Instant Subjective experience its fate in psychology psychoanalysis and philosophy of mind 1st editi
Subjective Experience Its Fate in Psychology Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Mind 1st Edition Morris N. Eagle
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A Psychodynamic View of Action and Responsibility
Clinical Studies in Subjective Experience 1st Edition
‘The study of subjective experience is fundamental to both psychology and psychoanalysis. Yet, consciousness has often been treated with circumspection in psychoanalysis. With his characteristic clarity of thought and intellectual rigor that have earned him the reputation as one of the foremost scholars in our field, Morris Eagle tackles this issue head-on in his new book. Eagle sifts through a vast body of literature to synthesize, critique, and at times debunk prevalent notions of what subjectivity means and why it is so critically important to psychoanalysis and to a psychoanalytic psychology. The result of such a monumental undertaking is a remarkable achievement and a major contribution to the field that is sure to become a classic’.
Christopher Christian, PhD, editor, Psychoanalytic Psychology
‘Morris Eagle strikes again. Forty years have passed since 1984, when, in a volume that now is a “classic”, he taught us to look at psychoanalysis as a living and evolving theory. A challenge to which he has returned in the following years, with a series of volumes written in a lucid and balanced voice, showing us that, despite the irredeemable plurality of the word “psychoanalysis”, it is still possible to think of a unified theory of the mind capable of accommodating all the major schools of psychoanalytic thought. In this view volume, Morris captures us with the idea that, despite the centrality of the unconscious, psychoanalytic theory has room within it to relocate consciousness and subjective experience in a way that does justice to their centrality in
our existence. Once again, he offers us a priceless book that enriches the way we look at psychoanalysis and, inevitably, at ourselves’.
Vittorio Lingiardi, University ofRome, Italy
‘Our subjective experience – our consciousness – is all that really matters to us, yet it has often not fared well in psychological and philosophical theorizing, and its importance is downplayed – indeed, it is a target of supposition in psychoanalysis. Morris Eagle offers a brilliant, intellectually kaleidoscopic exploration of the many ways that the importance of subjective experience has been affirmed or denied, deftly parrying the reductionists and affirming the centrality of consciousness while acknowledging its elusiveness. Eagle grapples with myriad provocative puzzles and controversies about understanding subjective experience across the disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and psychoanalysis, offering a cornucopia of insights, wise judgments, and, when warranted, devastating critiques of current views. His analysis leads him to construct a compelling and persuasive path forward that reinterprets Freudian insights into the unconscious in terms of James’s notion of fringe consciousness, an idea that, he shows, has profound clinical implications and saves us from much nonsense. This book offers us nothing less than a blueprint for tackling the future of psychoanalysis that saves psychoanalysis’s soul by fully acknowledging ours’.
Jerome C. Wakefield, PhD, DSW, isprofessor ofSocial Work, affiliateprofessor ofPhilosophy, professor ofthe ConceptualFoundations ofPsychiatry(2007–2019), associate
faculty in the Center for Bioethics, andhonorary faculty in the Psychoanalytic Association ofNew York, at New YorkUniversity
‘Only Morris Eagle could have written this book. Eagle’s unique mix of deep erudition, keen intellection, and unflagging passion result in a precious outcome: a masterwork that places subjective experience –consciousness – at the very center of human living. Experimental psychology, psychoanalysis, philosophy of mind all receive thorough and innovative treatment, not only illuminating features of conscious life, but also clarifying the nature of “unconscious” processes. Subjective Experience will be of interest to a wide-ranging audience: from undergraduates and practicing psychoanalysts, to graduate students and leading academics’.
Mitchell Wilson, MD, editor-in-chief, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association
Subjective Experience
Morris N. Eagle explores the understanding and role of subjective experience in the disciplines of psychology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy of mind.
Elaborating how different understandings of subjective experience give rise to very different theories of the nature of the mind, Eagle then explains how these shape clinical practices. In particular, Eagle addresses the strong tendency in the disciplines concerned with the nature of the mind to overlook the centrality of subjective experience in one’s life, to view it with suspicion, and to reduce it to neural processes. Describing examples of research in which subjective experience is a central variable, Eagle provides an outline of a model in which the dichotomy of conscious and unconscious is supplemented by subjective experience as a continuum.
This book is essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychoanalytic psychotherapists, psychologists and anyone wishing to gain a deeper understanding of the importance of theories of the mind to therapeutic practice.
Morris N. Eagle is professor emeritus of the Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies at Adelphi University. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a recipient of the Sigourney Award for lifetime contribution to psychoanalysis. He is the author and editor of eight books and more than 150 journal articles and chapters in edited books.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ISSUES
Members ofthe EditorialBoard
Wilma Bucci Derner Institute, Adelphi University
Diana Diamond City University of New York
Morris Eagle Derner Institute, Adelphi University
Peter Fonagy University College London
Andrew Gerber Austen Riggs Center
Robert Holt New York University
Paolo Migone Editor, Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane
Fred Pine Albert Einstein College of Medicine
The basic mission of PsychologicalIssues is to contribute to the further development of psychoanalysis as a science, as a respected scholarly enterprise, as a theory of human behavior, and as a therapeutic method.
Over the past 50 years, the series has focused on fundamental aspects and foundations of psychoanalytic theory and clinical practice, as well as on work in related disciplines relevant to psychoanalysis. PsychologicalIssues does not aim to represent or promote a particular point of view. The contributions cover broad and integrative topics of vital interest to all psychoanalysts as well as to colleagues in related disciplines. They cut across particular schools of thought and tackle key issues, such as the philosophical underpinnings of psychoanalysis, psychoanalytic theories of motivation, conceptions of therapeutic action, the nature of unconscious mental functioning, psychoanalysis and social issues,
and reports of original empirical research relevant to psychoanalysis. The authors often take a critical stance toward theories and offer a careful theoretical analysis and conceptual clarification of the complexities of theories and their clinical implications, drawing upon relevant empirical findings from psychoanalytic research as well as from research in related fields.
Series Editor David L. Wolitzky and the Editorial Board continues to invite contributions from social/behavioral sciences such as anthropology and sociology, from biological sciences such as physiology and the various brain sciences, and from scholarly humanistic disciplines such as philosophy, law, and ethics. Volumes 1–64 in this series were published by International Universities Press. Volumes 65–69 were published by Jason Aronson. For a full list of the titles published by Routledge in this series, please visit the Routledge website: https://www.routledge.com/PsychologicalIssues/book-series/PSYCHISSUES
Subjective Experience
Its Fate in Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy of Mind
The right of Morris N. Eagle to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademarknotice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
BritishLibrary Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781032686943 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032686950 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781032686967 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781032686967
Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
I dedicate this book to my wife Rita Eagle who, as always, gets to the heart of the matter and helps me organize what is often somewhat messy.
8 Some summing up and concluding comments
Index
Acknowledgments
I want to express my appreciation to my editor, Georgina Clutterbuck, who has been consistently and graciously helpful. I also want to acknowledge the stimulating and clarifying discussions of difficult issues with David Wolitzky and Jerry Wakefield.
Introduction
DOI: 10.4324/9781032686967-1
Although we do not normally give it much thought, what is most valuable and precious about being alive is consciousness, that is, being able to feel, think, and experience the world and oneself and others in it. Indeed, at the core of the dread of death is the fear of ceasing to be, that is, ceasing to experience. Death, Montaigne (1580/1993) tells us, is the limit of experience. As Thomas Reid wrote, ‘people are greatly interested in their own personal survival, which they see very much in terms of the continuity of their own consciousness’ (p. 2). And Edwards (1966) writes, ‘A person thinking of his own death is thinking of the destruction or disintegration of his body and the cessation of his experiences’ (p. 416). Let us say you were offered a devil’s bargain in which ‘you gain unlimited wealth, but must relinquish all subjective feeling. You can act and speak like a zombie, but no more hearing, smelling … loving, hating … wanting, hoping … imagining … ’ (Koch, 2019, p. xi). As Koch notes, ‘From your point of view, you might as well be dead’ (p. xi). In short, ‘Everything in our life depends on being alive and just about everything in our lives depends on being conscious’ (Searle, 2013, p. 10347).
