Part 13 (1/2)
EGOISM _VERSUS_ ALTRUISM. The individual in developing his own personality need not, necessarily, be selfish, nor is the enhancement of one's personality incompatible with altruism.
One man may find his individuality sufficiently developed in a large bank account, another in discovering a cure for cancer; one man may seek nothing but gratification of his physical appet.i.tes; another may find his fulfillment on the battlefield in defense of the national honor. Since man is born with the original tendencies to herd with and have common sympathies with his fellows, and to pity those of them that are weak and distressed, there is nothing more unnatural about altruism than about egoism. It is true that in some men the so-called altruistic impulses, the impulse to sympathize with the emotions, feelings, aspirations and difficulties of others, and to pity them in their distress, are comparatively weak; that in some men the more obviously egoistic impulses, such as the gratification of bodily desires, the acquisition of physical possessions are strong and uncontrollable. But through education the altruistic and social impulses of men may be cultivated and strengthened, so that they may become more powerful and dominant than even the urgency of physical desire. ”Man cannot live by bread alone,” and a man in whom a pa.s.sion for reform or for religion, for a cause or for a conquest has become strong, will sacrifice food, sleep, and physical comfort, and may even find the satisfactory fulfillment of self in self-sacrifice and obliteration.[1]
[Footnote 1: This is partly because man's sense of selfhood is so largely socially conditioned and affected by praise and blame.
Many a man in whom impulses of an egoistic sort are strong cannot resist the scorn of his gang, club, or clique. In this sense even socially beneficial actions may be ”selfish.”]
The old distinction between egoism and altruism is thus an artificial one. A genuinely altruistic individual derives satisfaction from the beneficent things he does, though he does not, as Jeremy Bentham supposed, calculate the benefits he will derive from his beneficence. Altruism is just as natural as egoism in its origins, though the impulses of self-preservation and personal physical satisfaction are natively stronger and more numerous. But human beings can be educated to altruism, and find the same satisfaction in service to others as individuals reared in less humane conditions find in satisfying their immediate physical desires.
SELF-SATISFACTION AND DISSATISFACTION. Since the development of selfhood plays so large a part in human action, it is natural that powerful emotions should be a.s.sociated with it.
Individuals become conscious of the kind of self they are and measure it favorably or unfavorably with the kind of self they would be. In so far as the actuality they conceive themselves to be measures up to the ideal self, to the fulfillment of which they have dedicated themselves, they have a feeling of self-satisfaction, of elation. They are jubilant or crestfallen, satisfied or dissatisfied with themselves, in so far as they are in their own estimation making good. In normal individuals, these estimates of triumph and frustration are, of course, colored and qualified by signs of approval and disapproval from other people. There are very few--and these insanely conceited--in whom the opinions of others are not largely influential in determining their own estimates of themselves.
The emotions themselves of self-satisfaction and abas.e.m.e.nt are of a unique sort ... each has its own peculiar physiognomical expression. In self-satisfaction the extensor muscles are innervated, the eye is strong and glorious, the gait rolling and elastic, the nostril dilated, and a peculiar smile plays upon the lips. This complex of symptoms is seen in an exquisite way in lunatic asylums, which always contain some patients who are literally mad with conceit, and whose fatuous expression and absurdly strutting or swaggering gait is in tragic contrast with their lack of any valuable personal quality. It is in these same castles of despair that we find the strongest examples of the opposite physiognomy, in good people who think they have committed ”the unpardonable sin” and are lost forever, who crouch and cringe and slink from notice, and are unable to speak aloud or look us in the eye.... We ourselves know how the barometer of our self-esteem and confidence rises and falls from one day to another through causes that seem to be visceral and organic rather than rational, and which certainly answer to no corresponding variations in the esteem in which we are held by our friends.[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 307.]
Self-satisfaction depends, as has been said, on the kind of self we are aiming at, and that in turn depends on the kind of self we are. A professional bank-robber may take a craftsman's pride in the skill with which he has rifled a safe and made off with the booty, just as a surgeon may take pride in a delicate operation, or a dramatist in a play. The ideal and the measure of satisfaction will again be determined by the group among whom we move. The bank-robber will not boast of his exploits to a missionary conference; the surgeon will prefer to explain the details of his achievement to medical men who can critically appreciate its technique. The ideal self we set ourselves may far outreach our achievements, considerable and generally applauded though these be. A man may know in his heart how futile are his triumphs, how far from the goals he cherished as young ideals. Many a brilliant comedian longs to play Hamlet; the gifted and scholarly musician knows how easy it is to win an audience with sentimental and specious music. The humility of genius has again and again been noted. ”The more one knows the less one knows one knows.”
Many men attain self-satisfaction through negation, through a serene surrender of the unattainable. As the Epicureans counseled, they increase their happiness by lessening their desires. The content which middle-aged people exhibit is not so frequently to be traced to the dazzling character of their achievement as to their resignation to their station.
Young people are moody and unhappy not infrequently because they cannot make a reconciliation between what they would be and what they are. Others again attain satisfaction vicariously in the achievements of others, as mediocre fathers do in their brilliant children, or as sympathetic and interested people do in the whole world about them.
The magnanimity of these expansive natures is often touching indeed. Such persons can feel a sort of delicate rapture in thinking that, however sick, ill-favored, mean-conditioned, and generally forsaken they may be, they are yet integral parts of the whole of this brave world, have a fellow's share in the strength of the dairy horses, the happiness of the young people, the wisdom of the wise ones, and are not altogether without part or lot in the good fortunes of the Vanderbilts and the Hohenzollerns themselves.[1]
[Footnote 1: James: _loc. cit._, vol. I, p. 313 (written in 1890).]
