How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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Procrustes and the Scheme of Apperception There is a famous old Greek myth of the giant Procrustes whose hut was built at the peak of a narrow mountain pass. This giant would invite all passers-by to sup with him and would force them to spend the night under his roof. Procrustes had an infamous bed for his visitors. If the stranger were shorter than the bed, the giant would stretch him until he fitted the bed exactly, usually at the expense of the stranger’s life. If the visitor happened to be too long for the bed, Procrustes would lop off his feet with his sword. We treat our experiences in much the same way as Procrustes treated his visitors. Our “ scheme of apperception ” is the bed into which we crowd all our experiences. If an experience does not fit our pattern exactly, we distort it by stretching it or by lopping an essential facet from it. In other words, we fit our experiences into the preconceived pattern of our life, blithely forgetting those experiences which do not help us on our way. Although it is very human not to learn from your experiences, it is better to make your style of life fit your experiences than to distort your experiences to fit your pattern. Herein lies the difference between subjectivity, which is the application of the Procrustes formula, and objectivity, which implies the broadening of one’s style of life to include new experiences. In the subjective life the scheme of apperception is a fixed unit; in the objective life the scheme of apperception is elastic. The happy man expands his pattern to meet reality ; the subjective man unhappily tries to distort reality to fit his pre¬ conceived ideas of what reality ought to be. If we return to our analogy of the digestive functions, subjectivity consists in trying to eat glass beads because they look pretty. The subjective man’s vanity is so great that he feels he can substitute his private logic—“ if beads look pretty they must be good to eat ”—for the common- sense version—“ glass beads are indigestible.” The objective man is one who, having been brought up in a
Publication/creation
London : George Routledge, 1932.
Physical description
xiv, 374 pages ; 22 cm
Contributors
Wolfe, W. Béran 1900-1935.
Notes
This edition was reprinted in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1942, 1944, 1945, 1946 and 1948.
Copy 1 Note: 1937 reprint. X158203
Attribution and usage
Wellcome Collection
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