Consciousness and subjective experience have had a checkered career in the history of intellectual thought. As Makari (2015) documents, until the 1700s, the study of the mind, understood in terms of consciousness and subjective experience, was a topic for theology. That is the soul, which included consciousness and subjective experience, belonged to religion. It was mainly the philosophical writings of Hobbes and Locke that secularized the study of mind and thereby made it available for empirical investigation. However, making the mind available for empirical
investigation did not necessarily mean that subjective experience would be at the center of the study of the mind.
The philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1933) wrote that ‘“experience”, of all the words in the philosophic vocabulary is the most difficult to manage’ (p. 9). He appears to locate this difficulty in the questionable relationship between sensation and judgment in the description of experience (an issue that will be discussed later in the context of the sensation–perception distinction) as well as the different perspectives one can take toward experience. At one point, John Dewey (1944) thought that the term ‘experience’ should be dropped from philosophical discussion, presumably because of its elusiveness. He wrote to a colleague ‘I agree with what you say about dropping “experience” as not needed’ (Letter to Arthur Bentley, May 12, 1944). However, he also wrote: ‘ … we need a cautionary directive word, like experience, to remind us that the world which is lived, suffered, and enjoyed, as well as logically thought of has the last word in all human inquiries and surmises’ (p. 372) (as cited in Jay, 2005)
Despite the obvious and stark reality that consciousness and the capacity to experience are at the core of one’s existence and the most precious things about being alive, until recently, they have not fared well in the disciplines – psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy – that have to do with the nature of mind. Consciousness and subjective experience have been variously viewed in these disciplines as epiphenomena, reduced to neural processes and broken down into their presumed elements. For example, not only were consciousness and subjectivity excluded from the subject matter of the discipline of psychology in the form of behaviorism, but were also given short shrift in the emergence of cognitive psychology, with its emphasis on unconscious computational processes. Thus, Fodor (1983) writes: ‘all psychologically interesting cognitive states are unconscious’ (p. 86). And Lakoff and Johnson (1999) write that one of three ‘major findings of cognitive science [is that] thought is mostly unconscious’ (p. 3).
Consciousness and subjective experience fare little better in psychoanalysis, particularly in the Freudian theory of the mind. The reduced significance of consciousness in classical psychoanalysis is reflected in its very definition as the study of unconscious phenomena. Laplanche and Pontalis (1973) write that ‘psychoanalytic theory emerges from a refusal to define the psychoanalytic field in terms of consciousness’ (p. 84). Further, as will be elaborated in a later chapter, not only is conscious experience viewed as epiphenomenal in the Freudian theory of the nature of the mind, but as (Ricoeur 1970) notes, consciousness is seen as ‘false’ (p. 33) and replete with ‘illusions and lies’ (p. 32). That is, conscious subjective experience is mainly a surface façade that hides, disguises, and misrepresents the unconscious motives and forces that truly drive one’s life.
A dismissive approach to subjective experience is also common in neuroscience. As Chalmers (1995) puts it, ‘for many years … the prevailing view was that science, which depends on objectivity, could not accommodate something as subjective as consciousness’ (p. 80).1 For example, Crick (1994), the Nobel Prize laureate, states
You, your joys and sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are, in fact, no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associate molecules. As Lewis Carroll’s Alice might have phrased it: ‘You’re nothing but a pack of neurons’.
(p. 3)
The neuroscientist Chater (2018) maintains that the positing of an inner world of beliefs, desires, motives, and thoughts is egregiously false. He writes that ‘Thoughts, like fiction, come into existence in
the instant that they are invented, and not a moment before’ (p. 5). He also writes that
no one, at any point in human history, has ever been guided by inner beliefs and desires, any more than any human being has been possessed by evil spirits or watched over by a guardian angel. Beliefs, motives, and other imagined inhabitants of our ‘inner world’ are entirely a figment of our imaginations. The stories we tell to justify and explain our own and others’ behavior aren’t just wrong in detail – they are a thoroughgoing fabrication from start to finish.
(p. 6)
Thus, Chater is not saying that the reasons and motives we give for our behavior do not represent our real reasons and motives. Rather, he is saying that there are no such things as reasons and motives motivating one’s behavior.
A radically different position is seen in a phenomenological perspective, which is less concerned with the problem of how a scientific physicalist worldview can accommodate consciousness and subjective experience. Rather, its concern is with the analysis of the structure of experience itself, which, it is argued, needs to be addressed prior to scientific concerns. However, as we will see, it is far from clear that this approach has contributed significantly to our understanding of consciousness and lived subjective experience. The approach to consciousness and subjective experience in the disciplines I discuss is not monolithic. For example, as exemplified by Gestalt psychology, psychophysics, and other methods that investigate the determinants and correlates of subjective experience,
there are approaches that do justice to the nature of actual, lived experience. As we will see, this is also the case in the context of psychoanalytic theory. As for philosophy of mind, there is an ongoing debate in the philosophical literature between those who believe that science must find a way of accommodating ‘something as subjective as consciousness’ (Chalmers, 1995, p. 80) and those who approach consciousness and subjective experience through various forms of reductionistic and eliminative strategies. On the one side, we have philosophers like Strawson (e.g., 2015) and Searle (e.g., 1992), who argue for the reality, indeed the primacy of consciousness, and who argue that if current science cannot accommodate as central an aspect of the natural world as the existence of conscious experience, it is science that needs to change. On the other side, similar to the neuroscience and philosophical perspectives of Crick and Chater described above, the philosopher Georges Rey (1983) writes that ‘The concept of consciousness might turn out to be an excessively simplistic way of viewing our complicated lives … we would be mistaken in thinking of ourselves, or of anything, as conscious’ (as cited in Baars, 2003, p. 14).
In the following chapters, I will elaborate on and critically evaluate various views in the disciplines of psychology, psychoanalysis, and philosophy on the role of consciousness and subjective experience in the understanding of the nature of mind. Before proceeding further, I want to clarify my use of some key terms and some key assumptions: the term ‘experience’ is equivalent to ‘conscious experience’. Whereas mental contents, as well as discrimination and encoding, can be unconscious, unconscious experience is an oxymoron. Normally, consciousness is my consciousness and the experiences I have are my experiences. That is, they are ‘subjective experiences’. However, under certain conditions (e.g., dissociative states, depersonalization, intrusive thoughts), one can have ‘not me’, ego-alien experiences. Such experiences lack the quality of subjectivity and thus, are not subjective experiences. These uses and assumptions should be kept in mind in reading discussions of subjective experience throughout the book.
Note
1. Dewey’s ambivalent position regarding experience reflects the dilemma that although experience is at the center of existence, and constitutes the foundation for empirical scientific investigation, the phenomenon of conscious experience itself does not readily fit into a scientific worldview.
References
Baars, B. J. (2003). The double life of B. F. Skinner: Inner conflict, dissociation and the scientific taboo against consciousness. JournalofConsciousness Studies, 10(1), 5–25.
Chalmers, D. (1995). The puzzle of conscious experience. Scientific American, 273(6), 80–86.
Chater, N. (2018). The mindis flat: The remarkable shallowness ofthe improvising brain. Yale University Press.
Dewey, J. (1944). Letter to Arthur F. Bentley. In J. Dewey & A. F. Bentley (Eds.), Aphilosophicalcorrespondence 1932–1951. Rutgers University Press.
Edwards, P. (1966). My death. In P. Edwards (Ed.), The encyclopedia of philosophy (Vol. 5, pp. 416–419). Free Press and Macmillan Publishing Company.
Fodor, J. A. (1983). The modularity ofmind. MIT Press.
Koch, C. (2019). The feeling oflife itself: Why consciousness is widespreadbut can'tbe computed. MIT Press.
Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh: The embodiedmind andits challenge to western thought. Basic Books.
Laplanche, J., &Pontalis, J.-B. (1973). The language ofpsycho-analysis. Hogarth Press.
Makari, G. (2015). Soulmachine: The invention ofthe modern mind. W. W. Norton & Company.
