The Foundations of Personality by Abraham Myerson (color ebook reader .TXT) 📕

The virgin, the continent who are intensely interested in sex are

not morbid, even though they have been forbidden to think of a

natural craving and appetite. But when the interest is for the

horrible it is often the case that the excitement aroused by the

subject is pleasurable, because it is a mild excitement and does

not quite reach disgust. Confronted with the real perversity, the

disgust aroused would quite effectually conquer interest.

And here is a fundamental law of interest: it must lead to a

profitable, pleasurable result or else it tends to disappear. If

this is too bold a statement, let me qualify it by stating that a

profitable, pleasurable result must be foreseen or foreseeable.

Either in some affective state, or in some tangible good,

interest seeks fulfillment. Disappointment is the foe of

interest, and too prolonged a “vestibule of satisfaction” (to use

Hocking’s phrase) destroys or impairs interest.

CHAPTER VIII. THE SENTIMENTS OF LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, HATE, PITY AND

DUTY. COMPENSATION AND ESCAPE

I shall ignore the complexities that arise when we seek to

organize our reactions into various groups by making a simple

classification of feeling, for the purposes of this book. There

is a primary result of any stimulation, whether from within

ourselves or without, which we have called excitement. This

excitement may have a pleasurable or an unpleasurable quality,

and we cannot understand just what is back of pleasure and pain

in this sense. Such an explanation, that pleasure is a sign of

good for the organism and pain a sign of bad, is an error in that

often an experience that produces pleasure is a detriment and an

injury. If pleasure were an infallible sign of good, no books on

character, morals or hygiene would need to be written.

This primary excitement, when associated with outer events or

things, becomes differentiated into many forms. Curiosity (or

interest) is the focusing of that excitement on particular

objects or ends, in order that the essential value or meaning of

that object or individual become known. Curiosity and interest

develop into the seeking of experience and the general

intellectual pursuits. We have already discussed this phase of

excitement.

An object of interest may then evoke further feeling. It may be

one’s baby, or one’s father or a kinsman or a female of the same

species. A type of feeling FAVORABLE to the object is aroused,

called “tender feeling,” which is associated with deeplying

instincts and has endless modifications and variations. Perhaps

its great example is the tender feeling of the mother for the

baby, a feeling so strong that it leads to conduct of self-sacrifice; conduct that makes nothing of privation, suffering,

even death, if these will help the object of the tender feeling,

the child. Tender feeling of this type, which we call love, is a

theme one cannot discuss dryly, for it sweeps one into reveries;

it suggests softly glowing eyes, not far from tears, tenderly

curved lips, just barely smiling, and the soft humming of the

mother to the babe in her arms. It is the soft feeling which is

the unifying feeling, and when it reaches a group they become

gentle in tone and manners and feel as one. The dream of the

reformer has always been the extension of this tender feeling

from the baby, from the child and the helpless, to all men, thus

abolishing strife, conquering hate, unifying man. This type of

love is also paternal, though it is doubtful whether as such it

ever reaches the intensity it does in the mother. By a sort of

association it spreads to all children, to all little things, to

all helpless things, except where there exists a counter feeling

already well established.

Though typical in the mother, child relationship, tender feeling

or love, exists in many other relationships. The human family,

with its close association, its inculcated unity of interests, in

its highest form is based on the tender feeling. The noble ideal

of the brotherhood of man comes from an extension of the feeling

found in brothers. The brotherly feeling is emphasized, though

the sisterly feeling is fully as strong, merely because the male

member of genus homo has been the articulate member, he has

written and talked as if he, and not his sister, were the

important human personage. So fraternal feeling is tender

feeling, existing between members of the same family, or the love

that we conceive ought to be present. Is such love instinctive,

as is the maternal love? If it is, that instinct is very much

weaker, and hostile feeling, indifference, rivalry, may easily

replace it. We rarely conceive of a mortal world where so intense

a love as that of the mother will be the common feeling; all we

dare hope for is a world in which there will be a fine fraternal

feeling.

Fraternal feeling is born of association together, any task

undertaken en masse, any living together under one roof. Even

when men sit down to eat at the same table, it tends to appear.

So college life, the barracks, secret orders, awaken it, but

here, as always, while it links together the associated, it shuts

out as non-fraternal those not associated.

What we call friendly feeling is a less vehement, more

intellectualized form of tender feeling. It demands a certain

equality and a certain similarity in tastes, though some

friendships are noted for the dissimilarity of the friends.

