The chief source of voluntary interest lies in desire and value, and though these are frequently in coalescence, so that the thing we desire is the thing we value, more often they are not in coalescence and then we have the divided self that James so eloquently describes. So there are types of men to whom the outer world, whether it is in its "other people," or its things, or its facts, or its attractions and repulsions, is the chief source of interest and these are the objective types, exteriorized folks, whose values lie in the goods they can accumulate, or the people they can help, or the external power they exercise, or the knowledge they possess of the phenomena of the world, or the things they can do with their hands. These are on the whole healthy-minded, finding in their pursuits and interest a real value, rarely stopping from their work to ask, "Why do I work? To what end? Are things real?" Contrasted with them are those whose gaze is turned inward, who move through life carrying on the activities of the average existence but absorbed in their thoughts, their emotions, their desires, their conflicts,--perhaps on their sensations and coenaesthetic streams. Though there is no sharp line of division between the two types, and all of us are blends in varying degrees, these latter are the subjective introspective folk, interiorized, living in the microcosmos, and much more apt than the objective minded to be "sick souls" obsessed with "whys and wherefores."
They are endlessly putting to themselves unanswerable questions, are apt to be the mentally unbalanced, or, but now and then, they furnish the race with one whose answers to the meaning of life and the direction of efforts guide the steps of millions.
[1] Herbert Spencer's description of these two worlds is the best in literature. "Principles of Psychology."
There is a good and a bad side to the two types of interest. The objective minded conquer the world in dealing with what they call reality. They bridge the water and dig up the earth; they invent, they plow, they sell and buy, they produce and distribute wealth, and they deal with the education that teaches how to do all these things. They find in the outer world an unalterable sense of reality, and they tend rather *****ly to accept themselves, their interests and efforts as normal. In their highest forms they are the scientist, reducing to law this tangle of outer realities, or the artist, who though he is a hybrid with deep subjective and objective interest, nevertheless remodels the outer world to his concept of beauty. These objective-minded folk, the bulk of the brawn and in lesser degree of the brain of the world, are apt to be "materialists," to value mainly quantity and to be self-complacent. Of course, since no man is purely objective, there come to them as to all moments of brooding over the eggs of their inner life, when they wonder whether they have reached out for the right things and whether the goods they seek or have are worth while. Such introspective interest comes on them when they are alone and the outer world does not reach in, or when they have witnessed death and misfortune, or when sickness and fatigue have reduced them to a feeling of weakness. For it is true that the objective minded are more often robust, hearty, with more natural lust, passion and desire than your introspectionists, more virile and less sensitive to fine impressions.
The introspectionists, culling, chewing the cud of their experiences and sensations, find in their own reactions the realities. In fact, interested in consciousness, they are sometimes bold enough to deny the realities of anything else.
Where the others build bridges, they build up the ideas of eternal good and bad, of beauty, of the transitory and the permanent, of now and eternity. They deal with abstract ideas, and they luxuriate in emotions. They build up beliefs where thought is the only reality and is omnipotent. They are the founders of religious, cults, fads and fancies. They inculcate the permanent ideals, because they are the only ones who interest themselves in something beside the show of the universe.
But too often they are the sick folk. Without the hardihood and the energy to conquer the outer world, they fall back on a world requiring less energy to study, less energy to conquer. Sometimes they develop a sense of unreality which vitiates all their efforts to succeed; or they become hypochondriacs, feeling every flutter of the heart and every vague ache and pain. The Hamlet doubting type is an introspectionist and oscillates in his mind from yea to nay on every question. Such as this type develop ideas of compensation and power and become cranks and fake prophets. Or else, and this we shall see again, they become imbued with a sense of inferiority, feel futile as against the red-blooded and shrink from others through pain.
Everywhere one sees these phases of interest in antagonism and cooperation. The "healthy-minded" acknowledge the leadership of a past introspectionist but despise the contemporary one as futile and light-headed. The introverted (to use a Freudian term) call the others Philistines, and mock them for their lack of spiritual insight, yet in everything they do they depend for aid and sustenance upon them. Introspection gives no exact measurements of value, but it gives value and without it, there can be no wisdom. But always it needs the correction of the outer world to keep it healthy.