Montaigne, M. de (1958). The complete essays ofMontaigne (D. M. Frame, Trans.). Stanford University Press.
Oakeshott, M. (1933). Experience andits modes. Cambridge University Press.
Rey, G. (1983). A reason for doubting the existence of consciousness. In R. J. Davidson, G. E. Schwartz, & D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness &selfregulation: Advances in researchandtheory (Vol. 3). Plenum Press.
Ricoeur, P. (1970). Freudandphilosophy: An essay on interpretation. Yale University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1992). The rediscovery ofthe mind. MIT Press.
Searle, J. R. (2013). Theory of mind and Darwin's legacy. Proceedings ofthe NationalAcademy ofSciences, 110(Suppl. 2), 10343–10348. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1301214110
Chapter 1 Consciousness and subjective experience in psychology
DOI: 10.4324/9781032686967-2
Titchener’s structuralism
Every undergraduate psychology student is taught that psychology became a scientific discipline in 1879, the date that Wundt established the first experimental laboratory of psychological research.1 Trained by Wundt, Titchener brought the experimental laboratory for research in psychology to the United States at Cornell University. Titchener and his followers defined psychology as the study of conscious experience. His theoretical and research program was called structuralism because it focused on the structure of conscious experience. According to the structuralist perspective, paralleling the approach of the physical sciences of analyzing physical objects into its constituent elements (i.e., atoms and molecules), the task of the psychological scientist is to analyze conscious experience into its constituent elements, which were identified as sensations, images, and feelings. The method of carrying out this analysis was introspection; however, this was not ordinary introspection, but rather trained introspection, which required the observer to report his or her subjective experience rather than the physical object. The latter was seen as a ‘stimulus error’; that is, the observer lapsed from a psychological point of view, in which one introspected and reported one’s experience, to a
physical point of view in which one described the external physical object. For example, one’s report of seeing, say, ‘an apple’ constituted a stimulus error insofar as it reported a physical object rather than one’s sensations (e.g., ‘red’, ‘round’). As we will see in Chapter 3, Titchener’s trained introspection bears a strong family resemblance to Husserl’s phenomenological approach of bracketing, that is, suspension of the natural attitude in order to describe the structure of experience. In both cases, the observer is suspending or bracketing the natural attitude of reporting the object.
In visual perception, different features of an object (e.g., an apple) such as contour, color, location, and so on, are processed in different parts of the brain. And yet, we do not normally experience these different features separately. Rather, we experience a unitary object in a particular context, a ‘binding’ product that is highly adaptive in one’s interaction with the world. (I will return to the process of ‘binding’ in Chapter 3.) In its emphasis on breaking down conscious experience into its presumed elements, and thereby avoiding the so-called ‘stimulus error’, the trained introspection procedure of structuralism, in effect, attempts to unbind the natural achievement of binding.2 This is also the case with regard to Husserl’s bracketing and suspension of the natural attitude. In both cases, it is not a spontaneous perceptual experience of unified objects that is the object of investigation, but the presumed elements of perceptual experience. This is but one expression of the (misguided) search for the presumed elements of perceptual experience, an issue that we will revisit in a discussion of the sensation-perception distinction.
It is worth noting that prior to the advent of structuralism, a fruitful body of work that came to be known as psychophysics (of which Titchener was certainly aware) had been conducted on the relation between reports of subjective experience and variations in physical stimuli. Weber (1834) reported that ‘the smallest perceptible difference between two weights can be stated as a ratio between the weights’ and further that ‘the ratio is independent of the magnitude of the weights’ (Boring, 1950, p. 113). This discovery also
held for visual and auditory discrimination. Fechner refined and mathematized Weber’s findings into what has come to be known as the Weber–Fechner law. In contrast to structuralism, this approach to the investigation of subjective experience was productive and led to important discoveries. This was largely so because unlike the structuralist approach, which focused on the supposed elements of experience, the research on psychophysics investigated the relations between experience as it is given and events in the world.3 Fechner recognized that although we cannot measure sensation itself, we can measure the relations between sensations (e.g., just noticeable differences or JND’S) and physical stimuli (see Boring, 1950, pp. 286–287). There is also the seminal work of Muller (1840) on specific nerve energies and perceptual experience, by Helmholtz on a wide range of perceptual experiences, as well as by many others. As I will elaborate later, a strategy of investigating functional relations between variations in experience and variations in other events such as external stimuli, neural processes, and social has been far more fruitful than approaches that attempt to analyze the structure of subjective experience itself.
Functionalism
The research program of structuralism led to few, if any, important findings or insights.
Following the relative failure of the structuralist project to generate findings of much significance, a new psychological perspective known as functionalism emerged in the United States. Its major figures included Angell, James, Baldwin, and Dewey. Functionalism was characterized, on the so to speak negative side, by a rejection of the elementalism of structuralism; and on the positive side, by an understanding of the mind and its properties in terms of its evolutionary functions. William James (1890), a central figure of functionalism, wrote a great deal about consciousness; not the static and broken down into elements consciousness of structuralism, but the personal, forever changing, and selective consciousness that we experience in our everyday life. Also, as the
term functionalism indicates, James’ emphasis was not on the elements, but rather on the function of consciousness. He writes:
Taking a purely naturalistic view of the matter, it seems reasonable to suppose that, unless consciousness served some useful purpose, it would not have been superadded to life. Assuming hypothetically that this is so, this results in an important problem for Psychophysicists to find out, namely, how consciousness helps an animal, how much complication of machinery may be saved in the nervous centers, for instance, if consciousness accompanies their action.
(James, 1875/1890, p. 205)
The functionalist approach is clearly summarized by Angell (1907) who described it as the ‘psychology of the fundamental utilities of consciousness’ in which mind is ‘primarily engaged in mediating between the environment and the needs of the organism’ (as cited in Boring, 1950, p. 557).4 Thus, although as was true of structuralism, consciousness was viewed as an appropriate subject matter for psychology, unlike structuralism, the emphasis was on its function, not on its elements. Among other implications, this meant that reduced importance was given to introspection as the primary source of psychological data.
Evolutionary theory exerted a strong influence on functionalism, not only in regard to its emphasis on adaptive functions, but also in its emphasis on the continuities between animals and humans. Although the functionalist study of animal behavior initially included inferences to the nature of the animal’s consciousness, investigators
such as Watson, later to become the originary figure of behaviorism, soon concluded that it was sufficient to limit one’s investigations to the animal’s behavior without any reference to consciousness. This led to the reasoning that if animal behavior could be investigated and understood without any reference to consciousness, this was also likely to be the case with regard to the investigation of human behavior. In short, the ground was prepared for the full-blown emergence of behaviorism, one major consequence of which was the snuffing out of any reference to consciousness and subjective experience. Based on the evidence that animal behavior could be shaped by Pavlovian conditioning (Yerkes & Morgalis, 1909), it appeared that behavior could be influenced directly, without the mediation of consciousness. As Boring (1950) notes, at least with regard to animal behavior, ‘a functional psychology could get along without consciousness’ (Boring, 1950, p. 556). The net result was a waning interest in consciousness and an increasing emphasis on behavior itself; thus, the boundary between functionalism and behaviorism became increasingly blurred.5
The ambivalent attitude of functionalism toward consciousness went beyond the context of animal behavior. We have already noted Dewey’s (1944) ambivalence toward the term ‘experience’ In his introduction to the 1981 publication of James’ (1890) The Principles of Psychology, Miller writes that ‘The functionalist’s attention to behavior was so successful that the subjective aspect of psychology came to seem unnecessary’ (p. XXI). Miller is, of course, referring to the link between functionalism and the emergence of behaviorism. However, despite that link, not only James, but the other major founders of functionalism –Angell, Baldwin, and Dewey – never took the explicit step of eliminating subjective experience as the subject matter of psychology. Indeed, it would be mistaken to conclude that James dismissed the importance of subjective experience. Even a casual familiarity with James’ writings – particularly his Principles of Psychology – would make it clear that subjective experience and its functions are at the center of his theory of the mind.
