Internal structure

“ But in justice to those who maintain the precedence of structure, it must be added that function, which, as we hold, is anterior to structure, nevertheless, regarded as an activity modified and different from what it was, assumes its differential, distinguishing characters only in proportion as the adaptation becomes perfect, and as equilibrium is established between that portion of internal reaction which it represents and the external action which it withstands. ”

“ That organized substance has the property of nourishing itself by assimilating from its internal medium substances there present in an unorganized state, and that this is followed by a development or differentiation of structure, is familiar to every inquirer. ”

“ For it is in early life that the foundation of our mental edifice is laid. All that is good, valid and solid in man’s mental structure depends on the breadth, width, depth, and solidity of that foundation. ”

“ Mental processes are not only plastic but shifting, varying, unstable, and undergo modifications of structure almost from moment to moment. We describe a complex schematically as if it had a fixed, immutable, and well-defined structure. ”

“ As the organization of our body exercises a powerful influence in the development of the soul's faculties, we may say that the spontaneity of some internal phenomena is connected with certain changes of our organization. ”

“ That the previous mental history of the individuals must have some share in producing or in modifying the whole of their mental character, is an inevitable consequence of the laws of mind; but that differences of bodily structure also co-operate, is the opinion of all physiologists, confirmed by common experience. ”

“ If we consider the nature of any coherent purpose or “mental system,” we shall find that, as the coherent embodiment of a purpose, it possesses a degree of individuality of its own. In proportion to the comprehensiveness, and again to the inner harmony or systematic structure of the interest it embodies, it constitutes a genuine self-existing individual whole of the kind which psychologists recognise as a “self.” ”

“ Structure is offered to the intellect--it clears and vivifies understanding; it is not felt, it is perceived. Anything which is made up of parts--beginning, middle, and end, climax and resolution--possesses structure. But form in the intimate sense is the intrinsic, inevitable relation of cause and effect ”

“ Instead of experiences engendering the 'inner relations,' the inner relations are what engender the experiences here.
What happens in the brain after experience has done its utmost is what happens in every material mass which has been fashioned by an outward force,—in every pudding or mortar, for example, which I may make with my hands. The fashioning from without brings the elements into collocations which set new internal forces free to exert their effects in turn. ”

“ A comprehensive study of human personality would include, as far as may be, answers to all these problems and would require a volume in itself. I have, therefore, not been able more than to give an outline in Lecture XVII of what seem to me to be the fundamental principles involved and the dynamic unitary systems out of which the structure is built up. There are various points of view from which the structure of the mind may be considered, just as with the structure of a literary work of art, or of a complicated mechanism like an automobile. ”

“ Human nature and social life.—Original nature is represented in human responses in so far as they are determined by the innate structure of the individual organism. The materials assembled under this head treat of inborn reactions as influenced, modified, and reconstructed by the structure of the social organization. ”

“ Does Structure originate Function, or does Function originate Structure? is a question about which there has been disagreement. Using the word Function in its widest signification, as the totality of all vital actions, the question amounts to this—does Life produce Organization, or does Organization produce Life? ”

“ That which is, is for thought, at once the fulfilment and the limit of the thinking process. The thinking process itself is a process whereby at once meanings tend to become determinate, and external objects tend to become internal meanings. Let my process of determining my own internal meaning simply proceed to its own limit, and then I shall face Being. I shall not only imitate my object as another, and correspond to it from without: I shall become one with it, and so internally possess it. ”

“ But since the passing from a structureless state to a structured state is itself a vital process, it follows that vital activity must have existed while there was yet no structure: structure could not else arise. That function takes precedence of structure, seems also implied in the definition of Life. ”

“ For, as the form of the body is a composition of various parts, so likewise our inward structure is not simple or uniform, but a composition of various passions, appetites, affections, together with rationality, including in this last both the discernment of what is right, and a disposition to regulate ourselves by it. ”

“ In short, at every step of his life, in every relation and association, in every expression of the inner forces that control his being, the normal individual is influenced by his internal secretions. Let us now see how. ”

“ What our intellect can accept as finally real, we saw, must be indissolubly one with actual experience, and it must be an internally coherent system. In the present book we have to discuss more in detail the structure which must belong 51to any reality possessing these general characteristics. The present chapter, then, will be devoted to an examination of the implications of the experiential character of real Being; in the next, we shall deal with the nature of its unity as a single system. ”

“ From this point of view the most fruitful conception of the structure of personality is that which views it as built up of dynamic units which may be classed as primary and secondary. The primary units are the innate psychophysiological arrangements or mechanisms which we have agreed to call the instincts, or innate tendencies or dispositions, in many of which are incorporated the emotions and other affects. ”

“ Not only has the order in which the facts of organization and life successively manifest themselves, from the first germ of existence to death, been found to be uniform, and very accurately ascertainable; but, by a great application of the Method of Concomitant Variations to the entire facts of comparative anatomy and physiology, the characteristic organic structure corresponding to each class of functions has been determined with considerable precision. ”

