The Foundations of Personality Part 14

denounces the sinner, the more, by implication, he praises himself.

People seek the strangest roads to the feeling of superiority.

From that cla.s.sical imbecile who burnt down the Temple of Diana to the crop of young girls who invent tales of white slavery in order to stand in the public eye as conspicuous victims, notoriety has been mistaken for fame by those desperate for public attention. To be superior some way, even if only in crime and foolishness, brings about an immense amount of laughable and deplorable conduct to which only a Juvenal could do justice. The world yields to superiority such immense tribute that to obtain recognition as superior becomes a dominant motive. How that superiority is to be reached presents great difficulties, and the problem is solved according to the character of the individual.

At the same time that we seek superiority we seek to be liked, to be esteemed, to be respected. These are not the same things, but are sufficiently alike in principle to be cla.s.sed together. With some the desire to be liked becomes a motive that ruins firmness of purpose and success, as in the well-known "good fellow,"--accommodating, obliging and friendly, who sacrifices achievement to this minor form of fellowship. On a larger plane there is the writer or artist who sacrifices his best capacities in order to please the popular fancy, seeks popularity rather than greatness, for it is seldom that the two coincide. Back of many a man's "respectability" is the fear of being disliked or discredited by his group. TO BE RESPECTABLE, TO LIVE SO THAT NEITHER THE NEIGHBORS NOR ONE'S OWN RATHER UNCRITICAL CONSCIENCE CAN CRITICIZE, IS PERHAPS THE MOST COMMON AIM IN LIFE. There are some who are all things to all men, merely out of the desire to be agreeable, who find it easy to agree with any opinion, because they have not the courage to be disliked. Even the greatest men yield to the desire to be admired and liked, though the test of greatness is unpopularity.

For there never can be a real and lasting democ-racy in belief, opinion and ideal. The ma.s.s must always lag behind the leaders, since it takes a generation or two for the ideas of the old leaders to permeate any society. Now and then a great leader finds a great following in his own lifetime, but his leadership rarely involves a new principle. There will always be a few ground breakers, behind them a few straggling followers, and far, far behind, the great ma.s.s of mankind.

This digression aside, to be popular, agreeable and entertaining are both aims and weapons. Most of us would infinitely rather be liked than disliked, and with some it is a pa.s.sion and a weakness. But to be popular, to be a good fellow, is an extraordinarily useful trait when combined with firm purposes and good intelligence. The art of life is to please, though its business is achievement and success, and here the art may further the business. Manners, courtesy and certain of the abilities, such as musical talent, story telling and humor are cultivated largely, though not wholly, out of the desire to please.

Manners and courtesy are really standardized methods of behavior, which are to adjust us in a pleasing way to our superiors, equals and inferiors, and to the various conventional situations of life. Naturally these will vary greatly in different ages and different countries. A democracy acknowledging in theory no superiors will insist that every man be called "sir" and every woman "madam," whereas an aristocracy laughs at that. In reality there is no democracy anywhere, and so we address differently the woman of the mansion and the woman of the hovel, The mistress of the house calls her maid by her first name but would wonder what the world is coming to if the maid became as familiar. In a limited sense, manners and courtesy are conventional ways of doing things, as the way of living, the tipping of the hat, the form of greetings, the way of eating, but these conventions have great value to the majority of people as evidencing breeding and training or the lack (superiority or inferiority), and also as removing doubt and choice, so that things run smoothly and without contradiction. In a more n.o.ble sense, manners and courtesy prescribe conduct in order to proscribe offense to the self-valuation of others. Convention says, "Address people as if they were your equals at least; don't contradict brusquely because that implies their inferiority or stupidity; avoid too controversial topics since bitterness and humiliation may thus arise; do not notice defects or disabilities for the same reason; do not brag or be too conspicuous, since to boast of superiority is to imply the inferiority of others, and they will dislike you," etc. We tend to dislike and hate those who make us feel inferior, except under those special circ.u.mstances where s.e.x-love, awe and admiration enter to make a certain inferiority desirable or befitting. So a large part of manners and courtesy concern themselves with the formulae of conduct which avoid this result to others, and we are also enjoined to conduct ourselves so that others will not regard us as inferior. We speak of a man as a "low person" if he eats with his knife, and very few things so humiliate us as the knowledge that we have behaved in an unmannerly way. One of the great purposes, then, is to be conventional, to behave, dress and "look" according to an accepted standard, one that is laid down for age, s.e.x and social station. There are people to whom convention is truly almost holy, and true to our principle of variability, there are others who hate convention.

