THIS DISILLUSIONMENT IS ITSELF ILLUSORY
IX
THE PRECISE NATURE OF THE ISSUE
The disillusionment that creeps over twentieth-century man concerns,
not the ability of the universe to supply what he desires, but his own
capacity for really desiring anything greatly significant. Are our
springs of action, then, all necessarily narrow, selfish, or sensual,
and do we merely delude ourselves when we fancy that our souls have
wings?
It is conceivable that we have wings, but that the surrounding
atmosphere is not of sufficient density to sustain us in flight. In
this case an old form of pessimism would be justifiable. We should be
able to respect ourselves, but we should complain against the nature
that brought us forth and now envelops us. The situation would have all
the elements of the deepest tragedy--two irreconcilables meeting, and
producing unrelievable woe thereby.
The general trend of our day is not towards pessimism of this kind.
Modern man assumes, on the whole, that the world is large enough for
our nature, and that his job is to get out of it what’s there. No
slackening of enterprise confronts us, little world-weariness; rather
unprecedented eagerness to explore, master, and appropriate. Nature
does not scare and oppress us as she used to do, and she is immensely
more responsive to our desires since the sciences taught us how to
predict. Accordingly, not disappointed bitterness, not renunciation nor
resignation, but exploitation is the characteristic attitude. “The
world is my oyster.”
What directly affects our idealism, then, is not any general lack of
exuberance in nature, but the conviction that there is a special lack
at one point. What we want is there, it is believed, but our wants,
our springs of action, are scant. It is assumed that we cannot want
the common welfare as much as we want profits; that we cannot desire
world-fellowship as much as we desire the perquisites of our present
war-making system of economy; that sex-appetite never can be made to
play a harmonious part in a symphony of life; and that aspiration for
communion with the divine is a refined and self-deceived form of the
very forces that religion fancies that it is bringing under control.
Our question concerns the truth of this view. Is it borne out by the
facts? If it is not borne out by the facts, then another question will
confront us. To conclude that we are capable of high motives is not
to affirm that we live up to our capacities. He who is most ardently
respectful towards human nature will not deny that we live below them.
How, then, does this come about?
An old answer is that we are fundamentally at variance with ourselves.
On one side of our nature, it was said, we are divine or at least have
a spark of divinity, but on another side we are of the earth, earthy.
Others affirm that to be conscious is to desire, and that desire, in
and of itself, is a state of division and inherently painful, and that
relief can be had only through the extinction of consciousness. Upon
this supposed disunity with self another sort of pessimism has been
built. However high some of our motivation may be, and whatever the
rest of the universe is like, it is said, we are doomed to defeat
through self-frustration.
Even if we found deep grounds for self-respect, therefore, the spirit
of disillusionment with reference to ourselves might not be wholly
exorcized. In the present Part evidence will be given that neither
the generalizations of science nor the run of everyday experience
can justify the mood that has overflowed us. But this will have the
effect of plunging us into an even more difficult problem--that of
understanding the contrarieties within our nature. This will be the
theme of Part III, and in Part IV the question will become, how to
manage these contrarieties.
As far as the case permits, this line of inquiry postpones the problems
usually called metaphysical. But they will hover near our every step,
and the conclusions that we reach will necessarily have a metaphysical
squint. If we can respect ourselves after looking one another squarely
in the face, then score one for the universe that brought us forth! It
is not altogether shabby. This we could maintain even if what is found
worthy of respect should be in unresolvable conflict with some negative
principle either within or without. For then the world-system would
bring forth tragedy, which is the opposite of littleness and meanness.
Tragedy is possible only in a world that contains inherent greatness.
Even if some ultimate defeat awaits us, who knows what dignity man
might attain by some superior method of meeting his fate?
But if, as I hope to show in the concluding division, there are ways in
which we can utilize even the contrarieties of our nature--if we can
win victories even through our defeats--then this, too, will suggest
something concerning our world-system. An experience like this is an
experience of freedom--an _experience_ of freedom, not proof except
in the sense that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Such
experience would, however, become a datum for any metaphysics that
fully takes in man. But all this belongs in the final section of the
book.
X
“HUMAN NATURE BEING WHAT IT IS”
Two lines of thought are discernible in the minds of those who
judge that human motivation is and must remain of low quality,
namely, generalizations from direct observation of the life about
us, and inferences from the truth that we are a part of nature and
a manifestation of her unchanging laws. Both these grounds must be
considered. I shall show, in the present section, what is implied as to
motivation in our being enmeshed in the totality of animate nature; in
the following section attention will be given to the bearing of current
psychology upon our problem, and afterwards, I shall endeavor to pluck
some of the fruits of direct observation.
For more than half a century, now, naturalistic views of man have had
their center in the theory of evolution. We have come to know ourselves
as blood relatives of the species that we call lower, and “blood
relative” has come to mean not only bodily but also mental kinship.
This, of itself, would scarcely argue anything as to the level of our
capacities as compared with the level of the beasts, for various levels
of conduct and apparently of capacity exist within our own species.
It is not the fact of kinship, but the fact of law and continuity
within this kinship that seems to furnish a basis for moderating our
self-respect. Law is interpreted as if we were fatalistically assigned
our place, and continuity is interpreted in the sense of sameness with
that from which we have sprung. Hence the notion that, “human nature
being what it is” by virtue of our place in the evolutionary order,
our motives are only complex forms of the impulses that we find in the
lower animals.
Yet the story of development is a story of variation, of variation
piled upon variation, and of sudden mutations. The continuity that
pervades the whole is continuity of process, not the perpetuation of
sameness. The connectedness of nature’s forms is like the connectedness
of a merchant’s goods--all were acquired by purchase, all will be
disposed of by sale; all appear in the same inventory and upon the same
ledger; they have all this in common, and there is this continuity from
one piece of merchandise to another. But this says nothing as to the
range of differences. It was said of one of the great London “stores”
some years ago that it would accept orders for any kind of commodity
known to man.
By means of natural law we can pass from any event in nature to any
other event, just as by the merchant’s books he can pass--say--from
a necktie to a delivery truck. But, just as unprecedented kinds of
goods may be bought and sold without interrupting the system, so
unprecedented natural events may occur, and unprecedented forms of life
may appear, without any breach of continuity. Evolution is, indeed, not
repetition of the same, but the bringing forth of that which is not the
same. Expectancy is the atmosphere appropriate to it. Not that progress
is implicit in evolution as such, but rather plasticity, roominess,
and versatility. The fact that usually the development of new organs
and new species takes place through the gradual accumulation of slight
changes does not alter the logic of the situation; gradualness of
change does not mean sameness. Even if it did, the fact of mutations
would still confront us.
