THE GROWTH OF PURPOSE AND PERSONALITY
There have been various philosophies dealing with the purposes of
man. Man seeks this or that--the eternal good, beauty, happiness,
pleasure, survival--but always he is represented as a seeker. A
very popular doctrine, Hedonism, now somewhat in disfavor,
represents him as seeking pleasurable, affective states. The
difficulty of understanding the essential nature of pleasure and
pain, the fact that what is pleasure to one man is pain to
another, rather discredited this as a psychological explanation.
I think we may phrase the situation fairly on an empirical basis
when we say that seeking arises in instinct but receives its
impulse to continuity by some agreeable affective state of
satisfaction. Man steers towards pleasure and satisfaction of
some type or other, but the force is the unbalance of an
instinct.
When we speak of man as a seeker, we are not separating him from
the rest of living things. All life seeks, and the more mobile a
living thing is the more it seeks. A sessile mussel chained to a
rock seeks little but the fundamentals of nutrition and
generation and these in a simple way. An animal that builds
habitations for its young, courts its mate, plays, teaches and
fights, may do nothing more than seek nutrition and generation,
but it seeks these through many intermediary "end" points,
through many impulses, and thus it has many types of
satisfaction. When a creature develops to the point that it
establishes all kinds of rules governing conduct, when it
establishes sanctions that are eternal and has purposes that have
a terminus in a hereafter which is out of the span of life of the
planner, it becomes quite difficult to say just what it is man
seeks. In fact, every man seeks many things, many satisfactions,
and whatever it may be that Man in the abstract seeks, individual
men differ very decidedly not only as to what they seek but as to
what should be sought.
Our viscera, our tissues, as they function, change by the using
up of energy and the breaking down of materials. That change
brings about sensory disturbances in our body which are not
unpleasant in moderation, which we call hunger, thirst and
fatigue. To relieve these three primitive states we seek food,
drink and rest; we DESIRE food, drink and rest. Desire then is
primitive, organic, arising mainly in the vegetative nervous
system, and it awakens mechanisms that bring us food, drink and
rest. A feeling which we call satisfaction results when the
changes in the viscera and tissues are readjusted or on the way
to readjustment. Here is the simplest paradigm for desire seeking
satisfaction, but it is on a plane rarely found in man, because
his life is too complicated for such formulae to work.
Food must be bought or produced, and this involves cooperation,
competition, self-denial, thrift, science, finance, invention. It
involves ethics, because though you are hungry you must not steal
food or give improper value for it. Moreover, though you are
hungry, you have developed tastes, manners, etc., and you cannot,
must not eat this or that (through religion); you mast eat with
certain implements), and would rather die than violate the
established standards in such matters.[1] Thus to the simple act
of eating, to the satisfaction of a primitive desire set up by a
primitive need, there are any number of obstacles set up by the
complexities of our social existence. The sanction of these
obstacles, their power to influence us, rests in other desires
and purposes arising out of other "needs" of our nature. What are
those needs? They are inherent in what has been called the social
instincts, in that side of our nature which makes us yearn for
approval and swings us into conformity with a group. The group
organizes the activities of its individuals just as an individual
organizes his activities. The evolutionists explain this group
feeling as part of the equipment necessary for survival. Perhaps
this is an adequate account of the situation, but the strength of
the social instincts almost lead one to a more mystical
explanation, a sort of acceptance of the group as the unit and
the individual as an incomplete fragment.
[1] The Sepoy Rebellion had its roots in a food taboo, and
Mussulman, Hebrew and Roman Catholic place a religious value on
diet. Most of the complexities of existence are of our own
creation.
What is true of hunger is true of thirst and fatigue. Desires in
these directions have to accommodate themselves, in greater or
lesser degrees, to the complexities in which our social nature
and customs have involved us. It is true that desires upon which
the actual survival of the individual depend will finally break
through taboo and restriction if completely balked. That is, very
few people will actually starve to death, die of thirst or keep
awake indefinitely, despite any convention or taboo. Nevertheless
there are people who will resist these fundamental desires, as in
the case of MacSwiney, the Irish republican, and as in the case
of martyrs recorded in the history of all peoples. It may be that
in some of these we are dealing with a powerful inhibition of
appetite of the kind seen in anhedonia.
The elaboration of the sex impulses and desires into the purposes
of marriage, the repression into lifelong continence and
chastity, forms one of the most marvelous of chapters in the
psychological history of man. The desire for sex relationship of
the crude kind is very variable both in force, time of appearance
and reaction to discipline and unquestionably arises from the
changes in the sex organs. Both to enhance and repress it are
aims of the culture and custom of each group, and the lower
groups have given actual sexual intercourse a mystical
supernatural value that has at times and in various places raised
it into the basis of cults and religions. Repressed, hampered,
canalized, forbidden, the sex impulses have profoundly modified
clothes, art, religion, morals and philosophy. The sex customs of
any nation demonstrate the extreme plasticity of human desires
and the various twists, turns and customs that tradition declares
holy. There have been whole groups of people that have deemed any
sexual pleasure unholy, and the great religions still deem it
necessary for their leaders to be continent. And the absurdities
of modesty, a modified sex impulse, have made it immoral for a
woman to show her leg above the calf while in her street
clothes,[1] though she may wear a bathing suit without reproach.
[1] This is, of course, not quite so true in 1921 as in 1910.
Whatever a desire is basically, it tends quickly to organize
itself in character. It gathers to itself emotions, sentiments,
intelligence; it plans and it wills, it battles against other
desires. I say IT, as if the desire were an entity, a
personality, but what I mean is that the somatic and cerebral
activities of a desire become so organized as to operate as a
unit. A permanent excitability of these nervous centers as a unit
is engendered, and these are easily aroused either by a stimulus
from the body or from without. Thus the sex impulse arises
directly from tensions within the sex organs but is built up and
elaborated by approval of and admiration for beauty, strength and
intelligence, by the desire for possession and mastery, by
competitive feeling, until it may become drawn out into the
elaborate purpose of marriage or the family.
What is the ego that desires and plans? I do not know, but if it
is in any part a metaphysical entity of permanent nature in so
far it does not become the subject matter of this book. For as a
metaphysical entity it is uncontrollable, and the object of
science is to discover and utilize the controllable elements of
the world. I may point out that even those philosophers and
theologians to whom the ego is an entity of supernatural origin
deny their own standpoint every time they seek to convince,
persuade or force the ego of some one to a new belief or new line
of action; deny it every time they say, "I am tired and I shall
rest; then I shall think better and can plan better." Such a
philosopher says in essence, "I have an entity within me totally
and incommensurably different from my body," and then he goes on
to prove that this entity operates better when the body is rested
and fed than otherwise!
For us the ego is a built-up structure and has its evolution from
the diffuse state of early infancy to the intense, well-defined
state of maturity; it is elaborated by a process that is in part
due to the environment, in part to the inherent structure of man.
We may postulate a continuous excitement of nerve centers as its
basis, and this excitement cognizes other excitement in some
mysterious manner, but no more mysterious than life, instinct or
intelligence are. These excitements struggle for the possession
of an outlet in action, and this is what we call competing
desires, struggle against temptation, etc.
Sometimes one desire is identified with the ego as part of
itself, sometimes the desire is contrasted with the ego and we
say, "I struggled with the desire but it overcame me." Common
language plainly shows the plurality of the personality, even
though the man on the street thinks of himself as a united "I,"
even an invisible "I."
One of the fundamental desires, nay the fundamental desire, is
the expansion of the self, i. e., increased self-esteem. When the
infant sprawls in his basket after his arrival in this world, it
is doubtful if he has a "me" which he separates from the
"non-me." Yet that same infant, a few years later, and through
the rest of his life, believes that in his personality resides
something immortal, and has as his prime pleasure the feeling of
worth and growth of that personality, and as his worst hurt the
feeling of decay and inferiority of that personality.
