This makes opportune a discussion of the work-traits. Since ours is an industrial society, in which the work of a member is his means of obtaining not only respect, but a living, these traits are largely those by which he is judged and by which he judges himself.

Since work for some is their life and for others their means of obtaining a living, it is obvious that the work-traits may be all the traits of the individual, or only a few of them. Certain traits are especially important, and to these we must limit ourselves.

The energy of the individual. Some are so constituted that they can constantly discharge their energy at a high rate. These are the dynamics, the hyperkinetic, the Rooseveltian—strenuous—the busy people, always able to do more. The modern American life holds this type as an ideal, though it is quite questionable whether these rather over-busy people do not lose in reflective and creative ability. The rushing stream turns the wheels of the mills, but it is too strenuous for stately ships. This type however achieves things, is seen often in the fine executive and usually needs no urging.

There is another fine type not so well adapted to our civilization, which is easily exhausted, but can accomplish very much in a short time; in other words discharges energy intermittently at a high rate. Charles Darwin was of this kind—intermittently hyperkinetic —obliged to rest after an hour's labor, but by understanding this, WILLING to rest. Unfortunately, unless one is a genius or rich, industry does not make allowances for this type. Industry is organized on steadiness of energy discharge,—eight hours every day, six days a week.

The commonest type is the "average" person who is capable of moderately intense but constant activity. This is the steady man and woman; it is upon this steadiness that the whole factory—shop system—is based. That this steadiness deadens, injures vivacity and makes for restlessness, is another matter.

A distinctly pathological type is found in some feebleminded and some high mentalities. This unfortunate discharges energy at a low rate is slow in action and often intermittent as well as hypokinetic. The loafer and the tramp are of this type. Around the water front of the seaports one can find the finest specimens who do odd jobs for as much as will pay for lodging and food and drink. Perhaps the order of the desired rewards should be reversed. Every village furnishes individuals of this group, either unable or unwilling to work consecutively or with energy. Often purposeless day-dreamers or else bereft of normal human mentality, these are the chronically unemployed of our social- industrial system.

It must be remembered that to work steadily every day and in the same place is not an innate circumstance of man's life. For the untold centuries before he developed into an agriculturist and a handicraftsman, he sought his food and his protection in the simplest way and with little steady labor. Whether as hunter or fisher or nomad herdsman, he lived in the open air, slept in caves or in rudely constructed shelters and knew nothing of those purposes that keep men working from morning till night. It's a long way from primitive man and his occupations, with their variety and their relaxations, to the factory hand, shut up in a shop all day and doing just one thing year in and year out, to the housewife with her multitudinous, never-ending tasks within four walls, to the merchant engrossed with profit and loss, weighing, measuring, buying, selling and worrying without cessation. The burden of steadiness in labor is new to the race, and it is only habit, necessity and social valuation that keeps most men to their wheel.

We would, I think, be oversentimental in our treatment of this subject if we omitted two hugely important factors in work character. Two powerful motives operate,—the necessity of working and work as an escape from ourselves.

Not much need be said of the pressure of necessity. "To eat one must work." This sentence condenses the threat behind most of the workers of the world. They cannot stop if they would—for few are those, even in prosperous communities, who have three months of idleness in their savings. The feeling of insecurity this fact brings makes a nightmare out of the lives of the many, for to the poor worker the charity organization is part of the penalty to be paid for sickness or unemployment. To my mind there are few things more pathetic than a good man out of a job, and few things for which our present society can be so heartily damned. Few even of the middle class can rest; their way of living leaves them little reserve, and so they plug along, with necessity as the spur to their industry.

To escape ourselves! Put any person of adult age, or younger, in a room with nothing to do but think, and you reduce him to abject misery and restlessness. Most of our reading, entertainment, has this object, and if necessity did not spur men on to work steadily, the tedium of their own thoughts would. To reflect is pleasant only to a few, and the need of a task is the need of the average human being. Perhaps once upon a time in some idyllic age, some fabled age of innocence, time passed pleasantly without work. To-day, work is the prime way of killing time, adding therefore to its functions of organizing activity, achievement and social value of recreation.

Yet contradictory as it seems, though many of us love work for its own sake, most of us do not love our own work. That is because few of us choose our work; it is thrust upon us. Happy is he who has chosen and chosen wisely!

Industry, energy, steadiness are parts of the work-equipment; enthusiasm, eagerness, the love of work, in short, is another part. Love of work is not a unitary character; it is a resultant of many forces and motives. Springing from the love of activity, it receives its direction from ambition and is reinforced by success and achievement. Few can continue to love a work at which they fail, for self-love is injured and that paralyzes the activity. Here and there is some one who can love his work, even though he is half-starved as a result,—a poet, a novelist, an inventor, a scientist, but these dream and hope for better things. But the bulk of the half-starved labor of the world, half-starved literally as well as symbolically, has no light of hope ahead of it and cannot love the work that does not offer a reward. It is easy for those who reap pleasure and reward from their labors to sing of the joy of work; business man, professional man, artist, handicraftsman, farmer,—these may find in the thing they do the satisfaction of the creative desires and the reward of seeing their product; but the factory is a Frankenstein delivering huge masses of products but eating up the producers. The more specialized it becomes the less each man creates of the unit, machine or ornament; the less he feels of achievement. Go into a cotton mill and watch the machines and their less than human attendants at their over-specialized tasks. Then ask how such workers can take any joy in work? Let us say they are paid barely enough to live upon. What food does the desire for achievement receive? What feeds the love of the concrete finished product of which a man can proudly say, "I did it!" The restlessness of this thwarted desire is back of much of that social restlessness that puzzles, annoys and angers the better-to-do of the world. As the factory system develops, as "efficiency" removes more and more of the interest in the task, social unrest will correspondingly increase. One of the great problems of society is this:

How are we to maintain or increase production and still maintain the love of work? To solve this problem will take more than the efficiency expert who works in the interest of production alone; it will take the type of expert who seeks to increase human happiness.

Native industry, the love of work are variables of importance. No matter what social condition we evolve, there will be some who will be "slackers," who will regard work as secondary to pleasure, who will take no joy or pride in the finished product, who will feel no loyalty to their organization; and vice versa, there will be those working under the most adverse conditions who will identify themselves, their wishes and purposes with "the job" and the product. Nowhere are the qualities of persistent effort and interest of such importance as in industry, and nowhere so well rewarded.

In the habits of efficiency we have a group of mechanically performed actions and stereotyped reactions essential for work. Except in certain high kinds of work, which depend upon originality and initiative, method, neatness and exactness are essential. "Time is money" in most of the business of the world; in fact time is the great value, since in it life operates. The unmethodical and untidy waste time as well as offend the esthetic tastes, as well as directly lose material and information. The habits in this sense are the tools of industry, though exactness may be defined as more than a tool, since it is also part of the final result. He whose work-conscience permits him to be inexact, permits himself to do less than his best and in that respect cheats and steals.

The work-conscience is as variably developed as any other type of conscience. There are those who are rogues in all else but not in their work. They will not turn out a bad piece of work for they have identified the best in them with their work. Contrariwise, there are others who are punctilious in all other phases of morality who are slackers of an easy standard in their work efforts. This is as truly a double standard of morals as anything in the sex sphere,—and as disastrous.

There is on every second wall in America the motto typical of our country, "Do it now!" To it could be added a much better one, "Do it well!" The energy of work and its promptness are only valuable when controlled by an ideal of service and thoroughness. A great part of the morals of the world is neglected; part of the responsibility is not felt, in that a code of work is yet to be enunciated in an authoritative way. I would have it shown graphically that all inefficiency is a social damage with a boomerang effect on the inefficient and careless, and in the earliest school, teaching the need of thoroughness would be emphasized. Our schools are tending in the other direction; the curriculum has become so extensive that superficiality is encouraged, the thorough are penalized, and "to get away with it" is the motto of most children as a result.

In an ideal community every man and woman will be evaluated as to intelligence and skill, and a place found accordingly. Since we live a few centuries too soon to see that community, since jobs are given out on a sort of catch-as-catch-can plan, it would be merely a counsel of perfection to urge some such method.

Nevertheless ambitious parents, whose means or whose self-sacrifice enable them to plan careers for their children, should take into solemn account, not their own ambitions, but the ability of the child. A man is apt to see in his son his second self and to plan for him as for a self that was somehow to succeed where he failed. But every tub in the ocean of human life must navigate on its own bottom, and a father's wishes will not make a poet into a banker or a fool into a philosopher. Nothing is so disastrous to character as to be misplaced in work, and there is as much social inefficiency in the high-grade man in the low-grade place as when the low-grade man occupies a high-grade place. We have no means of discovering originality, imagination or special ability in our present-day psychological tests, and we cannot measure intensity of purpose, courage and the quality of interest. Yet watching a child through its childhood and its adolescence ought to tell us whether it is brilliant or stupid, whether it is hand-minded or word-minded, whether it is brave, loyal, honest, a leader or a follower, etc. Moreover, the child's inclinations should play a part in the plans made. A man who develops a strong will where his desires lead the way will hang back and be a slacker where dissatisfaction is aroused.

