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

of the stage by

virtue of adverse adventures or misfortunes. Hence the wild

white-slave yarns and the “orphan child” who has been abused.

Every police department knows these girls and boys, as does every

social service agency.

 

I am afraid we all yield to the desire to be interesting or to

make artistic our adventures. To tell of what happens to us, of

what we have seen or said or done exactly as it was, is

difficult, not only because of faulty memory, but because we like

to make the tale more like a story, because, let us say, of the

artist in us. Life is so incomplete and unfinished! We so rarely

retort as we should have! And a bald recital of most events is

not interesting and so,—the proportions are altered, humor is

introduced, the conversation becomes more witty, especially our

share, and the adventure is made a little more thrilling. And

each who tells of it adds little or much, and in the end what is

told never happened. “The Devil is the father of lies,” runs the

old proverb. If so, we have all given birth to some of his

children.

 

Though direct lying is held to be harmful and socially

disastrous, and evidence of either fear and cowardice or

malevolence, the essential honesty of people is usually summed up

in the term sincerity. The advance of civilization is marked by

the appearance of toleration, the recognition that belief is a

private right, especially as concerns religion, and that

sincerity in belief is more important than the nature of belief.

What is really implied by sincerity is the absence of camouflage

or disguise, so that it becomes possible to know what a man

believes and thinks by his words and his acts. As a matter of

fact, that ideal is neither realized nor desirable, and it is as

wise and natural to inhibit the expression of our beliefs and

feelings as it is to inhibit our actions. To be frank with a man,

to tell him sincerely that we believe he is a scoundrel, and that

we hate him and to show this feeling by act, would be to plunge

the world into barbarism. We must disguise hate, and there are

times when we must disguise love. Sincerity is at the best only

relative; we ought to be sincere about love, religion and the

validity of our purposes, but in the little relationships

sincerity must be replaced by caution, courtesy and the needs of

efficiency. In reality we ask for sincerity only in what is

pleasant to us; the sincere whose frankness and honesty offend we

call boors.

 

Sincere self-revelation, if well done, is one of the most

esteemed forms of literary production. Montaigne’s preface to his

“Essays” is a promise that he lived up to in the sincerity and

frankness of his self and other analysis. “Pepy’s Diary” charms

because the naked soul of an Englishman of the seventeenth

century is laid before us, with its trivialities, lusts,

repentance and aspirations. In the latter nineteenth century,

Mary MacLane’s diary had an extraordinary vogue because of the

apparent sincerity of the eager original nature there revealed.

We love young children because their selfishness, their

curiosity, their “real” nature, is shown to us in their every

word and act. In their presence we are relaxed, off our guard and

not forced to that eternal hiding and studying that the society

of our equals imposes on us.

 

We all long for sincerity, but the too sincere are treated much

as the skeptic of Bjoriasen’s tale, who was killed by his

friends. As they stood around his body, one said to the other,

“There lies one who kicked us around like a football.” The dead

man spoke, “Ah, yes, but I always kicked you to the goal.” The

sincere of purpose must always keep his sincerity from wounding

too deeply; he must always be careful and include his own foibles

and failings in his attack, and he must make his efforts witty,

so that he may have the help of laughter. But here the danger is

that he will be listed as a pleasant comedian, and his serious

purpose will be balked by his reputation.

 

Sincerity, thus, is relative, and the insincere are those whose

purposes, declared by themselves to be altruistic, are none the

less egoistic, whose attachments and affections, loudly

protested, are not lasting and never intense, and whose manners

do not reflect what they themselves are but what they think will

be pleasing and acceptable to others. The relatively sincere seek

to make their outer behavior conform, within the possibilities,

to their inner natures; they are polite but not gushing, devoted

to their friends at heart and in deed, but not too friendly to

their enemies or to those they dislike, and they believe in their

own purposes as good. The unhappiest state possible is when one

starts to question the sincerity and validity of one’s own

purposes, from which there results an agonizing paralysis of

purpose. The sincere inspire with faith and cooperation, if there

is a unity of interest, but it must not be forgotten that others

are inspired to hatred and rivalry, if the sincerity is along

antagonistic lines. We are apt to forget that sincerity, like

love, faith and hope, is a beautiful word, but the quality of

sincerity, like the other qualities, may be linked with misguided

purpose. No one doubts the sincerity of the Moslem hordes of the

eighth century in desiring to redeem the world for Mahomet, but

we are quite as sincerely glad that sturdy Charles Martel smashed

them back from Europe. Their very sincerity made them the more

dangerous. In estimating any one’s sincerity, it is indispensable

to inquire with what other qualities is this sincerity

linked,—to what nouns of activity is it a qualifying adjective?