Let us watch that infant as it sprawls in its little bed, the
darling of a pair of worshiping parents. In that relationship the
child is no solitary individual; society is there already,
watching him, nourishing and teaching him. Already he is in the,
hands of his group who, though seeking his happiness, are
nevertheless determined that he shall obtain it their way. And
from then to the end of his life that group will in large measure
offer him the criteria of values, and his self-esteem will, in
the majority of cases, rest upon his idea of their esteem of him.
In the brooding mother, in the tender father lie dormant all the
judgments of the time on the conduct and guiding motives of the
little one.
The baby throws his arms about, kicks his legs, rolls his eyes.
In these movements arising from internal activities which, we can
only state, relate to vascular distribution, neuronic relations,
visceral and endocrinic activities, is the germ of the impulse to
activity which it is the function of society and the individual
himself to shape into organized useful work. Thus is manifested a
native, inherent, potentiality, which we may call the energy of
the baby, the energy of man, a something which the environment
shapes, but which is created in the laboratory of the individual.
The father and mother are delighted with the fine vigorous
movements of the child, and there is in that delight the approval
that society always gives or tends to give to manifestations of
power. We tend involuntarily to admire strength, even though
misdirected. The strong man always has followers though he be a
villain, and in fact the history of man is to a large extent
based on the fact that the strong man evokes enthusiasm and
obedience.
This impulse to activity is an unrest, and its satisfaction lies
in movement; in other words there is a pleasure or a relief in
mere activity. The need of discharging energy, the desire to do
so, the pleasure and satisfaction in so doing constitute a
cornerstone of the foundation of life and character. This desire
for activity, as we shall call it henceforth, is behind work and
play; it fluctuates with health and disease, with youth and old
age; it becomes harnessed to purpose, it is called into being by
motives or inhibited by conflict and indecision and its
organization is the task of society. Men differ in regard to the
desire for activity, with a range from the inert whose energy is
low to the dynamic types that are ever busy and ever seeking more
to do.
The child's first movements are aimless, but soon the impressions
it receives by striking hands and feet against soft and hard
things bring about a dim knowledge of the boundaries of itself,
and the kinesthetic impulses from joints and muscles help this
knowledge. The outside world commences to separate itself from
the "me," though both are vague and shadowy. Soon it learns that
one part of the outside world is able to satisfy its hunger, to
supply a need, and it commences to recognize the existence of
benevolent outside agencies; and it also learns little by little
that its instinctive cries bring these agencies to it. I do not
mean that the baby has any internal language corresponding to the
idea of outside agency, benevolence, etc., but it gets to know
that its cries are potent, that a breast brings relief and
satisfaction. At first it cries, the breast comes, there is
relief and satisfaction, and it makes no connection or no
connection is made between these events of outer and inner
origin. But the connection is finally made,--desire becomes
definitely articulate in the cry of the baby, which thus becomes
a plea and a summons. Anticipation of good to come appears and
with it the germ of hope and forward looking, and there is
realization or disappointment, joy or anger or sorrow. Thus
desire is linked up with satisfaction in a definite way, ideas
and feelings of demand and supply begin to appear and perhaps
power itself, in the vague notion, "I can get milk," commences to
be felt. Social life starts when the child associates the mother
with the milk, with the desire and the satisfaction. In the
relationship established between mother and baby is the first
great social contact; love, friendship, discipline, teaching and
belief have their origin when, at the mother's breast, the child
separates its mother from the rest of the things of the world.
And not only in the relief of hunger is the mother active, but
she gets to be associated with the relief from wet and irritating
clothes, the pleasant bath, and the pleasure of the change of
position that babies cry for. Her bosom and her arms become
sources of pleasure, and the race has immortalized them as
symbolic of motherhood, in song, in story and in myth.
Not only does he associate the mother with the milk but her very
presence brings him comfort, even when he is not hungry. It is
within the first few months of life that the child shows that he
is a gregarious[1] animal,--gregarious in the sense that he is
unhappy away from others. To be alone is thus felt to be
essentially an evil, to be with others is in itself a good. This
gregarious feeling is the sine qua non of social life: when we
punish any one we draw away from him; when we reward we get
closer to him. All his life the child is to find pleasure in
being with people and unhappiness when away from them, unless he
be one of those in whom the gregarious instinct is lacking. For
instincts may be absent, just as eye pigment is; there are mental
albinos, lacking the color of ordinary human feeling. Or else
some experience may make others hateful to him, or he may have so
intellectualized his life that this instinct has atrophied. This
gregarious feeling will heighten his emotions, he will gather
strength from the feeling that "others are with him," he will
join societies, clubs, organizations in response to the same
feeling that makes sheep graze on a hillside in a group, that
makes the monkeys in a cage squat together, rubbing sides and
elbows. The home in which our child finds himself, though a
social institution, is not gregarious; it gives him only a
limited contact, and as soon as he is able and self-reliant he
seeks out a little herd, and on the streets, in the schoolroom
and playground, he really becomes a happy little herd animal.
[1] One of my children would stop crying if some one merely
entered his room when he was three weeks old. He was, and is, an
intensely gregarious boy.
Let us turn back to the desire for activity. As the power to
direct the eyes develops, as hands become a little more sure,
because certain pathways in brain and cord "myelinize,"[1] become
functional, the outside world attracts in a definite manner and
movements become organized by desires, by purpose. It's a
red-letter day in the calendar of a human being when he first
successfully "reaches" something; then and there is the birth of
power and of successful effort. All our ideas of cause and effect
originate when we cause changes in the world, when we move a
thing from thither to yon. No philosopher, though he becomes so
intellectualized that he cannot understand how one thing or event
causes another, ever escapes from the feeling that HE causes
effects. Purpose, resistance, success, failure, cause, effect,
these become inextricably wound up with our thoughts and beliefs
from the early days when, looking at a dangling string, we
reached for it once, twice, a dozen times and brought it in
triumph to our mouth. And our idea that there were forbidden
things came when the watchful mother took it out of our mouth,
saying, "No, no, baby mustn't!"
[1] At birth, though most of the great nervous pathways are laid
down, they are non-functional largely because the fibers that
compose them are unclothed, non-myelinated. The various kinds of
tracts have different times for becoming "myelinated" as was the
discovery of the great analogist, Flechsig.
At any rate, the organization of activity for definite purposes
starts. The little investigator is apparently obsessed with the
idea that everything it can reach, including its fingers and
toes, are good to eat, for everything reached is at once brought
to the mouth, the primitive curiosity thus being gustatory. In
this research the baby finds that some few things are pleasant,
many indifferent and quite a few disgusting and even painful,
which may remain as a result not far different from that obtained
by investigation in later years. The desire for pleasant things
commences to guide its activities. Every new thing is at once an
object for investigation, perhaps because its possibilities for
pleasure are unknown. That curiosity may have some such origin is
at least a plausible statement. At any rate, desire of a definite
type steps in to organize the mere desire for activity; and
impulse is controlled by purpose.
The child learns to creep, and the delight in progression lies in
the fact that far more things are accessible for investigation,
for rearrangement, for tasting. It is no accident that we speak
of our "tastes" that we say, "I want to taste of experience."
That is exactly what the child creeping on the floor seeks,--to
taste of experience and to anticipate, to realize, to learn. Out
of the desire for activity grows a desire for experience born of
the pleasure of excitement that we spoke of previously. This
desire for experience becomes built up into strange forms under
teaching and through the results of experience. It is very strong
in some who become explorers, roues, vagabonds, scientists as a
result, and it is very weak in others who stay at home and seek
only the safe and limited experience. You see two children in one
room,--and one sits in the middle of the floor, perhaps playing
with a toy or looking around, and the other has investigated the
stove and found it hotter than he supposed, has been under the
table and bumped his head, has found an unusually sweet white
lump which in later life he will call sugar. The good child is
often without sufficient curiosity to be bad, whereas the bad
child may be an overzealous seeker of experience.