To that employer of labor who seeks more than dividends from his "hands," who has in mind that he is merely an agent of the community, and is not obsessed with the idea that he is "boss," I make bold to make the following suggestions:

Any plan of efficiency must be based on sympathy and human feeling. To avoid unnecessary fatigue is imperative, not only because it increases production, but because it increases happiness. Fatigue may have its origin in little matters,—in a bad bench, in a poor work table, or an inferior tool. Chronic fatigue[1] alters character; the drudge and slave are not really human, and if your workers become drudges, to that degree have you lapsed from your stewardship. Men react to fatigue in different ways: one is merely tired, weak and sleepy —a "dope," to use ordinary characterization—but another becomes a dangerous rebel, ready to take fire at any time.

[1] The Gilbreths have written an excellent little book on this subject. Doctor Charles E. Myers' recent publication, "Mind and Work," is less explicit, but worth reading.

More important than physical fatigue (or at least as important) is the fatigue of monotony. If your shop is organized on a highly mechanical basis, then the worker must be allowed to interrupt his labors now and then, must have time for a chat, or to change his position or even to lie down or walk. Monotony disintegrates mind and body—disintegrates character and personality—brings about a fierce desire for excitement; and the well-known fact that factory towns are very immoral is no accident, but the direct result of monotony and opportunity. It's bad enough that men and women have to become parts of the machine and thus lowered in dignity, worth and achievement; it is adding cruelty to this to whitewash windows, prohibit any conversation and count every movement. Before you may expect loyalty you must deserve it, and the record of the owners of industry warrants no great loyalty on the part of their employees. Annoying restrictions are more than injuries; they are insults to the self-feeling of the worker and are never forgotten or forgiven.

That a nation is built on the work of its people—their steadiness, energy, originality and intelligence, is trite. That anything is really gained by huge imports and exports when people live in slums and have their creative work impulses thwarted is not my idea of value. Factories are necessary to a large production and a large population, but the idea of quantity seems somehow to have exercised a baleful magic on the minds of men. England became "great" through its mills, and its working people were starved and stunted, body and soul. Of what avail are our Lawrences and Haverhills when we learn that in the draft examinations the mill towns showed far more physical defects, tuberculosis and poor nutrition than the non-factory towns?

Work is the joy of life, because through it we fulfill purposes of achievement and usefulness. Society must have an organization to fit the man to his task and his task to the man; it must organize its rewards on an ethical basis and must find the way to eliminate unnecessary fatigue and monotony. The machine which increases production decreases the joy of work; we cannot help that, therefore society must at least add other rewards to the labor that is robbed of its finest recompense.

A counsel of perfection! The sad part is that books galore are written about the ways of changing, but meanwhile the law of competition and "progress" adds machines to the world, still further enslaving men and women. We cannot do without machines,—nor can we do without free men and women. The fact is that competition is a spur to production and to industrial malpractice, since the generous employer must adopt the tactics of his competitors whether in a Southern mill town or in Japan.

I must confess to a feeling of disgust when I read preachments on the joys of work, on consecrating one's self to one's task. I can do that, because I do about what I please and when I please, and so do you, Mister Preacher, and so do the exceptional and the able and the fortunate here and there and everywhere. But this is mathematically and socially impossible for the great majority, and unless a plan of life fits that majority it is best to call the plan what it is,—an aristocratic creed, meant for the more able and the more fortunate.



CHAPTER XIII. THE QUALITIES OF THE LEADER AND THE FOLLOWER

The social group, in its descent from the herd, has become an intensely competitive, highly cooperative organization. There are two sets of qualities essential to those phases of society that concern us as students of character.

Out of the mass there come the leaders, those who direct and organize the thought and action of the group. The leader, in no matter what sphere he operates, excels in some quality: strength, courage, audacity, wisdom, organizing ability, eloquence,—or in pretension to that quality. The leader is a high variable and somehow is endowed with more of a desired or desirable character than others. As fighter, thinker or preacher he has made the history of man. A dozen million common men did not invent the wheel; it was one aboriginal genius who played with power and saw that the rolling log might transport his goods. The shadow may have interested in a mild way every contemporary and ancestor of the one who discovered that it moved regularly with the sun. And when a group is confronted by an unknown danger, it is not the half-courage of the crowd that adds up to bravery and fearless fighting spirit; it is the one man who responds to the challenge with courage and sagacity who inspires the rest with a similar feeling. The leaders of the world stand on each other's shoulders, and not on the shoulders of the common man. Democracy does not lie in an equal estimate of men's abilities and worth; it is in the recognition that the true aristocrat or leader may arise anywhere; that he must be allowed to develop, no matter who his ancestors and what his sex or color may be; and that he has no privileges but those of service and leadership.

The leadership qualities will always be determined by the character of the group that is to be led and the task to be performed. Obviously he who is to lead a warrior group of small numbers in a fray needs be agile, quick of mind, strong and fearless, whereas a general who sits in a chair at a desk ten miles from the fighting front and controls a million men fighting with airships, guns and bayonets must be a technical engineer of executive ability and experience. The leader whose task is to exhort a group into some plan of action—the politician, the popular speaker—needs mainly to appeal to the sympathies and stir the emotions of his group; his desire to please must be efficiently yoked with qualities that please his group, and those qualities will not be the same for a group of East Side immigrants as for a select Fifth Avenue assemblage. In the one instance an uncouth, unrestrained passion, fiercely emphasized, and a bold declaration of ideals of an altruistic type will be necessary; in the second all that will be ridiculous, but passion hinted at with suave polished speech and a careful outline of practical plans are essential. The labor leader, the leader of a capitalist group, will be different in many qualities, but they will be alike in their vigor and energy of purpose, in their aggressive fighting spirit, their proneness to anger at opposition but controlled when necessary by tact and diplomacy. They will impress the group they lead as being sincere, honest, able, knowing how to plan, choose and fight. These last three qualities are those which the members of the group demand; the leader must know how to plan, choose and fight for them. Nor, if he is to succeed easily, must he be too idealistic; he must not seek too distant purposes; the group must understand him, and though he must keep them in some awe and fear of him, yet must they feel that he represents an understandable ideal. The leader who preaches things out of comprehension arouses the kind of opposition which finally crucifies him.

The leader must feel superiority to his group, and whether he proclaims it or not, he usually does. Now and then he is a cold, careful planner, an actor of emotions he does not feel, a cynic playing on passions and ideals he does not share. Usually he is deeply emotional, sometimes deeply intellectual, but not often; generally he has his ears to the ground and listens for the stir that tells the way men wish to be led. Then he mounts his horse, literally or figuratively, brandishes his sword and shouts his commands.

A leader springs up in every group, under almost all kinds of circumstances. Let ten men start out for a walk, and in ten minutes one of them, for some reason or another, is giving the orders, is choosing and commanding. Often enough the leadership falls to social rank and standing rather than to leadership qualities. In fact, that is the chief defect in a society which builds up rank and social station; leadership falls then to men by virtue of birth, financial status or some non-relevant distinction. All one has to do is to read of the misfit leaders England's "best" turned out to be in the early part of the late war to realize how inefficient and untrustworthy such leadership may be. One meaning of democracy is that no man is a leader by virtue of anything but his virtues, and that opportunity must be given to the real leader to come into his own.

Leadership means neither selfishness nor altruism, nor does it connote wisdom. A leader may be rankly egoistic and careless of the welfare of his people—Alexander, Napoleon—or he may be imbued with a mission which is altruistic but unwise. Such, in my opinion, was Peter the Hermit who started the Crusades. The wise men of the world lead only indirectly,—by a permeation of their thoughts, slowly, into the thought of the leaders of the race and from them downwards. Adam Smith exerted a great influence. But how many read his books? The leaders of thought did, and they extended his teachings into the community, but certainly not as Adam Smith taught. Christ made an upheaval in Jerusalem and its vicinity; a few leaders taught revisions of His doctrines, and as the doctrines passed along, they became institutionalized and dogmatized into a total, made up as much of paganism as of Christ's teachings. It is the tragedy of those whose names exercise authority in the world that their teachings are often without great influence. For all of Christ's teachings, the Christian nations plunge into great wars and repudiate His doctrines as applicable neither to industry nor international relations.

If the leader needs certain qualities, the follower needs others. He must be capable of attachment to the leader or his institution; he must possess that quality called loyalty. Loyalty is the transference of the ego-feeling to the group, an institution or an individual. It has in it perhaps the self-abasement principle of McDougall, but perhaps it is just as well to say that admiration, respect and confidence are basic in it. Loyalty differs from love only in that there is a sort of inferiority denoted in the first. If you feel yourself superior to the person or institution claiming your loyalty, you are not loyal in feeling, though you may be in act; you are bound by honor or love and not by loyalty.

Loyalty in the inferior may be awakened by many things, but to be permanent the follower must sooner or later feel himself a part of the program. He must have not only duties and responsibilities but benefits, and he must be given a visible symbol of membership. A child becomes loyal when he is given a badge or title, and so do men. This is the meaning of uniforms, badges, titles and privileges; they are symbols of "belonging" and so become symbols of loyalty. From the higher intellects loyalty can only be won if they have a share in conference, in the exertion of power and in identification with the institution in a privileged way. Though cash and direct benefit do not insure loyalty, they go a long way toward getting it. Many a man who is a rebel as a workman is loyal as a foreman, and while here and there is one who is loyal and leal{sic} whether the wind blows good or ill, the history and proverbs of men tell very plainly that loyalty usually disappears with the downfall of the leader, or when benefits of one kind or another are too long delayed. A man may be loyal to the leader or institution powerful and splendid in his youth (usually pride is as much involved as loyalty), but his children never are.

