menu_book Chapter 9

Section 9 of Constructive Conscious Control of the Individual by F. Mathias Alexander. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Part 2. Chapter 2. Incorrect Conception. In the matter of conception, the first step is to convince the pupil that his present misdirected activities are the result of incorrect conception and of imperfect sensory appreciation, feeling. Now, in this regard, I would at once warn those who are inexperienced in this matter

that the pupil, as a rule, will not be convinced on this point by discussion and argument alone. A pupil will indeed often assure his teacher that he sees the argument, and from his standpoint this statement may be true. But, in my experience, there is only one way by which a teacher can really convince a pupil that his sense of feeling is misleading him when he starts to carry out a movement,

and that is by demonstration upon the pupil's own organism. A mirror should be used so that the pupil, as far as possible, can have ocular demonstration as well. The next point of importance to be impressed upon the pupil is the necessity for listening carefully to the teacher's words,

and for being quite clear as to the meaning that these words are intended to convey before he attempts to act upon them. This may seem like a truism, but, as a matter of fact, it is at this point that we come up against a rock

on which even a highly experienced teacher may make shipwreck. For in every case, the pupil's conception of what his teacher is trying to convey to him by words will be in accordance with his, the pupil's, psychophysical makeup. Footnote.

In this sense, it can be truly said that the pupil hears only what he wants to hear, because what he wants is decided by the standards fixed by his present habits. If, for instance, the pupil has fixed ideas in some particular direction, these fixed ideas must inevitably limit his capacity for quote-unquote listening carefully, a capacity

which we are apt to take so much for granted, that is for receiving the new ideas as the teacher is trying to convey them to him. In this connection, therefore, a teacher, in dealing with the shortcomings of a particular case, must give due consideration to the pupil's fixed conceptions, otherwise these will greatly complicate the problem for both teacher and pupil.

Certain of these fixed ideas are encountered in the case of almost every pupil. ideas, for example, as to what constitutes the right and what the wrong method of going to work as a pupil. Fixed ideas in regard to the necessity for concentration, if success is to attend the efforts of pupil and teacher. Also a fixed belief, based on subconscious guidance, that if a pupil is corrected for a defect, he should be taught to do something in order to correct it, instead of

being taught, as a first principle, how to prevent inhibition, the wrong thing from being done. The teacher experienced in the work of re-education can diagnose at once, by the expression and use of the pupil's eyes, the degree of influence upon him of such conceptions, and at each step in the training he should take preventive measures to counteract this influence. It is absurd to try to teach a person who is in a more or less agitated or even anxious condition. We must have

that calm condition which is characteristic of a person whose reasoning processes are operative. The list of fixed conceptions given above might be increased a hundredfold. The peculiarities of fixed conceptions, like peculiarities of handwriting, differ greatly in different people, and the form they take depends, as in the case of handwriting again, upon the individual's psychophysical makeup.

Footnote. All that is written here about fixed conceptions applies equally to the teacher as to the pupil. End of footnote. A teaching experience of over 25 years in a psychophysical sphere has given me a very real knowledge of the psychophysical difficulties

which stand in the way of many adults who need re-education and coordination. And as a result of this experience, I have no hesitation in stating that the pupil's fixed ideas and conceptions are the cause of the major part of his difficulties. I will now take certain of these fixed conceptions from my teaching experience, because they are so widespread and have such far-reaching and harmful effects upon life in general. And I will begin with the habit which has become established in most pupils trained on a subconscious basis, and to which we have already referred, viz. that of trying to correct one defect by doing something else. Illustration 1