Given the centrality of evolutionary theory in functionalist thinking, particularly, the idea that the capacity for conscious experience emerged in the course of evolution, it would be difficult for functionalist theorists to fail to recognize that this capacity served vital functions. As James (1890) writes:
The distribution of consciousness shows it to be exactly such as we might expect an organ added for the sake of steering a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself. Consciousness … has in all probability been evolved, like all other functions, for a use it is to the highest degree improbable apriorithat should have no use.
(as cited in Boring, 1950, p. 515)
Behaviorism
James’ cogent evolutionary argument regarding the function of consciousness notwithstanding, the move toward the dominance of behaviorism was inexorable. This meant that the exorcism of subjective experience as an appropriate matter for scientific investigation was inevitable. The emergence of behaviorism was influenced not only by functionalism, but also by the earlier writings of Russian physiologists and psychologists, including Bekhterev and Sechenov, who were developing an ‘objective psychology’. Central to objective psychology was the proposition that all psychological life could be understood as reflexes. Sechenov (1863) wrote that ‘all acts of conscious or unconscious life are reflexes’ (as cited in Boring, 1950, p. 635). Of course, the work of Pavlov, the greatest of the Russian physiologists, on conditioned reflexes, exerted a strong influence on behaviorism. It is important to note, however, that Pavlov did not accept Sechenov’s reduction of psychological life to
reflexes. He wrote: ‘Psychology, insofar as it concerns the subjective state of man, has a natural right to existence; for our subjective world is the first reality with which we are confronted’ (Pavlov, 1927, p. 239).
As the contrast between Bekhterev’s and Sechenov’s ‘objective psychology’ and Pavlov’s statement makes clear, one needs to distinguish between ontological and epistemological behaviorism. The former includes the position of early figures such as La Mettrie (1747), who viewed animals and humans as automations, Hobbes (1651), who interpreted all mental states in terms of matter in motion, and the Russian reflexologists, who reduced all behavior to reflexes. Epistemological behaviorism was mainly motivated by the overriding goal of enabling the scientific investigation of psychological phenomena. Epistemological behaviorists did not argue that consciousness does not exist; only that if psychology was to be a science, it needed to limit its subject matter to the observable. As Skinner (1953) wrote, ‘The objection to inner states is not that they do not exist, but that they are not relevant in a functional analysis’ (p. 53). (However, as we will see, in the very same paper, Skinner also adopts a position of ontological behaviorism). The basic stance of epistemological behaviorism toward subjective experience is that because it is private and not objectively observable, it is not subject to scientific investigation.6,7 On this view, the structuralist definition of psychology as the study of the elements of consciousness placed it outside the boundary of scientific study. The sterility of the structuralist project of investigating the elements of subjective experience appeared to support that idea. J.B. Watson’s 1913 book Psychology as the Behaviorist Views It, marks the birth of behaviorism in the United States and outlines its general program, which is filled out and elaborated in later papers. In one of those papers, Watson (1925) wrote that
… the time has come for psychology to discard all reference to consciousness … it is merely
another word for the ‘soul’ of more ancient times … the behaviorist must exclude from his scientific vocabulary all subjective terms such as sensation, perception, image, desire, purpose, and even thinking and emotion as they were subjectively defined. (as cited in Baars, 2003, p. 3)
Echoing Watson’s view many years later, Skinner (1953) wrote: ‘ … “mind” and “ideas” are non-existent entities, invented for the sole purpose of providing spurious explanations … since mental and psychic terms are asserted to lack the dimensions of physical science, we have an additional reason for rejecting them’ (pp. 30–31).
Watson argued that principles of animal behavior, such as conditioning, are applicable to human beings. He also ‘translated’ experiential terms into various forms of behaviors – for example, thinking as subvocal verbalizations; and verbal report as a form of behavior. In view of the fact that we generally report our subjective experiences verbally, the concept of ‘verbal behavior’, some argued, could be seen as allowing mentalistic terms into behaviorism through the back door. Similarly, in a book entitled Verbal Behavior, Skinner (1957) tried to demonstrate that through ‘functional analysis’ of environmental variables, one could predict and control verbal behavior without any reference to mental states. In what has become a classic, Chomsky (1980) wrote a devastating review of the book, which exposed the utter untenability of Skinner’s behaviorist approach to so-called verbal behavior.
Behaviorism justified its approach not only on the ground that observable behavior was the proper subject of psychological science, but also on the ground that focusing on the relation between antecedent (stimuli) and consequent (response) variables – without
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a grocery store when we got to Newfield, and were told that a widow near by accommodated travelers. We found her very willing if we could take care of the horse ourselves, for she had no “men folks.”
Despite our fatigue, as necessity compelled, we unharnessed Charlie and gave him some corn—she had no oats. We went into the little sitting-room to wait, but not to rest, for our hostess was very social. After being entertained for an hour and a half, we carried a pail of water to the barn for Charlie, and harnessed him. We asked the amount of our indebtedness, when her ladyship mentioned a sum exceeding what we often pay at first-class hotels, where our horse is well groomed and grained—not by ourselves—blandly remarking at the same time that she “did not believe in high prices.”
Our map is not much help when traveling bias, and we wondered next where we should sleep. It was only a few miles to the little village of West Newfield, and again we went to a grocery store for information. Our many inquiries were very courteously answered, and one or two hotels within a few miles were mentioned. At this point a young man came forward, commenting on the modesty of the storekeeper, whom he said was the hotel proprietor as well, and advised us to stay where we were sure of good care, as we should be no nearer Wolfeboro at either of the places suggested. We were directed to a modest house, one-story front, which we had just passed, where the wife of the gentlemanly storekeeper, hotel proprietor and farmer also, we afterward learned, kindly received us and gave us a cosy front room on the first floor. We soon felt we were in a home, as well as a hotel, and we sat on the front doorstep writing letters till dark, then talked of our friends in Hollis. How long ago it all seemed! And yet we only left there that morning.
There was not a sound to disturb our slumbers that night, and we awoke fresh for our drive of twenty-five miles to Wolfeboro. It was still hot, but the drive was a striking contrast to that of the day previous. We were approaching the rough country which borders Lake Winnipiseogee, and more than once fancied ourselves among the Berkshire hills. We stopped at a farmhouse for a pitcher of milk, and took a little lunch sitting on a stone wall under a large tree. The good old people begged us to go into the house, but we assured
them we preferred the wall, and when we returned the pitcher, they had come to the conclusion that it might be pleasant to eat out of doors once in a while. We knew they had watched us through the curtain cracks in the front room.
Every mile now, the country was more and more delightful, so wild and hilly. Up and down we went, getting glimpses of the lake from the top of a high hill, then wending our way into the valley only to go up again. It sometimes seemed as if nothing but a plunge would ever bring us to the lake, but after much twisting and turning, we reached Wolfeboro and drove up to The Pavilion at two o’clock. We left our horse and traveling equipments in charge until called for, and in an hour went on board the Lady of the Lake. Now we felt really at home, but the charms of Lake Winnipiseogee are only increased by familiarity, and we never enjoyed it more. At Weirs Landing a friendly face greeted us, one always present at the Grove meetings. We secured at Hotel Weirs the room we had last year, and then went out in search of friends, and found them from the East, West, North and South. We surprised them all, for they had heard indirectly only the day before that we had started on our journey with usual indefiniteness, except that we were not going to Weirs.
The two or three days we spent there were interspersed with sermons, friendly reunions, rowing, and a trip to Wolfeboro on The Gracie, with a party of twenty. The talented company, the glories of the lake and shore scenery by daylight, the sunset tints, the moon in its full beauty, and the lightning darting through the black clouds in the distant north, with now and then a far-away rumbling of thunder, made a rare combination.
