose lest they should not be able to carry it out. many feel that they would never be able to stand what others have stood without flinching and are persuaded that if ever they were placed in the position where they had to withstand some of the trials that they have heard of they would inevitably break down under the strain. just as soon as a human being loses confidence that he or she may be able to accomplish a certain thing, that of itself is enough to make the will ever so much less active than it would otherwise be. it is like breaking a piece of strong string: those who know how wrap it around their fingers, then jerk confidently and the string is broken. those who fear that they may not be able to break it hesitate lest they should hurt themselves and give a half-hearted twitch which does not break the string; the only thing they succeed {21} in doing is in hurting themselves ever so much more than does the person who really breaks it. after that abortive effort, they feel that they must be different from the others whose fingers were strong enough to break the string, and they hesitate about it and will probably refuse to make the attempt again. it is a very old story,--this of dreads hampering the activities of mankind with lack of confidence, and the fear of failure keeping people from doing things. one of his disciples, according to a very old tradition, once asked st. anthony the hermit what had been the hardest obstacle that he found on the road to sanctity. the story has all the more meaning for us here if we recall that health and holiness are in etymology the same. st. anthony, whose temptations have made him famous, was over a hundred at the time and had spent some seventy years in the desert, almost always alone, and probably knew as much about the inner workings of human nature from the opportunities for introspection which he had thus enjoyed as any human being who ever lived. his young disciple, like all young disciples, wanted a short cut on the pathway that they were both traveling. the old man said to him, "well, {22} i am an old man and i have had many troubles, but most of them never happened." many a nightmare of doubt and hesitation disappears at once if the dread of it is overcome. the troubles that never happen, if dwelt upon, paralyze the will until health and holiness become extremely difficult of attainment. there is the secret of the failure of a great many people in life in a great many ways. they fear the worst, dread failure, dampen their own confidence, and therefore fritter away their own energy. anything that will enable them to get rid of the dreads of life will add greatly to their power to accomplish things inside as well as outside their bodies. well begun is half done, and tackling a thing confidently means almost surely that it will be accomplished. if the dread of failure, the dread of possible pain in its performance, the dread of what may happen as a result of activity,--if all these or any of them are allowed to obtrude themselves, then energy is greatly lessened, the power to do things hampered and success becomes almost impossible. this is as true in matters of health and strength as it is with regard to various external accomplishments. it takes a great {23} deal of experience for mankind to learn the lesson that their dreads are often without reality, and some men never learn it. usually when the word dreads is used, it is meant to signify a series of psychic or psychoneurotic conditions from which sensitive, nervous people suffer a great deal. there is, for instance, the dread of dirt called learnedly misophobia, that exaggerated fear that dirt may cling to the hands and prove in some way deleterious which sends its victims to wash their hands from twenty to forty times a day. not infrequently they wash the skin pretty well off or at least produce annoying skin irritation as the result of their feeling. there are many other dreads of this kind. some of them seem ever so much more absurd even than this dread of dirt. most of us have a dread of heights, that is, we cannot stand on the edge of a height and look down without trembling and having such uncomfortable feelings that it is impossible for us to stay there any length of time. some people also are unable to sit in the front row of the balcony of a theater or even to kneel in the front row of a gallery at church without having the same dread of heights that comes to others at the edge of a high precipice. i have among my {24} patients some clergymen who find it extremely difficult to stand up on a high altar, though, almost needless to say, the whole height is at most five or six ordinary steps. then there are people who have an exaggerated dread of the dark, so that it is quite impossible for them to sleep without a light or to sleep alone. sometimes such a dread is the result of some terrifying incident, as the case in my notes in which the treasurer of a university developed an intense dread of the dark which made sleep impossible without a light, after he had been shot at by a burglar who came into his room and who answered his demand, "who is that?" by a bullet which passed through the head of the bed. most of the skotophobists, the technical name for dark-dreaders, have no such excuse as this one. victims of nervous dreads have as a rule developed their dread by permitting some natural feeling of minor importance to grow to such an extent that it makes them very miserable. some cannot abide a shut-in place. philip gilbert hamerton, the english writer and painter, often found a railroad compartment in the english cars an impossible situation and had to break his journey in order to get over {25} the growing feeling of claustrophobia, the dread of shut-in places, which would steal over him. there are any number of these dreads and, almost needless to say, all of them may interfere with health and the pursuit of happiness. i have seen men and women thrown into a severe nervous state with chilly feelings and cold sweat as the result of trying to overcome one of these dreads. they make it impossible for their victims to do a great many things that other people do readily, and sadly hamper their wills. there is only one way to overcome these dreads, and that is by a series of acts in the contrary direction until a habit of self-control with regard to these haunting ideas is secured. all mankind, almost without exception, has a dread of heights, and yet many thousands of men have in recent years learned to work on high buildings without very much inconvenience from the dread. the wages are good, they _want_ to work this way, and the result is they take themselves in hand and gradually acquire self-control. i have had many of them tell me that at first they were sure they would never be able to do it, but the gradual ascent of the building as the work proceeded accustomed them to height, {26} and after a while it became almost as natural to work high up in the air as on the first or second story of a building or even on the level ground. the overcoming of these dreads is not easy unless some good reason releases the will and sets it to exerting its full power. when this is the case, however, the dread is overcome and the brake lifted after some persistence, with absolute assurance. men who became brave soldiers have been known to have had a great dread of blood in early life. some of our best surgeons have had to leave the first operation that they ever saw or they would have fainted, and yet after repeated effort they have succeeded in overcoming this sensitiveness. as a matter of fact, most people suffer so much from dreads because they yielded to a minor dread and allowed a bad habit to be formed. it is a question of breaking a bad habit by contrary acts rather than of overcoming a natural disposition. many of those who are victims have the feeling that they cannot be expected to conquer nature this way. as a result, they are so discouraged at the very idea that success is dubious and practically impossible from their very attitude of mind; but it is only the {27} second nature of a habit that they have to overcome, and this is quite another matter, for exactly contrary acts to these which formed a habit will break it. some of these dreads seem to be purely physical in origin or character yet prove to be merely or to a great degree only psychic states. insomnia itself is more a dread than anything else. in writing for the international clinics some years ago (volume iv, series xxvi) i dwelt on the fact that insomnia as a dread was probably responsible for more discomfort and complaints from mankind than almost anything else. insomniaphobia is just such a dread as agoraphobia, the dread of open spaces; or akrophobia, the dread of heights; or skotophobia, the dread of the dark, and other phobias which afflict mankind. it is perfectly possible in most cases to cure such phobias by direct training against them, and this can be done also with regard to insomnia. some people, particularly those who have not been out much during the day and who have suffered from wakefulness a few times, get it on their mind that if this state keeps up they will surely lose their reason or their bodily health, and they begin to worry about {28} it. they commence wondering about five in the afternoon whether they are going to be awake that night or not. it becomes a haunt, and no matter what they do during the evening every now and then the thought recurs that they will not sleep. by the time they actually lie down they have become so thoroughly occupied with that thought that it serves to keep them awake. some of them avoid the solicitude before they actually get to bed, but begin to worry after that, and if after ten minutes they are not asleep, above all if they hear a clock strike somewhere, they are sure they are going to be awake, they worry about it, get themselves thoroughly aroused, and then they will not go to sleep for hours. it is quite useless to give such people drugs, just as useless as to attempt to give a man a drug to overcome the dread of heights or the dread of the dark or of a narrow street through which he has to pass. they must use their wills to help them out of a condition in which their dreads have placed them. apart from these neurotic dreads, quite unreasoning as most of them are, there are a series of what may be called intellectual dreads. these are due to false notions that have come to be accepted and that serve to {29} keep people from doing things that they ought to do for the sake of their health, or set them performing acts that are injurious instead of beneficial. the dread of loss of sleep has often caused people to take somnifacients which eventually proved ever so much more harmful than would the loss of sleep they were meant to overcome. many a person dreading a cold has taken enough quinine and whisky to make him more miserable the next day than the cold would have, had it actually made its appearance, as it often does not. the quinine and whisky did not prevent it, but the expectation was founded on false premises. there are a great many other floating ideas that prove the source of disturbing dreads for many people. a discussion of a few typical examples will show how much health may be broken by the dreads associated with various ills, for they often interfere with normal, healthy living. "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" applies particularly in this matter. there are many morbid fears that disturb mankind and keep us from accomplishing what might otherwise be comparatively easy. a great many people become convinced that they have some diseased condition, or morbid elements at least, {30} in them which make it impossible for them to do as much as other people. sometimes this morbid persuasion takes the form of hypochrondia and the individuals feel that they have a constitution that unfits them for prolonged and strenuous effort of any kind, so they avoid it. the number of valetudinarians, that is of those who live their lives mainly engaged in caring for their health, though their physicians have never been able to find anything organically wrong with them, is much larger than might be imagined. this state of mind has been with us for many centuries, for the word which describes it, hypochondria, came to us originally from greece and is an attempt to localize the affection in connection with its principal symptom, which is usually one of discomfort in the stomach region or to one side or the other of it, that is, in the hypochondria or beneath the ribs. such a state of mind, in which the patient is constantly complaining of one symptom or another, quite paralyzes the will. the individual may be able to do some routine work but he will not be able to have any initiative or energy for special developments of his occupation, and of course, when any real affection occurs, he will feel that he is quite {31} unable to bear this additional burden of disease. hypochondriacs, however, sometimes fairly enjoy their ill health and therefore have been known not infrequently to live on to a good, round old age, ever complaining more and more. it is their dread of disease that keeps them from getting better and prevents their wills from throwing off whatever symptoms there are and becoming perfectly well. until something comes along and rouses their wills, there is no hope of affecting them favorably, and it is surprising how long the state may continue without any one ever having found any organic affection to justify all the discomforts of which they complain. quite literally, they are suffering from complaints and not from disease in the ordinary sense of the word. sometimes these dreads of disease are dependent on some word which has taken on an exaggerated significance in people's minds. a word that in recent years has been the source of a great deal of unfavorable suggestion is "catarrh", and a mistaken notion of its meaning has been productive of a serious hampering of their will to be well in a number of persons. in itself, both according to its derivation and its accepted scientific {32} significance, the word means only that first stage of inflammatory irritation of mucous membranes which causes secretion to flow more freely than normally. _catarrhein_ in greek means only to flow down. [footnote 2] [footnote 2: the word has, by the way, the same meaning as rheumatism, which is also from the greek verb, to flow, though its application is usually limited to the serous membranes of the joints or the serous surfaces of the intermuscular planes. by derivation, catarrh is the same word also as gout, which comes from _gutta_ in latin, meaning a drop and implying secretory disturbances. these three words--catarrh, rheumatism, gout--have been applied to all sorts of affections and are so general in meaning as to be quite hard to define exactly. they have for this very reason, their vagueness, become a prolific source of unfortunate suggestion and of all kinds of dreads that disturb health.] by abuse, however, the word _catarrh_ has come to mean in the minds of a great many people in our time a very serious inflammation of the mucous membranes, almost inevitably progressive and very often resulting in fetid diseased conditions of internal or external mucous membranes, very unpleasant for the patient and his friends and the source of serious complications and _sequelae_. this idea has been fostered sedulously by the advertisers of proprietary remedies and the ingenious exploiters of various modes of treatment. as a result, a great many people who for one reason or another--usually because of some slight increase of secretion in the nose and {33} throat--become convinced they have catarrh begin to feel that they cannot be expected to have as much resistive vitality as others, since they are the subjects of this serious progressive disease. as a matter of fact, very few people in america, especially those living in the northern or eastern states, are without some tendency to mild chronic catarrh. the violent changes of temperature and the damp, dark days predispose to it; but it produces very few symptoms except in certain particularly sensitive individuals whose minds become centered on slight discomforts in the throat and nose and who feel that they must represent some serious and probably progressive condition. as a matter of fact, catarrh has almost nothing of the significance attributed to it so often in magazine and newspaper advertisements. simple catarrh decreases without producing any serious result, and indeed it is an index of a purely catarrhal condition that there is a complete return to normal. sometimes microbes are associated with its causation, but when this is so, they are bacteria of mild pathological virulence that do not produce deep changes. as for catarrh developing fetid, foul-smelling discharges or odors, that {34} is out of the question. there are certain affections, notably diphtheria, that may produce such serious changes in the mucous membranes that there will always even long after complete recovery be an unpleasant odorous condition, but it is probable that even in these cases there exists a special form of microbe quite rare in occurrence which produces the state known as _ozena_. as to catarrh spreading from the nose and throat to the other mucous membranes, that is also quite out of the question if it is supposed to occur in the way that the advertising specialist likes to announce. catarrhal conditions may occur in the stomach, but like those of the nose and throat they are not serious, heal completely, and produce no definite changes. a pinch of snuff may cause a catarrhal condition of the nose, that is an increase of secretion due to hyperaemia of the mucous membrane; the eating of condiments, of worcestershire sauce, peppers, and horse-radish may cause it in the stomach. it may be due to microbic action or to irritant or decomposing food, but it is not a part of a serious, wide-spreading pathological condition that will finally make the patient miserable. it is surprising, however, how many people say with an air of finality {35} that they have catarrh, as if it should be perfectly clear that as a result they cannot be expected at any time to be in sufficiently good health to be called on for any special work, and of course if any affection should attack them, their natural immunity to disease has been so lowered by this chronic affection, of which they are the victims, that no strong resistance could be expected from them. all this is merely a dread induced by paying too much attention to medical advertisements. it is better not to know as much as some people know, or think they know about themselves, than to know so many things that are not so. their dreads seriously impair their power to work and leave them ill disposed to resist affections of any kind that may attack them. it is a sad confession to make, but not a little of the enforced study of physiology in our schools has become the source of a series of dreads and solicitudes rather than of helpful knowledge. we have as a result a generation who know a little about their internal economy, but only enough to make them worry about it and not quite enough to make them understand how thoroughly capable our organisms are of caring for themselves successfully and with resultant good health, if we will only {36} refrain from putting brakes on their energies and disturbing their functions by our worries and anxieties. another such word as catarrh in its unfavorable suggestiveness in recent years has been auto-intoxication. it is a mouth-filling word, and therefore very probably it has occupied the minds of the better educated classes. usually the form of auto-intoxication that is most spoken of is intestinal auto-intoxication, and this combination has for many people a very satisfying polysyllabic length that makes it of special significance. its meaning is taken to be that whenever the contents of the intestines are delayed more than twenty hours or perhaps a little longer, or whenever certain irritant materials find their way into the intestinal tract, there is an absorption of toxic matter which produces a series of constitutional symptoms. these include such vague symptomatic conditions as sleepiness, torpor after meals, an uncomfortable sense of fullness--though when we were young we rather liked to have that feeling of fullness--and sometimes a feeling of heat in the skin with other sensations of discomfort in various parts of the body. at times there is headache, but this is rather rare; lassitude and a feeling of {37} inability to do things is looked upon as almost characteristic of the condition. usually there are nervous symptoms of one kind or another associated with the other complaints and there may be distinctly hysterical or psycho-neurotic manifestations. auto-intoxication as just described has become a sort of fetish for a great many people who bow down and worship at its shrine and give some of the best of their energies and not a little of their time to meditation before it. as a matter of fact, in the last few years it has come to be recognized that auto-intoxication is a much abused word employed very often when there are serious organic conditions in existence elsewhere in the body and still more frequently when the symptoms are due merely to functional nervous troubles. these are usually consequent upon a sedentary life, lack of fresh air and exercise, insufficient attention to the diet in the direction of taking simple and coarse food, and generally passing disturbances that can be rather readily catalogued under much simpler affections than a supposed absorption of toxic materials from the intestines. reflexes from the intestinal tract, emphasized by worries about the condition, are much more responsible for the feelings {38} complained of--which are often not in any sense symptoms--than any physical factors present. as doctor walter c. alvarez said in a paper on the "origin of the so-called auto-intoxicational symptoms" published from the george williams hooper foundation for medical research of the university of california medical school, [footnote 3] as the conclusion of his investigation of the subject: [footnote 3: _journal of the american medical association_, january 4, 1919.] "auto-intoxication is commonly diagnosed when a physical examination would show other more definite causes for the symptoms. those who believe that intestinal stasis can account for a long list of disease conditions have little proof to offer for their views. many of the assumptions on which they rest their case have proved to be wrong. "the usual symptoms of the constipated disappear so promptly after a bowel movement that they cannot be due to absorbed toxins. they must be produced mechanically by distension and irritation of the colon. they occur in nervous, sensitive people. it has been shown that various activities of the digestive tract can profoundly affect the sensorium and the vasomotor nerves. the {39} old ideas of insidious poisoning led to the formation of hypochrondriacs; the new explanation helps to cure many of them." there are many other terms in common use that have unfortunate suggestions and make people feel, if they once get the habit of applying them to themselves, that they are the subject of rather serious illness. i suppose that one of the most used and most abused of these is uric acid and the uric acid diathesis. scientific physicians have nearly given up these terms, but a great many people are still intent on making themselves miserable. all sorts of symptoms usually due to insufficient exercise and air, inadequate diversion of mind and lack of interests are attributed to these conditions. some time or other a physician or perhaps some one who is supposed to be a friend suggested them and they continue to hamper the will to be well by baseless worries founded on false notions for years afterwards. what is needed is a definite effort of the will to throw off these nightmares of disease that are so disturbing and live without them. it is surprising how much vital energy may be wasted in connection with such dreads. unfortunately, too, medicines of various kinds are taken to relieve the symptoms connected {40} with them and the medicine does ever so much more harm than good. oliver wendell holmes declared a generation ago that if all the medicines that had ever been taken by mankind were thrown into the sea it would be much better for mankind and much worse for the fishes. the expression still has a great truth in it, especially as regards that habit of self-drugging so common among the american people. in the course of lecture engagements, i stay with very intelligent friends on a good many occasions each year, and it is surprising how many of them have medicine bottles around, indicating that they are subject to dreads of various kinds with regard to themselves for which they feel medicine should be taken. these dreads unfortunately often serve to lessen resistive vitality to real affections when they occur and therefore become a source of real danger. all these various dreads, then, have the definite effect of lessening the power of the will to enable people to do their work and remain well. they represent serious brakes upon the flow of nerve impulses from the spiritual side of man's nature to the physical. this is much more serious in its results than would usually be thought; and one of the {41} things that a physician has to find out from a great many patients is what sources of dread they are laboring under so as to neutralize them or at least correct them as far as possible. it is surprising how much good can be accomplished by a deliberate quest after dreads and the direct discussion of them, for they are always much less significant when brought out of the purlieus of the mind directly into the open. many a neurotic patient, particularly, will not be improved until his dreads are relieved. this form of psycho-analysis rather than the search for sex insults, as they are called, or sexual incidents of early life, is the hopeful phase of modern psychological contribution to therapeutics. {42} chapter iii habits "why, will shall break it; will and nothing else." _love's labor's lost_. dreads are brakes on the will, inhibitions which prevent its exercise and make accomplishment very difficult and sometimes impossible. they represent mainly a state of mind, yet often they contain physical elements, and the disposition counts for much. their counterpart in the opposite direction is represented by habits which are acquired facilities of action for good or for ill. habits not only make activities easy but they even produce such a definite tendency to the performance of certain actions as to make it difficult not to do them. they may become so strong as to be tyrants for ill, though it must not be forgotten that properly directed they may master what is worst in us and help us up the hill of life. acts that are entirely voluntary and very difficult at first may become by habit so {43} natural that it is extremely difficult to do otherwise than follow the ingrained tendency. nature's activities are imperative. habitual actions may become equally so. when some one once remarked to the duke of wellington that habit was second nature, he replied: "oh, ever so much more than that! habit may be ten times as strong as nature." the function of the will in health is mainly to prevent the formation of bad habits or break those that have been formed, but above all, to bring about the formation of habits that will prevent as far as is possible the development of tendencies to disease in the body, man probably faces no more difficult problem in life than the breaking of a bad habit. usually it requires the exercise of all his will power applied to its fullest extent. if there is a more difficult problem than the breaking of a bad habit it is the formation of a good one late in life because of the persistency of advertence and effort that is required. it is comparatively easy to prevent the formation of bad habits and also easy to form good habits in the earlier years. the organism is then plastic and yields itself readily and thus becomes grooved to the habit or hardened against it by the performance of even a few acts. {44} all the psychologists insist that after the period of the exercise of instinct as the basis of life passes, habit becomes the great force for good or for ill. we become quite literally a bundle of habits, and the success of life largely depends on whether these habits are favorable or unfavorable to the accomplishment of what is best in us. more than anything else health depends on habit. we begin by doing things more or less casually, and after a time a tendency to do them is created; then almost before we know it, we find that we have a difficult task before us, if we try not to do them. to begin with, the activity which becomes the subject of a habit may be distinctly unpleasant and require considerable effort to accomplish. practically every one who has learned to smoke recalls more or less vividly the physical disturbance caused by the first attempt and how even succeeding smokes for some time, far from being pleasant, required distinct effort and no little self-control. after a time, the desire to smoke becomes so ingrained that a man is literally made quite miserable by the lack of it and finds himself almost incapable of doing anything else until he has had his smoke. {45} even more of an effort is required to establish the habit of chewing tobacco, and it is even more difficult to break when once it has been formed. any one who has seen the discomfort and even torments endured by a man who, after he had chewed tobacco for many years, tried to stop will appreciate fully what a firm hold the habit has obtained. i have known a serious business man who almost had to give up business, who lost his sleep and his appetite and went through a nervous crisis merely by trying to break the habit of chewing tobacco. in the orient they chew betel nut. it is an extremely hot material which burns the tongue and which a man can stand for only a very short time when he first tries it. after a while, however, he finds a pleasant stimulation of sensation in the constant presence of the biting betel nut in his mouth; he craves it and cannot do his work so well without it. he will ever advert to its use and will be restless without it. he continues to use it in spite of the fact that the intense irritation set up by the biting qualities of the substance causes cancer of the tongue to occur ten times as frequently among those who chew betel nut as among the rest of the population. not all {46} those who chew it get cancer, for some die from other causes before there is time for the cancer to develop, and some seem to possess immunity against the irritation. the betel nut chewer ignores all this, proceeds to form the habit, urged thereto by the force of example, and then lets himself drift along, hoping that it will have no bad effects. the alcohol and drug habits are quite as significant in shortening life as betel nut and yet men take them up quite confident in the beginning that _they_ will not fall victims, and then find themselves enmeshed. it is probable that the direct physical effects of none of these substances shorten life to a marked degree unless they are indulged in to very great excess, but the moral hazards which they produce, accidents, injuries of various kinds, exposure to disease, all these shorten life. men know this very well, and yet persist in the formation of these habits. any habit, no matter how strong, can be broken if the individual really wishes to break it, provided the subject of it is not actually insane or on the way to the insane asylum. he need only get a motive strong enough to rouse his will, secure a consciousness of his own power, and then the habit can be broken. {47} after all, it must never be forgotten that the only thing necessary in order to break a habit effectively is to refuse to perform a single act of it, the next time one is tempted. that breaks the habit and makes refusal easier and one need only continue the refusal until the temptation ceases. men who have not drawn a sober breath for years have sometimes come to the realization of the fools that they were making of themselves, the injury they were doing their relatives, or perhaps have been touched by a child's words or some religious motive, and after that they have never touched liquor again. father theobald mathew's wonderful work in this regard among the irish in the first half of the nineteenth century has been repeated by many temperance or total abstinence advocates in more recent generations. i have known a confirmed drunkard reason himself into a state of mind from which he was able to overcome his habit very successfully, though his reasoning consisted of nothing more than the recognition of the fact that suggestion was the root of his craving for alcohol. his father had been a drunkard and he had received so many warnings from all his older relatives and had himself so come to dwell on {48} the possible danger of his own formation of the habit that he had suggested himself into the frame of mind in which he took to drink. i have known a physician on whom some half a dozen different morphine cures had been tried--always followed by a relapse--cure himself by an act of his own will and stay cured ever since because of an incident that stirred him deeply enough to arouse his will properly to activity. one day his little boy of about four was in his office when father prepared to give himself one of his usual injections of morphine. the little boy gave very close attention to all his father's manipulations, and as the doctor was hurrying to keep an appointment, he did not notice the intent eye witness of the proceedings. just as the needle was pushed home and the piston shot down in the barrel, the little boy rushed over to his father and said, "oh, daddy, do that to me." apparently this close childish observer had noted something of the look of satisfaction that came over his father's face as he felt the fluid sink into his tissues. it is almost needless to say that the shock the father received was enough to break his morphine habit for good and all. it simply released his will and then he found that if he {49} really wanted to, he could accomplish what the various cures for the morphine habit only lead up to--and in his case unsuccessfully--the exercise of his own will power. the word "habit" suggests nearly always, unfortunately, the thought of bad habits, just as the word "passion" implies, with many people, evil tendencies. but it must not be forgotten that there are good passions and good habits that are as helpful for the accomplishment of what is best in life as bad passions and bad habits are harmful. a repetition of acts is needed for the formation of good habits just as for the establishment of customs of evil. usually, however, and this must not be forgotten, the beginning of a good habit is easier than the beginning of a bad habit. once formed, the good habits are even more beneficial than the bad habits are harmful. it is almost as hard to break a good habit as a bad one, provided that it has been continued for a sufficient length of time to make that groove in the nervous system which underlies all habit. we cannot avoid forming habits and the question is, shall we form good or bad habits? good habits preserve health, make life easier and happier; bad habits have the opposite effect, though {50} there is some countervailing personal element that tempts to their formation and persistence. every failure to do what we should has its unfortunate effect upon us. we get into a state in which it is extremely difficult for us to do the right things. we have to overcome not only the original inertia of nature, but also a contrary habit. if we do not follow our good impulses, the worse ones get the upper hand. as professor james said, for we must always recur to him when we want to have the clear expression of many of these ideas: "just as, if we let our emotions evaporate, they get into a way of evaporating; so there is reason to suppose that if we often flinch from making an effort, before we know it the effort-making capacity will be gone; and that, if we suffer the wandering of our attention, presently it will wander all the time. attention and effort are but two names for the same psychic fact. to what brain-processes they correspond we do not know. the strongest reason for believing that they do depend on brain processes at all and are not pure acts of the spirit, is just this fact, that they seem in some degree subject to the law of habit, which is a material law." it must not be forgotten that we mold not {51} alone what we call character, but that we manifestly produce effects upon our tissues that are lasting. indeed it is these that count the most, for health at least. it is the physical basis of will and intellect that is grooved by what we call habit. as doctor carpenter says: "our nervous systems have grown to the way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterwards into the same identical fold." permitting exceptions to occur when we are forming a habit is almost necessarily disturbing. the classical figure is that it is like letting fall a ball of string which we have been winding. it undoes in a moment all that we have accomplished in a long while. as professor bain has said it so much better than i could, i prefer to quote him: "the peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other. it is necessary, above all things, in such a situation never to lose a battle. every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the {52} right. the essential precaution, therefore, is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition under any circumstances." this means training the will by a series of difficult acts, accomplished in spite of the effort they require, but which gradually become easier from repeated performance until habit replaces nature and dominates the situation. serious thinkers who faced humanity's problems squarely and devoted themselves to finding solutions for them had worked out this formula of the need of will training long ago, and it was indeed a principal characteristic of medieval education. the old monastic schools were founded on the idea that training of the will and the formation of good habits was ever so much more important than the accumulation of information. they frankly called the human will the highest faculty of mankind and felt that to neglect it would be a serious defect in education. the will can only be trained by the accomplishment of difficult things day after day until its energies are aroused and the man becomes conscious of his own powers and the {53} ability to use them whenever he really wishes. there was a time not so long since, and there are still voices raised to that purport, when it was the custom to scoff at the will training of the older time and above all the old-fashioned suggestion that mortifications of various kinds--that is, the doing of unpleasant things just for the sake of doing them--should be practiced because of the added will power thus acquired. the failure of our modern education which neglected this special attention to the will is now so patent as to make everyone feel that there must be a recurrence to old time ideas once more. the formation of proper habits should, then, be the main occupation of the early years. this will assure health as well as happiness, barring the accidents that may come to any human being. good