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

a few cases stands up against the strain of life. Unless

money comes, a man cannot marry, or if he marries, then his wife

must do without ease and leisure and pretty things, and he must

live in a second-rate way. Sooner or later the idealist feels

himself uneasily inferior, and though he may compensate by

achievement or by developing a strong trend towards

seclusiveness, more often he regrets bitterly his idealism and in

his heart envies the rich. For they, ignorant and arrogant, may

purchase his services, his brains and self-sacrifice and buy

these ingredients of himself with the air of one purchasing a

machine. So the idealist finds himself condemned to a meager

life, unless his idealism brings him wealth, and he drifts in

spirit away from the character of his youth. It is the strain of

life, the fear of old age and sickness, the silent pressure of

the deprivations of a man’s beloved ones, the feeling of

helplessness in disaster and the silent envious feeling of

inferiority that makes inroads in the ranks of the idealists so

that at twenty there are ten idealists to the one found at forty.

 

I remember well one of my colleagues, working patiently in a

laboratory, out of sight of the world and out of the stream of

financial reward, enthused by science and service, who threw up

his work and went into the practice of medicine. “Why?” I asked

him. “Because when one of my brothers took sick and was in dire

need, I who loved him could not help. I had no money, and all my

monographs put together could not help him buy a meal. There is a

cousin of ours, who has grown rich running a cheap moving-picture

house, where the taste of the community is debauched every day.

He lent my brother two thousand dollars out of his superfluities;

it involved no sacrifice to him, for he purchased a third car at

the same time—and yet HE is our savior. Love alone is a torture.

I am going to get money.”

 

The world is built up on the sacrifices of the idealists, and

eternally it crucifies them. Wealth and power are to him who has

a marketable commodity, and one cannot complain when true genius

becomes rich. But the genius to make money may be and often

is—an exploiting type of ability, a selfishly practical

industry, which neither invents nor is of great service. The men

who now do the basic work in invention and scientific work in

laboratories are poorly paid and only now and then honored. Every

year in the United States hundreds of them leave their work in

research and seek “paying jobs,” to the impoverishment of the

world, but to their own financial benefit. Countries where the

scramble for wealth is not so keen, where the best brains do not

find themselves pressed into business, produce far more science,

art and literature than we do, with all our wealth. We will

continue to be a second-rate nation in these regards, still

looking for our great American novel and play, still seeking real

singers and artists, until our idealism can withstand the

pressure of our practical civilization.

 

For here is a great division in people. There are those who

become enthused by the noble aims of life, by the superiority and

service that come in the work of teacher, priest, physician,

scientist, philosopher and philanthropist, and those that seek

superiority and power in wealth, station and influence. Those

who, will fellowship and those who will power is a short way of

putting it, the idealists and the practical is another.

Fellowship is built up on sympathy, pity, friendliness and the

desire to help others; it is essentially democratic, and in it

runs the cooperative activities of man. For it is not true that

“competition is the life of trade”; cooperation is its life. Men

dig ore in mines, others transport their produce, others smelt it

and work it into shape, according to the designs and plans of

still other men; then it is transported by new groups and

marketed by an endless chain of men whose labors dovetail to the

end that mankind has a tool, a habitation or an ornament. The

past and present cooperate in this labor, as do the remote ends

of the earth. Competition is the SPUR of trade; its mighty

sinews, its strong heart and stout lungs are cooperative.

 

Power is aristocratic, and elaborates and calls into play

competitive spirit. In all men the desire for power and the

desire for fellowship blend and interplay in their ambitions and

activities; in some fellowship predominates, in others power. If

a man specializes in fellowship aims, without learning the secret

of power, he is usually futile and sterile of results; if a man

seeks power only and disregards fellowship, is hated and is a

tyrant, cruel and without pity. To be an idealist and practical

is of course difficult and usually involves a compromise of the

ideal. Some degree of compromise is necessary, and the rigid

idealist would have a better sanction for his refusal to

compromise if he or any one could be sure of the perfection of

his ideal.

 

The practical seek their own welfare or the welfare of others

through direct means, through exerting the power and the

influence that is money and station. Rarely do they build for a

distant future, and their goal is in some easily and popularly

understood good. What they say and what they do applies to

getting rich or healthy, to being good in a conventional way;

success is their goal and that success lies in the tangibles of

life. They easily become sordid and mean, since it is not

possible always to separate good and evil when one is governed by

expediency and limited idea of welfare. This is also true,—that

while the practical usually tend to lose idealism entirely, and

find themselves the tools of habits and customs they cannot break

from, now and then a practical man reaches a high place of power

and becomes the idealist.

 

Though all men seek power and fellowship, we have a right to ask

what are a man’s leading pursuits. And we must be prepared to

tear off a mask before we understand the most of our fellows, for

society and all of life is permeated with disguise. Now and then

one seeks to appear worse than he is, hates fuss and praise, but

this rare bird (to use slang and Latin in one phrase) is the

exception that proves the rule that men on the whole try to

appear better than they are. Rarely does a man say, “I am after

profit and nothing else,” although occasionally he does; rarely

does the scientist say, “I seek fame and reward,” even though his

main stimulus may be this desire and not the ideal of adding to

the knowledge of the world. Behind the philanthropist may lurk

the pleasure in changing the lives of others, behind the reformer

the picture of himself in history. The best of men may and do

cherish power motives, and we must say that to seek power is

ethically good, provided it does not injure fellowship. One must

not, however, be misled by words; duty, service, fellowship come

as often to the lips of the selfish as the unselfish.

 

We spoke of power as a form of superiority. Since all superiority

is comparative, there are various indirect ways of seeking

superiority and avoiding inferiority. One of these is by adverse

criticism of our fellows. The widespread love of gossip, the

quick and ever-present tendency to disparage others, especially

the fortunate and the successful, are manifestations of this type

of superiority seeking. Half the humor of the world is the

pleasure, produced by a technique, of feeling superior to the

boor, the pedant, the fool, the new rich, the pompous, the

over-dignified, etc. Half, more than half, of the conversation

that goes on in boudoir, dining room, over the drinks and in the

smoking room, is criticism, playful and otherwise, of others.

There are people in whom the adversely critical spirit is so

highly developed that they find it hard to praise any one or to

hear any one praised—their criticism leaps to the surface in one

way or another, in the sneer, in the “butt,” in the joke, in the

gibe, in the openly expressed attack. This way of being superior

may be direct and open, more often it is disguised. Many a woman

(and man) who denounces the sinner receives from her

contemplation of that sinner the most of her feeling of virtue

and goodness. The more bitterly the self-acknowledged “saint”

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

himself.

 

People seek the strangest roads to the feeling of superiority.

From that classical 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 classed 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 democracy in belief,

opinion and ideal. The mass 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 mass 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 passion 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