Mental model

“ In proceeding to examine and compare the mental phenomena, the first circumstance that strikes us, prior to any attempt to arrange them in classes, is, that the mind which exhibits these is susceptible of a variety of feelings, every new feeling being a change of its state; and, indeed, it is by such changes alone that it manifests itself, either in our own consciousness, or in the actions of our fellow men. ”

“ And, moreover, it is necessary, so long as such experiences have a strong hold on the popular imagination and shape the popular conceptions of the nature both of mental processes and of the field of psychology, to portray as well as may be the natural explanation and significance of the phenomena, and to indicate the general trend of the conceptions under which they may be profitably viewed ”

“ To accomplish this analysis requires direct psychological study carried to a high pitch of perfection; it being necessary, among other things, to investigate the degree in which mental character is created by circumstances, since no one supposes that cerebral conformation does all, and circumstances nothing. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is because they are in their proper and almost inextricable entanglement with our individual or temperamental functions, absolutely essential elements of all our rationality, of all our mental developments, of all our worth as thinkers, as workers or as producers ”

“ In contemplating the relations between body, soul, and spirit, between Universal Mind and individual mind, the methodised study of which constitutes Mental Science, we must never forget that these relations indicate, not the separateness, but the unity of these principles. We must learn not to attribute one part of our action to one part of our being, and another to another. ”

“ Now on analogy it seems possible that what we call individual mental lives are, to the wider process which contains and constitutes the whole of reality, as particular facts are to the whole process which constitutes each individual mental life. The whole of reality may contain individual lives as these contain particular facts, not as separate distinct units in logical relations, but as a process in which the line of demarcation between “the parts” (if we must speak of “parts”) is not clear cut. ”

“ I touch not, nor do I in any way whatsoever act upon the individuals which I class. The proceeding is all mental. Forming a class of individuals, is a mode of regarding them. But what is meant by a mode of regarding things? This is mysterious; and is as mysteriously explained, when it is said to be the taking into view the particulars in which individuals agree. For what is there, which it is possible for the mind to take into view, in that in which individuals agree? Every colour is an individual colour, every size is an individual size, every shape is an individual shape. ”

“ On the other hand, a traditional doctrine, which has won for itself no small hearing in psychology, regards the volitional, or active, side of our consciousness, not merely as a fact in itself, but as a cause of other facts, both physical and mental. From this point of view, the distinction between intellect and will acquires a fresh importance, and declines to be reduced to that mere distinction of aspects which we have emphasized in the foregoing account. ”

“ In point of fact, that which, for convenience, I have chosen to designate as the subjective mind, appears to be a separate and distinct entity; and the real distinctive difference between the two minds seems to consist in the fact that the "objective mind" is merely the function of the physical brain, while the "subjective mind" is a distinct entity, possessing independent powers and functions, having a mental organization of its own, and being capable of sustaining an existence independently of the body. In other words, it is the soul. ”

“ Now the sort of 'fact of experience' on which in my book I have proposed to compromise, is the so-called 'mental state,' in whose existence not only common men but philosophers have uniformly believed. ”

“ If, on the other hand, the mental state under examination neither resembles nor operates on any of the realities known to the psychologist, he calls it a subjective state pure and simple, possessed of no cognitive worth. ”

“ We can call, for instance, into peculiar activity, the judgment, the memory, or the imagination, and note the differences in our mental condition as the one faculty or the other is more active. And this is an experiment. Over our mental sensations we have less power. We cannot at will feel angry, or envious, or frightened. ”

“ On the other hand, if it means in this central position of mental sciences a science which does not consider the inner life as an object, but as subjective activity needing to be interpreted and subjectively understood, not as to its elements, but as to its meaning, then we should have two kinds of psychology, one which explains and one which interprets. They would speak of different facts, the one of the inner life as objective content of consciousness, as phenomenon, the other of the inner life as subjective attitude, as purpose. ”

“ This assumption may be sound so long as we are dealing with mind as the function of definitely localized organs, or if we are merely describing mental phenomena. It is when we pass to the contents of the mind, and study the significance of mental states, or enquire how they came into existence, that we find the atomistic psychology breaking down, and we find ourselves compelled to deal with mind as a psycho-sociologic phenomenon, with its relation to the social medium. ”

“ The general propositions applicable to all phases of psychological phenomena are here only briefly stated, leaving the minor, or subsidiary, propositions necessary for the elucidation of particular classes and sub-classes of phenomena to be stated under their appropriate heads.
The first proposition relates to the dual character of man's mental organization. That is to say, man has, or appears to have, two minds, each endowed with separate and distinct attributes and powers; each capable, under certain conditions, of independent action. ”

“ It may be stated as a fundamental principle that the will can never originate any form of mental activity....’ But it has the power, he continues, of selecting any one out of several objects that present themselves either simultaneously or successively before the mental vision, and of so limiting and intensifying the impression which that particular object makes upon the consciousness, that all others shall be for the time non-existent to it. ”