The next day, Saturday, was very bright, and we made sure of one more pleasant sail. The Lady of the Lake landed us at Wolfeboro at four o’clock, and we immediately ordered our horse, and made inquiries about hotels, roads and distances. We learned that hills abounded and that hotels were few and poor, and that Alton Bay was the only place where we would be sure of good accommodations; that the distance was twelve miles, and the road the roughest in the vicinity. We did not care to go to Alton Bay, as we had been there on a previous journey, but it seemed our wisest course. At different
times we had driven entirely around the lake, except this twelve miles, and we knew what to expect without the emphatic assurance of the clerk. We started off full of enthusiasm to surmount all difficulties, drew forth the revolver from the bottom of the bag, where it had been stowed away during our stay at Weirs, and amused ourselves by keeping tally of the hills, fifteen by actual count! They were long and high, too, but the fine views fully compensated us, and we knew Charlie was equal to the effort, for we had not forgotten the Canada hills he took us over last year. It was dark when we reached Alton Bay, and we were quite ready to enjoy the comforts that awaited us.
While our friends we had left at Weirs were preaching and being preached to, we quietly enjoyed the Sunday hours in our pleasant parlor overlooking the lake, reading and resting from our rough drive. At sunset we strolled to the water’s edge, sat down in an anchored row-boat and watched the clouds, which were grandly beautiful, looking at first like an immense conflagration, then resolving into black, smoky clouds as the last rosy tint faded.
Monday was a perfect day and Charlie was as fresh for the twentyeight miles to Dover as we were. The road was familiar, but seemed none the less pleasant. At Rochester we looked for the hotel, with beautiful hanging baskets all around the piazza, where we spent a night two years ago on our homeward drive from the mountains. Just after supper at Dover we heard a great chorus of bells, whistles and puffing engines. There was a fire just across the street, and we watched the devouring flames and the feather beds and bundles as they were thrown from the second story window into the drenched street, until the excitement was over, then went out for a walk. That night we packed up a little more than usual and planned what to do in case of fire, for our baggage is necessarily so limited on these journeys we should miss even the smallest article. Our precaution insured us sweet sleep and we took an early leave of Dover for Exeter, where we rested two hours, then started for Epping. Suddenly we changed our minds, faced about and went to Kingston. We had never been in Kingston. If we had, we never should have faced that way again; for the best hotel was the poorest we had yet
found, and the drive to Haverhill the next day very uninteresting. We fully appreciated the dry retort of a chatty old man, who gave us some directions, then asked where we came from that morning —“Kingston Plains! Good Lord!”
The drive from Haverhill to Andover was quite pleasant. We arrived there at three o’clock in the afternoon, and although we had driven but twenty miles, at once decided to go no farther that day. The heat was still oppressive, and no rain had fallen since we left home, except the shower at the Isles of Shoals. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible with books and lemonade. “Another pleasant day!” we said with a sigh, next morning. We were really longing for one of our cosy rainy-day drives.
Lowell and Lawrence were in our direct homeward route, but to avoid those places we had full directions to Littleton, and started in good faith for that place, but came across a guideboard which said, “Boston, twenty miles,” in the opposite direction. The temptation was too great, and once more we faced about. We called on friends as we drove through Reading and Maplewood, and finally found ourselves at Point of Pines. The heat and discomfort we had experienced were all forgotten there. The brilliant illuminations and the music made the evening hours delightful. The cool night was a luxury indeed. We spent the morning on the piazza with friends, and, after an early luncheon, drove into Boston via Chelsea Ferry. Oh! how hot it was! We thought there had been a change in the weather, but concluded we had been told truly, that it is always cool at the “Point.”
The crowded city streets distract Charlie, but we succeeded in wending our way to Devonshire street, where we got the latest news from home from a friend. Our last mail we had received at Weirs. We did a little shopping on Winter street, and then left the busy city for Cambridge, and on through Arlington and Lexington to Concord, a drive one cannot take too often, so full is it of historic interest. As we near the home of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts, and the monuments of Revolutionary interest, the very atmosphere seems full of recollections and reminiscences. The noble words of Emerson, the hermit life of Thoreau, the fascinating writings of
Hawthorne, transcendental people, “Little Women” and cousins just like other people, are all confused with skirmishes with the English, and the effort to realize it is all true. We have experienced this ecstasy more than once before, and it has faded away naturally as we drove on, but this time the spell was broken suddenly. We stopped at the hotel and found it just like a hundred other country taverns, not a suggestion of anything transcendental, and we felt as if dropped from the heights into the abyss of commonplaceness. We tried to rise again by watching from our window the passers-by and selecting those who looked as if they had been to the Summer School of Philosophy, but all in vain, and by the time we were ready to leave in the morning our enthusiasm had sunk to the Kingston level.
We had ordered our mails reforwarded from Weirs to Fitchburg, and now we were perplexed to know how to get them on our way home, when Leominster comes first. We studied our map and finally asked directions to Littleton again, and this time saw no enticing guideboard. We lunched at Ayer, lost our way trying to go from Shirley to Lunenburg (we rarely take a wrong road except when near home, where we are so sure we know we do not ask), and were ready for our two-hours’ rest when we arrived. The dust we shook off there was more than replaced before we reached Fitchburg. So many people were driving it was like a trip through the clouds; and the heat was so great, with the sun in our faces all the way, we set that little drive apart as the most uncomfortable of our whole journey. We forgot all our dusty zigzagging, however, as we drove leisurely towards Leominster, reading our letters, which were none the less interesting for having been a week in the Fitchburg post office.
Curious friends questioned our knowledge of geography, as they always do when we come from Boston through Fitchburg, and go our roundabout ways, but many years’ experience has convinced us there is more beauty in a curved than a straight line. We have taken longer journeys, and had better weather, but we shall always remember the journey of last summer as one of the pleasantest.
CHAPTER IV.
MOOSILAUKE AND FRANCONIA NOTCH.
“You did not take your drive this year, did you? I have seen nothing of it in the papers.” This oft-repeated query, and many similar hints, suggest that we have kept the pleasant incidents of our last summer’s drive to ourselves long enough; and the kindly interest of friends we know, and some we do not know, should be sufficient incentive to prompt our pen to tell you all about it.
Only those who have traveled by carriage nearly four thousand miles, within a radius of two hundred miles, in twelve successive summers, can appreciate the difficulty which increases each year in deciding which way to go. Railway travelers escape that difficulty, for they can only go where the rails are laid; but we belong to the great company of tramps who wander aimlessly, and rarely know in the morning where they will rest at night. We had only one definite idea when we decided to go somewhere, and that was, not to go to the seashore, because it was hot there last year; we believe in having a reason, however senseless it may be.
During the small hours of the morning of July 13th we found ourselves packing. Packing for a carriage journey means looking over once more the “must haves” which have been carefully selected, to see how many can be dispensed with in order to reduce the quantity to the amount of “baggage allowed” in a phaeton. This allowance is so small that, however limited one’s wardrobe may be, it looks plentiful after a month’s absence from it. This fact may well be mentioned as one of the decided advantages which a journey by carriage has over almost every other kind of summer traveling. The fewest things possible having been condensed into the smallest space possible, we were ready for a start at eight o’clock; but the clouds hung heavy, and we waited awhile for the sun to find its way through them; then said “good morning” to friends and were off. We
drove to Fitchburg because we like to start north, and from there we went to Ashburnham. Before we left Fitchburg the sun forgot all about us and hid behind the clouds, which had no consideration for our desire not to get wet the first day, and poured their contents on us unsparingly until we got to Ashburnham, where we stopped an hour or two. With seeming maliciousness the rain ceased during our stay, and began with renewed energy directly we were on our way again; and as we drove on through Winchendon the thunder and lightning rapidly increased. We had quite enjoyed the distant rumbling, but it was getting unpleasantly near The freshness of all our equipments was decidedly marred when we drove to the hotel in Fitzwilliam, and waterproofs and blankets were despatched to the kitchen fire to dry.
We devoted the evening to an earnest debate on “Why did we come to Fitzwilliam?” We had not even the reason we had for going to Fitchburg, and wherever we might drive, it did not seem as if Fitzwilliam was likely to be on our way. We do not know yet how it happened, unless the thunder and lightning so diverted us that we did not look on the map to see that Fitzwilliam was not on the way to anywhere. It is indeed delightful enough to be a terminus, and we were well cared for and ready for an early start when the bright morning greeted us. We faced toward Jaffrey, but were not out of sight of the hotel when we noticed our horse was lame. We drove on, thinking he might have stepped on a stone, and would soon be all right; but instead he grew worse, and, as we could not discover the cause after careful examination, we settled into a walk, and decided to stop at the first hotel we came to.
