Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychologyDewey, John
Philosophy
Human Nature and Conduct: An introduction to social psychology
Dewey, John
Habit; Social psychology
Habit as a vital art depends upon the animation of habit by impulse;
only this inspiriting stands between habit and stagnation. But art,
little as well as great, anonymous as well as that distinguished by
titles of dignity, cannot be improvised. It is impossible without
spontaneity, but it is not spontaneity. Impulse is needed to arouse
thought, incite reflection and enliven belief. But only thought notes
obstructions, invents tools, conceives aims, directs technique, and thus
converts impulse into an art which lives in objects. Thought is born as
the twin of impulse in every moment of impeded habit. But unless it is
nurtured, it speedily dies, and habit and instinct continue their civil
warfare. There is instinctive wisdom in the tendency of the young to
ignore the limitations of the environment. Only thus can they discover
their own power and learn the differences in different kinds of
environing limitations. But this discovery when once made marks the
birth of intelligence; and with its birth comes the responsibility of
the mature to observe, to recall, to forecast. Every moral life has its
radicalism; but this radical factor does not find its full expression in
direct action but in the courage of intelligence to go deeper than
either tradition or immediate impulse goes. To the study of intelligence
in action we now turn our attention.
PART THREE
THE PLACE OF INTELLIGENCE IN CONDUCT
I
In discussing habit and impulse we have repeatedly met topics where
reference to the work of thought was imperative. Explicit consideration
of the place and office of intelligence in conduct can hardly begin
otherwise than by gathering together these incidental references and
reaffirming their significance. The stimulation of reflective
imagination by impulse, its dependence upon established habits, and its
effect in transforming habit and regulating impulse forms, accordingly,
our first theme.
Habits are conditions of intellectual efficiency. They operate in two
ways upon intellect. Obviously, they restrict its reach, they fix its
boundaries. They are blinders that confine the eyes of mind to the road
ahead. They prevent thought from straying away from its imminent
occupation to a landscape more varied and picturesque but irrelevant to
practice. Outside the scope of habits, thought works gropingly, fumbling
in confused uncertainty; and yet habit made complete in routine shuts in
thought so effectually that it is no longer needed or possible. The
routineer's road is a ditch out of which he cannot get, whose sides
enclose him, directing his course so thoroughly that he no longer thinks
of his path or his destination. All habit-forming involves the beginning
of an intellectual specialization which if unchecked ends in thoughtless
action.
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