habits make proper living easy and after a time even pleasant, though there may have been considerable difficulty in the performance of the acts associated with them at the beginning. indeed, the organism becomes so accustomed to their performance after a time that it becomes actually something of a trial to omit them, and they are missed. education consists much more in such {54} training of the will than in storing the intellect with knowledge, though the latter idea has been unfortunately the almost exclusive policy in our education in recent generations. we are waking up to the fact that diminution of power has been brought about by striving for information instead of for the increase of will energy. professor conklin of princeton, in his volume on "heredity and environment", emphasized the fact that "will is indeed the supreme human faculty, the whole mind in action, the internal stimulus which may call forth all the capacities and powers." he had said just before this: "it is one of the most serious indictments against modern systems of education that they devote so much attention to the training of the memory and intellect and so little attention to the training of the will, upon the proper development of which so much depends." nor must it be thought that the idea behind this training of the will is in any sense medievally ascetic and old-fashioned and that it does not apply to our modern conditions and modes of thinking. professor huxley would surely be the one man above all whom any one in our times would be least likely to think of {55} as mystical in his ways or medieval in his tendencies. in his address on "a liberal education and where to find it", delivered before the south london workingmen's college some forty years ago, in emphasizing what he thought was the real purpose of education, he dwelt particularly on the training of the will. he defined a liberal education not as so many people might think of it in terms of the intellect, but rather in terms of the will. he said that a liberal education was one "which has not only prepared a man to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws, but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the rewards which nature scatters with as free a hand as her penalties." and then he added: "that man, i think, has had a liberal education who has been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength, and in smooth working order, ready, like a steam engine, to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is stored with a knowledge of the great {56} and fundamental truths of nature and of the laws of her operations; one who is no stunted ascetic but who is full of life and fire, but whose passions are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty, whether of nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to respect others as himself. "such an one and no other, i conceive, has had a liberal education; for he is, completely as a man can be, in harmony with nature." this is the liberal education in habits of order and power that every one must strive for, so that all possible energies may be available for the rewards of good health. details of the habits that mean much for health must be reserved for subsequent chapters, but it must be appreciated in any consideration of the relation of the will to health that good habits formed as early as possible in life and maintained conservatively as the years advance are the mainstay of health and the power to do work. {57} chapter iv sympathy "never could maintain his part but in the force of his will." _much ado about nothing_. a great french physician once combined in the same sentence two expressions that to most people of the modern time would seem utter paradoxes. "rest," he said, "is the most dangerous of remedies, never to be employed for the treatment of disease, except in careful doses, under the direction of a physician and rarely for any but sufferers from organic disease"; while "sympathy", he added, "is the most insidiously harmful of anodynes, seldom doing any good except for the passing moment, and often working a deal of harm to the patient." with the first of these expressions, we have nothing to do here, but the second is extremely important in any consideration of the place of the will in human life. nothing is so prone {58} to weaken the will, to keep it from exerting its full influence in maintaining vital resistance, and as a result, to relax not only the moral but the physical fiber of men and women as misplaced sympathy. it has almost exactly the same place in the moral life that narcotics have in the physical, and it must be employed with quite as much nicety of judgment and discrimination. sympathy of itself is a beautiful thing in so far as it implies that _suffering with_ another which its greek etymology signifies. in so far as it is pity, however, it tends to lessen our power to stand up firmly under the trials that are sure to come, and is just to that extent harmful rather than helpful. there is a definite reaction against it in all normal individuals. no one wants to be pitied. we feel naturally a little degraded by it. in so far as it creates a feeling of self-pity, it is particularly to be deprecated, and indeed this is so important a subject in all that concerns the will to be well and to get well that it has been reserved for a special chapter. what we would emphasize here is the harm that is almost invariably done by the well-meant but so often ill-directed sympathy of friends and relatives which proves relaxing of moral {59} purpose and hampers the will in its activities, physical as well as ethical. human nature has long recognized this and has organized certain customs of life with due reference to it. we all know that when children fall and even hurt themselves, the thing to do is not to express our sympathy and sorrow for them, even though we feel it deeply, but unless their injury is severe, to let them pick themselves up and divert their minds from their hurts by suggesting that they have broken the floor, or hurt it. for the less sympathy expressed, the shorter will be the crying, and the sooner the child will learn to take the hard knocks of life without feeling that it is especially abused or suffering any more than comes to most people. unfortunately, it is not always the custom to do the same thing with the children of a larger growth. this is particularly true when there is but a single child in the family, or perhaps two, when a good deal of sympathy is likely to be wasted on their ills which are often greatly increased by their self-consciousness and their dwelling on them. diversion of mind, not pity, is needed. the advice to do the next thing and not cry over spilt milk is ever so much better than sentimental recalling of the past. {60} many a young man who went to war learned the precious lesson that sympathy, though he might crave it, instead of doing him good would do harm. many a manly character was rounded out into firm self-control and independence by military discipline and the lack of anything like sentimentality in camp and military life. a good many mothers whose boys had been the objects of their special solicitude felt very sorry to think that they would have to submit to the hardships and trials involved in military discipline. most of them who were solicitous in this way were rather inclined to feel that their boy might not be able to stand up under the rigidities of military life and hoped at most that he would not be seriously harmed. they could not think that early rising, hard work, severe physical tasks, tiring almost to exhaustion, with plain, hearty, yet rather coarse food, eaten in slapdash fashion, would be quite the thing for their boy of whom they had taken so much care. not a few of them were surprised to find how the life under these difficult circumstances proved practically always beneficial. i remember distinctly that when the soldiers were sent to the mexican border the mother of {61} a soldier from a neighboring state remarked rather anxiously to me that she did not know what would happen to jack under the severe discipline incident to military life. he had always gone away for five or six weeks in the summer either to the mountains or to the seashore, and the mexican border, probably the most trying summer climate in the united states, represented the very opposite of this. besides, there was the question of the army rations; jack was an only son with five sisters. most of them were older than he, and so jack had been coddled as though by half a dozen mothers. he was underweight, he had a rather finicky appetite, he was capricious in his eating both as to quantity and quality, and was supposed to be a sufferer from some form of nervous indigestion. personally, i felt that what jack needed was weight, but i had found it very hard to increase his weight. he was particularly prone to eat a very small breakfast, and his mother once told me that whenever he was at home, she always prepared his breakfast for him with her own hands. this did not improve matters much, however, for jack was likely to take a small portion of the meat cooked for him, refuse to touch the potatoes, and eat marmalade and toast with {62} his coffee and nothing more. no wonder that he was twenty pounds underweight or that his mother should be solicitous as to what might happen to her jack in army life at the border. i agreed with her in that but there were some things that i knew would not happen to jack. his breakfast, for instance, would not be particularly cooked for him, and he might take or leave exactly what was prepared for every one else. neither would the government cook come out and sit beside jack while he was at breakfast and tempt him to eat, as his mother had always done. i knew, too, that at other meals, while the food would be abundant, it would usually be rather coarse, always plain, and there would be nothing very tempting about it unless you had your appetite with you. if ever there is a place where appetite is the best sauce, it is surely where one is served with army food. i need scarcely tell what actually happened to jack, for it was exactly what happened to a good many jacks whose mothers were equally afraid of the effects of camp life on them. amid the temptations of home food, jack had remained persistently underweight. eating an army ration with the sauce of appetite due to prolonged physical efforts in the outdoor {63} air every day, jack gained more than twenty pounds in weight, in spite of the supposedly insalubrious climate of the border and the difficult conditions under which he had to live. it was literally the best summer vacation that jack had ever spent, though if the suggestion had ever been made that this was the sort of summer vacation that would do him good, the idea would have been scoffed at as impractical, if not absolutely impossible. homer suggested that a mollycoddle character whom he introduces into the "iliad" owed something of his lack of manly stamina to the fact that he had six sisters at home, and an irish friend once translated the passage by saying that the young man in question was "one of seven sisters." this had been something of jack's trouble. he had been asked always whether he changed his underwear at the different seasons, whether he wore the wristlets that sisterly care provided for him, whether he put on his rubbers when he went out in damp weather and carried his umbrella when it was threatening rain, and all the rest. he got away from all this sympathetic solicitude in army life and was ever so much better for it. it is extremely difficult to draw the line {64} where the sympathy that is helpful because it is encouraging ends, and sentimental pity which discourages begins. there is always danger of overdoing and it is extremely important that growing young folks particularly should be allowed to bear their ills without help and learn to find resources within themselves that will support them. the will can thus be buttressed to withstand the difficulties of life, make them much easier to bear, and actually lessen their effect. ten growing young folks have been seriously hurt by ill-judged sympathy for every one that has been discouraged by the absence of sympathy or by being made to feel that he must take the things of life as they come and stand them without grouchy complaint or without looking for sympathy. this is particularly true as regards those with any nervous or hysterical tendencies, for they readily learn to look for sympathy. the most precious lesson of the war for physicians has been that which is emphasized in the chapter on "the will and the war psychoneuroses." there was an immense amount of so-called "shell-shock" which really represented functional neurotic conditions such as in women used to be called hysteria. at the {65} beginning of the war there was a good deal of hearty sympathy with it, and patients were encouraged by the physicians and then by the nurses and other patients in the hospital to tell over and over again how their condition developed. it was found after a time that the sympathy thus manifested always did harm. the frequent repetition of their stories added more and more suggestive elements to the patients' condition, and they grew worse instead of better. it was found that the proper curative treatment was to make just as little as possible of their condition, to treat them firmly but with assurance--once it had been definitely determined that no organic nervous trouble was present--and to bring about a cure of whatever symptoms they had at a single sitting by changing their attitude of mind towards themselves. some of the patients proved refractory and for these isolation and rather severe discipline were occasionally necessary. the isolation was so complete as to deprive them not only of companionship but also of reading and writing materials and the solace of their tobacco. severe cases were sometimes treated by strong faradic currents of electricity which were extremely painful. patients who insisted that {66} they could not move their muscles were simply made to jump by an electric shock, thus proving to them that they could use the muscles, and then they were required to continue their use. those suffering from shell-shock deafness and muteness were told that an electrode would be applied to their larynx or the neighborhood of their ear and when they felt pain from it, that was a sign that they were able to talk and to hear if they wished, and that they must do so. relapses had to be guarded against by suggestion, and where relapses became refractory and stronger currents of electricity to ear and larynx were deemed inadvisable, the strict isolation treatment usually proved effective. in a word, discipline and not sympathy was the valuable mode of treating them. sympathy did them harm as it invariably does. the world has recognized this truism always, but we need to learn the lesson afresh, or the will power is undermined. character is built up by standing the difficult things of life without looking for the narcotic of sympathy or any other anaesthetizing material. these are "hard sayings," to use a scriptural expression, but they represent the accumulation of wisdom of human experience. sympathy can be {67} almost as destructive of individual morale as the dreads, and it is extremely important that it should not be allowed to sap will energy. in our time above all, when the training of the will has been neglected, though it is by far the most important factor in education, this lesson with regard to the harmful effect of sympathy needs to be emphasized. for nervous people, that is, for those who have, either from inheritance or so much oftener from environment, yielded to circumstances rather than properly opposed them, sympathy is quite as dangerous as opium. george eliot once replied to a friend who asked her what was duty, that duty consisted in facing the hard things in life without taking opium. healthy living to a great extent depends on standing what has to be borne from the bodies that we carry around with us without looking for sympathy. it has often been emphasized that human beings are eminently lonely. the great experiences of life and above all, death and suffering, we have to face by ourselves and no one can help us. we may not be, as emerson suggested, "infinitely repellent particles", but at all the profoundest moments of life we feel our alone-ness. the more {68} that we learn to depend bravely on ourselves and the less we seek outside support for our characters, the better for us and our power to stand whatever comes to us in life. physical ills are always lessened by courageously facing them and are always increased by cringing before them. the one who dreads suffers both before and during the time of the pain and thus doubles his discomfort. we must stand alone in the matter and sympathy is prone to unman us. looking for sympathy is a tendency to that self-pity which is treated in a subsequent chapter and which does more to increase discomfort in illness, exaggerate symptoms, and lower resistive vitality than anything else, in the psychic order at least. suffering is always either constructive or destructive of character. it is constructive when the personal reaction suffices to lessen and make it bearable. it is destructive whenever there is a looking for sympathy or a leaning on some one else. character counts in withstanding disease, and even in the midst of epidemics, according to many well-grounded traditions, those who are afraid contract the disease sooner than others and usually suffer more severely. sympathy must not be allowed to produce any such effect as this. {69} chapter v self-pity "the will dotes that is attributive to what infectiously itself affects." _troilus and cressida_. the worst brake on the will to be well is undoubtedly the habit that some people have of pitying themselves and feeling that they are eminently deserving of the pity of others because of the trials, real or supposed, which they have to undergo. instead of realizing how much better off they are than the great majority of people--for most of the typical self-pitiers are not real subjects for pity--they keep looking at those whom they fondly suppose to be happier than themselves and then proceed to get into a mood of commiseration with themselves because of their ill health--real or imaginary--or uncomfortable surroundings. just as soon as men or women assume this state of mind, it becomes extremely difficult for them to stand any real {70} trials that appear, and above all, it becomes even more difficult for them to react properly against the affections of one kind or another that are almost sure to come. self-pity is ever a serious hamperer of resistive vitality. a great many things in modern life have distinctly encouraged this practice of self-pity and conscious commiseration of one's state until it has become almost a commonplace of modern life for those who feel that they are suffering, especially if they belong to what may be called the sophisticated classes. we have become extremely sensitive as a consequence about contact with suffering. editors of magazines and readers for publishing houses often refuse in our time to accept stories that have unhappy endings, because people do not care to read them, it is said. the story may have some suffering in it and even severe hardships, especially if these can be used for purposes of dramatic climax, but by the end of the story everything must have turned out "just lovely", and it must be understood that suffering is only a passing matter and merely a somewhat unpleasant prelude to inevitable happiness. almost needless to say, this is not the way of life as it must be lived in what many {71} generations of men have agreed in calling "this vale of tears." for a great many people have to suffer severely and without any prospect of relief--none of us quite escape the necessity of suffering--and as some one has said, all human life, inasmuch as there is death in it, must be considered a tragedy. the old greeks did not hesitate, in spite of their deep appreciation of the beauty of nature and cordial enthusiasm for the joy of living, even to emphasize the tragedy in life. they were perhaps inclined to think that the sense of contrast produced by tragedy heightened the actual enjoyment of life and that indeed all pleasure was founded rather on contrast than positive enjoyment. one may not be ready to agree with the saying that the only thing that makes life worth while is contrast, but certainly suffering as a background enhances happiness as nothing else can. aristotle declared that tragedy purges life, that is, that only through the lens of death and misfortune could one see life free from the dross of the sordid and merely material to which it was attached. his meaning was that tragedy lifted man above the selfishness of mere individualism, and by showing him the misfortunes of others prepared him to struggle {72} for himself when misfortune might come, as it almost inevitably would; and at the same time lifted him above the trifles of daily life into a higher, broader sphere of living, where he better realized himself and his powers. for man is distinctly prone to forget about death and suffering, and when he does, to become eminently selfish and forgetful of the rights of others and his duties towards them. the french have a saying, consisting of but four words and an intervening shrug of the shoulders, that is extremely illuminating. they quote as the expression of the usual thought of men when brought face to face with the fact that people are dying all around them, "_on meurt--les autres!_" "people die--oh, yes (with an expressive shrug of the shoulders), other people!" we refuse to recognize the fact that we too must go until that is actually forced upon us by advancing years or by some incurable disease. as for suffering, a great many people have come almost to resent that they should be asked to suffer, and character dissolves in self-pity as a result. instead of the constant, continuous reading of what may be called sybaritic literature--for it is said that the sybarite finds it impossible to sleep if there is a crushed rose leaf next {73} his skin--instead of being absorbed in the literature which emphasizes the pleasures of life and pushes its pains into the background, young people, and especially those of the better-to-do classes, should be taught from their early years to read the lives of those who have endured successfully hardships of various kinds and have succeeded in getting satisfaction out of their accomplishment in life, despite all the suffering that was involved. these are human beings like ourselves, and what mortal has done, other mortals can do. there was a school of american psychologists before the war who had come to recognize the value of that old-fashioned means of self-discipline of mind, the reading of the lives of the saints. for those to whom that old-fashioned practice may seem too reactionary, there are the lives and adventures of our african and asiatic travelers and our polar explorers as a resource. war books have been a godsend for our generation in this regard. they have led people to contemplate the hardest kind of suffering--and very often in connection with those who are nearest and dearest to them-and thus made them understand something of the possibilities of human nature to withstand {74} trials and sufferings. as a result they have been trained not to make too much of their own trivial trials, as they soon learned to recognize them in the face of the awful hardships that this war involved. what belgium endured was bad enough, while the experiences of poland, servia, armenia were an ascending scale of horrors, but also of humanity's power to stand suffering. life in the larger families of the olden times afforded more opportunities for the proper teaching of the place of suffering than in the smaller families of the modern time. older children, as they grew up, had before them the example of mother's trials and hardships in bearing and rearing children, and so came to understand better the place of hard things in life. in a large family it was very rare when one or more of the members did not die, and thus growing youth was brought in contact with the greatest mystery in life, that of death. very frequently at least one of the household and sometimes more, had to go through a period of severe suffering with which the others were brought in daily contact. it is sometimes thought in modern times that such intimacy with those who are suffering takes the joy out of life for those who {75} are young, but any one who thinks so should consult a person who has had the actual experience; while occasionally it may be found that some one with a family history of this kind may think that he or she was rendered melancholy by it, nine out of ten or even more will frankly say that they feel sure that they were benefited. there is nothing in the world that broadens and deepens the significance of life like intimate contact with suffering, if not in person, then in those who are near and dear to us. as a physician, i have often felt that i should like to take people who are constantly complaining of their little sorrows and trials, who are downhearted over some minor ailment, who sometimes suffer from fits of depression precipitated by nothing more, perhaps, than a dark day or a little humid weather, or possibly even a petty social disappointment, and put them in contact with cancer patients or others who are suffering severely day by day, yes, hour by hour, night and day, and yet who are joyful and often a source of joy to others. let us not forget that nearly one hundred thousand people die every year from cancer in this country alone. as a physician, i have often found that a {76} chronic invalid in a house became the center of attraction for the whole household, and that particularly when it was a woman, whether mother or elder sister, all of the other members brought their troubles to her and went away feeling better for what she said to them. i have seen this not in a few exceptional instances, but so often as to know that it is a rule of life. chronic invalids often radiate joy and happiness, while perfectly well people who suffer from minor ills of the body and mind are frequently a source of grumpiness, utterly lack sympathy, and are impossible as companions. an american woman, bedridden for over thirty years, has organized by correspondence one of the most beautiful charities of our time. pity properly restricted to practical helpfulness without any sentimentality is a beautiful thing. there is always a danger, however, of its arousing in its object that self-pity which is so eminently unlovely and which has so often the direct tendency to increase rather than decrease whatever painful conditions are present. crying over oneself is always to be considered at least hysterical. crying, except over a severe loss, is almost unpardonable. {77} it is often said that a good cry, like a rainstorm, clears the atmosphere of murk and the dark elements of life, but it is dangerous to have recourse to it. it is a sign of lack of character almost invariably and when indulged in to any extent will almost surely result in deterioration of the power to withstand the trials of life, whatever they may be. professor william james has suggested that not only should men and women stand the things that come to them in the natural course of events, but they should even go out and seek certain things hard to bear with the idea of increasing their power to withstand the unpleasant things of life. this is, of course, a very old idea in humanity, and the ascetics from the earliest days of christianity taught the doctrine of self-inflicted suffering in order to increase the power of resistance. it is usually said that the principal idea which the hermits and anchorites and the saintly personages of the early middle ages, of whose mortifications we have heard so much, had in inflicting pain on themselves was to secure merit for the hereafter. something of that undoubtedly was in their minds, but their main purpose was quite literally ascetic. _ascesis_, from the greek, means in its strict {78} etymology just exercise. they were exercising their power to stand trials and even sufferings, so that when these events came, as inevitably they would, seeing that we carry round with us what st. paul called "this body of our death," they would be prepared for them. practically any psychologist of modern times who has given this subject any serious thought will recognize, as did professor james, the genuine psychology of human nature that lies behind these ascetic practices. nothing that i know is so thoroughgoing a remedy for self-pity as the actual seeking at times of painful things in order to train oneself to bear them. the old-fashioned use of disciplines, that is, little whips which were used so vigorously sometimes over the shoulders as to draw blood, or the wearing of chains which actually penetrated the skin and produced quite serious pain no longer seems absurd, once it is appreciated that this may be a means of bracing up character and making the real trials and hardships of life much easier than would otherwise be the case. not that human nature must not be expected to yield a little under severe trials and bend before the blasts of adverse fortune, but {79} that there should not be that tendency to exaggerate one's personal feelings which has unfortunately become characteristic of at least the better-to-do classes in our time. not that we would encourage stony grief, but that sorrow must be restrained and, above all, must not be so utterly selfish as to be forgetful of others. tears should, to a large extent, be reserved, as they are in most perfectly normal individuals, for joyous rather than sad occasions, for no one ever was supremely joyful without having tears in the eyes. it is when we feel most sympathetic to humanity that the gift of tears comes to us, and no feeling is quite so completely satisfying as comes from the tears of joy. mothers who have heard of their boy's bravery, its recognition by those above him, and its reward by proper symbols, have had tears come welling to their eyes, while their hearts were stirred so deeply with sensations of joy and pride that probably they have never before felt quite so happy. {80} chapter vi avoidance of conscious use of the will "our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners." _othello_. doctor austin o'malley, in his little volume, "keystones of thought", says: "when you are conscious of your stomach or your will you are ill." we all appreciate thoroughly, as the result of modern progress in the knowledge of the influences of the mind on the body, how true is the first part of this saying, but comparatively few people realize the truth of the second part. the latter portion of this maxim is most important for our consideration. it should always be in the minds of those who want to use their own wills either for the purpose of making themselves well, or keeping themselves healthy, but above all, should never be forgotten by those who want to help others get over various ills that are manifestly due in whole or in part to the failure to use the vital energies in the body as they should be employed. {81} conscious use of the will, except at the beginning of a series of activities, is always a mistake. it is extremely wasteful of internal energy. it adds greatly to the difficulty of accomplishing whatever is undertaken. it includes, above all, watching ourselves do things, constantly calculating how much we are accomplishing and whether we are doing all that we should be doing, and thus makes useless demands on power partly by diversion of attention, partly by impairment of concentration, but above all by adding to the friction because of the inspection that is at work. the old kitchen saw is "a watched kettle never boils." the real significance of the expression is of course that it seems to take so long for the water to boil that we become impatient while watching and it looks to us as though the boiling process would really never occur. this is still more strikingly evident when we are engaged in watching our own activities and wondering whether they are as efficient as they should be. the lengthening of time under these circumstances is an extremely important factor in bringing about tiredness. ask any human being unaccustomed to note the passage of time to tell you when two minutes have elapsed; {82} inevitably he will suggest at the end of thirty to forty seconds that the two minutes must be up. only by counting his pulse or by going through some regular mechanical process will he be enabled to appreciate the passage of time in anything like its proper course. when watched thus, time seems to pass ever so much more slowly than it would otherwise. it is extremely important then that people should not acquire the impression that they must be consciously using their will to bring themselves into good health and keep themselves there, for that will surely defeat their purpose. what is needed is a training of the will to do things by a succession of harder and harder tasks until the ordinary acts of life seem comparatively easy. intellectual persuasion as to the efficiency of the will in this matter means very little. the ordinary feeling that reasoning means much in such matters is a fallacy. much thinking about them is only disturbing of action as a rule and hamlet's expression that the "native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" is a striking bit of psychology. shakespeare had no illusions with regard to the place of the will in life and more than any english author has emphasized it. i have {83} ventured to illustrate this by quotations from him under each chapter heading, but there are many more quite as applicable that might readily be found. he knew above all how easy it was for human beings to lessen the power of their wills and has told us of "the cloy'd will that satiateth unsatisfied desire" and "the bridles of our wills", and has given us such adjectives as "benumbed" and "neutral" and "doting", which demonstrates his recognition of how men weaken their wills by over-deliberation. the mode of training in the army is of course founded on this mode of thinking. the young men in the united states army want to accomplish every iota of their duty and are not only willing but anxious to do everything that is expected of them. there were some mighty difficult tasks ahead of them over in europe and our method of preparing the men was not by emphasizing their duty and dinning into their ears and minds how great the difficulty would be and how they must nerve themselves for the task. such a mode of preparation would probably have been discouraging rather than helpful. but they were trained in exercises of various kinds in an absolutely regular life under plain living in the {84} midst of hard work until their wills responded to the word of command quite unconsciously and immediately without any need of further prompting. their bodies were trained until every available source of energy was at command, so that when they _wanted_ to do things they set about them without more ado, and as they were used to being fatigued they were not constantly engaged in dreading lest they should hurt themselves, or fostering fears that they might exhaust their energies or that their tiredness, even when apparently excessive, would mean anything more than a passing state that rest would repair completely. if at every emergency of their life at war soldiers had to go through a series of conscious persuasions to wake up their will and set their energies at work, and if they had to occupy themselves every time in presenting motives why this activity should not be delayed, then military discipline, at least in so far as it involves prompt obedience, would almost inevitably be considerable of a joke. what is needed is unthinking, immediate obedience, and this can be secured only by the formation of deeply graven habits which enable a man to set about the next thing that duty calls for at once. {85} every action that we perform is the result of an act of the will, but we do not have to advert to that as a rule; whenever any one gets into a state of mind where it is necessary to be constantly adverting to it, then, as was said at the beginning of this chapter, there is something the matter with the will. the faculty is being hampered in its action by consciousness, and such hampering leads to a great waste of energy. the will is the great, unconscious faculty in us. by far the greater part of what has come unfortunately to be called the unconscious and the subconscious and that has occupied so much of the attention of modern writers on psychological subjects is really the will at work. it attains its results we know not how, and it is prompted to their accomplishment in ways that are often very difficult for us to understand. its effects are often spoken of as due to the submerged self or the subliminal self or the other self, but it is only in rare and pathological cases as a rule that such expressions are justified once the place of the will is properly recognized. it is often said, for instance, that the power some people have of waking after a certain {86} period of sleep at night or after a short nap during the daytime, a power that a great many more people would possess if only they deliberately practised it, is due to the subconsciousness or the subliminal personality of the individual which wakes him up at the determined time. why those terms should be used when other things are accomplished by the human will just as mysteriously is rather difficult to understand. it is well recognized that if an individual in the ordinary waking state wants to do something after the lapse of an hour or so he will do it, provided his will is really awake to the necessity of accomplishing it. it is true that he may become so absorbed in his current occupation as to miss the time, but such abstraction usually means that he was not sufficiently interested in the duty that was to be performed as to keep the engagement with himself, or else that he is an individual in whom the intellectual over-shadows the voluntary life. we speak of him as an impractical man. we all know the danger there is in putting off calling some one by telephone on being told that "the line is busy", for not infrequently it will happen that several hours will elapse before we think of the matter again {87} and then perhaps it may be too late. if we set a definite time limit with ourselves, however, then our will will prompt us quite as effectively, though quite as inexplicably, at the expiration of that time as it awakes those who have resolved to be aroused at a predetermined moment. we may miss our telephone engagement with ourselves, but we practically never miss an important train, because having deeply impressed upon ourselves the necessity for not missing this, our will arouses us to activity in good time. there is not the slightest necessity, however, for appealing to the unconscious or the subconscious in this. it is true that there is a wonderful sentinel within us that awakes us from daydreams or disturbs the ordinary course of some occupation to turn our attention to the next important duty that we should perform. we know that this sentinel is quite apart from our consciousness; but the power we have of setting ourselves to doing anything is exemplified in very much the same way. when i