As we have bodily organs that once were non-existent anywhere in our
world-system, so we perform functions that are special to us. Instances
will be given in a moment; but before going on to them, it is worth
remarking that the argument from kinship to sameness works just as well
backward as forward. If it be maintained that the blood relationship
between an Abraham Lincoln and a coyote implies that the impulsions
of the two are the same, it then becomes just as legitimate--and
illegitimate--to interpret the coyote by Lincoln as the reverse.
Let us now examine a case or two of our immersion within the totality
of animate nature. The statement has been made that the whole of human
conduct turns upon two fundamental drives, the appetite for food and
the appetite for sex. The reasoning by which this broad generalization
is supported starts with the assumption that survival is the
all-inclusive objective of organic impulses. Survival means, however,
according to circumstances, either continuance of an individual life,
or maintenance of a species. Nutrition, it is said, is the basic
condition of individual survival; reproduction, that of species
survival. Hence the conclusion is drawn that human life is ruled by
just two drives, each proliferating into many details, the drive for
food and the drive for sex-intercourse.
The theory has the attractiveness of simplicity, at least apparent
simplicity; but it is the simplicity of abstractions substituted
for the complexity of concrete facts. First of all, “survival,”
“individual,” and “species” are our after-thoughts, products of our
reflection and systematization. They are not a description of the
facts of animal conduct or of human conduct. We can perceive that a
given act is related to survival, but this by no means proves that
survival was in any sense an objective of the act.
In the second place, the two-drive theory is not fundamental in its own
sense of the term “fundamental drive.” For, since sexual reproduction
is known to have been preceded by a-sexual, and since a-sexual
reproduction roots in cell-division as a phase of nutrition, the
conclusion, upon the assumed basis, should be that there is only one
basic drive, the nutritional!
In the third place, the theory confuses instead of clarifying human
conduct in the sphere of sex and reproduction. Desire for sex-relations
is not by any means the same as desire for offspring or for the
maintenance of our species. Our race had been on the scene a long time
before anybody suspected the causal relation between the sex function
and the birth of babies. Desire for children does not root in sex
appetite; it arises only after being with children. Desire for the
maintenance of our species arises, of course, only through reflection,
and its object is apprehended only through imagination. As a matter of
unadorned fact, does not the sex-impulsion in human beings struggle to
free itself from all necessary association with reproduction?
A fourth consideration concerns the other supposedly basic and
inclusive drive, the nutritional. If we take the impulse to eat in its
primary and simple sense, then we must see that a plentiful supply of
food at any moment produces quiescence of food-getting activities;
a full belly is, so to say, the _summum bonum_ of this branch of
motivation. But the theory goes on to classify with food-getting a
whole lot of other activities of getting, storing, guarding, and
competing--almost the whole economic system, indeed. In subsequent
chapters (15 and 16) we shall see how complicated, in fact, is the
motivation of our system of production and distribution. At the present
moment it is sufficient to point out how strained is the theory that
all our individualistic getting is at bottom food-getting, and that all
individualistic getting is directed towards the prolongation of the
individual’s existence.
Thus far our considerations are negative; but there are positive
ones also. For it can be shown that within these two general areas
unprecedented inclinations, or likes and dislikes, have repeatedly
arrived. Sex-inclinations are the most easily-read instance. Since
sexual reproduction was preceded by a-sexual, the sex-appetite in its
totality had a beginning; it entered into a system in which it had
been non-existent; it was an utterly new attraction. Moreover, it has
undergone modifications and reversals. In some species promiscuity
is attractive; in others sex-inclination spontaneously selects one
permanent mate--among the pigeons, for example. In the case of man, so
many differentiations, and such profound ones, have taken place that
we are put to it to make our terminology consistent. Shall we classify
the satisfaction that personal beauty in the opposite sex gives us as
sexual, esthetic, or both? Certainly there was a stage in evolution
at which appreciation of beauty had nothing whatever to do with sex.
And what shall we say of mental graces--of wit, humor, originality,
sincerity, good taste? These attract men toward women and women toward
men; somehow these primarily non-sexual mental graces become a sex
bond. It is clear, then, that this drive is no single, unchanging
thing; it is the scene and area of spontaneous, new, unprecedented
inclinations; its first, raw stages, which chiefly attract biological
interest, taken by themselves, misrepresent the truth as much as they
represent it. Would it be old-fashioned, or rather merely “getting
up to date,” to add that fellowship between two personal spirits,
recognizing and prizing and cultivating themselves as such, and
therefore placing the primary sex-relation upon a basis of mutual
respect and reverence--that such fellowship must be recognized and
appreciated if one is to understand the sex drive as a human desire and
motive?
A similar creativeness in the realm of drives has appeared somewhere
in the world in relation to every type of human desire. The interests
of men do not move in any straight line; they dart and quiver;
explore, discover, make new habitations, and then migrate from the
homes that they have builded for themselves. There was a time, for
example, when our ancestors had no taste, no drive, for artistic
creation. But at last there arose--we need not stop to say by what
stages--a satisfaction that was not entirely dependent upon utility
or consumption. Objects began to be made for the pleasure that the
mere sight of them gave. Here is the evolution of a new species of
motivation. We might almost say “species” in the biological sense,
for art-interests breed freely among themselves but tend to become
infertile when they are crossed with other interests.
The existence of the sciences, of which the doctrine of evolution is a
conspicuous part, may itself be taken as an example of the emergence
of a new motive. For here bursts forth a self-sustaining impulsion to
intellectual activity that is free from fear, free from authority,
and free from utilitarian considerations. Here intelligence not only
rises above the clod, not only disengages its interests from all the
conditions of biological survival, but also reverses itself. For
science is a mighty damming back of the historical momentum of mind,
and the creation of new channels for its flow. Indeed, the emergence of
individual and social self-criticism, whether in the scientific or the
ethical sphere, would of itself be sufficient to prove that we belong
to an order in which superior motivation can evolve out of inferior.
