THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
THE INTERNATIONAL PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL LIBRARY
EDITED BY ERNEST JONES
No. 15
THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION
SIGMUND FREUD, M.D., LL.D.
TRANSLATED
BY
W. D. ROBSON-SCOTT
PUBLISHED BY HORACE LIVERIGHT
AND THE INSTITUTE OF PSYCHO-ANALYSIS
MCMXXVIII
_Printed in Great Britain by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
I wish to express my thanks to the Editor and to Mr. James Strachey for
reading through this translation and making many helpful suggestions.
W. D. R.-S.
CHAPTER I
When one has lived for long within a particular culture[1] and has often
striven to discover its origins and the path of its development, one
feels for once the temptation to turn one’s attention in the other
direction and to ask what further fate awaits this culture and what
transformations it is destined to undergo. But one soon finds that the
value of such an enquiry is diminished from the outset by several
considerations. Above all, by the fact that there are only a few people
who can survey human activity in all its ramifications. Most people have
been compelled to restrict themselves to a single, or to a few, spheres
of interest; but the less a man knows of the past and the present the
more unreliable must his judgement of the future prove. And further it
is precisely in the matter of this judgement that the subjective
expectations of the individual play a part that is difficult to assess;
for these prove to be dependent on purely personal factors in his own
experience, on his more or less hopeful attitude to life, according as
temperament, success or failure has prescribed for him. And finally one
must take into account the remarkable fact that in general men
experience the present naïvely, so to speak, without being able to
estimate its content; they must first place it at a distance, _i.e._ the
present must have become the past before one can win from it points of
vantage from which to gauge the future.
Footnote 1:
The German word _Kultur_ has been translated sometimes as ‘culture’
and sometimes as ‘civilization’, denoting as it does a concept
intermediate between these and at times inclusive of both.—ED.
And so he who yields to the temptation to deliver an opinion on the
probable future of our culture will do well to remind himself of the
difficulties just indicated, and likewise of the uncertainty that
attaches quite universally to every prophecy. It follows from this that
in hasty flight from so great a task I shall seek out the small tract of
territory to which my attention has hitherto been directed, as soon as I
have defined its position in general.
Human culture—I mean by that all those respects in which human life has
raised itself above animal conditions and in which it differs from the
life of the beasts, and I disdain to separate culture and
civilization—presents, as is well known, two aspects to the observer. It
includes on the one hand all the knowledge and power that men have
acquired in order to master the forces of nature and win resources from
her for the satisfaction of human needs; and on the other hand it
includes all the necessary arrangements whereby men’s relations to each
other, and in particular the distribution of the attainable riches, may
be regulated. The two tendencies of culture are not independent of each
other, first, because the mutual relations of men are profoundly
influenced by the measure of instinctual satisfaction that the existing
resources make possible; secondly, because the individual can himself
take on the quality of a piece of property in his relation to another,
in so far as this other makes use of his capacity for work or chooses
him as sexual object; and thirdly, because every individual is virtually
an enemy of culture, which is nevertheless ostensibly an object of
universal human concern. It is remarkable that little as men are able to
exist in isolation they should yet feel as a heavy burden the sacrifices
that culture expects of them in order that a communal existence may be
possible. Thus culture must be defended against the individual, and its
organization, its institutions and its laws, are all directed to this
end; they aim not only at establishing a certain distribution of
property, but also at maintaining it; in fact, they must protect against
the hostile impulses of mankind everything that contributes to the
conquest of nature and the production of wealth. Human creations are
easy to destroy, and science and technical skill, which have built them
up, can also be turned to their destruction.
So one gets the impression that culture is something which was imposed
on a resisting majority by a minority that understood how to possess
itself of the means of power and coercion. Of course it stands to reason
that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of culture
itself, but are conditioned by the imperfections of the cultural forms
that have so far been developed. Indeed it is not difficult to point out
these defects. While mankind has made solid advances in the conquest of
nature and may expect to make still greater ones, no certain claim can
be established for a corresponding advance in the regulation of human
affairs, and probably at every period, as again now, many men have asked
themselves whether this fragment that has been acquired by culture is
indeed worth defending at all. One might suppose that a reorganization
of human relations should be possible, which, by abandoning coercion and
the suppression of the instincts, would remove the sources of
dissatisfaction with culture, so that undisturbed by inner conflict men
might devote themselves to the acquisition of natural resources and to
the enjoyment of the same. That would be the golden age, but it is
questionable if such a state of affairs can ever be realized. It seems
more probable that every culture must be built up on coercion and
instinctual renunciation; it does not even appear certain that without
coercion the majority of human individuals would be ready to submit to
the labour necessary for acquiring new means of supporting life. One
has, I think, to reckon with the fact that there are present in all men
destructive, and therefore anti-social and anti-cultural, tendencies,
and that with a great number of people these are strong enough to
determine their behaviour in human society.