want a book, i do not know what it is that sets my muscles in motion and brings me to a shelf and then directs my attention to choosing the one i shall take down and consult. it is an unconscious activity, but not the activity of {88} unconsciousness, which is only a contradiction in terms. [footnote 4] [footnote 4: it is true that there is a particular phase of our intellectual effort included under the modern terms unconscious or subconscious that is mysterious enough to deserve a special name, but we already have an excellent term for this quality which is not vague but thoroughly descriptive of its activity. this is intuition,--a word that has been in use for nearly a thousand years now and signifies the immediate perception of a truth,--by a flash as it were. we may know nothing about a subject and may have only begun to think about it, when there flashes on us a truth that has perhaps never occurred to any one else and certainly has never been in our minds before. it has been suggested in recent years that such flashes of intelligence are due to the secondary personality or the subliminal self or the other self, and it is often added that it is the development of our knowledge of these phases of psychology that represents modern progress in the science of mind. only the term for it is new, however, for intuition has been the subject of special intensive study for a long while. indeed, the reason why the old-time poet appealed to the muses for aid and the modern poet suggests inspiration as the source of his poetic thought, is because both of them knew that their best thoughts flash on them, not as the result of long and hard thinking, but by some process in which with the greatest facility come perceptions that even they themselves are surprised to learn that they have. to say that such things come from the unconscious is simply to ignore this wonderful power of original thought, that is, primary perception. emerson suggested that intuition represented all the knowledge that came without tuition, as if this were the etymology, and the hint is excellent for the meaning, though the real derivation of the word has no relation to tuition. to attribute these original thoughts to the unconscious or any partly conscious faculty in us is to ignore a great deal of careful study of psychology before our time. it is besides to entangle oneself in the absurdity of discussing an unconscious consciousness.] while many people are inclined to feel almost helpless in the presence of the idea that it is their unconscious selves that enable them {89} to do things or initiate modes of activity, the feeling is quite different when we substitute for that the word "will." all of us recognize that our wills can be trained to do things, and while at first it may require a conscious effort, we can by the formation of habits not only make them easy, but often delightful and sometimes quite indispensable to our sense of well being. walking is extremely difficult at the beginning, when its movements are consciously performed, but it becomes a very satisfying sort of exercise after a while and then almost literally a facile, nearly indispensable activity of daily life, so that we feel the need for it, if we are deprived of it. this has to be done with regard to the activities that make for health. we have to form habits that render them easy, pleasant, and even necessary for our good feelings. this can be done, as has been suggested in the chapter on habits, but we have to avoid any such habit as that of consciously using the will. that is a bad habit that some people let themselves drop into but it should be corrected. having set our activities to work we must, as far as possible, forget about them and let them go on for themselves. it is not only possible but even easy and above all almost {90} necessary that we should do this. hence at the beginning people must not expect that they will find the use of their will easy in suppressing pain, lessening tiredness, and facilitating accomplishment, but they must look forward to the time quite confidently when it will be so. in the meantime the less attention paid to the process of training, the better and more easily will the needed habits be formed. failure to secure results is almost inevitable when conscious use of the will comes into the problem. as a rule a direct appeal should not be made to people to use their wills, but they should be aroused and stimulated in various ways and particularly by the force of example. what has made it so comparatively easy for our young soldiers to use their wills and train their bodies and get into a condition where they are capable of accomplishing what they would have thought quite impossible before, has been above all the influence of example. a lot of other young men of their own age are standing these things exemplarily. they are seen performing what is expected of them without complaint, or at least without refusal, and so every effort is put forth to do likewise without any time spent on reflection as to how {91} difficult it all is or how hard to bear or how much they are to be pitied. it is not long before what was hard at first becomes under repetition even easy and a source of fine satisfaction. getting up at five in the morning and working for sixteen hours with only comparatively brief intervals for relaxation now and then, and often being burdened with additional duties of various kinds which must be worked in somehow or other, seems a very difficult matter until one has done it for a while. then one finds everything gets done almost without conscious effort. will power flows through the body and lends hitherto unexpected energy, but of this there is no consciousness; indeed, conscious reflection on it would hamper action. no wonder that as a result of the facility acquired, one comes to readily credit the assumption that the will is a spiritual power and that some source of energy apart from the material is supplying the initiative and the resources of vitality that have made accomplishment so much easier than would have been imagined beforehand. this is quite literally what training of the will means: training ourselves to use all our powers to the best advantage, not putting obstacles in their way nor brakes on their exertion, but {92} also not thinking very much about them or making resolutions. the way to do things is to do them, not think about them. professor james is, as always, particularly happy in his mode of expressing this great truth. he insists that the way to keep the will active is not by constantly thinking about it and supplying new motives and furbishing up old motives for its activity, but by cultivating the faculty of effort. his paragraph in this regard is of course well known, and yet it deserves to be repeated here because it represents the essence of what is needed to make the will ready to do its best work. he says: "as a fine practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: _keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day_. that is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. the tax does him no good at the time and {93} possibly may never bring him a return. but if the fire _does_ come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. so with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. he will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast." to do things on one's will without very special interest is an extremely difficult matter. it can be done more readily when one is young and when certain secondary aims are in view besides the mere training of the will, but to do things merely for will training becomes so hard eventually that some excuse is found and the task is almost inevitably given up. exercising for instance in a gymnasium just for the sake of taking exercise or keeping in condition becomes so deadly dull after a while that unless there is a trainer to keep a man up to the mark, his exercise dwindles from day to day until it amounts to very little. men who are growing stout about middle life will take up the practice of a cold bath after ten minutes or more of morning exercises with a good deal of enthusiasm, but they will not keep it up long, or if they do continue for several months, any {94} change in the daily routine will provide an excuse to drop it. companionship and above all competition in any way greatly helps, but it takes too much energy of the will to make the effort alone. besides, when the novelty has worn off and routine has replaced whatever interest existed in the beginning in watching the effect of exercise on the muscles, the lack of interest makes the exercise of much less value than before. if there is not a glow of satisfaction with it, the circulation, especially to the periphery to the body, is not properly stimulated and some of the best effect of the exercise is lost. athletes often say of solitary exercise that it leaves them cold, which is quite a literal description of the effect produced on them. the circulation of the surface is not stimulated as it is when there is interest in what is being done and so the same warmth is not produced at the surface of the body. it is comparatively easy to persuade men who need outdoor exercise to walk home from their offices in the afternoon when the distance is not too far, but it is difficult to get them to keep it up. the walk becomes so monotonous a routine after a time that all sorts of excuses serve to interrupt the habit, and then it is not long before it is done so irregularly as to lose {95} most of its value. here as in all exercise, companionship which removes conscious attention from advertence to the will greatly aids. on the other hand, as has been so clearly demonstrated in recent years, it is very easy to induce men to go out and follow a little ball over the hills in the country, an ideal form of exercise, merely because they are interested in their score or in beating an opponent. any kind of a game that involves competition makes people easily capable of taking all sorts of trouble. instead of being tired by their occupation in this way and not wanting to repeat it, they become more and more interested and spend more and more time at it. the difference between gymnastics and sport in this regard is very marked. in sport the extraneous interest adds to the value of the exercise and makes it ever so much easier to continue; when it sets every nerve tingling with the excitement of the game, it is doing all the more good. gymnastics grow harder unless in some way associated with competition, or with the effort to outdo oneself, while indulgence in sport becomes ever easier. many a young man would find it an intolerable bore and an increasingly difficult task if asked to give as much time and energy {96} to some form of hard work as he does to some sport. he feels tired after sport, but not exhausted, and becomes gradually able to stand more and more before he need give up, thus showing that he is constantly increasing his muscular capacity. conscious training of the will is then practically always a mistake. it is an extremely difficult thing to do, and the amount of inhibition which accumulates to oppose it serves after a time to neutralize the benefit to be derived. good habits should be formed, but not merely for the sake of forming them. there should be some ulterior purpose and if possible some motive that lifts men up to the performance of duty, no matter how difficult it is. our young men who went to the camps demonstrated how much can be accomplished in this manner. they were asked to get up early in the morning, to work hard for many hours in the day, or take long walks, sometimes carrying heavy burdens, and were so occupied that they had but very little time to themselves. they were encouraged to take frequent cold baths, which implied further waste of heat energy, and then were very plainly fed, though of course with a good, rounded diet, {97} well-balanced, but without any frills and with very little in it that would tempt any appetite except that of a hungry man. they learned the precious lesson that hunger is the best sauce for food. most of these men were pushed so hard that only an army officer perfectly confident of what he was doing and well aware that all of his men had been thoroughly examined by a physician and had nothing organically wrong with them would have dared to do it. a good many of us had the chance to see how university men took the military regime. long hours of drilling and of hard work in the open made them so tired that in the late afternoon they could just lie down anywhere and go to sleep. i have seen young fellows asleep on porches or in the late spring on the grass and once saw a number of them who found excellent protection from the sun in what to them seemed nice soft beds--at least they slept well in them--inside a series of large earthen-ware pipes that were about to be put down for a sewer. some of them were pushed so hard, considering how little physical exercise they had taken before, that they fainted while on drill. quite a few of them were in such a state of nervous tension that they fainted on {98} being vaccinated. almost needless to say, had they been at home, any such effect would have been a signal for the prompt cessation of such work as they were doing, for the home people would have been quite sure that serious injury would be done to their boys. these young fellows themselves did not think so. their physicians were confident that with no organic lesion present the faint was a neurotic derangement and not at all a symptom of exhaustion. the young soldiers would have felt ashamed if there had been any question of their stopping training. they felt that they could make good as well as their fellows. they would have resented sympathy and much more pity. they went on with their work because they were devoted to a great cause. after a time, it became comparatively easy for them to accomplish things that would hitherto have been quite impossible and for which they themselves had no idea that they possessed the energy. it was this high purpose that inspired them to let more and more of their internal energy loose without putting a brake on, until finally the habit of living up to this new maximum of accomplishment became second nature and therefore natural and easy of accomplishment. {99} here is the defect in systems which promise to help people to train their wills by talking much about it, and by persuading them that it can be done, that all they have to do is to set about it. unless one has some fine satisfying purpose in doing things, their doing is difficult and fails to accomplish as much good for the doer as would otherwise be the case. conscious will activity requires, to use old-fashioned psychological terms, the exercise of two faculties at the same time, the consciousness and the will. this adds to the difficulty of willing. what is needed is a bait of interest held up before the will, constantly tempting it to further effort but without any continuing consciousness on the part of the individual that he must will it and keep on willing it. that must ever be a hampering factor in the case. human nature does not like imperatives and writhes and wastes energy under them. on the contrary, optatives are pleasant and give encouragement without producing a contrary reaction; and it is this state of mind and will that is by far the best for the individual. above all, it is important that the person forming new habits should feel that there is nothing else to be done except the hard things {100} that have been outlined. if there is any mode of escape from the fulfillment of hard tasks, human nature will surely find it. if our young soldiers had felt that they did not have to perform their military duties and that there was some way to avoid them, the taking of the training would have proved extremely difficult. they just _had_ to take it; there was no way out, so they pushed themselves through the difficulties and then after a time they found that they were tapping unsuspected sources of energy in themselves. for when people _have_ to do things, they find that they can do ever so much more than they thought they could, and in the doing, instead of exhausting themselves, they actually find it easier to accomplish more and more with ever less difficulty. the will must by habit be made so prompt to obey that obedience will anticipate thought in the matter and sometimes contravene what reason would dictate if it had a chance to act. the humorous story of the soldier who, carrying his dinner on a plate preparatory to eating it, was greeted by a wag with the word "attention!" in martial tones, and dropped his dinner to assume the accustomed attitude, is well known. similar practical jokes are said to have been played, on a certain number {101} of occasions in this war, with the thoroughly trained young soldier. the help of the will to the highest degree is obtained not by a series of resolutions but by doing whatever one wishes to do a number of times until it becomes easy and the effort to accomplish it is quite unconscious. reason does not help conduct much, but a trained will is of the greatest possible service. it can only be secured, however, by will action. the will is very like the muscles. there is little use in showing people how to accomplish muscle feats; they must do them for themselves. the less consciousness there is involved in this, the better. {102} chapter vii what the will can do "i can with ease translate it to my will." _king john_. it should be well understood from the beginning just what the will can do in the matter of the cure or, to use a much better word, the relief of disease, not forgetting that disease means etymologically and also literally discomfort rather than anything else. the will cannot cure organic disease in the ordinary sense of that term. it is just as absurd to say that the will can bring about the cure of bright's disease as it is to suggest that one can by will power replace a finger that has been lost. when definite changes have taken place in tissues, above all when connective tissue cells have by inflammatory processes come to take the place of organic tissue cells, then it is idle to talk of bringing about a cure, though sometimes relief of symptoms may be secured; above all the compensatory powers of the body {103} may be called upon and will often bring relief, for a time, at least. what is true of kidney changes applies also to corresponding changes in other organs, and there can be no question of any amount of will power bringing about the redintegration of organs that have been seriously damaged by disease or replacing cells that have been destroyed. there are however a great many organic diseases in which the will may serve an extremely useful purpose in the relief of symptoms and sometimes in producing such a release of vital energy previously hampered by discouragement as will enable the patient to react properly against the disease. this is typically exemplified in tuberculosis of the lungs. nothing is so important in this disease, as we shall see, as the patient's attitude of mind and his will to get well. without that there is very little hope. with that strongly aroused, all sorts of remedies, many of them even harmful in themselves, have enabled patients to get better merely because the taking of them adds suggestion after suggestion of assurance of cure. the cells of the lungs that have been destroyed by the disease are not reborn, much less recreated, but nature walls off the diseased parts, and the rest of {104} the lungs learn to do their work in spite of the hampering effect of the diseased tissues. when fresh air and good food are readily available for the patient, then the will power is the one other thing absolutely necessary to bring about not only relief from symptoms, but such a betterment in the tissues as will prevent further development of the disease and enable the lungs to do their work. the disease is not cured, but, as physicians say, it is arrested, and the patient may and often does live for many years to do extremely useful work. in a disease like pneumonia the will to get well, coupled with the confidence that should accompany this, will do more than anything else to carry the patient over the critical stage of the affection. discouragement, which is after all by etymology only disheartenment, represents a serious effect upon the heart through depression. the fullest power of the heart is needed in pneumonia and discouragement puts a brake on it. as we shall see it is probably because whiskey took off this brake and lifted the scare that it acquired a reputation as a remedy in pneumonia and also in tuberculosis. in spite of what was probably an unfavorable physical effect, whiskey {105} actually benefited the patient by its production of a sense of well being and absence of regard for consequences. hence its former reputation. this extended also to its use in a continued fever where the same disheartenment was likely to occur with unfortunate consequences on the general condition and above all with disturbance of appetite and of sleep. worry often made the patients much more restless than they would otherwise have been and they thus wasted vital energy needed to bring about the cure of the affection under which they were laboring. in all of these cases solicitude led to surveillance of processes within the body and interfered with their proper performance. it is perfectly possible to hamper the lungs by watching their action, and the same thing may be done for the heart. whenever involuntary activities in the body are watched, their proper functioning is almost sure to be disturbed. we have emphasized that in the chapter on "avoidance of conscious use of the will," and so it need not be dwelt on further here. even apart from over-consciousness there occur some natural dreads that may disturb nature's vital reactions, and these can be {106} overcome through the will. there is a whole series of inhibitions consequent upon fears of various kinds that sadly interfere with nature's reaction against disease. to secure the neutralization of these the will must be brought into action, and this is probably better secured by suggestion, that is, by placing some special motive before the individual, than by any direct appeal. particularly is this true if patients have not been accustomed before this to use their wills strenuously, for they will probably be disturbed by such an appeal. what will power when properly released can do above all is to bring the relief of discomfort. in a great many cases the greater part of the discomfort is due to over-sensitization and over-attention. even in such severe organic diseases as cancer, the awakening of the will may accomplish very much to bring decided relief. this is why we have had so many "cancer cures" that have failed. they made the patient feel better at first, and they relieved pain to some extent and therefore were thought to be direct remedial agents for the cancer itself. the malignant condition however has progressed without remission, though sometimes, possibly as the result of the new courage given flowing as surplus vitality into {107} the tissues, perhaps the progress of the lesion has been retarded. the patient sometimes has felt so much better as to proclaim himself cured. what is thus true of cancer will be found to occur in any very serious organic condition, such as severe injury, chronic disease involving important organs, and even such nutritional diseases as anemia or diabetes. the awakening in the patient of the feeling that there is hope and the maintenance of that hope in any way will always bring relief and usually some considerable remission in the disease. it is in convalescence above all, however, that the will power manifests its greatest helpfulness. when patients are hopeful and anxious to get well they are tempted to eat properly, to get out into the air; they thus sleep better and recovery is rapid. whenever they are disheartened, as for instance when husband and wife have been together in an injury, or both have contracted a disease and one of them dies, the survivor is likely to have a slow and lingering convalescence. the reason is obvious: there is literal lack of will power or at least unwillingness to face the new conditions of life, and vitality is spent in vain regret for the companionship that has been {108} lost. this depression can only be lifted by motives that appeal to the inner self and by such an awakening of the will for further interests in life as will set vital energies flowing freely again. in convalescence from injuries received after middle life or from affections that have been accompanied by incapacity to use muscles there is particular need of the will. a great many older people refuse to go through the pain and discomfort, soreness and tenderness as the younger folk who are training their muscles call them, which must be borne in order to bring about redevelopment of muscles, after they have once become atrophic from disuse. the refusal to push through a period of what is often rather serious discomfort leads many people to foster disabilities and use their muscles in wrong ways sometimes even for years. something occurs then to arouse their wills and they get better. anything that will do this will cure them. sometimes it is a new liniment, sometimes a new mode of manipulation or massage, sometimes some supposed electrical or magnetic discovery and sometimes the touch of a presumed healer. anything at all will be effective provided it wakens their wills into such activity {109} as will enable them to persist in the use of their muscles through the period of soreness and tenderness necessary to restore proper muscular functions. it is quite surprising to see what can be accomplished in this way, and the quacks and charlatans of the world have made their fortunes out of such patients always, while their cure has been the greatest possible advertisement and has attracted ever so many other patients to these so-called healers. nothing that can be done for these patients will have any good results unless their own wills are aroused, new hope given them and they themselves made to tap the layers of energy in them that can restore them to health. to tell them that they were to be cured by their own will, however, would probably inhibit utterly this energy that is needed, so that somehow they have to be brought to the state of mind in which they will accomplish the purpose demanded of them by indirection. the will is particularly capable of removing obstacles to nutrition that have often hampered the activities and sometimes seriously impaired the health of patients. many people are not eating enough for one reason or another and need to have their diet regulated, not in {110} the direction of a limitation or selection of food, though this appeals to so many people under the term dieting, but so that they shall eat enough and of the proper variety to maintain their health and bodily functions. a great many nervous diseases are dependent on lack of sufficient food. eating in those who lead sedentary lives much indoors is ever so much more a matter of will than of appetite. when people say that they eat all they want to, what they mean, as a rule, is that they eat all that they have formed the habit of eating. other habits can readily be formed and will often do them good. for a great many of the less serious symptoms which make people valetudinarians, nervous indigestion, insomnia, tendencies to headache, queer feelings in the head, constipation, the proper habit secured by will power, of eating so as to secure sufficient food, is the most important single factor. this the will must be trained to accomplish. now that disease prevention has become even more important than cure, the will is an extremely efficient element. air, food, exercise are important factors for healthy living. a great many people are neglecting them and then seem surprised that they should suffer from various symptoms of impaired {111} functioning of bodily organs. many men and a still greater number of women are staying in the house so much that their oxidation within the body is at a low ebb, and it is no wonder that vital processes are not carried on to the best advantage. our generation has eliminated exercise from life to a great extent, and now that the auto and the trolley car limit walking, not only the feet of mankind suffer severely, but all the organs in the body work at a disadvantage for lack of the exercise that they should have. no wonder that under the circumstances appetite is impaired and other functions of the body suffer. instead of simple foods various artificial stimulants are employed--such as alcohol, spices, and the like--to provoke appetite, often with serious consequences for the digestive organs. the will to be well includes the willing of the means proper to that purpose, and particularly regular exercise, several hours a day in the air, good simple food taken in sufficient quantity at three regular intervals and the avoidance of such sources of worry as will disturb physical functions. {112} chapter viii pain and the will "that the will is infinite and the execution confined." _troilus and cressida_. the symptom of disease that humanity dreads the most is pain. fortunately, it is also the symptom which is most under the control of the will, and which can be greatly relieved by being bravely faced and, to as great an extent as possible, ignored. it requires courage and usually persistent training to succeed in the relief of severe pain in this way, but men have done it, and women too, and men and women _can_ do it, if they really want to, though unfortunately all of the trend of modern life has been in the opposite direction, of avoiding pain at whatever cost instead of bravely facing it. the american indian, trained from his youth to stand severe pain, scoffed at even the almost ingeniously diabolical tortures of his enemy captors. after they had pushed slivers beneath his nails or {113} slowly crushed the end of a finger, or put salt in long, superficial wounds that had bared a whole series of sensitive cutaneous nerves, he has been known to laugh at them, and ask them proudly, without giving a sign of the pain that he was enduring, whether that was all that they could do. it was just a question of the human will overcoming even the worst sensations that the body could send up to the brain and deliberately refusing to permit any reactions that would reveal the reflex torment that was actually taking place. the war has done much to bring back the recognition of that diminution--to a great extent at least--or even almost entire suppression of pain which may occur, indeed almost constantly does occur, as a consequence of a man facing it bravely. we have been accustomed to think of the early martyrs as probably divinely helped in their power to withstand pain. whatever of celestial aid they had, we know that martyrs for all sorts of causes, some of them certainly not divine, have exhibited some degree of this same steadfastness. their behavior makes it reasonably clear that as the result of making up their minds to stand the pain involved, they have actually suffered so little that it was not {114} difficult to suppress external manifestations of their sufferings. it is not merely a suppression of the reflexes that has occurred but a minimizing to a very striking degree of the actual sensations felt. we have many stories of the older time before the modern use of anaesthetics, which tell how bravely men endured pain and at the same time retained their power to do things. indeed, some of them accomplished purposes in the midst of what would seem like supreme agony which made it very clear that pain alone has nothing like the prostrating effect that it is often supposed to have. for we have well authenticated tales of physicians performing amputations on themselves at times when no other assistance was available, and accomplishing the task so well that they recovered without complications. a blacksmith in the distant west, whose leg had been crushed by the fall of a huge beam, actually had himself carried into his shop and amputated his own limb above the knee, searing the blood vessels with hot irons as he proceeded. such a manifestation of will power is, of course, exceptional to a degree, and yet it illustrates what men can do in the face of conditions that are usually supposed {115} to be overwhelming. many a man in lumber camps or in distant island fisheries or on board fishing vessels, far beyond the hope of reaching a physician in time for him to be of service, has done things of this kind. we can be quite sure that the will to accomplish for himself what seemed necessary to save his life lessened his pain, made it ever so much more bearable and generally proved the power of the human will over even these physical manifestations in the body that are commonly supposed to be quite beyond any interference from the psychical part of nature. the spirit can still dominate the flesh, even in matters of pain, and dictate how much it shall be affected. it is a hard lesson to learn, but it is one that can be learned by proper persistence. in the early part of the war particularly many a young man had to face even serious operations without an anaesthetic. the awful carnage of the first six weeks of the war had not been anticipated and therefore there were not sufficient stores of anaesthetics available to permit of their use in every case. besides, many operations had to be performed so close to the front and under such circumstances that there could not be anaesthetics for all of them; and it was a never-ending source of {116} surprise to those who witnessed the details to see how bravely and uncomplainingly the young men took their enforced suffering. many a one, when his turn came to be operated on, quietly asked for a cigarette and then bore unflinchingly painful manipulations that the surgeon was extremely sorry to have to inflict. over and over again, when there was question of the regular succession of patients, young soldiers in severe pain suggested that some one else who seemed in worse condition than they, or who perhaps was not quite so well able to stand pain and control himself, should be attended to before they were. there is no doubt at all that this very power of self-control lessened their pain and made it ever so much easier to bear and less of a torment than it would have been otherwise. any great diversion of mind that turns the attention completely to something else will lessen even severe pain so much as to make it quite negligible for the moment. headaches disappear promptly when there is an alarm of fire, and toothaches have been known to vanish, for the time at least, as the result of a burglar scare. much less than this is needed, however, and there are many familiar examples {117} which illustrate the fact that the turning of the attention to something else will greatly diminish or even abolish pain. the well known story of the french surgeon about to set a dislocation is a typical demonstration. his patient was a woman of the nobility, her dislocation was of the shoulder and it was necessary for him to inflict very severe pain in order to replace it. besides, as the result of the reflex of that pain, he was certain to meet with great resistance from spasm in the surrounding muscles. it was before the days of anaesthetics, which relieve all of these inconveniences, and above all, relax the muscles. the surgeon got ready to do the ultimate manipulation that would replace the joint in its proper relation, and necessarily inflicted no little pain in his preparations. the lady complained very much, so he turned on her angrily, told her that she must stand it, slapped her in the face, and before she had recovered from the shock, the dislocation had been restored to the normal condition. it was rather heroic treatment, and it is to be hoped that she understood it, but it is easy to understand how much the procedure lessened her physical pain. when the mind is very much preoccupied {118} and the will intent on accomplishing some immediate purpose, even severe pain will not be felt at all. instances of this are not rare, and men who are advancing in a charge on a battlefield will often be wounded rather severely, and yet continue to advance without knowing anything about their wounds until a friend calls attention to their bleeding, or they themselves notice it; or perhaps even loss of blood may make them faint. the late president roosevelt furnished a magnificent illustration of this principle when he was wounded some years ago in the midst of a political campaign. a crank shot at him, in one of the western cities, and though the bullet penetrated four inches of muscle on his chest wall, and then flattened itself against a rib, he did not know that he was wounded. the flattening of the bullet must have represented at least as much force as would be exerted by a heavy blow on the chest, and yet the colonel never felt it. his friends congratulated him on his escape from injury until it was noted that blood was oozing through a hole that had been made in his coat. the intense will activity of the president simply kept him from noticing either the shock or the pain. {119} not long before the war a striking example was given of how a man may stand suffering in spite of long years of the refining influences of a sedentary scholarly life, most of it spent indoors. the second last general of the jesuits developed a sarcoma on his upper arm and was advised to submit to an amputation of the arm at the shoulder joint. he was a man well on in the sixties and the operation presented an extremely serious problem. the surgeons suggested that he should be ready for the anaesthetic at a given hour the next morning and then they would proceed to operate. he replied that he would be ready for the operation at the time suggested, but that he would not take an anaesthetic. they argued with him that it would be quite impossible for him to stand unanaesthetized the extensive cutting and dissection necessary to complete an operation of this kind in an extremely important part of the body, where large nerves and arteries would have to be cut through and where the slightest disturbance on the part of the patient might easily lead to serious or even fatal results. above all, he could not hope to stand it in tissues that had been rendered more sensitive than before by the enlarged circulation to the part, due to {120} the growth of the tumor, and the consequent hyperaemic condition of most of the tissues through which the cutting would have to be done and which were thus hypersensitized. he insisted, however, that he would not take an anaesthetic, for surely here seemed a chance to welcome suffering voluntarily as his lord and master had done. i believe that the head surgeon said at first that he would not operate. he felt sure that the operation would have to be interrupted after it had been begun, because the patient would not be able to stand the pain and there would then be the danger from bleeding as well as from infection which might occur. the general of the jesuits, however, was so calm and firm that at last it was determined to permit him to try at least to stand it, though most of the surgeons were sure that he would probably have to give up and allow himself to be anaesthetized before they were through. the event then was most interesting. the patient not only underwent the operation without a murmur, but absolutely without wincing. the