Said a youthful and inexperienced fish to an old and experienced one
in the long, long ago before there were any land animals, “What fun
it is to leap into the air! I wonder what it would be like to live on
the land and only occasionally take a bath in water, just as we live
in the water and only occasionally take a bath in air.” “Nonsense!”
replied the old and experienced fish. “Nobody could enjoy living in
the air. How would one breathe? Your gills would dry up, and you would
suffocate. The idea is contrary to nature and perfectly preposterous!”
XI
SOME NOTES ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MOTIVATION
Various phases of current psychology and would-be psychology--methods,
points of view, particular facts--have given an apparent color of
scientific justification, as we have seen, to the popular estimate of
our motivation. We have done them full justice as part causes of the
tendency to disillusionment, but we have not yet asked how far they
logically justify it. This is the question that we now have to consider.
The attribution to psychology of magisterial authority in the realm
of the interests of life is a bit of popular superstition. Probably
something of the thrill evoked by the thought of unseen ghostly
forces is in it; certainly it contains an over-wrought estimate of
the psychologist, as though he had something of the medicine-man in
him. Psychologists themselves know better, of course. Anyone who has
observed the development of the science since, say, James published
his two massive and fascinating volumes knows that cross-currents and
choppy seas and changeable winds prevail in this quarter. The enormous
expenditure of labor and of resources is, indeed, justified by the
results, partly because a substantial body of detailed facts has been
ascertained, and partly because basic issues as to subject-matter,
method, and interpretation have been brought to the fore. But these
issues have not been settled to the satisfaction of psychologists
themselves, who are divided into several apparently irreconcilable
groups. And it is these basic issues that are chiefly important when we
seek light upon our life-policies.
The problem of human motivation, for example--the ascertainment of
both our actual motives and our capacities for motives--is not a
matter of simple detail, like color-blindness or the curve of learning
in typewriting. Rather, it seems as though we can scarcely touch the
edges of motivation without plunging at once into the difficulties
that are systemic to the science as a whole. First and foremost is
the difficulty involved in the atomistic conception of analysis, a
conception taken over from the physical sciences before they had
reached their present insight into the all-embracing sweep of dynamic
problems. It was taken for granted that to analyse mental life is to
look for simple mental elements that correspond to material corpuscles
characterized by what Whitehead calls “simple location.” Then it was
assumed--simply assumed--that mind is an aggregate of simple elements
and that mental dynamic (very little attended to until recently)
corresponds to this supposed aggregate of quasi-independent elements.
That is, the main tradition of scientific psychology runs to the
effect that our whole behavior is actuated by particular relations of
a mechanical sort between elements (psychical or psycho-physical) that
are as remote from experience as atoms.
This amounted, practically, to making a concept of method--a type of
analysis--guarantee a particular metaphysics. The incontinence of
the thing has been repeatedly pointed out from the early days of the
present psychological movement. First, all the logical objections to
English associationism applied here. Next, eminent psychologists of the
new type--Ladd, Münsterberg and (in a sense) James--warned us that
simple sensations or other mental elements are not existing things,
but only mental constructs of the psychologists, a kind of technical
language, like equations or statistical curves. Finally, the physical
prototypes from which the psychological assumption took its start, such
as corpuscular indivisible atoms, have now been resolved by physics
into systems of a dynamic sort. Whitehead maintains that the whole
physical conception of elements and aggregates must now be replaced
by that of organism--the parts are not before the whole, and the real
wholes or organisms are dynamic, not corpuscular.
Meantime, there have been specific happenings in psychology that bear
upon our quest. The chief recognition of the dynamic problem came
through the theory of instincts. At first there appeared a tendency
to attribute every main division of conduct to an instinct. Thus, the
fact of reproduction was referred to an instinct of reproduction;
moral conduct to a moral instinct; religion to a religious instinct;
esthetic interests to an esthetic instinct, etc. This was, of course,
a crude popular starting point, and the particulars had to be refined,
but psychology did little more with mental dynamics for a long time
than just reorganize or refine some old list of instincts. The
number increased and the generality decreased. Instead of a social
instinct, we have, it is held, a whole group of instincts that care
for particular phases of our associated life--a gregarious instinct,
a motherly or parental instinct, an instinct for dominance, and for
submission, for example. But there never was any approximation to an
accepted list, nor does there appear to be any sure way to determine
the matter.
The instincts, whatever they are, have been taken, as a rule, as so
many drives or impulsions not only rooted in our nature but also
destined to express themselves willy-nilly; and the totality of
instincts has been accepted as constituting the total drive of a man.
But, over and above the fact that the list of instincts is unstable,
this theory of the human drive encounters numerous obstacles.
In the _first_ place, some of the instincts apply only within
situations that may or may not arise. Fear-reactions, under some
circumstances, have the marks usually attributed to instinct, but
it does not follow that we have any drive towards fear. Similarly,
pugnacity appears when experience takes a certain form, as restraint
or attack from another, but pugnacity in the sense of not being at
peace with oneself unless one can fight somebody else appears to be
non-existent.
In the _second_ place, habit plays an enormous rôle in the entire
matter. That is, the outfit of instincts, if there is such an outfit,
does not determine the configuration of the drives in any individual.
Here is the general truth that underlies the possibly doubtful theory
of sublimation. Apparently instincts can atrophy; certainly what are
called instincts can be either active or quiescent.
_Third_, “satisfiers and annoyers,” as Thorndike calls them, are
not identical with instincts in every case. There are conditions in
which it is annoying not to act, and other conditions in which it is
annoying to act. Further, as he likewise maintains, there are “original
tendencies of the original tendencies,” as to repeat, to form habits,
to organize; and, finally, there is the fact of self-criticism, with
its impelling or restraining influence exercised from the standpoint
of the whole rather than of any specific instinct. More of this later.
_Fourth_, further study of our drives increases the certainty of
their enormous plasticity. Woodworth has maintained that any mental
mechanism can become a drive, that is, that we can develop a positive
interest in and tendency to repeat anything that we ever do--we
can “take an interest” in anything. Watson, too, from his point of
view, and with his own conception of the method, holds that a man
can acquire practically any qualities. “Condition” the few original
reflexes in appropriate manner, and you will make of an individual a
religious devotee, a monster of vice, or what you will. Finally, the
whole notion that we possess an equipment of just such and so many
instincts is threatened, not only from the Watsonian angle but also
from several others. Instincts, various writers point out, appear to be
classificatory devices and nothing more.