Disciplinability is a quality of the follower. He must be willing to sacrifice his freedom of action and choice and turn it over to another. Rules and regulations are necessary for efficiency. In a larger sense, they become laws, and the law-abiding are the disciplined, ready to obey whatever law. Thus the reformers do not come from the law-abiding in spirit; it is the rebel who changes laws. Without the law-abiding, disciplined spirit there would be only anarchy, and though men have obeyed frightful laws and still do, this is better than no social discipline. A revolution occurs when the discipline, i.e., the rules and regulations and the rulers and regulators, have not kept pace with the new ideas that have permeated society. Men are willing to be governed; nay, they demand it, but there must be at least a rude conformity between the governed and the laws by which they are governed. In other words, discipline of any kind is welcome if the disciplined believe it to be right and just. Men accept punishment for infraction of a law if they believe themselves to be rightfully punished, but rebel against unjust discipline.

There are those who deny either openly or covertly the right of society to regulate their lives or desires. In modern literature this type of rebel is quite favor, ably depicted, although he is usually represented as finally punished in one way or another. Where a man rebels against a specific type of restriction but favors another kind he is a reformer; if however he favors merely the removal of restriction and regulation[1] he is an anarchist and, in my opinion, without real knowledge of life. While the rebel who denies the right of discipline exists, he is rare; the commonest rebel does not deny society's right to regulate but either will not or cannot keep his rebel desires in conformity. Most criminals are of this type, and the inability to conform may arise from many defects in training or original character.

[1] Watch a busy crossing when the traffic policeman is at work, regulating and disciplining. Everything is orderly, smooth-working, and no one complains. Let him step away for a moment; at once there is confusion, danger and the intensely competitive spirit of the drivers comes out, with the skillful and reckless and selfish invading the rights of the less skilled, timid and considerate. The policeman's return is welcomed by the bulk of the drivers. There are very many points of similarity between society and the busy crossing which need no elaboration on my part.

In fact, though we may rebel against discipline and its various social modifications, most of us are quite anxious that others shall be disciplined and raise the hue and cry at once when they rebel. Behind this dislike of the rebel is certainly the feeling that he predicates a superiority for himself by so doing, and this injures our self-esteem. Of course there is and may be a genuine belief that he menaces society and its stability, but those who raise this cry the loudest are usually themselves menaced either in authority and power or in some more direct cashable value.

The qualities which are now to be briefly discussed are in the main great inhibitions. The moral code is in great part and by the majority of men understood as inhibition and prohibition. A man is held to be honest if he does not steal and truthful if he does not lie. In reality this conception is largely correct, and it is as we extend our ideas of stealing and lying that we grow in morality.

Honesty, in relation to property, is the control of the acquisitive impulses and instincts and is wrapped up with the idea of private property. The acquisitive impulses are very strong in most people but not necessarily in all, and we find great variability here as elsewhere in human character. One child desires everything he sees, wants it for his own and does not wish others even to touch it, while another gives away everything he has. The covetous, the indifferent, the generous, the hoarders, the spenders,—these are a few of the types one finds every day in relation to the property and acquisitive feelings.

The spirit of "mine" needs on the whole little encouragement, though the ways to achieve "mine" are part of education. Mainly the spirit of "thine" needs encouragement, and most of our law, as differentiated from religion and ethics, has been built up on settling disputes in this matter. In its primary form, honesty in relation to property is the willingness to conform to society's rulings in this matter, e.g., the belief in ownership as sacred and that to acquire something desired one must (ethical must) go through certain recognized procedures. The whole conception rests on the social instinct's inhibitions of the acquisitive instinct and in the growth and strength of feelings of conscience and duty as previously described. Social heredity and tradition operate very powerfully in the matter of this kind of honesty; to steal, as we see it, from neighboring tribes is ethical for savage races, and even to steal such property as women. Throughout the ages the booty of war was one of the recognized rights of warriors, and even though to-day we have conventions protecting the private property of the enemy, this is one of those rules definitely understood as made to be broken.

Stealing is very common among children, who find their desire for good things too strong to be inhibited. But very quickly the average child learns control in so far as certain types of stealing are concerned. Some, however, never cease to steal, and in my opinion and experience this is true of those who become thieves later on. In very few cases do those who are eventually pickpockets and second-story men first develop their art in adolescence or youth; they have stolen from earliest childhood. Those who steal for the first time in adult life are usually those exposed to great temptations and occupying a position of trust, such as the bank officer or the trusted employee. Here the stress of overexpensive tastes, of some financial burden or the desire to get rich quick through speculation overcome inhibition, especially as it is too often assumed by the speculator that he will be able to return the money.

How widespread petty stealing is will be attested to by the hotel keeper and high-grade restaurant owner, whose yearly losses of linen, silver and bric-a-brac are enormous. The "best" people do not think it really wrong to do this, especially if the things taken have a souvenir value. Farmers whose fruit trees adjoin a public thoroughfare will also state that the average automobilist has quite a different code of morals for apples and pears than for money and gasoline.

"Caveat emptor"—let the buyer beware! This has been the motto of the seller of merchandise since the beginning of trade. It has made for a lot of cheating of various kinds, some of which has persisted as part of the practice of at least many merchants up to this day. Cheating in weight or quantity led to laws; and there cannot be any relaxation in these laws, or false scales and measures immediately appear. Cheating in quality led to adulterations in food stuffs which were veritably poisonous, so that it became necessary for each great nation to pass stringent laws to prevent very respectable and very rich men from poisoning their customers. Cheating in fabrics still flourishes and in unsuspected quarters, not always those of the small dealer. And, misrepresentation flourished in advertising openly and blatantly until very recently. It is true that advertising has changed its tastes and uses dignified and high-flown language, protesting the abnormally virtuous ideal of service of the article advertised; but can it be true that the makers of every car believe it to be so remarkable in performance and appearance?

To the credit of American merchants let it be stated that a widespread improvement has taken place in these matters, and that on the whole there never was a more unanimous determination to render service as at present. Yet while the goal of business is profit, and the goal of the buyer is the bargain, so long will there be a mutual over-reaching that does not fall far short of dishonesty.

There are types that are scrupulously honest in that they will not take a penny of value not obtained in the orthodox way of buying, trading or earning, who will take advantage of necessity, whose moral code does not include that fine sense of honor that spurns taking advantage of adversity. These are the real profiteers, and in the last analysis they add to their dishonesty an essential cruelty, though often they are pillars of the church.

I have dwelt on the dishonest; the types of honest men and women who give full value in work and goods to all whom they deal with are of course more numerous. The industrial world revolves around those who resist temptation, who work faithfully, who give honest measure and seek no unfair advantage. But that business is no brotherhood is an old story, and poor human nature finds itself forced by necessity and competition into ways that are devious and not strictly honest. It's the system that is at fault, for men have formed a scheme of creating and distributing values that severely tries and often weakens their ideals.

Truth in the sense of saying what is true and truth in the sense of getting at ultimate relations are two different matters. The first kind of truth is the basis of social intercourse, the second kind the goal of philosophic efforts.

Speaking the truth invariably is not an easy matter and in the strictest sense is quite questionable as to value. The white lie, so-called, the pleasant, assumed interest, the untruth intended to smooth social relations are shock absorbers and are part of the courtesy technique.

In a more technical sense, the untruth told to obtain some advantage or to escape the disagreeable in one form or another is held to be dishonorable, but is very widely practiced. People are enraged at being deceived if the deception is the work of an outsider or one not liked; they are shocked if deceived, lied to, by one they love. The lie stands as the symbol of weakness, but to be "taken in" has more than the material hurt the lie inflicts; it wounds vanity and brings doubt and suspicion into social relations, all of which are very disagreeable. It is held by ethical teachers to be worse to lie about faults than to have committed the faults, though this may be modified to mean only the minor faults.

All judges and lawyers will testify that "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" is very seldom told in court. Controversy is the enemy of truth, and when the fighting spirit is aroused, candor disappears. Where any great interest is involved, where the opponent is seeking to dispossess or to evade payment, or where legal punishment may be felt, the truth must be forced from most people. Moreover, passion blinds, and the natural and astonishing inaccuracy in observation and reporting[1] that every psychologist knows is multiplied wherever great emotions are at work. If perjury were really punished, the business of the courts would be remarkably increased.

[1] Not only is this true in law but in all controversy, whether theological, scientific, social or personal, the ego-feeling enters in its narrowest and blindest aspects to defeat honor, justice and truth.

All this is normal lying,—not habitual but occurring under certain circumstances. As clearly motivated is the lying of the braggart, the one who invents stories that emphasize his exceptional qualities. The braggart however is a mere novice as compared with the "pathological liar," who does not seem able to tell the truth, who invents continually and who will often deceive a whole group before he is found out. The motive here is that curious type of superiority seeking which is the desire to be piteously interesting, to hold the center of the stage by virtue of adverse adventures or misfortunes. Hence the wild white-slave yarns and the "orphan child" who has been abused. Every police department knows these girls and boys, as does every social service agency.

