Read free. Rational Living: Some Practical Inferences from Modern Psychology, by Henry Churchill King, 1906.
Excerpt
There seem to the writer to be four great inferences from modern psychology, and each with suggestions for life and character—that is, with direct suggestion of the conditions of growth, of character, of happiness, and of influence. These four inferences are: Life is complex; man is a unity; will and action are of central importance; and the real is concrete. In other words, modern psychology has four great emphases; for it may be said to urge upon us the recognition of the multiplicity and intricacy of the relations everywhere confronting us; of the essential unity of the relations involved in our own nature; of the fact that this unity demands action and is best expressed in action; and that we are, thus, everywhere shut out from resting in abstractions and must find reality only in the concrete. Manifestly these contentions are all closely interwoven, and they may even be regarded as all summed up in the last-as asserting the inter-relatedness of all.
For if only the concrete is real, then life is, in the first place, no abstraction or series of abstractions, but rich and complex beyond all formulation. In this complexity, secondly, no sharp lines can be drawn, all is interwoven; the life of man, therefore, is a unity—body and mind. But all experiences, bodily and mental, tend to terminate in action, in which alone the whole man is seen; will and action, then, are of central importance. The four propositions tend thus to fall together. It is these four propositions which form the subjects of the main divisions of our entire inquiry.
Introductory Pages
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