This psychological fact acquires a decisive significance when one is
forming an estimate of human culture. One thought at first that the
essence of culture lay in the conquest of nature for the means of
supporting life, and in eliminating the dangers that threaten culture by
the suitable distribution of these among mankind, but now the emphasis
seems to have shifted away from the material plane on to the psychical.
The critical question is whether and to what extent one can succeed,
first, in diminishing the burden of the instinctual sacrifices imposed
on men; secondly, in reconciling them to those that must necessarily
remain; and thirdly, in compensating them for these. It is just as
impossible to do without government of the masses by a minority as it is
to dispense with coercion in the work of civilization, for the masses
are lazy and unintelligent, they have no love for instinctual
renunciation, they are not to be convinced of its inevitability by
argument, and the individuals support each other in giving full play to
their unruliness. It is only by the influence of individuals who can set
an example, whom the masses recognize as their leaders, that they can be
induced to submit to the labours and renunciations on which the
existence of culture depends. All is well if these leaders are people of
superior insight into what constitute the necessities of life, people
who have attained the height of mastering their own instinctual wishes.
But the danger exists that in order not to lose their influence they
will yield to the masses more than these will yield to them, and
therefore it seems necessary that they should be independent of the
masses by having at their disposal means of enforcing their authority.
To put it briefly, there are two widely diffused human characteristics
which are responsible for the fact that the organization of culture can
be maintained only by a certain measure of coercion: that is to say, men
are not naturally fond of work, and arguments are of no avail against
their passions.
I know what objections will be brought against these arguments. It will
be said that the character of the masses, here delineated, which is
supposed to prove that one cannot dispense with coercion in the work of
civilization, is itself only the result of defective cultural
organization, through which men have become embittered, revengeful and
unapproachable. New generations, brought up kindly and taught to have a
respect for reason, who have experienced the benefits of culture early
in life, will have a different attitude towards it; they will feel it to
be their very own possession, and they will be ready on its account to
make the sacrifice in labour and in instinctual renunciation that is
necessary for its preservation. They will be able to do without coercion
and will differ little from their leaders. If no culture has so far
produced human masses of such a quality, it is due to the fact that no
culture has yet discovered the plan that will influence men in such a
way, and that from childhood on.
It may be doubted whether it is possible at all, or at any rate just
now, in the present stage of our conquest of nature, to establish a
cultural organization of this kind; it may be asked where the throng of
superior, dependable and disinterested leaders, who are to act as
educators of the future generations, are to come from; and one may be
appalled at the stupendous amount of force that will be unavoidable if
these intentions are to be carried out. But one cannot deny the grandeur
of this project and its significance for the future of human culture. It
is securely based on a piece of psychological insight, on the fact that
man is equipped with the most varied instinctual predispositions, the
ultimate course of which is determined by the experiences of early
childhood. But the limitations of man’s capacity for education set
bounds to the efficacy of such a cultural transformation. One may
question whether and in what degree it would be possible for another
cultural milieu to efface the two characteristics of human masses that
make the guidance of men’s affairs so very difficult. The experiment has
not yet been made. Probably a certain percentage of mankind—owing to
morbid predisposition or too great instinctual vigour—will always remain
asocial, but if only one can succeed in reducing to a minority the
majority that is to-day hostile to culture, one will have accomplished a
great deal, perhaps indeed everything that can be accomplished.
I should not like to give the impression that I have wandered far away
from the chosen path of my enquiry. I will therefore expressly assert
that it is far from my intention to estimate the value of the great
cultural experiment that is at present in progress in the vast country
that stretches between Europe and Asia. I have neither the special
knowledge nor the capacity to decide on its practicability, to test the
expediency of the methods employed, or to measure the width of the
inevitable gulf between intention and execution. What is there in course
of preparation eludes investigation, for which it is not ready; for this
our long consolidated culture presents the material.