The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗

set up in each age and place usually arise from local

pride, from the familiar type. The Mongolian who finds beauty in

his slanting-eyed, wide-cheek boned, yellow mate has as valid a

sanction as the Anglo-Saxon who worships at the shrine of his

wide-eyed, straight-nosed blonde.

 

[1] The peasant type, greatly admired by the agricultural folk of

Central Europe, is stout and ruddy. This is a better ideal of

beauty than the lily-white, slender and dainty maid of the

cultured, who very often can neither work nor bear and nurse

children.

 

When we leave the physical qualities and pass to the mental we

again find a lack of agreement as to the admirable. All agree

that intelligence is to be admired, but how shall that

intelligence be manifested? In practice, the major part of the

world admires the intelligence that is financially and socially

successful, and the rich and powerful have the greatest share of

the world’s praise. Power, strength, and superiority command

admiration, even from the unwilling, and the philosopher who

stands aloof from the world and is without real strength finds

himself admiring a crude, bustling fellow ordering men about.

True, we admire such acknowledged great intelligences as Plato,

Galileo, Newton, Pascal, Darwin, etc., but in reality only a

fragment of the men and women of any country know anything at all

about these men, and the admiration of most is an acceptance of

the authority of others as to what it is proper to admire.

Genuine admiration is in proportion to the intelligence and

idealism of the admirer. And there are in this country a thousand

intense admirers of Babe Ruth and his mighty baseball club to one

who pours out his soul before the image of Pasteur. You may know

a man (or woman) not by his lip-homage, but by what he genuinely

admires, by that which evokes his real enthusiasm and praise.

Judge by that and then note that the most constant admiration of

the women of our country goes out to actresses, actors,

professional beauties, with popular authors and lecturers a bad

second, and that of the men is evoked by prize fighters, ball

players and the rich. No wonder the problems of the world find no

solution, for it is only by fits and starts that men and women

admire real intelligence and real ability. The orator has more

admirers than the thinker, and this is the curse of politics; the

executive has more admirers than the research worker, and this is

the bane of industry; the entertainer is more admired than the

educator, and that is why Charlie Chaplin makes a million a year

and President Eliot received only a few thousand. The race and

the nation has its generous enthusiasms and its bursts of

admiration for the noble, but its real admiration it gives to

those whom it best understands. Fortunately the leaders of the

race have more of generosity and fine admiration than have the

mass they lead. Left to itself, the mass of the race limits its

hero-worship to the lesser, unworthy race of heroes.

 

The school histories, which should emphasize the admirable as

well as point out the reverse, have played a poor role in

education. The hero they depict is the warrior, and they fire the

hearts of the child with admiration and desire for emulation.

They say almost nothing of the great inventors, scientists and

philanthropists. The teaching of history should, above all, set

up heroes for the child to study, admire and emulate. “When the

half-gods go the gods arrive.” The stage of history as taught is

cluttered with the tin-plate shedders of blood to the exclusion

of the greater men.[1]

 

[1] Plutarch’s Lives are an example of the praise and place given

to the soldier and orator; and many a child, reading them, has

burned to be an Alexander or a Caesar. Wells’ History, with all

its defects, pushes the “conquerors” to their real place as

enemies of the race.

 

When the object that confronts us is so superior, so vast, that

we sink into insignificance, then admiration takes on a tinge of

fear in the state or feeling of awe. All men feel awe in the

presence of strength and mystery, so that the concept of God is

that most wrapped up with this emotion, and the ceremonies with

which kings and institutions have been surrounded strike awe by

their magnificence and mystery into the hearts of the governed.

We contemplate natural objects, such as mountains, mighty rivers

and the oceans, with awe because we feel so little and puny in

comparison, and we do not “enjoy” contemplating them because we

hate to feel little. Or else we grow familiar with them, and the

awe disappears. The popular and the familiar are never awe-full,

and even death loses in dignity when one has dissected a few

bodies. So objects viewed by night or in gloom inspire awe,

though seen by day they are stripped of mystery and interest. To

the adolescent boy, woman is a creature to be regarded with

awe,—beautiful, strangely powerful and mysterious. To the

grown-up man, enriched and disillusioned by a few experiences,

woman, though still loved, is no longer worshiped.

 

Though the reverent spirit is admirable and poetic, it is not by

itself socially valuable. It has been played upon by every false

prophet, every enslaving institution. It prevents free inquiry;

it says to science, “Do not inquire here. They who believe do not

investigate. This is too holy a place for you.” We who believe in

science deny that anything can be so holy that it can be

cheapened by light, and we believe that face to face with the

essential mysteries of life itself even the most assiduous and

matter-of-fact must feel awe. Man, the little, has probed into

the secrets of the universe of which he is a part. What he has

learned, what he can learn, make him bow his head with a

reverence no worshiper of dogmatic mysteries can ever feel.