Quote-unquote, doing it right Let's suppose that a person decides that he will take lessons in re-education from a certain teacher and comes for the first lesson. The teacher proceeds to indicate to the pupil, firstly, the results of his diagnosis of the pupil's psychophysical peculiarities, delusions, and defects, which he proposes to attempt to eradicate, and secondly, the means whereby the eradication is to be effected. It invariably follows that by the time the teacher has concluded his statement, the pupil will have formed his own conception, often diametrically the reverse of his teachers, of the facts disclosed. and unless he is a very unusual person

he will already have come to a decision in accordance with his preconceived ideas 1. as to the cause or causes underlying the facts disclosed 2. as to the ends which will be gained by the removal of these causes

and, most important of all, 3. as to the means he will adopt in order to gain these ends. In this last decision he will be influenced by his fixed belief that in order to secure the end he desires, his first duty is to do something, as he understands doing,

and to do it right, as he understands doing it right. This is not surprising, as it is probable that all his former teachers will have instilled into him from his earliest days the idea that when something is wrong, he must do something to try and get it right. Beyond this, he will have been told that, if he is conscientious, he will always try to be right, not wrong, so that this desire to be right will have become an obsession in which, as in so many other matters, his conscience must be satisfied.

Footnote. If we think the matter out, we shall be forced to admit that in such matters a person's insistence on satisfying conscience is too often merely an attempt to unload responsibility. He is aware of certain orthodox ways of dealing with his difficulties. His own experience of these ways is that they have mostly ended in failure. Still, he argues that if he tries them and they fail, he at least has done his best. In other words, he tries to satisfy his conscience, not his reasoning intelligence.

He embraces this way of going to work because it is the easy way. If he once stopped to reason the thing out, and based his judgment on the experience gained from the knowledge of his previous failures, he would have to discard these orthodox plans and seek new ones. This would not be the easy way.

It would be the difficult way. It would mean, among other things, a painful dissection of his psychophysical peculiarities, defects, prejudices, sensory excesses, successes, and these are to him just as much a manifestation of his malconditions as the diseased liver and kidney are in the case of the drunkard. To give his liver and kidneys a chance, the

drunkard would have to give up drinking wine, but he has not the control to do this. So with the pupil in our illustration. He knows that certain psychophysical habits are responsible for his condition, but these habits have become a part of him. They appeal to his perverted sense of feeling, and so he will not make the effort to give them up. End of footnote. As soon as the teacher observes that the pupil, following out his fixed idea, is setting out to do something he thinks right to

bring about the end he desires, he will point out to the pupil that, in trying to remedy his defects by quote-unquote doing something himself, he is relying upon his own judgment, but that his, the pupil's, judgment cannot be sound in this respect

based as it is on his previous incorrect sensory experiences. The teacher will therefore advise the pupil to stop relying on his own judgment in these matters and instead to listen to the new instructions and to allow the teacher to give him

by means of manipulation than you correct sensory experiences. The idea, however, of ceasing to do the wrong thing as a preliminary measure in re-education makes little or no appeal at first to the average pupil,

who in most cases goes on trying to quote-unquote be right in spite of his experience and of all that his teacher may say. Footnote. He is so possessed with the idea of specific cure that the principle of prevention, inhibition, is accepted by him at such a low valuation

that in 99 cases out of 100 it will be ignored. And a footnote. There are many reasons for this, chief among them being, in my opinion, the fact to which I have already drawn the reader's attention. Namely, that in our conception of how to employ the different parts of our mechanisms,

we are guided almost entirely by a sense of feeling, which is more or less unreliable. We get into the habit of performing a certain act in a certain way, and we experience a certain feeling in connection with it which we recognize as right. The act and the particular feeling associated with it become one in our recognition. If anything should cause us to change our conception, however, in regard to the manner of performing the act, and if we adopt

a new method in accordance with this changed conception, we shall experience a new feeling in performing the act which we do not recognize as right. We then realize that what we have hitherto recognized as right is wrong. For instance, suppose that the teacher, in trying to change some malcondition in the pupil, asks him to bend his knees. The pupil, thinking only of what his teacher asks him, the end, and desiring to do it right, as he understands

