# Making the Most of One's Mind/Chapter 1

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TAKING ONESELF IN HAND
AMONG the Romans of the old days when a boy A had finished his education, and was regarded as fit to enter upon the responsibilities of life, he cast aside the scarlet-bordered gown that boys then wore, discarded the disc of gold, silver, or leather that hung from his neck, and put on the plain black gown, the toga virilis, that was worn by men. In those days this entrance upon manhood was taken seriously, and was accompanied by a certain amount of ceremony. The boy was led to feel that his new estate made heavy demands upon him. No doubt it meant the removal of certain restraints. Indeed, the manly gown was sometimes called the toga liberior, the gown of greater freedom. But it also implied the imposition of new responsibilities. Orig​inally the donning of the toga virilis meant the liability to military service, for at first the gown was not assumed till the completion of the seventeenth year. Later in the history of Rome it was assumed at an earlier age. Indeed, the age varied considerably, but it may be safely said that the scarlet-bordered robe was not discarded before the fourteenth birthday, nor retained much beyond the sixteenth.
This variation is natural, for it is not in human nature to become a responsible person at any definite age fixed beforehand. Boys develop at different rates: some are ready at fourteen for the manly gown, while others might fittingly retain the scarlet border till well over twenty. After all, the gown was only a symbol. What it signified was that the boy had taken over his life into his own hands. He was henceforth to be, as the saying runs, "his own master," though, as a matter of fact, he was less frec from outward restraint than our modern boys.
We have no ceremony when we don our first coat with tails. In truth, we greatly prefer that no notice should be taken of the innovation, that our friends, in fact, should be considerate enough to pretend that we had been dressed in that way all along. Indeed, our gradual and unostentatious adoption of the garb of manhood represents more truly than the Roman method the process of coming to what are called ycars of discretion. No doubt there comes a time in most lives when the person is aware that he takes ​himself in hand, when he assumes the responsibility for the ordering of his own life. But in many cases the person cannot name any particular time at which the act could be said to have been performed, and we know that, after all, the assumption of the manly gown symbolizes only the completion of a process that has been going on for a long time.
This process is a very interesting one and may be called, in a general way, reflection. It implies the turning back of the mind upon itself. We are familiar with those verbs that are called reflexive. Their characteristic is that the action begun by the subject returns back upon that subject. The subject and the object of these verbs are one. If I wash myself, there is only one person occupied in the process. The I that washes is the same as the myself that is washed. It is true that in this case it may be said that one part of the self, say the hands, washes another part of the self, say the face. But when we pass from physical actions this separation cannot be made. When I say I blame myself, it is not one part of me that blames another. It would appear that the whole of me blames the whole of me. When Cranmer, at the stake, thrust his right hand first into the flames because it had signed the document of which he was ashamed, we feel that there is something wrong with the implied judgment. We cannot separate the responsibility on a physical basis. The whole Cranmer was at fault.
Yet there is a genuine difficulty implied in all ​reflexive action. Children can be greatly puzzled by such a sentence as "Says I to myself." Are there two persons, or only one? How can a conversation be carried on with only one person present? Even grown-up people have to recognize two aspects of the self. I as speaker say something to myself as hearer. There is only one self, but it is acting in two different ways. In one respect it is active, in another it is passive.
Now, at very early stages of life the child does not quite realize the extent of his "self." He will speak of himself in the third person. "Johnny wants a ride in Johnny's coach." By and by he begins to perceive that the Johnny he is talking about is different from every other Johnny. He has more interest in this particular Johnny than in all the remaining Johnnies in the world. He begins to realize that this Johnny who has the coach and other attractive things is a specially interesting person on his own account, apart from the things he possesses. When a child begins to pay special attention to this strange Johnny and to compare him with other children, he has reached the beginning of the conception of self. But there are here obviously two aspects of the self: the self that examines and the self that is examined. These two aspects are given. different names. The examining self is called the subjective self, and the self examined is called the objective. When the subjective seli appears for the first time it finds the objective self already existing. ​Johnny has had many rides in his coach before he begins to turn back upon himself and find out what sort of person he is. Thus it would appear that the objective self precedes the subjective, but all that this means is that at a certain stage the self "comes to itself," or realizes the meaning of this reflexive process that is implied in selfhood.
All these considerations are of great importance to those who wish to take themselves in hand and make the most of themselves. If the subjective self, when it takes stock of the objective, is not satisfied with what it finds, it may set about dealing with that objective self in order to improve it. This is the beginning of real personal education. It is true that a schoolboy may have been at school and therefore undergoing a certain kind of education long before he realizes the two aspects of the self. But his genuine personal education does not begin till he himself takes a hand in it, with some appreciation of what it all means. Education is a process in which there are always two poles, an active and a passive. At school the teacher is obviously at the active pole, the pupil at the passive. The teacher is said to educate, the pupil to be educated. Though the pupil is said to be passive, it does not mean that he is necessarily idle, or that he does nothing. In the two words employer and employee we have a similar distinction. So far as employing is concerned, the employer is active and the employee is passive, though so far as work is concerned, the employer ​may sit in an office and do very little, while the employee may be carting coals all day. So far as education is concerned, the teacher is active and may be called the educator, the pupil is passive and might be called the educatee, but is better named the educand. With an ordinary thoughtless schoolboy who just does his daily work as prescribed by the teacher, we have a case in which the teacher is all educator, and the pupil all educand. But wherever we find a pupil who takes an intelligent interest in his education, that is, who not only does his daily tasks but understands why he has to do them, we have a case in which the pupil is, to some extent, an educator as well as an educand.
In the lower classes at school the pupils are almost entirely educands. In the upper classes the better pupils gradually begin to take a hand in their own education, and become more and more educators of themselves. The progress of a really good pupil through a school is a process of gradually eliminating the need for an external educator. This does not mean that the teacher becomes of less use in the higher classes, but that his use is of a different kind. It has been said by a cynical Frenchman that a cat does not caress us, but only caresses itself against us. In the same way, the really good pupil educates himself against his teacher. In other words, he uses the teacher as a means to aid in educating himself. At the early stages the teacher directs the whole of the activities of the pupil, at the final stage ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/17 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/18 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/19 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/20 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/21 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/22 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/23 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/24 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/25 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/26 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/27 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/28 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/29 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/30 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/31 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/32 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/33 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/34 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/35 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/36 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/37 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/38 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/39 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/40 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/41 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/42 ​Page:Making the most of one's mind (IA makingmostofones00adam).pdf/43 ​available of the various ways in which his end may be attained. In the following pages will be found many suggestions, the result of long and interesting experience of studying and of students. It will be for you to give these suggestions your honest altention, and to decide which of them you feel called upon to adopt. You are no doubt bored at the continual repetition, by those whose business it is to speak for your good, of the threadbare saying that there is no royal road to learning. But there are many different kinds of roads, and since you have to walk one or other of them it is worth your while to make a wise selection at the beginning of your journey.