Because many writers have shot shafts of satire and ridicule at convention and custom, and because of the enormous reading public, the artificial nature of convention has been emphasized to that large part of the community that desires to be different merely for the sake of being different, and there is built up a conventional unconventionality. It has become the mark of the artist, the great in spirit, to be unconventional (at least in novels), and so there are a hundred "unconventional" poseurs to one genuinely free in spirit. Anything that becomes a dogma or a cult is not unconventional, for it is the standard or the custom of a group. Most Bohemians, so-called, are poseurs and conventionalized to their marrow. And most of the really unconventional are "freaks," "odd sticks" whose grotesque individualities cannot conform. But in the ma.s.s of the unconventional one finds here and there, like nuggets of gold in sand, the true reformers of the world.

The "poseurs" in custom have their a.n.a.logies in the pompous, over-dignified and over-important; the affected, in a word.

Affectation is felt to be a disharmony between the pose and the inner values or an attempt to win superiority or "difference" of a superior kind by acting. In either case it excites ridicule, hatred or disgust, and shafts at it form part of the stock in trade of the satirist, humorist and indeed every portrayer of life. What men demand of each other is sincerity, and even where the insincerity is merely a habitual pose it arouses hostile feeling which expresses itself all the way from criticism to the overt act.

Since to feel superior is so highly prized in social relationships of all kinds, part of the technique of those seeking some advantage or other--economic, social, personal--from those who must be influenced is to give them the feeling of superiority. Flattery, cajolement, humble supplication and the finer maneuvers of tact, all have this in mind. These however are palatable to the intelligent only when felt to be sincere and when emanating from some one more or less esteemed, though there are plenty who "fall" for the grossest flattery from almost any one, whose ego feeling is easily inflated with a corresponding shrinking in judgment and common sense. In the relations of men and women, flattery in one shape or another plays an enormous role --from the effect on women of the statement or implication in a subtle or gross way that they are charming, and the effect on men of acknowledged superiority in strength courage or intelligence. Of course, in both cases the effect is partly in the physical attractiveness of the flatterer and tends to become ridiculous when he or she is without charm. The simpering language that is irresistible when uttered by a starry-eyed maid of eighteen loses somewhat in beauty and effect when emanating from the lips of bespectacled forty. The power to use and the power to resist flattery in any of its forms have played almost as great a role in the history of the race as strength, beauty or intelligence.

It would be futile to elaborate in detail the various ways of seeking superiority or resisting inferiority. Two directions of this impulse need some attention, as they lead to personality traits of great importance. "Having one's way" becomes a dominant desire with many people, and much of the clashing that occurs in families, organizations and the council chambers of nations arises from a childish, egoistic seeking of superiority. People enter into the most heated and sterile arguments, often coming to blows, if the course of conduct they desire to have followed is modified or blocked. Even when secretly convinced that they are wrong, husbands and wives will continue to insist on victory, for too often the domestic relationship is a struggle for leadership and dominance rather than a partnership and a conference. Two heads are better than one when the intelligence within the heads is of good grade and when the desire for superiority does not take trivial directions. And the effect of yielding to the whims of children is to develop an irritable, domineering egoism bent on having its own way, resisting reasonable compromise or correction. The greatest benefit of discipline and above all of contact with equals to a child is in the effect on this phase of egoism, i. e., that cooperation means compromise; to be reasonable implies listening with respect to others' plans and to accept better ways of doing things, even if they have originated with others; in other ways the subordinating of trivial egoism.

