It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association
Interpretation
Understanding the principles of association can clarify complex mental processes.
William James emphasizes the importance of grasping foundational principles to effectively explain the intricate mental operations we engage in. Once we understand how our thoughts and experiences are interconnected through association, we gain a clearer insight into the workings of our minds, making it easier to articulate and comprehend complex cognitive processes.
In practice
In a psychology lecture about cognitive functions.
Many persons nowadays seem to think that any conclusion must be very scientific if the arguments in favor of it are derived from twitching of frogs' legs (especially if the frogs are decapitated) and that, on the other hand, any doctrine chiefly vouched for by the feelings of human beings (with heads on their shoulders) must be benighted and superstitious.
The man who knows governments most completely is he who troubles himself least about a definition which shall give their essence. Enjoying an intimate acquaintance with all their particularities in turn, he would naturally regard an abstract conception in which these were unified as a thing more misleading than enlightening.
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience, factors to which the environment and the lessons it has so far taught us must learn to bend.
The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.
As there is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it, so reasonable arguments, challenges to magnanimity, and appeals to sympathy or justice, are folly when we are dealing with human crocodiles and boa-constrictors.
It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.
If we humans are good at anything, itβs thinking weβve got a terrific idea and going for it without acknowledging the potential consequences or our own ignorance.
During the day extend that attitude to everyone you meet. Practice cherishing the "simplest" person (clerks, attendants, etc) or people you dislike.
It is his restraint that is honorable to a person, not their liberty.
I think one of the lessons of the Depression - and this is something that Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated - was that when orthodoxy fails, then you need to try new things. And he was very willing to try unorthodox approaches when the orthodox approach had shown that it was not adequate.
What if what made me do all those things everyone thought I shouldn't have done was what also had got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?
As I get considerably beyond the biblical allotment of three score years and ten, I feel with increasing intensity that I can express my gratitude for still being around on the oxygen-side of the earth's crust only by not standing pat on what I have hitherto known and loved. While oxygen lasts, there are still new things to love, especially if compassion is a form of love.
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