doing it right in connection with the act of bending his knees, bends his knees, and bends them as he has always bent them, that is, with a great amount of unnecessary tension and pressure, interfering with his equilibrium, shortening his spine by increasing the curve, etc., stiffening his neck, and so attains his end, the bending of his knees, but at the cost of undue strain and disadvantage in the use of the organism. I do not mean, of course,

that the pupil is conscious of all this. He probably never thought of how, the means whereby, he has performed such acts as bending his knees, and though he knows in a general way that something is wrong with him, else it is improbable that he would be coming to a teacher at all, he has not associated this something wrong with anything that he has been doing himself, that is, with his own misdirected activities. Therefore, when he bends his knees in response to his teacher's request,

he is not conscious of anything being wrong in his manner of doing it. He bends them as he has always been accustomed to bend them. This satisfies him. It feels right to him. Now, suppose that the teacher, after drawing the pupil's attention to the very disadvantageous manner in which he has been using himself during the process of bending his knees, gives him some help, into the details of which we will enter in the following chapters, and succeeds in inducing him to bend his knees

to the best advantage in the general use of his mechanisms. When this occurs, the act of bending the knees becomes, as far as this pupil is concerned, to all intents and purposes a new act, bringing with it a new feeling. This time the act is not what he is accustomed to, and so it feels wrong to him. Henceforward, whenever the conception of bending the knees comes to the pupil, whether in response to his teacher's directions or through his own initiative,

the choice lies before him of banning them in the old way, i.e. at great disadvantage to himself and feeling right, or of changing the manner in which he performs the act and feeling wrong. As a little girl said quaintly, when this point was explained to her in connection with something she was doing, oh, I see, if I feel at all, I must feel wrong, if I don't feel wrong, I mustn't feel. Unfortunately, the average adult pupil, unlike the little girl, does not see,

or if he does, he will not act accordingly. Indeed, we have to face the fact that the adult, as a rule, does not like a new feeling. In some cases, he is positively afraid of it. A new feeling gives him a sense of insecurity when he experiences it in connection with acts

that he has been accustomed to associate with a different feeling all his life. This sense of insecurity is particularly marked in connection with the maintenance of his equilibrium in the acts of standing, walking, etc., in accordance with the newly acquired feeling. And so it comes about that when a pupil is faced with the alternative of using his mechanisms badly and feeling right, or of using them well and feeling wrong, he is apt, as we say, to lose his

head, does not stop, therefore, to consider, that is, inhibit, and falls back upon feeling right. Footnote. Incidentally, I would point out that in cases where a person develops a phobia, in connection with crossing streets, traveling by train, crossing bridges or open spaces, being alone in a room, being unduly alarmed by ordinary noises, etc., there is already present in that person a serious condition of unsatisfactory psychophysical equilibrium,

which accounts for the susceptibility to the particular stimulus responsible for the phobia. End of footnote. This is only one example of the difficulty, which a pupil's incorrect conceptions and misdirected activities in certain directions will present both to him and his teacher in any endeavor to convey or acquire knowledge in the psychophysical sphere. In such a case as the one we have cited, the pupil's fixed ideas as to what constitutes right and what wrong

in certain conditions will produce a deadlock. For how can new and correct experiences be given to a pupil, who, in all the movements he makes, is working subconsciously to reproduce certain feelings that he has grown used to and likes. The situation is one that no teacher, be he ever so expert, can deal with satisfactorily. One from which the pupil cannot possibly be extricated unless he stops trying to get things right, stops, that is, working blindly for his ends,

and gives thought instead to the new means given to him by the teacher, whereby his ends can be attained. Footnote. The matter of these new means will be dealt with in the next chapter. End of footnote.

Illustration 2. Doing things his way. I will now take an equally fixed and unreasoning conception, which is common to most pupils who need re-education and coordination, namely their fixed ideas as to what they can and cannot do.

Their judgment on these points, of course, can only be based on their previous misleading experiences, but in spite of this fact, they are not ready to change their ideas, even when their teacher has given them practical proof that their judgment on these points is not to be relied on.

