Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that anything that a man can avoid under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under the notion that something else is good.  He who habitually acts sub specie mali, under the negative notion, the notion of the bad, is called a slave by Spinoza.  To him who acts habitually under the notion of good he gives the name of freeman.  See to it now, I beg you, that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating them to act, whenever possible, under the notion of a good.  Get them habitually to tell the truth, not so much through showing them the wickedness of lying as by arousing their enthusiasm for honor and veracity.  Wean them from their native cruelty by imparting to them some of your own positive sympathy with an animal’s inner springs of joy.  And, in the lessons which you may be legally obliged to conduct upon the bad effects of alcohol, lay less stress than the books do on the drunkard’s stomach, kidneys, nerves, and social miseries, and more on the blessings of having an organism kept in lifelong possession of its full youthful elasticity by a sweet, sound blood, to which stimulants and narcotics are unknown, and to which the morning sun and air and dew will daily come as sufficiently powerful intoxicants.

I have now ended these talks.  If to some of you the things I have said seem obvious or trivial, it is possible that they may appear less so when, in the course of a year or two, you find yourselves noticing and apperceiving events in the schoolroom a little differently, in consequence of some of the conceptions I have tried to make more clear.  I cannot but think that to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative, and reactive organism, partly fated and partly free, will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways.  Understand him, then, as such a subtle little piece of machinery.  And if, in addition, you can also see him sub specie boni, and love him as well, you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers.

#TALKS TO STUDENTS#

I. THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION

I wish in the following hour to take certain psychological doctrines and show their practical applications to mental hygiene,—­to the hygiene of our American life more particularly.  Our people, especially in academic circles, are turning towards psychology nowadays with great expectations; and, if psychology is to justify them, it must be by showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines.

The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions, commonly referred to in psychological literature as the Lange-James theory.  According to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation.  An emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object’s presence on the