“ In the one class, that of our internal affections, the phenomena depend on the laws which regulate the successive changes of state of the mind itself. In the other class, that of our external affections, they depend on the laws of the mind, indeed, which is susceptible of these peculiar changes of state; but they depend, in an equal degree, on the laws which give to matter its peculiar qualities, and, consequently, its peculiar influence on this mental susceptibility. ”

“ The reply is, that the immediate correlates of these and other such modes of consciousness, are not to be found in the agencies acting on us externally, but in certain internal agencies. The forces called vital, which we have seen to be correlates of the forces called physical, are the immediate sources of these thoughts and feelings; and are expended in producing them. ”

“ If all the sciences must thus converge in first principles, of which the only possible explanation is a statement of our own original mental structure, that structure itself may, it is evident, be made an object of the question-putting tendency. Though we cannot transcend our original notions and beliefs, we may at least collect or cricitise them. ”

“ To isolate the various elements out of the synthetized percept, the central elements must be shifted,―the subordinate elements must be made focal, giving rise to new percepts, but at the same time making it possible to pass in review the various elements. ”

“ Therefore, in every organic movement we may perceive the activity of the internal motive forces which are peculiar to life, and the influences of the ground to which the life is attached. In the movements of peoples, the internal forces are the organic powers of motion common to all creatures, and the spiritual impulses of the intellect and will of man. ”

“ Similarly with most of our mental actions, they are compounds of feeling and intellect, and produced by many causes, such as hereditary tendency, acquired habit, internal and external mental excitants, dogmatic belief, knowledge of empirical rules, and occasionally of verified principles. Several of these causes also frequently conspire to produce a single idea or decision. ”

“ The structure of the human mind corresponds with these objective resemblances; it seizes upon them, and delights in them, and naturally and joyfully infers and concludes that what has been observed of a part may be safely affirmed of the whole of that kind ”

“ You appear to consider it as of physical organization; an instinct of our nature which is perfected without care or cultivation, and that like one of our natural senses, it may be summoned to our aid without fear of error in its perceptions. ”

“ Returning now from this brief excursion into the social status, to the problem as related to the mental, moral, and physical health of individuals, and bearing in mind our Modulus of Man, and Theorem of Constructive Psychology, we find the annals of Spiritualism, Mediumship, or subjective control, of exceeding importance.
Another plane of life exists. Individuals on either plane communicate with the controlling entity on the supra-physical plane.
The Medium is invariably subjective and controlled. ”

“ And this theory falls at once into the necessary categories of human thought. Life, as generally defined, is a state of organized being wherein there is functional activity; while a state, or status, is an incidence determined by environing conditions. But back of each of these--life and its status--there must lie some efficient cause, producing, in the first instance, the environing conditions, and then the functional activity dependent on organization. ”

“ Let us detach from man all idea of what can be called organization,—that is, let the body be separated from the spirit, without, however, depriving the latter of the power to attain to representations of, and to produce actions in, the corporeal world; and let us then inquire how the spirit would set to work, would develop its powers, what steps it would take towards its perfection: the result of this investigation must be founded upon facts. ”

“ For the so-called 'social organism,' although composed of innumerable individual personalities, is, with regard to each of its constituent units, a part of the objective world—just as the human brain would be, were each of its constituent cells of a construction sufficiently complex to yield a separate personality. ”

“ They form truly a separate order of the internal affections of the mind,—as distinct from the intellectual phenomena, as the class, to which they both belong, is distinguishable from the class of external affections, that arise immediately from the presence of objects without. ”

“ The balance of mental and social, as well as of physiological, functions, is implied in the complex life of whose evolution we form a part. To say that we are to promote this balance of various functions, is to say nothing more than that we are to promote the life into which physical and mental and social factors enter. ”

“ These are realities; they are the most inner and essential realities in every instance of growth or development; to deal only with the development of the physical basis, is to leave untouched the kernel of the matter, is altogether superficial and unreal. But principles, plans, types and ideas, ends contemplated in movement and progress, these at any rate are not physical, are not matters of sense and organization. They are, as I have said, prior to what is physical, they are conditions antecedent to organization and growth. ”

“ The organization of the mind may be defined as the group of laws which determine the modes of thought and of action, irrespective of the subject-matter of mental activity. Subject to such laws are the manner of discrimination between perceptions, the manner in which perceptions associate themselves 103with previous perceptions, the manner in which a stimulus leads to action, and the emotions produced by stimuli. ”

“ Conditions of the Growth of Association, or of the Retentiveness of the Mind.—A practical, as well as a theoretical, interest attaches to the precise statement of the conditions or circumstances that regulate the growth of our associations, in other words our mental culture generally. ”

“ We may therefore define character as an expression of the organization of the wishes resulting from temperament and experience, understanding by “organization” the general pattern which the wishes as a whole tend to assume among themselves. ”

“ The causes of our mental structure are doubtless natural, and connected, like all our other peculiarities, with those of our nervous structure. Our interests, our tendencies of attention, our motor impulses, the æsthetic, moral, and theoretic combinations we delight in, the extent of our power of apprehending schemes of relation, just like the elementary relations themselves, time, space, difference and similarity, and the elementary kinds of feeling, have all [Pg 689] grown up in ways of which at present we can give no account. ”