surgeon who performed the operation said afterwards, "it was like cutting wax and not human flesh, so far as any reaction was concerned, though of course it bled." {121} the story carries its lesson of the power of a brave man to face even such awful pain as this and probably actually overcome it to such an extent that he scarcely felt it, simply because he willed that he would do so and occupied himself with other thoughts during the process. such an example as that of this general of the jesuits will seem to most people a reversion to that mystical attitude of mind of the medieval period, when somehow or other people were able to stand ever so much more pain than any one in our time could possibly think of enduring. we hear of saints of the middle ages who inflicted what now seem hideous self-tortures on themselves and not only bore them bravely but went about life smiling and doing good to others while they were under the influence of them. it would seem quite impossible, however, for people of the modern time to get into any such state of mind. our discoveries for the prevention of pain have made it unnecessary to stand much suffering, and as a result mankind would seem to have lost some if not most of the faculty of standing pain. so little of truth is there in any such thought that any number of the young men of the present generation between {122} twenty and thirty, that is, during the very years when mankind most resents pain and therefore reacts most to it, and by the same token feels it the most, have shown during this war that they possessed all the old-fashioned faculty of standing pain without a whimper and thinking of others while they did it. lack of advertence always lessens pain and may even nullify it until it becomes exceedingly severe. in his little volume, "a journey around my room", xavier de maistre dwells particularly on the fact that his body, when his spirit was wandering, would occasionally pick up the fire tongs and burn itself before his _alter ego_ could rescue it. concentration of attention on some subject that attracts may neutralize pain and make it utterly unnoticed until physical consequences develop. undoubtedly dwelling on pain, anticipating it, noting the first sensations that occur, multiplies the painful feeling. the physical reasons for this are to be found in the increased blood supply consequent upon conscious attention to any part, which sensitizes the nerves of the area and the added number of nerve fibers that are at once put into association with the area by the act of concentration of the attention. these serve to render sensation {123} much more acute than it would otherwise be. it might seem impossible to control the attention, but this has been done over and over again, even in the midst of severe pain, until there is no doubt that it is quite possible. as for the increase of pain by deliberate attention, that is so familiar an experience that practically every one has had it at some time. the reason for it has become very clear as the result of our generation's investigations into the constitution of the nervous system. the central nervous system, instead of being a _continuum_, or series of nerve elements which are directly connected with each other, consists of a very large number of separate individual cells which only make contacts with each other, the nerve impulses flowing over across the contact. the demonstration of these we owe originally to ramon y cajal, the distinguished spanish brain anatomist, to whom was awarded some years ago the nobel prize as well as the prize of the city of paris for his researches. in connection with his surprising discoveries as to the neurons which make up the brain, he suggested the law of avalanche, which would serve to explain the supersensitiveness of parts to which concentrated attention is paid. {124} according to this law, pain felt in any small area of the body may be multiplied very greatly if the sensation from it is distributed over a considerable part of the brain, as happens when attention is centered upon it. a pain message that comes from a localized area of the body disturbs under normal conditions at most a few thousand cells in the brain, because the area is directly represented only by these cells. they are connected however by dendrites and cell branches of various kinds with a great many other cells in different parts of the brain. a pain message that comes up will ordinarily produce only disturbance of the directly connected cells, but it may be transmitted and diffused over a great many of the cells of the cortex of the brain if the attention is focused strongly on it. the area at first affected, but a few thousand cells, may spread to many millions or perhaps even some hundreds of millions of them, if the centering of attention causes them to be "connected up", as the electricians say, with the originally affected small group of cells. it is just what happens in high mountains when a few stones loosened somewhere near the top by the wind or by melting processes begin their course down the mountain side. {125} on the way they disturb ever more and more of the loose pieces of ice and the shifting snows as well as the rocks near them, until, gathering force, what was at the beginning only a minor movement of small particles becomes a dreaded avalanche, capable not only of sweeping away men in its path but even of obliterating houses and sometimes of changing the whole face of a mountain area. hence the expression suggested by ramon y cajal of the law of avalanche for this wide diffusion of sensation, which spreads from a few thousand to millions or billions of cells, and from a rather bearable pain becomes intolerable torture, as a consequence of the brain's complete occupation with it. now it is possible for most people, indeed for all who have not some organic morbid condition, to control this spread of pain beyond its original connections, provided only they will to do so, refuse to be ruled by their dreads and proceed to divert attention from the painful condition to other subjects. here is why the man who bravely faces pain actually lessens the amount that he has to bear. there is no pain in the part affected. that we know, because any interruption of the nerve tract leading from the affected part to the brain {126} eliminates the pain. in the same way, the obtunding of the nerve cells in the cortex by anaesthetics or of the conducting nerve apparatus on the way to the brain by local anaesthesia, will have a like effect. anything then that will interfere with the further conduction of the pain sensation and the cortical cells directly affected will lessen the sense of pain, and this is what happens when a man settles himself firmly to the thought that he will not allow himself to be affected beyond what is the actual reaction of the nerve tissues to the part. as a matter of fact, the anticipation of pain due to the dread of it predisposes the part to be much more sensitive than it was before. we can all of us readily make experiments which show this very clearly. ordinarily we have a stream of sensations flowing up from the surface of the body to the brain, consequent upon the fact that the skin surface is touched by garments over most of the body, and that our nerves of touch respond to their usually rather rough surface. we have learned to pay no attention to these because we have grown accustomed to them, though any one who thinks that they are negligible should witness the writhings of a poor indian under the stress {127} of being civilized when he is required to wear a starched shirt for the first time. ordinarily indians have learned to suppress their feelings, but the shirt with its myriad points of contact, all of them starchily scraping, usually proves too much for his equanimity, and he wiggles and twists to such an extent as shows very clearly that he is extremely uncomfortable. most people have something of the same feeling the first day that they change into woolen underclothes after they have been wearing cotton for months, and the sensation is by no means easy to bear with equanimity. ordinarily from custom and habit in the suppression of feelings we notice none of these contact sensations with their almost inevitable itchy and ticklish feelings, though they are constantly there, but we can reveal them to ourselves by thinking definitely about any part of the body. such concentration of attention at once brings that part of the body above the threshold of consciousness, and we have distinct feelings there that we did not notice before. if for instance we think about the big toe on the left foot, immediately our attention is turned to it and we note sensations in it that were quite unnoticed before. we can feel the stocking touching any part of it {128} that we think of. not only that, but if we concentrate attention on a part most uncomfortable sensations develop. if anything calls our attention even to the middle of our backs, we find at once that there is a distinct sensation there, and this may become so insistent as to demand relief. it is well understood now what happens in these cases. as we have said, the attention given to a part leads to a widening of the minute blood vessels located there so that the nerve endings to the part are supplied with more blood and therefore become more sensitive. we know from experience in cold windy weather that when the cheek is hyperaemic the drawing of a leaf or even of a piece of paper across it may produce a very acute painful sensation. hyperaemia always makes parts of the body much more sensitive than before. attention has just this effect over all the surface of the body, as we can demonstrate to ourselves. we can actually, though only gradually, make our feet warm by thinking about them, because the active attention to them sends more blood to them. the dread of pain then, by concentrating attention on the part beforehand, actually increases the pain that has to be suffered and makes the subject {129} ever so much more sensitive. sensitiveness is of course dependent on other factors, as for instance lack of outdoor air and of oxygenization, which actually seems to hypersensitize people so that even very slight pain becomes extremely difficult to bear, but the question of attention, which is after all almost entirely a voluntary matter, has more to do with making pain harder to bear than anything else. in the preanaesthetic days, men have been known to sit and watch calmly an amputation of one of their limbs without wincing and apparently without undergoing very much pain. many are the incidents in history of a favorite general who showed his men how to bear pain by calmly smoking a cigar while a surgeon amputated an arm or a leg or performed some other rather important surgery. pain is after all like the sense of danger and may be suppressed practically to as great a degree. once during the present war, when long columns of soldiers going to the front had to pass by the open market place of a town that was being shelled by the germans, there was danger of the troops losing something of their morale at this point and of confusion ensuing. it would have been disturbing both to discipline and the {130} ordered movement of the troops to divert them by narrower streets, and the shells, though dangerous, were not falling frequently and not working serious havoc. every one knew, however, that the german gunners had the range, and a shell might land square in the market place at any time; thus there was a feeling of uneasiness and a tendency to nervous lack of self-control, with the inevitable confusion of movement afterwards. one of the french generals ordered an armchair to be brought out of one of the houses near by, took a position in the center of the square, with a little wand in his hand, and calmly joked with the soldiers as they went by about the temperature of the day mentioning occasionally something about a shell that happened to strike not far away. according to the story he was an immense man weighing nearly three hundred pounds, and so provided a very good-sized target for shells, but he was never touched and, almost needless to say, the line of soldiers never wavered while their general sat there joking at the danger. it is sometimes thought that men in the older, less refined times could stand pain and suffering generally much better than our generation which is supposed to have {131} degenerated in that respect. we have found, however, during the war that the soldiers who could stand supreme suffering the best were very often those who came from better-to-do families, who had been subjected to the most highly refining influences of civilization, but also to that discipline of the repression of the emotions which is recognized as an important phase of civilization. strange as it may seem, the city boys stood the hardships and the trials of trench life better than the country boys and not only withstood the physical trials but were calmer under fire and ever so much less complaining under injury. after all it is what might be expected, once serious thought is given to the subject, and yet somehow it comes as a surprise, as if the country boy ought to be less sensitive,--as indeed he probably is; but he lacks that training in self-control which enables the city boy to stand suffering. all our feeling that human nature has degenerated in physical constitution has been completely contradicted by the reaction of our young soldiers to camp and trench life. they have gone back to the lack of comforts and conveniences of the pioneer days and have had to submit to the outdoor life and the {132} hardships that their pioneer grandfathers went through and have not failed under them. the boys have come out of it all demonstrating not only that their courage was capable of supporting them, but with their physical being bettered by the conditions and their power to stand suffering revealed in a way that would scarcely have been believed possible beforehand. {133} chapter ix the will and air and exercise "and wishes fall out as they are willed." _pericles_ very probably the most important function of the will in its relation to health is that which concerns its power to control the habits of mankind as regards air and exercise. it is surprising to what an extent people neglect both of these essentials of healthy living in the midst of our modern sophisticated life, unless the will power is consciously used for the purpose of forming and then maintaining habits with regard to these requisites for health. it is a very fortunate thing that instinct urges the child, particularly the infant, to almost constant movement during its waking hours. children that are healthy and that are growing rapidly, boys somewhat more than girls, are so constantly in movement that one would almost think that they must be on springs. whenever they discover that they can make a {134} new movement, they proceed to make it over and over again until they can do it with facility. there is no lolling around for them; as soon as they wake, they want to be up and doing, no matter what the habits of the household may be. they are constantly on the move. we know that this is absolutely essential for growth as well as for the proper training of their muscles, but it is a very fortunate thing that children do it for themselves, for if their mothers were compelled to train them, the task would be indeed difficult. all mother has to do is to control them to some extent and keep them from venturing too far, lest they should hurt themselves. when the control of instinct over life is gradually replaced by reason, this tendency to exercise gradually diminishes until it is often surprising to find how little people are taking. as it is mainly the need for exercise that forces people out into the air, indoor life comes to be the main portion of existence. this is all contrary to nature, and so it is not surprising that _disease_, in its original etymological sense of discomfort, develops rather readily. the lack of exercise in the air permits a great many people to drift into all sorts of morbid conditions in which they are quite miserable. this {135} is, of course, particularly true as regards nervous ailments of various kinds; only under the term nervous ailments should be included not alone direct affections of the nervous system or functional disturbances of nerves, but also a number of other conditions. nervous indigestion, insomnia, neurotic constipation and many of the symptomatic affections associated with these conditions, tired feelings that interfere with activities, headache, various feelings of discomfort in the muscles and around the joints, inability to control the emotions and other such common complaints--if that is the proper word for them--all these are fostered by a sedentary life indoors. they frequently make not only the patient himself--or oftener herself--miserable, but also all those who come in contact with her. above all, it must not be forgotten that lack of exercise in the open air has a very definite tendency to make people extremely sensitive to discomforts of all kinds, mental as well as physical. many a man or woman whose life seems full of worries, sometimes without any adequate cause at all, who goes from one dread to another, who wakes in the morning with a sense of depression, find that most of these feelings and sometimes all of them, {136} disappear promptly when they begin to exercise more in the open. nothing dispels the gloom and depressions consequent upon an accumulation of cares and worries of various kinds like a few weeks in the woods, where every moment is passed in the fresh outdoor air, which actually seems to blow the cobwebs of ill feelings away and leaves the individual with a freedom of mind and a comfort of body that he almost expected never to enjoy again. undoubtedly the most important factor for the preservation of health is an abundance of fresh air. at certain seasons of the year this is not only easy and agreeable, but to do anything else imposes hardship. in our climate, however, there are about six months of the year in which it requires some exercise of will power to secure as much open air life as is required for health. there are weeks when it is too hot, there are many weeks when it is too cold. the cold air particularly is important, because it produces a stimulating vital reaction than which nothing is more precious for health. we have no tonic among all the drugs of the pharmacopeia that is equal to the effect of a brisk walk in the bracing air of a dry cold day. after a long morning and {137} perhaps a whole day in the house, even half an hour outdoors will enable us to throw off the sluggishness consequent upon confinement to the indoor air and the lack of appetite and the general feeling of physical lassitude which has followed living in an absolutely equable temperature for twenty-four hours. sometimes it requires no little effort of the will to secure this, and to continue it day after day without missing it or letting it be crowded out by claims that are partly real and partly excuses, because we do not care to make the special effort required. what humanity needs is regular exercise in the open air every day. as it is, between the trolley car and the automobile, very few people get what they need. any one who has to go a mile takes a car or some other conveyance and between waiting for the car and certain inevitable delays it will probably take ten minutes or more to go the mile. in five minutes more one could walk that distance and secure precious exercise besides such diversion of mind as inevitably comes from walking on busy city streets and which makes an excellent recreation in the midst of one's work. for it is quite impossible in our day to walk along city streets absorbed in abstract mental {138} occupations. one of the objections to walking is that after a while it can be accomplished as a matter of routine without necessarily taking one's mind away from subjects in which it has been absorbed. it is quite impossible for this to happen, however, on modern city streets. "the outside of a horse", it used to be said, "is good for the inside of a man." the main reason for this was because it is impossible for a man to ride horseback, unless his mount is a veritable old dobbin, without paying strict attention to the animal. the same thing is true as regards city pedestrianism, especially since the coming of the auto has made it necessary to watch our steps and look where we go. a great many people would be ever so much better in health if they walked to business or to school every morning instead of riding, for the young need it even more than the older people. especially is this true for all those who follow sedentary occupations. clerks in lawyers' offices, typewriters and stenographers, secretaries--all those who have to sit down much during the day--need the brisk walking and need it not merely of a sunday or a saturday afternoon, but every day in the year. many of them, if they walked two and three miles to {139} the office, would probably require only fifteen minutes, at most half an hour, more than if they took a train or trolley, but they would have secured a good hour of exercise in the open air. on the other hand the unfortunate crowding of trolley and elevated and subway trains in the busy hours when people go to and from their work makes an extremely uncomfortable and often rather depressing commencement and completion of the day's work. i know of nothing that makes a worse beginning for the day than to have to stand for half an hour or longer in a swaying, bumping car, hanging to a strap, crushed and crowded by people getting in and out. the effect of coming home under such circumstances after a reasonably long day's work is even more serious, and any little sacrifice that will enable people to avoid it will do them a great deal of good. fifteen or twenty minutes of extra time morning and evening would often suffice for this and would at the same time add a bracing walk in the open air to the day's routine. when first begun, such a practice would make one tired and sore, but that condition would pass in the course of a few days and be replaced by a healthy feeling of satisfaction {140} that would be well worth all the effort required. we should need ever so much less medicine for appetite and for constipation if this were true. a great many people who stand during the day would probably deem it quite out of the question for them to walk three miles or more to and from their business, for their feet get so tired that they feel that they could not endure it. what they need more than anything else, however, is exercise that will bring about a stimulation of the circulation in their feet. standing is very depressing to the circulation. it leads to compression of the veins and hence interference with the return circulation, with lowered nutrition which often predisposes to flat foot or yielding arch and tends to create corns and callouses: walking in reasonably well fitting shoes on the contrary tends to make the feet ever so much less sensitive our soldiers have had that experience and have learned some very precious lessons with regard to the care of their feet, the principal one being that the best possible remedy for foot troubles is to exercise the feet vigorously in walking and running, provided the shoes permit proper foot use. i have often known clerks and floorwalkers {141} who have to stand all day or move but a few steps at intervals, who were so tired at night that they felt the one thing they could do was to sit down for a while after dinner and then go to bed, but who came to feel ever so much better after a brisk walk home. it was rather hard to persuade them that, exhausted as they felt, they would actually get rested and not more tired from vigorous walking, but once they tried it, they knew the exercise was what they needed. the air in stores is often dry and uncomfortable for those who are in them all day. it is usually and quite properly regulated for the customers who come in from the streets expecting to get warm without delay. in dry, cold weather particularly, an evening walk home sets the blood in circulation until it gets thoroughly oxidized and the whole body feels better. such a brisk walk will often prevent the development of flat foot, especially if care is taken to spring properly from the ball of the foot, in the good, old-fashioned heel and toe method of walking. once flat foot has developed, walking probably is more difficult, but even then, with properly fitting shoes, the patients will be the better for a good walk after their work is over. it requires some will power to acquire the {142} habit, but once formed, the benefit and pleasure derived make it easy to keep up the practice. those who walk thus regularly will often find that their evening tiredness is not so marked, and they will feel much more like going out for some diversion than they otherwise would. probably nothing is more dispiriting in the course of time than to come home merely to eat dinner, sit down after dinner and grow sleepy on one's chair until one feels quite miserable, and then go to bed. there should be always, unless in very inclement weather, an outing before bedtime, and this should be looked forward to. it will often forestall the feeling that the day is over after dinner and so keep the individual from settling down into the dozy discomfort of an after-dinner nap as the closing scene of the day. good habits in this matter require an effort of the will to form; bad habits almost seem to form of themselves and then require a special effort to break. it is surprising how many of the dreads and anxiety neuroses and psycho-neurotic solicitudes and neurasthenic disquietudes and other more or less morbid mental states disappear under the influence of a brisk walk for three or {143} four miles or more every day. i have tried this prescription on all sorts of people, including particularly myself, and i know for certain that when troubles are accumulating the thing to do is to get outdoors more, especially for walking; then the incubus begins to lift. clergymen, university professors, members of religious orders, school teachers, as well as bankers, clerks and business people of various kinds, have been subjected to the influence of this prescription with decided benefit. some of them assert that they never felt so well as since they have formed the habit of walking every day. it must, however, be _every_ day, and it must not merely be a mile or so but it must be at least three miles. that means for a good many people about an hour spent in actual walking, but it is well worth the time and effort. above all, it repays not only in health and in better feelings but in the increased amount of work that can be done on the day itself. a whole day passed indoors will often contain many wasted hours, while if a walk of a couple of miles is planned for the morning and one for a couple of miles more in the afternoon, very satisfactory study or other work can be done in the intervals. almost needless to say, a brisk walk in the {144} cooler weather will create an appetite where it did not exist before. women often need counsel in this matter more than men, and regular walking for them is indeed a counsel of health. very few women in these modern times walk much, and to walk more than a mile seems to them a hardship. this is responsible for more of the supersensitiveness and nervous complaints of all kinds to which women are liable than anything else that i know of. it is also one important factor in the production of the constipation to which women are so much more liable than men. we see many advertisements with regard to the jolts to which the body is subjected every time the heel is put down and of the means that should be taken to prevent them, but it must not be forgotten that men and women were meant by nature to walk erect and that this recurring jolt has a very definite effect in stimulating peristalsis and favoring the movement of the contents of the intestines. besides, if the walking is brisk, the breathing is deeper and there is some massage of the liver, as also of the other abdominal viscera, while other organs are affected favorably. walking for women--regular, everyday walking--would be indeed a precious habit, but now {145} that women have occupations more and more outside of the house, this is one of the things they must make up their minds to do, if they are to maintain health, remembering that making up the mind is really making up the will. over and over again i have seen a great many of the troubles of the menopause or change of life in women disappear or become ever so much less bothersome as the result of the formation of regular habits of walking out of doors every day. unfortunately, there is a definite tendency about this time for women to withdraw more and more from public appearances and to live to a considerable extent in retirement at home. nothing could be much worse for them. they need, above all, to get out and to have a number of interests, and if these interests can only be so arranged as to demand rather prolonged walks, so much the better. this is more particularly true for the unmarried woman who is going through this critical time, and the question of walking regularly every day for three or four miles must be proposed to her. it will require a considerable effort of the will. more than two miles at the beginning will probably be too tiring, but the amount can be gradually increased {146} until at least four miles on the average is covered every day. above all, for the feelings of discomfort in the cardiac region so often noticed at this time, regular walking is the best remedy in most cases, always of course presupposing that there is no organic heart condition, for in that case only a physician can give the proper direction for each case. by the exercise of the lungs that it requires, it will probably save most people from colds and coughs which they have had to endure every winter. lastly be it said that practically all men and women, though more particularly the men who have lived well beyond the psalmist's limit of threescore and ten, have been regular daily walkers, or else they have taken exercise in some form in the open air which is the equivalent of walking. one of the most distinguished of english physicians, sir hermann weber, who died just after the end of the war in london, was in his ninety-fifth year. he had practised medicine regularly until the age of eighty and continued in excellent health and vigor until just before his death. during the last year of life, he contributed an interesting article to the _british medical journal_ on the "influence of muscular exercise on longevity." he attributed his vigor at the age of {147} ninety-five as well as the prolongation of his life to his practice of spending every day two or three hours in the open air. he walked, as a rule, forty to fifty miles a week. even in the most inclement weather he rarely did less than thirty miles a week. many another octogenarian and nonagenarian has attributed his good health and long life to the habit of regular daily exercise in the open. instead of using up energy, the will so used brings out latent stores of energy that would not otherwise be employed and thus adds to the available amount of vitality for the individual. doctor thomas addis emmet, only just dead, over ninety, in his younger years as a busy medical practitioner never kept a horse. it would not be difficult to cite many other examples among men who lived to advanced old age and who considered that they owed their good health and long life to daily habits of outdoor exercise. {148} chapter x the will to eat "if your will want not, time and place will be fruitfully added." _king lear_. eating is usually supposed to be entirely a matter of appetite which instinct directs to the best possible advantage of the individual. this is quite true for those who are living the outdoor life that is normal or at least most healthy for men, and when they are getting an abundance of exercise, and may i add also have not too great a variety of food materials in tempting form presented to them. under the artificial not to say unnatural conditions which men have to a great extent created for themselves in city life, confined at indoor sedentary occupations, some of them--and they are much more numerous than is usually imagined--eat too little, while a great many, owing to stimulation of appetite in various ways, eat too much. eating therefore for health's sake has to be done through the will and as a rule by the {149} formation of deliberate habits. it is easy to form habits either of defect or excess in the matter of eating and indeed a great deal of the ill health to which mankind is liable is due to errors in either of these directions. having disturbed nature's instincts for food in modifying the mode of life to suit modern conveniences, we have now to learn from experience and scientific observations what we should eat and then make up our minds to eat such quantity and variety as is necessary to maintain health and strength in the particular circumstances in which we are placed. while the greatest emphasis has been placed on the dangers to health in overeating, the number of people who, for one reason or another, eat too little is, as has been said, quite surprising. a very large proportion of those under normal weight are so merely because they have wrong habits of eating. indeed, it may be laid down as a practical rule of health that wherever there is no organic disease the condition of being underweight is a symptom of undereating. a great many thin people insist that the reason why they are underweight is that it is a family trait and that father and mother, or at least one of them, and some of their grandparents exhibited this {150} peculiarity; and thus it is not surprising that they should have it. a careful analysis of the family eating in such cases has shown me in a large number of instances, indeed almost without exception, that what my patients had inherited was not a constitutional tendency to thinness, but a family habit of undereating. this accrued to them not from nature but from nurture, and was acquired in their bringing up. most of them were eating one quite abundant meal a day and perhaps a pretty good second meal, but practically all of them were skimping at least one meal very much. in some way or other, a family habit of eating very little at this meal had become established and was now an almost inviolable custom. a great many thin individuals, that is persons who are somewhat more than ten per cent. under the average normal weight for their height, either do not eat breakfast at all or eat a very small one. it is not unusual for the physician analyzing their day's dietary to be told that the meal consists of a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. sometimes there is a roll, but more often only part of a roll, though occasionally in recent years there may be some fruit and some cereal; the fruit will usually be a half of one of the citrus fruits {151} which contains practically no nutrition and is only a pleasant appetizer, while more often than not the cereal will be one of the dry, ready-to-eat varieties which, apart from the milk or cream that may be served with them, contain in the usual small helpings very little nutriment. such breakfasts are particularly the rule among women who are under weight. sometimes lunch is comparatively light so that there are two daily apologies for meals. to make up for these, the third meal may be very hearty. city folk often eat at dinner more than is good for them. this may produce a sense of uncomfortable distention and overfulness followed by sleepiness which may be set down as due to indigestion, though it is just a question of overeating for the nonce. it would be much more conducive to health to distribute the eating over the three meals of the day, but it requires a special effort of the will to break the unfortunate habits that have been formed. particularly it seems hard for many people to eat a substantial breakfast and a determined effort is required to secure this. it would seem almost as though their wills had not yet waked up and that it was harder for them to do things at this time of day. it is especially important for working {152} women, that is, those who have such regular occupations as school-teacher, secretary, clerk and the like, to eat a hearty breakfast. they can get a warm properly chosen meal at home at this hour, while very often in the middle of the day they have to eat a lunch that is not nearly so suitable. as a consequence of neglecting breakfast then, it is twenty-four hours between their warm, hearty meals. even when they eat a rather good lunch, some eighteen hours elapse since the last hearty meal was taken, and one half the day's work has to be done on the gradually decreasing energy secured from the evening meal of the day before. with this unfortunate habit of eating, most of that was used up during the night in repairing the tissue losses of the day before, so that the morning's work has to be done largely "on the will" rather than on the normal store of bodily energy. it is surprising how many patients who are admitted to tuberculosis sanatoria have been underweight for years as a consequence of unfortunate habits of eating. not infrequently it is found that they have a number of prejudices with regard to the simple and most nutritious foods that mankind is accustomed to. not a few of the younger ones who {153} develop tuberculosis have been laboring under the impression that they could not digest milk or eggs or in some way they had acquired a distaste for them and so had eliminated them from their diet; some of them had also stopped eating butter or used it very sparingly. at the sanatoria, as a rule, very little attention is paid to the supposed difficulty of digestion of milk and eggs and perhaps butter. the patients are at once put on the regular diet containing these articles and the nurse sees that they take them even between meals, and unless there is actual vomiting or some very definite objective--not merely subjective--sign of indigestion, the patients are required to continue the diet. it is almost an invariable rule for the patients of such institutions to come to the physician in charge after a couple of weeks and ask how it was that they could have thought that these simple articles of food disagreed with them. they have begun to like them now and are surprised at their former refusal to take them, which they begin to suspect, as the physician very well knows, to have been the principal reason for the development of their tuberculosis. there are people who are up to weight or {154} slightly above it who develop tuberculosis, but they do not represent one in five of the patients who suffer from the affection. in probably three fourths of all the cases of tuberculosis the predisposing factor which allowed the tubercle bacillus to grow in the tissues was the loss of weight or the being underweight. there is a good biological reason for this, for there are certain elements in the make-up of the tubercle bacillus which favor its growth at a time when fat is being lost from the tissues rather than deposited, for at that time more fat for the growth of the tubercle bacillus is available in the lungs than at other times. often among the poor the loss in weight is due to lack of food because of poverty, or failure to eat because of alcoholism, but not infrequently