So our child reaching out for things develops ideas of cause,
effect and power, commences to have an idea of himself as a cause
and likes the feeling of power. As he learns to walk, the world
widens, his sense of power grows, and his feeling of personality
increases. Meanwhile another side of his nature has been
developing and one fully as important.
The persons in his world have become quite individual; mother is
now not alone, for father is recognized with pleasure as one who
likewise is desirable. He carries one on his shoulder so that a
pleasurable excitement results; he plays with one, holds out
strings and toys and other instruments for the obtaining of
experience. Usually both of these great personages are friendly,
their faces wear a smile or a tender look, and our little one is
so organized that smiles and tender looks awaken comfortable
feelings and he smiles in return. The smile is perhaps the first
great message one human being sends to another; it says, "See, I
am friendly, I wish you well." Later on in the history of the
child, he will learn much about smiles of other kinds, but at
this stage they are all pleasant. Though his parents are usually
friendly and give, now and then they deprive, and they look
different; they say, "No, no!" This "no, no" is social
inhibition, it is backed up by the power of deprivation,
punishment, disapproval; it has its power in a something in our
nature that gives society its power over us. From now there steps
in a factor in the development of character of which we have
already spoken, a group of desires that have their source in the
emotional response of the child to the parent, in the emotional
response of an individual to his group. Out of the social
pressure arises the desire to please, to win approval, to get
justification, and these struggle in the mind of the child with
other desires.
We said the child seeks experience,--but not only on his own
initiative. The father stands against the wall, perhaps with one
foot crossing the other. Soon he feels a pressure and looks down;
there is the little one standing in his imitation of the same
position. Imitation, in my belief, is secondary to a desire for
experience. The child does not imitate everything; he is equipped
to notice only simple things, and these he imitates. Why? The
desire to experience what others are experiencing is a basic
desire; it expresses both a feeling of fellowship and a
competitive feeling. We do not feel a strong tendency to imitate
those we dislike or despise, or do not respect, we tend to
imitate those we love and respect, those for whom we have a
fellow feeling. Part of the fellow feeling is an impulse to
imitate and to receive in a positive way the suggestion offered
by their conduct and manners.
Analogous to imitation, and part of the social instinct, is a
credulity, a willingness to accept as if personally experienced
things stated. Part of the seeking of experience is the asking of
questions, because the mind seeks a cause for every effect, a
something to work from. Indeed, one of the main mental activities
lies in the explaining of things; an unrest is felt in the
presence of the "not understood" which is not stilled until the
unknown is referred back to a thing understood or accepted
without question. The child finds himself in a world with
laid-down beliefs and with explanations of one kind or another
for everything. His group differs from other groups in its
explanations and beliefs; his family even may be peculiar in
these matters. He asks, he is answered and enjoined to believe.
Without credulity there could be no organization of society, no
rituals, no ceremonials, no religions and customs,--but without
the questioning spirit there could be no progress. Most of the
men and women of this world have much credulity and only a feeble
questioning tendency, but there are a few who from the start
subject the answers given them to a rigid scrutiny and who test
belief by results. Let any one read the beliefs of savages, let
him study the beliefs of the civilized in the spirit in which he
would test the statement of the performance of an automobile, and
he can but marvel at man's credulity. Belief and the acceptance
of authority are the conservative forces of society, and they
have their origin in the nursery when the child asks, "Why does
the moon get smaller?" and the mother answers, "Because, dear,
God cuts a piece off every day to make the stars with." The
authorities, recognizing that their power lay in unquestioning
belief, have always sanctified it and made the pious,
non-skeptical type the ideal and punished the non-believer with
death or ostracism. Fortunately for the race, the skeptic, if
silenced, modifies the strength of the belief he attacks and in
the course of time even they who have defended begin to shift
from it and it becomes refuted. Beliefs, as Lecky[1] so well
pointed out, are not so of ten destroyed as become obsolete.
[1] Lecky: "History of European Morals." As he points out, the
belief in witchcraft never was disproved, it simply died because
science made it impossible to believe that witches could
disorganize natural laws.
It may seem as if imitation were a separate principle in mental
growth, and there have been many to state this. As is well known
Tarde made it a leading factor in human development. It seems to
me that it is linked up with desire for experience, desire for
fellowship, and also with a strongly competitive feeling, which
is early manifest in children and which may be called "a want of
what the other fellow has." Children at the age of a year and up
may be perfectly pleased with what they have until they see
another child playing with something,--something perhaps
identical with their own. They then betray a decided,
uncontrollable desire for the other child's toy; they are no
longer content with their own, and by one means or another they
seek to get it,--by forcible means, by wheedling or coaxing, or
by tormenting their parents. The disappearance of contentment
through the competitive feeling, the competitive nature of
desire, the role that envy plays in the happiness and effort of
man, is a thesis emphasized by every moralist and philosopher
since the beginning of things. In the strivings of every man,
though he admit it or not, one of the secret springs of his
energy is this law of desire, that a large part of its power and
persistence is in the competitive feeling, is in envy and the
wish to taste what others are experiencing.
A basic law of desire lies in an observation of Lotze, elaborated
by William James. We may talk of selfishness and altruism as if
they were entirely separate qualities of human nature. But what
seems to be true is that one is an extension of the other, that
is, we are always concerned with the ego feeling, but in the one
case the ego feeling is narrow and in the other case it includes
others as part of the ego. Lotze's observations on clothes shows
that we expend ego feeling in all directions, that we tend to be
as tall as our top hats and as penetrating as our walking sticks,
that the man who has a club in his hand has a tactile sense to
the very end of the club. James in his marvelous chapter on the
various selves points out that a man's interests and affections
are his selves, and that they enclose one another like the petals
of a rose. We may speak of unipetalar selves, who include only
their own bodies in self-feeling; of bipetalar selves who include
in it their families, and from there on we go to selves who
include their work, their community, their nation, until we reach
those very rare souls whose petals cover all living things. So
men extend their self-feeling, if ambitious, to their work, to
their achievements,--if paternal to their children; if domestic,
to wife and home; if patriotic to the nation, etc. Development
lies in the extension of the self-feeling and in the increase of
its intensity. But the obstacle lies in the competitive feelings,
in that dualism of man's nature that makes him yearn not only for
fellowship, but also for superiority. These desires are in
eternal opposition, but are not necessarily antagonistic, any
more than are the thumb and the little finger as they meet in
some task, any more than are excitation and inhibition. Every
function in our lives has its check and balance, and fellowship,
yearning and superiority urge one another.
From the cradle to the grave, we desire fellowship as an addition
to our gregarious feeling. We ask for approval, for we expand
under sympathy and contract under cold criticism. Nothing is so
pleasant as "appreciation," which means taking us at our own
valuation or adding to it,, and there is no complaint so common
as, "They don't understand me," which merely means, "They blame
me without understanding that I really seek the good, that I am
really good, though perhaps I seem not to be." The child who
hurts its thumb runs to its mother for sympathy, and the pain is
compensated for, at least in part, by that sympathy. Throughout
life we desire sympathy for our hurts, except where that sympathy
brings with it a feeling of inferiority. To be helped by others
in one way or another is the practical result of this aspect of
fellowship.
(There is a convincing physical element in the feelings and
desires of man, evidenced in language and phrase. Superiority
equals aboveness, inferiority equals beneathness; sympathy equals
the same feeling. To criticize is to "belittle" and to cause the
feeling of littleness; to praise is "to make a man expand," to
enlarge him. Blame hurts one's feelings,--"He wounded me," etc.)
