Our discussion of happiness has so far not taught us much that is
not already common knowledge. Nor does the prospect of discovering
anything new seem much greater if we go on with the problem why it
is so hard for mankind to be happy. We gave the answer before, when
we cited the three sources of human sufferings, namely, the superior
force of nature, the disposition to decay of our bodies, and the
inadequacy of our methods of regulating human relations in the family,
the community and the state. In regard to the first two, our judgement
cannot hesitate: it forces us to recognize these sources of suffering
and to submit to the inevitable. We shall never completely subdue
nature; our body, too, is an organism, itself a part of nature, and
will always contain the seeds of dissolution, with its limited powers
of adaptation and achievement. The effect of this recognition is in no
way disheartening; on the contrary, it points out the direction for
our efforts. If we cannot abolish all suffering, yet a great deal of
it we can, and can mitigate more; the experience of several thousand
years has convinced us of this. To the third, the social source of our
distresses, we take up a different attitude. We prefer not to regard
it as one at all; we cannot see why the systems we have ourselves
created should not rather ensure protection and well-being for us all.
To be sure, when we consider how unsuccessful our efforts to safeguard
against suffering in this particular have proved, the suspicion dawns
upon us that a bit of unconquerable nature lurks concealed behind this
difficulty as well—in the shape of our own mental constitution.
When we start to consider this possibility, we come across a point of
view which is so amazing that we will pause over it. According to it,
our so-called civilization itself is to blame for a great part of our
misery, and we should be much happier if we were to give it up and go
back to primitive conditions. I call this amazing because—however one
may define culture—it is undeniable that every means by which we try
to guard ourselves against menaces from the several sources of human
distress is a part of this same culture.
How has it come about that so many people have adopted this strange
attitude of hostility to civilization? In my opinion, it arose from
a background of profound long-standing discontent with the existing
state of civilization, which finally crystallized into this judgement
as a result of certain historical happenings. I believe I can identify
the last two of these; I am not learned enough to trace the links in
the chain back into the history of the human species. At the time when
Christianity conquered the pagan religions some such antagonism to
culture must already have been actively at work. It is closely related
to the low estimation put upon earthly life by Christian doctrine. The
earlier of the last two historical developments was when, as a result
of voyages of discovery, men came into contact with primitive peoples
and races. To the Europeans, who failed to observe them carefully
and misunderstood what they saw, these people seemed to lead simple,
happy lives—wanting for nothing—such as the travellers who visited
them, with all their superior culture, were unable to achieve. Later
experience has corrected this opinion on many points; in several
instances the ease of life was due to the bounty of nature and the
possibilities of ready satisfaction for the great human needs, but it
was erroneously attributed to the absence of the complicated conditions
of civilization. The last of the two historical events is especially
familiar to us; it was when people began to understand the nature of
the neuroses which threaten to undermine the modicum of happiness open
to civilized man. It was found that men become neurotic because they
cannot tolerate the degree of privation that society imposes on them
in virtue of its cultural ideals, and it was supposed that a return to
greater possibilities of happiness would ensue if these standards were
abolished or greatly relaxed.
And there exists an element of disappointment, in addition. In the
last generations man has made extraordinary strides in knowledge
of the natural sciences and technical application of them, and has
established his dominion over nature in a way never before imagined.
