HOW TO READ HUMAN NATURE/PART 1
CHAPTER I
INNER STATE AND OUTER FORM
"Human
Nature" is a term most frequently used and yet but little understood. The
average person knows in a general way what he and others mean when this term is
employed, but very few are able to give an off-hand definition of the term or
to state what in their opinion constitutes the real essence of the thought
expressed by the familiar phrase. We are of the opinion that the first step in
the process of correct understanding of any subject is that of acquaintance
with its principal terms, and, so, we shall begin our consideration of the
subject of Human Nature by an examination of the term used to express the idea
itself.
"Human,"
of course, means "of or pertaining to man or mankind." Therefore,
Human Nature means the nature of man or mankind.
"Nature," in this usage, means: "The natural disposition of mind
of any person; temper; personal character; individual constitution; the
peculiar mental characteristics and attributes which serve to distinguish one
person from another."
Thus
we see that the essence of the nature of men, or of a
particular human being, is the mind, the mental qualities,
characteristics, properties and attributes. Human Nature is then a phase of
psychology and subject to the laws, principles and methods of study,
examination and consideration of that particular branch of science.
But
while the general subject of psychology includes the consideration of the inner
workings of the mind, the processes of thought, the nature of feeling, and the
operation of the will, the special subject of Human Nature is concerned only
with the question of character, disposition, temperament, personal attributes,
etc., of the individuals making up the race of man. Psychology is general—Human
Nature is particular. Psychology is more or less abstract—Human Nature is concrete.
Psychology deals with laws, causes and principles—Human Nature deals with
effects, manifestations, and expressions.
Human
Nature expresses itself in two general phases, i.e., (1) the phase of Inner
States; and (2) the phase of Outer Forms. These two phases, however, are not
separate or opposed to each other, but are complementary aspects of the same
thing. There is always an action and reaction between the Inner State and the
Outer Form—between the Inner Feeling and the Outer Expression. If we know the
particular Inner State we may infer the appropriate Outer Form; and if we know
the Outer Form we may infer the Inner State.
That
the Inner State affects the Outer Form is a fact generally acknowledged by men,
for it is in strict accordance with the general experience of the race. We know
that certain mental states will result in imparting to the countenance certain
lines and expressions appropriate thereto; certain peculiarities of carriage
and manner, voice and demeanor. The facial characteristics, manner, walk, voice
and gestures of the miser will be recognized as entirely different from that of
the generous person; those of the coward differ materially from those of the
brave man; those of the vain are distinguished from those of the modest.
We know that certain mental attitudes will produce the corresponding physical
expressions of a smile, a frown, an open hand, a clenched fist, an erect spine
or bowed shoulders, respectively. We also know that certain feelings will cause
the eye to sparkle or grow dim, the voice to become resonant and positive or to
become husky and weak; according to the nature of the feelings.
Prof.
Wm. James says: "What kind of emotion of fear would be left if the feeling
neither of trembling lips nor of weakened limbs, neither of goose-flesh nor of
visceral stirrings, were present, it is quite impossible for me to think. Can
one fancy the state of rage and picture no ebullition in the chest, no flushing
of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse
to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm breathing, and a
placid face?"
Prof.
Halleck says: "All the emotions have well-defined muscular expression.
Darwin has written an excellent work entitled, The Expression of the
Emotions in Man and Animals, to which students must refer for a detailed
account of such expression. A very few examples must suffice here. In all
the exhilarating emotions, the eyebrows, the eyelids, the nostrils, and the
angles of the mouth are raised. In the depressing passions it is the reverse.
This general statement conveys so much truth, that a careful observer can read
a large part of the history of a human being written in the face. For this
reason many phrenologists have wisely turned physiognomists. Grief is expressed
by raising the inner ends of the eyebrows, drawing down the corners of the
mouth, and transversely wrinkling the middle part of the forehead. In Terra del
Fuego, a party of natives conveyed to Darwin the idea that a certain man was
low-spirited, by pulling down their cheeks in order to make their faces long.
Joy is expressed by drawing backward and upward the corners of the mouth. The
upper lip rises and draws the cheeks upward, forming wrinkles under the eyes.