The large families of other days offered the conflict of wills and its consequent lesson within the home; to-day the solitary child, or the one whose brother or sister is three, four or five years younger or older must go into the streets to obtain this discipline or else go without. The indulged have this form of inferior egoism more than do those who have been roughly handled, and so it is more common in women of the better-to-do cla.s.ses and in men who have always exercised authority. It is of course found in what is known as the stubborn person, --he whose will is law to himself and who seeks to make it law to others. Ordinarily the stubborn person is merely a nuisance, but also, if he couples that stubbornness with intelligence and some especial ability, he may reach great heights, though he is seldom popular.

A sub-form of having one's own way is the adherence to one's own "opinion." The clash of opinions is in its n.o.blest aspect the basis of knowledge; the correction of opinion that results when man meets man is the growth of tolerance and urbanity. Wide reading, travel and experience teach us that our opinions can never be absolutely right, and we grow to look upon them in a detached sort of way. In fact, the prime result of the growth of intelligence and of experience is to make one, as it were, objective toward oneself, to view one's own thoughts, beliefs and emotions with some humor and skepticism. But the uncultured, the narrow, the inexperienced, the young and the strongly egotistic never detach themselves from their opinions, and their opinions are themselves. Attack an opinion, contradict or amend it,--and a sort of fighting spirit is aroused. Argument differs from discussion in that it seeks all means to win--ridicule, sophistry, and personal attack --and it is by far the more common. There was a time when opinion was entirely enslaved, when only the ruler might venture on a new belief or its expression; then there came a time when the right to freedom of opinion and its expression was conceded, and now, with huge forces confronting one another, freedom of opinion[1] is again threatened. But that is an issue larger than our subject.

[1] The most profound contribution to the subject of discussion and freedom of opinion in recent years has been written by Walter Lippman in the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1920.

You may judge a man by his type of argument and his reaction to the opinions of others. One should hold to his own beliefs and opinions, but only if they withstand the a.s.saults of reason. To build ego feeling into opinions is to make ignorance sacred. For most of us there are certain opinions that we will not tolerate, and there are others to which we are indifferent. There are those who feel it inc.u.mbent on themselves to contradict any opinion, even if they agree fundamentally with it. The mere fact that some one else gave it utterance arouses a sort of jealousy. Then there are others who will not permit any opinion of their own to be discussed, to whom it is a personal affront to do this. What we call urbanity is tolerance of other opinions; what we call reasonableness is the willingness to change opinions if convinced. What we call vacillation is to have no fixed opinion, to be influenced at once by the opinions of others. The pleasure sought in argument is a victory for our opinions and thus for ourselves.

Here Montaigne's wisdom aptly expresses itself: "We deride ourselves a hundred times when we mock our neighbor." He is stubborn and unreasonable who does not agree with us. "Be reasonable," cry the unreasonable as they argue. "How stubborn and pigheaded you are," say those inaccessible to reason. The difficulty in reaching a true estimate of the world, ourselves and our neighbors lies in the egoism which permeates our beliefs and opinions.

A second direction of the impulse to superiority is personal beauty. Not only does the young girl (or any other, male or female) dress and adorn herself to attract those whose good opinion she seeks, but also she seeks superiority over her compet.i.tors. Her own self-valuation increases with the admiration of some and the discomfiture of others. To be beautiful, attractive or pretty becomes thus a goal to many aims of the personality; it offers a route to success in obtaining power, riches, etc.; it yields the longed-for admiration, and it gives the satisfaction of superiority. It rarely has in it any ideal of service or of help, though beauty in the abstract is an ideal of high value. To desire to be beautiful physically as a leading aim usually leads to selfishness and petty vanity. As a subsidiary aim it balances character, but unfortunately, as we have before seen, it is inculcated as a primary aim early in the life of a girl. True, men seek to be beautiful in a masculine way, but the goal of masculine beauty is strength, which is directly serviceable. This is not to say that there are no men who are vain of their good looks, for there are many. But only occasionally does one find a man who organizes his life efforts to be beautiful, who establishes criteria of success or failure on complexion, hair, features of face and lines of figure. So long, therefore, as woman can obtain power through beauty and s.e.x appeal, so long may we expect a trivial trend in her character.

