The Mind and Its Education

Nothing is more wonderful than nature's method of endowing each individual at the beginning with all the impulses, tendencies and capacities that are to control and determine th...

The fundamental fact in all ranges of life from the lowest to the highest is _activity_, _doing_. Every individual, either animal or man, is constantly meeting situations which...

No word is more constantly on our lips than the word _think_. A hundred times a day we tell what we think about this thing or that. Any exceptional power of thought classes us a...

Every hour of our lives we call upon memory to supply us with some fact or detail from out our past. Let memory wholly fail us, and we find ourselves helpless and out of joint i...

Habit is our "best friend or worst enemy." We are "walking bundles of habits." Habit is the "fly-wheel of society," keeping men patient and docile in the hard or disagreeable lo...

The feeling that we call interest is so important a motive in our lives and so colors our acts and gives direction to our endeavors that we will do well to devote a chapter to i...

Everyone desires to have a good imagination, yet not all would agree as to what constitutes a good imagination. If I were to ask a group of you whether you have good imagination...

We have already seen that the mind and the body are associated in a copartnership in which each is an indispensable and active member. We have seen that the body gets its dignit...

As you sit thinking, a company of you together, your thoughts run in many diverse lines. Yet with all this diversity, your minds possess this common characteristic: _Though your...

Whence came the thought that occupies you this moment, and what determines the next that is to follow? Introspection reveals no more interesting fact concerning our minds than t...

A fine brain, or a good mind. These terms are often used interchangeably, as if they stood for the same thing. Yet the brain is material substance--so many cells and fibers, a p...

Feeling and emotion are not to be looked upon as two different _kinds_ of mental processes. In fact, emotion is but _a feeling state of a high degree of intensity and complexity...

Education was long looked upon as affecting the mind only; the body was either left out of account or neglected. Later science has shown, however, that the mind cannot be traine...

How do you rank in mental ability, and how effective are your mind's grasp and power? The answer that must be given to these questions will depend not more on your native endowm...

We can best understand the problems of sensation and perception if we first think of the existence of two great worlds--the world of physical nature without and the world of min...

We are to study the mind and its education; but how? It is easy to understand how we may investigate the great world of material things about us; for we can see it, touch it, we...

In the psychical world as well as the physical we must meet and overcome inertia. Our lives must be compelled by motive forces strong enough to overcome this natural inertia, an...

No young child at first sees objects as we see them, or hears sounds as we hear them. This power, the power of perception, is a gradual development. It grows day by day out of t...

1. The part played by past experience: Present thinking depends on past experience--The present interpreted by the past--The future also depends on the past--Rank determined by...

1. The nature of the will: The content of the will--The function of the will--How the will exerts its compulsion. 2. The extent of voluntary control over our acts: Simple reflex...

1. The nature of instinct: The babe's dependence on instinct--Definition of instinct--Unmodified instinct is blind. 2. Law of the appearance and disappearance of instincts: Inst...

1. The nature of interest: Interest a selective agent--Interest supplies a subjective scale of values--Interest dynamic--Habit antagonistic to interest. 2. Direct and indirect i...

1. The nature of memory: What is retained--The physical basis of memory--How we remember--Dependence of memory on brain quality. 2. The four factors involved in memory: Registra...

1. Different types of thinking: Chance, or idle thinking--Uncritical belief--Assimilative thinking--Deliberative thinking. 2. The function of thinking: Meaning depends on relati...

1. The relations of mind and brain: Interaction of mind and brain--The brain as the mind's machine. 2. The mind's dependence on the external world: The mind at birth--The work o...

1. The nature of habit: The physical basis of habit--All living tissue plastic--Habit a modification of brain tissue--We must form habits. 2. The place of habit in the economy o...

1. How the mind is to be known: Personal character of consciousness--Introspection the only means of discovering nature of consciousness--How we introspect--Studying mental stat...

1. Factors determining the efficiency of the nervous system: Development and nutrition--Undeveloped cells--Development of nerve fibers. 2. Development of nervous system through...

1. The place of imagination in mental economy: Practical nature of imagination--Imagination in the interpretation of history, literature, and art--Imagination and science--Every...

1. The function of perception: Need of knowing the material world--The problem which confronts the child. 2. The nature of perception: How a percept is formed--The percept invol...

1. The producing and expressing of emotion: Physiological explanation of emotion--Origin of characteristic emotional reactions--The duration of an emotion--Emotions accompanying...

1. Nature of attention: The nature of attention--Normal consciousness always in a state of attention. 2. The effects of attention: Attention makes its object clear and definite-...

1. Interrelation of impression and expression: The many sources of impressions--All impressions lead toward expression--Limitations of expression. 2. The place of expression in...

1. The nature of association: The neural basis of association--Association the basis of memory--Factors determining direction of recall--Association in thinking--Association and...

1. How we come to know the external world: Knowledge through the senses--The unity of sensory experience--The sensory processes to be explained--The qualities of objects exist i...

1. The nature of feeling: The different feeling qualities--Feeling always present in mental content--The seeming neutral feeling zone. 2. Mood and disposition: How mood is produ...