At the same time we are strangely affected by the condition of
others. Where no competitive-jealousy complex is at work, we
laugh with other people in their happiness, we are moved to tears
by suffering; we admire vigor, beauty and the fine qualities of
others; we accept their purposes and beliefs; we are glad to
agree with the stranger or the friend and hate to disagree. We
establish within ourselves codes and standards largely because we
wish to accept and believe and act in the same way as do those we
want as fellows. Having set up that code as conscience or ideals,
it helps us to govern our lives, it gives a stability in that we
tend at once to resist jealousy, envy, the "wrong" emotions and
actions. "Helping others" becomes a great motive in life,
responding to misery with tears, consolation and kindness,
reacting to the good deeds of others with praise. To be generous
and charitable becomes method for the extension of fellowship.
Asking for help in its varied form of praise, appreciation and
kindness, giving help as appreciation and kindness, are the weak
and strong aspects of the fellowship feelings. It is a cynical
view of life, perhaps, but it is probably true that the weak
phase is more common and more constant than the second. Almost
everybody loves praise and appreciation, for these enlarge the
ego feeling, and some, perhaps most, like to be helped, though
here, as was above stated, there is a feeling of inferiority
aroused which may be painful. Relatively there are few who are
ready to praise, especially those with whom they are in close
contact and with whom they are in a sort of rivalry. The same is
true of genuine appreciation, of real warm fellow feeling; the
leader, the hero, the great man receives that but not the fellow
next door. As for giving, charity, kindness, these are common
enough in a sporadic fashion, but rarely are they sustained and
constant, and often they have to depend on the desire "not to be
outdone," not to seem inferior,--have, as it were, to be shamed
into activity. For there is competition even in fellowship.
There are people, especially among the hysterics, who are deeply
wounded when sympathy is not given, when appreciation and praise
is withheld or if there is the suggestion of criticism. They are
people of a "tender ego," not self-sustaining, demanding the help
of others and reacting to the injury sustained, when it is not
given, by prolonged emotion. These sensitive folk, who form a
most difficult group, do not all react alike, of course. Some
respond with anger and ideas of persecution, some with a
prolonged humiliation and feeling of inferiority; still others
develop symptoms that are meant to appeal to the conscience of
the one who has wounded them. On the other hand, there are those
whose feeling of self sustains them in the face of most
criticism, who depend largely upon the established mentor within
themselves and who seek to conform to the rulings of that inward
mentor. Such people, if not martyred too soon, and if possessed
of a fruitful ideal, lay new criteria for praise and blame.
Contrasting with the desires and purposes of fellowship we find
the desires and purposes of superiority and power. Primarily
these are based on what McDougall calls the instinct of
self-display, which becomes intellectualized and socialized very
early in the career of the child. In fact, we might judge a man
largely by the way he displays himself, whether by some
essentially personal bodily character, some essentially mental
attribute or some essentially moral quantity; whether he seeks
superiority as a means of getting power or as a means of doing
good; whether he seeks it within or without the code. One might
go on indefinitely, including such matters as whether he seeks
superiority with tact or the reverse and whether he understands
the essential shallowness and futility of his pursuit or not. To
be superior is back of most of striving, and it is the most
camouflaged of all human motives and pleasures. For this is true:
that the preaching of humility, of righteous conduct, of service,
of self-sacrifice, by religion and ethics have convinced man that
these are the qualities one ought to have. So men seek, whenever
they can, to dress their other motives and feelings in the garb
of altruism.
Camouflage of motive as a means of social approval has thus
become a very important part of character; we seek constantly to
penetrate the camouflage of our rivals and enemies and bitterly
resist any effort to strip away our own, often enough hiding it
successfully from ourselves. There are few who face boldly their
own egoism, and their sincerity is often admired. Indeed, the
frank child is admired because his egoism is refreshing, i. e.,
he offers no problem to the observer. Out of the uneasiness that
we feel in the presence of dissimulation and insincerity has
arisen the value we place on sincerity, frankness and honesty. To
be accused of insincerity or dishonesty of motive and act is
fiercely resented.
The desire for power and superiority will of course take
different directions in each person, according to his make-up,
teaching and the other circumstances of his life. Property as a
means of pleasure, and as a symbol of achievement and of personal
worth, is valued highly from the earliest days of the child's
life. Very early does the child show that it prizes goods, shows
an acquisitive trend that becomes finally glorified into a goal,
an ambition. Money and goods become the symbol and actuality of
power, triumph, superiority, pleasure, safety, benevolence and a
dozen and one other things. Men who seek money and goods may
therefore be seeking very different things; one is merely
acquisitive, has the miser trend; another loves the game for the
game's sake, picks up houses, bonds, money, ships, as a fighter
picks up trophies, and they stand to him as symbols of his
superiority. Some see in property the fulcrum by which they can
apply the power that will shift the lives of other men and make
of themselves a sort of God or Fate in the destinies of others.
For others, and for all in part, there is in money the safety
against emergencies and further a something that purchases
pleasure, whether that pleasure be of body, or taste or spirit.
Wine and women, pictures and beautiful things, leisure for
research and contemplation,--money buys any and all of these, and
as the symbol of all kinds of value, as the symbol of all kinds
of power, it is sought assiduously by all kinds of men.
There are many who start on their careers with the feeling and
belief that money is a minor value, that to be useful and of
service is greater than to be rich. But this idealistic ambition
in only a few cases stands up against the strain of life. Unless
money comes, a man cannot marry, or if he marries, then his wife
must do without ease and leisure and pretty things, and he must
live in a second-rate way. Sooner or later the idealist feels
himself uneasily inferior, and though he may compensate by
achievement or by developing a strong trend towards
seclusiveness, more often he regrets bitterly his idealism and in
his heart envies the rich. For they, ignorant and arrogant, may
purchase his services, his brains and self-sacrifice and buy
these ingredients of himself with the air of one purchasing a
machine. So the idealist finds himself condemned to a meager
life, unless his idealism brings him wealth, and he drifts in
spirit away from the character of his youth. It is the strain of
life, the fear of old age and sickness, the silent pressure of
the deprivations of a man's beloved ones, the feeling of
helplessness in disaster and the silent envious feeling of
inferiority that makes inroads in the ranks of the idealists so
that at twenty there are ten idealists to the one found at forty.
I remember well one of my colleagues, working patiently in a
laboratory, out of sight of the world and out of the stream of
financial reward, enthused by science and service, who threw up
his work and went into the practice of medicine. "Why?" I asked
him. "Because when one of my brothers took sick and was in dire
need, I who loved him could not help. I had no money, and all my
monographs put together could not help him buy a meal. There is a
cousin of ours, who has grown rich running a cheap moving-picture
house, where the taste of the community is debauched every day.
He lent my brother two thousand dollars out of his superfluities;
it involved no sacrifice to him, for he purchased a third car at
the same time--and yet HE is our savior. Love alone is a torture.
I am going to get money."
The world is built up on the sacrifices of the idealists, and
eternally it crucifies them. Wealth and power are to him who has
a marketable commodity, and one cannot complain when true genius
becomes rich. But the genius to make money may be and often
is--an exploiting type of ability, a selfishly practical
industry, which neither invents nor is of great service. The men
who now do the basic work in invention and scientific work in
laboratories are poorly paid and only now and then honored. Every
year in the United States hundreds of them leave their work in
research and seek "paying jobs," to the impoverishment of the
world, but to their own financial benefit. Countries where the
scramble for wealth is not so keen, where the best brains do not
find themselves pressed into business, produce far more science,
art and literature than we do, with all our wealth. We will
continue to be a second-rate nation in these regards, still
looking for our great American novel and play, still seeking real
singers and artists, until our idealism can withstand the
pressure of our practical civilization.
For here is a great division in people. There are those who
become enthused by the noble aims of life, by the superiority and
service that come in the work of teacher, priest, physician,
scientist, philosopher and philanthropist, and those that seek
superiority and power in wealth, station and influence. Those
who, will fellowship and those who will power is a short way of
putting it, the idealists and the practical is another.