We have lost track of our hypothetical child in the history of his character development, lost sight of him as he struggles in a mora.s.s of desires and purposes of power, fellowship and superiority. His situations become still more complex as we watch him seek to unify his life around permanent purposes, against a pestering, surging, recurring, temporary desire. He desires, let us say, to conform to the restriction in s.e.x, but as he approaches adolescence, within and without stimuli of breathless ardor a.s.sail him. He must inhibit them if he proposes to be chaste, and his continent road is beset with never-resting temptations. He calls himself a fool at times for resisting, and his mind pictures the delights he misses--if not from direct experience, from information he gathers in books and from those who know--and if he yields, then self-reproach embitters him. But correctly to portray the situation is to drop our hypothetical adolescent, for here is where individual reaction and individual situations are too varied to be met with in one case. Some do not inhibit their s.e.x desires at all; others resist now and then, others yield occasionally; still others remain faithful to the ideal. Some drop the conventional ideal and replace with unconventional subst.i.tutes, some resist at great cost to themselves, and others find no difficulty in resisting what is no temptation at all to them. Pa.s.sion, resistance, opportunity, training and sublimation differ as remarkably as nuns differ from prost.i.tutes.

A similar situation is found in the work purposes. To work steadily, with industry and unflagging effort, at something perhaps not inherently attractive is not merely a measure of energy,--it is a measure of inhibition and will. For there are so many more immediate pleasures to be had, even if offering only variety and relaxation. There is the country, there is the lake for fishing; there is the dance hall where a pretty girl smiles as your arm encircles her waist; there is the ball field where on a fine day you may go and forget duty and strained effort in the swirl of an enthusiasm that emanates from the thousands around you as they applaud the splendid athletes; there is the good fellowship and pleasure that beckon as you bend to a task. To shut these out, to inhibit the temporary "good" for the permanent good, is the measure of character.

These s.e.x and work situations we must take up in detail in separate chapters. What is important is that as life goes on, necessity, the social organization and gradual concentration of energy ca.n.a.lize the purposes, reduce the power of the irrelevant and temporary desires. Habit and custom bring a person into definite relationship with society; the man becomes husband, father, worker in some definite field of industry; ambition becomes narrowed down to the possibilities or is entirely discarded as hopeless. The character becomes a collection of habits, with some controlling purpose and some characteristic relaxations. This at least is true of the majority of men. Here and there are those who have not been able to form a unification even along such simple lines; they are without steady habits, derelicts morally, financially and socially, or if with means independent of personal effort they are wastrels and idlers. And again there are the doers and thinkers of the world, the fortunate, whose lives are a.s.sociated with successful purposes, whose ambitions grow and grow until they reach the power of which they dreamed. There are the reformers living in a fever heat of purpose, disdaining rest and relaxation, dangerously near fanaticism and not far from mental unbalance, but achieving through that unbalance things the balanced never have the will to attempt. He who works merely to get rich or powerful or to provide food for his family cannot understand the zealots who see the world as a place where SOMETHING MUST happen,--where slavery MUST be abolished, women MUST have votes, children MUST go to school until sixteen, prost.i.tution MUST disappear, alcohol MUST be prohibited, etc. Such people miss the pretty, pleasant relaxing joys of life, but they gain in intensity of life what they lose in diffuseness.

This war of the permanent unified purposes versus the temporary scattering desires--the power of inhibition --is involved in the health and vigor of the person. Disease, fatigue and often enough old age show themselves in lowered purpose, in the failure of the will (in the sense of the energy of purpose), in a scattering of activity. Indeed, in the senile states one too often sees the disappearance of moral control where one least expected it. And one of the greatest tragedies of our times occurred when an elderly statesman, on the brink of arterial disease of the brain, lost the strength and firmness of purpose that hitherto had characterized him. One of the worst features of the government of nations is the predominance of old men in the governing bodies.

For not only are they apt to have over-intellectualized life, not only have they become specialists in purpose and therefore narrow, but the atrophy of the pa.s.sions and desires of youth and middle life has rendered them unfit to legislate for the bulk of the race, who are the young and middle-aged. It is no true democracy where old age governs the rest of the periods of life.