“ Our emotional and instinctive tendencies, our irresistible impulses to couple certain movements with the perception or thought of certain things, are also features of our connate mental structure, and like the necessary judgments, are interpreted by the apriorists and the empiricists in the same warring ways. ”

“ They reckoned with the new dimension which is in the world, which is above flesh and above brain; which is, in fact, the unifying force of the brain faculties, called here Intuition. The founders of this society reckoned, too, with the fact that psychology as it has been taught from a material basis in schools and colleges is a blight. One can't, as a purely physical being, relate himself to mental processes; nor can one approach the super-mental area by the force of mentality alone. ”

“ But the species of mental equilibration to be more especially noted, is that shown in the establishment of a correspondence between relations among our states of consciousness and relations in the external world. Each outer connection of phenomena which we are capable of perceiving, generates, through accumulated experiences, an inner connection of mental states ”

“ It is this chronic mental habit that broods upon the problem of subjective experiences, and is ready to recognize in signs and omens the guiding principle of rationality; not that this is always done designedly and superstitiously, but the underlying bent obscures the consideration of experience in any other than a personal light, and obstructs that illumination of the concrete by the generic, which constitutes an indispensable factor in the growth of wholesome thought. ”

“ Whatever conclusions an ultimate criticism may come to about mental states, they form a practically admitted sort of object whose habits of coexistence and succession and relations with organic conditions form an entirely definite subject of research. Cannot philosophers and biologists both become 'psychologists' on this common basis? Cannot both forego ulterior inquiries, and agree that, provisionally at least, the mental state shall be the ultimate datum so far as 'psychology' cares to go? ”

“ 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 though it is true that psychology has not yet secured her Newton, and that no one has yet formulated a law that expresses exactly the action of the minds and spirits of men under the influence of certain mental and moral stimuli or forces, yet we know that our minds and spirits are influenced by fear, hope, ambition, hate, and so forth, in ways that are fairly well understood and toward results that often can be predicted in advance. ”

“ Mind, in other words, is not merely a persistent medium wherein passive mental states are maintained, but an active and synthetic principle as well. Mental processes, like those of judgment, reasoning, and recognition, require a unitary and unifying principle, which actively examines and compares our impressions and thoughts, in order to discern their relations to one another and to itself. ”

“ You have before you "sense-perceptions," "causal judgments," "classifying judgments," and "associated emotional qualities" or "feeling tones." Every suggested idea, every act of reasoning is in the last analysis the product of one or more of these elementary forms of mental activity.
We shall now go on to consider the operations of these mental processes in connection with certain mental phenomena.
Principles that Bear on Practical Affairs
Our purpose in all this is not to teach you the elements of psychology as it is ordinarily conceived or taught. ”

“ The postulated objective reality acts upon the given individual consciousness and gives rise to mental states which along with the objective representation of that reality has also its own coloring, its own subjective side. ”

“ The power to mesmerize by this method is within the reach of any one with sufficient intelligence to understand the directions, and sufficient mental balance to follow them with persistency; provided always the subject is willing to be mesmerized, and is possessed of the requisite mental equilibrium to enable him to become passive and receptive. ”

“ When we speak of the 'mental' condition of a person, we refer to his senses, his perceptions, his consciousness, his ideas. If his mental condition is perfect, his will, his memory, his understanding are perfect, and connected with a healthy bodily organization. ”

“ The difference between different people in the ability to represent to themselves the phenomenon under either aspect, depends rather on the degree of exercise which they have given to their imagination in trying to frame mental pictures conformable to the two hypotheses, than upon those considerations of reason and evidence which yet may determine their belief. ”

“ But on the other hand this reactionary process may be used to confirm good and life-giving modes of thought, so that by a knowledge of its laws we may enlist even the physical body itself in the building up of that perfectly whole personality, the attainment of which is the aim and object of our studies. ”

“ With its assistance there spring up those universal thought complexes, which, distributed to the various fields to which they belong, appear as logical, linguistic, aesthetic, moral, and religious norms or principles. If these acquire a higher degree of value for our feelings, if we find ourselves heartily attached to them, so that we prefer them to all those things which are contradictory, if we bind them to our own self, they will thus become powerful mental groups, which spring up independent of the psychical mechanism as often as kindred ideas appear in the mind. ”

“ To what a degree this loose mode of classing and denominating objects has rendered the vocabulary of mental and moral philosophy unfit for the purposes of accurate thinking, is best known to whoever has most meditated on the present condition of those branches of knowledge. ”

“ Mental synthesis of psychic content in the unity of a moment-consciousness is a fundamental principle of psychology. ”

“ But when other people criticise our own more exalted soul-flights by calling them “nothing but” expressions of our organic disposition, we feel outraged and hurt, for we know that, whatever be our organism's peculiarities, our mental states have their substantive value as revelations [pg 013] of the living truth; and we wish that all this medical materialism could be made to hold its tongue. ”

“ If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete examples. If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it with the known. If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a story. If it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain. Above all things, make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long. ”