 

Honesty, truthfulness and sincerity are esteemed because there is

in our social structure the great need that men shall trust one

another. The cynic and the worldly wise, and also the experiences

of life, teach “never trust, always be cautious, never confide in

letter or speech,” curb the trusting urge in our nature. The

betrayal of trust is the one sin; all other crimes from murder

down may find an excuse in passion or weakness, but when the

trusting are deceived or injured, the cement substance of our

social structure is dissolved and the fabric of our lives

threatened. To trust is to hand over one’s destiny to another and

is a manifestation of the mutual dependence of man. It is in part

a judgment of character, it is in part an original trait, is an

absence of that form of fear called suspicion and on its positive

side is a form of courage.

 

Since it is in part a judgment of character in the most of us, it

tends to grow less prominent as we grow older. The young child is

either very trusting or entirely suspicious, and when his

suspicions are overcome by acquaintance and simple bribes, he

yields his fortunes to any one. (It is a pleasant fiction that

children and dogs know whom to trust, by an intuition.) But as

life proceeds, the most of us find that our judgment of character

is poor, and we hesitate to pin anything momentous on it. Only

where passion blinds us, as in sex love, or when our self-love

and lust for quick gain[1] or hate has been aroused do we lose

the caution that is the antithesis of trust. The expert in human

relations is he who can overcome distrust; the genius in human

relations is he who inspires trust.

 

For the psychopathologist an enormous interest centers in a group

of people whom we may call paranoic. In his mildest form the

paranoic is that very common “misunderstood” person who distrusts

the attitude and actions of his neighbors, who believes himself

to be injured purposely by every unintentional slight, or rather

who finds insult and injury where others see only forgetfulness

or inattention. Of an inordinate and growing ego, the paranoic of

a pathological trend develops the idea or delusion of

persecution. From the feeling that everything and every one is

against him, he builds up, when some major purpose becomes

balked, a specific belief that so and so or this or “that group

is after me.” “They are trying to injure or kill me” because they

are jealous or have some antagonistic purpose. Here we find the

half-baked inventor, whose “inventions” have been turned down for

the very good reason that they are of no value, and who concludes

 

[1] All the great swindlers show how the lust for gain plus the

wiles of the swindler overcome the caution and suspicion of the

“hard-headed,” The Ponzi case is the latest contribution to the

subject.

 

that some big corporations are in league with the Patent Office

to prevent him from competing with them; here we have the

“would-be” artist or singer or writer whose efforts are not

appreciated, largely because they are foolish, but who believes

that the really successful (and he often names them) hate and

fear him, or that the Catholics are after him, or perhaps the

Jews or the Masons.

 

In its extreme form the paranoic is rare just as is the extremely

trusting person of saintly type. But in minor form every group

and every institution has its paranoic, hostile, suspicious,

“touchy,” quick to believe something is being put over on him and

quick to attribute his failure to others. In that last is a

cardinal point in the compass of character. Some attribute their

failure to others, and some in their self-analysis find the root

of their difficulties and failures in themselves.

 

Under the feeling of injustice a paranoid trend is easily aroused

in all of us, and we may misinterpret the whole world when

laboring under that feeling, just as we may, if we are correct,

see the social organization very clearly as a result. Therein is

the danger of any injustice and seeming injustice, As a result

condemnation is extreme, wrongly directed and with little

constructive value. We become paranoid, see wrong where there is

none and enemies in those who are friendly.

 

The over-trusting, over-confidential are the virtuous in excess,

and their damage is usually localized to themselves or their

families. They tell their secrets to any one who politely

expresses an interest, they will hand over their fortunes to the

flattering stranger, to the smooth-tongued. Sometimes they are

merely unworldly, absorbed in unworldly projects, but more often

they are merely trusting fools.

 

Man the weak, struggling in a world whose forces are pitiless,

whose fairest face hides grim disaster, has sought to find some

one, some force, he might unfailingly trust. He raises his hands

to heaven; he cries, “There is One I can trust. Though He smite

me I shall have faith.”

 

CHAPTER XIV. SEX CHARACTERS AND DOMESTICITY

 

Originally reproduction is a part of the function of all

protoplasm; and in the primitive life-forms an individual becomes

two by the “simple process” of dividing itself into halves. Had

this method continued into the higher forms most of the trouble

as well as most of the pleasure of human existence would never

occur. Or had the hermaphrodite method of combining two sexes in

the one individual, so frequent in the plant world, found its way

into the higher animals, the moral struggles of man would have

become simplified into that resulting from his, struggles with

similar creatures. Literature would not flourish, the drama would

never have been heard of, dancing and singing would not need the

attention of the uplifter, dress would be a method of keeping

warm, and life would be sane enough but without the delicious

joys of sex-love.

 

Why are there two sexes?[1] I must refer the reader to the