I am afraid we all yield to the desire to be interesting or to make artistic our adventures. To tell of what happens to us, of what we have seen or said or done exactly as it was, is difficult, not only because of faulty memory, but because we like to make the tale more like a story, because, let us say, of the artist in us. Life is so incomplete and unfinished! We so rarely retort as we should have! And a bald recital of most events is not interesting and so,—the proportions are altered, humor is introduced, the conversation becomes more witty, especially our share, and the adventure is made a little more thrilling. And each who tells of it adds little or much, and in the end what is told never happened. "The Devil is the father of lies," runs the old proverb. If so, we have all given birth to some of his children.

Though direct lying is held to be harmful and socially disastrous, and evidence of either fear and cowardice or malevolence, the essential honesty of people is usually summed up in the term sincerity. The advance of civilization is marked by the appearance of toleration, the recognition that belief is a private right, especially as concerns religion, and that sincerity in belief is more important than the nature of belief. What is really implied by sincerity is the absence of camouflage or disguise, so that it becomes possible to know what a man believes and thinks by his words and his acts. As a matter of fact, that ideal is neither realized nor desirable, and it is as wise and natural to inhibit the expression of our beliefs and feelings as it is to inhibit our actions. To be frank with a man, to tell him sincerely that we believe he is a scoundrel, and that we hate him and to show this feeling by act, would be to plunge the world into barbarism. We must disguise hate, and there are times when we must disguise love. Sincerity is at the best only relative; we ought to be sincere about love, religion and the validity of our purposes, but in the little relationships sincerity must be replaced by caution, courtesy and the needs of efficiency. In reality we ask for sincerity only in what is pleasant to us; the sincere whose frankness and honesty offend we call boors.

Sincere self-revelation, if well done, is one of the most esteemed forms of literary production. Montaigne's preface to his "Essays" is a promise that he lived up to in the sincerity and frankness of his self and other analysis. "Pepy's Diary" charms because the naked soul of an Englishman of the seventeenth century is laid before us, with its trivialities, lusts, repentance and aspirations. In the latter nineteenth century, Mary MacLane's diary had an extraordinary vogue because of the apparent sincerity of the eager original nature there revealed. We love young children because their selfishness, their curiosity, their "real" nature, is shown to us in their every word and act. In their presence we are relaxed, off our guard and not forced to that eternal hiding and studying that the society of our equals imposes on us.

We all long for sincerity, but the too sincere are treated much as the skeptic of Bjoriasen's tale, who was killed by his friends. As they stood around his body, one said to the other, "There lies one who kicked us around like a football." The dead man spoke, "Ah, yes, but I always kicked you to the goal." The sincere of purpose must always keep his sincerity from wounding too deeply; he must always be careful and include his own foibles and failings in his attack, and he must make his efforts witty, so that he may have the help of laughter. But here the danger is that he will be listed as a pleasant comedian, and his serious purpose will be balked by his reputation.

Sincerity, thus, is relative, and the insincere are those whose purposes, declared by themselves to be altruistic, are none the less egoistic, whose attachments and affections, loudly protested, are not lasting and never intense, and whose manners do not reflect what they themselves are but what they think will be pleasing and acceptable to others. The relatively sincere seek to make their outer behavior conform, within the possibilities, to their inner natures; they are polite but not gushing, devoted to their friends at heart and in deed, but not too friendly to their enemies or to those they dislike, and they believe in their own purposes as good. The unhappiest state possible is when one starts to question the sincerity and validity of one's own purposes, from which there results an agonizing paralysis of purpose. The sincere inspire with faith and cooperation, if there is a unity of interest, but it must not be forgotten that others are inspired to hatred and rivalry, if the sincerity is along antagonistic lines. We are apt to forget that sincerity, like love, faith and hope, is a beautiful word, but the quality of sincerity, like the other qualities, may be linked with misguided purpose. No one doubts the sincerity of the Moslem hordes of the eighth century in desiring to redeem the world for Mahomet, but we are quite as sincerely glad that sturdy Charles Martel smashed them back from Europe. Their very sincerity made them the more dangerous. In estimating any one's sincerity, it is indispensable to inquire with what other qualities is this sincerity linked,—to what nouns of activity is it a qualifying adjective?

Honesty, truthfulness and sincerity are esteemed because there is in our social structure the great need that men shall trust one another. The cynic and the worldly wise, and also the experiences of life, teach "never trust, always be cautious, never confide in letter or speech," curb the trusting urge in our nature. The betrayal of trust is the one sin; all other crimes from murder down may find an excuse in passion or weakness, but when the trusting are deceived or injured, the cement substance of our social structure is dissolved and the fabric of our lives threatened. To trust is to hand over one's destiny to another and is a manifestation of the mutual dependence of man. It is in part a judgment of character, it is in part an original trait, is an absence of that form of fear called suspicion and on its positive side is a form of courage.

Since it is in part a judgment of character in the most of us, it tends to grow less prominent as we grow older. The young child is either very trusting or entirely suspicious, and when his suspicions are overcome by acquaintance and simple bribes, he yields his fortunes to any one. (It is a pleasant fiction that children and dogs know whom to trust, by an intuition.) But as life proceeds, the most of us find that our judgment of character is poor, and we hesitate to pin anything momentous on it. Only where passion blinds us, as in sex love, or when our self-love and lust for quick gain[1] or hate has been aroused do we lose the caution that is the antithesis of trust. The expert in human relations is he who can overcome distrust; the genius in human relations is he who inspires trust.

For the psychopathologist an enormous interest centers in a group of people whom we may call paranoic. In his mildest form the paranoic is that very common "misunderstood" person who distrusts the attitude and actions of his neighbors, who believes himself to be injured purposely by every unintentional slight, or rather who finds insult and injury where others see only forgetfulness or inattention. Of an inordinate and growing ego, the paranoic of a pathological trend develops the idea or delusion of persecution. From the feeling that everything and every one is against him, he builds up, when some major purpose becomes balked, a specific belief that so and so or this or "that group is after me." "They are trying to injure or kill me" because they are jealous or have some antagonistic purpose. Here we find the half-baked inventor, whose "inventions" have been turned down for the very good reason that they are of no value, and who concludes

[1] All the great swindlers show how the lust for gain plus the wiles of the swindler overcome the caution and suspicion of the "hard-headed," The Ponzi case is the latest contribution to the subject.

that some big corporations are in league with the Patent Office to prevent him from competing with them; here we have the "would-be" artist or singer or writer whose efforts are not appreciated, largely because they are foolish, but who believes that the really successful (and he often names them) hate and fear him, or that the Catholics are after him, or perhaps the Jews or the Masons.

In its extreme form the paranoic is rare just as is the extremely trusting person of saintly type. But in minor form every group and every institution has its paranoic, hostile, suspicious, "touchy," quick to believe something is being put over on him and quick to attribute his failure to others. In that last is a cardinal point in the compass of character. Some attribute their failure to others, and some in their self-analysis find the root of their difficulties and failures in themselves.

Under the feeling of injustice a paranoid trend is easily aroused in all of us, and we may misinterpret the whole world when laboring under that feeling, just as we may, if we are correct, see the social organization very clearly as a result. Therein is the danger of any injustice and seeming injustice, As a result condemnation is extreme, wrongly directed and with little constructive value. We become paranoid, see wrong where there is none and enemies in those who are friendly.

The over-trusting, over-confidential are the virtuous in excess, and their damage is usually localized to themselves or their families. They tell their secrets to any one who politely expresses an interest, they will hand over their fortunes to the flattering stranger, to the smooth-tongued. Sometimes they are merely unworldly, absorbed in unworldly projects, but more often they are merely trusting fools.

Man the weak, struggling in a world whose forces are pitiless, whose fairest face hides grim disaster, has sought to find some one, some force, he might unfailingly trust. He raises his hands to heaven; he cries, "There is One I can trust. Though He smite me I shall have faith."



CHAPTER XIV. SEX CHARACTERS AND DOMESTICITY

Originally reproduction is a part of the function of all protoplasm; and in the primitive life-forms an individual becomes two by the "simple process" of dividing itself into halves. Had this method continued into the higher forms most of the trouble as well as most of the pleasure of human existence would never occur. Or had the hermaphrodite method of combining two sexes in the one individual, so frequent in the plant world, found its way into the higher animals, the moral struggles of man would have become simplified into that resulting from his, struggles with similar creatures. Literature would not flourish, the drama would never have been heard of, dancing and singing would not need the attention of the uplifter, dress would be a method of keeping warm, and life would be sane enough but without the delicious joys of sex-love.

Why are there two sexes?[1] I must refer the reader to the specialists in this matter, but can assure him that no one knows. With the rise of Mandel's theory of heredity, it has been assumed that such a scheme offers a wider variety of possible character combinations. At present it is safe to say that no one can give a valid reason for the existence of male and female, and that while this elaboration of the reproducing individual into two parts may be necessary for some purpose, at first glance it appears like an interesting but mysterious complication.

[1] See Lloyd Morgan's book on sex.

