The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗
- Author: Abraham Myerson
- Performer: 1596050667
Book online «The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗». Author Abraham Myerson
The virgin, the continent who are intensely interested in sex are
not morbid, even though they have been forbidden to think of a
natural craving and appetite. But when the interest is for the
horrible it is often the case that the excitement aroused by the
subject is pleasurable, because it is a mild excitement and does
not quite reach disgust. Confronted with the real perversity, the
disgust aroused would quite effectually conquer interest.
And here is a fundamental law of interest: it must lead to a
profitable, pleasurable result or else it tends to disappear. If
this is too bold a statement, let me qualify it by stating that a
profitable, pleasurable result must be foreseen or foreseeable.
Either in some affective state, or in some tangible good,
interest seeks fulfillment. Disappointment is the foe of
interest, and too prolonged a “vestibule of satisfaction” (to use
Hocking’s phrase) destroys or impairs interest.
CHAPTER VIII. THE SENTIMENTS OF LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, HATE, PITY AND
DUTY. COMPENSATION AND ESCAPE
I shall ignore the complexities that arise when we seek to
organize our reactions into various groups by making a simple
classification of feeling, for the purposes of this book. There
is a primary result of any stimulation, whether from within
ourselves or without, which we have called excitement. This
excitement may have a pleasurable or an unpleasurable quality,
and we cannot understand just what is back of pleasure and pain
in this sense. Such an explanation, that pleasure is a sign of
good for the organism and pain a sign of bad, is an error in that
often an experience that produces pleasure is a detriment and an
injury. If pleasure were an infallible sign of good, no books on
character, morals or hygiene would need to be written.
This primary excitement, when associated with outer events or
things, becomes differentiated into many forms. Curiosity (or
interest) is the focusing of that excitement on particular
objects or ends, in order that the essential value or meaning of
that object or individual become known. Curiosity and interest
develop into the seeking of experience and the general
intellectual pursuits. We have already discussed this phase of
excitement.
An object of interest may then evoke further feeling. It may be
one’s baby, or one’s father or a kinsman or a female of the same
species. A type of feeling FAVORABLE to the object is aroused,
called “tender feeling,” which is associated with deeplying
instincts and has endless modifications and variations. Perhaps
its great example is the tender feeling of the mother for the
baby, a feeling so strong that it leads to conduct of self-sacrifice; conduct that makes nothing of privation, suffering,
even death, if these will help the object of the tender feeling,
the child. Tender feeling of this type, which we call love, is a
theme one cannot discuss dryly, for it sweeps one into reveries;
it suggests softly glowing eyes, not far from tears, tenderly
curved lips, just barely smiling, and the soft humming of the
mother to the babe in her arms. It is the soft feeling which is
the unifying feeling, and when it reaches a group they become
gentle in tone and manners and feel as one. The dream of the
reformer has always been the extension of this tender feeling
from the baby, from the child and the helpless, to all men, thus
abolishing strife, conquering hate, unifying man. This type of
love is also paternal, though it is doubtful whether as such it
ever reaches the intensity it does in the mother. By a sort of
association it spreads to all children, to all little things, to
all helpless things, except where there exists a counter feeling
already well established.
Though typical in the mother, child relationship, tender feeling
or love, exists in many other relationships. The human family,
with its close association, its inculcated unity of interests, in
its highest form is based on the tender feeling. The noble ideal
of the brotherhood of man comes from an extension of the feeling
found in brothers. The brotherly feeling is emphasized, though
the sisterly feeling is fully as strong, merely because the male
member of genus homo has been the articulate member, he has
written and talked as if he, and not his sister, were the
important human personage. So fraternal feeling is tender
feeling, existing between members of the same family, or the love
that we conceive ought to be present. Is such love instinctive,
as is the maternal love? If it is, that instinct is very much
weaker, and hostile feeling, indifference, rivalry, may easily
replace it. We rarely conceive of a mortal world where so intense
a love as that of the mother will be the common feeling; all we
dare hope for is a world in which there will be a fine fraternal
feeling.
Fraternal feeling is born of association together, any task
undertaken en masse, any living together under one roof. Even
when men sit down to eat at the same table, it tends to appear.
So college life, the barracks, secret orders, awaken it, but
here, as always, while it links together the associated, it shuts
out as non-fraternal those not associated.
What we call friendly feeling is a less vehement, more
intellectualized form of tender feeling. It demands a certain
equality and a certain similarity in tastes, though some
friendships are noted for the dissimilarity of the friends.