This was a new experience, and it looked serious. We found such slow traveling tiresome, and stopped for an hour in a very inviting spot by the wayside, where the rocks, under the shade of a large tree, seemed to be arranged for our especial comfort. We had luncheon from our basket, and read aloud, and watched between times the movements of a little green snake that evidently considered us intruders and was not disposed to give us absolute possession of the place.
We were refreshed, but Charlie was no better, and we were glad when we came to a hotel so pleasantly located that we felt we could spend Sunday there very comfortably, and hoped Charlie would be well by that time. Of course our limping condition interested the bystanders, and their wise opinions were freely volunteered. One said it was a sprain; another, strained cords of the right foot; a third thought the difficulty was in the left foot; when the landlord removed his pipe from his mouth and wisely declared he did not know, and as he resumed his smoking his manner indicated that the horse was as well as he ever would be. The best of care was promised, and to make sure of hitting the right place, the faithful hostler compressed both legs.
We established ourselves comfortably in a large front room facing Monadnock, a mountain we never tire of, and tried to enjoy as much as other people do who go to places to stay, instead of being always on the wing as we are. The afternoon and evening passed pleasantly, although we occasionally grew retrospective and thought of our usual good time and how some people would say, “That comes of starting on Friday.” Should we have to go home? and where would we be if Charlie had not been lame? Sunday morning we went quietly into the back pew of the little church across the green; then we read and read, and after that we read some more. Charlie seemed a little better at night, and Monday morning the landlord said he thought it would be well to drive him. (We think he expected parties to take our room.)
We started towards East Jaffrey, and tried to think he was better, but it was of no use. There was serious trouble somewhere. Having the day before us, we concluded to try to get to Peterboro, an easy drive if a man had not carelessly given us a wrong direction, which took us a long way over hard hills instead of along the pretty river road. Poor Charlie! he did his best; and so did we, for, despite the heat, we walked much of the way and dragged him. We looked and felt forlorn as lost children, but our wits were sharpened by our discouragements, and we concluded he had sand or gravel under his shoe. We did wish we had had a blacksmith instead of a compress at Jaffrey!
We hobbled into Peterboro in course of time, and asked to have Charlie taken directly to a blacksmith, who said we were right, but he feared the trouble was not discovered in season for immediate relief. We again settled down to await our fate. The hotel was very nice, but the outlook was a poor exchange for Monadnock; nothing but stores, the signs on which we read until it seemed as if we could never forget them, as our eyes wandered up and down the street in search of something restful. All things have an end, so had this unsatisfactory day. We made an early call, next morning, on the blacksmith, who said we had better let Charlie rest that day, and take him down to the shop Wednesday morning.
Another day! Our diary record for that day is, “We do not like this way of taking a carriage journey.” Before the sun set we were driven to an extremity never reached before, in all our journeyings—an afternoon nap to kill time. After breakfast Wednesday morning, in desperation, we took matters into our own hands, went to the stable, led Charlie out, and trotted him about the yard. He was certainly better, and as we were determined not to act upon any advice, we asked none, but paid our bill and packed our traps before we drove to the blacksmith’s shop—a model establishment, by the way. The humblest one has a charm; but this shop was the most luxurious one we had ever seen, and everything was in harmony, from the fair, genial face of the proprietor to the speck of a boy who earned two cents a horse, or twelve cents a day, for brushing flies while the horses were being shod. We watched anxiously while the examination went on, and when the man looked up with a face worthy a second Collyer and said it was all right, we felt like having a jubilee. He carefully protected the injured spot, reset the shoes, and pronounced the horse ready for use. We added this Boston-born blacksmith to our list of never-to-be-forgotten friends and began our journey anew.
Was this an inspired creature we were driving? On he sped, and his eyes were in every direction, looking for some adequate excuse to jump. Surely, the limping Charlie was a myth! Bennington and Antrim were left behind, and night found us at Hillsboro Bridge, twenty miles
from our good blacksmith, the pleasantest remembrance we had of Peterboro.
Now we were really going somewhere, we must fix upon some place to meet letters from home. We took the map and cast our eyes up and down New Hampshire, but whether we fled to the borders or zigzagged through the interior, there was no escaping familiar routes. Being unanimously persistent in facing north, we bethought ourselves of the transformed “Flume,” and immediately fixed upon Plymouth for a mail centre. Charlie’s spirits were unabated the next day, and we rested him at Warren. It was useless to ask directions, for everybody was determined we must take the great highway to the mountains, through Concord. This we were not going to do, and as a first digression we drove around Mt. Kearsarge in Warner and spent a night at the Winslow House, a very attractive hotel half way up the mountain. A slight repentance may have come over us as we left the main road and attacked the hills that lay between us and the house on the mountain, especially as we felt compelled to walk, lest the hard pull prove too much for Charlie. Just before we reached the Mountain House we got into our phaeton, and all signs of repentance must have fled, for a lady on the piazza exclaimed, as we drove up, that we must be the ladies she had read of in the Transcript, for we looked as if we were having such a good time!
Once there, no one could have any regrets. The night was perfect. We asked leave to change our seats at the supper table, in order to add the sunset to our bill of fare; and in the evening we were cordially welcomed by the guests, who gathered around the open fire in the large parlor. At ten o’clock we all went out to see the moon rise over the mountain. A gentleman coming up the mountain saw it rise several times, and we got the effect of these repetitions by walking down a little way.
The morning was as lovely as the night, and the view simply beautiful, satisfying in all moods. There was no sensation of awe or isolation, but a feeling that one could be content forever. Kearsarge is about three thousand feet high. We were already fifteen hundred feet up, and directly after breakfast we started for the summit. No other parties were ready for a climb that morning, so full directions
for the bridle path and walking sticks were given us, and with maps, drinking cup and revolver strapped about us, we were ready for any emergency.
There is nothing more bewitching than an old bridle path, and we enjoyed every moment of the hour it took us to reach the summit. If the lovely, woodsy ascent and final scramble over the rocks had not fully rewarded us, the view itself must have more than repaid our efforts. With the aid of a little book we studied out the various mountain peaks and traced our route along the country to Moosilauke. We drank our fill of the beauty, then leisurely descended, and reached the Winslow House just in season to prepare for dinner, which means to people traveling without their wardrobe, a dash of water, a touch of the whisk broom and a little rub on the dusty boots.
We were just tired enough to enjoy a drive of twenty miles to Bristol in the afternoon—twelve miles up and down hills, and eight miles by a beautiful river. Our remembrance of Bristol is that we slept in one hotel and ate in another, that the moon rose two hours earlier than on Kearsarge, and that by some unaccountable mistake we arose an hour earlier than we thought, hastened to the office with our letters on the way to our refreshment hotel, where we supposed we had the dining-room to ourselves because we were last instead of first, wondered what could have happened to our watch, and did not discover that the watch was all right and we all wrong until we stopped, as we drove out of the village, to inquire the way to Plymouth, which would take us seven miles by the shore of Newfound Lake. It happened very well, however, for if we had been an hour later we should have missed the guardianship of that kindly couple who chanced to come along just in season to accompany us in passing a large company of gypsies, whom we had been following for some time, dreading to pass them in such a lonely place, lest they should think we had something they might like.
We had a “way” now, if we were going to Moosilauke, and Plymouth was eight miles out of our way, but we had to go there to get our letters. One or two we expected had not arrived, and we requested the postmaster to keep them until we called or sent for them. The
good words we got from home shortened the eight miles extra to Rumney, which proved to be the loveliest part of our day’s drive.
Rumney is quiet and just the place we wanted for Sunday We were the only guests at the little hotel, and everything was cosy as possible. We watched the people going to church, and after the last straggler had disappeared we put on our hats and followed, taking seats in the back pew of the smallest of the three small churches in that small place, where we heard a thrilling discourse on the atonement.