 

CHAPTER X. COURAGE, RESIGNATION, SUBLIMATION, PATIENCE, THE WISH,

AND ANHEDONIA

 

In the preceding chapter we spoke of the feeling of energy and

certain of the basic emotions—such as fear, anger, joy, sorrow,

disgust, surprise and admiration. It is important to know that

rarely does a man react to any life situation in which the

feeling of energy is not an emotional constituent and governs in

a general way that reaction. Moreover, fear, anger, joy and the

other feelings described mingle with this energy feeling and so

are built great systems of the affective life.

 

1. Courage is one of these systems. It is not merely the absence

of fear that constitutes courage, though we interchange

“fearless” with “courageous.” Frequently it is the conquest of

fear by the man himself that leads him to the highest courage.

There is a type of courage based on the lack of imagination, the

inability to see ahead the disaster that lurks around every

corner. There is another type of courage based on the philosophy

that to lose control of oneself is the greatest disaster. There

are the nobly proud, whose conception of “ought,” of “noblesse

oblige,” makes them the real aristocrats of the race.

 

The fierce, the predisposed to anger are usually courageous.

Unrestrained anger tends to break down imagination and foresight;

caution disappears and the smallest will attack the largest. In

racial propaganda, one way to arouse courage is to arouse anger.

The enemy is represented as all that is despicable and mean and

as threatening the women and children, religion, or the flag. It

is not sufficient to arouse hate, for hate may fear. While

individuals of a fierce type may be cowards, and the gentle often

enough are heroes, the history of the race shows that physical

courage resides more with the fierce races than with the gentle.

 

Those who feel themselves superior in strength and energy are

much more apt to be courageous than those who feel themselves

inferior. In fact, the latter have to force themselves to

courage, whereas the former’s courage is spontaneous. Men do not

fear to be alone in a house as women do, largely because men feel

themselves equal to coping with intruders, who are sure to be

men, while women do not. One of the early signs of chronic

sickness is a feeling of fear, a loss of courage, based on a

feeling of inferiority to emergencies. The Spartans made it part

of that development of courage for which their name stands, to

develop the physique of both their men and women. Their example,

in rational measure, should be followed by all education, for

courage is essential to nobility of character. I emphasize that

such training should be extended to both male and female, for we

cannot expect to have a timorous mother efficiently educate her

boy to be brave, to say nothing of the fact that her own

happiness and efficiency rest on courage.

 

Tradition is a mighty factor in the production of courage. To

feel that something is expected of one because one’s ancestors

lived up to a high standard becomes a guiding feeling in life.

Not to be inferior, not to disappoint expectation, to maintain

the tradition that a “So-and-So” never shows the white feather,

makes, heroes of the soldiers of famous regiments, of firemen and

policemen, of priests, of the scions of distinguished families,

aye, even of races. To every man in the grip of a glorious

tradition it seems as if those back of him are not really dead,

as if they stand with him, and speak with his voice and act in

his deeds. The doctor who knows of the martyrs of his profession

and knows that in the code of his calling there are no diseases

he must hesitate to face, goes with equanimity where others who

are braver in facing death of other kinds do not dare to enter.

 

Courage is competitive, courage is cooperative, as is every other

phase of the mental life of men. We gather courage as we watch a

fellow worker face his danger with a brave spirit, for we will

not be outdone. Amour propre will not permit us to cringe or give

in, though we are weary to death of a struggle. But also we

thrill with a common feeling at the sight of the hero holding his

own, we are enthused by it, we wish to be with him; and his

shining example moves us to a fellowship in courage. We find

courage in the belief that others are “with us,” whether that

courage faces physical or moral danger. To be “with” a man is to

more than double his resources of strength, intelligence and

courage; it is more than an addition, for it multiplies all his

virtues and eliminates his defects. The sum total is the Hero. I

wonder if there really ever has been a truly lonely hero, if

always there has not been some one who said, “I have faith in

you; I am with you!” If a man has lacked human backing, he has

said to himself, “The Highest of all is with me, though I seem to

stand alone. God gives me courage!”

 

In a profoundly intellectual way, courage depends on a feeling

that one is useful, not futile. Men lose courage, in the sense of

brave and determined effort, when it seems as if progress has

ceased and their place in the world has disappeared. This one

sees frequently in middle-aged men, who find themselves relegated

to secondary places by younger men, who feel that they are

slipping and soon will be dependents.

 

Hope, the foreseeing of a possible success, is necessary for most

courage, though now and then despair acts with a courage that is

largely pride. The idea of a future world has given more courage

to man