Adjustment

“ Vital changes cannot, however, be regarded as changes simply standing by themselves, for, if we overlook their adjustment to the accomplishment of a purpose, we omit their most essential characteristic. ”

“ The consequence of that adjustment, when complete, will be that actions which are right—that is, are beneficial to the individual and to society—will always be pleasurable, not only in their consequences, but also immediately and in themselves. ”

“ We can say either that we do not respond to them any longer, or more truly that we have effected a persistent response to them—an equilibrium of adjustment. This means, in the second place, that this enduring adjustment supplies the background upon which are made specific adjustments, as occasion arises. We are never interested in changing the whole environment; there is much that we take for granted and accept just as it already is. Upon this background our activities focus at certain points in an endeavor to introduce needed changes. ”

“ We have tried to show that these habits are able to cause trouble because of their bearing on that inevitable conflict between the ancient urge of the reproductive instinct and the later ideals which society has acquired. If this conflict be met in the light of the present, free from the backward pull, of outgrown habits, an adjustment is possible which satisfies both the individual and society. We call this adjustment sublimation. This is rather a synthesis than a compromise, a union of the opposing forces, a happy utilization of energy by displacement on more useful ideas. ”

“ When a step in the development has been taken, this step itself constitutes a change of situation which requires a new adaptation; it becomes the point of departure for a new step in the adjustment, and so on interminably. ”

“ These stages or levels of emotional adjustment seem, for the most part, to be fixed not by any special suitability to circumstances, certainly not to present circumstances, but much more by social suggestion and by accidents which withdraw us from actual experience, the one force which might push us further. ”

“ This capacity to direct the instinctive forces into various forms of activity, we call the capacity for adjustment and we may assume that it depends upon the operation of certain mechanisms which we may call the mechanisms of adjustment. ”

“ Factors Involved in Process.—In such an experience the consciousness of the lad is at the outset occupied with a definite problem, or felt need, demanding adjustment—the recovering of the lost coin, which need acts as a stimulus to the consciousness and gives direction and value to the resulting mental activity. Acting under the demands of this problem, or need, the mind displays an intelligent initiative in the selecting of ideas—stick, adhesion, tar, etc., felt to be of value for securing the required new adjustment. ”

“ Throughout the evolution of conduct we find a growing complexity of adjustment of acts to ends, the interposition of more and more complex means, each as a step to the next, and leading to the final attainment of even remoter ends. ”

“ Acts that produce external changes imply adjustment of means to ends. The creation of external things is such an act. Unless an actor is identical with the product itself, he must therefore be subject to the external conditions of adjustment, i.e., he must be finite. ”

“ The maladies and defects which we detect in modern industry are but the measure of a present maladjustment.
"The progessive adjustment of a structure to environment in the unconscious or low conscious world is necessarily slow. But where the conscious will of man, either as an individual or as a society, can be utilized for an adjusting force, the pace of progress may be indefinitely quickened. ”

“ We have seen that adjustment arises because like creatures want the same things and in like ways try to get them. Now, wanting the same things, and trying in like ways to get them, are essentially psychological phenomena, and under analysis they resolve into one elementary phenomenon in particular, namely, like response to the same, or to similar, or to common stimulation. ”

“ As we approach the moment of decisive action, experience will teach us the solemn duty devolving upon us. While we may not at present anticipate fully what will then be necessary, we can nevertheless determine some few principles of a general nature which must control the adjustment. ”

“ The phases seem to follow each other by an inherent necessity, and as if independent of the reason and will of the men affected, but the changes are always produced by a strain towards better adjustment of the mores to conditions and interests of the society, or of the controlling elements in it. ”

“ Usually, however, the adjustment, farfetched or absurd though it may be, is sufficient so that the mechanism goes on with at least a semblance of effectiveness. Its nutty operator is allowed to live; people aren't very critical—or even observant. ”

“ Adoption of the principles just cited into commanding rank in our standards of social action will assure steady approach to more worthy conditions. The details of progressive adjustment must come from experiments, just as in the case of improvements in printing presses or in dynamos. ”

“ For these responses are commonly of the nature of solutions to problems, not of intellectual research, but of emotional accommodation and adjustment, and can usually be best achieved while the different impulses which have to be reconciled are still in an incipient or imaginal stage, and before the matter has become further complicated by the irrelevant accidents which attend overt responses. ”

“ We shall encounter difficulties greater than any we have ever faced in our national history, We shall have to adapt ourselves to the strange stimuli of a new environment and undergo the travails of constrant adjustment and readjustment. ”

“ It consists of endeavours to adjust help to needs, which endeavours are themselves unadjusted to each other. Thus, precisely as in the theoretical progress, the unadjustment of adjustments brings out ever new contradictions which demand readjustment. ”

“ Our methods may seem strange and indirect. Even incomprehensible. But I assure you we know what we're doing." ”

“ Adaptation of means to an end may be produced in two ways that we at present know of; by processes of natural selection, and by the agency of an intelligence in which an image or idea of the end preceded the use of the means. In both cases the existence of the adaptation is accounted for by the necessity or utility of the end. ”

