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

like Christian Science, New Thought, etc. Though these start with

elastic general principles, sooner or later the directions for

conduct become minute and then fixed. The tragedy of a great

founder of religion like Buddha or Christ is that though he gives

out a great pure principle, his followers must have, demand and

evolve a dogmatic religion with fixed ceremonials. Man, on the

whole, does not want to choose; he wants to have the feeling that

he ought to do this or that according to a code laid down by

authority. This will make a real democracy always impossible.

However the sentiment of duty arises, it becomes the central

feeling in all inner conflicts, and it wrestles with inclination

and the pleasant choice. Duty is the great inhibitor, but also it

says “Thou shalt!” Ideally, duty involves self-sacrifice, and

practically man dislikes self-sacrifice save where love is very

strong. Duty chains a man to his task where he is inclined for a

holiday. Duty may demand a man’s life, and that sacrifice seems

easier for men to make than the giving up of power and pelf. (In

the late war it was no great trouble to pass laws conscripting

life; it was impossible to pass laws conscripting wealth. It was

easier for a man to allow his son to go to war than to give up

his wealth en masse.)

The power of the feeling of duty and right over men is very

variable. There are a few to whom the feeling of “ought” is all

powerful; they cannot struggle against it, even though they wish

to. All of their goings, comings and doings are governed thereby,

and even though they find the rest of the world dropping from

them, they resist the herd. For the mass of men duty governs a

few relationships—to family and country—and even here

self-interest is camouflaged by the term “duty” in the phrase “a

man owes a duty to himself.” This is the end of real duty. The

average man or woman makes a duty of nonessentials, of

ceremonials, but is greatly moved by the cry of duty if it comes

from authority or from those he respects. He fiercely resents it

if told he is not doing his duty, but is quick to tell others

they are not doing theirs.

There is also a group in whom the sense of duty is almost

completely lacking, or rather fails to govern action. Ordinarily

these are spoken of as lacking moral fiber, but in reality the

organizing energy of character and the inhibition of the impulse

to seek pleasure and present desire is feeble. Sometimes there is

lack of affection toward others, little of the real glow of

tender feeling, either towards children[1] or parents or any one.

Though these are often emotional, they are not, in the good

meaning of the term, sentimental.

[1] It is again to be emphasized that the most vital instincts

may be lacking. Even the maternal feeling may be absent, not only

in the human mother but in the animal mother. So we need not be

surprised if there are those with no sense of right or duty.

Is the sentiment of duty waning? The alarmists say it is and

point to the increase of divorce, falling off in church

attendance, and the unrest among the laboring classes as evidence

that there is a decadence. Pleasure is sought, excitement is the

goal, and sober, solid duty is “forgotten.” They point out a

resemblance to the decadent days of Rome, in the rise of luxury

and luxurious tastes, and indicate that duty and the love of

luxury cannot coexist. Woman has forgotten her duty to bear

children and to maintain the home and man has forgotten his duty

to God.

Superficially these critics are right. There is a demand for a

more satisfying life, involving less self sacrifice on the part

of those who have in the past made the bulk of the sacrifices.

Woman, demanding equality, refuses to be regarded as merely a

child bearer and is become a seeker of luxury. The working man,

looking at the world he has built, now able to read, write and

vote, asks why the duty is all on his side. In other words, a

demand for justice, which is merely reciprocal, universal duty,

has weakened something of the sense of duty. In fact, that is the

first effect of the feeling of injustice, of unjust inequality.

Dealing with the emancipated, the old conception of duty as

loyalty under all conditions has not worked, and we need new

ideals of duty on the part of governments and governing groups

before we can get the proper ideals of duty in the governed.

Some of those ideals are commencing to be heard. International

duty for governments is talked of and some are bold to say that

national feeling prevents a real feeling of duty to the world, to

man. These claim that duty must have its origin in the extension

of tender feeling, in fraternity, to all men. In a lesser way

business is commencing to substitute for its former motto,

“Handelschaft ist keine Bruderschaft” (business is no

brotherhood), the ideal of service, as the duty of business.

Everywhere we are commencing to hear of “social duty,” of

obligation to the lesser and unfortunate, of the responsibility

of the leaders to the led, of the well to the sick, of the

law-abiding to the criminal. Strange notion, this last, but one

at bottom sound and practical.

In the end, the true sense of duty is in a sense of individual

responsibility. Our age feels this as no other age has felt it.

Other ages have placed responsibility on the Church, on God and

on the State. Difficult and onerous as is the burden, we are

commencing to place duty on the individual, and in that respect

we are not in the least a decadent generation.