Friendship lives on reciprocal benefits, tangible or intangible,
though sentimentalists may take exception to this. Primary in it
is the good opinion of the friends and interest in one another;
we cannot be friends with those who think we are foolish or mean
or bad. We ALLOW a friend to say that we have acted wrongly
because we think he has our interest at heart, because he has
shown that he has this interest at heart, though his saying so
sometimes strains the friendship for a while. Friendship ideally
expects no material benefits, but it lives on the spiritual
benefit of sympathy and expressed interest and the flattery of a
taste in common. It is a unification of individuals that has been
glorified as the perfect relationship, since it has no
classifiable instinct behind it and is in a sense democracy at
its noblest. Friendship is easiest formed in youth, because men
are least selfish, least specialized at that time. As time goes
on, alas, our own interests and purposes narrow down in order
that we may succeed; there is less time and energy for
friendship.
Sex love is only in part made up of tender feeling. Passion,
admiration of beauty, desire of possession, the love of conquest,
take away from the “other” feeling that is the basis of
tenderness or true love. We desire so much for ourselves in sex
love that we have not so much capacity for tender feeling as we
usually think we have. The protests of eternal devotion and
unending self-sacrifice are sincere enough but they have this
proviso in the background: “You must give yourself to me.” If the
lovers can also be friends, if they have a real harmony of
tastes, desires and ambitions, if they can recede their ego
feeling, know how to compromise, then this added to sex feeling
makes the most genuinely satisfying of all human relations, or at
least the most reciprocal. But the two human beings who fall in
love are rarely enough alike, and their relationship is rarely
one of equality; traditional duties and rights are not equal;
they will seek different things, and their relationship is too
close and intimate to be an easy one to maintain. Sex love and
marriage are different matters, for though they may be the same,
too often they are not. Rarely does sex love maintain itself
without marriage and marriage colors over sex love with parental
feelings, financial interests, home and its emotions, etc. In sex
gratification[1] there is the danger of all sensuous pleasure:
that a periodic appetite gratified often leaves behind it an
ennui, a distaste,—sometimes reaching dislike—of the entire act
and associations.
[1] Stanley Hall says that after sex gratification there is
“taedium vitae,” weariness of life. In unsanctioned sex
gratification this is extreme and takes on either bitter
self-reproach or else a hate of the partner. But this is due to
the inner conflict rather than the sex act.
Is all tender feeling, all love, sexual in its essential nature?
The Freudians say yes to this, or what amounts to yes. All mother
love arises from the sex sphere, and it cannot be denied that in
the passionate desire to fondle, to kiss and even to bite there
is something very like the excitement of sex. But there is
something very different in the wish for self-sacrifice, the pity
for the helpless state, the love of the littleness. Women, when
they love men, often add maternal feeling to it, but mainly they
love their strength, size and vigor; and there tenderness and
passion differ. Certainly there seems little of the sexual in the
love of a father for his baby,[1] though the Freudians do not
hesitate in their use of the term homosexual. Apparently all
children have incestuous desire for their parents, if we are to
trust Freud. Without entering into detailed reasoning, I disavow
any truly sexual element in tender feeling. It is part of the
reception we give to objects having a favorable relation to
ourselves. Indeed, we give it to our houses, our dogs, our
cattle; our pipes are hallowed by friendly association, and so
with our books, our clothes and our homes. We extend it in deep,
full measure to the very rocks and rills of our native land or to
some place where we spent happy or tender days. Tender feeling,
love, is inclusive of much of the sex emotion, and the
characteristic mistake of the Freudians of identifying somewhat
similar things has here been made.
[1] It’s a very difficult world to live in, if we are to trust
the Freudians. If your boy child loves his mother, that’s
heterosexual; if he loves his father, that’s homosexual; and the
love of a girl child for her parents simply reverses the above
formula. If your wife says of the baby boy, “How I love him! He
looks just like my father,” be careful; that’s a daughter-father
complex of a dangerous kind and means the most unhallowed things,
and may cause her to have a nervous breakdown some day!
Love, then, is this tender feeling made purposive and
intelligent. It is a sentiment, in Shand’s phrase, and seeks the
good of its object. It may be narrow, it may be broad, it may be
intense or feeble, but in its organized sense it plans, fights
and cherishes. It has organized with it the primary
emotions,—fear if the object is in danger, or anger is evoked
according to the circumstances; joy if the object of love is
enhanced or prospers; sorrow if it is lost or injured under
circumstances that make the lover helpless. Love is not only the
tenderest feeling, but it is also the most heroic and desperate
fighter in behalf of the loved one. Here we are face to face with
the contradictions that we always meet when we personify a
quality or make an abstraction. Love may do the most hateful
things; love may stunt, the character of the lover and the
beloved. In other words, love, tender feeling, must be conjoined
with intelligence, good judgment, determination and fairness
before it is useful. It would be a nice question to determine
just how much harm misguided love has done.
What is pity? Though objects of love always elicit pity, when
helpless or injured, objects of pity are not necessarily objects
of love. In fact, we may pity through contempt. Objective pity is
a type
Comments (0)