The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗
- Author: Abraham Myerson
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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 circumstances. That is to
say, he must continually adjust himself to the unforeseen, the
obstacle, the favoring circumstance; 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
associates 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.” God’s will is,—but no one else’s. What happens when
two will and pray for diametrically opposing results? “Then God
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 God 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 assassination 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
constituents 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,
passionate, egoistic and in the last analysis 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 attitude 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 God of
victory is a righteous God 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 asserting 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 classical 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 antisocial 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
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