All The Mind Page 2
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How Past Experience Is Conserved
PAST EXPERIENCE CONSERVED IN BOTH MENTAL AND PHYSICAL TERMS.--If past experience plays so important a part in our welfare, how, then, is it to be conserved so that we may secure its benefits? Here, as elsewhere, we find the mind and body working in ... How We Attend
Someone has said that if our attention is properly trained we should be able to look at the point of a cambric needle for half an hour without winking. But this is a false idea of attention. The ability to look at the point of a cambric needle for h... How We Come To Know The External World
There is a marvel about our coming to know the external world which we shall never be able fully to understand. We have come by this knowledge so gradually and unconsciously that it now appears to us as commonplace, and we take for granted many thin... Importance Of Health And Vigor Of The Nervous System
Parallel with opportunities for proper stimuli and response the nervous system must possess good tonicity, or vigor. This depends in large degree on general health and nutrition, with freedom from overfatigue. No favorableness of environment nor exc... Improving The Power Of Attention
While attention is no doubt partly a natural gift, yet there is probably no power of the mind more susceptible to training than is attention. And with attention, as with every other power of body and mind, the secret of its development lies in its u... Individual Differences In Imagery
IMAGES TO BE VIEWED BY INTROSPECTION.--The remainder of the description of images will be easier to understand, for each of you can know just what is meant in every case by appealing to your own mind. I beg of you not to think that I am presenting s... Inter-relation Of Impression And Expression
No impression without corresponding expression has become a maxim in both physiology and psychology. Inner life implies self-expression in external activities. The stream of impressions pouring in upon us hourly from our environment must have means ... Interest Fundamental In Education
Some educators have feared that in finding our occupations interesting, we shall lose all power of effort and self-direction; that the will, not being called sufficiently into requisition, must suffer from non-use; that we shall come to do the inter... Judgment
But in the building up of percepts and concepts, as well as in making use of them after they are formed, another process of thinking enters; namely, the process of judging. NATURE OF JUDGMENT.--Judging enters more or less into all our thinking, f... Law Of The Appearance And Disappearance Of Instincts
No child is born with all its instincts ripe and ready for action. Yet each individual contains within his own inner nature the law which determines the order and time of their development. INSTINCTS APPEAR IN SUCCESSION AS REQUIRED.--It is not we... Laws Underlying Memory
The development of a good memory depends in no small degree on the closeness with which we follow certain well-demonstrated laws. THE LAW OF ASSOCIATION.--The law of association, as we have already seen, is fundamental. Upon it the whole structure... Localization Of Function In The Nervous System
DIVISION OF LABOR.--Division of labor is the law in the organic world as in the industrial. Animals of the lowest type, such as the amoeba, do not have separate organs for respiration, digestion, assimilation, elimination, etc., the one tissue perfo... Memory Devices
Many devices have been invented for training or using the memory, and not a few worthless systems have been imposed by conscienceless fakers upon uninformed people. All memorizing finally must go back to the fundamental laws of brain activity and th... Mood And Disposition
The sum total of all the feeling accompanying the various sensory and thought processes at any given time results in what we may call our feeling tone, or mood. HOW MOOD IS PRODUCED.--During most of our waking hours, and, indeed, during our sleep... Nature Of Attention
It is by attention that we gather and mass our mental energy upon the critical and important points in our thinking. In the last chapter we saw that consciousness is not distributed evenly over the whole field, but piled up, now on this object of th...