The details of this forward progress are universally known: it is
unnecessary to enumerate them. Mankind is proud of its exploits and
has a right to be. But men are beginning to perceive that all this
newly-won power over space and time, this conquest of the forces of
nature, this fulfilment of age-old longings, has not increased the
amount of pleasure they can obtain in life, has not made them feel
any happier. The valid conclusion from this is merely that power over
nature is not the only condition of human happiness, just as it is not
the only goal of civilization’s efforts, and there is no ground for
inferring that its technical progress is worthless from the standpoint
of happiness. It prompts one to exclaim: is it not then a positive
pleasure, an unequivocal gain in happiness, to be able to hear,
whenever I like, the voice of a child living hundreds of miles away, or
to know directly a friend of mine arrives at his destination that he
has come well and safely through the long and troublesome voyage? And
is it nothing that medical science has succeeded in enormously reducing
the mortality of young children, the dangers of infection for women
in childbirth, indeed, in very considerably prolonging the average
length of human life? And there is still a long list one could add
to these benefits that we owe to the much-despised era of scientific
and practical progress—but a critical, pessimistic voice makes itself
heard, saying that most of these advantages follow the model of those
‘cheap pleasures’ in the anecdote. One gets this enjoyment by sticking
one’s bare leg outside the bedclothes on a cold winter’s night and
then drawing it in again. If there were no railway to make light of
distances my child would never have left home and I should not need
the telephone to hear his voice. If there were no vessels crossing the
ocean my friend would never have embarked on his voyage and I should
not need the telegraph to relieve my anxiety about him. What is the
use of reducing the mortality of children when it is precisely this
reduction which imposes the greatest moderation on us in begetting
them, so that taken all round we do not rear more children than in
the days before the reign of hygiene, while at the same time we have
created difficult conditions for sexual life in marriage and probably
counteracted the beneficial effects of natural selection? And what do
we gain by a long life when it is full of hardship and starved of joys
and so wretched that we can only welcome death as our deliverer?
It seems to be certain that our present-day civilization does not
inspire in us a feeling of well-being, but it is very difficult to
form an opinion whether in earlier times people felt any happier and
what part their cultural conditions played in the question. We always
tend to regard trouble objectively, _i.e._ to place ourselves with
our own wants and our own sensibilities in the same conditions, so
as to discover what opportunities for happiness or unhappiness we
should find in them. This method of considering the problem, which
appears to be objective because it ignores the varieties of subjective
sensitivity, is of course the most subjective possible, for by applying
it one substitutes one’s own mental attitude for the unknown attitude
of other men. Happiness, on the contrary, is something essentially
subjective. However we may shrink in horror at the thought of certain
situations, that of the galley-slaves in antiquity, of the peasants in
the Thirty Years’ War, of the victims of the Inquisition, of the Jews
awaiting a pogrom, it is still impossible for us to feel ourselves
into the position of these people, to imagine the differences which
would be brought about by constitutional obtuseness of feeling, gradual
stupefaction, the cessation of all anticipation, and by all the grosser
and more subtle ways in which insensibility to both pleasurable and
painful sensations can be induced. Moreover, on occasions when the
most extreme forms of suffering have to be endured, special mental
protective devices come into operation. It seems to me unprofitable to
follow up this aspect of the problem further.
It is time that we should turn our attention to the nature of this
culture, the value of which is so much disputed from the point of
view of happiness. Until we have learnt something by examining it
for ourselves, we will not look round for formulas which express its
essence in a few words. We will be content to repeat[10] that the word
‘culture’ describes the sum of the achievements and institutions which
differentiate our lives from those of our animal forebears and serve
two purposes, namely, that of protecting humanity against nature and of
regulating the relations of human beings among themselves. In order to
learn more than this, we must bring together the individual features
of culture as they are manifested in human communities. We shall have
no hesitation in allowing ourselves to be guided by the common usages
of language, or as one might say, the _feeling_ of language, confident
that we shall thus take into account inner attitudes which still resist
expression in abstract terms.
The beginning is easy. We recognize as belonging to culture all the
activities and possessions which men use to make the earth serviceable
to them, to protect them against the tyranny of natural forces, and
so on. There is less doubt about this aspect of civilization than
any other. If we go back far enough we find that the first acts of
civilization were the use of tools, the gaining of power over fire,
and the construction of dwellings. Among these the acquisition of
power over fire stands out as a quite exceptional achievement, without
a prototype;[11] while the other two opened up paths which have
ever since been pursued by man, the stimulus towards which is easily
imagined. By means of all his tools, man makes his own organs more
perfect—both the motor and the sensory—or else removes the obstacles
in the way of their activity. Machinery places gigantic power at his
disposal which, like his muscles, he can employ in any direction; ships
and aircraft have the effect that neither air nor water can prevent
his traversing them. With spectacles he corrects the defects of the
lens in his own eyes; with telescopes he looks at far distances; with
the microscope he overcomes the limitations in visibility due to the
structure of his retina. With the photographic camera he has created
an instrument which registers transitory visual impressions, just as
the gramophone does with equally transient auditory ones; both are at
bottom materializations of his own power of memory. With the help of
the telephone he can hear at distances which even fairy-tales would
treat as insuperable; writing to begin with was the voice of the
absent; dwellings were a substitute for the mother’s womb, that first
abode, in which he was safe and felt so content, for which he probably
yearns ever after.
