MENTAL DEVELOPMENT 477 



gence is necessary to avoid pain which by associative memory it 

 foresees and prevents in innumerable ways, whether arising 

 from direct bodily injury or a craving due to the non-gratification 

 of the organic needs of the body, e.g. hunger, thirst, the desire 

 for fresh air, for sleep, for exercise, for recuperation and repose 

 after muscular or mental fatigue and for the satisfaction of the 

 sexual appetite. It is not too much to say that the affective 

 life or subjective feeling of the child as well as of the adult 

 depends largely upon the organic sensibility (caenaesthesia), the 

 source and foundation of all stable perceptual associations and 

 of the vast majority of habitual actions. It is necessary to 

 remark that the subjective attitude of the individual determines 

 the severity of pain felt, as much as the intensity of the stimulus. 

 We know how an irritable state of the nervous system enhances 

 pain, whether it be due to inflammatory conditions of the peri- 

 pheral nervous structures, of the chains of neurones forming the 

 transmitter to the seat of consciousness, or of the central receptor 

 which in certain abnormal mental states {e.g. neurasthenia and 

 hysteria) may evince hyperesthesia or anaesthesia. 



The Control of the Emotions and Inculcation of 



Good Habits 



In the formation of character no problem in education is 

 more important than the acquirement of self-esteem, self- 

 reliance, and self-control ; but this education of self, to be 

 effective in the struggle for existence in our social organism, 

 must be tempered by sympathy and unselfishness to others 

 for the essence of social evolution and progress is altruistic 

 egoism. It is never too early to begin to inculcate in a child 

 the habit of self-control ; thus it should be taught to acquire 

 the habit of control of the primitive emotions of anger, of fear, 

 and of disgust in infancy, and to limit or repress their motor 

 reactions ; but their repression or suppression should in great 

 measure be determined by the nature and intensity of the 

 cause of the emotional disturbance. Crying and screaming of 

 an infant is a protective appeal to the mother for relief of pain 

 or the satisfaction of a natural desire or organic need, but 

 this natural expression of a physiological necessity may become 

 the expression of a bad temper; thus a child, who learns that 

 it can get its own way in obtaining something it desires against 

 its parents' wishes, very soon contracts the bad habit of falling 