among all classes it is just a question of certain bad habits of eating that might readily have been corrected by the will. it is surprising how many people who complain of various nervous symptoms--meaning by that term symptoms for which no definite physical basis can be found, or for which only that extremely indefinite basis of a vague reflex, real or supposed, from the abdominal organs--are underweight and will be found to be eating much less than the average of {155} humanity. these nervous symptoms include above all discomforts of various kinds in the abdominal region; sense of gone-ness; at times a feeling of fullness because of the presence of gas; grumblings, acid eructations, bitter taste in the mouth, and above all, constipation. as is said in the chapter on "the will and the intestinal functions," the most potent and frequent cause of constipation is insufficient eating, either in quantity or in variety. it is especially in the digestive tract of those who do not eat as much as they should that gas accumulates. this gas is usually thought to be due to fermentation, but as fermentation is a very slow gas producer and nervous patients not infrequently belch up large quantities, it is evident that another source for it must be sought. any one who has seen a number of hysterical patients with gaseous distention of the abdomen and attacks of belching in which immense quantities of gas are eructated, will be forced to the conclusion that in such nervous crises gas leaks out of the blood vessels of the walls of the digestive tract and that this is the principal source of the gas noted. what is true in the severe nervous attacks is also true in nervous symptoms of other kinds, and neurotic indigestion so called {156} is always accompanied by the presence of gas. apparently the old maxim of the physicist of past centuries has an application here. "nature abhors a vacuum" and as the stomach and intestines are not as full as they ought to be, nor given as much work to do as they should have, nature proceeds to occupy them with gas which finds its way in from the very vascular gastrointestinal walls. this is of course an explanation that would not have been popular a few years ago when the chemistry of digestion seemed so extremely important, but in recent years, medical science has brought us back rather to the physics of digestion, and i think that most physicians who have seen many functional nervous patients would now agree with these suggestions as to the origin of gaseous disturbance in the gastrointestinal tract in a great many of these cases. besides the physical symptoms, there are a whole series of psychic or psycho-neurotic symptoms, the basis of which undoubtedly lies in the condition of underweight as a consequence of undereating. over and over again i have seen the feeling of inability to do things which had come over men, and {157} particularly women, disappear by adding to and regulating the diet until an increase in weight came. extreme tiredness is a frequent symptom in those under weight, and this often leads to their having no recreation after their work because they have not enough energy for it; as every human being needs diversion, a vicious circle of influence which adds to their nervous tired condition is formed. i have seen in so many cases the eating of a good breakfast and a good lunch supply working people with the energy hitherto lacking that enabled them to go out of an evening to the theater or to entertainments of one kind or another, that it has become a routine practice to treat these people by adding to their dietary unless there are direct contra-indications. dreads are much more common among people who are underweight than among those who eat enough to keep themselves in proper physical condition. i have had a series of cases, unfortunately only a small one in number, in which the craving for alcoholic liquor disappeared before an increase in diet and a gain in weight. i shall never forget the first case in which this happened. the patient was a man of nearly sixty years of age who held a {158} rather important political office in a small neighboring town. he was on the point of losing it because periodical sprees were becoming more frequent and it was impossible for him to maintain his position. he was over six feet in height and he weighed less than a hundred and fifty pounds. i had tried to get him to gain in weight by advice and suggestion without avail. finally, i had to make a last effort to use whatever influence i had to save his political position for him, and then i succeeded in making him understand that he would have to do as i told him in the matter of eating, or else i would have nothing more to do with him. it was not without some misgivings that i thus undertook to make a man of nearly sixty change his lifelong habits of eating. that is something which i consider no physician has a right to do unless there is some very imperative reason for it. here was, however, a desperate case. it was in the late afternoon particularly that this patient craved drink so much that he could not deny himself. as he ate but very little breakfast and had a hasty scanty lunch, he was at the very bottom of his physical resources at that time, and at the end of a rather demanding day's work. we had {159} to break up his other habits in the hope of getting at the craving. he had taken coffee and a roll for breakfast. i dictated a cereal, two eggs and several rashers of bacon and several rolls. i insisted on fifteen minutes in the open before lunch and then a hearty lunch with some substantial dessert at the end of it. this man proceeded to gain at the rate of a little more than three pounds a week. by the end of two months, he weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds and had not touched a drop of liquor in that time and felt that he had no craving for it. that is some ten years ago, and there has been no trouble with his alcoholic cravings since. he has maintained his weight; he says that he never felt so well and that above all he now has no more of that intense tiredness that used to come to him at the end of the day. every now and then he says to me in musing mood,--"and to think that i had never learned to eat enough!" for these very tired feelings so often complained of by nervous patients, once it has been decided that there is no organic trouble--for of course kidney or heart or blood pressure affections may readily cause them--there are just two things to be considered: these are {160} flat-foot or yielding arch, and undereating. when there is a combination of these two, then tiredness may well seem excessive and yet be readily amenable to treatment. persons with occupations which require standing are especially liable to suffer in this way. undereating in the evening is especially important for many nervous people and is often the source of wakefulness. it is the cause of insomnia, not so much at the beginning of the night, as a rule, as in the early morning. many a person who wakes at four or five and cannot go to sleep again is hungry. there is a sense of gone-ness in the stomach region in these cases, which the patients are prone to attribute to their nerves in general, or some of them who have had unfortunate suggestions from their physicians may talk of their abdominal brain; but it is surprising how often their feelings are due simply to emptiness. any thin person particularly who has his last meal before seven and does not go to bed until after eleven should always take something to eat before retiring. a glass of milk or a cup of cocoa and some crackers or a piece of simple cake may be sufficient, but it is important to eat enough. animals and men naturally get sleepy after eating and do not sleep well if their {161} stomachs are empty. children are the typical examples. we are all only children of a larger growth in this regard. when the last meal is taken before seven and people do not go to bed until nearly twelve, as is frequently the case in large cities, the custom of having something to eat just before bed is excellent for sleep. i have known the establishment of this habit to afford marked relief in cases of insomnia that had extended over years. the people in my experience who sleep the worst are those who, having taken a little cambric tea and some toast and preserves with perhaps a piece of cake for supper, think that this virtuous self-control in eating ought to assure them good rest. it has just the opposite effect. disturbed sleep, full of dreams and waking moments, is oftener due to insufficient eating than to overeating. the people whom i know who sleep the best and from whom there are no complaints of insomnia, are those who, having eaten so heartily at dinner that they get to the theater a little late, attend the follies or some late show for a while and then go round to one of the broadway restaurants and chase a welsh rarebit or some lobster a la newburg, with a biscuit tortoni or a pãªche melba down {162} to their stomachs and then go home to sleep the sleep of the just. just as there are bad habits of eating too little that are dangerous and must be corrected by the will so there are bad habits of eating too much that can only be corrected in the same way. while it is dangerous to be under weight in the early years of life, it is at least as dangerous to be overweight in middle life. with the variety and abundance of food now supplied at a great many tables, it is comparatively easy for people in our time to eat too much. the result is that among the better-to-do classes a great many people suffer from obesity, sometimes to such an extent that life is made a burden to them. there is only one way to correct this and that is to eat less and of course to exercise more. reduction in diet means the breaking of a long established habit and that of course is often hard. the whole family may have to set a good example of abstinence from too great a variety of food and especially from the richer foods, in order that a parent may be helped to prevent further development of obesity and to lose gently and gradually some of the overweight that is being put on, and which now, by conserving heat and slowing up metabolism {163} generally within the body, makes it so easy for even reduced quantities of food to maintain the former habit of adding weight. in this matter of obesity, however, just exactly as in the case of tuberculosis for those who are underweight, prevention is much better than cure. the people who know that they inherit such tendencies should be particularly careful not to form habits of eating that will add considerably to their weight. after all, it is not nearly so difficult a matter as is often imagined. there is no need, unless in very exceptional cases, of denying one's self anything that is liked in the ordinary foods, only less of each article must be eaten. even desserts need not be entirely eliminated, for ices may be taken instead of ice cream; sour fruits and especially those of the citrus variety--oranges and grapefruit--and the gelatine desserts may be eaten almost with impunity. the phrase "eat and grow thin" has deservedly become popular in recent years because as a matter of fact it is perfectly possible to eat heartily and above all to satisfaction without putting on weight. it is, of course, harder to lose weight, but even that may be accomplished gradually under proper direction if there is the persistent will to do it. {164} in recent years another disease has come to attract attention which represents the result of an overindulgence in food materials that can be limited without much difficulty. this is diabetes which used to be comparatively rare but has now become rather frequent. an authority on the disease declared not long since that there are over half a million people in this country now who either have or will have diabetes as the result of the breaking down of their sugar metabolism. it is not surprising that the disease should be on the increase, for the consumption of sugar has multiplied to a very serious degree during the last few generations. a couple of centuries ago, those who wanted sugar went not to the grocery store, but to the apothecary shop. it was kept as a flavoring material for children's food, as a welcome addition to the dietary of invalids and the old, and quite literally as a drug, for it was considered to have, as it actually has, to a slight extent at least, some diuretic qualities that made it valuable. a little more than a century ago, a thousand tons of sugar sufficed for the whole world's needs, while the year before the war, the world consumed some twenty-two million of tons of sugar. it is said that every man, woman, and {165} child in the united states consumed on the average every day a quarter of a pound of sugar. our candy stores have multiplied, and while two generations ago the little candy stores sold candies practically entirely for children, eking out their trade with stationery and newspapers and school supplies, now candy stores dealing exclusively in confectionery are very common. there are several hundred stores in the united states that pay more than $25,000 a year rent, though they sell nothing but candy and ice-cream sodas. corresponding with the increase in the sale of candy has come also the consumption of very sweet materials of various kinds. french pastries, vienna tarts, oriental sweetmeats, turkish fig paste, arabian date conserves, and west indian guava jelly, are all familiar products on our tables. chocolate has become one of the important articles of world commerce, though almost unknown beyond a very narrow circle a little more than a century ago. tea and coffee have been introduced from the near and the far east and by a western abuse consumed with such an amount of sweetening as make them the medium of an immense consumption of sugar. there is no doubt that unless good habits {166} of self-denial in this regard are formed, diabetes, which is an extremely serious disease, especially for those under middle life, will continue to increase in frequency. the candy and sugar habit is rather easy to form; every one realizes that it is a habit, but it is sometimes almost as hard to break as the tobacco habit. we were meant to get our sugar by the personal manufacture of it from starch substances. if a crust of bread is chewed vigorously until it swallows itself, that is, dissolves in the secretions and gradually disappears, it will be noted that there is a distinctly sweetish taste in the mouth. this is the starch of the bread being changed into sugar. we were expected by nature to make our own sugar in this way, but this has proved too slow and laborious a way for human nature to get all the sugar it cared for, so most people prefer to secure it ready made. sugar is almost as artificial a product as alcohol and is actually capable of doing almost as much harm as its not distantly related chemical neighbor. it is rather important that good habits in the matter should be formed and we have been letting ourselves drift into very unfortunate habits in recent years. {167} chapter xi the place of the will in tuberculosis "and like a neutral to his will and matter did nothing." _hamlet_. probably the very best illustration in the whole range of medicine of the place of the will in the cure of disease is afforded by tuberculosis. this used to be the most fatal of all human affections until displaced from its "bad eminence" within the last few years by pneumonia, which now carries off more victims. as it is, however, about one in nine or perhaps a few more of all those who die are victims of tuberculosis. this high mortality would seem to indicate that the disease must be very little amenable to the influence of the will, since surely under ordinary circumstances a good many people might be expected to have the desire and the will to resist the affection if that were possible. in spite of the large death rate this is exactly what is true. {168} tuberculous infections are extremely common, much commoner even than their high mortality reveals. after long and critical discussion with a number of persistent denials, it is now generally conceded by authorities in the disease that the old maxim "after all, all of us are a little tuberculous" is substantially correct. very few human beings entirely escape infection from the tubercle bacillus at some time in life. the great majority of us never become aware of the presence of the disease and succeed in conquering it, though the traces of it may be found subsequently in our bodies. careful autopsies reveal, however, that very few even of those who did not die directly from tuberculosis fail to show tuberculous lesions, usually healed and well shut off from the healthy tissues, in their bodies. one in eight of those who become infected have not the resistive vitality to throw off the disease or the courage to face it and take such precautions as will prevent its advance. all those, however, who give themselves any reasonable chance for the development of resistance survive the disease though they remain always liable to attack from it subsequently if they should run down in health and strength. {169} heredity, which used to be supposed to play so important a rã´le in the affection, is now known to have almost nothing to do with the spread of the disease. family tendencies are probably represented by nothing more than a proneness to underweight which makes one more liable to infection, and this is due as a rule to family habits in the matter of undernourishment from ill-advised consumption of food. probably a certain lack of courage to face the disease boldly and do what is necessary to develop bodily resistance against it may also be an hereditary family trait, but environment means ever so much more than heredity. there is a well known expression current among those who have had most experience in the treatment of patients suffering from tuberculosis that "tuberculosis takes only the quitters", that is to say that only those succumb to consumption who have not the strength of will to face the issue bravely and without discouragement to push through with the measures necessary for the treatment of their disease. in a word it is only those who lack the firmness of purpose to persist in the mode of life outlined for them who eventually die from their affection of the {170} lungs. no specific remedy has been found that gives any promise of being helpful, much less of affording assured recovery, though a great many have been tried and not a few are still in hopeful use. recent experience has only served to emphasize the fact that the one thing absolutely indispensable for any successful treatment of tuberculosis of the lungs is that the patient should regain weight and strength and with them resistive vitality so as to be able to overcome the disease and get better. to secure this favorable result two conditions of living are necessary but they must be above all persisted in for a considerable period. first there must be an abundance of fresh air with rest during the advancing stage or whenever there are acute symptoms present, and secondly an abundance of good food which will provide a store of nutritive energy and make the resistive vitality as high as possible. curiously enough this "fresh air and good food" treatment for the disease was recognized as the sheet anchor of the therapeutics of consumption as long ago as galen's time, the end of the second century, when that distinguished greek physician was practising at rome. nearly eighteen hundred {171} years ago galen suggested that he had tried many remedies for what he called phthisis, the greek equivalent of our word consumption or wasting away, and had often thought that he had noted a remedial value in them, but after further experience he felt that the all-important factors for cure were fresh air and good food. he even went so far as to say that he thought the best food of the consumptive or the phthisical, as he called them, was milk and eggs. a great deal of water has flowed under the bridge of medical advance since his time and at many periods since physicians have been sure that they had valuable remedies for consumption; yet here we are practically back at galen's conclusion more than fifty generations after his time, and we are even inclined to think of this mode of treatment as comparatively new, as it is in modern history. the influence on consumption of the will to get well when once aroused was typically exemplified in the career of the well-known london quack of the beginning of the nineteenth century, st. john long. he set himself up as having a sure cure for consumption. he was a charlatan of the deepest dye whose one idea was to make money, and who knew {172} nothing at all about medicine in any way. he took a large house in harley street and fitted it up for the reception of people anxious to consult him. for some seasons every morning and afternoon the public way was blocked up with carriages pressing to his door. nine out of ten of his patients were ladies and many of them were of the highest rank; fashion and wealth hastened to place themselves and their daughters at the mercy of the pretender's ignorance. his mode of treatment was by inhalation. he assured his patients that the breathing in of this medicated vapor would surely cure their pulmonary disease, and because others were intent on going they went; many of them were greatly benefited for a time and these so-called cures proved a bait for many other patients. j. cordy jeaffreson in his volume "a book about doctors", written two generations ago, has told the story of st. john long's successful application of the principle of community of treatment and its effectiveness upon his patient. like mesmer he realized that treating people in groups led them mutually to influence each other and to bring about improvement. st. john long {173} had in one of the rooms in harley street "two enormous inhalers, with flexible tubes running outward in all directions and surrounded by dozens of excited women-ladies of advanced years and young girls giddy with the excitement of their first london season--puffing from their lips the medicated vapor or waiting until a mouthpiece should be at liberty for their pink lips." in our generation of course we had various phases of similar treatment, including nebulizers and compressed air apparatus and medicated vapor, all working wonders for a while, and then proving to have no physical beneficial effect. what is surprising is to find the number of cures that were worked. st. john long had so many applicants for attention that he was literally unable to give heed to all of them. the news of the wonderful remedy flew to every part of the united kingdom and from every quarter sick persons, wearied of a vain search after an alleviation of their sufferings, flocked to london with hope renewed once more. this enabled st. john long to select for treatment only such cases as gave ready promise of cure. he made it a great preliminary of his treatment that his {174} patients should eat well as a rule and on one occasion when he was called into the country to see a man suffering in the last stages of consumption he said quite frankly, "sir, you are so ill that i cannot take you under my charge at present. you want stamina. take hearty meals of beefsteak and strong beer; and if you are better in ten days i will do my best for you and cure you." it is easy to understand that if he made it a rule for his consumptive patients that they should eat well or not expect relief from his medicine he would secure a great many good results. especially would this be true in many cases that came up to him from the country, had the advantage of a change of climate, and of environment and very soon found that they had much more strength than they thought they had. they had been dreading the worst, they were now led to hope for the best; they took the brake off their will, they fed well and it was not long then before they proceeded to get well. as even a little experience with consumptive patients shows it is often difficult for them to follow directions--and keep it up--in the matter of fresh air and good food and here is where the question of the will in the {175} treatment is all important. many a consumptive has in early life formed bad habits with regard to eating, especially in the direction of eating too little and refusing for some reason or other to take what are known to be the especially nutritious foods. not infrequently indeed it is their neglect of nutrition in this regard that has been the principal predisposing factor toward the development of the disease. this bad habit must be overcome and often proves refractory. then it is never easy to give up the pursuit of a chosen vocation and pursue faithfully for a suitable period the humdrum monotonous existence of prolonged rest every day in the open air with eating and sleeping as almost the only serious interests, if indeed they can be called such, permitted in life. it is only those who have the will power to follow directions faithfully, whole-heartedly and persistently who have a reasonable prospect of getting ahead of their disease and eventually securing such a conquest of it as will enable them to return to their ordinary life as it was before the development of tuberculosis. unless patients are ready to follow directions as regards outdoor air and good food the {176} cure, or as specialists in tuberculosis prefer to call it the arrest of symptoms in the disease, is almost out of the question. above all it is extremely important that those who suffer from pulmonary tuberculosis should be ready to follow directions at an early stage of their disease, before any serious symptoms develop, for it is then that most can be done for them. many a sufferer from tuberculosis makes his or her cure extremely difficult, certainly ever so much more difficult than it would otherwise have been, because the dread of going to see a physician--lest they should be told that their affection is really consumption and demands immediate strenuous treatment--causes them to put off consultation with some one whose opinion in the matter is reliable. this is indeed one of the principal reasons why tuberculosis of the lungs still continues to carry off so many victims every year,-because people are afraid to learn the truth. they dare not put the question to a definite issue and refuse to believe the possibility that certain disturbing symptoms represent developing tuberculosis. they defer seeing an expert; they take this and that suggestion from friends; they buy cough remedies which {177} they see advertised, sometimes they tinker with so-called "consumption cures." after a while an advance of their symptoms makes it absolutely necessary to see a physician but often by this time their disease has progressed from an incipient case rather easy to be treated and with an excellent prognosis to a more advanced stage at which cure is ever so much more difficult; or by this time it may even prove that their strength has been seriously sapped and they have not enough resistive vitality left to bring about reaction toward the cure. the all-important thing for all those who have at any time lived near consumptives, whether relatives or others--for the disease is almost invariably acquired and not hereditary--or who have worked for any prolonged period in more or less intimate contact with those who had a chronic cough or who subsequently developed tuberculosis, is that on the first symptom that is at all suspicious they should make up their minds to have the question as to whether they have tuberculosis or not definitely settled and that they should be ready to do what they are told in the matter. the first symptom is not a persistent cough as so many think, nor continued loss of {178} weight, which is an advanced sign as a rule, but a continued rapidity of pulse for which no non-pulmonary reason can be found. the old idea that consumptives should not be told what their affection was, lest it should disturb their minds and discourage them so much as to do them harm, has now been abandoned by practically all those of large experience in the care of the tuberculous. the opposite policy of being perfectly candid and making the patients understand their serious condition and the importance of taking all the measures necessary for cure, yet without permitting them to be unnecessarily scared, has been adopted. their will to get well must be thoroughly aroused. after all, it must be recalled that tuberculosis is an extremely curable disease. it is now definitely known that more than ninety per cent. of humanity have at some time had a tuberculosis process, that is to say a focus of tuberculosis active within their tissues. only about one in nine of the deaths in civilized countries is from tuberculosis. that means that at least eight other people who have not died from the disease but from something else have had the affection, yet have recovered from it. instead of the old shadow of {179} heredity with its supposedly almost inevitable fatality, so that young people who saw their brothers and sisters or other relatives around them die from the disease felt that they were doomed, we now know that the hereditary factor plays an extremely minor role if indeed it plays any serious rã´le at all in the development of the disease. no affection is so amenable to the state of mind and the will to be well as tuberculosis. that is exactly the reason why so many remedies have come into vogue and apparently been very successful in its treatment and then after a while have proved to be of no particular service or even perhaps actually harmful so far as their physical effect is concerned. it cannot be too often repeated that anything whatever that a patient takes that will arouse new hope and give new courage and reawaken the will will actually benefit these patients. no wonder then that scarcely a year passes without some new remedy for tuberculosis being proposed. all that is needed to affect favorably patients suffering from the disease is to have some good reason presented which makes them feel that they ought to get better and then at once they eat better and proceed to increase {180} their resistive vitality. the despondency that comes with the lack of the will to be well hurts their appetite particularly and no tuberculosis patient can ever hope to recover health unless he is eating heartily. with better eating there is always a temptation to be more outdoors and the ability to stand cooler air which always means that the lungs are given their opportunity to breathe fresh cool air which constitutes absolutely the best tonic that we have for the affection. it has been recognized in recent years that the only climates which give reasonable hope of being helpful for the tuberculous are those which present a variation of some thirty degrees in their temperature every day. whenever this is the case chilly feelings are always produced in those who are exposed to the change, even though the lower temperature curve may not go down to anywhere near freezing. if for instance the temperature at the hottest hour of the day, say three o'clock in the afternoon, is 90â° f. and that of the later evening or middle of the night is 60â° f., chilly feelings will be produced. just the same thing is true if the temperature is between 30â° f. and 40â° f. shortly after the middle of the day and then goes down to {181} near zero at night. these chilly feelings are uncomfortable, but they produce an excellent reaction in the circulation and set the blood coursing from the heart to the tissues better than any medicine that we have. in the midst of this the lungs have their resistive vitality raised so as to throw off the disease. this is probably one of the principal reasons why mountain climates have been found so much more helpful for the treatment of tuberculosis than regions of lower elevations. whenever the elevation is more than fifteen hundred feet there will almost invariably be a variation of thirty degrees between the day and the night temperature. there are of course still greater variations, even sixty or seventy degrees sometimes where the altitudes are very high, but this is often too great for the tuberculous patients to react properly to, in their rundown conditions. besides, the air is much rarer at the higher elevations, breathing is more difficult, because the lungs have to breathe more rapidly and more deeply in order to secure the amount of oxygen that is needed for bodily necessities from the rarified air. the middle elevations then, between fifteen hundred and twenty-five {182} hundred feet, have been found the best for tuberculosis patients, and they are very pleasant during the summer time, though never without the chilly discomfort of the drop in temperature. during the fall and winter, however, many patients become tired out trying to react to these variations of temperature and want to seek other climates where they will not have to submit to the discomfort and the chilly feelings. if they come down to more comfortable quarters before their tuberculosis has been brought to a standstill by the increase of their resistive vitality, it is very probable that they will lose most of the benefit that they derived from their mountain experience. here is where the will comes in. those who have the will to do it and the persistence to stick at it and the character that keeps them in good humor in spite of the discouraging circumstances which almost inevitably develop from time to time, will almost without exception recover from their tuberculosis with comparatively little difficulty, if they have only taken up the treatment before the disease is so far advanced as to be beyond cure. in the older days consumptives used to be sent to the riviera and to algiers and to {183} other places where the climate was comparatively equable, with the idea that if they could only avoid the chilly feelings consequent upon variations of temperature it would be better for them. many of the disturbing symptoms of tuberculosis are rendered less troublesome in such a climate, but the disease itself is likely to remain quiescent at best or perhaps even to get insidiously worse, as tuberculosis is so prone to do. these milder climates require much less exercise of the will, but that very fact leaves them without the all-important therapeutic quality which the lower altitudes possess. for many people the outdoor life and the sight of nature in the variations produced in scenery during the course of the days and the seasons are satisfying enough to be helpful in making their cure of tuberculosis easy. they are extremely fortunate if they have this strong factor in their favor. it is very probable that we owe the discovery of the value of the adirondacks and other such medium altitudes in the treatment of tuberculosis to the fact that doctor trudeau liked the outdoors so much and was indeed so charmed with the adirondack region that when death from tuberculosis seemed {184} inevitable, he preferred the saranac region as a place to die in, in spite of the hardships and the bitter cold from which at that time there was so little adequate protection, to the comforts of the city. he scarcely hoped for the miracle of cure from a disease which he as a doctor knew had carried off so many people, but if he were to die he felt that he would rather die in the face of nature with his beloved mountains all around him than in the shut-in spaces of the city. his resolution to go to the adirondacks seemed to many of those who heard of it scarcely more than the caprice of a man whom death had marked for itself. his physicians surely had no hope of his journey benefiting him but they felt very probably that in the conditions he might be allowed to have this last desire since there were so few other desires of life that he was likely to have fulfilled. his will to live outdoors in spite of the bitter cold of that first winter undoubtedly saved his life and then he evolved the system of outdoor treatment which has in the past fifty years saved so many lives and is now the recognized treatment for the disease. it is easy to understand, however, how much of firm determination was required {185} on his part forty years ago, when there were no comfortable ways of getting into the adirondacks, when the last stage of the journey had to be made for forty miles on a mattress in a rough wagon, when water for washing had to be secured by breaking the ice in the pitcher or on the lake and when the bitter climate must have been the source of almost poignant torture to a man constantly running a slight temperature. he had the courage and the will power to do it and the result was not only his own survival but a great benefit secured for others. unfortunately many a consumptive patient who during his first period of treatment keeps to the letter the regulations for outdoor air and abundant food fails to do so if it is necessary to come back a second time. persistency is here a jewel indeed and only the persistent win out. many an arrested case fails to keep the rules of living that may be necessary for years afterwards and runs upon relapse. the will to do what is necessary is all-important. trudeau himself, after securing the arrest of his disease in the adirondacks, though he lived and worked successfully to almost seventy years of age, found it quite impossible to live out of them {186} and often had to hurry back from even comparatively brief visits to the lowlands. besides, every now and then during some forty years he had the will power to take his own prescription of outdoor air and absolute rest. it was the faculty to do this that gave him length of life far beyond the average of humanity and the power to accomplish so much in spite of the invasion of the disease which had rendered large parts of both lungs inoperative. not only did he live on, however, but he succeeded in doing so much valuable work that few men in the medical profession of america have stamped their name deeper on modern medical science than this consumptive who had constantly to use his will to keep himself from letting go. {187} chapter xii the will in pneumonia "who shall stay you?