Problems of to-day from the point of view of a psychologist / by Hugo Münsterberg.
- Hugo Münsterberg
- Date:
- 1910
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Problems of to-day from the point of view of a psychologist / by Hugo Münsterberg. Source: Wellcome Collection.
103/336 page 87
![T PROHIBITION AND TEMPERANCE 87 But with the emotion the will dries up. The Ameri- can nation would never have achieved its world work if the attitude of resignation had been its national trait. Those pioneers who opened the land and awoke to life its resources were men who longed for excitement, for the intensity of life, for vivid experience. The nation would not be loyal to its tradition if it were not to foster this desire for intense experience. The moderate use of ; alcohol is both training in such intensified conscious ex- [ perience and training in the control and discipline of such i states. As a child learns to prepare for the work of life 1 by plays and games, so man is schooling himself for the i active and effective life by the temperate use of exciting : beverages which playlike awake those vivid feelings of i success. The scholar and the minister and thousands : of other individuals may not need this training, but the [ millions may best prepare themselves for a national career of effectiveness, if this opportunity is not taken i from their lives. History demonstrates this abundantly. To be sure all this is but half true, because as we said \ the individual and finally the nation may find substitutes, i: may satisfy the craving for emotional excitement, for will i elation, for intense experience by other means. Gamb- t ling and betting, mysticism and superstition, recklessness ] and adventurousness, sexual over-indulgence and per- } version, brutality and crime, divorce and vulgar amuse- \ ments, have always been the psychological means of over- : coming the emptiness and monotony of an unstimulated { life. Like alcohol they produce that partial paralysis ? i ]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28142330_0103.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
