There is, however, a third form of the fundamental question which is
less unanswerable than the two forms already mentioned. The plain man
may be excused for his remarkable indifference as to what his labour
and his tedium will gain for him "later on," when "later on" means
beyond the grave or thirty years hence. But we live also in the
present, and if proper existence is a compromise between the claims of
the present and the claims of the future the present must be
considered, and the plain man ought surely to ask himself the
fundamental question in such a form as the following: "I am now--this
morning--engaged in something rather tiresome. What do I stand to gain
by it this evening, to-morrow, this week--next week?" In this form the
fundamental question, once put, can be immediately answered by
experience and by experiment.
But does the plain man put it? I mean--does he put it seriously and
effectively? I think that very often, if not as a general rule, he
does not. He may--in fact he does--gloomily and savagely mutter: "What
pleasure do I get out of life?" But he fails to insist on a clear
answer from himself, and even if he obtains a clear answer--even if he
makes the candid admission, "No pleasure," or "Not enough
pleasure"--even then he usually does not insist on modifying his life
in accordance with the answer. He goes on ignoring all the interesting
towns and oases on the way to his Timbuctoo. Excessively uncertain
about future joy, and too breathlessly preoccupied to think about joy
in the present, he just drives obstinately ahead, rather like a person
in a trance. Singular conduct for a plain man priding himself on
common sense!
For the case of the plain man, conscientious and able, can only too
frequently be summed up thus: Faced with the problem of existence,
which is the problem of combining the largest possible amount of
present satisfaction with the largest possible amount of security in
the future, he has educated himself generally, and he has educated
himself specially for a particular profession or trade; he has adopted
the profession or trade, with all its risks and
responsibilities--risks and responsibilities which often involve the
felicity of others; he has bound himself to it for life, almost
irrevocably; he labours for it so many hours a day, and it occupies
his thoughts for so many hours more. Further, in the quest of
satisfaction, he has taken a woman to wife and has had children. And
here it is well to note frankly that his prime object in marrying was
not the woman's happiness, but his own, and that the children came,
not in order that they might be jolly little creatures, but as
extensions of the father's individuality. The home, the environment
gradually constructed for these secondary beings, constitutes another
complex organization, which he superimposes on the complex
organization of his profession or trade, and his brain has to carry
and vitalize the two of them. All his energies are absorbed, and they
are absorbed so utterly that once a year he is obliged to take a
holiday lest he should break down, and even the organization of the
holiday is complex and exhausting.
Now assuming--a tremendous assumption!--that by all this he really is
providing security for the future, what conscious direct, personal
satisfaction in the present does the onerous programme actually yield?
I admit that it yields the primitive satisfaction of keeping body and
soul together. But a Hottentot in a kraal gets the same satisfaction
at less expense. I admit also that it ought theoretically to yield the
conscious satisfaction which accompanies any sustained effort of the
faculties. I deny that in fact it does yield this satisfaction, for
the reason that the man is too busy ever to examine the treasures of
his soul. And what else does it yield? For what other immediate end is
the colossal travail being accomplished?
Well, it may, and does, occur that the plain man is practising
physical and intellectual calisthenics, and running a vast business
and sending ships and men to the horizons of the earth, and keeping a
home in a park, and oscillating like a rapid shuttle daily between
office and home, and lying awake at nights, and losing his eyesight
and his digestion, and staking his health, and risking misery for the
beings whom he cherishes, and enriching insurance companies, and
providing joy-rides for nice young women whom he has never seen--and
all his present profit therefrom is a game of golf with a free mind
once a fortnight, or half an hour's intimacy with his wife and a free
mind once a week or so, or a ten minutes' duel with that daughter of
his and a free mind on an occasional evening! Nay, it may occur that
after forty years of incessant labour, in answer to an inquiry as to
where the genuine conscious fun comes in, he has the right only to
answer: "Well, when I have time, I take the dog out for a walk. I
enjoy larking with the dog."
The estimable plain man, with his horror of self-examination, is apt
to forget the immediate end of existence in the means. And so much so,
that when the first distant end--that of a secure old age--approaches
achievement, he is incapable of admitting it to be achieved, and goes
on worrying and worrying about the means--from simple habit! And when
he does admit the achievement of the desired end, and abandons the
means, he has so badly prepared himself to relish the desired end that
the mere change kills him! His epitaph ought to read: "Here lies the
plain man of common sense, whose life was all means and no end."
A remedy will be worth finding.