Unification of purpose often goes too far. Men lose sight of the duties they owe to wife and family in their pursuit of wealth or fame; they forget that relaxation and pleasure-seeking are normal and legitimate aims. They deify a purpose; they attach it to themselves so that it becomes more essentially themselves than their religion or their family. They speak of their work as if every letter were capitalized and lose sympathy and interest in the rest of the wide striving world. Men grow hard, even if philanthropists, in too excessive a devotion to a purpose, and soon it is their master, and they are its slaves. Happy is he who can follow his purpose efficiently and earnestly, but who can find interest in many things, pleasure in the wide range of joys the world offers and a youthful curiosity and zest in the new.

Every human being, no matter how civilized and unified, how modern and social in his conduct, has within him a core of uncivilized, disintegrating, ancient and egoistic desires and purposes. "I feel two natures struggling within me" is the epitome of every man's life. This is what has been called conflict by the psychoa.n.a.lysts, and my own disagreement with them is that I believe it to be distinctly conscious in the main. A man knows that the pretty young girls he meets tempt him from his allegiance to his wife and his desires to be good; a woman knows that the prosaic husband no longer pleases, and why he does not please,--only if you ask either of them bluntly and directly they will deny their difficulties. The organic activities of the body, basic in desire of all kinds, are crude and give rise to crude forbidden wishes, but the struggle that goes on is repressed, rebelled against and gives rise to trains of secondary symptoms,--fatigue, headache, indigestion, weariness of life and many other complaints. It is perfectly proper to complain of headache, but it is a humiliation to say that you have chosen wrongly in marriage, or that you are essentially polygamous, or that an eight-hour day of work at clerking or bookkeeping disgusts and bores you. People complain of that which is proper and allows them to maintain self-respect, but they hide that which may lower them in the eyes of others. Gain their confidence, show that you see deeper than their words and you get revelations that need no psychoa.n.a.lytic technique to elicit and which are distinctly conscious.

This brings me to the point that the constant inhibition, blocking and balking of desires and wishes, though in part socially necessary and ethically justifiable, is decidedly wearisome, at times to all, and to many at all times. It seems so easy and pleasant to relax in purposes, in morals, in thought, to be a vagrant spirit seeking nothing but the pleasures right at hand; to be like a traditional bee flitting from the rose to rose of desire. (Only the bee is a decidedly purposive creature, out for business not pleasure.) "Why all this striving and self-control?" cries the unorganized in all of us. "Why build up when Death tears down?" cries the pessimist in our hearts. Great epochs in history are marked by different answers to these questions, and in our own civilization there has grown up a belief that bodily pleasure in itself is wrong, that life is vanity unless yoked to service and effort. The Puritan idea that we best serve G.o.d in this way has been modified by a more skeptical idea that we serve man by swinging our efforts away from bodily pleasure and toward work, organized to some good end; but essentially the idea of inhibition, control, as the highest virtue, remains. Such an ideal gains force for a time, then grows too wearisome, too extreme, and a generation grows up that throws it off and seeks pleasure frankly; paints, powders, dances, sings, develops the art of "living," indulges the sense; becomes loose in morals, and hyperesthetic and over-refined in tastes.

Then the ennui, boredom and disgust that always follow sensual pleasures become diffuse; happiness cannot come through the seeking of pleasure and excitement and anhedonia of the exhausted type arises. Preachers, prophets, seers and poets vigorously proclaim the futility of pleasure, and the happiness of service; inhibition comes into its own again and a Puritan cycle recommences. Stoic, epicurean; Roman republic, Roman empire; Puritan England, Restoration; Victorian days, early twentieth century; for to-day we are surging into an era of revolt against form, custom, tradition; in a word against inhibition.

As with periods, so with people; self-indulgence, i. e., indulgence of the pa.s.sing desires, follows the idealism of adolescence. Youth sows its wild oats. Then the steadying purposes appear partly because the pleasure of indulgence pa.s.ses.