I refer the reader to textbooks in anatomy and embryology, and to the specialists on sex like Krafft-Ebbing, Havelock Ellis and Ploss for details as to the differences between man and woman. There are first the essential organs of generation, differing in the two sexes, the ovary furnishing the egg, the testes furnishing the seed or sperm; then the organs of sexual contact; the secondary sex characteristics, such as stature, distribution of hair, deposits of fat, shape of body and especially of the pelvis, the voice, smoothness of skin, muscular development, etc. There is an orderly evolution in the development of sex characters which starts with earliest embryo life and goes on regularly until puberty, when there is an extraordinary development of latent characters and peculiarities. After puberty maturity is reached by easy stages, and then comes involution or the recession of sex characters. This is reached in woman rather suddenly and in man more gradually. The completely differentiated man differs from his completely differentiated mate in the texture of his hair, skin, nails; in the width and mobility of pupils, in the color of his sclera, etc., as well as in the more essential sex organs.

Indeed there are very essential bodily differences that are obviously important though not well understood. One is that the bodily temperature of man is slightly higher than that of woman, and that he has five million red blood corpuscles to every cubic millimeter of his blood, while she has four and a half million; that his brain weighs considerably more but is not heavier proportionately; that her bodily proportions resemble those of the child-form[1] more than do his, which some interpret as a point of superiority for her, while others interpret it as a sign of inferiority. On the whole, the authorities consider that man is made for the discharge of energy at a high rate for a short time, he is the katabolic element, while woman stores up energy for her children and represents the anabolic element of the race.

[1] See Havelock Ellis.

As a corollary to the above, it is necessary to know that each human being (and also each higher animal) starts out with the potential sex organs of both sexes, and that each individual becomes sexually differentiated at about the eleventh week of intra-uterine life. Moreover every male has female organs, and every female has male organs, though in the normal conditions these are mere vestiges and play no part in the sex life of the person. Yet this indicates that the separation of male and female is not absolute, and logically and actually a male may have female characters, physically and mentally, and vice versa a female may resemble the male in structure and character.

The sex relations have in the racial sense reproduction as their object, but it is wise to remember that in the whole living world only man knows this, and he has known it for only a relatively short time. Furthermore, in youth, when the sexual life is at its intensest, this fact, though known, is not really realized, and in the individual's plans and desires parenthood figures only incidentally, if at all. Society, in its organization, places its emphasis on child-bearing, and so indirectly reproduction becomes a great social aim rather than an individual purpose.

1. The feeling of parenthood is, as every one knows, far stronger in woman than in man. But here again generalizations are of no use to us, since there are women who develop only a weak maternal feeling, while there are men whose intensity of response to children is almost as great as any woman's. Undoubtedly occupation in other than the traditional woman's field is weakening the maternal feeling or is at least competing with it in a way that divides the modern mother's emotions and purposes and is largely responsible for her restless nervousness. This I think may safely be stated: that industry, athleticism, education, late marriage, etc., are not making for better physical motherhood.[1] On the contrary, the modern woman has a harder time in bearing her children, and worst of all she is showing either a reluctance or an inability to nurse them. Small families are becoming the rule, especially among the better to do. On the other hand, the history of the home is the gradual domestication of the man, his greater devotion to the children and to his wife. The increase in divorce has its roots in social issues too big to be discussed with profit here, but perhaps the principal item is the emancipation of woman who is now freer to decline unsatisfactory relations with her mate.

[1] "The Nervous Housewife."

2. The sex passion, as a direct feeling, is undoubtedly stronger in the male, as it is biologically necessary it should be, since upon him devolves the active part in the sex relationship.[2] The sexologists point out two types of sex feeling, one of which is supposed to be typically male, the other typically female.

[2] See Havelock Ellis, Krafft-Ebbing, Freud.

The male feeling is called sadism, after an infamous nobleman who wrote on the subject. It is a delight in power, especially in cruelty, and shows itself in a desire for the subjection of the female. In its pathological forms it substitutes cruelty for the sexual relation, and we have thus the horrible Jack the Rippers, etc. The Freudians go to the extreme of seeing in all love of power a sadism, but the truth is that the sadistic impulse is the love of power, cruelly or roughly expressed in sex. The cave man of the stories is a sadist of a type, and one generally approved of, at least in theory. A little of sadism is shown in the delight in pinching and biting so often seen; and the expression "I'd like to eat you up" has a playful sadism in it.

The opposite of sadism is masochism. This is a delight in being roughly used, in being the victim of aggression. The typical female is supposed to rejoice in the power and strength of the male as exerted on her. The admiration women often give to the uncouthly strong, their praise of virility, is masochistic in its origin. The desire of the peasant woman to be beaten as a mark of man's love is supposed to be masochistic, a pleasure in pain, which is held to be a primitive female reaction.

Sex psychopathology discloses innumerable cases where extreme sadism and masochism exist in both sexes; that is, not only males but females are sadistic, and so not only females but males are masochistic. Undoubtedly in minor degree both qualities express themselves in male and female; undoubtedly the male is more frequently a sadist than is the female. Though the majority of women may thrill in the strength and power of the lover, there are relatively few American women who will tolerate real roughness or cruelty. As a matter of fact the basic feelings in sex love, aside from the sexual urge itself, are tenderness and admiration. Naturally men desire to protect, and this becomes part of their tenderness; they admire and love the beauty of women and are attracted by the essential (or supposed essential) feminine qualities. And as naturally women desire to be protected; this enhances their tenderness, and their admiration is elicited by the peculiar male characters of strength, hardihood and aggressiveness, as well as by beauty and human qualities generally. Though the love of conquest is a part of sex feeling, it is neither male nor female, but is that feeling of superiority and power so longed for in all relations. Men like to conquer the proud, reserved, haughty woman because she piques them, and women often set out to "win" the reserved "woman hater" for the same reason. Thus tenderness and sex passion, with sadism and masochism in lesser degree, are basic in sex feeling, but other qualities enter so largely that any complete analysis is almost impossible. The belief, engendered by romance and teaching, that happiness lies in love, spurs youth on. Admiration for achievement, love of beauty, desire for the social standing that winning some one gives, desire for home and perhaps even for children are some of the factors of love.

Sex passion varies enormously in people. In some men it is an almost constant desire, obsessive, and is relatively uncritical and unchoosing. Occasionally, though much more rarely, the same condition is found in women. Such abnormal individuals are almost certain of social disaster, and when married their conduct usually leads to divorce or desertion. Then there is a wide range of types down to the almost sexless persons,[1] the frigid, who are much more commonly found among women than men. In fact, with many women active sex desire may never occur, and for others it is a rarity, while still others find themselves definitely desirous only after pregnancy. Not only are women less passionate, but their desire is more "finicky," more in need of appropriate circumstances, the proper setting and the chosen mate than with man. In other words, sex desire is more physical and urgent in the man and more psychical and selective in the woman.

[1] Some claim that the "frigid" woman is such because her mate is ignorant of the art of love. This is true of some frigid women. Instruction to men and women about to be married on the technique of sexual life might well take a fine place in the curriculum of life.

A curious by-product of the sexual feeling is fetichism. To do it justice, fetichism is found in all feeling toward others, but is most developed in sex relation. The fetich is a symbol of the desired person, thus the handkerchief and glove of the woman or the hat of the man. Pathologically any part of the dress—the shoe or the undergarments—may become so closely associated with sexual feeling as to evoke it indiscriminately or even to displace it. Normal fetich formation may become a bit foolish and sentimental but never becomes a predominant factor in sex relationship.

The history of modesty is the history of the sex taboo. As pointed out, the sex feelings are the most restricted of any of the instincts. I despair of giving an adequate summary of this, but it may be best stated by declaring that all the restrictions we hold as imperative have, at one time or another in some place, been regarded as sacred and desirable. Brother and sister marriages were favored by Egyptian royalty, prostitution was a rite in Phoenician worship, phallic worship frankly held as a symbol that which to-day we hold profane (in a silly way), plural marriage was and is countenanced in a large part of the world to-day, marriage for love is held as foolish in most countries, even now. The practice of child restriction now prevalent in Europe and America would be looked at with horror in those countries where children of ten or eleven are allowed to marry. Exogamy, endogamy, monogamy, polygamy,—all these are customs and taboos, and though in our day and country monogamy has the social and religious sanction, there is nothing to indicate that this is a permanent resting place for marriage. Certainly the statistics of divorce indicate a change in the permanent status of marriage.

What this is meant to emphasize is the social nature of sexual modesty. Modesty of other kind rests either on a moderate self-valuation or a desire to avoid offense by not emphasizing one's own value, or it is both. However sexual modesty originated, practically it consists in the concealing of certain parts of the body, avoiding certain topics of conversation, especially in the presence of the other sex, and behaving in such fashion as to restrict sexual demonstration. There is a natural coyness in women which has been socially emphasized by restrictions in dress, conduct and speech to a ridiculous degree. Thus it was immodest in our civilization for women to show their legs, and the leg became the symbol of the femaleness of the woman or girl, as also did the breast.[1] The body became taboo, and at present, when women are commencing to dress so that the legs are shown, the arms are bare, and the back and shoulders visible, the cry of immodesty, immorality and social demoralization is raised, as if real morality rested in these ridiculous, barbaric taboos.

[1] All the anthropologists, Tyler, McLennan, Ellis and especially Frazier, deal at length with this fascinating subject. The psychopathologists relate the most extraordinary stories of fetich love.

