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Book of Life, The

<h2>PART FOUR THE BOOK OF SOCIETY</h2> <h2>CHAPTER XLVIII THE EGO AND THE WORLD</h2> <div class="blockquot">(Discusses the beginning of consciousness, in the infant and in primitive man, and the problem of its adjustment to life.) </div> We have now to consider the relationship of man to his fellows, with whom he lives in social groups. Upon this problem floods of light have been thrown by the new science of psycho-analysis. I will try to give, briefly and in simple language, an idea of these discoveries. One of the laws of biology is that every individual, in his development, reproduces the history of the race; so that impulses and mental states of a child reveal to us what our far-off ancestors loved and feared. The same thing is discovered to be true of neurotics, people who have failed in adjusting themselves to civilized life, and have gone back, in some or all of their mental traits, to infantile states. If we analyze the unconscious minds of "nervous patients," and compare them with what we find in the minds of infants, and in savages, we discover the same dreams, the same longings and the same fears. The mental life of man begins in the womb. We cannot observe that life directly, but we know that it is there, because there cannot be organic life without mind to direct it, and just as there is an unconscious mind that regulates the bodily processes in adults, so in the embryo there must be an unconscious mind to direct the flow of blood, the building of bones, muscle, eyes and brain. The mental life of that unborn creature is of course purely egotistical; it knows nothing outside itself, and it finds this universe an agreeable place—everything being supplied to it, promptly and perfectly, without effort of its own. But suddenly it gets its first shock; pain begins, and severe discomfort, and the creature is shoved out into a cold world, yelling in protest against the unsought change. And from that moment on, the new-born infant labors to adjust itself to an entirely new set of conditions. Discomforts trouble it, and it cries. Quickly it learns that these cries are answered, and satisfaction of its needs is furnished. Somehow, magically, things appear; warm and dry covering, a trickle of delicious hot milk into its mouth. At first the infant mind has no idea how all this happens; but gradually it comes to realize objects outside itself, and it forms the idea that these objects exist to serve its wants. Later on it learns that there are particular sounds which attach to particular objects, and cause them to function. The sound "Mama," for example, produces a goddess clothed in beauty and power, performing miracles. So the infant mind arrives at the "period of magic gestures" and the "period of magic words"; corresponding to a certain type of myth and belief which we find in every race and tribe of human being that now exists or ever has existed on earth. All these stories about magic wishes and magic rings and magic spells of a thousand sorts; and nowhere on earth a child which does not listen greedily to such fancies! The reason is simply that the child has passed through this stage of mental life, and so recently that the feelings are close to the surface of his consciousness. But gradually the infant makes the painful discovery that not everything in existence can be got to serve him; there are forces which are proof against his magic spells; there are some which are hostile, and these the infant learns to regard with hatred and fear. Sometimes hatred and fear are strangely mixed with admiration and love. For example, there is a powerful being known as "father," who is sometimes good and useful, but at other times takes the attention of the supremely useful "mother," the source of food and warmth and life. So "father" is hated, and in fancy he is wished out of the way—which to the infant is the same thing as killing. Out of this grows a whole universe of fascinating mental life, which Freud calls by the name "the &OElig;dipus complex"—after the legend of the Greek hero who murdered his father and committed incest with his mother, and then, when he discovered what he had done, put out his own eyes. There is a mass of legends, old as human thought, repeating this story; we cannot be sure whether they have grown out of the greeds and jealousies of this early wish-life of the infant, or whether they had their base in the fact that there was a stage in human progress in which the father really was killed off by the sons. This latter idea is discussed by Freud, in his book, "Totem and Taboo." It appears that primitive man lived in hordes, which were dominated by one old male, who kept all the women to himself, and either killed the young males, or drove them out to shift for themselves; so the young men would combine and murder their father. The forming of human society, of marriage and the family, depended upon one factor, the decision of the young victors to live and let live. The only way they could do this was to agree not to quarrel over the women of their own group, but to seek other women from other groups. This may account for what is known as "exogamy," an almost universal marriage custom of primitive man, whereby a man named Jones is barred by frightful taboos from the women named Jones, but is permitted relations with all the women named Smith. To return to our infant: he is in the midst of a painful process of adjusting himself to the outside world; discovering that sometimes all his magic words and gestures fail, his wishes no longer come true. There are beings outside him, with wills of their own, and power to enforce them; he has to learn to get along with these beings, and give up his pleasures to theirs. These processes which go on in the infant soul, the hopes and the terrors, the griefs and the angers, are of the profoundest significance for the later adult life. For nothing gets out of the mind that has once got into it; the infantile cravings which are repressed and forgotten stay in the unconscious, and work there, and strive still for expression. The conscious mind will not tolerate them, but they escape in the form of fairy-tales and stories, of dreams and delusions, slips of the tongue, and many other mental events which it is fascinating to examine. Also, if we are weakened by ill health or nervous strain, these infantile wishes may take the form of "neuroses," and fully grown people may take to stammering, or become impotent, or hysterical, or even insane, because of failures of adjustment to life that happened when they were a year or two old. These things are known, not