Thinking and learning to think

by Nathan Christ Schaeffer

Wrong methods.

He further claims that the visualizing faculty can be developed by education. This is very significant. It shows how unwise methods may harm our children in two directions. The wrong method may keep the mind at work in the concrete when the science under consideration demands more advanced and very different methods of thought. In the other direction the mind may be tied to words, descriptions, book methods, and symbolic representations, whereas the thinking which one’s future duties demand points in the direction of drawing, mechanics, and handicrafts, in which success turns upon the power of thinking in visual images and mental pictures. One cannot forbear quoting his language in so far as it bears upon the thinking developed by schools for manual training in distinction from the thinking developed by the university which aims to fit its students for the professions and for scientific thought and experimental research.

Thinking in images.

“There can, however, be no doubt as to the utility of the visualizing faculty when it is duly subordinated to the higher intellectual operations. A visual image is the most perfect form of mental representation wherever the shape, position, and relations of objects in space are concerned. It is of importance in every handicraft and profession where design is required. The best workmen are those who visualize the whole of what they propose to do before they take a tool in their hands. The village smith and the carpenter who are employed on odd jobs employ it no less for their work than the mechanician, the engineer, and the architect. The lady’s maid who arranges a new dress requires it for the same reason as the decorator employed on a palace, or the agent who lays out great estates. Strategists, artists of all denominations, physicists who contrive new experiments, and, in short, all who do not follow routine, have need of it. The pleasure its use can afford is immense. I have many correspondents who say that the delight of recalling beautiful scenery and great works of art is the highest that they know; they carry whole picture-galleries in their minds. Our bookish and wordy education tends to repress this valuable gift of nature. A faculty that is of importance in all technical and artistic occupations, that gives accuracy to our perceptions, and justness to our generalizations is starved by lazy disuse instead of being cultivated judiciously in such a way as will, on the whole, bring the best return. I believe that a serious study of the best method of developing and utilizing this faculty, without prejudice to the practice of abstract thought in symbols, is one of the many pressing desiderata in the yet unformed science of education.”[30]

What is meant by the process of unselfing the will? If the maxim is interpreted to mean that education must eliminate the selfishness of the individual, and teach him to will and act for the good of humanity, especially of all with whom he comes in contact, the maxim points out an important end of education. If, on the other hand, the maxim is made to mean that the self, with its peculiarities, is to be sacrificed in the educative process, it carries a contradiction on its face. The lower self may have to be sacrificed in order that the higher self may be conserved. He that loseth his life shall save it; he that saveth his life shall lose it, is the teaching of Holy Writ.

Open a dictionary and search for words indicating how the belief in the necessity of emancipating life from the dominion of self has been woven into the very texture of the English language. Egotism, which originally meant the excessive use of the pronoun I, has come to signify all kinds of self-praise, self-exaltation, and to include all manner of parading one’s virtues and excellencies; egoism denotes a state of mind in which the feelings are concentrated on self. Vanity and self-conceit are two words closely allied to the natural selfishness of the human heart. The former indicates the feeling which springs from the thought that we are highly esteemed by others; the latter is an overweening opinion of one’s talents, capacities, and importance. There is another list of compound words, like self-denial, self-sacrifice, self-abnegation, which point to the importance of eliminating self and thoughts of self from the soul’s activities in thinking and willing. Virtues like humility, love, service, sacrifice, are lauded in every Christian land. They are the Christian virtues exemplified by Jesus of Nazareth, who lived to do good to others, and who died that the sinning, sorrowing millions on earth might find peace and consolation for their troubled souls.

Selfishness.

The unselfing of the will depends as much upon right thinking as does the unsensing of the mind. The untrained mind deals too much with things near at hand in the objective world; the uneducated will deals too much with the thing nearest to every man in the subjective world,—the individual self. The thought of self may enter so thoroughly into the feelings and activities of the soul that the rights of others are never thought of in the gratification of self and in the efforts at self-aggrandizement and self-glorification. Selfish desire and selfish ambition may dominate the soul and cause the individual to trample upon the dearest rights of others. The millions which some men heap up are squeezed from the productive toil of thousands, perhaps millions, of human hands. Colossal fortunes can seldom be made without reducing a considerable number of human beings to a condition of living from hand to mouth, to a state of chronic poverty. That the inordinate ambition of a masterful politician may be gratified, the hopes of other aspirants must be frustrated and their rights must be trampled upon. Hence in the end there is little happiness among office-holders and office-seekers. The selfishness of great conquerors is still more inexcusable. In the effort to gratify an unholy ambition the lives of thousands are sacrificed, their blood is spilt upon the battle-field, and their health is undermined by suffering and disease. If the men who send the soldier to the front were themselves compelled to sleep in ditches, or to expose themselves to the fire of machine-guns upon the open field, wars would not be declared, or, if declared, would soon cease.

Self-sacrifice.

The higher life demands that the lower self be subordinated, regulated and sublimated in the education of man. The individual may be taught to find happiness in self-sacrifice for the sake of others, in deeds of love, charity, and benevolence. That this may result from the educative process, there should occur a change of heart, resulting in a change of view and in a transformation of the habits of thought so that self is seen in its true relation to mankind and to God, so that the things of time and sense shall stand in true relation to the verities of eternity and the interests of the higher life.