For our present purpose it is not essential to forecast the ultimate
outcome of researches that bear upon these points. It is sufficient to
recognize the great range of human motivation, the great plasticity
of it (that is, the indefinitely many possibilities of character for
the same individual), and the organic character of it (that is, the
capacity for action from the standpoint of a desired whole). Anyone who
is interested in the future development of thought upon this matter
will do well to watch the discussions of the concept of “organism”
(Whitehead’s term) in the physical sciences and of “configuration” (an
English translation of the German, _Gestalt_, as used by Koffka) or an
equivalent in psychology.
The physics of today already has transcended the notion that bodies
are aggregates of elements--transcended it, not upon speculative or
metaphysical grounds alone, but also upon the basis of experiment
and mathematical analysis. Throughout nature, so Whitehead says, any
concrete actuality is a dynamic whole, a complex event, not a corpuscle
or an aggregate of corpuscles. These are merely abstractions, useful
in their way, but matter is not even the residence of energy. Further,
these dynamic wholes act spontaneously, and they even transform
themselves from within themselves--they do not wait to be acted upon
like billiard balls; rather, initiative is everywhere present.
If this conception of physical nature should become the accepted view,
it would remove at a stroke the methodological foundation of much
psychology that regards itself as particularly entitled to be called
scientific. In particular, the whole of psychology would become dynamic
psychology, and motivation would be recognized as _in limine_ both
organizing and self-transforming action. It is a safe guess that, in
this case, _the self_ would be accorded a far less grudging place than
it has had in the psychology of the last generation. Professor Calkins
has recently pointed out, in fact, that several contemporary movements
of psychology are converging in this general direction.
It is an interesting coincidence that the concept of organism should
emerge in physics and the concept of configuration in psychology almost
simultaneously. As far as I am aware, there has been no connection
or interdependence between them. It is even more interesting that
both concepts should spring directly from experimentation. Much more
experimental research must be made before we shall definitely know
just what truth there is in the _Gestalt_-psychology, and just how the
concept of “configuration” applies, if it applies at all, at different
levels of conduct. Prediction is precarious, and it is uncalled
for; but again it lies upon the surface that here is a movement,
experimental in method, that is destined, if it goes on, to instate the
self as an actual determiner and organizer of behavior at the levels
usually called social and ethical. And the self will not only not be
conceived as an aggregate (even of forces); it will not be construed
primarily by its antecedents of whatever sort. Adjustment, that is,
will not be conceived as accommodation of a given organism to a given
environment merely, but as also re-creation of both organism and
environment. An entirely reasonable attitude might then be expressed as
follows: “This is the sort of self, and this is the sort of society,
that we want to be; let us, then, create educational, physiological,
and economic conditions favorable thereto.”
The position of psychoanalysis in the total movement of psychology is
somewhat ambiguous, or at least not well worked out. On the one hand,
we have here a genuine attempt at a dynamic psychology. The object
under contemplation is not the brain; it is scarcely psycho-physical;
it is predominantly, almost exclusively, mental, and the mental is
conceived of not as a perceiving, knowledge-getting function, but as
overwhelmingly desire--designing, scheme-forming, outward-pressing
desire. Further, the individual is treated predominantly as an
individual rather than as an aggregate. The disorders of personality
are the main interest, and the treatment of these disorders is directed
toward a reorganization of the personality so that it shall function as
a unit. On the other hand, the raw material of human nature appears
to be much like a congeries of instincts, or a collection of wild
animals each of which is ready to spring into action upon the slightest
occasion. The endeavor to discover some central desire that uses these
instincts for its own purposes is, indeed, a movement towards an
organic view of the individual; but even the central desire, in the
absence of help from the psychoanalyst, seems to have a substantially
wild, instinctive quality.
“The Unconscious,” or desire before psychoanalysis has enabled it
to understand itself, may be either a literal description of mental
dynamics, or a symbol that psychiatrists find useful in their practice,
a symbol that abstracts from the psychical actuality much as atoms and
ethers do from physical actuality. That psychoanalytic treatments have
some success does not prove the truth of the practitioner’s mental
pictures. The Ptolemaic astronomy correctly predicted eclipses; the
Mesmeric fluid, animal magnetism, the king’s touch, spirits of deceased
Indian chiefs--all have been effective for purposes of mental healing.
Recently a psychoanalyst, MacCurdy, has pointed out that the patient’s
emotional reorganization and recovery may take place around a secondary
or minor complex instead of the one that is the primary cause of the
disturbance; the essential thing is to secure the proper attitude and
procedure for reconstruction. The cure, then, does not prove that any
theory of the contents or the processes of “the Unconscious” is correct.
There remains as evidence of the wild-animal-den view the fact that
the patient himself accepts it as true in his own case. “Yes,” he
says, “I see that I have desired to commit incest with my mother, or
to murder my father. I didn’t realize it until now.” In other words,
a psychoanalytic theory has been transferred to him in the course of
the analysis. There is no evidence that he has become a psychologist,
or that his ability at introspection has achieved a trustworthy stage.
When witchcraft was believed, confessions were made, apparently sincere
confessions, that one had “signed the Devil’s book,” or that one had
done other monstrous deeds. Under questioning in court witnesses have
recalled things that they never witnessed. A still closer parallel with
psychoanalysis is the success of many a revivalist in convincing people
of their utter moral worthlessness and helplessness, that they are
creatures of the devil, moved solely by evil desires. In both cases the
person who brings the relief is the one through whom the certainty of
one’s inner baseness first arises.
The upshot of the evidence, then, is about as follows: Psychoanalysis
has extended in important ways our knowledge of the ramifications of
the sex impulses and of the impulse to egoistic dominance; it has
increased our knowledge of the motivation of much that mistakenly,
through “rationalization,” offers itself as reasonable conduct; it has
put us upon our guard against a considerable range of self-deceptions;
but it has not proved the actual existence of the diabolism that is
pictured in “the Unconscious.” And let it be remembered that, in front
of the patient whose mind is supposed to be a den of wild beasts,
sits the psychoanalyst himself, a self-controlled, benevolent, and
high-minded man. Over against the theoretical Unconscious let us place
the certainly actual honor of the psychiatrist in his handling of his
patient--scrupulous honor in a situation that brings to the fore the
most enticing emotions and impulses.