merely as a matter of theory, but because, as soon as by analysis these infant secrets are brought into consciousness and adjusted there, the trouble instantly ceases. So it appears that the whole process of human life, from the very hour of birth, consists of the correct adjustment of men and women in relation to their fellows. Not merely is man a social being, but all the prehuman ancestors of men, for ages upon geologic ages, have been social beings; they have lived in groups, and their survival has depended upon their success in fitting themselves snugly into group relationships. Failure to make correct adjustments means punishment by the group, or by enemies outside the group; if the failure is serious enough, it means death. We may assert that the task of understanding one's fellow men, and making one's self understood by them, is the most important task that confronts every individual. And if we look about the world at present, the most superficial of us cannot fail to realize that the task is far from being correctly performed. So many people unhappy, so many striving for what they cannot get! So many having to be locked behind bars, like savage beasts, because they demand something which the world is resolved not to let them have! So many having to be killed, by rifles and machine-guns, by high explosive shells and poison gas—because they misunderstood the social facts about them, and thought they could fulfill some wishes which the rest of mankind wanted them to repress! As I read the psycho-analyst's picture of the newly born infant with its primitive ego, its magic cries and magic gestures, I cannot be sure how much of it is sober science and how much is mordant irony—a sketch of the mental states of the men and women I see about me—whole classes of men and women, yes, even whole nations! The effort of the following chapters will be to interpret to men and women the world which they have made, and to which they are trying to adjust themselves. More especially we shall try to show how, by better adjustments, men may change both themselves and the world, and make both into something less cruel and less painful, more serene and more certain and more free. <h2>CHAPTER XLVIX COMPETITION AND CO-OPERATION</h2> <div class="blockquot">(Discusses the relation of the adult to society, and the part which selfishness and unselfishness play in the development of social life.) </div> Pondering the subject of this chapter, I went for a stroll in the country, and seating myself in a lonely place, became lost in thought; when suddenly my eye was caught by something moving. On the bare, hot, gray sand lay a creature that I could see when it moved and could not see when it was still, for it was exactly the color of the ground, and fitted the ground tightly, being flat, and having its edges scalloped so that they mingled with the dust. It was a lizard, covered with heavy scales, and with sharp horns to make it unattractive eating. At the slightest motion from me it vanished into a heap of stones, so quickly that my eye could scarcely follow it. This creature, you perceive, is in its actions and its very form an expression of terror; terror of devouring enemies, of jackals that pounce and hawks that swoop, and also of the hot desert air that seeks to dry out its few precious drops of moisture. Practically all the energies of this creature are concentrated upon the securing of its own individual survival. To be sure, it will mate, but the process will be quick, and the eggs will be left for the sun to hatch out, and the baby lizards will shift for themselves—that is to say, they will be incarnations of terror from the moment they open their eyes to the light. The jackal seeks to pounce upon the lizard, and so inspires terror in the lizard; but when you watch the jackal you find that it exhibits terror toward more powerful foes. You find that the hawk, which swoops upon the lizard, is equally quick to swoop away when it comes upon a man with a gun. This preying and being preyed upon, this mixture of cruelty and terror, is a conspicuous fact of nature; if you go into any orthodox school or college in America today, you will be taught that it is nature's most fundamental law, and governs all living things. If you should take a course in political economy under a respectable professor, you would find him explaining that such cruelty-terror applies equally in human affairs; it is the basis of all economic science, and the effort to escape from it is like the effort to lift yourself by your boot-straps. The professor calls this cruelty-terror by the name "competition"; and he creates for his own purposes an abstract being whom he names "the economic man," a creature who acts according to this law, and exists under these conditions. One of the professor's formulas is the so-called "Malthusian law," that population presses always upon the limits of subsistence. Another is "the law of diminishing returns of agriculture," that you can get only so much product out of a certain piece of land, no matter how much labor and capital you put into it. Another is Ricardo's "iron law of wages," that wages cannot rise above the cost of living. Another is embodied in the formula of Adam Smith, that "Competition is the life of trade." The professor enunciates these "laws," coldly and impersonally, as becomes the scientist; but if you go into the world of business, you find them set forth cynically, in scores of maxims and witticisms: "Dog eat dog," "the devil take the hindmost," "business is business," "do others or they will do you." Evidently, however, there is something in man which rebels against these "natural" laws. In our present society man has set aside six days in the week in which to live under them, and one day in the week in which to preach an entirely different and contradictory code—that of Christian ethics, which bids you "love your neighbor," and "do unto others as you would they should do unto you." Between these Sunday teachings and the week-day teachings there is eternal conflict, and one who takes pleasure in ridiculing his fellow men can find endless opportunity here. The Sunday preachers are forbidden to interfere with the affairs of the other six days; that is called "dragging politics into the pulpit." On the other hand, incredible as it may seem, there are professors of the week-day doctrine who call themselves Christians, and believe in the Sunday doctrine, too. They manage this by putting the Sunday doctrine off into a future world; that is, we are to pounce upon one another and devour one another under the "iron laws" of economics so long as we live on earth, but in the next