Mental quality

“ The common quality of all states of mind would be the quality designated by the word "mental"; and besides this we should have to suppose that each separate person's states of mind have some common characteristic distinguishing them from the states of mind of other people. ”

“ But what analysis can we adopt which shall prove universally satisfactory? If we rank men according to mental, moral or spiritual attributes, one quality is sure to contradict or affect the other, and it is hard to decide which trait is paramount. ”

“ 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 measure of mental health is the disposition to find good everywhere, good and order, analogy, health and benefit,—the love of truth, tendency to be in the right, no fighter for victory, no cockerel. ”

“ It is also a fact that a given mental state in one person tends to excite a like state in those with whom he associates. How important, then, that each and all cultivate, as habits, the qualities of cheerfulness, kindness, and good-will, instead of the opposite states of mind. ”

“ The study of psychology has opened the mind to inspection as we open the back of a watch-case and see the wheels go round; and this study lays its crown of victorious explorations at the feet of ethics.... His view is that conscience is the sense of conflict between bodily and mental desires ... therefore not a guide; it is only a sense of lostness in the woods, that wants a guide. Good sense and good religion are the guides to be consulted. ”

“ The mind that would be healthy must cast out of it all it cannot appropriate, assimilate, and transmute, else mental, moral, and affectional diseases set in, and psychal debility is the result, terminating in a complete deadening of all these higher qualities which par excellence make us truly human. ”

“ But beside all this they consider that the senses of the normal man are susceptible of infinite refinement, and that upon a greater or less degree of acquired acuteness of perception the value of his results must depend. To attain this high degree of sensitiveness, necessary to the perception of very subtle phenomena, the adepts find it necessary to train their faculties, bodily and mental, by a life of rigid abstention from all pleasures or indulgences not indispensable in maintaining the relation between the physical and intellectual powers. ”

“ Discipline, habit, and character, appear to be activity crystallized in seeking adaptation to our environments. What is the truth that stands out in relief? Clearly, that character, habit, and discipline, are the reflex upon ourselves of activity, moral, mental, or physical. Whence it seems to follow that useless or vicious activity will appear as useless or vicious character and discipline. ”

“ It's those people who never allow themselves in spirit to be downed, no matter what their individual problems, [Pg 62] surroundings, or conditions may be, but who chronically bob up serenely who, after all, are the masters of life, and who are likewise the strength-givers and the helpers of others. There are multitudes in the world today, there are readers of this volume, who could add a dozen or a score of years—teeming, healthy years—to their lives by a process of self-examination, a mental housecleaning, and a reconstructed, positive, commanding type of thought. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And, like all other mental or physical faculties, this faculty of observation will improve continually by being exercised, and add to the stature of the inner man, making him more complete. Besides, how immensely it will add to his enjoyment of life. ”

“ It is not therefore, he thinks, mere mental excellence, but the active exercise of mental excellence—the state of a man's mind, when he not only possesses excellent faculties, moral or intellectual, but is actively engaged in using them, which really constitutes the human good. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The investigation of the conditions under which man acquires his various physical and mental qualities is in full progress, but is only at its commencement, and has as yet furnished extremely few positive facts. ”

“ A study of the psychogenesis of a concrete case will on the one hand illustrate these principles and, on the other, the structure and dynamics of normal personality.
Before making such a study, however, we ought to have a working conception of the normal; and this we are entitled, from the point of view of dynamic psychology, to construct on the basis of data supplied by studies of abnormal and normal mental behavior. The older way of considering human personality was to conceive it as an “ego” with various faculties. ”

“ With the affectional experiences which we are considering, the relatively ‘pure’ condition lasts. In practical life no urgent need has yet arisen for deciding whether to treat them as rigorously mental or as rigorously physical facts. ”

“ The objective mind, it will therefore be seen, is potentially selective, that is to say, the measure of its quality is its capacity to select at will intellectual nourishment from the whole range of humanity and nature, free from the oppression of its psychic environment. ”

“ By appropriate tests, the quickness of response to sense-impressions, the character of the associations of ideas, the workings of the individual imagination, the nature of the emotional tendencies, the character and scope of the powers of attention and discrimination, the degree of persistence of the individual and his susceptibility to fatigue in certain forms of effort, the visual, auditory and manual skill, and even the moral character of the subject, can be more or less clearly and definitely determined. ”

“ It is generally admitted, for example, that such mental qualities as attention, memory, judgment, intelligence, reason, such moral qualities as loyalty, courage, truthfulness, kindness, unselfishness, such semi-moral qualities as cleanliness, orderliness, carefulness, alertness, industry, punctuality, are capable of being developed by education. ”

