ture which they had already found, or solve a puzzle to which they knew the solution, or if they were to try to explain to her the construction of a machine which they knew and she did not. Measured by her own standard it would then be her turn to appear the simpleton.

Must point out what we wish to have seen. - Salesmen, under the pressure of economic necessity, have always acted on the principle here involved. They have not presumed that their intended customer would himself find the merits of their goods, but have themselves pointed them out. An agent will direct attention to the simplest features about his book or his machine, and the surprising fact is that these seem to come into existence just when he points them out. Otherwise they would likely be overlooked, however prominent they may be to one who already knows them. You should follow his example. The details, or the type of organization, which you would have one see in a picture, or the merits to be observed in music, you should take the pains to point out. The matter which you are attempting to explain you should remember is not as clear to your hearer as it is to you, and you should not be impatient about going over it in minutest detail. The outlook that to you is so perspicuous and sensible you should recollect may be as much a meaningless chaos to your fellow as the picture above was mere daub to you before you approached it with its outline in mind, and you should not expect him to catch it until you have explained it to him as to a little child.

And this is not because your fellow is more stupid than yourself. It merely indicates that you must stand ready to treat every situation which is new to your hearer in a way analogous to that in which you could help a novice to find the frogs-by condescending to trace in detail their outlines. After he has once formed, as you already have, a preperception of them he can see through them as readily as you now do, but before that time he can not be expected to do so.

EXERCISES

1. Cite cases which have come to your notice of success due to tact, and of blunders due to its absence.

2. Someone has said that tact is polished lying. To what extent is that true?

3. Give examples, from your own experience or from that of others, of the successful use of tact in the following situations: (a) The delivery of an unwelcome message.

(b) Securing a contribution from a "hard case.”

(c) Convincing someone of the value of a proposal to which he had been hostile.

(d) Administering a reprimand.

4. Does the tactful man make enemies?

Why?

5. Suppose you were to give a talk to the sixth grade on pupil government, urging them to adopt a "school city." Plan how you would go about it.

6. How much knowledge and interest do the boys of your age in your Sunday school class have in common?

7. What do you find to be the effect of using a very short period for study? A very long one? What length seems best for you? 8. Have you ever experienced a case in which you overlooked many important facts until they had been pointed out to you? A case in which others seemed stupidly ignorant of facts, obvious to you, until you had specifically pointed them out? What lesson should this teach?

9. Show how a teacher should prepare her class for the proper reception of the lesson.

CHAPTER V

RACE APPERCEPTION KEEPING OPEN

MINDED TOWARD PROGRESS

Tendency to preserve bias. Bias in the individual. — Etiquette has long ago decreed that a man shall, as far as possible, lay aside his profession when he leaves his workshop or office and goes out among his fellows in a social way. But unfortunately most of us are unable to do this. On the slightest occasion we tend to slip back into our business outlook. The preacher, the physician, the teacher, must continually guard against "talking shop." All day long he has maintained a certain way of apperceiving life's activities and back into this outlook it is as easy for him to fall as for a body to drop from unstable to stable equilibrium. Our usual mode of apperceiving becomes a rut out of which it is difficult to stay. In spite of ourselves we can scarcely avoid seeing the world from only a single angle when we have once become accustomed to that angle.

And yet there are many checks to this domination of a single "apperceptive system" in any any one individual. Coming in contact with men who have a different outlook, as such a one does, his own apperception can scarcely help being modified thereby. The fact, at least, that there are other ways of looking at the world is constantly thrust upon him. This frequent contact with one's fellows inevitably serves as a certain antidote to narrowmindedness.

Bias in the group. But the danger of stagnation is greater where the fixed mode of apperceiving belongs to a compact group than where it is only of the individual. For

where a group has a certain attitude in common this check to one-sidedness is less effective. One is disposed then to hunt out the members of his group and fraternize with them, instead of having his bias corrected by rubbing up against men of different outlook. Thus, instead of being broadened by his association, he is confirmed and strengthened in his narrow mode of apperceiving the situation in question. And so the bias of the closed group tends to grow continually by cumulation until the members of the group lose sympathy absolutely with those outside of its own bounds. Thus the Democrats, or the Socialists, or the Anarchists, or the members of a certain religious sect, get together and reiterate to each other their common views until their mode of apperceiving the problem becomes so predominant in their minds that they can not conceive how any one could sincerely look upon it in any other way.

When all with whom we

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Such group bias is inevitable. associate think in a certain way they exert a tremendous force upon us to draw us into the same outlook. By their looks of approval or disapproval, by their suggestions, or by their arguments they coax, bump, pull, and twist our apperception mass" until at length it settles into such equilibrium as is in harmony with theirs. And then, of course, since one's mental attitude is so large a factor in determining what one shall find, we see as they do.

And yet even such group is not without complementary suggestions. For the members of no such group are so isolated that they come in touch with no one who has a different viewpoint. That there are other ways of regarding the situation in question is, from time to time, thrust upon them by inevitable contact with men outside their own class. This fact can scarcely help tempering, in some degree, their onesidedness.

Bias in the age. But when a mode of apperceiving a situation is characteristic of an age, rather than of one out

of many contemporary groups, the difficulty of avoiding stagnation is far greater. For here the check to one-sidedness is most feeble. In fact such check is then almost entirely absent. The whole tendency is centripetal toward the center. All have inherited from their ancestors the same outlook, by their mutual association they all confirm in each other this outlook, and together they transmit it as an inflexible heritage to posterity. Thus the whole social fabric weighs down upon any tendency to change. From the dawn of life to its close wherever one walks, with whomever he talks, whatever he reads or hears, all pelt away at his "apperception mass" to batter it into the conventional mold. If, as Professor James says, "Old fogyism is the inevitable terminus toward which life sweeps us on " as individuals, much more so is racial old fogyism the goal toward which time drives on society. A Chinese stagnation is not an exceptional tendency a caprice of the Oriental nations. It is the normal drift of all nations, and from it a small minority has, in all progressive countries, saved us at the cost of infinite suffering and self-sacrifice.

Conservatism of society. toward the common center. selves spontaneously change their outlook-shift themselves to a new angle of apperception - but they try to restrain the individuals in their group who have the freshness and the daring left to venture it. Emerson says:

The masses always drag back
They not only can not them-

Society is everywhere in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

That outspoken German individualist, Nietzsche, protesting against this inertia of society against moving out of its rut, distinguishes between the good man — the man who merely