CHAPTER IX. ENERGY RELEASE AND THE EMOTIONS

One of the problems in all work is to place things in their right

order, in the order of origin and importance. This difficulty is

almost insoluble when one studies the character of man. As we see

him in operation, the synthesis is so complete that we can hardly

discern the component parts. Inheritance, social pressure,

excitement, interest, love, hate, self-interest, duty and

obligation, —these are not unitary in the least and there is

constantly a false dissection to be made, an artefact, in order

that clearness in presentation may be obtained.

We see men as discharging energy in work and play, in the

activities that help or hurt themselves and the race. They obtain

that energy from the world without, from the sunshine, the air,

the plants and the animals; it is built up in their bodies, it is

discharged either because some inner tension builds up a desire

or because some outer stimulus, environmental or social, directs

it. Though we have no way of measuring one man’s energy against

another, we say, perhaps erroneously, “He is very energetic,” or

“He is not”; “He is tireless,” or “He breaks down easily.” As

students of character, we must take this question of the energies

of men into account as integral in our study.

Granting that the human being takes in energy as food and drink

and builds it up into dischargeable tissues, we are not further

concerned with the details of its physiology. How does the

feeling of energy arise, what increases the energy discharge and

what blocks, inhibits or lowers it? For from day to day, from

hour to hour, we are conscious either of a desire to be active, a

feeling of capacity or the reverse. We depend on that feeling of

capacity to guide us, and though it is organic, it has its

mysterious disappearances and marvelous reenforcements.

It arises, so we assume, from the visceral-neuronic activities,

subconsciously, in the sense we have used that word. It therefore

fluctuates with health, with fatigue, with the years. We marvel

at the energy of childhood and youth, and the deepest sadness we

have is the depletion of energy-feeling in old age. We love

energy in ourselves and we yield admiration, willing or

unwilling, to its display in others. The Hero, the leader, is

always energetic. In our times, in America, we demand “pep,”

action and energy-display as an essential in our play and in our

work, and we worship quite too frankly where all men have always

worshiped.

What besides the organic activity, besides health and well-being,

excites the feeling of energy and what depresses it?

1. This feeling is excited by the society of others, by the

herd-feeling, and depressed by long-continued solitude or

loneliness. The stimuli that come from other people’s faces,

voices, contacts—their emotions, feelings and manifestations of

energy—are those we are best adapted to react to, those most

valuable in stirring us up. Scenery, the grandeur of the outer

world, finally depress the most of us, and we can bear these

things best in company. Who has not, on a long railroad journey,

watched with weariness and flickering interest valley and hill

and meadow swing by and then sat up with energy and definite

attention as a human being passed along on some rural road?

Lacking these stimuli there is monotony and monotony always has

with it as one of its painful features a subjective sense of

lowered energy, of fatigue. This is the problem of the housewife

and the solitary worker everywhere,—there is failure of the

sense of energy due to a failure to receive new stimuli in their

most potent form, our fellows.

2. The disappearance or injury of desire and purpose. Let there

be a sudden blocking of a purpose or an aim, so that it seems

impossible of fulfillment, and energy-feeling drops; movement,

thought, even feeling seem painful. The will flags, and the whole

world becomes unreal. This is part of the anhedonia we spoke of.

In reality, we have the disappearance of hope as basic in this

adynamia. Hope and courage are in part organic, in part are due

to the belief that a desired goal can be reached. Whether that

goal is health, when one is sick, or riches, or fame, or love and

possession, if it is a well-centralized goal toward which our

main energies are bent, and then seems suddenly impossible to

reach, there is a corresponding paralysis of energy.

Here is where a great difference is seen between individuals and

between one time of life and another. There are some to whom hope

is a shining beacon light never absent; whatever happens, hope

remains, like the beautiful fable of Pandora’s box. There are

others to whom any obstruction, any discouraging feature, blots

out hope, and who constantly need the energy of others; their

persuasions and exhortations, for a renewal of energy. Here, as

elsewhere in life, some are givers and others takers of energy.

In the presence of the hopeless it is hard to maintain one’s own

feeling of energy and that is why the average man shuns them. He

guards as priceless his own enthusiasm.

Curiously enough, when energy tends to disappear in the face of

disaster to one’s plans, a tonic is often enough the reflection,

“it might have been worse” or “there are others worse off.”[1]

Though one rebels against the encouraging effect of the last

statement, it does console, it does renew hope. For hope and

energy and desire are competitive, as is every other measure of

value. So long as one is not the worst off, then there is

something left, there is a hopeful element in the situation.

Similarly a certain rough treatment helps, as when Job is told

practically, “After all, who is Man that he should ask for the

fulfillment of his hopes?” A sense of