Now, it would seem reasonable that any pupil who decides to take lessons of a certain teacher because he believes him able to help him to overcome some difficulty, would take that teacher's word for it as to whether he is capable or not of doing what he is asked to do at a particular point. But too often the opposite is the case. For if a teacher during a lesson should ask a pupil to do something which happens to be among the things which,

in the days before he came for lessons, he was convinced he could not do, i.e. his difficulty, the pupil will immediately balk. He may not openly refuse to follow out the new instructions given to him, but what amounts to the same thing, he will make a mental reservation, as we say, when he receives them. The reason for this is that he subconsciously believes that he knows more than his teacher about the things he can or cannot do. So that when he receives the

instructions, he starts to carry them out on a plan of his own, that is, in his way, and so intent is he on this plan, that the new instructions do not reach his consciousness, that is, they do not make upon him that due impression which is required for carrying them out satisfactorily, or even for remembering them accurately. Curiously enough, a pupil's confidence in his way of doing things is not in the least disturbed by the fact that his way has never

worked well in the past, and, as his teacher is careful to point out to him, can never work well in the future, for the simple reason that his way is essentially wrong for his purpose, that, in fact, what he thinks of as a difficulty is not a difficulty in itself, but simply the result of his way of going to work. Further, the teacher will point out that any reason he may have had in the past for clinging to his way of doing things no longer exists, because the practical help that

the teacher is able to give him places him in a totally new position in regard to his difficulty, so that all he has to do is to stop trying to overcome his difficulty his way and instead to remember and follow out the new instructions by which means he will obtain the result he desires. This cannot be called an unreasonable proposition

if we have once allowed that a teacher should be trusted to know more than his pupil about the particular matter in hand. In my experience, however, the pupil who has been brought up on subconscious methods is not attracted as a rule by this form of reasoning when faced with a difficulty. And so it comes about that although a teacher may demonstrate to a pupil over and over again

that he will never be able to do what he is trying to do unless he changes his means whereby, gives up, that is, his way of doing it, the pupil will still go on trying to overcome his difficulty his way. Footnote. It must be pointed out that in such instances as the one we are discussing,

the pupil's right way is the wrong way. The right way, that is, the teacher's right way, is the very last that would ever be recognized by the pupil as the right way, because this right way has never yet come within the pupil's experiences, and a footnote. Similarly, although a teacher may assure his pupil over and over again that if only

he will adopt the new means given to him, he will be able to do quite easily the thing he has always believed he cannot do, the pupil will not make any attempt to adopt the new means. He will go on, in fact, trying to be right his way and always being wrong. More unreasonable still, after a certain time he will actually begin to worry because he finds that he is not getting on, that his way is not working. Could anything be more unreasonable? Suppose a man starts out to

reach a certain destination and comes to a place where the road branches into two. Not knowing the way, he takes the wrong road of the two and gets lost. He asks the way of someone he meets and is told to go straight back to the crossroads and take the other road, which will lead him directly to the place he wants to reach. What should we say if we heard that the man had gone back to the crossroads as directed, but had there concluded that he knew better after all than his advisor,

had taken again this old road, and again got lost, and had done this thing not once or twice, but over and over again. Still more, what should we say if we heard that he was worrying dreadfully because he kept getting lost and seemed no near to getting to his destination? I can see the reader's look of skepticism as he reads this and assures himself that he at any rate could not be guilty of the crime of not really attempting to do that which he knows he can do,

or of not ceasing to try and do that which the experience of hours, days, nay of years had proved to be the impossible in his particular case. Yet this is more or less what happens in the case of every pupil, even of those who are counted the most intelligent, the most highly educated, the most scientifically trained.

And this serves to strengthen my conviction that the principles underlying present methods of education are erroneous. Indeed, it would seem that our educational systems, our methods of training in scientific and professional spheres, have tended actually to cultivate and establish the defects to which I have referred.

