Chapter 6. Avoidance Of Conscious Use Of The Will

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_ CHAPTER VI. AVOIDANCE OF CONSCIOUS USE OF THE WILL

"Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners."
Othello.

Doctor Austin O'Malley, in his little volume, "Keystones of Thought", says: "When you are conscious of your stomach or your will you are ill." We all appreciate thoroughly, as the result of modern progress in the knowledge of the influences of the mind on the body, how true is the first part of this saying, but comparatively few people realize the truth of the second part. The latter portion of this maxim is most important for our consideration. It should always be in the minds of those who want to use their own wills either for the purpose of making themselves well, or keeping themselves healthy, but above all, should never be forgotten by those who want to help others get over various ills that are manifestly due in whole or in part to the failure to use the vital energies in the body as they should be employed.

Conscious use of the will, except at the beginning of a series of activities, is always a mistake. It is extremely wasteful of internal energy. It adds greatly to the difficulty of accomplishing whatever is undertaken. It includes, above all, watching ourselves do things, constantly calculating how much we are accomplishing and whether we are doing all that we should be doing, and thus makes useless demands on power partly by diversion of attention, partly by impairment of concentration, but above all by adding to the friction because of the inspection that is at work.

The old kitchen saw is "a watched kettle never boils." The real significance of the expression is of course that it seems to take so long for the water to boil that we become impatient while watching and it looks to us as though the boiling process would really never occur. This is still more strikingly evident when we are engaged in watching our own activities and wondering whether they are as efficient as they should be. The lengthening of time under these circumstances is an extremely important factor in bringing about tiredness. Ask any human being unaccustomed to note the passage of time to tell you when two minutes have elapsed; inevitably he will suggest at the end of thirty to forty seconds that the two minutes must be up. Only by counting his pulse or by going through some regular mechanical process will he be enabled to appreciate the passage of time in anything like its proper course. When watched thus, time seems to pass ever so much more slowly than it would otherwise.

It is extremely important then that people should not acquire the impression that they must be consciously using their will to bring themselves into good health and keep themselves there, for that will surely defeat their purpose. What is needed is a training of the will to do things by a succession of harder and harder tasks until the ordinary acts of life seem comparatively easy. Intellectual persuasion as to the efficiency of the will in this matter means very little. The ordinary feeling that reasoning means much in such matters is a fallacy. Much thinking about them is only disturbing of action as a rule and Hamlet's expression that the "native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought" is a striking bit of psychology.

Shakespeare had no illusions with regard to the place of the will in life and more than any English author has emphasized it. I have ventured to illustrate this by quotations from him under each chapter heading, but there are many more quite as applicable that might readily be found. He knew above all how easy it was for human beings to lessen the power of their wills and has told us of "the cloy'd will that satiateth unsatisfied desire" and "the bridles of our wills", and has given us such adjectives as "benumbed" and "neutral" and "doting", which demonstrates his recognition of how men weaken their wills by over-deliberation.

The mode of training in the army is of course founded on this mode of thinking. The young men in the United States Army want to accomplish every iota of their duty and are not only willing but anxious to do everything that is expected of them. There were some mighty difficult tasks ahead of them over in Europe and our method of preparing the men was not by emphasizing their duty and dinning into their ears and minds how great the difficulty would be and how they must nerve themselves for the task. Such a mode of preparation would probably have been discouraging rather than helpful. But they were trained in exercises of various kinds in an absolutely regular life under plain living in the midst of hard work until their wills responded to the word of command quite unconsciously and immediately without any need of further prompting. Their bodies were trained until every available source of energy was at command, so that when they wanted to do things they set about them without more ado, and as they were used to being fatigued they were not constantly engaged in dreading lest they should hurt themselves, or fostering fears that they might exhaust their energies or that their tiredness, even when apparently excessive, would mean anything more than a passing state that rest would repair completely.

If at every emergency of their life at war soldiers had to go through a series of conscious persuasions to wake up their will and set their energies at work, and if they had to occupy themselves every time in presenting motives why this activity should not be delayed, then military discipline, at least in so far as it involves prompt obedience, would almost inevitably be considerable of a joke. What is needed is unthinking, immediate obedience, and this can be secured only by the formation of deeply graven habits which enable a man to set about the next thing that duty calls for at once.

Every action that we perform is the result of an act of the will, but we do not have to advert to that as a rule; whenever any one gets into a state of mind where it is necessary to be constantly adverting to it, then, as was said at the beginning of this chapter, there is something the matter with the will. The faculty is being hampered in its action by consciousness, and such hampering leads to a great waste of energy.

