I am not sure that Dr. Walsh’s warning about reading is needed in America. “Reading,” he says, “requires the least mental labor of almost any pursuit, and hardly a person but sooner or later finds himself putting off something that ought to be done by pretending that he is accomplishing more by his reading. Reading in itself is excellent, but it is vastly overused to excuse the inaction of weak and lazy people.” No doubt; but of 961 people I personally know well, 857 spend every evening listening to the radio, attending a moving picture, or playing cards and dancing. Of the remaining 104, only eighty-one read.
Yet Dr. Walsh is dead right when he says that “the best good habit in the world is the proper use of time”—though the acquisition of more hours in a day would be helpful—and his Success in a New Era is a singularly honest and helpful book, free from even one patent formula for attaining “success.”
The Foundations of Personality, by Abraham Myerson, M.D., though on more general lines, is of no less value. Dr. Myerson analyzes the elements of character—which is not, of course, the same thing as mind. Character is intimately related to mind, as the brain and body are intimately related. Character may be affected by both the mind and the body; it is not dependent on either. Dr. Myerson describes the general types of character, the tradition of each and its social heredity; and he follows the energies of men as they expend themselves in instinct and emotion and intelligence. Although a physician and a psychologist, he writes from the standpoint of one who deeply shares the everyday aspirations and conflicts of his fellows. His comments on the influences exerted upon character, and on the expression of character in work, play, humor, sex and religion are of acute interest. His book’s great practical value is dual: it helps toward self-understanding and it gives a good deal of help toward insight into the characters of others—a matter which usually has an important part in determining our own success or failure in life.
Simpler than The Foundations of Personality because of a much narrower scope is Arthur Holmes’s Controlled Power: A Study of Laziness and Achievement. This popularly-written book by a professor of psychology is almost a handbook on the subject of laziness, its causes and cure. For not all laziness comes from the same cause, and not all apparent laziness is laziness in fact. There is such a thing as the indolence of genius, well-illustrated by Professor Holmes in the cases of Dr. Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, and the naturalist, John Muir. There is the languor of youth, when the rapid growth of the body may produce a kind of inertia either physical or mental. The aversion of the normal boy to study is easily explained, Professor Holmes holds. What people have done much they like much to do; and what they have done little they like little to do. What the human race has not done very long is hard for individuals of the race to do. The human race has hunted and fished for thousands of years; it has studied for a very few centuries, and studied in the mass for only about one century. Of course the boy will prefer to hunt or fish!
Controlled Power is so entirely readable that one feels as if it should be put in the hands of every parent and school teacher. Its wisdom could do much for them, as well as for the child.
Teachers and many parents could read advantageously also The Normal Mind, by William H. Burnham, professor of pedagogy and school hygiene in Clark University. If our knowledge of what we call mental hygiene shows us anything, it shows us that most people do not utilize the brains they have. The whole purpose of mental hygiene is to teach how to make the most of one’s inborn ability. The power to think with clearness means usually the throwing off of bad mental habits.
Professor Burnham, teaching at G. Stanley Hall’s institution and with a background of many years’ experience and observation, has produced a book which most satisfactorily compends what we know about mental hygiene to date. His presentation of the school task, of mental attitudes, of suggestion and mental hygiene, of success and failure and discipline, offers in practical form the wisdom we have regarding mental health and how to attain it.
Twelve Tests of Character, by the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, D.D., has amply proven its popularity; indeed, it has for months been among the ten best-selling books of non-fiction throughout America. Dr. Fosdick’s tests are tests of character in action, not conventional qualities nor abstract traits. Written with reference to Christian teaching, the book is nevertheless one of extreme popular appeal. Nothing of the sort has more “rush” of style and pointedness, more irresistibility in brushing aside objections and obstacles. Undoubtedly the wealth of illustrative instances and anecdotes has greatly enhanced its popularity.
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But my chapter runs too long. I have saved for the end, and will not quit leaving unmentioned, Albert Payson Terhune’s Now That I’m Fifty. Is Mr. Terhune’s outspokenness a bit brutal? I do not think so. He is fifty and knows whereof he writes; why should he not tell what he knows? Is it cruel to say that one should have money, such money as he can acquire, with which to meet fifty? No, it is common sense. Is it bitter to point out, with unmistakable instances, that fifty cannot do the things that twenty does? Most decidedly not; for Mr. Terhune points out those other things that twenty cannot do, and that fifty can. Fifty cannot run five miles; twenty can. Very well; when Mr. Terhune was in his twenties and tried to work a few hours at night after the work of the day, he went all to pieces. But now, at fifty, he can work better than ever before in his life; longer hours, harder work; and come out of it smiling. In fact, in Now That I’m Fifty he practically says: “Look at the things I used to be able to do and can do no longer; and thank the Lord I can’t!” This little book of Terhune’s, not much more than an extended essay, is so honest, so merry, so frank and so mellow that I think fifty can safely put it in the hands of those who aspire to be fifty.