Friendship lives on reciprocal benefits, tangible or intangible,

though sentimentalists may take exception to this. Primary in it

is the good opinion of the friends and interest in one another;

we cannot be friends with those who think we are foolish or mean

or bad. We ALLOW a friend to say that we have acted wrongly

because we think he has our interest at heart, because he has

shown that he has this interest at heart, though his saying so

sometimes strains the friendship for a while. Friendship ideally

expects no material benefits, but it lives on the spiritual

benefit of sympathy and expressed interest and the flattery of a

taste in common. It is a unification of individuals that has been

glorified as the perfect relationship, since it has no

classifiable instinct behind it and is in a sense democracy at

its noblest. Friendship is easiest formed in youth, because men

are least selfish, least specialized at that time. As time goes

on, alas, our own interests and purposes narrow down in order

that we may succeed; there is less time and energy for

friendship.

Sex love is only in part made up of tender feeling. Passion,

admiration of beauty, desire of possession, the love of conquest,

take away from the “other” feeling that is the basis of

tenderness or true love. We desire so much for ourselves in sex

love that we have not so much capacity for tender feeling as we

usually think we have. The protests of eternal devotion and

unending self-sacrifice are sincere enough but they have this

proviso in the background: “You must give yourself to me.” If the

lovers can also be friends, if they have a real harmony of

tastes, desires and ambitions, if they can recede their ego

feeling, know how to compromise, then this added to sex feeling

makes the most genuinely satisfying of all human relations, or at

least the most reciprocal. But the two human beings who fall in

love are rarely enough alike, and their relationship is rarely

one of equality; traditional duties and rights are not equal;

they will seek different things, and their relationship is too

close and intimate to be an easy one to maintain. Sex love and

marriage are different matters, for though they may be the same,

too often they are not. Rarely does sex love maintain itself

without marriage and marriage colors over sex love with parental

feelings, financial interests, home and its emotions, etc. In sex

gratification[1] there is the danger of all sensuous pleasure:

that a periodic appetite gratified often leaves behind it an

ennui, a distaste,—sometimes reaching dislike—of the entire act

and associations.

[1] Stanley Hall says that after sex gratification there is

“taedium vitae,” weariness of life. In unsanctioned sex

gratification this is extreme and takes on either bitter

self-reproach or else a hate of the partner. But this is due to

the inner conflict rather than the sex act.

Is all tender feeling, all love, sexual in its essential nature?

The Freudians say yes to this, or what amounts to yes. All mother

love arises from the sex sphere, and it cannot be denied that in

the passionate desire to fondle, to kiss and even to bite there

is something very like the excitement of sex. But there is

something very different in the wish for self-sacrifice, the pity

for the helpless state, the love of the littleness. Women, when

they love men, often add maternal feeling to it, but mainly they

love their strength, size and vigor; and there tenderness and

passion differ. Certainly there seems little of the sexual in the

love of a father for his baby,[1] though the Freudians do not

hesitate in their use of the term homosexual. Apparently all

children have incestuous desire for their parents, if we are to

trust Freud. Without entering into detailed reasoning, I disavow

any truly sexual element in tender feeling. It is part of the

reception we give to objects having a favorable relation to

ourselves. Indeed, we give it to our houses, our dogs, our

cattle; our pipes are hallowed by friendly association, and so

with our books, our clothes and our homes. We extend it in deep,

full measure to the very rocks and rills of our native land or to

some place where we spent happy or tender days. Tender feeling,

love, is inclusive of much of the sex emotion, and the

characteristic mistake of the Freudians of identifying somewhat

similar things has here been made.

[1] It’s a very difficult world to live in, if we are to trust

the Freudians. If your boy child loves his mother, that’s

heterosexual; if he loves his father, that’s homosexual; and the

love of a girl child for her parents simply reverses the above

formula. If your wife says of the baby boy, “How I love him! He

looks just like my father,” be careful; that’s a daughter-father

complex of a dangerous kind and means the most unhallowed things,

and may cause her to have a nervous breakdown some day!

Love, then, is this tender feeling made purposive and

intelligent. It is a sentiment, in Shand’s phrase, and seeks the

good of its object. It may be narrow, it may be broad, it may be

intense or feeble, but in its organized sense it plans, fights

and cherishes. It has organized with it the primary

emotions,—fear if the object is in danger, or anger is evoked

according to the circumstances; joy if the object of love is

enhanced or prospers; sorrow if it is lost or injured under

circumstances that make the lover helpless. Love is not only the

tenderest feeling, but it is also the most heroic and desperate

fighter in behalf of the loved one. Here we are face to face with

the contradictions that we always meet when we personify a

quality or make an abstraction. Love may do the most hateful

things; love may stunt, the character of the lover and the

beloved. In other words, love, tender feeling, must be conjoined

with intelligence, good judgment, determination and fairness

before it is useful. It would be a nice question to determine

just how much harm misguided love has done.

What is pity? Though objects of love always elicit pity, when

helpless or injured, objects of pity are not necessarily objects

of love. In fact, we may pity through contempt. Objective pity is

a type