THE DEMAND FOR PRIVACY AND INDIVIDUALITY
PRIVACY AND SOLITUDE. Although one of man's most powerful
tendencies, as has already been pointed out, is his desire to
be with his fellows, this desire is not unqualified. Just as men
can be satiated with too much eating, and irritated by too
much inactivity, so men become "fed up" with companionship.
The demand for solitude and privacy is thus fundamentally
a physiological demand, like the demand for rest.
"The world is too much with us," especially the human world.
Companionship, even of the most desirable kind, exhausts
nervous energy, and may become positively fatiguing and
painful. To crave solitude is thus not a sign of man's
unsociability, but a sign merely that sociability, like any other human
tendency, becomes annoying, if too long or too strenuously
indulged. Much of the neurasthenia of city life has been
attributed to the continual contact with other people, and the
total inability of most city dwellers to secure privacy for any
considerable length of time. In some people a lifelong habit
of close contact with large numbers of people makes them
abnormally gregarious, so that solitude, the normal method of
recuperation from companionship, becomes unbearable. Few
city dwellers have not felt after a period of isolation in some
remote country place the need for the social stimulus of the
city. But a normal human life demands a certain proportion
of solitude just as much as it demands the companionship of
others.
With the spread of education and the general enhancement
of the sense of personal selfhood and individuality among
large numbers of people, the demand for privacy has increased.
The modern reader is shocked to discover in the
literature of the Elizabethan period the amazing lack of a
sense of privacy there exhibited. In contemporary society
this sense and the possibility of its satisfaction are variously
displayed on different economic and social levels. In the
congested life of the tenements it is almost impossible, and many
social evils are to be traced to the promiscuous mingling of
large families (and sometimes additional boarders) in
congested quarters.
The demand for privacy and solitude becomes acute among
people who do a great deal of mental work. "Man," says
Nietzsche, "cannot think in a herd," and the thinker has
traditionally been pictured as a solitary man. This is because
quiet seems to be, for most men, an essential condition of
really creative thought. There are some men who find it
impossible to write when there is another person, even one of
whom they are fond, in the same room. "No man," writes
Mr. Graham Wallas, "is likely to produce creative thoughts
(either consciously or subconsciously) if he is constantly
interrupted by irregular noises." Constant association with
other people means, moreover, continual distraction by
conversation which seriously interrupts a consecutive train of
thought. The insistence in public and college reading rooms
on absolute quiet is a device for securing as nearly as may
be privacy in intellectual work.
Privacy is again demanded as a matter of emotional protection
in individuals in whom there is a highly sensitive development
of personal selfhood. We like to keep our concerns to
ourselves, or to share them only with those with whom we
have a marked community of interest and feeling. Children
love to "have secrets they won't tell," and older people,
especially sensitive and intelligent ones, feel a peculiar sense of
irritation at having their personal affairs and feelings publicly
displayed. Nearly everyone must recall occasions where he
was vividly communicative and loquacious with a friend, only
to relapse into a clam-like silence on the entry of a third person.
This is primarily due to the fact that while men are by
nature gregarious, their gregariousness early becomes specialized
and aroused exclusively by people for whom they develop
a sense of personal affection and common sympathy. Any
intrusion from without this circle becomes an intrusion upon
privacy.
SATISFACTION IN PERSONAL POSSESSION: THE ACQUISITIVE INSTINCT.
An almost universal human trait of considerable social consequence
is the satisfaction men experience in having objects
that are their own. Both animals and humans, apart from
training, display a tendency to get and hold objects. This
tendency may take extreme forms, as in the case of miserliness
or kleptomania. It is evidenced in special ways in the
collections that children, and some grown-ups, make of
miscellaneous objects without any particular use, and with no
particular æsthetic value.
The objects which satisfy this instinct of possession may
include material goods, family, or larger groups. In primitive
tribes under the patriarchal system, the patriarch practically
owns the tribe. Our laws not so long ago recognized
the marriage relation as a state in which the wife is
possessed or owned by the husband.
Possession gives the owner various kinds of satisfaction.
The instinctive satisfaction in possession itself may be quite
irrespective of the values of the objects owned, and deprivation
may be fiercely resisted out of all proportion to the value
of the objects. Especially will this be the case if the object
possessed has become surrounded with other emotional
attachments, so that an individual may be as bitterly chagrined
and piqued by being deprived of some slight memoir or keepsake
as of a large sum of money. In the same way the fighting
spirit of a whole tribe or nation may be aroused by the
invasion or seizure of a small and unimportant bit of land, or by
the chance of its possession.
The instinctive sense of satisfaction, as in the last mentioned
case is enhanced by the sense of importance which
comes from possession, and which enhances one's own individuality
and personality. A man's vast holdings in wealth,
land, factories, machinery, or private estates is, in a sense,
regarded by him as an extension of his personality. He is
confirmed in this impression because it is so regarded by his
neighbors and the whole social group. A great landowner is
a celebrity throughout the countryside, and, as Mr. Veblen
points out, a large part of the luxurious display and expenditure
of the leisure classes is their way of publicly and conspicuously
indicating the amount of their possessions.