A word should be said concerning the bearing of intelligence-tests upon
our knowledge of the motives of men. There is a popular tendency, which
is not altogether absent from academic circles, to jump at conclusions
concerning motivation from the results of experiments upon something
else. The adjectives “superior” and “inferior,” applied primarily to
levels of intelligence, come almost insensibly to be a designation
of levels of manhood or of decency in general. Now, the most that
can be said as yet concerning the interrelations between the various
desirable and undesirable factors of personal make-up is that, on the
whole, the more desirable tend to bunch together, and the undesirable
likewise tend to go in bunches. It cannot be said, however, that there
is only one worthwhile type, and that the core of this type is superior
intelligence. We do not yet know just what this “intelligence” that we
have been measuring is, nor what it guarantees at its various levels.
It is certain that achievement depends upon other qualities also, so
that failure may attend a high IQ, and success may be won by steady
and persistent employment of an intelligence distinctly lower. Wisdom
and goodness and efficiency have other foundations in addition to
some as yet undetermined degree of intelligence. Further, it appears
that within the general concept, “intelligence,” we are required to
distinguish between types. There is, for example, in addition to
the abstract or conceptual type that is most cultivated in schools,
a mechanical type of intelligence, very likely there is a social
intelligence, and there may be others. We do not yet know, except in
the vaguest way, how these varieties of intelligence are dynamically
related to the requirements of wise living, either individual or social.
Yet bold conclusions have been drawn on this very point. Without
waiting for any research upon the possible connections between
different intelligence-levels, on the one hand, and different sorts of
drives on the other not a few persons have somehow assured themselves
that superiority of intelligence tends and must tend to create a ruling
class and that this ruling class will automatically run affairs in its
own interest, making other classes means thereto. There is scarcely a
shadow of evidence for this view. History seems to show that superior
intelligence has aspired to all kinds of power and all kinds of
excellence. Further, it is notorious that the resort to force, and even
to less external means of putting halter and bridle upon one’s fellows,
is a second-class resource for those who lack strength to meet their
fellows upon the basis of intelligent trust, good-will, and mutual
sharing. Was it because William Penn lacked high intelligence that
he treated the Indians in such an unconventional manner? The almost
certain fact of a high average of intelligence among monarchs and high
officials generally does not account for the specific principles upon
which they administer government. For these principles run through the
entire scale from Nero to Confucius, and from Louis XIV to Washington
and Lincoln. If we were in position to measure the intelligence of
rulers and heads of states through a considerable period of political
history we might find--we probably should find--that the higher
intelligence leans, on the whole, towards universal good according to
the understanding of it that each period of culture makes possible;
that it correlates with sensitiveness towards people, and in this
sense makes for appreciation of others’ points of view and therefore
for a common human measure of the good. Truly efficient love of one
another may yet turn out to be the supremely satisfying accomplishment
of the highest intelligence.
In the entire museum of misconstructions of intelligence-test
results nothing, perhaps, is more grotesque than the inference, or
assumption, that high intelligence will of course accept and profit
by the motivation of industrialism in its present form. The average
IQ of the financially successful is somewhat higher than that of the
economically under-dog portion of the populace. In other words, the
_degree_ of success is due _in some measure_ to this factor. In some
measure only, for there is no evidence that all the more intelligent
succeed and all the others fail; and the degree only, for in a general
way intelligence connotes success in the pursuit of any end that it
consents to serve, and moreover we know of particular circumstances
that induce men to pursue wealth and the power that it brings. We know
that the environmental influences of our time shunt men’s ambitions
in particular directions. We are trained from infancy by an economic
order that takes for granted the service of self rather than of others.
Some persons who possess high native intelligence go in for the ends
that this training promotes, and of course such persons have more than
average success in getting what they want. Meantime, other possessors
of the gift go in for other things--research, original production in
literature and the fine arts, humanitarian service, the championship
of unpopular causes, the development of a cooperative society, the
promotion of religion.
Moreover, we have no comparative measures of the intelligence of
different types of successful men of affairs. What should we find if
we compared these three sorts: Men who rely upon compulsion; men who
rely upon indirection or intrigue; and men who rely upon frankness,
conciliation, and moderation? We do not know which of these would
exhibit the highest intelligence; but it is allowable to guess!
The relation between the insight of the literary artist and that of
the psychologist is sufficiently close to require a comment, finally,
upon the evidential value of the literature of disillusion that was
mentioned in Chapter V. Is it not the business of the imaginative
writer, one may ask, to see life as it is; to be more sensitive than
the common run of men to the devices and desires of the heart, and thus
to reveal us to ourselves? Look in the mirror of current literature,
then, and see what a rank thing your nature is! An appropriate
part-reply to this would be: Why this mirror more than scores of
others that literature, past and present, has held up to nature? What
guarantee is there that this reflecting surface has fewer distorting
curves than others that render a different image? Why accept at its
own value, without analysis, the cynical “realism” of one group,
or the “barbaric naturalism” of another? Their borrowings from the
psychologists are mixed and partly dubious or worse, and the marks of
the seer are scarcely discernible.
That some value as a revealer of ourselves to ourselves may reside in
even a distorted image must be granted. The literature in question
is uncovering naïve insincerities and evasions that infest our life,
and it is almost compelling us to see that there are forces within
and around us that require a rational control that never yet has been
provided. Nevertheless, in this total phenomenon we are witnessing one
of the literary fashions that have succeeded one another for thousands
of years. These pictures have truth in them, but it is truth selected
and isolated in accordance with a mood, a drift, a spirit of the times,
and then imaginatively reorganized in the interest of composition or
picture-making. The literature of tomorrow will turn to other phases of
experience, other types of motivation, and it will leave a different
taste in the mouth of readers and theater-goers.
It turns out, then, that the psychology of motivation, and the
quasi-psychology of it, have drifted here and there into disillusioning
allegations, but without definitely proving them. On the one hand we
have the hang-over of an unworkable theory of instincts; a decadent
atomistic point of view and method; behavioristic metaphysics based
upon nothing more substantial than a preference as to what one shall
attend to; hasty inferences from the results of intelligence-testing;
the rough-and-ready symbols of practicing psychiatrists, and literary
exploitation of the whole. On the other hand, we find failure of every
theory that assimilates human motivation in its totality to either the
movements of matter or the impulses of the lower animals, and instead,
growth of contrary views within general science and specifically within
psychology; in particular, a definite reaffirmation that the individual
mind acts as a true integer, a genuine one-in-many.