It sounds like a fairy-tale, but not only that; this story of what man
by his science and practical inventions has achieved on this earth,
where he first appeared as a weakly member of the animal kingdom, and
on which each individual of his species must ever again appear as a
helpless infant—O inch of nature!—is a direct fulfilment of all, or of
most, of the dearest wishes in his fairy-tales. All these possessions
he has acquired through culture. Long ago he formed an ideal conception
of omnipotence and omniscience which he embodied in his gods. Whatever
seemed unattainable to his desires—or forbidden to him—he attributed
to these gods. One may say, therefore, that these gods were the ideals
of his culture. Now he has himself approached very near to realizing
this ideal, he has nearly become a god himself. But only, it is true,
in the way that ideals are usually realized in the general experience
of humanity. Not completely; in some respects not at all, in others
only by halves. Man has become a god by means of artificial limbs,
so to speak, quite magnificent when equipped with all his accessory
organs; but they do not grow on him and they still give him trouble
at times. However, he is entitled to console himself with the thought
that this evolution will not come to an end in A.D. 1930. Future ages
will produce further great advances in this realm of culture, probably
inconceivable now, and will increase man’s likeness to a god still
more. But with the aim of our study in mind, we will not forget, all
the same, that the human being of to-day is not happy with all his
likeness to a god.
Thus we recognize that a country has attained a high level of
civilization when we find that everything in it that can be helpful in
exploiting the earth for man’s benefit and in protecting him against
nature—everything, in short, that is useful to him—is cultivated
and effectively protected. In such a country the course of rivers
which threaten to overflow their banks is regulated, their waters
guided through canals to places where they are needed. The soil is
industriously cultivated and planted with the vegetation suited to
it; the mineral wealth is brought up assiduously from the depths
and wrought into the implements and utensils that are required. The
means of communication are frequent, rapid and reliable; wild and
dangerous animals have been exterminated, the breeding of tamed and
domesticated ones prospers. But we demand other things besides these of
civilization, and, curiously enough, we expect to find them existing in
the same countries. As if we wished to repudiate the first requisition
we made, we count it also as proof of a high level of civilization
when we see that the industry of the inhabitants is applied as well to
things which are not in the least useful and, on the contrary, seem
to be useless, _e.g._ when the parks and gardens in a town, which
are necessary as playgrounds and air-reservoirs, also bear flowering
plants, or when the windows of dwellings are adorned with flowers.
We soon become aware that the useless thing which we require of
civilization is beauty; we expect a cultured people to revere beauty
where it is found in nature and to create it in their handiwork so
far as they are able. But this is far from exhausting what we require
of civilization. Besides, we expect to see the signs of cleanliness
and order. We do not think highly of the cultural level of an English
country town in the time of Shakespeare when we read that there was
a tall dungheap in front of his father’s house in Stratford; we are
indignant and call it ‘barbarous’, which is the opposite of civilized,
when we find the paths in the Wiener Wald littered with paper. Dirt
of any kind seems to us incompatible with civilization; we extend our
demands for cleanliness to the human body also, and are amazed to hear
what an objectionable odour emanated from the person of the Roi Soleil;
we shake our heads when we are shown the tiny wash-basin on the Isola
Bella which Napoleon used for his daily ablutions. Indeed, we are
not surprised if anyone employs the use of soap as a direct measure
of civilization. It is the same with order, which, like cleanliness,
relates entirely to man’s handiwork. But whereas we cannot expect
cleanliness in nature, order has, on the contrary, been imitated from
nature; man’s observations of the great astronomical periodicities
not only furnished him with a model, but formed the ground-plan of
his first attempts to introduce order into his own life. Order is a
kind of repetition-compulsion by which it is ordained once for all
when, where and how a thing shall be done so that on every similar
occasion doubt and hesitation shall be avoided. The benefits of order
are incontestable: it enables us to use space and time to the best
advantage, while saving expenditure of mental energy. One would be
justified in expecting that it would have ingrained itself from the
start and without opposition into all human activities; and one may
well wonder that this has not happened, and that, on the contrary,
human beings manifest an inborn tendency to negligence, irregularity
and untrustworthiness in their work, and have to be laboriously trained
to imitate the example of their celestial models.
