Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/160

156 appreciation of the problem, however, a few considerations on the point seem worth while. First, we register our belief in its existence by such expressions as "mind growth," naivété, self-activity, spontaneity, genius, "mental initiative," and by more remote terms like open mind, youthful mind, unprejudiced mind, simple mind. Second, many students of mind tacitly accept it and forthwith attempt its description. This is clone by Professor Royce in his "Outlines of Psychology." Professor Shaler expresses his conviction of its existence as follows:

One of the results of the marvelously swift, absolutely free development of man's spirit is that there has as yet been insufficient time for it to become organized as are the conditions of the body. Working in the instinctive manner in which the lower species do their complicated work through the fore-determined mental processes we term instincts, there are always gauges and standards for the endeavors in the mind as there are in the bodily frame. With us, however, all kinds of thinking are still a hurly burly, a confusion, to which time and culture may possibly bring something like the order it has in the lower life, but which probably is ever to remain in its present uncontrolled shape.

Third, biologists are generally agreed that the human hand, the vocal organs and the cerebral cortex have developed possibilities far beyond present realization. Their possibilities are as yet unknown. The capacity of the cortex appears to be infinite with only a small portion reduced to law and order. If we can so confidently assert unlimited capacity of these physical structures, then any lesser conception of mind is, indeed, an untenable one. It does not yet appear what we shall be, but there is a general agreement that the immediate path of evolution will be spiritual rather than physical. And if spiritual, it can only go on in the free portion of mind, in those parts not yet harnessed to matter and frozen into laws and habits. Of course there is universal agreement that the mind should be mechanized to the extent of the needs of common life, of routine business, of the alphabets of learning and of the elements of culture, but anything beyond these points is inimical not only to individual development, but to racial evolution. While, on the other hand, influences that tend to check mechanization and to incline the mind to grapple with the ideal, the novel, the realities rather than the formalities of life prolong the possibilities of spiritual development. Humor and play are two such influences, with the honors in favor of humor. It stands guard at the dividing line between free and mechanized mind, and like play, it keeps the individual young, projects the best of youth into adult life, sets metes and bounds to "docility" and prevents the mental life of the race from hardening into instinctive and hereditary forms of action. It saves to the world its geniuses and saves the individual from the blighting influence of commercial and utilitarian ideals,