“ You need some emotional and moral exercise to counterbalance your mental and intellectual training. You are not aware how much of the most valuable knowledge, conviction, certainty—call it what you will, but l mean that kind of moral and spiritual knowledge which is the basis of all right conduct–springs in the main from spiritual and emotional sources. ”

“ What they lack, more or less completely, is good judgment, the moral sense, and especially continuity or logical consecutiveness, a unity of direction in intellectual production and the actions of life. ”

“ Every one’s mental life may fairly be said to be divided between those ideas, thoughts, and feelings which he receives from and gives out to his social world, the social environment in which he lives, and those which belong more properly to his inner life and the innermost sanctuary of his personality and character. ”

“ Intimately connected with, and in fact growing out of, the subject of the influence of mental timbre over the functions of the body, are many interesting questions of mental ethics which, it seems to me, ought to be studied from a somewhat different point of view than that from which they are commonly regarded. ”

“ The conclusion, so far from damping the efforts of progress and modern developments of science, should stimulate us to improve the moral and physical condition of this class, and so lessen the dangers to mental disorder among them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ideal to be aimed at is, of course, “A healthy Mind in a healthy Body”—and the two are so closely related that [Pg 198] what affects one, favorably or unfavorably, is sure to react upon the other. ”

“ In fact, our mental life is nothing but a readjustment, of complex reactions. The poet finds recourse in his phantasies; the philosopher gives vent to his theoretical speculations; [348] the scientist resorts to his inventions and hypothetical theories; the well balanced, normal individual seeks readjustment in healthy activities,—art, literature, science, occupations, sport, etc., etc. ”

“ On a certain day, for example, we may see a characteristic of the personality much intensified, with no outward reason. The cause is often to be found in what is taking place at some higher level — the stimulation of that quality in the ego. ”

“ Surely not the psychological fact; for our inveterate love of relating and comparing things does not alter the intrinsic qualities or nature of the things compared, or undo their absolute givenness. And surely not the physiological fact; for the length of time during which we can feel or attend to a quality is altogether irrelevant to the intrinsic constitution of the quality felt. ”

“ Thus psychology—properly interpreted as the study of the evolution of mental functions—at once appraises the value of mental traits, and in recovering the trade-routes of the past, points to the most profitable highways of the future. Psychology of this type and temper remains the supreme guide of education. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Its greatest value, however, lies in the fact that he brings home to us so graphically the overwhelming importance of the personal element so often overlooked by those who are accustomed to dealing with mental cases in large numbers. ”

“ Average.—Evinces fair mental powers, provided they are cultivated, otherwise only moderate intellectual capabilities; with an excitable temperament, allow the feelings and larger faculties to control judgment; with large moral organs, has more piety than talents, and allows religious prejudices and preconceived doctrines to prevent impartial intellectual examination; with moderate Acquisitiveness, will never acquire property; with average Constructiveness, will be a poor mechanic, etc. ”

“ But we recognize that a man of trained mind can choose and will to substitute for his present surroundings thoughts upon more constructive things from past experience, or from future possibilities, or from within the mind’s own storehouse. His ability to largely modify his life by his will, we recognize as man’s greatest power. Adaptability, emotional response, suggestibility, attention, thought-substitution, habit-formation, and will can minister vitally to health, or can prove damaging avenues of disease. ”

“ They whose endeavour is mental excellence, will learn, perhaps too late, how much it is endangered by diseases of the body, and find that knowledge may easily be lost in the starts of melancholy, the flights of impatience, and the peevishness of decrepitude. ”

“ The phenomena of purely subjective mental action, are, however, of little practical importance to mankind when compared with the action of the subjective mind modified by the co-ordinate power of the objective intelligence. ”

“ The 'Confessions of a Second-rate Sensitive Mind' are full of deep insight into human nature, and into those particular trials which are sure to beset men who think and feel for themselves at this epoch of social development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the laws of the mental world are uniform, we can count on them as aids toward understanding other people and understanding ourselves.
"Intelligent Scrutiny versus Morbid Introspection." It helps wonderfully to be able to look at ourselves in an objective, impersonal way. ”

“ Interrelation of Physical, Mental and Moral Development. — As to the interrelation of physical, mental and moral development, it must never be forgotten that the mind and the body must be studied together, 5 and that this is particularly true in considering the mind in management. 6 For the best results of the mind, the body must be cared for, and provided for, fully as much as must the mind, or the best results from the mind will not, and cannot, be obtained. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”