Sunday night there was a heavy shower, and Monday was just the day for Moosilauke, so bright and clear. Before we left Rumney we learned the gypsies had traveled while we rested, and were again in our path. We drove on, looking for them at every turn, and when we finally overtook them no guardian couple came along, and we tucked our wraps and bags out of sight, looked at the revolver’s hidingplace, and decided to brave it. They were scattered all along the road with their lumbering wagons, and Charlie pricked up his ears and refused to pass them. Immediately a brawny woman appeared, and saying, “Is your horse afraid?” took him by the bit and led him by the long procession. We kept her talking all the way, and when she left us we thought, surely this is the way with half the anticipated troubles in life; they are only imaginary. At another point, a large tree had fallen across the road during the rain and gale of the night. An old man was hard at work upon it, and had just got to the last limb which obstructed our way as we drove up; with a cheery word he drew it aside, and as neither gypsies nor gales had succeeded in detaining us, we now looked hopefully towards the summit of Moosilauke.
It is twelve miles from Rumney to Warren, and five miles from Warren to the Breezy Point House, on the slope of the mountain. This hotel was burned a few weeks after we were there; indeed, it has happened to so many hotels where we have been in our journeyings, that one would not wonder we never sleep when we travel, until we have packed “in case of fire,” and when we are up very high, we plan our escape; then rest as peacefully as if warranted not to burn.
The drive to Breezy Point House was very like that to the Winslow House on Kearsarge—partly walking. We got there before noon, and again we were the only persons to go to the top. As it takes three hours for the drive to the summit, we had no time to wait for dinner, so had a lunch, and a buckboard and driver were ordered for us. We had been warned to take plenty of wraps, and before we went to lunch had laid them aside, leaving the things we did not wish to take in the office. Everybody was waiting to see us off as we came from the dining-room, and the clerk said, “Your wraps are all right, under the seat.” We always envy everybody on a buckboard, and now we had one all to ourselves, a pair of horses equal to two mountain trips a day, and a chatty little driver ready to answer all our questions. It was a perfect summer afternoon, and we were delighted at every turn until we reached the “Ridge,” when a cold blast struck us, and the soft breezes suddenly changed to wind that threatened to take our hats off, if not our heads. Now for the wraps; and will you believe it? the man had put in the things we did not want, and those we did want were probably on the chair in the parlor, where we had left them. Between us we had one veil and one neckhandkerchief, with which we secured our hats and heads. There were one or two light sacques and a basque! Thinking of our warm wraps at the hotel did no good, so we dressed up in what we had, and with a little imagination, were comfortable.
The narrow and comparatively level stretch, sloping on either side, and the sudden ascent to the highest point on the mountain, suggest a ride upon the ridgepole of a house and final leap to the top of the chimney; once there, we went into the cosy house, something like the old one on Mt. Washington, and tied everything a little tighter before we dared face the gale. We then started out, and, actually in danger of being blown away, we united our forces by taking hold of hands, and ran along the daisy-carpeted plateau to what looked like the jumping-off place to the north. There is a similarity in mountain views, but each has at least one feature peculiar to itself. Mt. Washington has not even a suggestion of the beautiful meadows seen from Mt. Holyoke; and from one point on Moosilauke there is a view of mountain tops unlike any we have seen; just billows of mountains, nothing else, and the hazy, bluish tint was only varied by
the recent land slides on Mt. Liberty and Flume Mountain, which looked like silver cascades. Charming pictures meet the eye in every direction, but none more lovely than that along the Connecticut River near the Ox Bow.
We took mental possession of the whole scene in a very few minutes, and, with a last look at the “billows,” sought shelter under some rocks long enough to recover our breath and gather our pockets full of daisies; then returned to the house. A very fraillooking elderly lady was sitting by the fire, and we wondered how she ever lived through the jolting ride up the mountain, and how she could ever get down again. But our own transportation was the next thing for us, and we found some impatient parties had started off with our driver and left us to the mercy of another. We were disappointed at first, but when we found the new driver was just as good and wise as the other, and that his was “the best team on the mountain,” we were reconciled.
As we drove along the Ridge, he said he did not often trot his horses there, but when the wind blew so hard he wanted to get over it as soon as possible. We held on to each other and the buckboard, and believed him when he told us that, a few days before, he took a young man up in a single team, and the horse and buckboard were blown off the road, and the breath of the young man nearly forsook him forever. We enjoyed even that part of the ride, and when we got down a little way the frightful wind subsided into gentle zephyrs, so warm and soft that not a wrap was needed. Our driver was in no haste, and we stopped to gather ferns and flowers by the way. The knotted spruce sticks he cut and peeled for us now have bright ribbon bows, and adorn our parlor We lost all fear as we watched the horses step down the very steep pitches with as much ease as Charlie takes a level road, and wished the ride was longer.
After a half-hour at the Breezy Point House, we packed our unused wraps into the phaeton and prepared for our return drive to Warren, where we spent the night. Practical people again advised us to return to Plymouth if we wished to visit the Flume; but, remembering what happened to Lot’s wife for turning back, we proposed to keep straight on. The first time we stopped to make an inquiry, an old lady
looked sorrowfully at us and said, “There are gypsies ahead of you;” but we borrowed no trouble that time, and wisely, for we did not see them. We drove thirty-one miles that day, and for some distance followed the Connecticut River and looked across into Vermont, where we could follow the road we drove along on our way to Canada two years ago. After leaving the river, we followed the railroad very closely. We were once asked if our horse is afraid of the “track.” He is not, even when there is an express train on it, under ordinary circumstances; but a wooden horse might be expected to twinge, when one minute you are over the railroad, and the next the railroad is over you, and again you are alongside, almost within arm’s reach. In one of the very worst places we heard the rumbling of a train, and as there was no escape from our close proximity, we considered a moment, and decided we would rather be out of the carriage; “just like women,” I can hear many a man say. But never mind; our good Charlie had expelled us unceremoniously from the carriage once since our last journey, and we did not care to risk a repetition nearly two hundred miles from home. He rested while we jolted up and down Moosilauke the day before, and all the morning his ears had been active. A broken-down carriage with an umbrella awning by the side of the road was an object of so great interest to him that we had to close the umbrella, before he was even willing to be led by. A boy said it belonged to a man who had met with an accident, and we thought how much he might have escaped if he had “got out” as we did.
As the heavy train came thundering along almost over our heads, so close is the road to the high embankment, controlling our horse seemed uncertain; but to moral suasion and a strong hold on the curb he peacefully submitted, and in a few minutes we were on our way again, the carriage road, railroad and river intertwining like a three-strand braid. Night found us at Lisbon, and a small boy admitted us to a very new-looking hotel, and told us we could stay, before the proprietor appeared, with a surprised look at us and our baggage, and said the house was not yet open. That was of little consequence to us, as he allowed us to remain; and, after being in so many old hotels, the newness of everything, from bedding to teaspoons, was very refreshing.
We took the next day very leisurely, read awhile in the morning, then drove Charlie to the blacksmith’s to have his shoes reset before starting for Franconia via Sugar Hill, which commands as fine a view of the Franconia Mountains as Jefferson affords of the Presidential range. We remembered very pleasantly the house in Franconia where we were cared for two years ago, when night overtook us on our way from Littleton, and by two o’clock we were quite at home there again. It is away from the village, and directly opposite the house is an old wooden bridge. Sheltered by the high wooden side of the bridge is an old bench, where one can sit hours, rocked by the jar of the bridge to the music of horses’ feet, reveling in day dreams, inspired by the lovely view of the mountains, peaceful rather than grand, and the pretty winding stream in the foreground. We did not leave the charmed spot until the last sunset-cloud had faded, and darkness had veiled the mountain tops. We retired early, full of anticipation for the morning drive from Franconia to Campton, which has such a rare combination of grandeur and beauty, and is ever new. We drove up through the “Notch” several years ago, but the drive down would be new to us, for when we drove down two years ago, we might have fancied ourselves on a prairie, were it not for the ups and downs in the road. Not even an outline of the mountains was visible; everything was lost in the hazy atmosphere which preceded the “yellow day.”
