Parents and childrenMason, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Maria)
Philosophy
Parents and children
Mason, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Maria)
Child rearing; Education -- Parent participation
by inherited propensity, but by unbroken inveterate habit?
THE LAW AGAINST US--UNCONSCIOUS CEREBRATION.
Those who are accustomed to write know what it is to sit down and
“reel off” sheet after sheet of matter without plan or premeditation,
clear, coherent, ready for press, hardly needing revision. We are told
of a lawyer who wrote in his sleep a lucid opinion throwing light on
a most difficult case; of a mathematician who worked out in his sleep
a computation which baffled him when awake. We know that Coleridge
dreamed “Kubla Khan” in an after-dinner nap, line by line, and wrote
it down when he awoke. What do these cases and a thousand like them
point to? To no less than this: that, though the all important _ego_
must, no doubt, “assist” at the thinking of the initial thought on
a given subject, yet, after that first thought or two, ‘brain’ and
‘mind’ manage the matter between them, and the thoughts, so to speak,
think themselves; not after the fashion of a pendulum which moves to
and fro, to and fro, in the same interval of space, but in that of a
carriage rolling along the same road, but into ever new developments of
the landscape. An amazing thought--but have we not abundant internal
evidence of the fact? We all know that there are times when we cannot
get rid of the thoughts that _will think themselves_ within us, though
they drive away sleep and peace and joy. In the face of this law,
benign as it eases us of the labour of original thought and decision
about the everyday affairs of life, terrible when it gets beyond our
power of control and diversion, what hope for those in whose debauched
brain vile thoughts, involuntary, automatic, are for ever running with
frightful rapidity in the one well-worn track? Truly, the _in_-look
is appalling. What hope for these? And what of a scheme whose first
condition is the regeneration of the vicious--vicious, not only by
inherited propensity, and by unbroken inveterate habit, but reduced to
that state of, shall we say, inevitable viciousness--when “unconscious
cerebration,” with untiring activity, goes to the emanation of vicious
imaginations? All these things are against us.
THE LAW FOR US--LIMITATIONS TO THE DOCTRINE
OF HEREDITY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account