Fellowship is built up on sympathy, pity, friendliness and the
desire to help others; it is essentially democratic, and in it
runs the cooperative activities of man. For it is not true that
"competition is the life of trade"; cooperation is its life. Men
dig ore in mines, others transport their produce, others smelt it
and work it into shape, according to the designs and plans of
still other men; then it is transported by new groups and
marketed by an endless chain of men whose labors dovetail to the
end that mankind has a tool, a habitation or an ornament. The
past and present cooperate in this labor, as do the remote ends
of the earth. Competition is the SPUR of trade; its mighty
sinews, its strong heart and stout lungs are cooperative.
Power is aristocratic, and elaborates and calls into play
competitive spirit. In all men the desire for power and the
desire for fellowship blend and interplay in their ambitions and
activities; in some fellowship predominates, in others power. If
a man specializes in fellowship aims, without learning the secret
of power, he is usually futile and sterile of results; if a man
seeks power only and disregards fellowship, is hated and is a
tyrant, cruel and without pity. To be an idealist and practical
is of course difficult and usually involves a compromise of the
ideal. Some degree of compromise is necessary, and the rigid
idealist would have a better sanction for his refusal to
compromise if he or any one could be sure of the perfection of
his ideal.
The practical seek their own welfare or the welfare of others
through direct means, through exerting the power and the
influence that is money and station. Rarely do they build for a
distant future, and their goal is in some easily and popularly
understood good. What they say and what they do applies to
getting rich or healthy, to being good in a conventional way;
success is their goal and that success lies in the tangibles of
life. They easily become sordid and mean, since it is not
possible always to separate good and evil when one is governed by
expediency and limited idea of welfare. This is also true,--that
while the practical usually tend to lose idealism entirely, and
find themselves the tools of habits and customs they cannot break
from, now and then a practical man reaches a high place of power
and becomes the idealist.
Though all men seek power and fellowship, we have a right to ask
what are a man's leading pursuits. And we must be prepared to
tear off a mask before we understand the most of our fellows, for
society and all of life is permeated with disguise. Now and then
one seeks to appear worse than he is, hates fuss and praise, but
this rare bird (to use slang and Latin in one phrase) is the
exception that proves the rule that men on the whole try to
appear better than they are. Rarely does a man say, "I am after
profit and nothing else," although occasionally he does; rarely
does the scientist say, "I seek fame and reward," even though his
main stimulus may be this desire and not the ideal of adding to
the knowledge of the world. Behind the philanthropist may lurk
the pleasure in changing the lives of others, behind the reformer
the picture of himself in history. The best of men may and do
cherish power motives, and we must say that to seek power is
ethically good, provided it does not injure fellowship. One must
not, however, be misled by words; duty, service, fellowship come
as often to the lips of the selfish as the unselfish.
We spoke of power as a form of superiority. Since all superiority
is comparative, there are various indirect ways of seeking
superiority and avoiding inferiority. One of these is by adverse
criticism of our fellows. The widespread love of gossip, the
quick and ever-present tendency to disparage others, especially
the fortunate and the successful, are manifestations of this type
of superiority seeking. Half the humor of the world is the
pleasure, produced by a technique, of feeling superior to the
boor, the pedant, the fool, the new rich, the pompous, the
over-dignified, etc. Half, more than half, of the conversation
that goes on in boudoir, dining room, over the drinks and in the
smoking room, is criticism, playful and otherwise, of others.
There are people in whom the adversely critical spirit is so
highly developed that they find it hard to praise any one or to
hear any one praised--their criticism leaps to the surface in one
way or another, in the sneer, in the "butt," in the joke, in the
gibe, in the openly expressed attack. This way of being superior
may be direct and open, more often it is disguised. Many a woman
(and man) who denounces the sinner receives from her
contemplation of that sinner the most of her feeling of virtue
and goodness. The more bitterly the self-acknowledged "saint"
denounces the sinner, the more, by implication, he praises
himself.
People seek the strangest roads to the feeling of superiority.
From that classical imbecile who burnt down the Temple of Diana
to the crop of young girls who invent tales of white slavery in
order to stand in the public eye as conspicuous victims,
notoriety has been mistaken for fame by those desperate for
public attention. To be superior some way, even if only in crime
and foolishness, brings about an immense amount of laughable and
deplorable conduct to which only a Juvenal could do justice. The
world yields to superiority such immense tribute that to obtain
recognition as superior becomes a dominant motive. How that
superiority is to be reached presents great difficulties, and the
problem is solved according to the character of the individual.
At the same time that we seek superiority we seek to be liked, to
be esteemed, to be respected. These are not the same things, but
are sufficiently alike in principle to be classed together. With
some the desire to be liked becomes a motive that ruins firmness
of purpose and success, as in the well-known "good
fellow,"--accommodating, obliging and friendly, who sacrifices
achievement to this minor form of fellowship. On a larger plane
there is the writer or artist who sacrifices his best capacities
in order to please the popular fancy, seeks popularity rather
than greatness, for it is seldom that the two coincide. Back of
many a man's "respectability" is the fear of being disliked or
discredited by his group. TO BE RESPECTABLE, TO LIVE SO THAT
NEITHER THE NEIGHBORS NOR ONE'S OWN RATHER UNCRITICAL CONSCIENCE
CAN CRITICIZE, IS PERHAPS THE MOST COMMON AIM IN LIFE. There are
some who are all things to all men, merely out of the desire to
be agreeable, who find it easy to agree with any opinion, because
they have not the courage to be disliked. Even the greatest men
yield to the desire to be admired and liked, though the test of
greatness is unpopularity.
For there never can be a real and lasting democ-racy in belief,
opinion and ideal. The mass must always lag behind the leaders,
since it takes a generation or two for the ideas of the old
leaders to permeate any society. Now and then a great leader
finds a great following in his own lifetime, but his leadership
rarely involves a new principle. There will always be a few
ground breakers, behind them a few straggling followers, and far,
far behind, the great mass of mankind.
This digression aside, to be popular, agreeable and entertaining
are both aims and weapons. Most of us would infinitely rather be
liked than disliked, and with some it is a passion and a
weakness. But to be popular, to be a good fellow, is an
extraordinarily useful trait when combined with firm purposes and
good intelligence. The art of life is to please, though its
business is achievement and success, and here the art may further
the business. Manners, courtesy and certain of the abilities,
such as musical talent, story telling and humor are cultivated
largely, though not wholly, out of the desire to please.
Manners and courtesy are really standardized methods of behavior,
which are to adjust us in a pleasing way to our superiors, equals
and inferiors, and to the various conventional situations of
life. Naturally these will vary greatly in different ages and
different countries. A democracy acknowledging in theory no
superiors will insist that every man be called "sir" and every
woman "madam," whereas an aristocracy laughs at that. In reality
there is no democracy anywhere, and so we address differently the
woman of the mansion and the woman of the hovel, The mistress of
the house calls her maid by her first name but would wonder what
the world is coming to if the maid became as familiar. In a
limited sense, manners and courtesy are conventional ways of
doing things, as the way of living, the tipping of the hat, the
form of greetings, the way of eating, but these conventions have
great value to the majority of people as evidencing breeding and
training or the lack (superiority or inferiority), and also as
removing doubt and choice, so that things run smoothly and
without contradiction. In a more noble sense, manners and
courtesy prescribe conduct in order to proscribe offense to the
self-valuation of others. Convention says, "Address people as if
they were your equals at least; don't contradict brusquely
because that implies their inferiority or stupidity; avoid too
controversial topics since bitterness and humiliation may thus
arise; do not notice defects or disabilities for the same reason;
do not brag or be too conspicuous, since to boast of superiority
is to imply the inferiority of others, and they will dislike
you," etc. We tend to dislike and hate those who make us feel
inferior, except under those special circumstances where
sex-love, awe and admiration enter to make a certain inferiority
desirable or befitting. So a large part of manners and courtesy
concern themselves with the formulae of conduct which avoid this
result to others, and we are also enjoined to conduct ourselves
so that others will not regard us as inferior. We speak of a man
as a "low person" if he eats with his knife, and very few things
so humiliate us as the knowledge that we have behaved in an
unmannerly way. One of the great purposes, then, is to be
conventional, to behave, dress and "look" according to an
accepted standard, one that is laid down for age, sex and social
station. There are people to whom convention is truly almost
holy, and true to our principle of variability, there are others
who hate convention.