Beauty, cleanliness and order clearly occupy a peculiar position among
the requirements of civilization. No one will maintain that they are as
essential to life as the activities aimed at controlling the forces of
nature and as other factors which we have yet to mention; and yet no
one would willingly relegate them to the background as trivial matters.
Beauty is an instance which plainly shows that culture is not simply
utilitarian in its aims, for the lack of beauty is a thing we cannot
tolerate in civilization. The utilitarian advantages of order are quite
apparent; with regard to cleanliness we have to remember that it is
required of us by hygiene, and we may surmise that even before the
days of scientific prophylaxis the connection between the two was not
altogether unsuspected by mankind. But these aims and endeavours of
culture are not entirely to be explained on utilitarian lines; there
must be something else at work besides.
According to general opinion, however, there is one feature of culture
which characterizes it better than any other, and that is the value it
sets upon the higher mental activities—intellectual, scientific, and
aesthetic achievement—the leading part it concedes to ideas in human
life. First and foremost among these ideas come the religious systems
with their complicated evolution, on which I have elsewhere endeavoured
to throw a light; next to them come philosophical speculations; and
last, the ideals man has formed, his conceptions of the perfection
possible in an individual, in a people, in humanity as a whole, and the
demands he makes on the basis of these conceptions. These creations
of his mind are not independent of each other; on the contrary, they
are closely interwoven, and this complicates the attempt to describe
them, as well as that to trace their psychological derivation. If
we assume as a general hypothesis that the force behind all human
activities is a striving towards the two convergent aims of profit
and pleasure, we must then acknowledge this as valid also for these
other manifestations of culture, although it can be plainly recognized
as true only in respect of science and art. It cannot be doubted,
however, that the remainder, too, correspond to some powerful need in
human beings—perhaps to one which develops fully only in a minority of
people. Nor may we allow ourselves to be misled by our own judgements
concerning the value of any of these religious or philosophical
systems or of these ideals; whether we look upon them as the highest
achievement of the human mind, or whether we deplore them as fallacies,
one must acknowledge that where they exist, and especially where they
are in the ascendant, they testify to a high level of civilization.
We now have to consider the last, and certainly by no means the least
important, of the components of culture, namely, the ways in which
social relations, the relations of one man to another, are regulated,
all that has to do with him as a neighbour, a source of help, a sexual
object to others, a member of a family or of a state. It is especially
difficult in this matter to remain unbiased by any ideal standards
and to ascertain exactly what is specifically cultural here. Perhaps
one might begin with the statement that the first attempt ever made
to regulate these social relations already contained the essential
element of civilization. Had no such attempt been made, these relations
would be subject to the wills of individuals: that is to say, the man
who was physically strongest would decide things in accordance with
his own interests and desires. The situation would remain the same
even though this strong man should in his turn meet with another who
was stronger than he. Human life in communities only becomes possible
when a number of men unite together in strength superior to any single
individual and remain united against all single individuals. The
strength of this united body is then opposed as ‘Right’ against the
strength of any individual, which is condemned as ‘brute force’. This
substitution of the power of a united number for the power of a single
man is the decisive step towards civilization. The essence of it lies
in the circumstance that the members of the community have restricted
their possibilities of gratification, whereas the individual recognized
no such restrictions. The first requisite of culture, therefore, is
justice—that is, the assurance that a law once made will not be broken
in favour of any individual. This implies nothing about the ethical
value of any such law. The further course of cultural development seems
to tend towards ensuring that the law shall no longer represent the
will of any small body—caste, tribe, section of the population—which
may behave like a predatory individual towards other such groups
perhaps containing larger numbers. The end-result would be a state
of law to which all—that is, all who are capable of uniting—have
contributed by making some sacrifice of their own desires, and which
leaves none—again with the same exception—at the mercy of brute force.