But no matter how much one emphasizes the arbitrary nature of modesty, of the restrictions placed on dress, speech and conduct, it still remains true that their function is at present to act as inhibitors. Ridiculous as it is to believe that morality resides in the length of the skirt or in the degree of paint and powder on the face, the fact is that usually they who depart too widely from the conventional in these matters are uninhibited and are as apt to depart from the conventional in deed as they are in deportment. There are those who say that we would be far more moral if we went about naked; that clothes suggest more than nakedness reveals. This is true of some kinds of clothes—the half nakedness of the stage or the ballroom, or the coquettish additions to clothes represented by the dangling tassels —but it is not true of the riding breeches, or the trim sport clothes, or the walking suit. The dress of men, though ugly, is useful, convenient and modest, and there is no doubt that a generation of free women, determined to become human in appearance, could evolve a modest and yet decorative costume. All of the present-day extravagance in female attire, with its ever-changing fashion, is a medley of commercial intrigues, female competition and sex excitement. Though the modesty restrictions are absurd, the motive that obscurely prompts it is not, and the transgressors either seek notice in a risky way, are foolish, to speak bluntly, or else are inviting actual sexual advances.

Though we may actually restrict the sex life so that some men and women become pure in the accepted sense, it will always be true that men and women will be vaguely or definitely attracted to each other. Like the atmospheric pressure which though fifteen pounds to the square inch at the sea level is not felt, so there exists a sex pressure, excited by men and women in each other. There is a smoldering excitement always ready to leap into flame whenever the young and attractive of the sexes meet. The conventions of modesty tend to restrict the excitement, to neutralize the sex pressure, but they may be swept aside by immodesty and the suggestive. The explanation of the anger and condemnation felt by the moral man in the presence of the "brazen" woman lies in the threat to his purposes of respectability and faithfulness; he is angered that this creature can arouse a conflict in him. The bitterness of the "saint" against the wanton originates in the ease with which she tempts him, and his natural conclusion is that the fault lies with her and not with his own passions. The respectable woman inveigles against her more untrammeled sister, not so much through her concern for morality, as through the anger felt against an unscrupulous competitor who is breaking the rules.

In so far as women are concerned, the sex pressure on them is increased in many ways. For two years I examined, mentally, the girls who were listed as sex offenders by the various social agencies of Boston. As a result of that experience, plus that of a physician and citizen of the world, a few facts of importance stand out in my mind.

1. There is a group of men whom one may call sex adventurers. These are not all of one kind in education, social status and age, but they seek sex experiences wherever they go and are always alert for signs that indicate a chance to become intimate. They take advantage of the widespread tendency to flirt and haunt the places where the young girls tend to parade up and down (certain streets in every large city), the public dance halls, the skating resorts, the crowded public beaches, etc. They regard themselves as connoisseurs in women and think they know when a girl is "ripe"; they are ready to spend money and utilize flattery, gifts and bold wooing, according to their nature and the way they size up their prey.

2. The female sex adventurer is not so common, except in the higher criminal classes where the effort to ensnare rich men calls forth the abilities of certain women. In a limited way the prostitute, professed or clandestine, is a sex adventurer, but ordinarily she is merely supplying a demand and has only to exert herself physically, rarely needing to conquer men's inhibitions. We omit here the schemes of conquest of girls and women seeking marriage as too complex for any one but a novelist, and also because the moral code regards them as legitimate. Women who are ready to accept sexual advances are common enough in the uninhibited girl, the dissatisfied married woman, the young widow, the drug habitue; but aside from the woman who has capitalized her sex, the sex adventurer is largely male.

What attracts him? For he rarely pesters the good woman, and ordinarily the average woman is not solicited.

The girl usually "picked up" dresses immodestly or in the extreme of style, even though she is essentially shabby and poorly clad. To-day business sees to it that fripperies are within the reach of every purse.

She usually corresponds to a type of prettiness favored in the community, often what is nowadays called the chicken type. Plump legs and fairly prominent bosom and hips are symbols of those desired among all grades of men, together with a pretty face. The homely girl finds it much easier to walk unmolested.

If she appears intelligent and firm, the above qualities will only entitle her to glances, respectful and otherwise. The sex adventurer hates to be rebuffed, and he is not desperately in love, so that he will not risk his vanity. If she appears of that port vivacious type just above the moron level—in other words if she is neither bright nor really feeble-minded—then sex pressure is increased. The feeble-minded girl of the moron type, or the over-innocent and unenlightened girl, is always in danger.

There is further the sexually excited or the uninhibited girl. We must differentiate between those who attempt no control, and those whose surge of desire is beyond the normal limits. The uninhibited of both sexes are a large group, and the bulk of the prostitutes are deficient in this respect rather than in intelligence. Sometimes inhibition arrives late, after sexual immorality has commenced. In men this is common, but unfortunately for women, society stands in their way when this occurs with them. "Youth must have its fling" is a masculine privilege denied to feminine offenders.

The desire for a good time plays havoc with the uninhibited girl. Unable to find interest in her work, which too often is uninteresting, desiring good clothes and excitement, she discovers that these are within her reach if she follows her instincts. What starts out as a flirtation ends in social disaster, and a girl finds out that some men who give good times expect to be paid for them.

Since our study is not a pathological treatise, we must omit further consideration of the offender and dismiss without more comment the whole range of the perverter. It suffices to say that the perverted are often such congenitally, in which case nothing can be done for them, and others are the results of certain environments, which range all the way from girls' boarding-schools to the palaces of kings.

In ancient times, and in many countries to-day, certain perversions were so common as to defy belief, and we are compelled to associate with some of the greatest names, practices[1] that shock us. These same ancients would denounce as unnatural in as hearty terms the increasing practices of child-limitation among us.

[1] I pass over as out of the range of this book the question raised by Freud, whether or not we are all of us homosexual as well as heterosexual.

The sex desires and instincts struggle with, overcome or harmonize with the social instincts. It would be impossible to portray even the simplest sex life from the mental standpoint. The chastest woman who is unconscious of sex desire is motivated by romance and the sex feelings and customs of others in her ideas of happiness and right behavior. The cynical profligate, indulging every sensual urge, in so far as he can, must guide himself by the resistance of society, by the necessity of camouflage, the fear of public opinion and often the impediment of his own early training. Men and women start out perhaps as romantic idealists, enter marriage, and in the course of their experiences become almost frankly sensual. And in the opposite direction, men and women wildly passionate in youth develop counter tendencies that swing them into restraint and serene self-control. There are those to whom sex is mere appetite, to be indulged and put out of the way, so as not to interfere with the great purposes of success; there are those to whom it is a religion, carried on with ceremonials and rites; there are those to whom it is an obsession, and their minds are in a sexual stew at all times. There are the under-inhibited, spoken of above, and there are the over-inhibited, Puritanical, rebelling at the flesh as such, disguising all their emotions, reluctant to admit their humanness and the validity of pleasure.

The romantic ideal, glorifying a sort of asexual love of perfect men and women, asceticism which permits sex only as a sort of necessary evil and sensuality which proclaims the pleasure of sex as the only joy and scoffs at inhibition influence the lives of us all. The effect of the forbidden, the tantalizing curiosity aroused and the longing to rise above the level of lust make the sex adjustment the most difficult of all and produce the queerest results. Sex is a road to power and to failure, a road to health and sickness. As in all adjustments, there are some who are conscious of but few difficulties, who are moral or immoral without struggle or discontent. Contrasted with these are the ones who find morality a great burden, and those who, yielding to desire, find continuous inner conflict and dissatisfaction and lowered self-valuation as a result.

Our society is organized on chastity and continence prior to marriage, purity and constancy after marriage. That noble ideal has never been realized; the stories of Pagan times, of the Middle Ages and of the present day, as well as everyday human experience, show that the male certainly has not lived up to his part of the bargain. Legalized prostitution in most countries, illegal prostitution in the United States and England, in addition to the enormous amount of clandestine relationships, are a sufficient commentary on the results. The increasing divorce rate, the feminist movement, the legalizing of the "illegitimate" child in Norway and Sweden and the almost certain arrival of similar laws in all countries indicate a softer attitude toward sex restrictions. The rapidly increasing age of marriage means simply that continence will be more and more difficult, for I am not one of those who believe that the repression of this vital instinct is without harm. Continence is socially necessary, but beyond a certain age it is physically and mentally harmful. Man is thus placed on the horns of a dilemma from which it will take the greatest wisdom and the finest humanity to extricate him. But I cannot lay claim to any part of the knowledge and ability necessary to formulate the plan. Let us at least be candid; let us not say grandiloquently that the sexual urge can be indefinitely repressed without harm to the average individual. We may safely assert that there are people, men and women both, to whom the sex impulses are vague and of little force, but to the great majority, at least of men, sex desire is almost a hunger, and unsatisfied it brings about a restlessness and dissatisfaction that enters into all the mental life. On what basis society will meet this situation I do not pretend to know, but this is certain,—that all over the civilized world there is apparent an organizing rebellion against the social impediment to sexual satisfaction.

For it must be remembered that sexual satisfaction is not alone naked desire. It is that—but sublimated into finer things as well. It is the desire for stability of affection, for a sympathetic beloved, an outlet for emotion, a longing for respectable unitary status. The unit of respectable human life is the married couple; the girl wants that social recognition, and so does her man. Both yearn to cast off from their old homes and start a new one, as an initial step in successful living. The thought of children—a little form in a little bed, and the man and woman gazing in an ecstasy of pride and affection upon it—makes all other pleasures seem unworthy and gives to the ache for intimacy a high moral sanction.