The will is the great, unconscious faculty in us. By far the greater part of what has come unfortunately to be called the unconscious and the subconscious and that has occupied so much of the attention of modern writers on psychological subjects is really the will at work. It attains its results we know not how, and it is prompted to their accomplishment in ways that are often very difficult for us to understand. Its effects are often spoken of as due to the submerged self or the subliminal self or the other self, but it is only in rare and pathological cases as a rule that such expressions are justified once the place of the will is properly recognized.

It is often said, for instance, that the power some people have of waking after a certain period of sleep at night or after a short nap during the daytime, a power that a great many more people would possess if only they deliberately practised it, is due to the subconsciousness or the subliminal personality of the individual which wakes him up at the determined time. Why those terms should be used when other things are accomplished by the human will just as mysteriously is rather difficult to understand. It is well recognized that if an individual in the ordinary waking state wants to do something after the lapse of an hour or so he will do it, provided his will is really awake to the necessity of accomplishing it. It is true that he may become so absorbed in his current occupation as to miss the time, but such abstraction usually means that he was not sufficiently interested in the duty that was to be performed as to keep the engagement with himself, or else that he is an individual in whom the intellectual over-shadows the voluntary life. We speak of him as an impractical man.

We all know the danger there is in putting off calling some one by telephone on being told that "the line is busy", for not infrequently it will happen that several hours will elapse before we think of the matter again and then perhaps it may be too late. If we set a definite time limit with ourselves, however, then our will will prompt us quite as effectively, though quite as inexplicably, at the expiration of that time as it awakes those who have resolved to be aroused at a predetermined moment. We may miss our telephone engagement with ourselves, but we practically never miss an important train, because having deeply impressed upon ourselves the necessity for not missing this, our will arouses us to activity in good time. There is not the slightest necessity, however, for appealing to the unconscious or the subconscious in this. It is true that there is a wonderful sentinel within us that awakes us from daydreams or disturbs the ordinary course of some occupation to turn our attention to the next important duty that we should perform. We know that this sentinel is quite apart from our consciousness; but the power we have of setting ourselves to doing anything is exemplified in very much the same way. When I want a book, I do not know what it is that sets my muscles in motion and brings me to a shelf and then directs my attention to choosing the one I shall take down and consult. It is an unconscious activity, but not the activity of unconsciousness, which is only a contradiction in terms. [Footnote 4]

[Footnote 4: It is true that there is a particular phase of our intellectual effort included under the modern terms unconscious or subconscious that is mysterious enough to deserve a special name, but we already have an excellent term for this quality which is not vague but thoroughly descriptive of its activity. This is intuition,--a word that has been in use for nearly a thousand years now and signifies the immediate perception of a truth,--by a flash as it were. We may know nothing about a subject and may have only begun to think about it, when there flashes on us a truth that has perhaps never occurred to any one else and certainly has never been in our minds before. 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. Only the term for it is new, however, for intuition has been the subject of special intensive study for a long while. Indeed, the reason why the old-time poet appealed to the muses for aid and the modern poet suggests inspiration as the source of his poetic thought, is because both of them knew that their best thoughts flash on them, not as the result of long and hard thinking, but by some process in which with the greatest facility come perceptions that even they themselves are surprised to learn that they have. To say that such things come from the unconscious is simply to ignore this wonderful power of original thought, that is, primary perception. Emerson suggested that intuition represented all the knowledge that came without tuition, as if this were the etymology, and the hint is excellent for the meaning, though the real derivation of the word has no relation to tuition. To attribute these original thoughts to the unconscious or any partly conscious faculty in us is to ignore a great deal of careful study of psychology before our time. It is besides to entangle oneself in the absurdity of discussing an unconscious consciousness.]

While many people are inclined to feel almost helpless in the presence of the idea that it is their unconscious selves that enable them to do things or initiate modes of activity, the feeling is quite different when we substitute for that the word "will." All of us recognize that our wills can be trained to do things, and while at first it may require a conscious effort, we can by the formation of habits not only make them easy, but often delightful and sometimes quite indispensable to our sense of well being. Walking is extremely difficult at the beginning, when its movements are consciously performed, but it becomes a very satisfying sort of exercise after a while and then almost literally a facile, nearly indispensable activity of daily life, so that we feel the need for it, if we are deprived of it.

This has to be done with regard to the activities that make for health. We have to form habits that render them easy, pleasant, and even necessary for our good feelings. This can be done, as has been suggested in the chapter on habits, but we have to avoid any such habit as that of consciously using the will. That is a bad habit that some people let themselves drop into but it should be corrected. Having set our activities to work we must, as far as possible, forget about them and let them go on for themselves. It is not only possible but even easy and above all almost necessary that we should do this. Hence at the beginning people must not expect that they will find the use of their will easy in suppressing pain, lessening tiredness, and facilitating accomplishment, but they must look forward to the time quite confidently when it will be so. In the meantime the less attention paid to the process of training, the better and more easily will the needed habits be formed.