In some men a modic.u.m of success will give a disproportionate sense of confidence and power. The man to whom success has always come easily is not baffled by problems that would appall those who, in middle life, ”lie among the failures at the foot of the hill.” As Goethe, who had always been miraculously successful, said to one who came to complain to him about the difficulty of an undertaking: ”You have but to blow on your hands.” In a crowd one can hardly fail to note the easy air of competence and confidence that distinguishes the successful man of affairs.
THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THE SELF AND OTHERS. The consciousness of self increases with the expression of personal opinion and power. The man whose books are translated into half a dozen languages, to whose lectures people come from all parts of the world, cannot help feeling an increased sense of importance, although he may combine this consciousness with a sense of personal humility. In the same way a man who exerts great social power, who controls the economic lives of thousands of employees, or whose benefactions in the way of libraries and charitable inst.i.tutions dot the land, develops inevitably a sense of his own selfhood as over against that of the group. He begins to realize that he does make a significant difference in the world. This was curiously ill.u.s.trated in a speech delivered by Andrew Carnegie when, after a prolonged absence in Europe, he came back to the opening of the Carnegie Inst.i.tute, the building of which had cost him six million dollars:
He said he could not bring himself to a realization of what had been done. He felt like Aladdin when he saw this building and was aware that he had put it up, but he could not bring himself to consciousness of having done it any more than if he had produced the same effect by rubbing a lamp. He could not feel the owners.h.i.+p of what he had given, and he could not feel that he had given it away.[1]
[Footnote 1: Quoted from the obituary of Andrew Carnegie in the _New York Times_ of August 12, 1919.]
This sense of incredulity at one's actions or achievements is rarer than the consciousness of self which it promotes.
The intensity of this self-awareness is increased when opinion is expressed or power exerted in the face of opposition. The man who finds himself standing out against the community in which he lives, who is a freethinker among those who are intensely religious, an extremist among those who are custom-ridden, spiritualistic among people who are controlled by materialistic ideas, finds the sense of his own personality heightened by contrast. When dissenting opinions are steadfastly maintained in the face of the opposition of a powerful majority, there develops a personality with edge and strength.
The man who can persist in his belief against the prevailing winds of doctrine and of action may be wrong, but he is a personality. He is intensely and persistently aware of himself.
Similarly, the exertion of power in the face of opposition increases the sense of one's own power and helps to consolidate it. One derives from it the same exhilaration that one has in feeling a canoe under the impulsion of one's paddle overcome the resistance of the water. In the same way, the exertion of social power in the face of obstacles makes half the exhilaration of politics and business for some types of men in business and political life. One admires the ruthlessness of a Napoleon at war or of a captain of industry in the sharp industrial compet.i.tion of the nineteenth century, not because it is ruthless, but because it is power. Such men are at least not neutral; they are positive forces.
The contrast between the ”self” and the others may be friendly, with a recognition of all other selves as equally ent.i.tled to existence. One pursues the even tenor of one's way, and is content to let others pursue theirs. Men of very powerful personality have exhibited the utmost gentleness and consideration of others. Lincoln, the typical strong, silent man, displayed a tenderness for the suffering and distressed that has already become proverbial.
The contrast between one's self and the world may be one of bitter opposition, as when one's ideas or actions are subjected to social censure. As Mill argued over half a century ago, the forceful suppression of opinion produces a more violent manifestation of it. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in the heavens. A sense of injustice, of unfairness, will not only intensify a man's opinions but his consciousness of his own personality. To meet with opposition is to feel acutely the outlines of one's own person; to be forced to recognize the differences between ourselves and others is to discover what sort of people we ourselves are.
The contrast is likewise one of opposition, sometimes to bitterness, when the individual seeks to impose his own opinions or his own personality forcibly on others. A Mohammed, fired with the zeal of a religious enthusiasm, may spread his doctrine by fire and sword and be resisted by similar violence. Others than the Germans have betaken themselves to arms to spread a specific and arbitrary type of life.
On a small scale it is seen wherever a fanatical parent tries to force his own belief and type of life upon his children, reared in a younger and freer generation. In contemporary society most individuals are neither tempted nor permitted to coerce people to their own way of thinking, although economic pressure and social ostracism are still powerful instruments by which strategically situated individuals can force their own opinions or types of life upon others.
TYPES OF SELF. The consciousness of self varies in its expression and intensity and at different times may display different types or combinations of types. No one is ever utterly consistent, and different situations, different groups, provoke different selves in us. n.o.body writes quite the same kind of letter to his different friends, or is, as has been pointed out, the same person in different situations. But, except for those intellectual will-o'-the-wisps, or moral ne'er-do-wells who take on the color of every new circ.u.mstance in which they happen to be cast, men do develop predominantly one type of self which const.i.tutes, in familiar language, their character.
The manner of our consciousness of our personality may vary in quality, even though it be intense in degree. One may be aware even of one's importance, without being ”self-important.”
One may be quite conscious of one's significance in the world and yet not be ”self-conscious.” It is indeed usually the little man who has a great air about him. The officiousness and pettiness of the small soul invested with authority has often been commented on. Proverbial wisdom has succinctly recorded the fact that empty barrels make the most noise. Latterly, Freudian psychology has pointed out the mechanisms by which insignificant people compensate for the poverty of their person by bl.u.s.ter and brag.[1]
[Footnote 1: On this point see an illuminating brief discussion by Hart in _The Psychology of Insanity_.]