Part 5 (1/2)
These accidental graces that man makes in the instinctive and habitual control to which he subjects his environment become the most cherished values of his experience. Men may first have come to speak poetry accidentally, for language arose, like other human habits, as a thing of use. But the charming and delightful expression of feelings and ideas came to be cherished in themselves, so that what was first an accident in man's life, may become a deliberate practice.
When this creation of beautiful objects, or the beautiful expression of feelings or ideas is intentional, we call it art. In such intentional creation and cheris.h.i.+ng of the beautiful man's life becomes enriched and emanc.i.p.ated. He learns not only to live, but to live beautifully.
In such activity men, as has been recognized by social reformers from Plato to Bertrand Russell, are genuinely happy, and there alone find freedom. For in the creation of beauty man is not performing actions because he must, under the brutal compulsion of keeping alive. He is acting simply because action is delightful both in the process and in the result.
Whether in business, politics, or scholars.h.i.+p, men are happy to the extent to which they have the sense of creation that is peculiarly the artist's.
The products of art, moreover, are not desirable because they bring other goods, but because they themselves are intrinsically delightful. Men love to live in a world in which their marble has been made into statues, in which their houses are things of beauty rather than merely places in which to live. Their lives are enriched by living in a society where the thoughts and emotions which they communicate to one another and which they must somehow express can be not infrequently expressed with n.o.bility and music. Through science Nature becomes man's tool; through art it can become a beautiful instrument to work with, and a lovely thing in and for itself.
CHAPTER IV
THE BASIC HUMAN ACTIVITIES
FOOD, SHELTER, AND s.e.x. Thus far our a.n.a.lysis has been confined to the general types of human behavior. We have found that all human activity is conditioned by a native equipment consisting of certain more or less specific tendencies to action, and that these may be modified into acquired tendencies called ”habits.” We have found that through the processes of reflection, through imaginative trial and error, both of these may, within limits, be controlled. We must now proceed to an inventory of those elements of our native equipment which have an especial significance in social life.
In the first place, we must note the three great primary drives of human action, the unlearned and native demands for food, shelter, and s.e.x gratification.[1] Although the last-named does not display itself in human beings until a considerable degree of maturity has been attained there is indubitable evidence that it is an inborn and not an acquired reaction.
The practical utility of the first two is apparent; they are the most essential features of the group of so-called self-preservative instincts, among which may be grouped the natural tendency to recover one's equilibrium and the instinct of flight in the face of dangerous or threatening objects. The utility of the s.e.x instinct is racial rather than individual. The instinctive satisfaction human beings find in s.e.x gratification is the natural guarantee of the continuance of the race.
[Footnote 1: The reader must be reminded that the simpler reflexes involved in the use of the heart, lungs, intestines, and all the internal organs, must be cla.s.sed as part of man's native equipment.
They differ from those reactions commonly cla.s.sed as instincts in that they are simpler and stabler, that in their normal functioning they never rise to consciousness, and that they are almost completely beyond the individual's modification or control.]
In a general survey of this nature it IS impossible, as it is unnecessary, to examine in detail the physiological elements of the demand for food and shelter. It will suffice to point out that the first two are the ultimate biological bases of a large proportion of our economic activities. They are primary, not in the sense that they are constantly conscious motives to action, but that their fulfillment is prerequisite to the continuance of any of the other activities of the organism.
Agriculture and manufacture, the complicated systems of credit and exchange which human beings have devised, are, for the most part, contrivances for the fulfillment of these fundamental demands. With the complexity of civilization new demands, of course, arise, but these fundamental necessities are still the ultimate mainsprings of economic production.
The demand for s.e.x gratification, because of its enormous driving force and the emotional disturbances connected with it, offers a peculiarly acute instance of the difficulties brought about in the control of man's native endowment in his own best interest. While the production of offspring is its chief biological utility, satisfaction of the s.e.x instinct itself is stimulated in human beings quite apart from considerations of the desirability or undesirability of offspring. Since the s.e.x instinct is at once so deep-rooted and intense a driving force in human action, and its consequences of such crucial importance to both those directly involved and to the group as a whole, societies have, through law and custom and tradition, built up elaborate codes for its control. In civilized society the free operation of this instinct is checked in a thousand ways. But, as in the case of other primitive motives to action, the s.e.x instinct, obvious as are the disasters of disease and disorganization which follow as consequences of its uncontrolled indulgence, cannot altogether be repressed.
