cases up to puberty and some even beyond this. I know boys who have
almost attained to manhood who are still inordinately interested in
automobiles and railways. In these cases we are dealing with a fixation
of an infantile wish which will exercise a decisive influence on the
individual’s whole life. In most cases the first ideal loses its
glamour before the magic of a uniform. The first uniform that a child
sees daily is that of the “letter-carrier.” In his favour, too, is
the fact that he is always on the go, going from house to house. The
“policeman” too, promenading up and down in his uniform, engages the
child’s fantasy. So too the dashing “fireman.” Needless to say all
these are very soon displaced and wholly forgotten in favour of the
“soldier.”
The love to be a soldier has its origin in many sources. Almost all
boys pass through a period when they want to be soldiers. The wish to
be a soldier is a compromise for various suppressed wishes. A soldier
has been known to become a general and even a king. That fact is
narrated in fairy tales, chronicled in sagas and recorded in history.
One can manifest one’s patriotism. Then there is the beautiful coloured
uniform that the girls so love--and one is always going somewhere. For
one is never just an ordinary soldier but a bold, dashing trooper,
and--this above all!--one has a big powerful sword. Under the influence
of these childish desires children plead to go to the military schools
and the parents give their consent in the belief that it is the
children’s natural bent that speaks. Why, I tried to take this step
when I was fifteen years old but--heaven be praised for it--was found
physically unfit. My more fortunate friends who were accepted have for
the most part subsequently discovered that they had erred in their
youth.
The same thing happens with respect to the other wishes of children,
whether they become engineers, teachers, physicians, or ministers. The
voice of the heart is deceptive and rarely betrays the individual’s
true gift. The biographies of great men may now and then give
indications of talent manifested in childhood. But the contrary is also
easily to be found. Very often hidden desires are concealed or masked
behind one’s choice of a calling. I know a man who became a physician
because he longed to go far away, to go to the metropolis. In youth he
had to be driven to practice his music--and yet music was his great
talent and he should have become a musician.
What our children want to become ... seldom denotes that they have a
natural aptitude for a particular calling. They are to be regarded
only as distorted symbols behind which the almost utterly insoluble
puzzles of the childhood soul are concealed. When we are mature enough
to know what we really want to become it is usually too late. Then we
are children no longer. But then we would love to be children again and
shed a furtive tear for the beautiful childhood that’s dead.... If we
could be children again we’d know what we would like to be. No illusory
wish would then tempt us from the right path, luring us like a will o’
the wisp into the morass of destruction.
And this wish too is fulfilled. We become children again if we live
long enough. But then, alas! our wishes have ceased to bloom. Over the
stubble-field of withered hopes we totter to our inevitable destiny.
Everything seems futile, for all paths lead to one goal. Then we know
what children would like to become, what they must become.
INDEPENDENCE
A pale, dark-complexioned young man, elegantly attired, sits before
me. His hair is neatly parted on the side and boldly thrown back over
his forehead; he is clearly half snob and half artist; in short, one
of that remarkable type of young man that is so common in a modern
metropolis. His complaints are the customary complaints of the
modern neurotic. He is tired and weak, incapable of prolonged mental
application. He is a clerk in an office, and has already lost one
position because of his inability to use his brains any longer. With
some difficulty his father had secured a position for him in a bank
where a bright future seems to await him but where a dull present
bears him down. All day it’s nothing but figures, figures, figures. He
cannot endure that. His patience is almost exhausted; the figures swim
before his eyes, and he makes more mistakes than is tolerable in an
official of a bank. He begs me for a certificate that will officially
vouch for his unendurable condition and make it possible for him to
resign from his office in an honourable way before he is discharged for
incompetence.
“Yes, and what will you do then? Have you another position in prospect?”
“Certainly,” he replied, with a certain alacrity which was in striking
contrast with his careless melancholy. “I want to make myself
independent. I am not fitted for office work, and I can’t bear to be
bossed around and instructed by every Tom, Dick, or Harry who happens
to have been on the job a few years longer than I.”
“Ah! now I understand your inability to figure. You are living in a
state of permanent psychic conflict. Because you have no desire to work
you cannot work. But what kind of business do you wish to go into? What
have you learned?”
“Learned? To tell the truth, only what one learns in a trade school. I
don’t want to go into business. I only want the certificate to show my
father that my health will not permit me to work in an office. Do you
think it’s good for anybody to work from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with only
one hour for luncheon?”
“That would be only eight hours work a day! I assure you that there are
thousands who would be happy to work only so little. Shall you work
less when you are independent?”
“Certainly. Then I won’t have to work at all.”
“So!” I replied in amazement. “I am curious to know what sort of
business that is where one doesn’t have to work. What do you intend to
do when your father gives you money?”