Because many writers have shot shafts of satire and ridicule at
convention and custom, and because of the enormous reading
public, the artificial nature of convention has been emphasized
to that large part of the community that desires to be different
merely for the sake of being different, and there is built up a
conventional unconventionality. It has become the mark of the
artist, the great in spirit, to be unconventional (at least in
novels), and so there are a hundred "unconventional" poseurs to
one genuinely free in spirit. Anything that becomes a dogma or a
cult is not unconventional, for it is the standard or the custom
of a group. Most Bohemians, so-called, are poseurs and
conventionalized to their marrow. And most of the really
unconventional are "freaks," "odd sticks" whose grotesque
individualities cannot conform. But in the mass of the
unconventional one finds here and there, like nuggets of gold in
sand, the true reformers of the world.
The "poseurs" in custom have their analogies in the pompous,
over-dignified and over-important; the affected, in a word.
Affectation is felt to be a disharmony between the pose and the
inner values or an attempt to win superiority or "difference" of
a superior kind by acting. In either case it excites ridicule,
hatred or disgust, and shafts at it form part of the stock in
trade of the satirist, humorist and indeed every portrayer of
life. What men demand of each other is sincerity, and even where
the insincerity is merely a habitual pose it arouses hostile
feeling which expresses itself all the way from criticism to the
overt act.
Since to feel superior is so highly prized in social
relationships of all kinds, part of the technique of those
seeking some advantage or other--economic, social, personal--from
those who must be influenced is to give them the feeling of
superiority. Flattery, cajolement, humble supplication and the
finer maneuvers of tact, all have this in mind. These however are
palatable to the intelligent only when felt to be sincere and
when emanating from some one more or less esteemed, though there
are plenty who "fall" for the grossest flattery from almost any
one, whose ego feeling is easily inflated with a corresponding
shrinking in judgment and common sense. In the relations of men
and women, flattery in one shape or another plays an enormous
role --from the effect on women of the statement or implication
in a subtle or gross way that they are charming, and the effect
on men of acknowledged superiority in strength courage or
intelligence. Of course, in both cases the effect is partly in
the physical attractiveness of the flatterer and tends to become
ridiculous when he or she is without charm. The simpering
language that is irresistible when uttered by a starry-eyed maid
of eighteen loses somewhat in beauty and effect when emanating
from the lips of bespectacled forty. The power to use and the
power to resist flattery in any of its forms have played almost
as great a role in the history of the race as strength, beauty or
intelligence.
It would be futile to elaborate in detail the various ways of
seeking superiority or resisting inferiority. Two directions of
this impulse need some attention, as they lead to personality
traits of great importance. "Having one's way" becomes a dominant
desire with many people, and much of the clashing that occurs in
families, organizations and the council chambers of nations
arises from a childish, egoistic seeking of superiority. People
enter into the most heated and sterile arguments, often coming to
blows, if the course of conduct they desire to have followed is
modified or blocked. Even when secretly convinced that they are
wrong, husbands and wives will continue to insist on victory, for
too often the domestic relationship is a struggle for leadership
and dominance rather than a partnership and a conference. Two
heads are better than one when the intelligence within the heads
is of good grade and when the desire for superiority does not
take trivial directions. And the effect of yielding to the whims
of children is to develop an irritable, domineering egoism bent
on having its own way, resisting reasonable compromise or
correction. The greatest benefit of discipline and above all of
contact with equals to a child is in the effect on this phase of
egoism, i. e., that cooperation means compromise; to be
reasonable implies listening with respect to others' plans and to
accept better ways of doing things, even if they have originated
with others; in other ways the subordinating of trivial egoism.
The large families of other days offered the conflict of wills
and its consequent lesson within the home; to-day the solitary
child, or the one whose brother or sister is three, four or five
years younger or older must go into the streets to obtain this
discipline or else go without. The indulged have this form of
inferior egoism more than do those who have been roughly handled,
and so it is more common in women of the better-to-do classes and
in men who have always exercised authority. It is of course found
in what is known as the stubborn person, --he whose will is law
to himself and who seeks to make it law to others. Ordinarily the
stubborn person is merely a nuisance, but also, if he couples
that stubbornness with intelligence and some especial ability, he
may reach great heights, though he is seldom popular.
A sub-form of having one's own way is the adherence to one's own
"opinion." The clash of opinions is in its noblest aspect the
basis of knowledge; the correction of opinion that results when
man meets man is the growth of tolerance and urbanity. Wide
reading, travel and experience teach us that our opinions can
never be absolutely right, and we grow to look upon them in a
detached sort of way. In fact, the prime result of the growth of
intelligence and of experience is to make one, as it were,
objective toward oneself, to view one's own thoughts, beliefs and
emotions with some humor and skepticism. But the uncultured, the
narrow, the inexperienced, the young and the strongly egotistic
never detach themselves from their opinions, and their opinions
are themselves. Attack an opinion, contradict or amend it,--and a
sort of fighting spirit is aroused. Argument differs from
discussion in that it seeks all means to win--ridicule,
sophistry, and personal attack --and it is by far the more
common. There was a time when opinion was entirely enslaved, when
only the ruler might venture on a new belief or its expression;
then there came a time when the right to freedom of opinion and
its expression was conceded, and now, with huge forces
confronting one another, freedom of opinion[1] is again
threatened. But that is an issue larger than our subject.
[1] The most profound contribution to the subject of discussion
and freedom of opinion in recent years has been written by Walter
Lippman in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1920.
You may judge a man by his type of argument and his reaction to
the opinions of others. One should hold to his own beliefs and
opinions, but only if they withstand the assaults of reason. To
build ego feeling into opinions is to make ignorance sacred. For
most of us there are certain opinions that we will not tolerate,
and there are others to which we are indifferent. There are those
who feel it incumbent on themselves to contradict any opinion,
even if they agree fundamentally with it. The mere fact that some
one else gave it utterance arouses a sort of jealousy. Then there
are others who will not permit any opinion of their own to be
discussed, to whom it is a personal affront to do this. What we
call urbanity is tolerance of other opinions; what we call
reasonableness is the willingness to change opinions if
convinced. What we call vacillation is to have no fixed opinion,
to be influenced at once by the opinions of others. The pleasure
sought in argument is a victory for our opinions and thus for
ourselves.
Here Montaigne's wisdom aptly expresses itself: "We deride
ourselves a hundred times when we mock our neighbor." He is
stubborn and unreasonable who does not agree with us. "Be
reasonable," cry the unreasonable as they argue. "How stubborn
and pigheaded you are," say those inaccessible to reason. The
difficulty in reaching a true estimate of the world, ourselves
and our neighbors lies in the egoism which permeates our beliefs
and opinions.