The elevation of the upper lip and the nostrils expresses contempt. A skillful
observer can frequently tell if one person admires another. In this case the
eyebrows are raised, disclosing a brightening eye and a relaxed expression;
sometimes a gentle smile plays about the mouth. Blushing is merely the
physical expression of certain emotions. We notice the expression of emotion
more in the countenance, because the effects are there more plainly visible;
but the muscles of the entire body, the vital organs, and the viscera, are also
vehicles of expression."
These
things need but a mention in order to be recognized and admitted. This is
the action of the Inner upon the Outer. There is, however,
a reaction of the Outer upon the Inner, which while equally
true is not so generally recognized nor admitted, and we think it well to
briefly call your attention to the same, for the reason that this
correspondence between the Inner and the Outer—this reaction as
well as the action—must be appreciated in order that the entire
meaning and content of the subject of Human Nature may be fully grasped.
That
the reaction of the Outer Form upon the Inner State may be
understood, we ask you to consider the following opinions of well-known and
accepted authorities of the New Psychology, regarding the established fact that
a physical expression related to a mental state, will, if
voluntarily induced, tend to in turn induce the mental state appropriate to it.
We have used these quotations in other books of this series, but will insert
them here in this place because they have a direct bearing upon the particular
subject before us, and because they furnish direct and unquestioned authority
for the statements just made by us. We ask you to consider them carefully, for
they express a most important truth.
Prof.
Halleck says: "By inducing an expression we can often cause its allied
emotion.... Actors have frequently testified to the fact that emotion will
arise if they go through the appropriate muscular movements. In talking to a
character on the stage, if they clench the fist and frown, they often find
themselves becoming really angry; if they start with counterfeit laughter, they
find themselves growing cheerful. A German professor says that he cannot walk
with a schoolgirl's mincing step and air without feeling frivolous."
Prof.
Wm. James says: "Whistling to keep up courage is no mere figure of
speech. On the other hand, sit all day in a moping posture, sigh, and
reply to everything with a dismal voice, and your melancholy lingers. If we
wish to conquer undesirable emotional tendencies in ourselves, we must
assiduously, and in the first instance coldbloodedly, go through the outward
movements of those contrary dispositions which we wish to cultivate.
Smooth the brow, brighten the eye, contract the dorsal rather than the ventral
aspect of the frame, and speak in a major key, pass the genial compliment, and
your heart must indeed be frigid if it does not gradually thaw."
Dr.
Wood Hutchinson, says: "To what extent muscular contractions condition
emotions, as Prof. James has suggested, may be easily tested by a quaint and
simple little experiment upon a group of the smallest voluntary muscles of the
body, those that move the eyeball. Choose some time when you are sitting
quietly in your room, free from all disturbing influences. Then stand up, and
assuming an easy position, cast the eyes upward and hold them in that position
for thirty seconds. Instantly and involuntarily you will be conscious of a
tendency toward reverential, devotional, contemplative ideas and thoughts.
Then turn the eyes sideways, glancing directly to the right or to the left,
through half-closed lids. Within thirty seconds images of suspicion, of
uneasiness, or of dislike will rise unbidden to the mind. Turn the eyes on one
side and slightly downward, and suggestions of jealousy or coquetry will be apt
to spring unbidden. Direct your gaze downward toward the floor, and you are
likely to go off into a fit of reverie or abstraction."
Prof.
Maudsley says: "The specific muscular action is not merely an exponent of
passion, but truly an essential part of it. If we try while the features are
fixed in the expression of one passion to call up in the mind a different one,
we shall find it impossible to do so."
We
state the fact of the reaction of the Outer upon the Inner,
with its supporting quotations from the authorities, not for the purpose of
instructing our readers in the art of training the emotions by means of the
physical, for while this subject is highly important, it forms no part of the
particular subject under our present consideration—but that the student
may realize the close relationship existing between the Inner State and the
Outer Form. These two elements or phases, in their constant action and
reaction, manifest the phenomena of Human Nature, and a knowledge of each, and
both give to us the key which will open for us the door of the understanding of
Human Nature.