As in the case of any other strong native tendency, interference
with the instinct of acquisition, whether displayed by
the individual or the group, provokes often fierce anger and
bitter combat. The history of wars of aggrandizement
throughout the history of Europe are testimonies to the
efficacy of this instinct at least in the initiation of war.
The progress of civilization beyond its earliest states is
held, by some sociologists and economists, to be ascribed to
the power of the acquisitive instinct. The acquisition of
material wealth or capital, the development of the institution
of private property with its concomitant individual development
of land and natural resources is maintained by Lester
Ward to be of paramount importance in social advance:
... Objects of desire multiplied themselves and their possession
became an end of effort. Slowly the notion of property came into
being and in acquiring this, as history shows, the larger share of all
human energy has been absorbed. The ruling passion has for a
time long anterior to any recorded annals always been proprietary
acquisition.... Both the passion and the means of satisfying it were
conditions to the development of society itself, and rightly viewed
they have also been leading factors in civilization.[1]
[Footnote 1: Lester Ward: _The Psychic Factors of Civilization_, p. 156.]
There are many other motives to activity than acquisition,
but there are many evidences of its intense operation even in
modern society. Many men go on working long after they have
money enough to enable them to live in comfort, merely
for the further satisfaction of this impulse. "While in the
course of satisfaction of most other desires, the point of satiety
is soon reached, the demands of this one grow greater without
limit, so that it knows no satiety."[1]
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _loc. cit._, p. 323.]
The power of this tendency to personal acquisition and
possession seems an obstacle to all thoroughly communistic
forms of political and social organization. The conception of
a state where nobody owns anything, but where all is owned
in common--an idea which has been repeated in many modern
forms of socialism and communism, fails to note this powerful
human difficulty. Many socialist writers, it must be
noted, however, point out that they wish social ownership of
the means of production rather than of every item of personal
property, such as books, clothing, and the like.
INDIVIDUALITY IN OPINION AND BELIEF. Men frequently
display with regard to their opinions and beliefs the same passionate
attachment that they exhibit with regard to their
physical possessions. Like the latter, these come to be regarded
as an extension of the individual's personality, and
the same tenacious defense may be made of them as of a house,
land, or money.
Individual opinions and beliefs are not themselves possessions,
from a social point of view, so much as is the right to
express them. A man's private opinion may influence his
own conduct; his conduct itself may be an expression of
opinion. But unless an opinion is communicated, it cannot
influence any one else's conduct, and society has never been
much concerned about opinions that an individual harbored
strictly in his own bosom. Silence, socially, is as good as
assent. The insistence on the right to one's own opinions
becomes, therefore, an insistence on the right or the freedom to
express them.[2] This right is cherished in varying degrees by
different individuals in different ages. It becomes pronounced
in persons in whom there is marked development
of individuality, and, in general, where, as in Anglo-Saxon
countries, a social and political tradition of liberty and
individuality has become very powerful.
[Footnote 2: Beliefs and opinions may come to be regarded as
important personal possessions in themselves, as in the case
of rival claimants to some theory or idea, as in the case of
Leibnitz's and Newton's dispute over the calculus.]
Individuality in opinion and belief becomes critical chiefly
when the opinions and beliefs expressed are at variance with
those generally current among the group. For reasons already
discussed in connection with man's instinctive gregariousness
and the emotional sway which habits of thought have
over men, dissent is regarded with suspicion. Especially is
this the case where the dissenting opinions have to do with
new social organization and custom. The psychological
causes of this opposition are various, but include among other
things a positive feeling of fear.
It is only recently that men have been abandoning the belief that
the welfare of a state depends on rigid stability and on the
preservation of its traditions and institutions unchanged. Wherever that
belief prevails, novel opinions are felt to be dangerous as well as
annoying, and any one who asks inconvenient questions about the
why and the wherefore of accepted principles is considered a pestilent
person.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bury: _History of Freedom of Thought_, p. 9.]
Throughout history there has been a long struggle for
freedom of thought and discussion, and there have been great
landmarks in the degree with which freedom was attained,
and the fields wherein it was permitted. For a long time in
the history of Europe, dissent from the prevailing opinion on
religious matters was regarded both as abominable and socially
dangerous, and was severely punished. Since the middle
of the nineteenth century there has been no legal punishment
provided for dissent from established opinions in
religion, although penalties for heterodoxy in countries where
religious opinion is strong and fairly unanimous may be
exerted in other ways. In social matters also, there has
practically ceased to be legal coercion of opinion.[2] The argument
for the suppression of individual opinion has been tersely
summarized by the author above quoted:
[Footnote 2: Except in the recent period of excitement and stress
during the Great War, when suppression of opinion was, for better
or for worse, taken as a measure of national defense.]
Those who have the responsibility of governing a society can argue
that it is incumbent on them to prohibit the circulation of pernicious
opinions as to prohibit any anti-social actions. They can argue that
a man may do far more harm by propagating anti-social doctrines
than by stealing his neighbor's horse or making love to his neighbor's
wife. They are responsible for the welfare of the State, and if they
are convinced that an opinion is dangerous... it is their duty to
protect society against it as against any other danger.[1]
[Footnote 1: Bury: _loc. cit._, p. 13.]