This does not solve our whole problem; we still have much to learn
about ourselves. But it furnishes at least a “not proved” to set
against our temptation too easily to believe the loud voices of
disillusionment. It furnishes, likewise, a visa for those who would
travel outside of technical psychology in order to see more of
humanity. We should not be surprised if we find organization of drives
by some sort of ruling drive; the consequent shifting of satisfactions
and dissatisfactions, approvals and disapprovals; the possible approval
or disapproval of the ruling drive, with consequent redirection of the
central tendency. All this implies, likewise, readiness to question
the extent and significance of the term “drive.” Perhaps we are moved
only in part by a _vis a tergo_; possibly man is a forward-reacher, an
initiator, a creator. And perhaps this disillusionment that threatens
or seems to threaten paralysis of our wants may turn out to be the
vague, confused beginning of a new want, the darkness upon the face of
the deep whence a new world is to appear.
Note. The authors and works referred to in this Chapter are as
follows:
Calkins, M. W. “Converging Lines in Contemporary Psychology,” Brit.
Jour. Psy. (Gen’l Section), Jan., 1926, pp. 171-179.
Koffka, K. Growth of the Mind. New York, 1925.
MacCurdy, J. T. Problems in Dynamic Psychology, New York, 1922.
Thorndike, E. L. The Original Nature of Man. New York, 1913.
Watson, J. B. Behaviorism. New York: People’s Institute Pub. Co.
Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World. New York, 1925.
Woodworth, R. S. Dynamic Psychology. New York, 1918.
XII
CHILDHOOD AS A REVEALER OF HUMAN CAPACITIES
The attitude of disillusionment puts the mind into a prison upon whose
walls hang pictures of life at which the prisoner continually gazes.
Make the round of your cell, O prisoner, and tell me what stages of
life you find represented. There are no children in any of the pictures!
The apparent evidence that humanity is doomed to low types of
motivation is drawn from a fraction of experience at particular stages
of life. None is derived from childhood, scarcely any from adolescence;
nearly all of it comes from the fully adult period which, being most
conventionalized and least plastic, is least able to reveal to us our
unrealized possibilities.
If we desire to witness our elemental propensities, or nearly all of
them, in unrestrained swing, let us observe children. Not yet encrusted
with custom, not yet halter-broken to the emotional restraints of their
elders, they “let go” readily. What is inside shows outwardly. At least
this is relatively true as compared with us who have endured the bit so
long that we take it to be a part of our nature. And a great variety,
indeed, there is inside a child; in an hour you shall witness a range
of motivation that you might not discover in a grown-up in a score of
years. Here is nature in the raw, or nearly so. What impression, then,
does childhood make upon us when we become intimate with it?
A mixed impression: Amusement at the simple, literal, and unashamed
reproduction of our own foibles; something like astonishment at the
(usually) easy transitions between desirable and undesirable conduct; a
sort of fascination by the utter naturalness of generosity, alongside
the equal naturalness of pinching self-regard; and (if we are analytic)
a bit of self-searching when we realize the deep dependence of both
upon conditioning circumstances as well as upon original tendencies.
All this, but never disrespect--at least never after one has taken
the trouble to trace the processes of children’s minds. A really
understanding intimacy with the young appears invariably to produce
respect for them.
The drama of disillusionment is never played upon this stage.
Cynicism, depression, revolt, and either surly, regretful, or ghoulish
acquiescence in mean ways of living, all are shoved aside, forgotten,
made impossible when we sympathetically enter into the experiences
and attitudes of dawning life. Spirits bruised by adult experience
find healing in play with children; calloused minds recover their
sensitiveness by merely watching them. If a small child is perceived to
be in immediate peril, the most hardened adult will suddenly exhibit a
glint of nobility.
All this constitutes evidence with respect to the validity of the
reasoning that is offered by the current disillusionment. Evidence, not
merely incitement to change of mood; though such a change may itself
be evidential in some conditions. Depression of spirit can disappear
under the influence of children, or under the influence of alcohol. But
the difference is twofold: Alcohol dulls the edge of judgment, and it
introduces us to no fresh facts, whereas acquaintance with children
does not impair the judgment, and it does introduce us to pertinent
facts. The fact that when original nature displays its rudiments with
frankness and unrestraint we do not find confirmation for a certain
view of life, but on the whole find ourselves drifting in the opposite
direction, is distinctly evidential.
There is no need to be afraid that we shall yield too much to naïve
impressions--at least no one who has lived through the child-study
movement is likely to remain naïve. For a whole generation analytical
study has consciously and of set purpose put aside the gush of parental
impulse and the sentimentality of certain kindergarten traditions
in a determination to be objective and to hitch up child-life with
the scientific study of nature generally. Now, not only has the
child-study movement not slurred over the unlovely traits of the young;
it has actually picked out and emphasized every shred of evidence
of irrationality, social insensitiveness, selfishness, cruelty, and
whatever else might seem to reflect the drives of pre-human species.
At the outset of the child-study movement, genetic psychology
enthusiastically believed that the human individual rather closely
recapitulates the developmental stages of lower species, and that
childhood is a genuine savagery. This was an unsentimental theory; at
least it made of children creatures of instincts to which nobility
could not be attributed. If science ever had an opportunity to lay the
foundations of a pessimistic view of man, it was now; for its eyes
were straining to see animality and irrationality wherever they could
be found. Higher, more social and rational drives, it was held, appear
spontaneously at adolescence, and they are consolidated in maturity.
We now know that this was an exaggeration of the spontaneous values
of adolescence. Suppose this exaggeration had been discovered at the
time; the conditions then would have been ripe for explaining human
motivation at its best as merely a set of complicated and sophisticated
forms of drives that are both low and blind.
Thus, modern child-study has leaned over backward in its endeavor
not to be complimentary in its interpretations of the young of the
species. If an anthropoid ape should acquire ability to read English,
he would not discover any race-prejudice against apes in the American
publications that represented this point of view! But the point of
view did not maintain itself. It rested upon three supports each
of which proved to be weak. _First_, the embryological facts that
formed the substructure turned out to be too few and too scattered
to establish recapitulation even in pre-natal life. _Second_, the
view of instinct that was employed was speculative, almost animistic.
_Third_, observation of children was skewed by the theory under which
it proceeded--the theory that children recapitulate savagery and
barbarism. Disproportionate attention was given to conduct that is
disagreeable to elders; socially neglected or mistrained youngsters
were incautiously taken to be “the child”; everything obstreperous was
a shining nugget. The movement actually reached the point of awakening
apprehension as to the normality or sincerity of untroublesome children.
