An intimate history of the conduct of the individuals concerned in each of these cases would reveal primitive urges, as those for food, for escape from peril, for care of offspring; but in all instances except the first it would reveal also something more than just a summation of such rudimentary drives. Even in case 2 they are redirected, canalized, weighed against one another, dovetailed together, related to the whole significance of the family for its members. In cases 3 and 4 it is still more obvious that work has been done upon the primitive drives, not merely by them, for there is organization of selves and organization of society that are not at all predictable from any scrutiny of raw drives; indeed, here power over conduct flows out of valuations that, a little way back in our history, could not have been felt or understood. We have reached a point where we are able to say what sort of selves we want to be; we have begun to have preferences concerning types of society; already, through law, education, religion, and eugenics we are upon the edge of deliberate control of the evolution of our species.
Thus far, for the sake of convenience in dealing with a complicated matter, I have spoken of primitive or raw drives or pushes, for the most part, as though they were so many separate and distinct actualities. In fact, however, hunger, sex-attraction, and all the rest are generalizations. In the human species at least each actual instance of hunger is less simple than mere hunger; each instance of sex-attraction requires, if we are to describe it completely, something more than an isolated instinct. With man, an instinctive satisfaction is not the terminus of a railroad but an intermediate station through which as well as to which he moves. The whole truth is that, though the raw material of our personal selves is given to or thrust upon us, just as sap is given to or thrust upon a tree, nevertheless it is from the beginning human material; within it from the beginning personal selves are in process of forming themselves, and society is in process of forming itself. This motive is in all and through all the dynamics of human conduct.
You can stop mere hunger by filling the stomach, but by no stuffing process can you appease the life-urge that is human. Much of the devastating irony that Plato’s Socrates directs against the Sophists is based upon this truth. Gautama saw the merely negative aspect of it, but he did not perceive, as Jesus did, that creative self-activity—ethical love, for example—contains a satisfaction of its own—a satisfaction, too, that is by no means to be equated with other satisfactions, since it bestows value upon them or withholds it from them. Self-discipline is a fact; so is voluntary acceptance of work, and even of pain and loss and obloquy. If men revile you, and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you, still you are blessed or happy if this experience comes because you are loyal to “the ever-coming Kingdom of God.” It is partly by this transvaluation of values, this conversion of our native drives, that men now and then transmute both their environment and themselves into forms that yield unprecedented beauty, and truth, and fellowship. In human experience, I repeat, the motive of being a personal self among personal selves is in all and through all. It may be weak or retarded, or it may become distorted, yet even in conditions most unpropitious we find the spark not quite extinguished.
A few years ago, a one-act play, a curtain-raiser, entitled “A Morality Play for the Leisured Class,”[7] was given at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. There were two characters, a modern man who had just been killed in an automobile smash-up, and an experienced inhabitant of the other world. The deceased, gradually coming to himself, and wondering where he is, calls out in the misty twilight that surrounds him,
“Is anybody there?”
The mist clears away, revealing a shining Presence with wings. The Presence asks,
“Can I do anything for you, Sir?”
The deceased wants to know what’s to be had here.
“Anything you like,” is the reply. “Anticipating your desires, I have already taken thirty years from your age.”
“Perpetual youth, eh?” exclaims the newcomer. “It looks as if I’d come to the good place, after all. But what about the golden crown?”
“You can have one if you like,” comes the answer, and presto! a starry golden crown encircles the stranger’s brow.
“Exactly according to the specifications,” says he. “And now, what else have you got here?”
“Anything you like,” replies the angel.
“I can have everything I desire? Absolutely everything?” asks the soul excitedly.
“Subject only to certain restrictions imposed by the nature of the place,” is the reply. “There is neither pain, nor suffering, nor struggle here. Anything else that you desire I will procure for you.”
There follows a succession of requests and realizations: The best of things to eat and drink; luxurious living quarters; “period” furniture and decorations; masterpieces of painting and statuary; the society of beauteous women (Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, and others). But each of these exalted experiences proves to be insufficient and finally cloying, and the experimenter demands a change. “This everlasting perfection palls,” he says. “The sights are too uniformly beautiful, the ladies too uniformly clever, charming, and obliging.... I know what I want! I want some work.” But he discovers that, since work implies wanting something that one cannot have by merely wanting it, whereas here one gets a thing by merely asking for it, the satisfaction of work is out of the question.
He and his obliging attendant ransack their minds to think of something that might possibly relieve the tedium. The attendant, at his wits’ end and discouraged, turns to go, saying, “I don’t know what to propose, Sir. But if anything occurs to you,” ...
“Hold on!” cries the seeker; “I’ve got it! I want some pain; that’s it.”
“I’m sorry, Sir,” comes the polite answer, “but no one is allowed to have any pain in this place. You’ll get used to the restriction after you’ve been here a few thousand years. They all feel as you do at first, but they all get accustomed, after a while, to this mode of existence.”
“But,” ejaculates the neophyte, “I can’t stand this damned everlasting bliss! I’d rather be in hell.”
The Presence, stepping back and looking at him in astonishment, asks, “And wherever do you think you are, Sir?”