--my will, not all the world." _hamlet_. what is true of tuberculosis and the influence of the will has proved to be still more true, if possible, of pneumonia. clinical experience with the disease in recent years has not brought to us any remedy that is of special value, nor least of all of specific significance, but it has enabled us to understand how individual must be the treatment of patients suffering from pneumonia. we have recognized above all that mentally disturbing factors which lessen the patient's courage and will to live may prove extremely serious. we hesitate about letting an older person suffering from pneumonia learn any bad news and particularly any announcement of the death of a near relative, above all, a husband or wife. the shock and depression consequent upon any such announcement may {188} prove serious or even fatal. the heart needs all its power to accomplish its difficult task of forcing blood through the limited space left free in the unaffected lung tissue, and anything which lessens that, that is anything which _disheartens_ the patient, to use our expressive english phrase, must be avoided as far as possible. when a man of fifty or beyond, one or more of whose friends has died of pneumonia about his age, comes down with the disease and learns, as he often will in spite of the best directed effort to the contrary, that he is suffering from the affection, if he is seriously disturbed by the knowledge, we realize that it bodes ill for the course of the disease. if a pneumonia patient, especially beyond middle life, early in the case expresses the thought that perhaps this may be the end and clings at all insistently to that idea, the physician is almost sure to feel little confidence of pulling him through the illness. in probably no disease is it more important that the patient's courage should be kept up and that his will should help rather than hamper. courage is above all necessary in pneumonia because the organs that are most affected and have most to do with his recovery are so much {189} under the control of the emotions. any emotional disturbance will cause the heart to be affected to some extent and the respiration to be altered in some way. when a pneumonia patient has to lie for days watching his respirations at forty to the minute, though probably he has never noticed them before, and feels how his heart is laboring, no wonder that he gets scared, and yet his scare is the very worst thing that can happen to him. it will further disturb both his heart and his respiration and leave him with less energy to overcome the affection. he may be tempted to make conscious efforts to help his lungs in their work, though any such attempt will almost surely do more harm than good. he must just face the inevitable for some five to nine days, hope for the best all the time and keep up his courage so as not to disturb his heart. after middle life only the patients who are capable of doing that will survive the trial that pneumonia gives. the super-abounding energy of the young man will carry him through it much better; and besides, the young man usually has much less solicitude as to the future and much less depending on his recovery. a generation ago or even less, whiskey or {190} brandy or some form of strong, alcoholic stimulant, as it was called, was looked upon as the sheet anchor in pneumonia. for a generation or more at that time, the same remedy had been looked upon by a great many physicians as an extremely precious resource in the treatment of tuberculosis. the therapeutic theory behind the practice was that in affections of the lungs a particular strain was placed upon the heart and therefore this organ needed to be stimulated just as far as could be done with safety. as alcohol increases the rapidity of the heart beat, it was considered to be surely a stimulant and came to be looked upon as the safest of heart stimulants, because, except when used over very long periods, direct bad effects had not been noticed. in pneumonia, above all, the heart needed to be stimulated because it had to pump blood through the portion of the lungs unaffected by the pneumonia, usually congested and offering special hindrances to the circulation; besides, a much larger amount of blood than usual had to be pumped through these portions of the lungs in order to compensate for the solidified portions. a number of very experienced physicians came to be quite sure that alcoholic stimulants {191} were the most valuable remedy that we had for this special purpose of cardiac stimulation; some of them went so far as to say, with a well known new york clinician, that if they were to be offered all the drugs of the pharmacopeia without alcoholic stimulant for the treatment of pneumonia on the one hand, or whiskey or brandy on the other without all the pharmacals, they would prefer to take the alcohol, confident that it would save more patients for them. they were quite sure that they had made observations which justified them in this conclusion. we know at the present time that alcohol is not a stimulant but always a narcotic. it increases the rapidity of the heart beat, though not by direct stimulation, but by disturbing the inhibitory nerve apparatus of the heart and thus permitting the heart to beat faster. just as there is a governor on a steam engine, to keep it from going too fast and regulate its speed to a definite range, so there is a similar governing apparatus or mechanism in connection with the heart. it is by affecting this that alcohol makes the heart go faster. blood pressure is not raised, but on the contrary lowered, and the effect of alcohol is depression and not stimulation. {192} in spite of this, good observers seemed to note favorable effects from the use of alcohol in both pneumonia and tuberculosis. this appears to be a paradox until one analyzes the psychic effects of alcohol and places them alongside the physical, in order to determine the ultimate equation of the influence of the substance. alcohol has a very definite tendency to produce a state of euphoria, that is, of well-being. the patient's mind is brought to where it dismisses solicitude with regard to himself. this neutralizes directly the anxiety which so often acts as a definite brake upon resistive vitality. the alcoholic stimulant, in so far as it has any physical effect, probably does a little harm, but its influence on the mind of the patient not only serves to neutralize this, but adds distinctly to the patient's prospects of recovery. without it, the dread which comes over him paralyzes to some extent at least his heart activity and interferes with lung action. under the influence of alcohol, he gains courage--artificial, it is true--but still enough to put _heart_ in him, and this is the stimulation that the older clinical observers noted. the patient can, with the scare lifted, use his will to be well {193} ever so much more effectively and psychic factors are neutralized that were hampering his resistive vitality. this illustrates very well indeed the place of dilute alcohol in some of the usual forms in therapeutics about the middle of the nineteenth century. practically all the textbooks of medicine at that time recommended alcohol for many of the continued fevers. in sepsis, in child-bed fever, in typhoid, in typhus, as well as in tuberculosis and pneumonia and other less common affections, whiskey or brandy was recommended highly and usually given in considerable quantities. all of these affections are likely to be accompanied by considerable anxiety and solicitude with a series of recurring dreads that sadly interfere with nature's efforts toward recovery. under certain circumstances, the scare, to use the plain, simple word, was sufficient to turn the scale against the patient. the giving of whiskey at least lifted the scare [footnote 5] {194} and enabled the patient to use his vital resources to best advantage. [footnote 5: the use of whiskey for snake-bite probably has no other significance than this lifting of the scare. it used to be said that the alcoholic stimulation neutralized the depressant effect of snake poisoning on the heart. now we know that this is not true, and in addition, we know of no effect that alcohol in the system might have in neutralizing the presence of the toxic albumin which constitutes the danger in snake poisoning. it is only rarely that the bite of a rattlesnake will be fatal. experts declare that the snake must be a large one, its sting must be inflicted on the bare skin, it must not have stung any one so as to empty its poison glands for more than twenty-four hours, and the full dose of the poison must be injected beneath the skin for the bite to be fatal. very rarely are all these conditions fulfilled. when a person is bitten by a snake, however, the terror which ensues is quite sufficient of itself to hurt the patient seriously and he may scare himself to death, though the snake poison would not have killed him. the whiskey lifts the scare and gives nature a chance to neutralize the poison which she can usually do successfully.] it is extremely important, then, first to be sure that the patient's will to be well is not hampered by unfortunate psychic factors and secondly, that his courage shall be stimulated to the greatest possible degree. fresh air is the most important adjuvant for this that we have. the outdoor air gives a man the courage to dissipate dreads and makes him feel that he can accomplish what seemed impossible before. undoubtedly this is one of the favorable effects of the fresh-air treatment of pneumonia, for it makes people mentally ever so much less morbid. the patient's surroundings must be made as encouraging as possible and there must be no signs of anxious solicitude, no long faces, no weeping, and as far as possible, no disturbance about business affairs that might make him think that a fatal termination was {195} feared. his will to get well must be fostered in every possible way and obstacles removed. this is why it has been so well said in recent years that good nursing is the most important part of the treatment of pneumonia. this does not mean that a good nurse can replace a physician, but that both must coordinate their efforts to making the patient just as comfortable as possible, so that he will feel assured that everything that should be, is being done for him, and that it is only a question of being somewhat uncomfortable for a few days and he will surely get well. sunny rooms, smiling faces, flowers at his bedside, cheerful greetings, all these, by adding to the patient's euphoria, bolster up his will and make him feel that after all, thousands of people have suffered from pneumonia and recovered from it, and there is no reason why he should not, provided that he will not interfere with his own recovery. {196} chapter xiii coughs and colds "the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills." _othello_. it might seem as though the will had nothing to do with such very material ailments as coughs and colds, and yet the more one knows about them, the clearer it becomes that their symptoms can be lessened, their duration shortened, their tendencies to complications modified, and to some extent at least, they can be almost literally thrown off by the will to be well. the idea of a little more than a generation ago that coughs and colds would be most benefited by confinement to the house and as far as possible to a room of an absolutely equable temperature has gradually given way before the success of the open-air treatment for tuberculosis and the meaning of fresh air in the management of pneumonia cases. fresh, cold air is always beneficial to the lungs, no matter what the conditions present in them, though it requires {197} no little courage and will power to face the practical application of that conclusion in many cases. when it is bravely faced, however, the results are most satisfactory, and the respiratory condition, if amenable to therapeutics, is relieved or proceeds to get better. of course it is well understood that any and every patient who has a rise in temperature, that is whose temperature is above 100â° f. in the later afternoon hours, should be in bed. under no circumstances must a person with any degree of fever move around. this does not mean, however, that such patients should not be subjected to fresh, cold air. the windows in their room or the ward in which they are treated should be open, and if the condition is at all prolonged, arrangements should be made for wheeling their beds out on the balcony or placing them close to a window. the cold air gives them distinctly chilly feelings and sometimes they complain of this, but they must be asked to stand it. of course if the cold disturbs their circulation, if the feet and hands get cold and the lips blue, the patients are not capable of properly reacting against the cold and must not be subjected to it. their subjective feelings of chilliness, however, must {198} not be sufficient to keep them from the ordeal of cold, fresh air; on the contrary, they must be told of the benefit they will receive from it and asked to exert their wills to stand the discomfort with just as little disturbance as possible. people suffering from coughs, no matter how severe, should get out into the air regularly, if they have no fever, and should go on with their regular occupation unless that occupation is very confining or is necessarily conducted in dusty air. keeping to the house only prolongs the affection and makes it much more liable to complications than would otherwise be the case. sufferers from these affections should not go into crowds, should avoid the theaters and crowded cars, partly for the sake of others--because they can readily convey their affection to them--but also for their own sake, because they are more susceptible to other forms of bacteria than those already implanted in their own systems and they are much more liable to pick up foreign bacteria in crowds than anywhere else. they should be out in the open air, particularly in the sunlight, and this will do more to shorten the course of a cough and cold than anything else. {199} they need more sleep than before and should be in bed at least ten or eleven hours in the day, though if they should not sleep during all of that time, they need not feel disturbed but may read or knit or do something else that will occupy them while they retain a recumbent position. they should not indulge in long, tiresome walks and in special exertion, but should postpone these until the cough has given definite signs of beginning to remit. with regard to the cough itself, it must not be forgotten that the action of coughing is for the special purpose of removing material that needs to be cleared from the lungs and the throat and larynx. it should not be indulged in except for that purpose. it requires a special effort, and while the lungs and other respiratory passages are the subject of a cold, these extra efforts should not be demanded of them unless they are absolutely necessary. almost needless to say, people indulge in a great deal of unnecessary coughing. some of this is a sort of habit and some of it is due to that tendency to imitate, so common in mankind. every one has surely heard during religious services, in a pause just after heads have been bowed in prayer or for a {200} benediction, a single cough from a distant part of the church which seemed to be almost the signal for a whole battery of coughs that followed immediately from every portion of the edifice. if some one begins coughing during a sermon or discourse, others will almost inevitably follow. coughing, like yawning, is very liable to imitation. the famous rule of an old-time german physician was that no one was justified in coughing or scratching the head unless these activities were productive. unless you get something as the result of the coughing, it should not be indulged in. there are a great many people who cough much more than necessary and who delay the progress of their betterment in that way. whenever material is present to be coughed up, coughing is not only proper but almost indispensable. it is the imitative cough, the coughs which indicate overconsciousness of one's affection, the coughs that so often almost unconsciously are meant to catch the sympathy of those around, which must be repressed by the will, and when the patient finds that he really has to cough less than he thinks, he will be quite sure that he is getting better and will actually improve as a consequence of this feeling. {201} coughs need an abundance of fluid much more than medicine, and warm fluids are better than cold; the will must be exercised so as to secure the taking of these regularly. at least a quart of warm liquid, milk if one is not already overweight, should be taken between meals during the existence of a cough. hot milk taken at night will very often secure much better rest with ever so much less coughing than would otherwise be the case. the tendency to take cough remedies which lessen the cough by their narcotic effect always does harm. coughing is a necessary evil in connection with coughs, and whatever suppression there is should be accomplished by means of the will. remedies that lessen the coughing also lock up the secretions and disturb the system generally and therefore prolong the affection and do the patient harm. most of the remedies that are supposed to choke off a cough have the same effect. quinine and whiskey have been very popular in this regard but always do harm rather than good. their use is a relic of the time when whiskey was employed for almost every form of continued fever and when quinine was supposed to be good for every febrile affection. we know now that quinine has no effect {202} except upon malarial fevers, and then only by killing the malarial organism, and that whiskey is a narcotic and not a stimulant and does harm rather than good. those who did not take the familiar q. and w. have in recent years had the habit of administering to themselves or to their friends various laxative or anodyne or antiphlogistic remedies that are supposed to abort a cough or cold and above all, prevent complications. all of these remedies do harm. every single one of them, even if it makes the patient a little more comfortable for the time, produces a condition that prevents the system from throwing off the infection which the cold represents as well and as promptly as it otherwise would. it requires a good deal of will power to keep from taking the many remedies which friends and sometimes relatives insist on offering us whenever a cold is developing, but the thing to do is to summon the will power and bravely refuse them. medicine knows no remedies that will abort a cold. the use of brisk purgatives, sometimes to an extent which weakens the patient very much the next day, is simply a relic of the time when every patient was treated with antimony {203} or calomel and free purgation was supposed to be almost as much of a cure-all as blood-letting. there is no reason in the world to think that the emptying of food out of the bowels will do any particular good, unless there is some definite indication that the food material present there should be removed because it is producing some deleterious effect. the longer a physician is in the practice of medicine the less he tries to abort infectious diseases, and coughs and colds are, of course, just infections. they must run their course, and the one thing essential is to put the patient in as good condition as possible so that his resistive vitality will enable him to throw off the infection as quickly as possible. it requires a good deal of exercise of will power on the part of the physician to keep from running after the many will-o'-the-wisps of treatment that are supposed to be so effective in shortening the course of disease, but any physician who looks back at the end of twenty years will know that his patients have reason to be thankful to him just in proportion as he has avoided running after the fads and fancies of current medicine and conservatively tried to treat his patients rather than cure their diseases. the patient is ever so much {204} more important than his disease, no matter what the disease may be. above all, for the cure and prevention of coughs and colds people must not be afraid of cold, fresh air. a good many seem to fear that any exposure to cold air while one has a cough may bring about pneumonia or some other serious complication. it must not be forgotten, however, that the pneumonia months in the year occur in the fall and the spring, october and november and march and april producing most deaths from the disease, and not december, january and february. the large city in this country which may be said to have the fewest deaths from pneumonia is montreal, where the temperature during december and january is often almost continuously below zero for weeks at a time and where there is snow on the ground for three or four months in succession. the highest death rate from pneumonia is to be found in some of our southern cities which have rather mild winters and rather equable temperature,--that is, no considerable variation in the daily temperature range. cold air is bracing and tonic for the lungs and enables them to resist the microbe of pneumonia, and it is now recognized {205} by physicians that personal immunity is a much more important factor in the prevention of the disease than anything else. coughs and colds and bronchitis and pneumonia, the respiratory diseases generally, are much less frequent in very cold climates than in variable regions. arctic explorers are but rarely troubled by them, even though they may be exposed to extremely low temperatures for months. men subjected to blizzards at thirty and forty degrees below zero may have fingers and toes frozen but do not have respiratory affections. some years ago, it was noted that one of these arctic expeditions had spent nearly two years within the arctic circle without suffering from bronchial or throat disease and within a month after their return in the spring most of them had had colds. nansen and his men actually returned from the arctic regions where they had been in excellent health during two severe winters to be confined to their beds with grippy colds within a week of their restoration to civilization, with its warm comfortable homes and that absolute absence of chill which is connected in so many people's minds with the thought of coughs and colds. the principal reason why colds are so {206} frequent in the winter time in our cities and that pneumonia has increased so much is mainly because people are afraid of standing a little cold. office buildings are now heated up to seventy degrees to make the personnel absolutely comfortable even on the coldest days, and as a consequence the air is so dry that it is more arid--that is more lacking in water vapor, as the united states public health service pointed out--than death valley, arizona, in summer. people dress too warmly, anticipating wintry days and often getting milder weather and thus making themselves susceptible to chilling because the skin is so warm that the blood is attracted to the surface. will power to stand cold, even though at a little cost of discomfort, is the best preventive of coughs and colds and their complications and the best remedy for them, once the acute febrile stage has passed. {207} chapter xiv neurotic asthma and the will "great minds of partial indulgence to their benumbed wills." _troilus and cressida_. in closing a clinical lecture on bronchial asthma at the university of marburg some years ago, professor friedrich mã¼ller, who afterwards became professor at berlin, said, "each asthmatic patient is a problem by himself and must be studied as such; meantime, it must not be forgotten what an important rã´le suggestion plays in the treatment of the disease." this represents very probably the reason why so many remedies have been recommended for asthma and have proved very successful in the hands of their inventors or discoverers as regards the first certain number of patients who use them, and yet on subsequent investigation have turned out to be of no special therapeutic value and sometimes indeed to have no physical effect of any significance. {208} of course this is said with regard to neurotic asthma only, and must not be applied too particularly to other forms of the affection, though there is no doubt at all that the symptoms of even the most severe cases of organic asthma can be very much modified and often very favorably, by suggestive methods. the principal feature of asthma is a special form of severe difficulty in breathing. it is known now that the beginning of the affection is always as strumpell said, "an extensive and quite rapid contraction of the smaller and smallest bronchial branches, that is the terminal twigs of the bronchial tubes." it is not so much air hunger, though there is, of course, an element of that because the lungs are not functioning properly, as an inability to empty the lungs of air already there and get more for respiratory purposes. the spasm in asthma has a tendency to hold the lungs too full of air and produce the feeling of their getting ever fuller and fuller. what the old sea captain said in the midst of his attack of asthma, when somebody sympathized with him because he had so much difficulty in getting his breath, was that he had lots of breath and would like to get rid of some of it. {209} he added, "if i ever get all this breath that's in me now out of me, i'll never draw another breath so long as i live, so help me." the respiration spasm is usually at full inspiration and the effort is mainly directed toward expiration and expulsion of air present using the accessory respiratory muscles for that purpose. the picture of a man suffering from asthma is that of a patient so severely ill as to be very disturbing to one not accustomed to seeing it. it would be almost impossible for any one not used to the attacks to think that in an hour or two at the most the patient would be quite comfortable and if he is accustomed to the attacks, that he will be walking around the next day almost as if nothing had happened. all that the affection consists in is a spasm of the bronchioles and as soon as that lets up, the patient will be himself again. some material may have accumulated during the time when the spasm was on which will still need to be disposed of, and there will be, of course, tiredness of muscles unaccustomed to be used in that special way, but that will be all. we are still in the dark as to what causes the spasms but undoubtedly psychic factors {210} play an important etiological rã´le. for a good many people, there is a distinct element of dread as the immediate cause of their asthmatic attacks. some people have it only when they have gone through some disturbing neurotic experience. occasionally it is the result of physical factors combined with some psychic element. cat asthma is not very uncommon and occurs as a consequence of some contact by the individual with a specimen of the cat tribe though usually the large cats, the lions and tigers, do not cause it. there is nearly always, in those who are liable to this form of asthma, a special detestation of cats. there is probably some emanation from the animal which produces the asthmatic fever, just as is true also of horses in those cases where horse asthma occurs. in a few of these latter cases, however, it was noted that the horse asthma did not begin until after there had been some terrifying experience in connection with the horse, as a runaway, a collision, or something of that kind. any one who sees many asthmatic cases inevitably gets the impression after a time that their very dread of the attacks has not a little to do with predisposing them. {211} occasionally the dread is associated with some other organic disturbance, either of heart or kidneys, or oftener still, with some solicitude with regard to these organs and the persuasion that there is something serious the matter with them, though there is at most only some functional disturbance. this is particularly true of cases of palpitation of the heart where there has been considerable dread of organic heart disease. in a certain number of these cases, there is some emphysema present, that is, overdistention of the lungs, such as is seen in high-chested people. owing to the long anterio-posterior diameter of the chest and the fact that as a consequence it is nearly as thick through as it is wide, this form of chest is sometimes spoken of as barrel-chest. patients who have it are particularly likely to suffer from asthma if they have any dread of heart trouble or if they are of a nervous constitution. i have known people with the dread of the dark to get an attack of asthma if they were asked to sleep alone after having been accustomed for years to sleep with somebody in the room. i have known even a physician to have attacks of asthma of quite typical character as the result of a dread of being {212} out after dark which had gradually come over him. i have had a physician patient who was very uncomfortable if alone on the streets of new york, even during the day, and whose symptoms at their worst were distinctly dyspneic or asthmatic. he used to have to bring his wife with him whenever he came to see me for he lived out in one of the neighboring towns, because he was so afraid that he might get an asthmatic attack that would overcome him and he would feel helpless without some one to aid him. in practically all these cases, the treatment of asthma becomes largely that of treating the accompanying dread. once the acute symptoms of the attack itself manifest themselves, they have to be treated in any way that experience has shown will relieve the patient. the general condition, however, needs very often an awakening of the will to regulate the life, to get out into the air more than before, to avoid disturbing neurotic elements, and worrying conditions of various kinds. thin people need to be made to gain in weight, using their will for that purpose; stout people who eat too much and take too little exercise need to have their lives {213} regulated in the opposite direction. in the meantime, anything that arouses the patient to believe firmly that his condition will be improved by some remedy or mode of treatment, will help him to make the intervals between attacks longer and the attacks themselves less disturbing. the will undoubtedly plays a distinct role in this matter which patients who have been through a series of asthmatic attacks recognize very clearly. the many remedies for asthma which have been lauded highly even by physicians, and that have cured or relieved a great many patients and yet after a while have proved to be without much beneficial effect, make it very clear how much the affection depends on the will power to face it and throw it off. nothing will be curative in asthma unless the patient has confidence in his power and uses his own will energy to help it. he must overcome the element of dread which occurs in connection with all asthmatic attacks, even those due to organic disease of heart or kidneys. no matter how frequent the attacks have been, there is always an element of fright that enters into an affection which interferes with the respiration. this must {214} be overcome by psychic means to help out the physical remedies that are employed. sometimes the psychic remedies will succeed of themselves where more material means have failed completely. {215} chapter xv the will in intestinal function "ill will never said well." _henry v_. during the past generation, the appreciation of the relative part played by the stomach and intestines in digestion has completely changed. our forefathers considered the stomach the all-important organ of digestion and the intestines as scarcely more than a long tube to facilitate absorption and deal properly with waste materials. their relative values are now exactly reversed in our estimation. the stomach has come to be looked upon as scarcely more than a thin-walled bag meant to hold the food that we take at each meal and then pass it on by degrees to be digested, prepared for absorption and finally absorbed in the intestines. it has comparatively little to do with such alteration of the food as prepares it to be absorbed. its motor function is much more important than its secretory function and serious stomach troubles are {216} dependent on disturbances of stomach motility. contractions at the pyloric orifice, that is the passageway from the stomach into the intestines, will cause the retention of food and seriously interfere with health. the dilatation of the stomach for any reason may produce a like result and these are the stomach affections that need special care. if the stomach will only pass the food on properly, the intestines will do the rest. a number of people have been found in the course of routine stomach examinations who proved to have no secretory function of the stomach and yet suffered no symptoms at all attributable to this fact. the condition is well known and is called _achylia gastrica_, that is, failure of the stomach to manufacture chyle, the scientific term for food changed by stomach secretions. our stomachs are only meant, apparently, to provide a reservoir for food that will save us the necessity of eating frequently during the day, as the herbivorous and graminivorous animals have to do, and enable us to store away enough food to provide nutrition for five or six hours. we thus have the leisure to occupy ourselves with other things besides eating and drinking. this conclusion as to the relative {217} significance of the stomach and digestion is confirmed by the fact that removal of the whole stomach or practically all of it for cancer has in a number of well known cases been followed by gain in weight and general improvement in health. schlatter's case, the very first one in which nearly the whole stomach was removed, proved a typical instance of this, for the patient proceeded to gain some forty pounds in weight. she had lost this during the course of the growth of a cancer and its interference with stomach motility. it was necessary, however, for her to be fed, rather carefully, well-chosen foods usually in liquid form, and every hour and a half instead of at longer intervals. her intestines were thus spared from overloading and proceeded to do the work of digestion for which they are so well provided by abundant secretion poured into them from the large glands, the liver and the pancreas, as well as the series of small glands in their own walls all of which were manifestly meant to do extremely important work. in the increased estimation of the significance of the digestive functions of the intestines which has come in recent years, there has been a tendency, as always in human {218} affairs, for the pendulum to swing too far. above all, certain phases of intestinal function have come to occupy too much attention and to be the subject of oversolicitude. whenever this happens, whatever function it concerns is sure to be interfered with. attention has been concentrated to a great extent on evacuation of the bowels and the consequences have been rather serious. a great many people whose intestinal functions were proceeding quite regularly have had their attention called to the fact that any sluggishness of the intestines may be the source of disturbing symptoms and the beginning of even serious morbid conditions. as a consequence, they pay a great deal of attention to the matter and before long become so solicitous that the elimination of waste materials from the intestines is interfered with. above all, they may be led to pick and choose their foods so delicately that there is not the necessary waste material left to encourage peristalsis. the result is that to some extent at least, intestinal function would almost seem to have broken down in our day. everywhere one sees advertisements of medicines and remedies and treatments of various kinds that will aid in the evacuation of the bowels. {219} most of them are guaranteed to be perfectly harmless and all of them are pleasant to take, they work while you are doing nothing else and are just engaged in saving mankind not only suffering but complications of various kinds that may lead to serious results. some years ago, when matthew arnold was in this country, he declared in one of his lectures that what the world needed was "leading and light," but a well known american physician who is closely in touch with american life declared not long since that what we needed in america manifestly, if advertisements were any index of the needs of a people, was laxatives and more laxatives. advertisements cost money; it is said that at least four times as much as the advertising costs must be spent by the public on any object advertised in order to make it pay, so that very probably nearly a billion of dollars a year is spent in this country on laxatives. only whiskey and tobacco present a higher bill to the american people annually. practically all of the laxative medicines do harm if taken over a prolonged period. over and over again physicians have found that laxative remedies introduced even by scientists, with the assurance that they were quite {220} harmless and had no undesirable after effects proved the source of annoying or even serious symptoms after a while. it is true that when constipation has become habitual, it may be necessary to give laxative medicines for a prolonged period, but this is only another instance of the necessity that is often presented to the physician of choosing between two evils and trying to find the lesser one. even the heavy oil that has become so popular in recent years has been found on careful investigation and prolonged observation to have certain undesirable effects and it must not be forgotten that it has not been used generally for a sufficiently long time for us to be absolutely sure what its sequelae may be. this breakdown of intestinal activity is not the fault of nature but of men and women who have been thinking to improve on the natural laws of living. as the result of improvements in diet and refinements in cooking and the preparation of foods, less and less of their roughage is left in our articles of food when sent to the table. it is on this roughage or waste material that intestinal movement or peristalsis depends. if we eat perfectly white bread, cut all the gristle and fatty materials from our meat, carefully eliminating {221} the connective tissue bundles that may occur in it, eat our vegetables mainly in the shape of purees and avoid to a great extent all the coarser varieties, such as parsnips and carrots and beets, we provide very little material for the intestines to carry on and aid them in the elimination of other wastes. if, besides, we always ride and do not walk, and so have none of that precious jolting which occurs every time the heel comes down, and if we have no bending movements in our lives, no wonder that intestinal movement becomes sluggish and we have to supply stimulants and irritants to get it to do its work. intestinal evacuation is very largely a matter of will. there are very few people so constituted by nature that they will not have regular movements sufficient to maintain their digestive tracts in excellent health, if they form the right habits. they must, however, make up their minds, that is their wills, to restore coarse materials to their diet. they must eat whole wheat or graham bread, must eat fruit regularly and usually eat the skins of the fruit with it, that is as far as apples, pears, peaches, apricots, plums and the like are concerned. even as regards oranges, it is probable that the eating of occasional {222} pieces of orange peel is an excellent means of helping intestinal functions and providing waste material. [footnote 6 ] [footnote 6: a curious discovery has been made in recent years that orange skin contains a very precious element essential for bodily health, belonging to the class of substances known as the vitamines and contains more of it than any other food material that we have. the instinct which tempted so many of us as children to eat orange skin, in spite of the fact that we were discouraged from the practice, was founded on something much more than mere childish caprice. orange skin is after all the basis of marmalade which has been so commonly used by the english people at breakfast and which is at once a tasty and healthful material.] when baked potatoes are taken, the skin should be eaten, mainly because of the waste material it provides, but also because just underneath the skin and sure to be removed with it if it is taken off, there are certain salts and other substances that are excellent for health and particularly for digestion. besides, the carbonized material which so often occurs on baked potatoes is of itself a good thing. it represents some of that