Short Talks on Psychology Author:Charles Gray Shaw Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PSYCHOLOGY AND THE PAY ENVELOPE NO one can pay any degree of attention to the workings of the mind without noticing that our human consciousness has its own w... more »ay of working. The eye sees light as "color," the ear hears sound as "tone," the tongue tastes chemicals as "sweet" or "sour." The mind is a law unto itself. In addition to this principle of internal independence, there is a kind of Monroe doctrine of mind in the light of which one sensation is brighter or better when contrasted with another. Red is most rosy against green, blue is at its best when laid side by side with yellow. The dull world of physical facts may be unaware of this, but it is what every mind knows. Furthermore, the mind is in the habit of noting things in ways purely relative, so that it depends upon attendant circumstances whether this or that idea will make an impression upon the mind. In the brightness of day, you cannot see the stars for all their shining; in the noise of the subway, you cannot hear the tones of ordinary conversation talk as much as will your companion. This sense of "it depends" has an economic significance upon whose basis one can gain some insight intothe present situation in the industrial order. The principle may be recognized at once when one notes that a penny to a child is as a dime to a youth, in the youth's mind the dime equals the dollar of the grownup man, while with the worker whose wage is, or was, low the dollar extra may seem the equivalent of a hundred. It all depends upon the economic starting point. Economists and statesmen will have to work out the problem of sane and just distribution; meanwhile the psychologically minded may dwell upon the fact that a sum like a hundred dollars has no fixed value, but means one thing to one man, another to another, a...« less