Marriage, responsibility, straining effort mark the pa.s.sing of ten or a dozen years; then in middle life, and often before, things get flat and without savor, monotony creeps in and a curiosity as to the possibilities of pleasure formerly experienced is awakened. (I believe that most of the s.e.xual unfaithfulness in men and women over thirty springs not from pa.s.sion but from curiosity.)

There occurs a dangerous age in the late thirties and early forties, one in which self-indulgence makes itself clamorous. The monotony of labor, the fatigue of inhibition make themselves felt, and at this time men (and women) need to add relaxation and pleasure of a legitimate kind. Golf, the fishing trip, games of all kinds; legitimate excitement which need not be inhibited is necessary. This need of excitement without inhibition is behind most of the gambling and card playing; it explains the extraordinary attraction of the detective story and the thrilling movies; it gives great social value to the prize fight and the ball game where you may see the staid and the sober giving vent to an excitement that, may fatigue them for a time but which clears the way for their next day's inhibitions.

Unfortunately too many mistake excitement for happiness. The forms of relief from inhibition--card playing, sports, the theater, the thrilling story and the movie--grow to be habits and lose their exciting value. They can give no permanent relief from the pain of repression; only a philosophy of life can do that. A philosophy of life! One might write a few volumes on that (and there are so many great philosophers already on the market), and yet such a philosophy would only state that strenuous purpose must alternate with quiet relaxation; excitement is to be sought only at periods and never for any length of time; relief from inhibitions can only be found in legitimate ways or self-reproach enters. Play, sports, short frequent vacations rather than long ones, freedom from ceremony as a rule--but now and then a full indulgence in ceremonials--and a realization that there is no freedom in self-indulgence.

I remember one Puritanically bred young woman who fled from her restrictions and inhibitions and joined a "free love" colony in New York. After two years she left, them and came back to New England. Her statement of the situation she found herself; it summarizes all attempts at "freedom." "It wasn't freedom. You found yourself bound to your desires, a slave to every wish. It grew awfully tiresome and besides, it brought so many complications. Sometimes you loved where you weren't loved--and vice versa. Jealousy was there, oh, so much of it--and pleasure disappeared after a while. It wasn't conscience--I still believe that right and wrong are arbitrary matters --but I found myself envying people who had some guide, some belief, some restrictions in themselves! For it seemed to me they were more free than I."

The fact is, for most men and women inhibition is no artificial phenomenon, despite its burdensomeness. It is not only inevitable, it is desirable. A feeling of power appears when one resists; there is mental gain, character growth as a result. Life must be purposive else it is vain and futile, and the feeling of no achievement and failure is far more disastrous than a thousand inhibitions.

Though man battles and compromises with himself, he also battles and compromises with his fellows and circ.u.mstances. That is to say, he must continually adjust himself to the unforeseen, the obstacle, the favoring circ.u.mstance; the possible and impossible; the certain and uncertain. Adjustment to reality is what the neurologists call it, but they do not define reality, which indeed cannot be defined. It is not the same thing for any two persons. For some reality is success, for others it is virtue.

The scientist smiles at the reality of the love-sick girl, and she would think his reality a bad dream. The artist says, "Beauty is the reality"; the miser says, "Cash"; the sentimentalist answers, "None of this but Love"; and the philosopher, aloof from all these, defines reality as "Truth." And the skeptic asks, "What is Truth?" We gain nothing by saying a man must adjust himself to reality; we say something definite when we say he must adjust his wishes to his abilities, to the opposing wills, wisher, and abilities of others; to the needs of his family and his country; to disease, old age and death; to the flux of the river of life. In the quickness of adjustment we have a great character factor; in the farsightedness of adjustment (foreseeing, planning) we have another. Does a man take his difficulties with courage and good cheer does he make the "best of it" or is he plunged into doubt and indecision by obstacles or complications? Is he calm, cool, collected, well poised, in that he watches and works without too much emotion and maintains self-feeling against adversity? We say a man is self-reliant when he finds in himself resources against obstacles and does not call on his neighbors for help. We would do well to extend the term to the one whose fund of courage, hope, energy and resource springs largely from within himself; who resists the forces that reduce courage, hope and energy. A higher sort of man not only supplies himself with the energetic factors of character, but he inspires, as we say, others; he is a sort of bank of these qualities, with high reserves which he gives to others. Contrast him with those whose cry constantly is "Help, help." Charming they may be as ornaments, but they deplete the treasury of life for their a.s.sociates and are only of value as they call out the altruism of others.