Let
us now call your attention to an illustration which embodies both
principles—that of the Inner and the Outer—and the action and reaction between
them, as given by that master of subtle ratiocination, Edgar Allan Poe. Poe in
his story "The Purloined Letter" tells of a boy at school who
attained great proficiency in the game of "even or odd" in which one
player strives to guess whether the marbles held in the hand of his opponent
are odd or even. The boy's plan was to gauge the intelligence of his opponent
regarding the matter of making changes, and as Poe says: "this lay in mere
observation and admeasurement of the astuteness of his opponents." Poe
describes the process as follows: "For example, an arrant simpleton
is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, 'are they even or
odd?' Our schoolboy replies, 'odd,' and loses; but upon the second trial he
wins, for he then says to himself, 'the simpleton had them even upon the first
trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd
upon the second; I will therefore guess odd;'—he guesses and wins. Now, with a
simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus: 'This fellow
finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will
propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd,
as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is
too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as
before. I will therefore guess even;' he guesses even and wins."
Poe
continues by stating that this "is merely an identification of the
reasoner's intellect with that of his opponent. Upon inquiring of the boy by
what means he effected the thorough identification in which
his success consisted, I received answer as follows: 'When I wish to find out
how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what
are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as
accurately as possible in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait
to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or
correspond with the expression.' This response of the school boy lies at
the bottom of all the spurious profundity which has been attributed to
Rochefoucauld, to La Bougive, to Machiavelli, and to Campanella."
In
this consideration of Human Nature we shall have much to say about the Outer
Form. But we must ask the reader to always remember that the Outer Form is
always the expression and manifestation of the Inner State, be that Inner State
latent and dormant within the depths of the subconscious mentality, or else
active and dynamic in conscious expression. Just as Prof. James so strongly
insists, we cannot imagine an inner feeling or emotion without its
corresponding outward physical expression, so is it impossible to imagine the
outward expressions generally associated with a particular feeling or emotion
without its corresponding inner state. Whether or not one of these, the outer
or inner, is the cause of the other—and if so, which
one is the cause and which the effect—need not concern us here. In
fact, it would seem more reasonable to accept the theory that they are
correlated and appear simultaneously. Many careful thinkers have held that
action and reaction are practically the same thing—merely the opposite phases
of the same fact. If this be so, then indeed when we are studying the Outer
Form of Human Nature we are studying psychology just as much as when we are
studying the Inner States. Prof. Wm. James in his works upon psychology insists
upon the relevancy of the consideration of the outward expressions of the inner
feeling and emotion, as we have seen. The same authority speaks even more
emphatically upon this phase of the subject, as follows:
"The
feeling, in the coarser emotions, results from the bodily expression.... My
theory is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the
exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they
occur is the emotion.... Particular perceptions certainly do
produce widespread bodily effects by a sort of immediate physical influence,
antecedent to the arousal of an emotion or emotional idea.... Every one of the
bodily changes, whatsoever it may be, is felt, acutely or
obscurely, the moment it occurs.... If we fancy some strong emotion, and then
try to abstract from our consciousness of it all the feelings of its bodily symptoms,
we have nothing left behind.... A disembodied human emotion is a sheer
nonentity. I do not say that it is a contradiction in the nature of things, or
that pure spirits are necessarily condemned to cold intellectual lives; but I
say that for us emotion disassociated from all bodily feeling
is inconceivable. The more closely I scrutinize my states, the more persuaded I
become that whatever 'coarse' affections and passions I have are in very truth
constituted by, and made up of, those bodily changes which we ordinarily call
their expression or consequence.... But our emotions must always be inwardly what
they are, whatever may be the physiological ground of their apparition. If
they are deep, pure, worthy, spiritual facts on any conceivable theory of their
physiological source, they remain no less deep, pure, spiritual, and worthy of
regard on this present sensational theory."
Kay
says: "Does the mind or spirit of man, whatever it may be, in its actings
in and through the body, leave a material impression or trace in its structure
of every conscious action it performs, which remains permanently fixed, and
forms a material record of all that it has done in the body, to which it can
afterward refer as to a book and recall to mind, making it again, as it were,
present to it?... We find nature everywhere around us recording its movements
and marking the changes it has undergone in material forms,—in the crust of the
earth, the composition of the rocks, the structure of the trees, the
conformation of our bodies, and those spirits of ours, so closely connected
with our material bodies, that so far as we know, they can think no thought,
perform no action, without their presence and co-operation, may have been so
joined in order to preserve a material and lasting record of all that they
think and do."