A blissful smile passed over the interesting youth’s face like a beam
of celestial light. “I know all about sports. I’m going to play the
races!”
I must admit I was considerably taken aback. I know how reluctant to
work many a modern man is whose whole energy is expended in dreams. But
that a sensible man should think of such a thing was new to me. Such a
peculiar motivation for the purpose of becoming independent. The matter
kept running through my head a long time. I soon noticed that this
youth was only an extreme type of a very common species--a species that
expresses itself in a passion for independence. When we investigate the
deeper causes of this passion we invariably find the desire to secure
for oneself the utmost amount of pleasure from a very small investment.
But independence is only apparently the coveted ideal; behind it
lies not only the desire for freedom, not only the proud feeling of
self-reliance. No, in many cases the kernel of the matter is--laziness.
Independence! Proud, brazen word! How many sacrifices hast thou not
demanded and dost still demand daily! Who is ignorant of these little
daily tragedies of which no newspaper makes mention! The salesman who,
after he had for years enjoyed a care-free and assured position, has
fallen a victim to the craving for independence, and has to contend
with cares and worries so long that at last, broken down and battered,
he renounces his beautiful dream and willingly submits his once proud
neck to the yoke; the writer who starts his own newspaper and sees his
hard-saved gold flow away in beautifully printed sheets; the actor
who becomes the director of his own company; the merchant who builds
his own factory,--an endless procession of men who wished to make
themselves independent.
It would be one-sided not to admit that in addition to the
aforementioned element of wanting to make one’s work easier there is
also a certain ambition to get ahead of one’s neighbours. Modern man
is linked to life by a thousand bonds. He is only a little screw in a
vast machine--a screw that has little or no influence on the working
efficacy of the complicated apparatus, that can be lightly thrown aside
or replaced. We all feel the burden of modern life, and instinctively
we all fret under it and work against it. We long to sever the link
that ties us to commonplace day and to become the lever that sets the
machinery in motion.
Stupid beginning! Hopeless and thankless! Who can be independent and
absolute nowadays? Is there any calling that can boast of standing
outside life? It is a delusive dream which beckons and betrays us. We
change masters only. That’s very simple. But we are far from becoming
independent thereby. We have a hundred masters instead of one. The
employee who has made himself “independent” has lost his master but
becomes the slave of innumerable new tyrants to whose wills he must
bow: his customers. Therein he resembles the so-called free professions
which are in reality not free. The physician is dependent upon the
whims of his patients; the lawyer woos the favour of his clients; the
writer groans under the knout of the cruelest of all tyrants: the
public. And, strange to say, it is this last calling that appeals
to most persons as the ideal of independence. It is almost a weekly
occurrence to see some discontented youngster or an unhappy girl with
a thick manuscript in his or her portfolio, begging to be recommended
to some publisher and thus open a writer’s career to them. They want to
become self reliant, independent. It is vain to point out to them that
an author’s bread is not sweetened with the raisins of independence.
Others who have never written a line suddenly make up their minds to
become journalists. They think that the will to become a journalist
is all that is needed to be so. Evidences of adequate preparation
and qualification they find in the excellence of their school
compositions. They do not suspect that the journalist’s independence
is a myth that is credited only by those who have never smelled to
journalism. That the journalist is the slave not only of the public
but also of the hour. That not a minute of the day is his, and that he
would gladly exchange his pen for any other, more massy tool, if such a
thing were possible.
Dissatisfaction with one’s calling is also one of the factors that sets
the feeling for independence in motion. Who is nowadays satisfied with
his calling, or with himself?! This may be easily proved by referring
to a striking phenomenon. In doing so we need not sing the praises
of the “good old days.” But happiness in one’s work and contentment
with one’s calling were certainly much more common than they are now.
Otherwise it could never have come to pass that the father’s calling
should be transmitted to the sons generation after generation. How is
it with us to-day? The physician cries: My son may be anything but a
physician. The public official: My son shall be more fortunate than I;
under no circumstances shall he be a public official. The actor: Be
what you will, my son, but not an artist; art is the bitterest bread.
The merchant wants to make a lawyer of his son, the lawyer a merchant,
etc.
We envy others because we are all dissatisfied with ourselves and
unhappy. The great ideal that floats before our eyes is to become a
clipper of coupons. Money alone guarantees the road to independence.
But if we were to ask the rich about this we would hear some
surprising things. I know a lady who possesses a vast fortune and
who is the absolute slave of her money. I recommended her to take a
trip for her health’s sake. She replied: “Do you think that I can
go away for a week? You have no idea of all the work I have to do.
Now it’s something with the bureau of taxes, now it’s engaging a new
superintendent! Then there are the receptions! I am busy from morning
till night.” When I advised her to hire a manager she laughed merrily:
“I’d be in a fine fix if I did that! Then I would lose the only
recompense I have: my independence!”