It is generally recognized that in men and animals alike the s.e.x impulse is apt to manifest itself in very vigorous and sustained efforts toward its natural end; and that in ourselves it may determine very strong desires, in the control of which all the organized forces of the developed personality, all our moral sentiments and ideals, and all the restraining influences of religion, law, custom and convention too often are confronted with a task beyond their strength.[1]
[Footnote 1: McDougall: _Social Psychology_, 11th ed., pp. 399-400.]
There is considerable agreement among students of the subject that the emotional energies aroused in connection with the s.e.x instinct may be drained off into other channels, and serve to quicken and sustain both artistic creation and appreciation and social and religious enthusiasms of various kinds. And the s.e.x instinct, as we shall find in our discussion of Racial Continuity (see p. 243) is the basis of the family.
PHYSICAL ACTIVITY. The difference between sticks and stones and living beings consists primarily in the fact that the latter are positively active; the former are pa.s.sively acted upon.
The stone will stay put, unless moved by some external agent, but even the amoeba will do something to its environment.
It will stretch out pseudopodia to reach solid objects to which to cling; it will attempt to return to these objects when dislodged; it will actively absorb food. Higher up in the animal scale, ”Rats run about, smell, dig, or gnaw, without real reference to the business in hand. In the same way Jack (a dog) scrabbles and jumps, the kitten wanders and picks, the otter slips about everywhere like ground lightning, the elephant fumbles ceaselessly, the monkey pulls things about.”[2] ”The most casual notice of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of exploring and testing activity. Objects are sucked, fingered and thumped; drawn and pushed, handled and thrown.”[3]
[Footnote 2: Hobhouse: _Mind in Evolution_, p. 195.]
[Footnote 3 Dewey: _How We Think_, p. 31.]
When vitality is at its height in the waking period of a young child, its environment is a succession of stimulations to activity. Man's ”innate tendency to fool” is notorious, a tendency particularly noticeable in children. Objects are responded to, not as means to ends, not with reference to their use, but simply for the sheer satisfaction of manipulation.
Facial expressions, sounds, gestures, are made almost on any provocation; they are the expressions of an abundant ”physiological uneasiness.” The two-year-old is a mechanism that simply must and will move about, make all kinds of superfluous gestures and facial expressions, and random sounds, as it were, just to get rid of its stored-up energy. Man's laziness and inertia are not infrequently commented on by moralists, but it is not laziness and inertia _per se_; certainly in normal individuals in the temperate zone, to do _something_ most of their waking time is a natural tendency and one intrinsically pleasant to practice. That the tendency to be active should vary in different individuals and at different times is, of course, as important a fact as it is a familiar one. Some of the causes of this variation will be noted in the succeeding.
In adult life for casual and random activity is subst.i.tuted activity directed by some end or purpose which determines the responses called into play. Professional and business, domestic and social enterprises and obligations take up most of the adult's energy. The contrast between the play of the child and the work of the adult is that in the case of the former actions are done for their own sake; and in the latter for some end. The child, we say, plays ”for the fun of the thing,” the adult works for pay, for professional success, for power, reputation, etc.
But even in the adult the desire for play powerfully persists.
Not all the grown-up's energy is absorbed in his work, and even some types of work, like that of the poet or painter, or the building-up of a great business organization, may be intrinsically delightful and self-sufficient activity. Under the conditions of modern industry, however, especially of machine production, much--in many cases, most--of the activity by which an individual earns his living, utilizes only some of his native tendencies to act, while the working day does not, under normal conditions, absorb all his energy. Whatever vitality is not, therefore, absorbed in necessary work goes into forms of purely gratuitous activity. Which form ”play”
shall take in the adult depends on the degree to which certain impulses are in him stronger than others, either by native endowment or cultivation, and which impulses have not been sufficiently utilized in him during the day's work. A man musically gifted will find his recreation in some performance on a musical instrument, let us say; on the other hand, if his work is music, those impulses, strong though they be, that make him a musician, will have been sufficiently exhausted in the day's work to make some other activity a more satisfactory recreation.
The relations between play and work can be better understood by a consideration of the physiological importance of variety in activity. A certain regular recurrence of response may be pleasant, as in rowing or canoeing, or in listening to the rhythms of poetry or music, but a prolonged repet.i.tion of precisely the same stimulus or the same set of stimuli may make responses dissatisfying to the degree of pain. Ideal activity, biologically, would be one where every impulse was just sufficiently frequently called upon to make response easy, fluent, and satisfactory.