“ The facility with which adaptation is made to the changed conditions of a new combination of intervals, so that just as small displacements are made under one as another, indicates to my mind that one can control the conditions so that the apperception shall ripen quickly or slowly, depending upon the warmth of the interest, and the concentration or division of the attention,—that there is a capacity in the ordinary individual so to adapt himself to the conditions as to do equally good work in coördinating two sense-impressions anywhere within a wide range of intervals. ”

“ Thus, each life-habit has its advantages and its disadvantages; and we may conclude from this that a change from a long-lived to a short lived form, or the reverse, may take place in consequence of adaptation to changes in outer circumstances. ”

“ Throughout it was essentially one phase of human organization. When one comes to examine the final result, it is astonishing to remark the small amount of essential change, of positively final and irreparable alteration, in the conditions of the common life. ”

“ Now we have surmised that at this stage our subject has been modified, both physically and mentally, to a certain extent in approach to the human type, and there is precisely one special modification which would have been of paramount importance in view of the problem of advance in progress. ”

“ Modifications due to successful chance action, being more satisfactory to the brute, are stronger and modify the moment in their own direction, while unsuccessful reactions tend to drop out and thus adaptation, improvement is brought about. ”

“ Let us endeavor to assign the differences of subject that afford relief by transition.
There are many kinds of change that are merely another name for simple remission of the intellectual strain. When a severe and difficult exercise is exchanged for an easy one, the agreeable effect is due not to what we engage in, but to what we are relieved from. ”

“ But the thorough adaptation of the scheme to man's nature is greatly more appreciable, and lies fully within the reach of observation and experience. And how thorough that adaptation is, all who have really looked at the matter ought to be competent to say. ”

“ That the principle of selection is, in the end, the ability to modify behavior through the anticipation of possible consequences, appears from the fact that the category of stimulus and response is otherwise found to be unworkable. It is true that in the simpler forms of behavior stimulus and response may be correlated without practical difficulty. ”

“ We frequently appear to mentally adapt ourselves to particular circumstances when we are really determined by causes; and this apparent adaptation is also seen in ordinary physical and chemical phenomena. ”

“ Inhibition of certain phases or elements of some of the tendencies is necessary for the most valuable development of the individual, but the entire loss of any save one or two would be disastrous to some form of adult usefulness or enjoyment. The method by which valuable elements or phases of an original tendency are fixed and strengthened is the general method of habit formation and will be taken up under that head in Chapter IV. When the modification involves definite inhibition, there are three possible methods,--punishment, disuse, and substitution. ”

“ Your own change is quite sufficient—it gives us all we need. It will give us, if we retrace the steps of it, everything, everything!"
Mrs. Briss considered. "I don't quite see, do I? why, at this hour of the night, we should begin to retrace steps." ”

“ The change is everywhere, but inward; we localize it here and there, but outwardly; and thus we constitute bodies which are both stable as to their qualities and mobile as to their positions, a mere change of place summing up in itself, to our eyes, the universal transformation. ”

“ And the changes which are continually taking place in that portion of the outward world which is subject to man's control, keep pace with men's internal or mental changes to which they correspond, and without which no outward changes could occur. ”

“ As we proceed further and further from the time at which alternative actions are open to us, the events of which either action would be part cause become increasingly dependent on those other circumstances, which are the same, whichever action we adopt. The effects of any individual action seem, after a sufficient space of time, to be found only in trifling modifications spread over a very wide area, whereas its immediate effects consist in some prominent modification of a comparatively narrow area. ”

“ The practicability of every reform is determined absolutely and always by “the circumstances of the case,” and only those who put themselves into the midst of affairs, either by action or by observation, can know what those circumstances are or perceive what they signify. ”

“ Yet every movement which we accomplish implies a change in our debit and credit of vital economy, a change in our balance of bodily and mental expenditure and replenishment; and this, if brought to our awareness, is not only interesting, but interesting in the sense either of pleasure or displeasure, since it implies the more or less furtherance or hindrance of our life-processes. ”

“ Things undergo a change in becoming experienced, but the change consists in a doing, in the assumption of a certain task or duty. The experiential object hence varies with the response; the situation and the motor activity fit together like the sections of a broken bowl. ”

“ They can shew, too, that the changes daily taking place in ourselves—the facility that attends long practice, and the loss of aptitude that begins when practice ceases,—the strengthening of the passions habitually gratified, and the weakening of those habitually curbed,—the development of every faculty, bodily, moral, intellectual, according to the use made of it—are all explicable on this principle. ”

“ But together with a dawning consciousness that times and conditions have considerably changed, there is growing up in certain quarters a feeling that we too shall have to make some modifications in order to adapt ourselves to the altered circumstances. ”

“ The only obvious respect in which all kinds of Progress are alike, is, that they are modes of change; and hence, in some characteristic of changes in general, the desired solution will probably be found. We may suspect à priori that in some law of change lies the explanation of this universal transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous. 32 Thus much premised, we pass at once to the statement of the law, which is this:—Every active force produces more than one change—every cause produces more than one effect. ”

“ We may add at once that the reorganization which is required to constitute conscious behavior varies a great deal in extent. In an act that is more or less habitual, a comparatively slight modification of the corresponding organized system of neural discharge will suffice to harmonize the conflicting elements, whereas on other occasions a more extensive modification is required. ”

“ But the change in the mental attitude and in the habits of the three hundred or more workmen can be brought about only slowly and through a long series of object-lessons, which finally demonstrates to each man. ”