Wherever we look, the higher we go, the less of true independence do
we find. What does the psychology of modern social feelings teach us?
It shows us everywhere the same cry for independence which in the
single individual we have described as the basic feeling of his social
attitude. Norway wanted its independence and got it. Hungary stormily
clamoured for independence. Ireland, Poland, Persia, India, Egypt, and
numerous colonies are struggling for independence. In the structure of
the State the urge for independence begets continual turmoil. Austria
can sing a plaintive song as to this. The demand of certain states for
autonomy is the outcome of the same motive.
Political tune--scurvy tune. However--wholly unintentionally our
analysis brings us from the consideration of the individual to that
of the group. That a modern state can never again attain that measure
of independence that it once enjoyed is as clear to the political
economist as to the sociologist. What we have said of the individual
applies also to peoples.
Must we then conclude that there is no independence? Isn’t it possible
then for man to elevate himself above his environment and take a
loftier point of view?
There certainly is such a thing as independence. But we must draw a
sharp line of distinction between two different kinds of independence.
There is an inner and an outer independence. But it is only the inner
independence that one can hope to attain wholly. It alone is capable of
giving us that modicum of outward independence which may be laboriously
wrested from life. A healthy philosophy of life that frees the spirit,
makes renunciation easier and wishing harder, and a certain spiritual
and bodily freedom from wanting for things,--these alone can give us
that independence that the world affords. That is why the poorest of
the poor is more independent than the richest of the rich.
We all know the beautiful story of the king whose physicians promised
him health if he could wear the shirt of a happy man. Messengers
searched every corner of the world but, alas! could not find a happy
man, till finally they came upon a merry hermit in the thickest part of
a dark forest who seemed to be perfectly happy. But he, the only happy
man in the wide world, had no shirt!
We would have to divest ourselves of many shirts to become independent
within. We wear and lug about with us numberless suits, wrappings,
which cover up our true selves and apparently safeguard us, whereas in
reality they drag us down to the base earth.
JEALOUSY
Has any one counted the victims of jealousy? Daily a revolver cracks
somewhere or other because of jealousy; daily a knife finds entrance
into a warm body; daily some unhappy ones, racked by jealousy and
life-weary, sink into fathomless depths. What are all the hideous
battles narrated by history when compared with the endless slaughters
caused by this frightful passion! It enslaves man as no other passion
does; degrades him, humiliates him, and makes him taste the hell of
many other passions, such as envy, mistrust, revengefulness, fear,
hate, anger, and poisons the meagre pleasure-cup that imparts a touch
of sweetness to bitter life.
What is jealousy? Whence flow its tributaries? Is this the Danaidean
gift to humanity? Is it the twin sister of love? Do we acquire it or
is it born with us? It is surely worth while to consider every one of
these questions and to attempt to determine the nature of this unholy
passion.
To understand jealousy we must go far, very far back into the history
of man’s origin. Yes, far beyond man, as far as the animal world!
For certain animals, intelligent animals, show clearly evidences of
jealousy. Pet dogs resent it if their masters pet another dog. They are
even jealous if the master caresses human beings. There are dogs who
begin to whine if their master plays with or fondles his children. Very
much the same thing is told of cats. Who of us on reading Freiligrath’s
gruesome ballad, “The Lion’s Bride,” has not felt the terror of the
beast’s furious jealousy?
Our observation of animals has taught us one of the fundamental
characteristics of jealousy. Animals know very definitely what is
theirs. They have a fine perception for what is theirs. Most dogs snarl
even at their masters if they attempt to take their food from them.
Their jealousy is the mood in which they express their possession,
the egoism of their share. They defend as their possession even the
affection to which they think themselves solely entitled.
The emotional life of the young shows the same phenomenon. They too
do not know the distinction between thine and mine. What they happen
to have in their hands is theirs and will defend it with their weak
powers and loud howls. Many psychologists, including Percy, Compayné,
Sully, Anfosse, Schion, Ziegler, consider the child an unmitigated
egoist. Even in its love it is out and out egoistic and therefore
extremely jealous. Young children’s jealousy may attain an incredible
degree of intensity. A little two-year-old girl cried incessantly if
her mother took the baby brother in her arms. A little boy was so
jealous of his younger sister that he used to pinch her leg at every
opportunity; having been smartly punished for it on one occasion he
spared the little girl thereafter, but became afflicted with a peculiar
compulsion neurosis: he pinched the legs of adults. Such experiences
are of profound significance. They give us a glimpse of the primitive
times when man had no idea yet of altruism. The whole world was his as
far as his power, his strength, went. Man’s jealousy developed out of
this primary ego-feeling, out of his right to sole possession. Before
man could be civilised this tremendous barrier had to be overcome.
The first community, the first social beings, were the first stages of
altruism and civilization.