A second direction of the impulse to superiority is personal
beauty. Not only does the young girl (or any other, male or
female) dress and adorn herself to attract those whose good
opinion she seeks, but also she seeks superiority over her
competitors. Her own self-valuation increases with the
admiration of some and the discomfiture of others. To be
beautiful, attractive or pretty becomes thus a goal to many aims
of the personality; it offers a route to success in obtaining
power, riches, etc.; it yields the longed-for admiration, and it
gives the satisfaction of superiority. It rarely has in it any
ideal of service or of help, though beauty in the abstract is an
ideal of high value. To desire to be beautiful physically as a
leading aim usually leads to selfishness and petty vanity. As a
subsidiary aim it balances character, but unfortunately, as we
have before seen, it is inculcated as a primary aim early in the
life of a girl. True, men seek to be beautiful in a masculine
way, but the goal of masculine beauty is strength, which is
directly serviceable. This is not to say that there are no men
who are vain of their good looks, for there are many. But only
occasionally does one find a man who organizes his life efforts
to be beautiful, who establishes criteria of success or failure
on complexion, hair, features of face and lines of figure. So
long, therefore, as woman can obtain power through beauty and sex
appeal, so long may we expect a trivial trend in her character.
We have lost track of our hypothetical child in the history of
his character development, lost sight of him as he struggles in a
morass of desires and purposes of power, fellowship and
superiority. His situations become still more complex as we watch
him seek to unify his life around permanent purposes, against a
pestering, surging, recurring, temporary desire. He desires, let
us say, to conform to the restriction in sex, but as he
approaches adolescence, within and without stimuli of breathless
ardor assail him. He must inhibit them if he proposes to be
chaste, and his continent road is beset with never-resting
temptations. He calls himself a fool at times for resisting, and
his mind pictures the delights he misses--if not from direct
experience, from information he gathers in books and from those
who know--and if he yields, then self-reproach embitters him. But
correctly to portray the situation is to drop our hypothetical
adolescent, for here is where individual reaction and individual
situations are too varied to be met with in one case. Some do not
inhibit their sex desires at all; others resist now and then,
others yield occasionally; still others remain faithful to the
ideal. Some drop the conventional ideal and replace with
unconventional substitutes, some resist at great cost to
themselves, and others find no difficulty in resisting what is no
temptation at all to them. Passion, resistance, opportunity,
training and sublimation differ as remarkably as nuns differ from
prostitutes.
A similar situation is found in the work purposes. To work
steadily, with industry and unflagging effort, at something
perhaps not inherently attractive is not merely a measure of
energy,--it is a measure of inhibition and will. For there are so
many more immediate pleasures to be had, even if offering only
variety and relaxation. There is the country, there is the lake
for fishing; there is the dance hall where a pretty girl smiles
as your arm encircles her waist; there is the ball field where on
a fine day you may go and forget duty and strained effort in the
swirl of an enthusiasm that emanates from the thousands around
you as they applaud the splendid athletes; there is the good
fellowship and pleasure that beckon as you bend to a task. To
shut these out, to inhibit the temporary "good" for the permanent
good, is the measure of character.
These sex and work situations we must take up in detail in
separate chapters. What is important is that as life goes on,
necessity, the social organization and gradual concentration of
energy canalize the purposes, reduce the power of the irrelevant
and temporary desires. Habit and custom bring a person into
definite relationship with society; the man becomes husband,
father, worker in some definite field of industry; ambition
becomes narrowed down to the possibilities or is entirely
discarded as hopeless. The character becomes a collection of
habits, with some controlling purpose and some characteristic
relaxations. This at least is true of the majority of men. Here
and there are those who have not been able to form a unification
even along such simple lines; they are without steady habits,
derelicts morally, financially and socially, or if with means
independent of personal effort they are wastrels and idlers. And
again there are the doers and thinkers of the world, the
fortunate, whose lives are associated with successful purposes,
whose ambitions grow and grow until they reach the power of which
they dreamed. There are the reformers living in a fever heat of
purpose, disdaining rest and relaxation, dangerously near
fanaticism and not far from mental unbalance, but achieving
through that unbalance things the balanced never have the will to
attempt. He who works merely to get rich or powerful or to
provide food for his family cannot understand the zealots who see
the world as a place where SOMETHING MUST happen,--where slavery
MUST be abolished, women MUST have votes, children MUST go to
school until sixteen, prostitution MUST disappear, alcohol MUST
be prohibited, etc. Such people miss the pretty, pleasant
relaxing joys of life, but they gain in intensity of life what
they lose in diffuseness.
This war of the permanent unified purposes versus the temporary
scattering desires--the power of inhibition --is involved in the
health and vigor of the person. Disease, fatigue and often enough
old age show themselves in lowered purpose, in the failure of the
will (in the sense of the energy of purpose), in a scattering of
activity. Indeed, in the senile states one too often sees the
disappearance of moral control where one least expected it. And
one of the greatest tragedies of our times occurred when an
elderly statesman, on the brink of arterial disease of the brain,
lost the strength and firmness of purpose that hitherto had
characterized him. One of the worst features of the government of
nations is the predominance of old men in the governing bodies.
For not only are they apt to have over-intellectualized life,
not only have they become specialists in purpose and therefore
narrow, but the atrophy of the passions and desires of youth and
middle life has rendered them unfit to legislate for the bulk of
the race, who are the young and middle-aged. It is no true
democracy where old age governs the rest of the periods of life.
Unification of purpose often goes too far. Men lose sight of the
duties they owe to wife and family in their pursuit of wealth or
fame; they forget that relaxation and pleasure-seeking are normal
and legitimate aims. They deify a purpose; they attach it to
themselves so that it becomes more essentially themselves than
their religion or their family. They speak of their work as if
every letter were capitalized and lose sympathy and interest in
the rest of the wide striving world. Men grow hard, even if
philanthropists, in too excessive a devotion to a purpose, and
soon it is their master, and they are its slaves. Happy is he who
can follow his purpose efficiently and earnestly, but who can
find interest in many things, pleasure in the wide range of joys
the world offers and a youthful curiosity and zest in the new.
Every human being, no matter how civilized and unified, how
modern and social in his conduct, has within him a core of
uncivilized, disintegrating, ancient and egoistic desires and
purposes. "I feel two natures struggling within me" is the
epitome of every man's life. This is what has been called
conflict by the psychoanalysts, and my own disagreement with them
is that I believe it to be distinctly conscious in the main. A
man knows that the pretty young girls he meets tempt him from his
allegiance to his wife and his desires to be good; a woman knows
that the prosaic husband no longer pleases, and why he does not
please,--only if you ask either of them bluntly and directly they
will deny their difficulties. The organic activities of the body,
basic in desire of all kinds, are crude and give rise to crude
forbidden wishes, but the struggle that goes on is repressed,
rebelled against and gives rise to trains of secondary
symptoms,--fatigue, headache, indigestion, weariness of life and
many other complaints. It is perfectly proper to complain of
headache, but it is a humiliation to say that you have chosen
wrongly in marriage, or that you are essentially polygamous, or
that an eight-hour day of work at clerking or bookkeeping
disgusts and bores you. People complain of that which is proper
and allows them to maintain self-respect, but they hide that
which may lower them in the eyes of others. Gain their
confidence, show that you see deeper than their words and you get
revelations that need no psychoanalytic technique to elicit and
which are distinctly conscious.
This brings me to the point that the constant inhibition,
blocking and balking of desires and wishes, though in part
socially necessary and ethically justifiable, is decidedly
wearisome, at times to all, and to many at all times. It seems so
easy and pleasant to relax in purposes, in morals, in thought, to
be a vagrant spirit seeking nothing but the pleasures right at
hand; to be like a traditional bee flitting from the rose to rose
of desire. (Only the bee is a decidedly purposive creature, out
for business not pleasure.) "Why all this striving and
self-control?" cries the unorganized in all of us. "Why build up
when Death tears down?" cries the pessimist in our hearts. Great
epochs in history are marked by different answers to these
questions, and in our own civilization there has grown up a
belief that bodily pleasure in itself is wrong, that life is
vanity unless yoked to service and effort. The Puritan idea that
we best serve God in this way has been modified by a more
skeptical idea that we serve man by swinging our efforts away
from bodily pleasure and toward work, organized to some good end;
but essentially the idea of inhibition, control, as the highest
virtue, remains. Such an ideal gains force for a time, then grows
too wearisome, too extreme, and a generation grows up that throws
it off and seeks pleasure frankly; paints, powders, dances,
sings, develops the art of "living," indulges the sense; becomes
loose in morals, and hyperesthetic and over-refined in tastes.