charcoal which in recent years french physicians particularly have found very valuable as a remedy for certain disturbances of intestinal digestion. the removal of parings from fruit and vegetables and the careful trimming of meat, have taken out of human diet the materials which meant most for intestinal movements for former generations, and they {223} have to be supplied artificially by means of irritant drugs, salts, oils and the like, to the detriment of function. the other element in the modern situation as regards the failure of intestinal function is the lack of fluids. people who live indoors are not tempted to take so much water as those who work outside and yet in our modern, steam-heated houses they often need more. our heating systems take much more water from us than the former methods of heating. the result is seen in our furniture that comes apart from dryness and in our books and other things which crack and deteriorate. something of the same thing happens to human beings unless they supply sufficient fluids. for this it is necessary deliberately to make up the mind, which always means the will, to consume five or six glasses of water between meals and especially to take one on rising in the morning and another on going to bed. this should _not_ be hot and above all not lukewarm water, but fresh cold water which stimulates peristalsis. the creation of a habit is needed in the matter or it will be neglected. i have sometimes given patients some harmless drug, like a lithium salt, that was to be taken three or four times a day in a full glass of {224} water, in order to be sure that they would take the water. they were willing to take the medicine but i could not be assured that without it they would drink the amount of water that i counselled. above all, a regular habit of going to the toilet at a definite time every day must be created. nothing is so important. in little children, even from their very early years, such a habit can be established; it is only necessary to put them on their chairs at certain times in the day and the desired result will follow. adults are merely children of a larger growth in this matter, and the habit of going regularly is all-important. a little patience is needed, though there should be no forcing, and after a time, a very satisfactory habit can be established in this manner. it seems almost impossible to many people that anything so simple should prove to be remedial for what to them for a time seemed so serious a disturbance of health, but only a comparatively short trial of the method will be sufficient to demonstrate its value. a book or newspaper may be taken with one, or lord chesterfield's advice to learn a page of horace which may afterwards be sent down as an offering to libitina, the goddess of secret {225} places, may be followed, but the mind must not be diverted too much from the business in hand, and the will must be afforded an opportunity to exert its power. it is true that the muscular elements of the intestines consist of unstriped muscles and that they are involuntary, and yet experience and observation have shown that the will has a certain indirect influence even over involuntary muscle. the heart, though entirely involuntary in its regular activities, can be deeply influenced by the will and the emotions, as the words encouraging and discouraging, or the equivalent saxon words heartening and disheartening, make very clear. undoubtedly the peristaltic functions of the intestines can be encouraged by a favorable attitude of the will towards them. above all, it is important that the anxious solicitude which a great many people have and foster sedulously with regard to the effect of even slight disturbances of intestinal functions should be overcome. we have discussed this question in the chapter on dreads and need only say here that the delay of a few hours in the evacuation of the bowels or even the missing entirely of an intestinal movement for a full day occasionally, will {226} usually not disturb the general health to any notable extent, and that the symptoms so often attributed to these slight disturbances of intestinal function are much more due to the solicitude about them than to any physical effect. there are a great many people whose intestinal functions are quite sluggish and whose movements occur only every second day or so, who are in perfectly good health and strength and have no symptoms attributable to any absorption of supposed toxic materials from the intestines. indeed, in recent years, the idea of intestinal auto-toxemia has lost more and more in popularity for it has come to be recognized that the symptoms attributed to this condition are due in a number of cases to serious organic disease in other parts of the body, and in a great many cases to functional nervous troubles and to the psycho-neuroses, especially the oversolicitude with regard to the intestines. the will is needed then for intestinal function to regulate the diet, to increase the quantity of fluid, to secure regular habits and to eliminate worry and anxiety which interferes with intestinal peristalsis. there are but very few cases that will not yield to this discipline of the will when properly and persistently tried. {227} chapter xvi the will and the heart "for what i will, i will, and there an end." _two gentlemen of verona_. the heart is the _primum movens_, the first tissue of the body that moves of itself in the animal organism, doing so rhythmically and of course continuously before the nervous system develops in the embryo. this spontaneous activity would seem to place it quite beyond the control of the will, as of course it is, so far as the continuance of its essential activity goes, but there is probably no organ that is so much influenced by the emotions and comes indirectly under the influence of the will as the heart. there are a series of expressions in practically all languages which chronicle this fact. we talk about the encouragement and discouragement or in saxon terms that are exactly equivalent to the french words, heartening and disheartening of the individual. at moments of panic the {228} heart can be felt to be depressed, while at times when resolve is high there is a sense of well-being in connection with the firm action of the heart that flows over into the organism and makes everything seem easy of accomplishment. there are a number of heart conditions that depend for their existence and continuance on a sense of discouragement, that is oversolicitude with regard to the heart. if something calls attention to that organ, the fact that it is so important for life and health and that anything the matter with it may easily prove serious, will sometimes precipitate a feeling of panic that is reflected in the heart and adds to the symptoms noted. the original disturbing heart sensation may be due to nothing more than some slight distention of the stomach by gas, or by a rather heavy meal, but once the dread of the presence of a heart condition of some kind comes over the individual, all the subjective feelings in the cardiac region are emphasized and the discouragement that results further disturbs both heart and patient. palpitation of the heart is scarcely more than a solicitous noting of the fact that the heart is beating. in certain cases, under the {229} stress of emotion, the heart beat-rate may be faster than normal, but in a number of people who complain of palpitation, no rapid heart action is noted. what has happened is that something having called particular attention to the heart, the beating of the organ gets above the threshold of consciousness and then continues to be noted whenever attention is given it. this is of itself quite sufficient to cause a sense of discomfort in the heart region and there may be, owing to the solicitude about the organ, a great deal of complaint. just one thing is absolutely necessary in the treatment of these cases, once it is found that there is no organic condition present. the patient's will must be stimulated to divert the attention from the heart and to keep solicitude from disturbing both that organ and the patient himself. it is not always easy to accomplish this, but where the patient has confidence in the diagnosis and the assurance that nothing serious is the matter, a contrary habit that will overcome the worry with regard to the heart can be formed. for it must not be forgotten that in these cases a series of acts of solicitous attention has been performed which has created a habit that can only be overcome by the opposite habit. {230} it is surprising how much discomfort this simple affection, due to a functional disturbance of the heart and overattention to it, may produce and how much it may interfere with the usual occupation. it is a case, however, simply of willing to be better, and nothing else will accomplish the desired result. at times the mistake is made of giving such patients a heart remedy, perhaps digitalis, but this only emphasizes the unfavorable suggestion and besides, by stimulating heart action, sometimes brings it more into the sphere of consciousness than before and actually does harm. there is a form of this functional disturbance of the heart which reaches a climax of power to disturb and then is sometimes spoken of as spurious _angina pectoris_. in these cases the patient complains not only of a sense of discomfort but of actual pain over the heart region and this pain is sometimes spoken of as excruciating. occasionally the pain will be reflected down the left arm which used to be considered the pathognomic sign of true _angina pectoris_ but is not. sometimes the pain is reflected in the neck on the left side or at times is noted at the angle of the scapula behind. when these symptoms occur {231} in young persons and particularly in young women, there is no reason to think for a moment of their being due to true _angina pectoris_, which is a spasm of the heart muscle consequent upon the degeneration of the coronary arteries, the blood vessels which feed the heart itself, and occurs almost exclusively in the old, and much more commonly in old men. the pain of true _angina pectoris_ is often said to be perhaps the worst torture that humanity has to bear. as a rule, however, it is very prostrating and so genuine sufferers from it are not loud in their complaints. their suffering is more evident in their faces than in their voices. indeed, it has come to be looked upon as a rule by the english clinicians and heart experts that the more fuss there is made, the less likelihood there is of the affection being true _angina pectoris_. when there is pain in the heart region then, especially in young or comparatively young women, of which great complaint is made, it is almost surely to be considered spurious _angina_, even though there may be reflex pain down the arm as well as the impending sense of death which used to be considered distinctive of the genuine _angina pectoris_. {232} the treatment of true _angina_ depends to some extent on inspiring the patient with courage, for it is needed to carry him through the very serious condition to which he is subjected. the psychic element is important, though the drug treatment by the nitrites and especially amyl nitrite is often very effective. in spurious _angina_, the will is the all-important element. there is some irritation of the heart muscle but it is mainly fright that exaggerates the pain and then concentration of attention on it makes it seem very serious. the one thing that is all important is to relieve patients from the solicitude which comes upon them with regard to their hearts and which prevents them from suppressing their feelings and diverting their minds to other things. sometimes the will is needed to bring about such a change in the habits of the individual as will furnish proper nutrition for the heart. very often these patients are under weight, not infrequently they have been staying a great deal in the house, and both of these bad habits of living need to be corrected. good habits of eating and exercise are above all important for the relief of the condition. for functional heart trouble, gentle exercise {233} in the open air generally must be taken, for it acts as a tonic stimulant to the heart muscle. almost as a rule, when patients suffer from symptoms from their hearts, they are inclined to consider them a signal that they must rest and above all must not exercise to such an extent as to make the heart go faster. rest, if indulged in to too great an extent, has a very unfavorable effect upon the heart, for the heart, like all muscles, needs exercise to keep it in good condition. one of the most important developments of heart therapeutics in our generation was the nauheim treatment. in this, exercise is an important feature. the exercise is graduated and is pushed so as to make a definite call upon the heart's muscular power. nauheim is situated in a little cup-shaped valley and patients are directed to walk a certain distance on one of the various roads, distances being marked by signposts every quarter of a mile or so. the walk outward, when the patient is fresh, is slightly uphill, and the return home is always downhill, which saves the patient from any undue strain. the experience at nauheim was so favorable that many physicians took up the practice of having their heart patients exercise {234} regularly and found that it was decidedly to their benefit. if this is true for organic heart conditions, it is even more valuable for neurotic heart cases, though it often requires a good deal of exercise of will on the part of patients suffering from these affections to control their feelings and take such exercise as is needed. in men, it will often be found that the discomfort in the heart region, particularly in muscular, well-built men who have no organic condition, is due more to lack of exercise than to any other factor. this is particularly true whenever the men have taken considerable vigorous exercise when they were young and then tried to settle down to the inactive habits of a sedentary life. athletes who have been on the teams at college, self-made men who have been hard manual laborers when they were young, even sons of farmers who take up city life are likely to suffer in this way. their successful treatment depends more on getting exercise in the open back into their lives than on anything else, and for this a call upon the individual's will power for the establishment of the needed new habits is the essential. former athletes who try to settle down to a very inactive life are almost sure to have {235} uncomfortable feelings in their heart region. at times it will be hard to persuade them that they have not some serious affection consequent upon some overstrain at athletics. in a few cases, this will be found to be true, but in the great majority the root of the trouble is that the heart craves exercise. a good many functional heart cases, like the neurotic indigestions, so called--are due to the fact that the heart and the stomach are not given enough to do. the renewal of exercise in the daily life--and it should be the daily life as a rule and not merely once or twice a week--will do more than anything else to relieve these cases and restore the patient's confidence. we saw during the war that a number of young men, officers even more than privates--that is, the better educated more than the less educated--suffered from shell shock so called. a good many university men may suffer from what might be termed heart shock if they find any reason to be solicitous about their hearts. these neurotic conditions can only be relieved by the will and diversion of attention. a certain number of people who suffer from missed beats of their hearts become very much perturbed about the condition of that organ. {236} irregular heart action, and especially what has been called the irregularly irregular heart, may prove to be a serious condition. there are a number of regular irregularities of heart action, however, consisting particularly of the missed beat at shorter or longer intervals, which may have almost no significance at all. i know two physicians, both athletes when they were at college, who have suffered from a missed heartbeat since their early twenties. in one case it has lasted now for thirty-five years and the physician is still vigorous and hearty, capable even of running up an elevated stairway after a train without any inconvenience. some twenty years ago there was question of his taking out a twenty-year life insurance policy and the insurance company's physician at first hesitated to accept the risk because of the missed beat. an examination made by three physicians at the home office was followed by his acceptance and he has outlived the maturity of the policy in good health and been given a renewal of it, in spite of the fact that his missed beat still persists. there is often likely to be a good deal of solicitude as to the eventual prognosis in these cases, that is as to what the prospect of {237} prolonged life is. the regularly irregular heart does not seem to make for an unfavorable prognosis. young patients particularly who have learned that they have a missed heartbeat need to have this fact emphasized. we have the story of an important official of an american university in whom a missed beat was discovered when he was under forty. this was many years ago, and the prognosis of his condition was considered to be rather serious. the patient actually lived, however, for a little more than fifty years after the discovery of his missed beat. it is easy to understand what a favorable effect on a patient solicitous about a missed beat such a story as this will have. it heartens a patient and gives him the will power to throw off his anxieties and to keep from watching his heart and thus further interfering with its activities. there is even a possibility of life to the eighties or, as i have known at least one case, to the nineties, where the irregular heart was first noted under thirty. but it is well recognized that close concentration of attention on the heart will hamper its action. it has been demonstrated that it is possible by will power to cause the missing of heartbeats and while only those who have {238} practised the phenomenon can demonstrate it, there are a number of well-authenticated examples of it. there is no doubt, however, that anxiety about the heart will quicken or slow the pulse rate. when a patient comes to be examined for suspected heart trouble the pulse rate is almost sure to be higher than normal, even though there may be nothing the matter with the heart; the increase or decrease of the pulse beat is due to the anxiety lest some heart lesion should be discovered. this makes it necessary as a rule not to take too seriously the pulse rate that is discovered on a first consultation and makes it always advisable to wait until the patient has been reassured to some extent before the pulse rate is definitely taken. it is easy to see, then, what a large place there is for the will in heart therapeutics. courage is an extremely important element in keeping the heart from being disturbed and maintaining it properly under control. scares of various kinds with regard to this all-important organ are prone to get hold of people and then to disturb it. many a heart that is actually interfered with in its activities by drugs of various kinds would respond to the awakening of the will of the patient {239} so as to control solicitudes, anxieties, dreads and the like that are acting as disturbing factors on the heart. when taken in conjunction with the will to eat and to exercise properly so often necessary in these cases, the will becomes the therapeutic agent whose power must never be forgotten, because it can always be an adjuvant even when it is not curative and can produce excellent auxiliary effects for every form of heart treatment that we have. {240} chapter xvii the will in so-called chronic rheumatism "i should do it with much more ease; for my good will is to it." _the tempest_. in popular estimation, rheumatism is one of the commonest of affections. when a physician asks a patient, especially if the patient is over forty years of age, "have you ever suffered from rheumatism?" the almost invariable response is, "yes", though but little further inquiry is needed to show that what the patient means is that he has suffered from some painful conditions in the neighborhood of his joints, or that his muscles have been sore or inclined to ache in rainy weather, or that he has undergone some other vague discomforts connected with dampness. chronic rheumatism is a term that includes a great many of the most varied conditions. true rheumatism, that is, acute articular rheumatism, is now recognized as an infectious disease which runs a definite course, usually with {241} fever, for some ten days to ten weeks, and requires confinement to bed usually for a month or more. very rarely will any connection be found between this affection, which presents always galen's four classic symptoms of inflammation, swelling, redness, heat and pain (_tumor, rubor, color, et dolor_), and the usual conditions which are broadly characterized as rheumatism. just as soon as patients are asked if their rheumatism included these symptoms there is denial, yet the idea of their having had rheumatism remains. as a matter of fact, there are a number of sore and painful conditions in connection with muscles and particularly in and around joints that have, without any scientific justification at least, been called chronic rheumatism. any painful condition that is worse in rainy weather is sure to be so named. as old dislocations, sprains and wrenches of joints, broken bones, as well as muscular conditions of all kinds, including flat foot and other yielding of joints, all produce this effect, it is easy to understand that there is an immense jumble of all sorts of painful conditions included under the term "chronic rheumatism." some of them, particularly in older people, produce lameness or at least inability to walk {242} distances without showing the disability; a great many of them produce distinct painful conditions during the night following the use of muscles and often disturb patients very much, because they arouse the dread that they are going to be crippled as they grow older. indeed, one of the most serious effects of these recurring painful conditions is the dread produced lest they should cause such progressive affections in and around joints as would eventually make the patients bed-ridden. there are a certain number of cases of so-called rheumatoid arthritis which produce very serious changes in joints with inevitable crippling and quite beyond all possibility of repair. these cases are often spoken of as chronic rheumatism and it is the solicitude produced by the dread of them that makes the worst part of the discomfort in many a so-called chronic rheumatic case. if their affection is to be progressive, then the patients foresee a prolonged confinement to bed in the midst of severe pain, hopeless of ultimate cure. it may be said at once that these cases of rheumatoid arthritis have nothing to do with rheumatism, represent a special acute infection, are never a sequela of any of the rheumatic conditions and are {243} fortunately very rare. this assurance of itself is quite sufficient to make ever so much better a great many patients who feel that they suffer from rheumatism. the painful conditions that are described under the term chronic rheumatism would seem to be quite beyond any power of the will to affect. they are at least supposed to represent very definite changes in the tissues, usually of chronic character and therefore not amenable to any remedies except those of physical influence. besides, they are so frequent that surely if there were any question of the will being able to control them or bring relief for them, most sufferers would discover this fact for themselves and apply the remedy from within. it is not to be expected that a very great many people would suffer pains and aches that are worse in rainy weather if all that was needed was the exertion of their will power either to throw off the affection or to perform such exercises and activities as would gradually make their conditions better. in general it is felt that painful conditions of this kind cannot be affected by the will and that distinctly material and not psychic therapeutics must be looked to for their relief. now it so happens that the best illustration {244} of the power of the will to "cure" people, that is, to relieve them completely of their affections and start them afresh in life with the feeling that they are no longer handicapped by disease, is to be found exactly in the group of cases that have almost from time immemorial been called chronic rheumatisms. we have had more "cures" of various kinds announced for these--chemical, electrical, physical, hydriatic, movement therapy and so forth--than for almost any other group of diseases. more irregular practitioners of medicine all down the ages have made a reputation by curing these affections than have won renown by treating any other set of ills to which humanity is heir. like the poor, these ills are still with us, in spite of all the "cures" and probably nowhere is the expression of the old french physician that "the therapeutics of any generation is always absurd to the second succeeding generation" better illustrated than in regard to them. these cases serve to emphasize very clearly, however, the fact that the pains and aches of mankind are largely under the control of the will. the more one studies these cases of so-called chronic rheumatism the easier it is to {245} understand how they become the signal "cures" which attract attention to the quacks and charlatans who promise much, but do nothing in particular, though they may give medicines or treatment of some kind or another. they only arouse the patient's will to be better and the determination to use his will with confidence, now that the much praised treatment is doing something which will surely make him better. cases of this kind have constituted a goodly part of the clientele of the great historic impostors who succeeded in making large sums of money out of curing people by methods that in themselves had no curative power. a review of some of the chapters of that very interesting department of human history, the history of quackery, is extremely suggestive in that regard. the only way to get a good idea of the basic significance of these cases is to realize by what they were cured and by whom they were cured. one of the most interesting illustrations of that phase of human credulity is the story of greatrakes, the irish adventurer who had been a soldier in flanders, and who when his campaigns were over set up to be a healer of mankind. he chose his opportunity during {246} the time while cromwell, as lord protector of great britain, had refused to continue the practice of touching the ailing which the kings of england had pursued for hundreds of years since the confessor's time. cromwell did not impugn the efficacy of the royal touch but he refused to have anything to do with it himself. greatrakes found it an opportune moment to announce that for three nights in succession he had been told in a dream by the holy spirit that in the absence of the king he was to touch people and cure them. one might possibly think that with no better credentials than this and no testimony except his own claim in the matter greatrakes would receive but scant attention. any one who thinks so, however, does not understand human nature. it was not long before some of the people who had been sufferers for longer or shorter periods went to greatrakes and allowed him to try his hand at healing them. they argued that at least if it did them no good it could do them no harm, and it was not long before some of them declared that they had been benefited by his ministrations. very soon then he was able to furnish what seemed to be abundant evidence of divine mission in the cures {247} that were worked by his more than magic touch. above all, people who had been sufferers for prolonged periods, who had gone the rounds of physicians, who had tried all sorts of popular remedies, and some of whom had been declared incurable were healed of their ills after a series of visits to greatrakes. no wonder then that patients came more and more frequently, until his name went abroad in all the country and in spite of the difficulties of travel people came from long distances just to be treated by him. all that he did was to ask the patient to expose the affected part and then greatrakes would stroke it with his hand, assure the patient that a wonderful new vitality would go into them because of his mission from on high and promise them that they would surely get better, explaining of course that betterment would be progressive and that it would start from this very moment. the stroking was the important part of the cure and so he is known in history as "greatrakes the stroker." it may be said in passing that while those who were touched by the english kings in the exercise of the prerogative of the royal touch were usually presented with a gold coin which had been particularly {248} coined for that purpose as a memorial, a corresponding gold piece, a sovereign as a rule, in greatrakes' method of treatment passed from the patient to the healer. it was a case of metallotherapy with extraction of the precious metal from the patient, as is always the case under such circumstances. here in america we had a similar experience, though ours had science as the basis of the superstition in the case instead of religion. the interest aroused by galvani's experience with the twitching of frogs' legs when exposed nerve and muscle were touched by different metals led doctor elisha perkins to invent a pair of tractors which would presumedly apply galvani's discovery to therapeutics. these were just plain pieces of metal four or five inches long, shaped more or less like a lead pencil and tapering to a blunt point. with these, as thatcher, one of our earlier historians of medicine, tells us, perkins succeeded in curing all sorts of ailments, but particularly many different kinds of painful conditions. he was most successful in the treatment of "pains in the head, face, teeth, breast, side, stomach, back, rheumatism and so forth." in a word, he cured the neuralgias and the rheumatic pains and the chronic {249} rheumatisms which are the source of so much trouble--and especially complaint--for the old, and which so often physicians, in any time of the world's history, have been unable to cure. for a time his success was supposed to be due to some curious electrical power that he was using. learned pamphlets were issued to show that animal magnetism or animal electricity or galvanism was at work. professors at no less than three universities in america gave attestations in favor of its efficacy. time has of course shown that there was absolutely no physical influence of any kind at work. the only appeal was to the mind. elisha perkins was a yale man of education and impressive personality, "possessing by nature uncommon endowments both bodily and mental ", and he succeeded in impressing on his patients the idea that they would surely be cured; he thus overcame the dreads, released the will power, gave new hope and a tonic stimulus to appetite, created a desire for exercise, and then the will kept this up and before long the patient was cured. when animal magnetism, as it was called about the middle of the nineteenth century, {250} was practised without apparatus, one of its most important claims to the consideration of physicians was founded on its power to heal chronic painful affections which had previously resisted all therapeutic efforts. the power of neuro-hypnotism, as it came to be designated, to accomplish this, will be best appreciated from the fact that this state was being used as a mode of anaesthesia for surgical operations. when the news of the use of ether to produce narcosis for surgical purposes at the massachusetts general hospital first came to england, it did not attract so much attention as would otherwise have been the case, because english physicians and surgeons were just then preoccupied with the discussion of neuro-hypnotic anaesthesia, and those who believed in it thought that ether would not be necessary, while those who refused to believe thought the report with regard to ether just another of these curious self-delusions to which physicians seemed to be so liable. perkins' declarations of the curative value of his tractors were, after all, only a succeeding phase of what mesmer had called to the attention of the medical profession and the public in paris not quite a generation before. mesmer seated his patients around a tub {251} containing bottles filled with metallic materials out of which wires were conducted and placed in the hands of patients seated in a circle around it. mesmer called this apparatus a _baquet_ or battery and it was thought to have some wonderful electric properties. a great many people who received the treatment were cured of chronic pains and aches that had sometimes lasted for years. so many prominent people were involved that the government finally ordered an investigation to be made by french scientists with whom, because he was the minister from the colonies at the time, our own benjamin franklin was associated. they declared that there was not a trace of electricity or any other physical force in mesmer's apparatus. he was forbidden to continue the treatment and there was a great scandal about the affair, because a large number of people felt that he was doing a great deal of good. when hypnotism came in vogue again at the end of the nineteenth century, it was a case of chronic rheumatism that gave it its first impetus in scientific circles. professor bernheim of nancy had tried in vain all of his remedies in the treatment of a patient suffering from lumbago. the patient disappeared {252} for a time and when bernheim next saw him, he was cured. bernheim had treated him futilely for months and was curious to know how he had been cured. the patient told him that he had been cured by hypnotism as practised by liebault. this brought bernheim to investigate liebault's method of hypnotism and made him a convert to its practice. it was the interest of the school of nancy in the subject that finally aroused charcot's attention and gave us the phase of interest in hypnotism which attracted so much public attention some thirty years ago. many other cases of those very refractory affections--lumbago and sciatica--have been cured by hypnotism when they have resisted the best directed treatment of other kinds over very long periods. it is these chronic rheumatisms, so called, the chronic pains and aches in muscles in the neighborhood of joints, that were cured by the viennese astronomer, father maximilian hã¶ll, in the eighteenth century. he simply applied the magnet and saw the result, and felt sure that there must be some physical effect, though there was none. his work was taken up by pfarrer gassner of elwangen who, after using the magnets for a time, found {253} that there was no need of their application, provided the patients could by prayer and other religious means be brought into a state of mind where they were sure that they were going to get better. they then proceeded to use their muscles properly in spite of the pain that might result for a time, and as a result it was not long before they were cured of their affections. the church forbade his further practise because of his expressed idea that pain came from the power of evil and dropped from men when they turned to god, which was the eighteenth-century anticipation of eddyism. dowie's cures were largely of similar affections, and patients sometimes dropped their crutches and walked straight who could not walk before. a great many of the so-called chronic rheumatisms are really the result of dreads to use muscles in the proper way because for the moment something has happened to make their use painful. a direct injury, a wrench, or some incident causes a joint for a time to be painful when used. in sparing it, the muscles around it are used differently than before and as a consequence become sensitive and painful. it is quite easy, then, for people to form bad habits which they cannot break {254} because they have not the strength of will to endure the sore and tender condition which develops when they try to use muscles properly once more. the young athlete who wants to get his muscles in good condition knows that he must pass through a period of soreness and tenderness, sometimes of almost excruciatingly painful character. he does so, however, and does not speak of his condition as involving pains and aches but only soreness and tenderness. older people, however, who have to get their muscles back into good condition after a period of disuse following an injury or some inflammatory disturbance, find this period of discomfort very difficult to bear and so keep on using their muscles somewhat abnormally and at mechanical disadvantage. as a consequence, these muscles remain tender, are likely to ache in rainy weather and often give a good deal of discomfort. until the sufferers can be brought to use their wills properly, so as to win back their muscles to normal use, they will not get well. an application of magnets or a leyden jar or mesmer's battery of the eighteenth century, or perkins' tractors, or neuro-hypnotism, or animal magnetism, or later hypnotism, or {255} dowie's declaration of their cure, enables them to use their will in this regard and then they proceed to recover. it is surprising how many presumedly intelligent people--at least they have received considerable education--have been cured of conditions that they have endured for years by some remedy or mode of treatment that actually had no physical effect. st. john long, the english charlatan who has been mentioned in the chapter on tuberculosis, also succeeded in making a name for himself in connection with the chronic rheumatisms and the so-called rheumatic pains and aches of older people. between consumption and these conditions, he caught both the young and the old, and thus rounded out his clientele. for consumption he provided an inhalant; for rheumatic conditions, a liniment. this liniment became very famous in that generation for its power to relieve the pains and aches, both acute and chronic, of mankind. so many people were cured by it and above all, so many of them were people of distinction--lords and ladies and the relatives of the nobility--that parliament was finally petitioned in the interests of suffering humanity to buy the secret of the {256} liniment from its inventor and publish it for the benefit of the world. i believe that a substantial sum, representing many, many thousands of dollars in our time, was actually voted to st. john long and the recipe for his liniment was published in the british pharmacopeia. in composition, it was, i believe, only a commonplace turpentine liniment made up with yolks of eggs instead of oil, as had been the custom before. just as soon as this fact became known, the wonderful cures which had occurred in connection with its use ceased to a great extent, for distinguished members of the nobility and their relatives would not be cured by so common-place a medium as an ordinary turpentine liniment. st. john long was even accused of not having sold his real secret to the government, but there was