To call it a defect is to use a word that is inadequate to express what really amounts to the loss of one half of our original psychophysical endowment by the gradually decreasing use of the invaluable process called inhibition. And I repeat that the comparative loss of this most valuable potentiality is chiefly due to the erroneous principles which underlie our teaching methods in all spheres.

Those who are responsible for these methods have not realized the importance of holding the balance true in every sphere of life between the desire to do, volition, and the ability to check that desire, inhibition. The words volition and inhibition are in constant use in these pages, and I wish at this point to make it clearly understood that they are used merely as names for two respective acts. Volition standing for the act of responding to some stimulus or stimuli to psychophysical action,

doing, and inhibition standing for the act of refusing to respond to some stimulus or stimuli to psychophysical action, not doing. In other words, volition is used to name what we intend to do and inhibition to name what we refuse to do, that is, to name what we wish to hold in check, what we wish to prevent. We are not interested here in any controversy concerned with the problem as to whether or not volition and inhibition are different manifestations of the same force,

or even as to what this force is, any more than the engineer who is using electricity as a power to a particular end is immediately interested as to what electricity is. We prophecy, however, that before we have acquired accurate knowledge as to the latter, we may possibly have solved the former by means of that consciously acquired knowledge

which is coming to us through the practical understanding of our psychosensory potentialities, upon which a higher and higher standard of human psychophysical functioning depends. In the sense, then, implied by a process enabling one to stop, a process concerned not with ends, however good in themselves, but with the means whereby these ends can be brought about,

I maintain that there is a lack of inhibition in all spheres. In no sphere, however, has the lack of inhibitory development been fraught with such danger as in matters concerned with the actual use of the psychophysical mechanism in the activities of everyday life, for the lack of this development tends to produce in the individual a state of unbalanced psychophysical functioning throughout the whole organism.

Indeed, all our methods of educational training make for rigidity rather than mobility in educational use. Small wonder, then, that adults in whom such psychophysical conditions have become established in childhood manifest where their activities are concerned an almost total lack of the most ordinary common sense associated with unreliable sensory appreciation. Illustration 3. Not seeing ourselves as others see us.

Perhaps the most striking and at the same time the most pathetic instance of human delusion is to be found in the human creature's attitude towards his own psychophysical defects, disadvantages, peculiarities, etc. on one hand, and towards his merits, advantages, and natural gifts on the other. To thine own self be true is an inspiring incentive when the human creature's coordinated psychophysical development has reached a point where that self cannot be

duped by its sensations. As a striking instance in this field of human delusion, we will take the attitude of the stutterer towards the things he thinks of as right or wrong in himself when he is faced with the practical problem of speaking in everyday life. The case to which I refer is just one instance of many that have come within the writer's experience

during investigations made in the past 30 years. The pupil in this particular case was what is generally called a bad stutterer, but he made rapid progress during his lessons and in an unusually short space of time was able to speak without any sign of stuttering

as long as he spoke slowly. He reached a point where he could carry on a conversation with his teacher without being troubled with the old defects, provided that he enunciated the words slowly and deliberately. The teacher then said,

I want you to speak in the way that you are speaking to me now, during your conversations throughout the whole day. The pupil at once became agitated, thus disturbing temporarily his new and developing control, and relapsed into his old way of stuttering as he replied, Oh, I couldn't do that. Everyone would notice me. Now, if we try to analyze the condition of a

person who can seriously make a remark like this, and the pupil was quite sincere, he meant it. We shall see that his agitation caused him to revert to a condition associated with his previous mal-coordination, in which he had been accustomed to hypnotize himself where the facts of his shortcomings and peculiarities were concerned. We may try to explain his remark by saying that he had become so used to the conditions of his stuttering that he no longer cared what the other

fellow thought about it, or else that he had determined to ignore the disagreeable fact that he stuttered, and in this way had deluded himself into thinking that the other fellow did not notice his contortions. Footnote. This is the opposite delusion of that of the person who becomes self-conscious over a comparatively unnoticeable peculiarity. For example, a pupil will exaggerate to himself a minor and comparatively unnoticeable peculiarity to such a degree that he becomes