Then the ennui, boredom and disgust that always follow sensual
pleasures become diffuse; happiness cannot come through the
seeking of pleasure and excitement and anhedonia of the exhausted
type arises. Preachers, prophets, seers and poets vigorously
proclaim the futility of pleasure, and the happiness of service;
inhibition comes into its own again and a Puritan cycle
recommences. Stoic, epicurean; Roman republic, Roman empire;
Puritan England, Restoration; Victorian days, early twentieth
century; for to-day we are surging into an era of revolt against
form, custom, tradition; in a word against inhibition.
As with periods, so with people; self-indulgence, i. e.,
indulgence of the passing desires, follows the idealism of
adolescence. Youth sows its wild oats. Then the steadying
purposes appear partly because the pleasure of indulgence passes.
Marriage, responsibility, straining effort mark the passing of
ten or a dozen years; then in middle life, and often before,
things get flat and without savor, monotony creeps in and a
curiosity as to the possibilities of pleasure formerly
experienced is awakened. (I believe that most of the sexual
unfaithfulness in men and women over thirty springs not from
passion but from curiosity.)
There occurs a dangerous age in the late thirties and early
forties, one in which self-indulgence makes itself clamorous. The
monotony of labor, the fatigue of inhibition make themselves
felt, and at this time men (and women) need to add relaxation and
pleasure of a legitimate kind. Golf, the fishing trip, games of
all kinds; legitimate excitement which need not be inhibited is
necessary. This need of excitement without inhibition is behind
most of the gambling and card playing; it explains the
extraordinary attraction of the detective story and the thrilling
movies; it gives great social value to the prize fight and the
ball game where you may see the staid and the sober giving vent
to an excitement that, may fatigue them for a time but which
clears the way for their next day's inhibitions.
Unfortunately too many mistake excitement for happiness. The
forms of relief from inhibition--card playing, sports, the
theater, the thrilling story and the movie--grow to be habits and
lose their exciting value. They can give no permanent relief from
the pain of repression; only a philosophy of life can do that. A
philosophy of life! One might write a few volumes on that (and
there are so many great philosophers already on the market), and
yet such a philosophy would only state that strenuous purpose
must alternate with quiet relaxation; excitement is to be sought
only at periods and never for any length of time; relief from
inhibitions can only be found in legitimate ways or self-reproach
enters. Play, sports, short frequent vacations rather than long
ones, freedom from ceremony as a rule--but now and then a full
indulgence in ceremonials--and a realization that there is no
freedom in self-indulgence.
I remember one Puritanically bred young woman who fled from her
restrictions and inhibitions and joined a "free love" colony in
New York. After two years she left, them and came back to New
England. Her statement of the situation she found herself; it
summarizes all attempts at "freedom." "It wasn't freedom. You
found yourself bound to your desires, a slave to every wish. It
grew awfully tiresome and besides, it brought so many
complications. Sometimes you loved where you weren't loved--and
vice versa. Jealousy was there, oh, so much of it--and pleasure
disappeared after a while. It wasn't conscience--I still believe
that right and wrong are arbitrary matters --but I found myself
envying people who had some guide, some belief, some restrictions
in themselves! For it seemed to me they were more free than I."
The fact is, for most men and women inhibition is no artificial
phenomenon, despite its burdensomeness. It is not only
inevitable, it is desirable. A feeling of power appears when one
resists; there is mental gain, character growth as a result. Life
must be purposive else it is vain and futile, and the feeling of
no achievement and failure is far more disastrous than a thousand
inhibitions.
Though man battles and compromises with himself, he also battles
and compromises with his fellows and circumstances. That is to
say, he must continually adjust himself to the unforeseen, the
obstacle, the favoring circumstance; the possible and impossible;
the certain and uncertain. Adjustment to reality is what the
neurologists call it, but they do not define reality, which
indeed cannot be defined. It is not the same thing for any two
persons. For some reality is success, for others it is virtue.
The scientist smiles at the reality of the love-sick girl, and
she would think his reality a bad dream. The artist says, "Beauty
is the reality"; the miser says, "Cash"; the sentimentalist
answers, "None of this but Love"; and the philosopher, aloof from
all these, defines reality as "Truth." And the skeptic asks,
"What is Truth?" We gain nothing by saying a man must adjust
himself to reality; we say something definite when we say he must
adjust his wishes to his abilities, to the opposing wills,
wisher, and abilities of others; to the needs of his family and
his country; to disease, old age and death; to the flux of the
river of life. In the quickness of adjustment we have a great
character factor; in the farsightedness of adjustment
(foreseeing, planning) we have another. Does a man take his
difficulties with courage and good cheer does he make the "best
of it" or is he plunged into doubt and indecision by obstacles or
complications? Is he calm, cool, collected, well poised, in that
he watches and works without too much emotion and maintains
self-feeling against adversity? We say a man is self-reliant when
he finds in himself resources against obstacles and does not call
on his neighbors for help. We would do well to extend the term to
the one whose fund of courage, hope, energy and resource springs
largely from within himself; who resists the forces that reduce
courage, hope and energy. A higher sort of man not only supplies
himself with the energetic factors of character, but he inspires,
as we say, others; he is a sort of bank of these qualities, with
high reserves which he gives to others. Contrast him with those
whose cry constantly is "Help, help." Charming they may be as
ornaments, but they deplete the treasury of life for their
associates and are only of value as they call out the altruism of
others.
There is no formula for adjustment. Intelligence, insight into
one's powers and capacities, caution, boldness, compromise,
firmness, aggressiveness, tact,--these and a dozen other traits
and qualities come into play. It is a favorite teaching of
optimistic sentimentalists, "Will conquers everything--it is
omnipotent." God's will is,--but no one else's. What happens when
two will and pray for diametrically opposing results? "Then God
is on the side of the heaviest battalions," said Napoleon.
Victory comes to the best prepared, the most intelligent, the
least hampered and the luckiest. Outside of metaphysics and
theology there is no abstract will; it is a part of purpose,
intelligence and instinct and shares in their imperfections and
limitations. To will the impossible is to taste failure, although
it may be difficult to know what is impossible. Fight hard, be
brave, keep your powder dry and have good friends is the best
counsel for adjustment. But learn resignation and cultivate a
sense of humor.
No inspiration in that? Well, I must leave inspiration to others
who have an infallible formula. The best I can offer in
adjustment is the old prayer, "Lord, make me love the chase and
not the quarry! Lord, make me live up to my ideals!"
Out of the welter of conflicts into which the individual is
plunged through his own nature and the nature of the life around
him, out of the experience of the race and the teaching of its
leaders come ideals. Good, Beauty, Justice,--these are good
deeds, beautiful things, true and non-contradictory expressions,
just acts raised to the divine and absolute, and therefore
worshiped. And their opposite, arising from evil deeds, ugly and
disgusting things, misleading experiences and suffering, become
unified into various forms of Evil. Life becomes divided into two
parts, Good and Evil, and personified (by the great majority)
into God and the Devil. Man seeks the Good, hates Evil, esteems
himself when he conforms to the ideal, loathes himself when he
violates it. He cannot judge himself; he wishes to know the
judgment of others and accepts or rejects that judgment.
We say man seeks pleasure, satisfaction, the Good. True. But it
is important to know that essentially he seeks a higher
self-valuation, seeks to establish his own dignity and worth and
has his highest satisfaction when that valuation is reached
through conformity with absolute standards.