The decadence of this mode of approach, and the rise of more objective
methods, have brought us insight that is of the utmost importance
to anyone who desires to understand the motivation of adults. First
of all, psychical continuity rather than discontinuity between
childhood and maturity has been proved to exist; in the second place,
the remarkable plasticity or modifiability of childhood, taken in
connection with this continuity, has given us clues hitherto lacking
concerning the real origin of many adult traits.
Small children can respond to nearly if not quite every sort of
stimulus that adults feel. We cannot longer regard even sex as a
completely delayed drive, for traces of sex-stimulation are found in
infancy, and definite sex interest follows very early. Any social
impulse, good or bad, that adults exhibit can be found in early
childhood also under appropriate conditions of stimulation. Moreover,
in respect to the employment of intelligence there is no necessary
break between childhood and maturity, for rational processes mingle
with impulse and emotion from infancy. In fact, old-fashioned parental
authority met scarcely any obstacle greater than the capacity of
children to have a reason and to stick to it. We now know that
scientific attitudes and types of observation and inference no more
need to be postponed than does good pronunciation, which is taking the
place of the old-fashioned “baby-talk.” It is worth noting, by the way,
that “baby-talk,” wherever it exists, has been learned largely from
adults!
This psychical continuity between childhood and maturity vacates the
notion that adulthood is a ready-made set of drives or characteristics
into which we are ushered by natural laws of growth. We are what we
are, not because nature acts after the manner of destiny or fate, but
because some selective process has been at work in each individual
case. Each of us has the capacity to be very different from what he
is. It is true, of course, that there are inborn and ineradicable
differences between individuals, differences in degree of energy, in
degree of intellectual capacity, in degree of sensitiveness towards a
given sort of stimulus, and therefore differences in emotional type.
But these are entirely generic; they do not shut up an individual
to just this or that occupation, social bond, way of thinking, or
policy and habit of weighing values. If we desire to account for the
particular qualities of an individual, we must look into his whole
experience from infancy onward.
This point of view is now no longer a merely general probability.
Psychiatrists and experts in child-guidance are daily tracing to
particular experiences what seem at first sight to be native and
ineradicable personal traits. Moreover, many a bound personality is
being released by the interjection of new experiences and the formation
of corresponding new habits. This is true of both children and adults,
and it is particularly noteworthy that the release of adults often
depends upon undoing a knot that was tied in childhood.
If the plasticity of childhood and the psychical continuity between
maturity and immaturity are, in one aspect, portentous, they are
likewise heartening. For the fine qualities that children are capable
of--their spontaneity, their capacity for reversing themselves, their
generosity and affection, their sense of humor, their unabashed candor,
their frequently startling objectivity--we of adult years also are
capable of. Childhood is not a shut-off room which we are permitted
to visit now and then in order to forget the disagreeable apartment
in which we are compelled to live; childhood is a part of what we
still are! Plasticity, we are learning, though it may decline with the
hardening of the arteries, has no dead line. Experiment has disproved
the view, held as late as William James, that after adolescence we are
practically incapable of learning qualitatively new habits. We can both
increase already used powers by further use of them, and also bring
into action neglected powers.
Anyone who can enter sympathetically into the life of another has
capacity for developing in himself the qualities of this other. The
fact that our cynicism, our distrust of others, and our doubt of
ourselves shrink when we make ourselves companions of the young is a
direct evidence of what our nature contains, in however undeveloped
form. And who does not grow mellow--who does not experience a measure
of regeneration (becoming “as a little child”)--upon witnessing in
children such admirable graces as candor, responsiveness to affection,
generosity, the habit of laughter--all spontaneous, unreserved,
uncalculating? It is because there is something of the child within me
that I am capable of entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
At first sight, psychoanalytic studies may seem to work against the
view both that childhood is so plastic and that it is so beautiful.
Certainly these studies are sobering. After making due deduction
for speculation that expresses itself as statement of fact, and for
an almost mythological symbolism that spreads a fog of fatalistic
mysticism over simple and controllable facts, there is still excellent
reason for growing sober. But the reason is the one already given for
regarding as portentous our new knowledge of the possibilities that
reside in early mind-sets. These possibilities are both portentous
and heartening, we have said, and there is nothing in the ascertained
facts of psychoanalysis that goes against this statement. Sex-tangles
can start in infancy, and they can persist into maturity, thwarting
life at almost any point. Attitudes of dependence upon a parent may
be so overwrought, or they may be continued so long, that again the
mature person never quite comes to himself. But these are not fated
tragedies; they are errors that can be prevented. Psychoanalysts are
clear upon this point. There remains, then, no difficulty unless it
be the shock that some persons experience upon hearing that small
children are capable of sex response and that their sex attraction
may be towards a parent. If such persons will only take notice that
psychoanalysts employ the term “sex” in an exceedingly broad manner,
sometimes making it as inclusive as the term “affection”; and if they
will further reflect that there is nothing unclean in sex as such, so
that a psychically sexless child would be no more “innocent” than one
psychically sexed, the psychoanalytic view, even if it be wholly true,
will be seen not to rob childhood of any spiritual beauty.
The remark was made, a little way back, that fellowship with children
produces respect for their native qualities. Some evidence of the
correctness or incorrectness of this statement ought to be discoverable
in the attitudes of teachers and in the practices of schools. The
teacher becomes acquainted with many children of different types;
is less liable than a parent to be swayed by emotions that deflect
the judgment; is in a situation that calls for professional study
and attitudes in the matter. The trained teachers, then, and the
schools that make the largest study of the problems of education
may be expected to accumulate experience and views that have some
significance. Now, it is safe to say that today no school that is
modern or even intelligently managed is conducted upon the assumption
that children at any age are merely instinctive creatures. Moreover,
in the schools in which experimentation is most free and pervasive,
you will find an abounding belief in children, and no spirit of
disillusionment with respect to adults. You will find criticism of
adult society, great dissatisfaction with it, to be sure; but on what
ground? On the ground that the traditional, conventional treatment of
the young represses, retards, covers up, and thus defeats the splendid
capacities that are within us.
It is noteworthy that the schools and schoolmen who make this charge do
thereby place themselves under obligation to make a concrete showing
of what can be done by better education. What happens when schooling
is guided by this glowing faith in man? Does the faith grow brighter
and brighter, or does it check itself by its own failure to work? It
is my opinion that the actualities of human nature are receiving more
illumination at the present moment in the experimental schools than
anywhere else. Let us take a glance or two, then, in this direction.