There is no formula for adjustment. Intelligence, insight into one's powers and capacities, caution, boldness, compromise, firmness, aggressiveness, tact,--these and a dozen other traits and qualities come into play. It is a favorite teaching of optimistic sentimentalists, "Will conquers everything--it is omnipotent." G.o.d's will is,--but no one else's. What happens when two will and pray for diametrically opposing results? "Then G.o.d is on the side of the heaviest battalions," said Napoleon.

Victory comes to the best prepared, the most intelligent, the least hampered and the luckiest. Outside of metaphysics and theology there is no abstract will; it is a part of purpose, intelligence and instinct and shares in their imperfections and limitations. To will the impossible is to taste failure, although it may be difficult to know what is impossible. Fight hard, be brave, keep your powder dry and have good friends is the best counsel for adjustment. But learn resignation and cultivate a sense of humor.

No inspiration in that? Well, I must leave inspiration to others who have an infallible formula. The best I can offer in adjustment is the old prayer, "Lord, make me love the chase and not the quarry! Lord, make me live up to my ideals!"

Out of the welter of conflicts into which the individual is plunged through his own nature and the nature of the life around him, out of the experience of the race and the teaching of its leaders come ideals. Good, Beauty, Justice,--these are good deeds, beautiful things, true and non-contradictory expressions, just acts raised to the divine and absolute, and therefore worshiped. And their opposite, arising from evil deeds, ugly and disgusting things, misleading experiences and suffering, become unified into various forms of Evil. Life becomes divided into two parts, Good and Evil, and personified (by the great majority) into G.o.d and the Devil. Man seeks the Good, hates Evil, esteems himself when he conforms to the ideal, loathes himself when he violates it. He cannot judge himself; he wishes to know the judgment of others and accepts or rejects that judgment.

We say man seeks pleasure, satisfaction, the Good. True. But it is important to know that essentially he seeks a higher self-valuation, seeks to establish his own dignity and worth and has his highest satisfaction when that valuation is reached through conformity with absolute standards.

CHAPTER XII. THE METHODS OF PURPOSE--WORK CHARACTERS

Having asked concerning any person, "What are his purposes?"

whether of power or fellowship, whether permanent or transitory, whether adjustable or not, we next ask, "How does he seek their fulfillment?"

"He who wills the end wills the means" is an old saying, but men who will the same end may will different means. There have been those who used a.s.sa.s.sination to bring about reform, and there are plenty who use philanthropy to hasten their egoistic aims. The nihilist who throws a bomb to bring about an altruistic state is own cousin to the ward heeler who gives coal to his poor const.i.tuents so that his grafting rule may continue.

1. There are those who use the direct route of force to reach their goal of desire and purpose. They attempt to make no nice adjustments of their wishes to the wishes of others; the obstacle, whether human or otherwise must get out of their way or be forcibly removed or destroyed. "A straight line is the shortest distance between two points," and there is only one absolute law,--"the good old rule, the simple plan that they may take who have the power and they may keep who can." The individuals who react this way to obstacles are choleric, pa.s.sionate, egoistic and in the last a.n.a.lysis somewhat brutal.

This is especially true if they seek force at first, for with nearly all of us extreme provocation or desperation brings direct-action measures.