THE SOCIAL IMPORTANCE OF INDIVIDUALITY IN OPINION. There
have been many notable documents in support of the belief
that society is the gainer and not the loser by permitting and
encouraging individuality in thought and belief. The following,
taken from one of the most famous of these, John Stuart
Mill's _Essay on Liberty_, was written to illustrate the fatal
results of prohibiting dissenting opinions merely because most
people think or call them immoral:
Mankind can hardly be too often reminded that there was once a
man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and
public opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision.
Born in an age and country abounding in individual greatness, this
man has been handed down to us by those who best knew both him
and the age, as the most virtuous man in it.... This acknowledged
master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived--whose
fame, still growing after two thousand years, all but outweighs the
whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious--was
put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction,
for impiety and immorality. Impiety, in denying the gods recognized
by the State.... Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and
instructions, a "corrupter of youth." Of these charges the tribunal,
there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and
condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved best
of mankind to be put to death as a criminal.[2]
[Footnote 2: J. S. Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. II.]
Every important step in human progress has been a variation
from the normal or accustomed, something new. Most
advances in science have been departures from older and
accustomed ways of thinking. Through the permission and
encouragement of individual variation in opinion we may
discover in the first place that accepted beliefs are wrong.
Galileo thought differently from the accepted Ptolemaic
astronomy of his day, and the demonstration of his diverging
belief proved the Ptolemaic astronomy to be wrong. The
evolutionary theory, bitterly attacked in its day, replaced
Cuvier's doctrine of the forms of life upon earth coming about
through a series of successive catastrophes. Lyell, in the face
of the whole scientific world of his day, insisted on the gradual
and uniform development of the earth's surface. Half the
scientific doctrines now accepted as axiomatic were bitterly
denounced when they were first suggested by an inquiring
minority.
Milton in his famous _Areopagitica_, an address to Parliament
written in 1644, protesting against the censorship of
printing, stressed the importance of permitting liberty for the
securing and developing of new ideas:
What should ye do then, should ye suppress all this flowery crop
of knowledge and new light sprung up and yet springing daily in this
city? Should ye set an oligarchy of twenty engrossers [censors] over
it, to bring a famine upon our minds again, when we shall know nothing
but what is measured us by their bushel? ... That our hearts
are now more capacious, our thoughts more erected to the search and
expectation of greatest and exactest things, is the issue of your own
virtue propagated in us; ye cannot suppress that unless ye reënforce
an abrogated and merciless law.... Give me the liberty to know, to
utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.[1]
[Footnote 1: Milton: _Areopagitica_.]
Even if the currently accepted doctrines prove to be true,
there is, as Mill pointed out, a vast social utility in permitting
the expression of contrary opinion though it be an error.
New ideas, however extreme, "may and commonly do possess
some portion of truth"; they bring to light and emphasize
some aspect or point of view which prevailing theories fail to
note. Thus the possible over-emphasis of certain contemporary
writers on the socialization of man's life is a valuable
corrective to the equal over-emphasis on individualism which
was current among so many thinkers during the nineteenth
century. The insistence with which present-day psychologists
call our attention to the power of instinct, though it may
possibly be over-emphasized, counterbalances that tendency
exhibited by such earlier authors as Bentham to picture man
as a purely rational being, whose every action was determined
by sheer logic.
Finally, unless doctrines are subjected to criticism and
inquiry, no matter how beneficial they are to society, they
will become merely futile and empty formulæ with very little
beyond a mechanical influence on people's lives. The maxims
of conventional morality and religion which everybody
believes and few practice are solemnly bandied about with
little comprehension of their meaning and no tendency to act
upon them. A belief becomes, as Mill pointed out, living,
vital, and influential in the clash of controversy. Whether
novel and dissenting doctrines are true or false, therefore, the
encouragement of their expression provides vitality and
variation without which progress is not possible.
The social appreciation of persons who display marked individual
opinions varies in different ages toward the same
individual. The martyr stoned to death by one generation
becomes the hero and prophet of the next. One has but to
look back at the contemporary vilification and ridicule to
which Lincoln was subjected to find an illustration. Or, on
a more monumental scale:
The event which took place on Calvary rather more than eighteen
hundred years ago. The man who left on the memory of those who
witnessed his life and conversation such an impression of his moral
grandeur that eighteen subsequent centuries have done homage to
him as the Almighty in person, was ignominiously put to death, as
what? As a blasphemer.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mill: _Essay on Liberty_, chap. II.]
One would suppose that men would have learned not only
to tolerate and be receptive to novelty in belief after these
repeatedly tardy recognitions of greatness. There are dozens
of instances in the history of religious, social, and political
belief, of men and women who, suppressed with the bitterest
cruelty in one generation, have been in effect, and sometimes
in fact, canonized by posterity. And a certain degree of tolerance
and receptiveness has come to be the result. But
while we no longer burn religious and social heretics,
condemnation is still meted out in some form of ostracism.
Prejudice, custom, and special interest frequently move men
to suppress in milder ways extremists, expression of whose
opinions seems to them, as unusual opinions have frequently
seemed, fraught only with the greatest of harm.