From this period emanate the subterranean sources from which jealousy
is fed. We have probably all become more or less altruistic. But always
in conflict with ourselves, in conflict with the beast, in conflict
with the savage within us. Even to this day the whole world belongs to
each one of us. Our desires extend our property to infinity. What would
we not own? What do we not desire? The wealth of the rich, the honour
of the distinguished, the triumphs of the artist, to say nothing of his
sexual triumphs. The less we can fulfil these desires the more do we
cling to what we have, or, somewhat more accurately, could have had.
For jealousy does not concern only what one actually possesses. Women
may be jealous of men they do not love and do not even possess. They
simply begrudge the other woman her conquest. Don Juans know this very
well. The best way of conquering a woman is still the old, old way:
to make love to her friend. In this case wounded vanity plays a part,
of course. But what is vanity but the over-estimation of the Me, the
striking emphasis laid on one’s own value? And thus we again come back
to the root of all jealousy: the pleasure in one’s own possession, in
one’s embellished egoism.
Jealousy need not always have a sexual motive. A woman may be jealous
of her husband’s friend because he has been more successful than her
husband. Her husband is her possession. He ought to be the foremost, he
ought to have achieved the others’ successes, so that his fame should
revert to her too. Pupils are jealous of one another even though not
a trace of a sexual motive may be demonstrable. We may be jealous of
another’s horses, dogs, furniture, virtues, honours, friendships,
responsibilities, etc. Behind it there always is our brutal egoism, the
desire for another’s possessions, or at least the fear of losing one’s
own possession.
Jealousy is generally regarded as a pre-eminently feminine quality.
Erroneously so. It would be more nearly correct to say that the heroic
side of jealousy is to be found only in men. It is not a matter merely
of chance that we have no feminine counterpart to Othello, Herod and
the Count in Hauptmann’s “Griselda.” Jealousy in women has received a
social valuation from men; it always has a smack of the ridiculous,
pathological, or unjustified. It is a subject for satire, and is more
often a comedy motive than a tragic reproach. This is due to the fact
that woman’s love is monopolised by men, whereas a man’s loyalty
is demanded by most women but attained only by very few. A man’s
infidelity is not a dramatic reproach because it is a daily occurrence
and wholly in accord with the lax conception of the majority. A woman’s
infidelity is an offence against the sacred mandates imposed by--men.
And therefore the jealousy of a man--be the subject of the passion a
fool, a fop, an old man, or some other laughable type destined for
cuckoldry--is a struggle for just possession, a conflict which always
has an heroic effect, whereas a woman’s jealousy is always a dispute
for the sole possession of a man, a right which is disputed by a great
majority (namely, the men, and even some women).
But there are men and women who are not jealous even though they love
intensely. And with this we hit upon a second and important root of
jealousy. Only one who contemplates an act of disloyalty against the
object of his jealousy, or who, as a result of doubts about his own
erotic powers, thinks he cannot gratify that object can be jealous.
Of course I am not now speaking of justified jealousy based on facts,
but of baseless, unjustified jealousy. Whence comes the suspicion that
attributes infidelity to the beloved being? What is the driving power
in these cases? Only the knowledge of one’s true nature. Only they can
be jealous, jealous without cause, who cannot guarantee for themselves.
In other words: jealousy is the projection of one’s own shortcomings
upon the beloved.
If we find a woman who is all her life torturing her husband with her
jealousy, complaining now that he has been looking at some woman too
long, now that he stayed out too long, now that he was too friendly
with one of her friends, etc., then it is the woman who has seen
the weakness of her own character and who, in thought, is guilty of
every infidelity which she will not admit even to herself. And in
the same way faithless husbands who love their wives make the most
jealous husbands. That is the vermuth potion which leaves with them a
bitter after-taste as soon as they have made another conquest. Their
own experiences entitle them to be jealous. Bachelors who had been
philanderers and can boast of many conquests usually marry plain or
unattractive women--alleging, by way of explanation, that they want to
have the woman for themselves and not for others, meanwhile forgetting
how often they themselves had been caught in the nets of homely
women. For almost any woman who will permit herself to do so can find
admirers, and ugliness is no protection against dramatic or comic
marital infidelities.
The absence of jealousy in cases of intense affection usually, but not
always, indicates a nature immune against all assaults. But those who
are free from this passion need not therefore be puffed up. We are
poor sinners all, and the time may come sooner or later for any of
us in which we shall transfer our weaknesses upon others and become
jealous. But it also happens that freedom from jealousy is a sign not
of security but of stupidity, unlimited vanity. The woman is regarded
as a paragon of all the virtues, without a touch of frailty. The
husband may be an ideal specimen of an otherwise frivolous species. In
these cases one’s inadequacy is so covered up by our over-estimation of
our endowments that comparisons are never instituted and projection is
impossible.