no reason at all to think that. he had been producing his cures not by his liniment but by the strong effect of his prestige and reputation as a healer upon the minds of his patients and the consequent release of will power which enabled them to do things which they thought they could not do before. we have had many wonderful curative oils of various kinds since then, with all sorts of names from alpha to omega and {257} very often called after a saint,--though st. john long was as far as possible from being a saint in the ordinary acceptance of that word. these modern curative oils and liniments have been merely counter-irritants, but at times, owing to a special reputation acquired, they have been counter-irritants for the mind and stimulants for the will which have enabled old people to persist through the periods of soreness and tiredness until they reacquired the proper use of their muscles. {258} chapter xviii psycho-neuroses "look, what i will not, that i cannot do." _measure for measure_. the psycho-neuroses, that is, the various perversions of nervous energy and inability to supply and conduct nervous impulses properly, consequent upon a mental persuasion which interferes with these activities, have come to occupy an ever larger and larger place in the field of medicine. the war has been illuminating in this matter. a psycho-neurosis is, after all, a hysterical manifestation and it might very well be expected that very few of these would be encountered in armies which took only the _men_ of early adult life and from among those, only persons who had been demonstrated to be physically and, as far as could be determined, mentally normal. neurologists would seem scarcely to have a place in the war except for wounds of nerves {259} and the cerebral location of missiles and lesions. certainly none of the army medical departments had the slightest premonition that neurology would bulk larger in their war work than any other department except surgery. that proved to be the case, however. the surprise was to have, from very early in the war, literally thousands of cases of psycho-neuroses, "shell shock" as unfortunately they came to be called, which included hysterical symptoms of all kinds, mutism, deafness, blindness, paralysis, and contractures. france and england after some time actually had to maintain some fifty thousand beds in their war hospitals mainly for functional nervous diseases, the war neuroses of many kinds. during the first half of the war, one seventh of all the discharges from the british army or actually one third of all the discharges, if those from wounds were not included, were for these war neuroses. they attacked particularly the better educated among the men and were four times as prevalent among officers as among the privates. in proportion to the whole number of those exposed to shells and "war's alarms and dangers" generally, these war neuroses were {260} more common among the men than among the women. nurses occasionally suffered from them, but not so frequently as the men who shared their dangers in the hospitals and stations for wounded not far from the firing line. in the treatment of this immense number of cases, a very large amount of the most valuable therapeutic experience for psychoneuroses was accumulated. it was found that suggestion played a very large role in making the cases worse. if these patients were placed in general hospitals where there was much talk of wounds and injuries and the severe trials of battle life they grew progressively worse. they talked of their own experiences, constantly enlarging them; they repeated what they had heard from others as if these represented their own war incidents and auto-suggested themselves into ever worse and worse symptomatic conditions. this was, after all, only the familiar _pseudologia hysterica_ which occurs in connection with hysteria, and which is so much better called by the straightforward name of pathological self-deception or perhaps even just frankly hysterical lying. if these patients were examined frequently by physicians, their {261} symptoms became more and more varied and disabling and their psycho-neurosis involved more external symptoms. in a word, it was found that their minds were the source of extremely unfavorable factors in their cases. the original shock or the severe trials of war life had unbalanced their self-control and suggestions of various kinds made them still worse. much attention to their condition from themselves and others simply proved to be constantly disturbing. as was pointed out by doctor pearce bailey, who had the opportunity as united states chief of the division of neurology and psychiatry attached to the surgeon general's office to visit france and england officially to make observations on the war neuroses, the experience of the war has amply confirmed babinski's position with regard to hysteria. the distinguished french neurologist has shown that the classic symptoms of hysteria are the results of suggestion originating in medical examinations or from misapplied medical or surgical treatment. he differs entirely from charcot in the matter and points out that it was unfortunate misdirected attention to hysterical patients which led to the creation of the many cases of _grande hystã©rie_ which {262} used to be seen so commonly in clinics in france and have now practically disappeared. they were not genuine pathological conditions in any sense of the word, but merely the reflection of the exaggerated interest shown in them by those interested in neurology, who came to see certain symptoms and were, of course, gratified in this regard by the patients, always anxious to be the center of attention and, above all, the focus of special interest. the successful treatment of the war neuroses was all founded on the will and not on the mind. once a careful examination had determined absolutely that no organic morbid condition was present, the patient was given to understand that his case was of no special significance but on the contrary was well understood and had nothing exceptional in it. the unfortunate frequent demonstration of these patients at the beginning of the war as subjects of special interest had been the worst possible thing for them. after experience had cleared the way, they were made to feel that just as soon as the attending physician had the time to give them, he would be able to remove their symptoms without delay. this was almost the only appeal to the mind {263} that was made. it represented the suggestive element of the treatment. the two other elements were reeducation and discipline. once suggestion had brought the patient to believe firmly that he would be cured, he was made to understand that his cure would be permanent. then reeducation was instituted to overcome the bad habit of lack of confidence that had been formed, while discipline broke down the psychic resistance of the patient to the idea of recovery. in such symptoms as mutism or deafness, the patient was told that electricity would cure him and that as soon as he felt the current when the electrode was applied, his power of speech or of hearing would be restored, _pari passu_, with sensation. the same method was used for blindness and other sensory symptoms. paralyses were favorably affected the same way, though tremors were harder to deal with. a cure in a single treatment was the best method, for the patient readily relapsed unless he was made to feel that he had recovered his powers completely and that it would be his own fault if he permitted his symptoms to recur. the most interesting phase of the successful treatment of these war neuroses for us was {264} the fact that the ultimate dependence was placed by the french on a system of management which was called _torpillage_. _torpillage_ consists in the brusque application of faradic currents strong enough to be extremely painful in hysterical conditions, and the continuance of the procedure to the point at which the deaf hear, the dumb speak, or those who believe themselves incapable of moving certain groups of muscles come to move them freely. the method has proved highly effective and requires but little time and practically no personnel except the medical officer who applies the treatment and the non-commissioned officer who takes the patient at the end of the treatment and continues the exercise of the afflicted parts. one treatment suffices. the apparatus is of the simplest, the only accessory to the electric supply and the electrodes consisting of an overhead trolley which carries the long connecting wires the whole length of the room, thus making it impossible for the patient to get away from the current which is destined to cure him. in a word, the man who would insist on maintaining a false attitude of mind towards himself, though that attitude of mind was not {265} deliberate, and least of all not malingering, was simply made to give it up. sufficient pain was inflicted on him so that he was willing to accept instead of his own false opinion the opinion of his physician that he could accomplish certain functions. _torpillage_ was, in other words, simply "a method of treatment which gave authority to a medical officer to inflict pain on a patient up to the point at which the patient yields up his neurosis." as a rule, the infliction of very little suffering is needed, for once the demonstration is made that he will have to suffer or give in, it does not take him very long to give in. there is no doubt at all that the method is eminently effective, particularly in those cases which were entirely refractory to other modes of treatment. it would remind us of some old modes of treatment which were in popular use long ago, but which had gone out entirely in our milder generation because we thought their use almost unjustified. it was not an unusual thing three or four generations ago to rouse a young woman out of an hysterical tantrum, once it was perfectly clear from previous experiences that it _was_ really an hysterical tantrum, by dashing a pitcher of cold water {266} over her. sir thomas more relates that he saw a number of people suffering from various forms of possession--and any neurologist will confess that some hysterics must have a devil--who were cured by being roundly whipped. certain men and women who complained that they were unable to walk or to work and thus became a care for relatives or for the community, were cured by this, as it seemed to later generations, heartless mode of treatment. now, we have turned to curing the war hysterias by punishment, that is, by the infliction of severe pain, in just the same way. a great many of these patients who suffer from neuroses and psycho-neuroses, and especially from hysterical inhibitions so that they cannot hear or cannot walk or cannot talk, represent inabilities similar to many which are seen in civil life. patients complain that they cannot do things; their friends say that they will not do them; and the physician sees that the root of the trouble is that they cannot _will_. now, however, that war has permitted the use of such remedies, physicians have found that they can, to advantage, force the patients to will and that once the will has been recalled into action, its energy can be maintained. {267} of course the compulsory mode of treatment was not represented as a punishment, but on the contrary it was always presented as a form of treatment which was extremely painful but necessary for the condition. presented as punishment, it would have been resented, and the patient would probably have set about sympathizing with himself and perhaps seek the sympathy of others, and this would prevent the effectiveness of the treatment. it is very evident that as the result of compulsory methods of treatment, and of the recognition of the fact that major hysterical conditions are largely the result of suggestion and must be cured by enabling the patient to secure control over himself again, the outlook for the treatment of the psychoneuroses will be very different as a consequence of the experience that has been gained. above all, the place of the will will be recognized, and there will no longer be that coddling of patients and that analysis of their minds for long distant psychic insults of various kinds which will explain their condition, that has done so much harm in a great many ways in recent years. another feature of the french treatment was that the neurotic patients should be {268} isolated. this isolation was complete. it had been found that association with other patients, the opportunity to tell their troubles and be sympathized with, did them harm invariably and inevitably, so that those whose neurotic symptoms continued were taken absolutely away from all association with others. not only this, but all other modes of diversion of mind were denied them. they were placed in rooms without reading or writing materials and even without tobacco. this solitary confinement would remind one of the enforced privacy of the old-fashioned rest cure in which the patient was absolutely secluded from all association with relatives or others who might in any way sympathize with them. the soldier patients were kept in this complete isolation until such time as they showed themselves amenable to treatment. this was usually not very long. as a matter of fact, the isolation rooms had to be used very little but were found necessary and especially effective in the management of relapsed cases. just as soon as soldier patients learned that such isolating rooms were available, they became much more ready to give up their neuroses, and as a consequence, in most places, the isolating department did {269} not have to be used, and in some places they could even be given over to the lodgment of attendants. it was quite sufficient, however, that they had fulfilled their purpose of changing patients' attitude of mind towards themselves and giving their will control over them. as colonel pearce bailey, m.c., says, in most of these patients, persuasive measures and contrary suggestion were quite sufficient, but when they failed, disciplinary measures proved effective. how are we going to be able to make such disciplinary measures available in civil life is another question, but at least the war has made clear that neurotic patients who claim that they cannot do something and actually will not do it, _must be made to do it_, for this will prove the beginning of their cure. it seems probable, as doctor bailey adds, that the reason why the treatment of officers was more difficult--and it must not be forgotten that in proportion to their numbers, four times as many officers suffered from so-called shell shock as privates--was exactly because these modes of discipline, amounting practically to compulsion, were not used with them. {270} chapter xix feminine ills and the will "oh, undistinguished space of woman's will!" _king lear_. it is probable that the largest field for the employment of the will for the cure of conditions that are a source of serious discomfort or at least of complaint is to be found among the special ills of womankind. the reason for this is that the personal reaction has so much to do with the amount of complaint in these affections. not infrequently the individual is ever so much more important than the condition from which she is suffering. women who have regular occupation with plenty to do, especially if they are interested in it and take their duties seriously, who get sufficient exercise and are out of doors several hours each day and whose appetites are as a consequence reasonably good, suffer very little from feminine ills, as a rule. if an infection of some kind attacks them, they will, of {271} course, have the usual reaction to it, and this may involve a good deal of pain and even eventually require operation. apart from this, however, there is an immense number of feminine ills dependent almost entirely on the exaggerated tendency to react to even minor discomforts which characterizes women who have no occupation in which they are really interested, who have very little to do, almost no exercise, and whose appetite and sleep as a consequence are almost inevitably disturbed. above all, it must not be forgotten that whenever women do not get out into the air regularly every day--and this means for a time both morning and afternoon--they are likely to become extremely sensitive to pains and aches. this is true of all human beings. those who are much in the open air complain very little of injuries and bodily conditions that would seem extremely painful to those living sedentary lives and who are much indoors. riding in the open air is better than not being in the open air at all, but it does not compare in its power to desensitize people with active exercise in the open air. in the older days, when women occupied themselves very much indoors with {272} sewing, knitting and other feminine work, and with reading in the evenings, and when it was considered quite undignified for them to take part in sports, neurotic conditions were even more common than they are at the present time, and young women were supposed to faint readily and were quite expected to have attacks of the "vapors" and the "tantrums." the interest of young women in sports in recent years and the practice of walking has done a great deal to make them ever so much healthier and has had not a little to do with decreasing the number and intensity of the so-called feminine ills, the special "women's diseases" of the patent medicine advertisements. much remains to be done in this regard, however, and there are still a great many young women who need to be encouraged to take more exercise in the open than they do and thus to live more natural lives. it is particularly, however, the women of middle age, around forty and beyond it, who need to be encouraged to use their wills for the establishment of habits of regular exercise in the open air as well as the creation of interests of one kind or another that will keep them from thinking too much about {273} themselves and dwelling on their discomforts. these are thus exaggerated until often a woman who has only some of the feelings that are almost normally connected with physiological processes persuades herself that she is the victim of a malady or maladies that make her a pitiable object, deserving of the sympathy of her friends. a great many of the operations that have been performed on women during the past generation have been quite unnecessary, but have been performed because women felt themselves so miserable that they kept insisting that something must be done to relieve them, until finally it was felt that an operation might do them some good. it would surely do them no harm or at least make them no worse, and there was always the possibility that the rest in the hospital, the firm persuasion that the operation was to do them good, the inculcation of proper habits of eating during convalescence might produce such an effect on their minds as would give them a fresh start in life. undoubtedly a great many women who were distinctly improved after operations owed their improvement much more to the quiet seclusion of their hospital life, their own strong expectancy {274} and the care bestowed upon them under the hospital discipline without exaggerated sympathy which brought about the formation of good habits of life, than to their operation. many a woman gained weight after an operation simply because her eating was properly directed, and this was the main part of the improvement which took place. operations are sometimes needed and when they are the patient will probably not get well without one; but as a distinguished neurologist, doctor dercum of philadelphia, said in a paper read before the american medical association last year, the neurologist is constantly finding patients on whom one or several operations have been performed, some of them rather serious abdominal operations, the source of whose complaints is a neurosis and not any morbid condition of the female or other organs. occasionally one sees something like this in men, and i shall never forget seeing at professor koenig's clinic in berlin a sufferer from an abdominal neurotic condition on whom no less than three operations for the removal of his appendix had been performed, until finally professor koenig felt that he would be justified in tattooing over the right iliac region the words "no appendix {275} here." the condition developed in a young soldier as the result of a fall from a horse and his affection resembled very much some of the neuroses that came to be called, unfortunately, "shell shock" during the present war. the principal trouble in securing such occupation of mind as will prevent exaggerated neurotic reactions to even slight discomforts in women is the creation for them of definite interests in life. the war taught a notable lesson in this regard. many a physician saw patients whose complaints had been a great source of annoyance to them--and their friends--proceed to get ever so much better as the result of war interests. in one women's prison in an eastern state, just before the war, a series of crises of major hysteria was proving almost unmanageable. by psychic contagion it had spread among the prisoners until scarcely a day passed without some prisoner "throwing a fit" with screaming and tearing of clothes and breaking of articles that might be near. prominent neurologists had been consulted and could suggest nothing. when the war began, the prisoners were set to rolling bandages, knitting socks and sweaters and making united states flags for the army. as if by magic, the neurotic {276} crises disappeared. for months there were none of them. the prisoners had an abiding interest that occupied them deeply in other things besides themselves. the reduction of nervous complaints of various kinds among better-to-do women was very striking. as might be expected, their rather strenuous occupation with war activities kept them from thinking about themselves, though it is true that now they complain about all the details that they had to care for and the lack of coã¶peration on the part of certain people. it would seem as though many of them had so much to do that they would surely exhaust their energies and so be in worse condition than before, but this very seldom proved to be the case. literally many thousands of women improved in health because they became interested in other people's troubles instead of their own. david harum once said that "it is a mighty good thing for a dog to have fleas because it keeps him from thinking too much about the fact that he is a dog." that seems a rather unsympathetic way of putting the case, but there is no doubt at all that what many women need is serious interests apart from themselves in order to prevent the law of {277} avalanche from making minor ills appear serious troubles. what most women need above all are heart interests rather than intellectual occupations. that was why occupation with war activities did so much good. that is the reason, too, that club life and reading and other similar pursuits often fail to be helpful to women in their ills to the extent that might possibly be expected. above all, women need interests in children and the ailing, and these can be supplied by visits to hospitals or by taking an active interest in nurseries, though this is often not personal enough in its appeal to catch a woman's deepest attention. one of the great reasons why there are more nervous diseases among women in our time than in the past is because children are fewer, and because so many women are without children and the calls that they inevitably make on their mothers. unfortunately, the traditions of the present day are to a great extent in opposition to that family life with a number of children, which means not only the deepest interests for woman but also such inevitable occupations in the care of them that she has very little time to think about herself. it may seem quixotic, that is, {278} demanding unnecessary magnanimity to suggest that these modern ideas should be discarded by those who wish to assure themselves such interests in middle life as will prove definitely preventive of many neurotic conditions, but it is manifestly the physician's duty to make such suggestions. life has really become full of dreads for many women in this regard. a gradual reduction in the birth rate which has deprived so many women of the heart interests that were particularly valuable at and after middle life; has been the source of a great deal more suffering without any satisfaction, than would be associated in any way with the care of children. it is extremely unfortunate, then, that this phase of social evolution should have taken place, for the quest of ease and pleasure has proved a prolific source of feminine ills. it is well recognized now that the reason for this reduction in the birth rate is not physical but ethical. it is a matter of choice and not necessity. there is a conscious limitation of the number of children in the family accomplished deliberately, and as a rule the women consider that they are justified in the procedure because they thus conserve their own health and provide such {279} few children as they have with healthier bodies than would otherwise have been the case. indeed, child-bearing beyond one or two or perhaps three children has become a source of dread in modern times, a dread that supposedly centers around the health of the children, as well as the mother herself. the mother of a few children is supposed to be healthier and the children of small families to be heartier and more vigorous than when there are half a dozen or more children in the family. a woman is actually supposed by many to seriously imperil her life and her health if she has more than two or three children, though as a matter of fact, the history of the older times when families were larger shows us that women were then healthier on the average than they are now, in spite of all the progress that medicine and surgery have since made in relieving serious ills. above all, it was often the mother of numerous children who lived long and in good health to be a blessing to those around her, and not the old maids nor the childless wives, for longevity is not a special trait of these latter classes of women. the modern dread of deterioration of vitality as the result of frequent child-bearing is quite without {280} foundation in the realities of human experience. some rather carefully made statistics demonstrate that the old tradition in the matter is not merely an impression but a veritable truth as to human nature's reaction to a great natural call. while the mothers of large families born in the slums with all the handicaps of poverty as well as hard work against them, die on the average much younger than the generality of women in the population, careful study of the admirable vital statistics of new south wales show that the mothers who lived longest were those who under reasonably good conditions bore from five to seven children. here in america, a study of more favored families shows that the healthiest children come from the large families, and it is in the small families particularly that the delicate, neurotic and generally weakly children are found. alexander graham bell, in his investigation of the hyde family here in america, discovered that it was in the families of ten or more children that the greatest longevity occurred. so far from mothers being exhausted by the number of children that were born, and thus endowing their children with less vitality than if they {281} had fewer children, it was to the numerous offspring that the highest vitality and physical fitness were given. one special consequence of these is longevity. in a word, the dread so commonly fostered that the mothers of large families will weaken themselves in the process of child-bearing and unfortunately pass on to their offspring weakling natures by the very fact that they have to repeat the process of giving life and nourishment to them at comparatively short intervals, is as groundless as other dreads, for exactly the opposite is true. it is when nature is called upon to exert her amplest power that she responds most bountifully and dowers both children and mother with better health in return. something of the same thing is true with regard to the age of mothers when their children are born. the infant mortality is lowest among the children of young mothers between twenty and twenty-five years of age, though it has been found out that "delay in child-bearing after that age penalizes the children." this is, of course, true particularly for first children. the successive children of young mothers are known by observation and statistics as being constantly in {282} better condition up to the seventh. there is on the average nearly a half a pound difference in weight at birth between succeeding children of the same mother, so that each infant is born sturdier and more vigorous than its predecessor. these recently collated facts remove entirely the supposed foundations of a series of dreads which were having an unfortunate effect upon our population, for the natives were disappearing before the foreigners because of the higher birth rate among the latter. birth control has been producing a set of unfortunate conditions for both mothers and children. the one child in the family is sure to be spoiled, not only as a social being but often as regards health, and conditions are scarcely better when there are but two, especially if they are of opposite sexes. if anything happens to them, the mother has nothing to live for, and a little later in life the selfish beings that have been raised under the self-centered conditions of a small family are almost sure to be a source of anxiety and worry. many a woman owes the valetudinarianism of her later years to the fact that she dreaded maternal obligations and avoided them, and so the latter part of her life is {283} empty of most of what makes life worth living. the will to make life useful for others rather than to follow a selfish, comfortable, easy existence is the secret of health and happiness for a great many women who are almost invalids or at least constantly complaining in the midst of idle lives. a woman who has nothing better to occupy her time than the care of a dog or two cannot expect to have any interests deep enough to divert her attention from the pains and aches of life that are more or less inevitable. the opportunity to dwell on them will heighten their intensity until they are almost torments. many more of the feminine ills can be explained in this way than by learned pathological disquisitions. every physician has seen the bitterest complaints disappear before some change of life that necessitated occupation and gave the patient other things to think about besides self. the will to face nature's obligations of maternity straightforwardly is probably the greatest preventive against the psycho-neuroses that prove so seriously disturbing to a great many women. their affections, given a proper opportunity to develop, impel their {284} wills to such activity as prevents the development of morbid states. the dreads for themselves and their children, which so often make the excuse for a different policy in life than this, have proved unfounded on more careful study. now that war activities no longer call women, it must not be forgotten that home duties are the only ones that can serve as a universal antidote for the poison of self-indulgence, which is much more productive of symptoms of disease than the autointoxications of which we have heard so much, but for which there is so little justification in our advancing science. the assumption of serious duties is the best possible panacea for the ills of mankind as well as womankind, only unfortunately in recent years women have succeeded in shirking duties more and have paid the inevitable price which nature always demands under such circumstances, when the dissatisfaction in life is much harder to bear than the work and trials involved in the pursuit of duty. {285} index a achylia gastrica, 216 activity, intestinal, 220 adirondacks, 183 agoraphobia, 27 akrophobia, 27 alcohol, narcotics, 191; in pneumonia, 190; in snake bite, 193 alcoholic craving and food, 159 algiers, 182 angina pectoris, 230 anthony, saint, the hermit, 21 arctic regions, 205 aridity, office building, 206 aristotle, 71 arnold, matthew, 219 arthritis, rheumatoid, 242 ascesis, 77 asceticism, 92 asthma dread, 211 attention, concentration of, 127 auto-intoxication, 36 autotoxemia, 226 avalanche, law of, 123 b babinski, 261 bailey, dr. pearce, 261, 269 bain, professor, 51 bell, alexander graham, 280 bernheim, 252 betel nut, 45 birth control, 282 bismarck, 10 brakes on energies, 19 bright's disease, 102 c cancer, 75 cancer cures, 106 carpenter, doctor, 51 cat asthma, 210 catarrh, 31 character, 66 charcot, professor, 252 chesterfield, lord, 224 child bearing, 279 chilliness, 197 claustrophobia, 25 coddling, 267 conklin, professor, 54 consciousness, sphere of, 230; threshold of, 127 consumption cures, 177 cough remedies, 201 coughing, unnecessary, 199; productive, 200 coughs and cold air, 204 cures, so-called, 244 d danger, sense of, 129 "david harum", 276 death valley, 206 dercum, doctor, 274 diabetes, 164 disheartenment, 104 dowie, john a., 253 dreads, 278 {286} e "eat and grow thin", 163 eating, 149 eddyism, 253 education, liberal, 55 effort, faculty of, 92 eliot, george, 67 emerson, ralph waldo, 67 emmet, thomas addis, 11, 147 energies of men, 15 english, thomas dunn, 10 euphoria, 192 evacuation, intestinal, 221 f family, large, 74; eating, 160 fermentation, 155 flat foot, 141 food and alcoholic craving, 159 food prejudices, 152 franklin, benjamin, 251 function, intestinal, 218 g galen, 170, 241 galvani, 248 gas formation, 155 gassner, pfarrer, 252 giving up, 2 gouley, john w., 11 greatrakes, 245 h habits, 149 hamerton, philip gilbert, 24 hamlet, 82 hard sayings, 66 health, secret of, 283 heart craves exercise, 235; interests, 277; irregular, 236: missed beats, 235; regularly irregular, 237 heredity, 169; and environment, 54 hã¶ll, father maximilian, 252 holmes, oliver wendell, 40 horace, 224 "horse, the outside of a", 138 humboldt, alexander von, 9 huxley, thomas henry, 54 hyde family, 280 hypnotism, 251 hypochondria, 30 hysteria, major, 275 i imperatives, 99 insomniaphobia, 27 instinct, 149 insults, psychic, 267 interests, feminine, 277 intestinal stasis, 38 intuition, 88 invalids, chronic, 76 isolation, 268 j james, william, professor, 15, 60, 77, 92 jesuits, general of, 119 k koenig, professor, 274 l laxatives, 219 leo xiii, 9 libitina, 224 long, st. john, 171, 255 {287} longevity, 146 lying, hysterical, 260 m maistre, xavier de, 122 marmalade, 222 matthew, father, 47 mesmer, friedrich anton, 172, 250 metallotherapy, 248 mexican border, 60 misophobia, 23 mitchell, s. weir, 11 mollycoddle, 63 moltke, 10 montreal, 204 more, sir thomas, 266 mothers, young, 281 mutism, 259 n nansen, fridtjof, 205 nauheim, 233 neuro-hypnotism, 250 new south wales, 280 o obesity, 162 o'malley, austin, 80 optatives, 99 orange skin, 222 p pain and refinement, 131 pain, control, 116; dread of, 128 palpitation, 228 perkins, elisha, 248 personality, secondary, 88 phthisis, 171 physiology, study of, 35 pneumonia, 104; alcohol in, 190 possession, 266 pseudologia hysterica, 260 psychic contagion, 275 psycho-analysis, 41 pueckler-muskau, prince, 16 q quackery, history of, 245 quinine and whisky, 201 quitters, 169 r ramon y cajal, 123 ranke, leopold von, 11 repplier, agnes, 17 resolution, 82 respiration spasm, 209 rest, 57 rheumatism, chronic, 240 rheumatoid arthritis, 242 riviera, 182 roosevelt, theodore, 118 roughage, 220 royal touch, 246 s saranac, 184 scare, lifted, 193 schlatter's case, 217 self-drugging, 40 self-pity, practice of, 70 self-subliminal, 88 sensation, diffusion of, 125 sensitization, 135 shell-shock, 64, 259 skotophobia, 24 smith, stephen, 11 snake bite, 193 {288} stokes, professor, 5 stomach functions, 215 subconscious, 85 suffering, 68 sybarite, 72 t tantrum, 265, 272 temperature variations, 181 thatcher, 248 therapeutics, absurd, 244 thompson, william hanna, 11 torpillage, 264, 265 tragedy, 71 trait, family, 149 trudeau, doctor, 183 tuberculosis, 103; curable, 178; early, 176; frequency, 168; takes quitters, 169 u undereating, 160 underweight, 149 v valetudinarianism, 282 vapors, 272 virchow, rudolf, 10 w weber, sir hermann, 146 wellington, duke of, 43 wilde, oscar, 7 will, and survival, 4; conscious use, 81; living on, 2; omnipotent, 16; sapping, 13 women's diseases, 272 -------------------------mind and health series a series of medical handbooks written by eminent specialists and edited by h. addington bruce, a.m., and designed to present the results of recent research and clinical experience in a form intelligible to the lay public and medical profession. 1. human motives. by james jackson putnam, m.d., professor emeritus, diseases of the nervous system, harvard university; consulting neurologist, massachusetts general hospital, boston. 179 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. a study of human conduct, using both the philosophical and the freudian psychoanalytic methods of approach, with most attention to the latter method.--_a. l. a. booklist_. 2. the meaning of dreams. by isador h. coriat, m.d., first assistant visiting physician, nervous diseases, boston city hospital. 194 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. the many examples that are analyzed and explained are taken from cases that have come under the author's observations.--_a. l. a. booklist_. 3. sleep and sleeplessness. by h. addington bruce, a.m. 219 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. popular chapters on the various theories of sleep and dreams; disorders of sleep, dreams and the supernatural; and on the causes and treatment of sleeplessness.--_a. l. a. booklist_. 4. the influence of joy. by george van ness dearborn, a.m., ph.d., m.d. 223 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. presents the latest findings as to the effects of joy on the human organism. the writer gives sensible, easily understood suggestions to students and teachers and something of the psychology underlying the suggestions.--_a. l. a. booklist_. 5. nervousness: its causes, treatment and prevention. by l. e. emerson, ph.d.. psychologist, massachusetts general hospital, boston. 184 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. a popular, psychological discussion of nervousness, and its treatment by psychoanalysis and mental readjustment. it should be of help to the nervous sufferer. a good introduction to the freudian theory.--_a. l. a. booklist_. 6. the mental hygiene of childhood. by william a. white, m.d., superintendent of st. elizabeths hospital, washington, d. c. 193 pages. 12mo. $1.35 _net_. a brilliant study of the psychology of childhood that analyzes the mental life of the child and shows parents how it may best be cultivated. _in preparation_ fear and its consequences. by boris sidis, m.d., director of the sidis psychotherapeutic institute, portsmouth, n. h. insanity and its prevention. by m. s. gregory, m.d., resident alienist, bellevue hospital, new york. dreads and obsessions. by dr. j. w. courtney, physician-in-chief, department of the diseases of the mind and nervous system, carney hospital, boston. the conquest of laziness. by arthur holmes, dean of pennsylvania state college. ----------------- little, brown & co., publishers 34 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