This brings us to the point where we must consider those characteristics that make up domesticity and homekeeping. Early impressions and the consistent teaching of literature, stage, press and religion have given to the home a semi-sacred character, which is one of the great components of the desire to marry, especially for women. The home is, in the minds of most of those who enter into marriage, a place owned, peculiarly possessed, and it offers freedom from the restraints of society and the inhibitions of ceremony and custom. Both the man and woman like to think that here is the place where their love can find free expression, where she will care for him and he will provide for her, and where their children can grow in beauty, intelligence and moral worth under their guidance. But this is only the sentimental side of their thought, the part they give freest expression to because it is most respectable and "nice." In the background of their minds is the desire for ownership, the wish to say, "This is mine and here I rule." Into that comes the ideal that the stability of society is involved and the homekeeper is its most important citizen, but when we study the real evolution of the home, study the laws pertaining to the family, we find that the husband and father had a little kingdom with wife and children as subjects, and that only gradually has there come from that monarchical idea the more democratic conception cherished to-day.

Men and women may be considered as domestic or non-domestic. The domestic type of man is ordinarily "steady" in purpose and absorbed more in work than in the seeking of pleasure, is either strongly inhibited sexually or else rather easily satisfied; cherishes the ideal of respectability highly; is conventional and habituated, usually has a strong property feeling and is apt to have a decided paternal feeling. He may of course be seclusive and apt to feel the constraints of contact with others as wearying and unsatisfactory; he is not easily bored or made restless. All this is a broad sketch; even the most domestic find in the home a certain amount of tyranny and monotony; they yearn now and then for adventure and new romance and think of the freedom of their bachelor days with regret over their passing. They may decide that married home life is best, but the choice is not without difficulty and is accompanied by an irrepressible, though hidden dissatisfaction. On the whole, however, the domestic man finds the home a haven of relief and a source of pleasurable feeling.

The non-domestic man may be of a dozen types. Perhaps he is incurably romantic and hates the thought of settling down and putting away for good the search for the perfect woman. Perhaps he is uninhibted sexually or over-excitable in this respect, and is therefore restless and unfaithful. He may be bored by monotony, a restless seeker of new experiences and new work, possessed by the devils of wanderlust. He may be an egoist incapable of the continuous self-sacrifice and self-abnegation demanded by the home,—quarrelsome and selfish. Sometimes he is wedded to an ideal of achievement or work and believes that he travels best who travels alone. Often in these days of late marriage he has waited until he could "afford" to marry and then finds that his habits chain him to single life. Or he may be an unconventional non-believer in the home and marriage, though these are really rare. The drinker, the roue, the wanderer, the selfish, the nonconventional, the soarer, the restless, the inefficient and the misogynist all make poor husbands and fathers and find the home a burden too crippling to be borne.

One of the outstanding figures of the past is the domestic woman, yearning for a home, assiduously and constantly devoted to it, her husband and her numerous children. Fancy likes to linger on this old-fashioned housewife, arising in the early morning and from that time until her bedtime content to bake, cook, wash, dust, clean, sew, nurse and teach; imagining no other career possible or proper for her sex; leading a life of self- sacrifice, toil and devotion. Poet, novelist, artist, and clergyman have immortalized her, and men for the most part cherish this type as their mother and dream of it as the ideal wife.

Perhaps (and probably) this woman rebelled in her heart against her drudgery and dreamed of better things; perhaps she regretted the quickly past youth and dreaded the frequent child-bearing. Whether she did or not, the appearance of a strongly non-domestic type is part of the history of the latter nineteenth century and the early twentieth.

The non-domestic women are, like their male prototypes, of many kinds, and it would be idle to enumerate them. There is the kind of woman that "has a career," using this term neither sarcastically nor flatteringly. The successful artist of whatever sort—painter, musician, actress—has usually been quite spoiled for domesticity by the reward of money and adulation given her. Nowhere is the lack of proportion of our society so well demonstrated as in the hysterical praise given to this kind of woman, and naturally she cannot consent to the subordination and seclusion of the home. Then there is the young business woman, efficient, independent, proud of her place in the bustle and stir of trade. She is quite willing to marry and often makes an admirable mother and wife, but sometimes she finds the menial character of housework, its monotony and dependence too much for her. The feminist aglow with equality and imbued with too vivid a feeling of sex antagonism may marry and bear children, but she rarely becomes a fireside companion of the type the average man idealizes. Then the vain, the frivolous, the sexually uncontrolled,—these too make poor choice for him who has set his heart on a wife who will cook his meals, darn his stockings and care for the children. To be non-domestic is a privilege or a right we cannot deny to women, nor is there condemnation in the term,—it is merely a summary characterization.

Though to remain single is to be freer than to be married and domestic, yet the race will always have far more domestic characters. These alone will bear children, and from them the racial characters will flow rather than from the exceptional and deviate types, unless the home disappears in the form of some other method of raising children. After all, the home is a costly, inefficient method of family life unless it has advantages for childhood. This it decidedly has, though we have bad homes aplenty and foolish ones galore. Yet there is for the child a care, and more important, an immersion in love and tender feeling, possible in no other way. We should lose the sacred principles of motherhood and fatherhood, the only example of consistent and unrewarded love, if the home disappeared. The only real altruism of any continuous and widespread type is there found. It is the promise and the possibility of our race that we see in the living parents. We know that unselfishness exists when we think of them, and the idealist who dreams of a world set free from greed and struggle merely enlarges the ideal home.

But we must be realistic, as well as idealistic. A silent or noisy struggle goes on in the home between the old and the new, between a rising and a receding generation. An orthodox old generation looks askance on an heretical new generation; parents who believe that to play cards or go to theater is the way of Satan find their children leaving home to do these very things. Everywhere mothers wonder why daughters like short skirts, powder and perhaps rouge, when they were brought up on the corset, crinoline and the bustle; and they rebel against the indictment passed out broadcast by their children. "You are old-fashioned; this is the year 1921." When children grow up, their wills clash with their parents', even in the sweetest, and most loving of homes. Behind many a girl's anxiety to marry is the desire for the unobstructed exercise of her will. Parents too often seek in their children a continuation of their own peculiarities, their own characters and ideals, forgetting that the continuity of the generations is true only in a biological sense, but in no other way. And children grown to strength, power and intelligence think that each person must seek his experiences himself and forget that true wisdom lies in what is accepted by all the generations.

Just as we have the types of husbands and the types of wives, so we judge men and women by the wisdom, dignity and faithfulness of their parenthood; so we judge them by the kind of children they are to their parents. In this last we have a point in character of great importance and one upon which the followers of Freud have laid much—over-much—stress.

The effect of too affectionate a home training, too assertive parenthood, is to dwarf the individuality of the child and make him a sort of parasite, out of contact with his contemporaries, seclusive and odd. There is a certain brand of goody-goody boy, brought up tied to his mother's apron strings, who has lost the essential capacities of mixing with varied types of boys and girls, who is sensitive, shy and retiring, or who is naively boorish and unschooled in tact. According to some psychiatrists this kind of training breeds the mental disease known as Dementia Praecox, but I seriously doubt it. One often finds that the goody-goody boy of fifteen becomes the college fullback at twenty,—that is, once thrown on the world, the really normal get back their birthright of character. I think it likely that now and then a feeling of inferiority is bred in this way, a feeling that may cling and change the current of a boy's life. The real danger of too close a family life, in whatever way it manifests itself, is that it cuts into real social life, narrows the field of influences and sympathies, breeds a type of personality of perhaps good morals but of poor humanity.

The home must never lose its contact with the world; it should never be regarded as the real world for which a man works. It is a place to rest in, to eat in, to work in; in it is the spirit of family life, redolent of affection, mutual aid and self-sacrifice; but more than these, it is the nodal point of affections, concerns and activity which radiate from it to the rest of the world.



CHAPTER XV. PLAY, RECREATION, HUMOR AND PLEASURE SEEKING

One of the great difficulties in thought is that often the same word expresses quite different concepts. Some superficial resemblance has taken possession of the mind and expressed itself in a unifying word, disregarding the fundamental differences.

Take the word "play." The play of childhood is indeed a pleasurable activity to the child, but it is really his form of grappling with life, a serious pursuit of knowledge and a form of preparation for his adult activities. It is not a way of relaxation; on the contrary, in play he organizes his activities, shuffles and reshuffles his ideas and experiences, looking for the new combinations we call "imaginations." The kitten in its play prepares to catch its prey later on; and the child digging in a ditch and making believe "this is a house" and "this is a river" is a symbol of Man the mighty changing the face of Nature. The running and catching games like "Tag" and "I spy," "Hide and go seek," "Rellevo" are really war games, with training in endurance, agility, cool-headedness, cooperation and rivalry as their goals. Only as the child grows older, and there is placed on him the burden of school work, does play commence to change its serious nature and partake of the frivolous character of adult life.