Marsh
says: "Every human movement, every organic act, every volition, passion,
or emotion, every intellectual process, is accompanied with atomic
disturbance." Picton says: "The soul never does one single action by
itself apart from some excitement of bodily tissue." Emerson says:
"The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river its
channel in the soil; the animal its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf
their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the
sand or stone.... The ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object
covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent. In nature this
self-registration is incessant." Morell says: "The mind depends for
the manifestation of all its activities upon a material organism." Bain
says: "The organ of the mind is not the brain by itself; it is the brain,
nerve, muscles, organs of sense, viscera.... It is uncertain how far even
thought, reminiscence, or the emotions of the past and absent could be
sustained without the more distant communication between the brain and the
rest of the body." And, thus, as we consider the subject carefully we see
that psychology is as much concerned with the physical manifestations of the mental
impulses and states as with the metaphysical aspect of those states—as much
with the Outer Form as with the Inner State—for it is practically impossible to
permanently separate them.
As
an illustration of the physical accompaniment or Outer Form, of the psychical
feeling or Inner State, the following quotation from Darwin's "Origin of
the Emotions," will well serve the purpose:
"Fear
is often preceded by astonishment, and is so far akin to it that both lead to
the senses of sight and hearing being instantly aroused. In both cases the eyes
and mouth are widely opened and the eyebrows raised. The frightened man at
first stands like a statue, motionless and breathless, or crouches down as if
instinctively to escape observation. The heart beats quickly and violently, so
that it palpitates or knocks against the ribs; but it is very doubtful if it
then works more efficiently than usual, so as to send a greater supply of
blood to all parts of the body; for the skin instantly becomes pale as during
incipient faintness. This paleness of the surface, however, is probably in
large part, or is exclusively, due to the vaso-motor centre being affected in
such a manner as to cause the contraction of the small arteries of the skin.
That the skin is much affected under the sense of great fear, we see in the
marvelous manner in which perspiration immediately exudes from it. This
exudation is all the more remarkable, as the surface is then cold, and hence
the term, a cold sweat; whereas the sudorific glands are properly excited into
action when the surface is heated. The hairs also on the skin stand erect, and
the superficial muscles shiver. In connection with the disturbed action of the
heart the breathing is hurried. The salivary glands act imperfectly; the mouth
becomes dry and is often opened and shut. I have noticed that under slight fear
there is a strong tendency to yawn. One of the best marked symptoms is the
trembling of all the muscles of the body; and this is often seen in the
lips. From this cause, and from the dryness of the mouth, the voice
becomes husky or indistinct or may altogether fail.... As fear increases into
an agony of terror, we behold, as under all violent emotions, diversified
results. The heart beats wildly or fails to act and faintness ensues; there is
a death-like pallor; the breathing is labored; the wings of the nostrils are
widely dilated; there is a gasping and convulsive motion of the lips; a tremor
of the hollow cheek, a gulping and catching of the throat; the uncovered and
protruding eyeballs are fixed on the object of terror; or they may roll
restlessly from side to side. The pupils are said to be enormously dilated. All
the muscles of the body may become rigid or may be thrown into convulsive
movements. The hands are alternately clenched and opened, often with a
twitching movement. The arms may be protruded as if to avert some dreadful
danger, or may be thrown wildly over the head. The Rev. Mr. Hagenauer has seen
this latter action in a terrified Australian. In other cases there is a sudden and
uncontrolled tendency to headlong flight; and so strong is this that
the boldest soldiers may be seized with a sudden panic."
In
conclusion, let us say that just as the above striking description of the
master-scientist, Darwin, shows us that the particular emotion has its outer
manifestations—the particular Inner State its Outer Form—so has the
general character of the person its outer manifestation, and
Outer Form. And, just as to the eye of the experienced observer at a distance
(even in the case of a photographic representation, particularly in the case of
a moving picture) may recognize the Inner State from the Outer Form of the
feeling or emotion, so may the experienced character reader interpret the whole
character of the person from the Outer Form thereof. The two interpretations
are based on exactly the same general principles. The inner thought and feeling
manifest in the outer physical form. He who learns the alphabet of Outer Form
may read page after page of the book of Human Nature.
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