The liberty of the individual is not a benefit of culture. It was
greatest before any culture, though indeed it had little value at
that time, because the individual was hardly in a position to defend
it. Liberty has undergone restrictions through the evolution of
civilization and justice demands that these restrictions shall apply
to all. The desire for freedom that makes itself felt in a human
community may be a revolt against some existing injustice and so may
prove favourable to a further development of civilization and remain
compatible with it. But it may also have its origin in the primitive
roots of the personality, still unfettered by civilizing influences,
and so become a source of antagonism to culture. Thus the cry for
freedom is directed either against particular forms or demands of
culture or else against culture itself. It does not seem as if man
could be brought by any sort of influence to change his nature into
that of the ants; he will always, one imagines, defend his claim to
individual freedom against the will of the multitude. A great part of
the struggles of mankind centres round the single task of finding some
expedient (_i.e._ satisfying) solution between these individual claims
and those of the civilized community; it is one of the problems of
man’s fate whether this solution can be arrived at in some particular
form of culture or whether the conflict will prove irreconcilable.
We have obtained a clear impression of the general picture presented by
culture through adopting the common view as to which aspects of human
life are to be called cultural; but it is true that so far we have
discovered nothing that is not common knowledge. We have, however, at
the same time guarded ourselves against accepting the misconception
that civilization is synonymous with becoming perfect, is the path by
which man is ordained to reach perfection. But now a certain point
of view presses for consideration; it will lead perhaps in another
direction. The evolution of culture seems to us a peculiar kind of
process passing over humanity, of which several aspects strike us as
familiar. We can describe this process in terms of the modifications
it effects on the known human instinctual dispositions, which it is
the economic task of our lives to satisfy. Some of these instincts
become absorbed, as it were, so that something appears in place of them
which in an individual we call a character-trait. The most remarkable
example of this process is found in respect of the anal erotism of
young human beings. Their primary interest in the excretory function,
its organs and products, is changed in the course of their growth
into a group of traits that we know well—thriftiness, orderliness
and cleanliness—valuable and welcome qualities in themselves, which,
however, may be intensified till they visibly dominate the personality
and produce what we call the anal character. How this happens we do not
know; but there is no doubt about the accuracy of this conclusion.[12]
Now, we have seen that order and cleanliness are essentially
cultural demands, although the necessity of them for survival is not
particularly apparent, any more than their suitability as sources of
pleasure. At this point we must be struck for the first time with the
similarity between the process of cultural development and that of
the libidinal development in an individual. Other instincts have to
be induced to change the conditions of their gratification, to find
it along other paths, a process which is usually identical with what
we know so well as sublimation (of the aim of an instinct), but which
can sometimes be differentiated from this. Sublimation of instinct is
an especially conspicuous feature of cultural evolution; this it is
that makes it possible for the higher mental operations, scientific,
artistic, ideological activities, to play such an important part in
civilized life. If one were to yield to a first impression, one would
be tempted to say that sublimation is a fate which has been forced
upon instincts by culture alone. But it is better to reflect over this
a while longer. Thirdly and lastly, and this seems most important of
all, it is impossible to ignore the extent to which civilization is
built up on renunciation of instinctual gratifications, the degree to
which the existence of civilization presupposes the non-gratification
(suppression, repression or something else?) of powerful instinctual
urgencies. This ‘cultural privation’ dominates the whole field of
social relations between human beings; we know already that it is the
cause of the antagonism against which all civilization has to fight.
It sets hard tasks for our scientific work, too; we have a great deal
to explain here. It is not easy to understand how it can become
possible to withhold satisfaction from an instinct. Nor is it by any
means without risk to do so; if the deprivation is not made good
economically, one may be certain of producing serious disorders.
But now, if we wish to know what use it is to us to have recognized
the evolution of culture as a special process, comparable to the
normal growth of an individual to maturity, we must clearly attack
another problem and put the question: what are the influences to which
the evolution of culture owes its origin, how did it arise and what
determined its course?