self-conscious about it, and imagines that everywhere he goes people are looking at him on account of it, whereas the defect is so slight that it would not be noticed by outsiders. I have pointed out in the chapter entitled Individual Errors and Delusions in Man's Supreme Inheritance the harmful effects that may follow a person's misguided attempts to conceal or change characteristics which they believe to be very serious drawbacks to their appearance,

but which compared to other very serious defects which they completely overlook are relatively minor peculiarities. End of footnote. The fact remains that he had reached such a stage of defective sensory appreciation and self-hypnotic indulgence that his whole outlook was topsy-turvy. He no longer saw things as they were. He was out of communication with reasoning, where his consciousness of his defects was concerned.

He was therefore able to persuade himself that the normal condition would be conspicuous, whilst the abnormal would pass unnoticed. In this he was relying almost entirely on his perverted sense of feeling. The point on which we should lay particular stress is that the condition of delusion and self-deception indicated in this illustration will be found to be more or less present in all people who are imperfectly coordinated and have an unreliable sensory appreciation. Illustration 4

Quote-unquote out of shape In connection with unreliable sensory appreciation, and with perverted ideas or conceptions of what is right or wrong, where the human creature's uses of his own mechanisms are concerned, the following is a most significant illustration. A little girl, who had been unable to walk properly for some years, was brought to the

writer for a diagnosis of the defects in the use of the psychophysical mechanisms which were responsible for her more or less crippled state. When this had been done, a request was made that a demonstration should be given to those present of the manipulative side of the work, the child of course to be the subject to be manipulated, so that certain readjustments and coordinations might be temporarily secured, thus showing, in keeping with the diagnosis,

the possibilities of re-education on a general basis in a case of this kind. The demonstration was successful from this point of view. For the time being, the child's body was comparatively straightened out, that is, without the extreme twists and distortions that had been so noticeable when she came into the room.

When this was done, the little girl looked across at her mother and said to her in an indescribable tone, Oh, mummy, he's pulled me out of shape. Here indeed is food for reflection for all who are concerned in any attempt

to eradicate psychophysical defects. In accordance with this poor little child's judgment, her crookedness was straightness, her sensory appreciation of her out-of-shape condition was that it was in shape.

Imagine, then, what would be the result of her trying to get anything right by doing something herself, as she had always tried and had always been urged to try to do, whilst practicing remedial exercises according to the directions and under the guidance of a teacher. Small wonder that all attempts to teach her had resulted in failure. Consideration of the foregoing cannot but lead us to a full realization of what would

have been the psychophysical condition of such a child when she reached adolescence, if the orthodox methods of teaching in all spheres had been employed to help her. The child's remark is proof positive that, where her defects were concerned, her ideas and conceptions were dominated by her sensory appreciation, and that this sensory appreciation was not only unreliable but actually delusive.

Her experiences in connection with the functioning of her organism were consequently incorrect and harmful experiences, and as her judgment in these spheres was the result of these experiences, little wonder that her judgment of what was right and what wrong in her case was not only practically worthless,

but constituted a positive danger to her future development. Unless, in such cases, a child is re-educated and coordinated on a basis of conscious control, it cannot acquire a new and reliable sensory appreciation, and lacking this, it will grow up employing guiding sensations which are delusive and which tend to become more and more so with the advance of time.

Incorrect experiences and bad judgment will be associated with this delusive guidance of the mechanisms in the functioning of the organism, and all its efforts in the different spheres of the activities of life will be in accordance with this functioning. The point that comes out clearly in all these illustrations

is that conceptions which are mainly influenced by unreliable sensory appreciation, acting and reacting subconsciously and harmfully on the processes involved are incorrect conceptions, and that in these cases unreliable sensory appreciation goes hand in hand with incorrect and deceptive experiences in the psychophysical functioning. And when we remember that, as we saw in the case of the little girl of the last illustration,

our judgment is based on experience, we must also see that where this experience is incorrect and deceptive, the resulting judgment is bound to be misleading and out of touch with reality. We have to recognize, therefore, that our sensory peculiarities are the foundation of what we think of as our opinions, and that in fact 9 out of 10 of the opinions we form are rather the result of what we feel than what we think.