Conspicuously those accustomed to arbitrary power use this method. They have grown accustomed to believing that their will or wish is a cause, able to remove obstacles of all kinds. When at all opposed the angry reaction is extreme, and they tend to violence at once. The old-fashioned home was modeled in tyranny, and the force reaction of the father and husband to his children and wife was sanctioned by law and custom. The att.i.tude of the employer to employee, universally in the past and still prominent, was that of the master, able in ancient times to use physical punishment and in our day to cut off a man's livelihood if he showed any rebellion. In a larger social way War is crude brute force, and those who delude themselves that the G.o.d of victory is a righteous G.o.d have read history with a befoozled mind. Force, though the world rests on it, is a terrible weapon and engenders brutality in him who uses it and rebellion, hate and humiliation in him upon whom it is used. It is an insult to the dignity and worth of the human being. It must be used for disciplining purposes only,--on children, on the criminal, and then more to restrain than to punish. It cannot disappear from the world, but it should be minimized. Only the sentimentalized believe it can disappear entirely, only the brutal rejoice in its use. Force is a crude way of a.s.serting and obtaining superiority; the gentle hate to use it, for it arouses their sympathy for their opponent. Whoever preaches force as the first weapon in any struggle is either deluded as to its value or an enemy of mankind.

As a non-inhibited response, force and brutality appear in the mentally sick. General paresis, cerebral arterio-selerosis, alcoholic psychoses present cla.s.sical examples of the impatient brutal reaction, often in men hitherto patient and gentle.

2. Strategy or cunning appears as a second great method of obtaining the fulfillment of one's purposes. We all use strategy in the face of superior or equal power, just as we tend to use force confronted by inferiority. There is of course a legitimate use of cunning, but there is also an anti-social trend to it, quite evident in those who by nature or training are schemers.

The strategist in love, war or business simulates what he does not feel, is not frank or sincere in his statements and believes firmly that the end justifies the means. He uses the indirect force of the lie, the slander, insinuation --he has no aversion to flattery and bribery--he uses spies and false witnesses. He is a specialist in the unexpected and seeks to lull suspicion and disarms watchfulness, waiting for the moment to strike. Sometimes he weaves so tangled a web that he falls into it himself, and one of the stock situations in humor, the novel and the stage is where the cunning schemer falls into the pit he has dug for others. In his highest aspect he is the diplomat; in his lowest he is the sneak. People who are weak or cowardly tend to the use of these methods, but also there is a group of the strong who hate direct force and rather like the subtler weapons.

The strategist tends to be quite cynical, and his effect on his fellow men is to increase cynicism and pessimism. They who have suffered through the schemer grow to suspect their fellows under any guise. They become suspicious and hard, determined never to trust any one again. Indeed, practical wisdom to a large extent is the wisdom of strategy and is full of mottoes and proverbs inculcating non-generous ideals. When people have been "fooled"

or misled, the most valuable of the social cementing qualities, faith in one's fellows, is weakened. Despite the disintegrating effect of unscrupulous shrewdness, it is common enough to hear men say of a successful votary of the art, "Well, I give him credit. He is a very clever fellow, and he has brought home the bacon." Success is so highly prized and admired that the means of obtaining it becomes secondary in the eyes of the majority.

3. The role of speech in the relationships of human beings is of course too great to be over-estimated. Speech becomes the prime weapon in swaying and molding the opinions and acts of others. It is the medium of the threat of force and the stratagem of cunning, but also it enters human life as the medium of persuasion and conviction. The speech ability, the capacity to use words in attaining purpose, shows as striking variations as any other capacity.

Though a function of intelligence, the power to speak (and write) convincingly and easily, is not at all related to other phases of intelligence. Though it can be cultivated, good verbalism is an innate ability, and a most valuable one. The power to speak clearly so as to express what is on one's own mind is uncommon, as any one can testify who has watched people struggling to express themselves. "You know" is a very frequent phrase in the conversation of the average man, and he means that, "My words are inadequate, but you know what I mean." The delight in the good writer or speaker is that he relieves other people's dissatisfaction in their own inadequate expression by saying what they yearn to say for themselves, thus giving them a vicarious achievement.

But the power of clear expression is not at all the power of persuasion, although it may be a part of it. One may clearly express himself and antagonize others. The persuader seeks to discover the obstacles to agreement with him in the minds of others and to remove or nullify them. He may seek to do this by a clear exposition of his wishes and desires, by showing how these will benefit the others (or at least not harm them), by meeting logically or otherwise the objections and demonstrating their futility. This he will attempt, if he is wise and practical, only in a limited group or among those who are keen-minded and open to reason. Even with them he will have to kindle and maintain their interest, and he must arouse a favorable emotional state.