Failure to secure results is almost inevitable when conscious use of the will comes into the problem. As a rule a direct appeal should not be made to people to use their wills, but they should be aroused and stimulated in various ways and particularly by the force of example. What has made it so comparatively easy for our young soldiers to use their wills and train their bodies and get into a condition where they are capable of accomplishing what they would have thought quite impossible before, has been above all the influence of example. A lot of other young men of their own age are standing these things exemplarily. They are seen performing what is expected of them without complaint, or at least without refusal, and so every effort is put forth to do likewise without any time spent on reflection as to how difficult it all is or how hard to bear or how much they are to be pitied. It is not long before what was hard at first becomes under repetition even easy and a source of fine satisfaction. Getting up at five in the morning and working for sixteen hours with only comparatively brief intervals for relaxation now and then, and often being burdened with additional duties of various kinds which must be worked in somehow or other, seems a very difficult matter until one has done it for a while. Then one finds everything gets done almost without conscious effort. Will power flows through the body and lends hitherto unexpected energy, but of this there is no consciousness; indeed, conscious reflection on it would hamper action. No wonder that as a result of the facility acquired, one comes to readily credit the assumption that the will is a spiritual power and that some source of energy apart from the material is supplying the initiative and the resources of vitality that have made accomplishment so much easier than would have been imagined beforehand. This is quite literally what training of the will means: training ourselves to use all our powers to the best advantage, not putting obstacles in their way nor brakes on their exertion, but also not thinking very much about them or making resolutions. The way to do things is to do them, not think about them.

Professor James is, as always, particularly happy in his mode of expressing this great truth. He insists that the way to keep the will active is not by constantly thinking about it and supplying new motives and furbishing up old motives for its activity, but by cultivating the faculty of effort. His paragraph in this regard is of course well known, and yet it deserves to be repeated here because it represents the essence of what is needed to make the will ready to do its best work. He says:

"As a fine practical maxim, relative to these habits of the will, we may, then, offer something like this: Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time and possibly may never bring him a return. But if the fire does come, his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him, and when his softer fellow mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast."

To do things on one's will without very special interest is an extremely difficult matter. It can be done more readily when one is young and when certain secondary aims are in view besides the mere training of the will, but to do things merely for will training becomes so hard eventually that some excuse is found and the task is almost inevitably given up. Exercising for instance in a gymnasium just for the sake of taking exercise or keeping in condition becomes so deadly dull after a while that unless there is a trainer to keep a man up to the mark, his exercise dwindles from day to day until it amounts to very little. Men who are growing stout about middle life will take up the practice of a cold bath after ten minutes or more of morning exercises with a good deal of enthusiasm, but they will not keep it up long, or if they do continue for several months, any change in the daily routine will provide an excuse to drop it. Companionship and above all competition in any way greatly helps, but it takes too much energy of the will to make the effort alone. Besides, when the novelty has worn off and routine has replaced whatever interest existed in the beginning in watching the effect of exercise on the muscles, the lack of interest makes the exercise of much less value than before. If there is not a glow of satisfaction with it, the circulation, especially to the periphery to the body, is not properly stimulated and some of the best effect of the exercise is lost. Athletes often say of solitary exercise that it leaves them cold, which is quite a literal description of the effect produced on them. The circulation of the surface is not stimulated as it is when there is interest in what is being done and so the same warmth is not produced at the surface of the body.

It is comparatively easy to persuade men who need outdoor exercise to walk home from their offices in the afternoon when the distance is not too far, but it is difficult to get them to keep it up. The walk becomes so monotonous a routine after a time that all sorts of excuses serve to interrupt the habit, and then it is not long before it is done so irregularly as to lose most of its value. Here as in all exercise, companionship which removes conscious attention from advertence to the will greatly aids. On the other hand, as has been so clearly demonstrated in recent years, it is very easy to induce men to go out and follow a little ball over the hills in the country, an ideal form of exercise, merely because they are interested in their score or in beating an opponent. Any kind of a game that involves competition makes people easily capable of taking all sorts of trouble. Instead of being tired by their occupation in this way and not wanting to repeat it, they become more and more interested and spend more and more time at it. The difference between gymnastics and sport in this regard is very marked.

In sport the extraneous interest adds to the value of the exercise and makes it ever so much easier to continue; when it sets every nerve tingling with the excitement of the game, it is doing all the more good. Gymnastics grow harder unless in some way associated with competition, or with the effort to outdo oneself, while indulgence in sport becomes ever easier. Many a young man would find it an intolerable bore and an increasingly difficult task if asked to give as much time and energy to some form of hard work as he does to some sport. He feels tired after sport, but not exhausted, and becomes gradually able to stand more and more before he need give up, thus showing that he is constantly increasing his muscular capacity.