For the play of adult life is an effort to find pleasure and relaxation in the dropping of serious purposes, in the "forgetting" of cares and worries, by indulging in excitement which has no fundamental purpose. The pleasure of play for the adult is in the release of trends from inhibition, exactly as we may imagine that a harnessed horse, pulling at a load and with his head held back by a check-rein, might feel if he were turned loose in a meadow. This is the kind of play spirit manifested in going out fishing, dressed in old clothes, with men who will not care whatever is said or done. There is purpose, there is competition and cooperation and fellowship, but the organization is a loose one and does not bear heavily. So, too, with the pleasure of a game of ball for the amateur who plays now and then. There is organization, control and competition; but unless one is a poor loser, there is a relaxed tension in that the purpose is not vital, and one can shout, jump up and down and express himself in uninhibited excitement. Whether this excitement has a value in discharging other excitement and feelings that are inhibited in the daily work is another matter; if it has such a value, play becomes of necessary importance. In outdoor games in general, the feeling of physical fitness, of discharging energy along primordial lines and the happy feeling that comes merely from color of sky and grass and the outdoor world, bring a relief from sadness that comes with the work and life of the city man.

Often the play is an effort to seek excitement and thus to forget cares, or it is a seeking of excitement for its own sake. Thus men gamble, not only for the gain but because such excitement as is aroused offers relief from business worries or home difficulties. The prize fights, the highly competitive professional sports of all kinds are frequented and followed by enormous numbers of men, not only because men greatly admire physical prowess, but because the intense excitement is sought. I know more than one business and professional man who goes to the "fights" because only there can he get a thrill. There is a generalized mild anhedonia in the community, which has its origin in the fatigue of overintense purposes, failure to realize ideals and the difficulties of choice. People who suffer in this way often seek the sedentary satisfaction of watching competitive professional games.

Indeed, the hold of competition on man exists not alone in his rivalry feeling toward others; it is evidenced also in the excitement he immediately feels in the presence of competitive struggle, even though he himself has little or no personal stake. Man is a partisan creature and loves to take sides. This is remarkably demonstrated by children, and is almost as well shown in the play of adults. A recent international prize fight awakened more intense interest than almost any international event of whatever real importance. That same day it passed practically unnoticed that America ended a state of war with Germany.

A law of excitement, that it lies in part in a personal hazard accounts for the growth of betting at games. The effort to gain adds to the interest, i. e., excitement. That it adds tension as well and may result in fatigue and further boredom is not reckoned with by the bettor or gambler. To follow the middle of the road in anything is difficult, and nowhere is it more beset with danger than in the seeking of excitement.

Games of skill of all kinds, whether out of doors or within; baseball, cricket, billiards, and pool afford, then, the pleasure of exertion and competition in an exciting way and yet one removed from too great a stake. Defeat is not bitter, though victory is sweet; a good game is desired, and an easy opponent is not welcomed. The spirit of this kind of play has been of great value to society, for it has brought the feeling of fair play and sportsmanship to the world. Primitive in its origin, to take defeat nobly and victory with becoming modesty is the civilizing influence of sportsmanship. In the past women have lacked good-fellowship and sportsmanship largely because they played no competitive-cooperative games.

I shall not attempt to take up in any detail all the forms of pleasure-excitement seeking. Dancing, music, the theater and the movies offer outlets both for the artistic impulses and the seeking of excitement. In the theater and the movies one seeks also the interest we take in the lives of others, the awakening of emotions and the happy ending. Only a few people will ever care for the artistic wholesale calamity of a play like "Hamlet," and even they only once in a while.

Men and women seek variety, they seek excitement in any and all directions, they want relief from the tyranny of purpose and of care. But also,—they hate a vacuum, they can usually bear themselves and their thoughts for only a little while, because their thoughts are often basicly melancholy and full of dissatisfaction. So they seek escape from themselves; they try to kill time; reading, playing and going to entertainments. In fact, most of our reading is actuated by the play spirit, and is an effort to obtain excitement through the lives of others.

Humor[1] is a form of pleasure seeking and giving, but depends on a certain technique, the object of which is to elicit the laugh or its equivalent. The laugh is a discharge of tension, and while usually it accompanies pleasure, it may indicate the tension of embarrassment or even complex emotional states. But the laugh or smile of humor has to be elicited in certain ways, chief of which are to bring about a feeling of expectation, and by some novel arrangement of words, to send the mind on a voyage of discovery which suddenly ends with a burst of pleasure when the "point" is seen. The pleasure felt in humor arises from the feeling of novelty, the pleasure of discovering a hidden meaning and the pleasure in the "point" or motive of the story, joke or conduct.

[1] I use this term to include wit, satire and even certain phases of the comic.

Usually, the humorous pleasure has these motives: it points at the folly and absurdity of other people's conduct, thought, logic and customs. It gives a feeling of superiority, and that is why all races love to poke fun at other races: certain characteristics of Jew, Irishman, Yankee, Scot, etc., are presented in novel and striking fashion, in a playful manner.

It points out the weak and absurd side of people and institutions with which we have trouble; and this brings in marriage, business, mothers-in-law, creditors, debtors, as those whose weakness is exposed by the technique of humor.

Humor likes to explode pretension, pedantry, dignity, pomposity; we get a feeling of joy whenever those who are superior come a cropper, which is increased when we feel that they have no right to their places. So the humorous technique deals with the get-rich-quick folk, the foolish nobleman, the politician, the priest (especially in the Middle Ages), etc.

Not only does humor seek to obtain pleasure from an attack on others and thus to feel superior or to compensate for inferiority, but also it reaches its highest form in exposing man himself, including the humorist. The humorist, seeking his own weaknesses and contradictions, his falsities, strips the disguise from himself in some surprising way. Bergson points out that to strip away a disguise is naturely humorous unless it reveals too rudely the horrible. The humorist takes off the mask from himself and others, and in so far as we can detach ourselves from pride and vanity, we laugh. The one who cannot thus detach himself is "hurt" by humor; the one who somehow has become a spectator of his own strivings can laugh at himself. Thus humor, in addition to becoming a compensation and a form of entertainment, is a form of self-revelation and self-understanding carried on by a peculiar technique. On the whole this technique depends upon a hiding of the real meaning of the story or situation under a disguise of the commonplace. The humorist phrases his words or develops his situation so as to send the thoughts of the listener flying in several directions. There is a brief confusion, an incongruity is felt, then suddenly from under a disguise the point becomes clear and the laugh is in part one of triumph, in part one of pleased surprise.

I shall not attempt an analysis of the psychology of humor, for illustrious writers and thinkers have stubbed their intellectual toes on this rock for centuries. In later years the analyses of Freud and Bergson are noted, but there is a list of writers from Aristotle down whose remarks and observations have brought out clearly certain trends. For us the direction that any one's humor takes is a very important phase in the study of character.

Humor is a weapon, and the humorist has two ends in view: the one to please his audience and to align them on his side, the second to attack either playfully or seriously some person or institution with the technique of humor. Certain trends are seen in humor, one to seek a feeling of superiority by revealing the inferiority of others in a surprising way, another to release a burdensome[1] inhibition, a third to play with and in a sense mock the disagreeable features of life, and the fourth to seek detachment from one's self, to seek relief from sorrow, disappointment and deprivation by viewing the self as from afar.

[1] In this way humor is an effort for freedom; through humor one tastes of experiences otherwise forbidden.

So there is a sarcastic humor which points out the foibles and weaknesses of others either grossly or delicately. Usually these others are those differing from one's own group—the Irish, Jew, farmer, Negro—and the jokes either deal with their personal appearance (a low humor) or their characteristic expressions, points of view and actions. The audience is convulsed at their quaintness or folly, though often enough on the stage the comic figure delivers a sort of wisdom mingled with his foolishness, and this adds to the humorous explosion. The sarcastic humor in its highest form reaches satire, where under a disguise powerful institutions or the habit and ways of life of a group are criticized. In polite society people are continually attacking each other in a kind of warfare called repartee, in which the tension is kept just without the bounds of real hostility, while the audience sides with the one whose shaft is the most telling. In the lower ranks this interchange, which is surprisingly frequent, is coarse and insulting. It is supposed to be a test of character to be able to "stand" these attacks with equanimity and even to join in the laugh against oneself. To "kid" and take "kidding" is thus an important social trait.

Humor is often used to expose the folly of the pretentious. Much of the stock in trade of the humorist lies in his attack on the pedant, the pompous, the great, the new-rich, the over-important of one kind or another. To find them less than they pretend to be gives two especial kinds of pleasure to the audience; the first the stripping away of disguise (Bergson), and the second the relief of our own feeling of inferiority in their presence by showing how inferior they really are.

Since inhibition wears on us, the great inhibitions are directly attacked by the humorist. Thus sex forms one of the great subjects of humor, and from the obscene story told by those on whom the sex inhibitions rest lightly to the joke about clothes, etc., told by those who mock the opposite sex, the whole idea is to bring about pleasure in the release of inhibitton and the play of the mind around the forbidden. Freud has some interesting remarks on this type of humor, which he regards largely as sexual aggression. It is necessary to say that the release of inhibition is always that of an inhibition not too strongly felt or accepted. A really modest person, one to whom the sex code is a sacred thing, does not find pleasure in a crude sex joke. Similarly with the inhibition surrounding marriage, which is a stock subject of humor. The overearnest person dislikes this type of humor and reacts against it by calling it "in bad taste." In the Middle Ages (and to-day among those opposed to the Catholic church), the priest and nun were slyly or coarsely attacked by the humorist, and in all times those somewhat skeptical find in religion, its ceremonials and customs, a field for joke and satire.