Footnote. It is only reasonable to conclude that it is because the opinions of most people are much more the manifestation of their sensory peculiarities, feeling, than of their reasoning processes

that we find so many varied and conflicting opinions held by people about a single simple point or serious subject. It is positively alarming that reasoning plays so small a part in most of the opinions we hold, and in our judgment with regard to things that matter.

It is for this reason that we find ourselves in such a fearful muddle after 2,000 years of struggle towards a better standard of psychophysical functioning, struggle which it was hoped would bring in an era of goodwill, universal unity, tolerance, and mutual understanding. End of footnote.

Our emotional defects also are linked with our sensory peculiarities, so that given the slightest disturbance in these directions, we must be temporarily thrown into a danger zone where serious and uncontrolled psychophysical conditions prevail. footnote it only needs a certain number of repetitions of harmful experiences such as are alluded to above to produce one or other of the different phases which we place within the borderlands of insanity many phases of this development of temporary insanity are accompanied by violent physical manifestations and a footnote we can now see how far this line of thought has

brought us, for the fact that emerges from all these considerations, is that our approach to life generally, our activities, beliefs, emotions, opinions, judgments, in whatever sphere, are conditioned by the preceding conceptions, which are associated with the individual use of the psychophysical mechanisms, and conditioned by the standard of reliability of our individual sensory appreciation. This is the great fact which must be realized by our leaders in educational,

religious, moral, social, political, and all other spheres of human activities before there can be any quote-unquote uplifting of the human creature out of the present chaotic conditions. We all think and act, except when forced to do otherwise, in accordance with the peculiarities of our particular psychophysical makeup. We read a particular paper each morning because the policy of that paper is the one we believe in. And we can read there what we want to read. We cultivate

friendships with people who think as we think, and we ignore or are antagonized by those who do not. The preacher attracts to church only those who want to go to church. We start to read a book, but immediately we reach a point with which we disagree, our more or less debauched kinesthesia cannot control the impulses which, when set in motion, put us out of communication with our reasoning.

Yet, in spite of all this, books are written, lectures given, sermons preached, speeches made, in the belief that ideas which are given out by these means can be satisfactorily assimilated by hearers or readers, and that good ideas may thus be passed on for the uplifting of mankind in social, religious, political and other spheres of activity.

Here we have a great delusion. For, as we have shown, our degree of ability to assimilate a new and unfamiliar idea or to overcome our prejudices in connection with our cherished ideas and beliefs depends upon our individual conception of such ideas and beliefs and this conception is conditioned by the standard of individual psychophysical coordination

and of reliability of the sensory appreciation. Had this fact not been overlooked, writers, lecturers, preachers, orators, etc. would long since have shown some practical interest in the means whereby their hearers and readers

could reach such a standard of functioning of the psychophysical organism that they would be able to assimilate satisfactorily new ideas and teachings. For how, I ask, can those who have developed a condition of unreliable sensory appreciation, with all the incorrect experiences, beliefs, and judgments that we now know to be inevitably associated with this condition,

assimilate satisfactorily ideas that do not fit in with these experiences? Correct apprehension and reliable sensory appreciation go hand in hand. Footnote As a friend, a member of the medical profession wrote to me recently, I am getting more and more convinced that people can learn only what they know.

End of footnote The mass is made up of individuals, and reliable sensory appreciation cannot be given on the mass teaching principle or by precept or exhortation. This can only be done by individual teaching and individual work.

Moreover, people who are massed together are apt to be governed by the herd instinct, and we need to help men to evolve beyond that influence as soon as possible. And to this end, we must have conscious and individual development. End of section 9