Conscious training of the will is then practically always a mistake. It is an extremely difficult thing to do, and the amount of inhibition which accumulates to oppose it serves after a time to neutralize the benefit to be derived. Good habits should be formed, but not merely for the sake of forming them. There should be some ulterior purpose and if possible some motive that lifts men up to the performance of duty, no matter how difficult it is.

Our young men who went to the camps demonstrated how much can be accomplished in this manner. They were asked to get up early in the morning, to work hard for many hours in the day, or take long walks, sometimes carrying heavy burdens, and were so occupied that they had but very little time to themselves. They were encouraged to take frequent cold baths, which implied further waste of heat energy, and then were very plainly fed, though of course with a good, rounded diet, well-balanced, but without any frills and with very little in it that would tempt any appetite except that of a hungry man. They learned the precious lesson that hunger is the best sauce for food.

Most of these men were pushed so hard that only an army officer perfectly confident of what he was doing and well aware that all of his men had been thoroughly examined by a physician and had nothing organically wrong with them would have dared to do it. A good many of us had the chance to see how university men took the military regime. Long hours of drilling and of hard work in the open made them so tired that in the late afternoon they could just lie down anywhere and go to sleep. I have seen young fellows asleep on porches or in the late spring on the grass and once saw a number of them who found excellent protection from the sun in what to them seemed nice soft beds--at least they slept well in them--inside a series of large earthen-ware pipes that were about to be put down for a sewer. Some of them were pushed so hard, considering how little physical exercise they had taken before, that they fainted while on drill. Quite a few of them were in such a state of nervous tension that they fainted on being vaccinated. Almost needless to say, had they been at home, any such effect would have been a signal for the prompt cessation of such work as they were doing, for the home people would have been quite sure that serious injury would be done to their boys. These young fellows themselves did not think so. Their physicians were confident that with no organic lesion present the faint was a neurotic derangement and not at all a symptom of exhaustion. The young soldiers would have felt ashamed if there had been any question of their stopping training. They felt that they could make good as well as their fellows. They would have resented sympathy and much more pity. They went on with their work because they were devoted to a great cause. After a time, it became comparatively easy for them to accomplish things that would hitherto have been quite impossible and for which they themselves had no idea that they possessed the energy. It was this high purpose that inspired them to let more and more of their internal energy loose without putting a brake on, until finally the habit of living up to this new maximum of accomplishment became second nature and therefore natural and easy of accomplishment.

Here is the defect in systems which promise to help people to train their wills by talking much about it, and by persuading them that it can be done, that all they have to do is to set about it. Unless one has some fine satisfying purpose in doing things, their doing is difficult and fails to accomplish as much good for the doer as would otherwise be the case. Conscious will activity requires, to use old-fashioned psychological terms, the exercise of two faculties at the same time, the consciousness and the will. This adds to the difficulty of willing. What is needed is a bait of interest held up before the will, constantly tempting it to further effort but without any continuing consciousness on the part of the individual that he must will it and keep on willing it. That must ever be a hampering factor in the case. Human nature does not like imperatives and writhes and wastes energy under them. On the contrary, optatives are pleasant and give encouragement without producing a contrary reaction; and it is this state of mind and will that is by far the best for the individual.

Above all, it is important that the person forming new habits should feel that there is nothing else to be done except the hard things that have been outlined. If there is any mode of escape from the fulfillment of hard tasks, human nature will surely find it. If our young soldiers had felt that they did not have to perform their military duties and that there was some way to avoid them, the taking of the training would have proved extremely difficult. They just had to take it; there was no way out, so they pushed themselves through the difficulties and then after a time they found that they were tapping unsuspected sources of energy in themselves. For when people have to do things, they find that they can do ever so much more than they thought they could, and in the doing, instead of exhausting themselves, they actually find it easier to accomplish more and more with ever less difficulty. The will must by habit be made so prompt to obey that obedience will anticipate thought in the matter and sometimes contravene what reason would dictate if it had a chance to act. The humorous story of the soldier who, carrying his dinner on a plate preparatory to eating it, was greeted by a wag with the word "Attention!" in martial tones, and dropped his dinner to assume the accustomed attitude, is well known. Similar practical jokes are said to have been played, on a certain number of occasions in this war, with the thoroughly trained young soldier.

The help of the will to the highest degree is obtained not by a series of resolutions but by doing whatever one wishes to do a number of times until it becomes easy and the effort to accomplish it is quite unconscious. Reason does not help conduct much, but a trained will is of the greatest possible service. It can only be secured, however, by will action. The will is very like the muscles. There is little use in showing people how to accomplish muscle feats; they must do them for themselves. The less consciousness there is involved in this, the better. _

Read next: Chapter 7. What The Will Can Do

Read previous: Chapter 5. Self-Pity

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