XIII
CAPACITIES REVEALED BY NEW TYPES OF EDUCATION
The same two decades that showered us with mental tests witnessed also
the upspringing of many schools that are variously designated by such
terms as “modern,” “experimental,” and “creative activity.” Creative
activity, as a description of what pupils do when they are at school,
is an arresting notion. It obviously assumes with respect to pupils’
capacities something different from popular thought about them, and
different, too, from the traditions of the schoolmaster. The school
policy that it connotes includes provision for an unprecedented degree
of both negative freedom (absence of compulsion) and positive freedom
(abundance of materials with which to work and natural situations to
be met by the pupils’ own initiative). Observation of pupils placed in
conditions thus favorable for the showing out of what is in them may be
expected to throw light upon the motives and the capacities of human
beings.
The testing movement has had the effect of stressing “nature” rather
than “nurture” as the great determinant of conduct--over-stressing
it, indeed. But the creative type of school-experience yields data
that help towards a balanced understanding of the factors. In general,
this experience tends to make both nature and nurture stand out; the
old bipolarity of heredity-environment, nature-nurture, remains, but
both poles are illuminated. This type of school makes obvious the
differences in native gifts, but it shows likewise that conditions
created by adults have prevented us from knowing what gifts are there.
Whenever a given sort of conduct is oft-repeated, our first, incautious
impulse is to guess that the conduct in question is produced by some
specific quality or bent of one’s original nature. The absence, or even
the great infrequency of anything, is taken, similarly, as evidence
that there is a vacant place in one’s nature. Thus a bad mental habit,
a fallacious mode of judging, gets control of us. “It’s his nature,”
we say, not stopping to consider whether the whole of his capacity
or only a fraction of it has been displayed. What the experimental
schools are doing is to bring into action capacities that commonly are
under-exercised and therefore not recognized as existing.
These schools are proving that there is more in human nature than
we had dreamed of in our philosophy. The method of the proof is, in
principle, simple: Make conditions favorable for the maximum voluntary
exercise of any and all worth-while capacities that may possibly be
there. When this is done, behold, pupils “take an interest in” many
things that have been regarded as beyond their range. We are finding
out that teaching of the traditional sorts has habitually aimed under
the heads rather than over the heads of pupils. An intellectual
springiness that teachers and parents failed to discover or produce
by the methods of prescription, spontaneously appears under the new
conditions. Conduct now occurs that is better by far than old-type
schools ever thought of requiring or even recommending.
All this throws light upon the motives of men. In brief, this is
the trend of the facts: _First_, a surprising degree of rationality
has appeared. That is, children and youth are showing remarkable
capacity for the apprehension of problems, the weighing of facts, the
holding of judgment in suspense, caution in generalizing, readiness
to revise one’s own findings, and ability to resist suggestion and
external authority. _Second_, equally surprising social capacities
come to the surface. Pupils show not merely ability to run the
machinery of a self-government scheme devised by teachers, but also
readiness to feel situations and needs, to originate solutions, to
carry responsibilities, to organize and cooperate, to appreciate both
justice and generosity, and to make self-corrections. _Third_, to
the originality that is involved in all this there is added amazing
creativeness in literature, drawing, and painting.
If this were a discussion of educational method, we should now inquire,
of course, into the specific procedures of the schools and the teachers
that have these effects upon pupils. But the technic of teaching
is not our present concern. What is directly to our purpose is the
demonstration that schools and teachers of the older, customary sort
did not bring out the whole nature of their pupils. Indeed, the schools
of yesterday concealed, retarded, distorted, smothered some of the most
valuable gifts, thereby unwittingly contributing to the forces that
have produced the present sense of disillusionment with respect to
human nature.
It is worthy of particular note that the “creative activity” schools
are discovering capacities other than those usually classed as
intellectual. It is much that the young take an interest in abstract
and bookish knowledge; it is more that they take the attitudes and
employ the processes of science with reference to natural events; but
beyond this, and of greatest significance, is capacity to adjust human
relations in thoughtful, high-minded, and sometimes original ways. Only
a few years ago an incident like the following would have astonished
any teacher, but today it seems only “natural.” A group of children,
engaged in play-activities that involved construction-work, discovering
that merely impulsive conduct interfered with their purposes, called
a meeting, devised a government, and actually administered it
effectively. Not the least instructive feature of this incident is that
these children, when their own information did not suffice, voluntarily
sought help from a teacher.
Such fresh and keen practicality in attacking the problems of social
living in the school is often extended into the problems of the larger
community also. Instances are multiplying in which community service
of great value has been done by the young upon their own initiative
(with the constant help of teachers, of course). Not only have children
shown eager willingness to relieve immediate distress; they have
penetrated to the causes of one or more common infectious diseases,
and have mastered some of the methods of prevention; they have worked
intelligently and devotedly at the problem of parks and playgrounds;
they have cooperated with police departments and fire departments. And
in and through the whole there are glints of creativeness. Genuine
creativeness, not merely naïveté that happens now and then to make a
happy hit.
The creativeness of the young adds to our knowledge of ourselves a
touch more thrilling than that of romance, and it suggests fascinating
outlooks for the future. The ruts that exist almost everywhere in our
conduct have heretofore constituted the staple evidence concerning the
nature of man. More than once already we have noticed how prone men
are to take habitual performance as a measure of possible performance.
Conventionality, it seems, always claims that it is more than
conventionality; it makes itself out to be a forthright utterance of
original, unchangeable human nature, or even a requirement of ethical
obligation and the will of God. What a happy reversal of all this might
occur if schools generally should cultivate in their pupils the ability
to get out of ruts as well as to get into them. It is conceivable
that society might ultimately include in its regular expectations a
genuinely original, self-transcending, non-conformity and re-creation.
The most astounding piece of educational literature that has appeared
in many a day is Mearns’s _Creative Youth_ (New York, 1925). It is an
account of the teaching of literature to pupils of high-school age
through the unified experience of appreciation and creation. Yes,
creation of literature, not ‘exercises in composition.’ The evidence
is here in a collection of real poems thus produced. The inventiveness
displayed in them is almost unbelievable; the insight into life shown
by several of the young poets is a mystery that calls for solution;
but the poems are undeniably poems, undeniably original, some of them
worthy (literary critics being judges) to stand alongside the best that
the recognized poets of our day have produced.