is not a pleasurable pastime but simply a valuable
means to an end.

KNOWING OUR MACHINE

=Counting on Ourselves.= Knowing our machine makes us better able to
handle it. For, after all, each of us is, in many ways, very like a
piece of marvelous and complicated machinery. For one thing, our
minds, as well as our bodies, are subject to uniform laws upon which
we can depend. We are not creatures of chaos; under certain conditions
we can count on ourselves. Freedom does not mean freedom from the
reign of law. It means that, to a certain extent, we can make use of
the laws. Psychic laws are as susceptible to investigation,
verification, and use as are any laws in the physical world. Each
person is so much the center of his own life that it is very easy for
him to fall into the way of thinking that he is different from all the
rest of the world. It is a healthful experience for him to realize
that every person he meets is made on the same principles, impelled by
the same forces, and fighting much the same fight. Since the laws of
the mental world are uniform, we can count on them as aids toward
understanding other people and understanding ourselves.

="Intelligent Scrutiny versus Morbid Introspection."= It helps
wonderfully to be able to look at ourselves in an objective,
impersonal way. We are likely to be overcome by emotion, or swept by
vague longings which seem to have no meaning and which, just because
they are bound up so closely with our own ego, are not looked at but
are merely felt. Unknown forces are within us, pulling us this way and
that, until sometimes we who should be masters are helpless slaves.
One great help toward mastery and one long step toward serenity is a
working-knowledge of the causes and an impersonal interest in the
phenomena going on within. Introspection is a morbid, emotional
fixation on self, until it takes on this quality of objectivity. What
Cabot calls the "sin of impersonality" is a grievous sin when
directed toward another person, but most of us could stand a good deal
of ingrowing impersonality without any harm.

The fact that the human machine can run itself without a hitch in the
majority of cases is witness to its inherent tendency toward health.
People were living and living well through all the centuries before
the science of psychology was formulated. But not with all people do
things run so smoothly. There were demoniacs in Bible times and
neurotics in the Middle Ages, as