We took an early start, and passing the cheery hotels and boardinghouses of Franconia, were soon in the Notch, of which Harriet Martineau says, “I certainly think the Franconia Notch the noblest mountain pass I saw in the United States.” However familiar it may be, one cannot pass Echo Lake without stopping. We did not hear the cannon which is said to be echoed by a “whole park of artillery,” but a whole orchestra seemed to respond to a few bugle notes. At Profile Lake we left the carriage again, to see how the “Old Man” looked when joined to earth. He hung in mid-air when we saw him last—enveloped in mist. We were too impatient to explore the new Flume to spare half an hour for the Pool, which was still fresh in our minds; and leaving Charlie to rest we started at once, with eyes opened wide to catch the first change in the famed spot. For some distance all was as we remembered it; but the scene of devastation
was not far off, and we were soon in the midst of it. We had heard it said, “The Flume is spoiled,” and again, “It is more wonderful than ever.” Both are true in a measure; before it suggested a miracle, and now it looked as if there had been a “big freshet.” Huge, prostrate trees were lodged along the side of the gorge high above our heads, and the mighty torrent had forced its way, first one side, then the other, sweeping everything in its course, and leaving marks of its power. Nothing looked natural until we got to the narrow gorge where the boulder once hung, as Starr King said, “Held by a grasp out of which it will not slip for centuries,” and now it has rolled far down stream like a pebble, and is lost in a crowd of companion boulders. The place where it hung is marked by the driftwood which caught around it and still clings to the ledges. A long way below we saw a board marked “Boulder” placed against an innocent-looking rock, which everybody was gazing at with wonder and admiration, but we also noticed a mischievous “A” above the inscription, which gave it its probable rank. A workman told us he thought he had identified the real boulder farther down amidst the debris; but it matters little, for it was not the boulder which was so wonderful, but how it came to be suspended so mysteriously. After seeing the Flume in its present condition, the charm which always clings to mystery is lost, but one is almost overpowered with the thought of the resistless force of Nature’s elements.
After climbing over the rocks till tired, we found a cosy place away from the many parties who were there, and in our little nook discovered a new boulder more mysteriously hung than the old one. It was a little larger than a man’s head, and firmly held between two larger rocks by two small pebbles which corresponded to ears. A flat rock had lodged like a shelf across the larger rocks, half concealing the miniature boulder. The old boulder was no longer a mystery to us, for we could easily imagine how, no one knows whether years or ages ago, a mountain slide like the one in June rolled the old rock along until it lodged in the gap simply because it was too large to go through. But for a time this little one baffled us. When the mighty torrent was rushing along, how could Nature stop to select two little pebbles just the right size and put them in just the right place to hold the little boulder firmly? We puzzled over it, however, until to our
minds it was scientifically, therefore satisfactorily solved; but we are not going to tell Nature’s secret to the public. We call it “our boulder,” for we doubt if any one else saw it, or if we could find it again among the millions of rocks all looking alike. We longed to follow the rocky bed to the mountain where the slide started, a distance of two miles, we were told, but prudence protested, and we left that till next time. We stopped to take breath many times on our way back to the Flume House, and after a good look at the slides from the upper piazza, we sought rest in our phaeton once more.
We forgot all about Lot’s wife this time, and looked back until it seemed as if our necks would refuse to twist. The ever-changing views as you approach Campton exhaust all the expressions of enthusiastic admiration, but the old stage road through the Pemigewasset Valley has lost much of its charm by the railroad, which in several places has taken possession of the pretty old road along the valley, and sent the stage road up on to a sand bank, and at the time we were there the roads were in a shocking condition. The many washouts on the stage and rail roads had been made barely passable, and there was a look of devastation at every turn. We spent the night at Sanborn’s, always alive with young people, and were off in the morning with a pleasant word from some who remembered our staying there over night two years ago.
From Campton to Plymouth is an interesting drive. We had a nice luncheon by the wayside, as we often do, but, instead of washing our dishes in a brook or at a spring as usual, we thought we would make further acquaintance with the woman who supplied us with milk. We went again to the house and asked her to fill our pail with water that we might wash our dishes; she invited us into the kitchen, and insisted on washing them for us—it was dish-washing time—which was just what we hoped she would do to give us a chance to talk with her. She told us about the freshets as she leisurely washed the tin pail, cups and spoons, and laid them on the stove to dry. Our mothers had not taught us to dry silver in that way, and we were a little anxious for the fate of our only two spoons, and hastened our departure, with many thanks for her kindness.
As soon as we reached Plymouth we went to the post office, eager for our letters. The deaf old gentleman was at his post, and we asked for letters and papers. He glanced up and down something, we do not know what, then indifferently said, “There are none.” Usually there is nothing more to be said; but not so in our case, for we were too sure there ought to be letters, if there were not, to submit to such a disappointment without protest. Perhaps he had not understood the names. We spoke a little louder, and asked if he would please look once more. He looked from top to bottom of something again, and with no apology or the least change of countenance, handed out a letter. This encouraged us, and we resolved not to leave until we got at least one more. “Now,” we said very pleasantly, “haven’t you another hidden away up there, somewhere?” He looked over a list of names and shook his head. We told him our mails were of great importance to us as we were traveling and could not hear from home often, and we were sure our friends had not forgotten us, and there must be one more somewhere. His patience held out, for the reason, perhaps, that ours did, and he looked up and down that mysterious place once more and the letter was forthcoming! The one or two witnesses to our conversation showed manifest amusement, but there was no apparent chagrin on the part of the obliging postmaster. We thought of the scripture text about “importunity,” and went to the carriage to read our letters which had barely escaped the dead-letter office. We were amused when we read that a package had been mailed with one of the letters, and went to the postmaster with this information. He declared there was no package, and knowing that packages are frequently delayed a mail, we did not insist on having one, but requested it forwarded to Weirs.
The annual question, “Shall we go to Weirs?” had been decided several days before; and we now set forth on the zigzag drive which we cannot make twice alike, and which always gives us the feeling of being on the road to nowhere. The day was bright, and we did not need ginger cookies to keep us warm, as we did the last time we took this drive, but there was no less discussion as to whether we ought to go, and whether the last turn was wrong or right. We always feel as if we had got home and our journey was ended, when we get
to Weirs. As usual, many familiar faces greeted us, and it was particularly pleasant, for until we got there we had not seen a face we knew since the day after we left home. Even our minister was there to preach to us, as if we were stray sheep and had been sent for. Lake Winnipiseogee was never more beautiful, but looked upon with sadness because of the bright young man who had given his life to it, and whose body it refused to give up. Although we always feel our journey at an end, there is really one hundred miles of delightful driving left us, and Monday morning, after the adjournment of the grove meeting, we ordered our horse, and while waiting walked to the station to have a few last words with our friends who were going by rail and boat.
Directly we leave Weirs we go up a long hill, and are rewarded by a very fine view of the lake and surrounding mountains. We drove into a pasture to gain the highest point, saw all there was to be seen, then down the familiar road to Lake Village and Laconia. At a point where the road divided, two bright girls were reclining in the shade, and we asked them the way to Tilton; one answered, “The right, I think,” and in the same breath said, “We don’t know. Are you from Smith’s? We are staying at ——’s, but we thought you might be staying at Smith’s, and we want to know if that is any nicer than our place.” Their bright faces interested us, and we encouraged their acquaintance by telling them we were not staying anywhere, but traveling through the country. This was sufficient to fully arouse their curiosity, and a flood of questions and exclamations were showered upon us “Just you two? Oh, how nice! That’s just what I like about you New England ladies; now, we could not do that in Washington. Do you drive more than ten miles a day? Is it expensive? Where do you stay nights? Do you sketch? Why don’t you give an illustrated account of your journey for some magazine? Oh! how I wish I could sketch you just as you are, so I could show you to our friends when we go back to Washington!” and so on until we bade them good morning.
We crossed a very long bridge, and afterwards learned that it was to be closed the next day and taken down, being unsafe. We found a man at a little village store who would give Charlie his dinner. We