world we shall play on golden harps and have nothing to do but love one another. If anybody is so foolish as to apply the Sermon on the Mount to present-day affairs, we regard him as a harmless crank; if he persists, and sets out to teach others, we call him a Communist or a Pacifist, and put him in jail for ten or twenty years. In the Book of the Mind, I have referred to Kropotkin's "Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution," which I regard as one of the epoch-making books of our time. Kropotkin clearly proves that competition is not the only law of nature, it is everywhere modified by co-operation, and in the great majority of cases co-operation plays a larger part in the relations of living creatures than competition. There is no creature in existence which is entirely selfish; in the nature of the case such a creature could not exist—save in the imaginations of teachers of special privilege. If a species is to survive, some portion of the energies of the individual must go into reproduction; and steadily, as life advances, we find the amount of this sacrifice increasing. The higher the type of the creature, the longer is the period of infancy, and the greater the sacrifice of the parent for the young. Likewise, most creatures make the discovery that by staying together in herds or groups, and learning to co-operate instead of competing among themselves, they increase their chances of survival. You find birds that live in flocks, and other birds, like hawks and owls and eagles, that are solitary; and you find the co-operating birds a thousand times as numerous—that is to say, a thousand times as successful in the struggle for survival. You find that all man's brain power has been a social product; the supremacy he has won over nature has depended upon one thing and one alone—the fact that he has managed to become different from the "economic man," that product of the imagination of the defenders of privilege. It is evident that both competition and co-operation are necessary to every individual, and the health of the individual and of the race lies in the proper combination of the two. If a creature were wholly unselfish—if it made no effort to look after its own individual welfare—it would be exterminated before it had a chance to reproduce. If, on the other hand, it cannot learn to co-operate, its progeny stand less chance of survival against creatures which have learned this important lesson. We have a nation of a 110,000,000 people, who have learned to co-operate to a certain limited extent. Some of us realize how vastly the happiness of these millions might be increased by a further extension of co-operation; but we find ourselves opposed by the professors of privilege—and we wish that these gentlemen would go out and join the lizards of the desert sands or the sharks of the sea, creatures which really practice the system of "laissez faire" which the professors teach. The plain truth is that we cannot make a formula out of either competition or co-operation. We cannot settle any problem of economics, of business or legislation, by proclaiming, for example, that "Competition is the life of trade." Competition may just as well turn out to be the death of trade; it depends entirely upon the kind of competition, and the stage of trade development to which it is applied. In the early eighteenth century, when that formula of Adam Smith was written, competition was observed to keep down prices and provide stimulus to enterprise, and so to further abundant production. But the time came when the machinery for producing goods was in excess, not merely of the needs of the country, but of the available foreign markets, and then suddenly the large-scale manufacturers made the discovery that competition was the death of trade to them. They proceeded, as a matter of practical common sense, and without consulting their college professors, to abolish competition by forming trusts. We passed laws forbidding them to do this, but they simply refused to obey the laws. In the United States they have made good their refusal for thirty-five years, and in the end have secured the blessing of the Supreme Court upon their course. So now we have co-operation in large-scale production and marketing. It is known by various names, "pools," "syndicates," "price-fixing," "gentlemen's agreements." It is a blessing for those who co-operate, but it proves to be the death of those who labor, and also of those who consume, and we see these also compelled to combine, forming labor unions and consumers' societies. Each side to the quarrel insists that the other side is committing a crime in refusing to compete, and our whole social life is rent with dissensions over this issue. Manifestly, we need to clear our minds of dead doctrines; to think out clearly just what we mean by competition, and what by co-operation, and what is the proper balance between the two. I have been at pains in this book to provide a basis for the deciding of such questions. It is a practical problem, the fostering of human life and the furthering of its development. We cannot lay down any fixed rule; we have to study the facts of each case separately. We shall say, this kind of competition is right, because it helps to protect human life and to develop its powers. We shall say, this other kind of competition is wrong because it has the opposite effect. We shall say, perhaps, that some kind was right fifty years ago, or even ten years ago, because it then had certain effects; but meantime some factor has changed, and it is now having a different effect, and therefore ought to be abolished. There has never been any kind of human competition which men did not judge and modify in that way; there is no field of human activity in which ethical codes do not condemn certain practices as unfair. The average Englishman considers it proper that two men who get into a dispute shall pull off their coats, and settle the question at issue by pummeling each other's noses. But let one of these men strike his opponent in the groin, or let him kick his shins, and instantly there will be a howl of execration. Likewise, an Anglo-Saxon man who fights with the fists has a loathing for a Sicilian or Greek or other Mediterranean man who will pull a knife. That kind of competition is barred among our breeds; and also the kind which consists of using poisons, or of starting slanders against your opponent. If you look back through history, you find many forms of competition which were once eminently respectable, but now have been outlawed. There was a time, for example, when the distinction we draw between piracy and sea-war was wholly unknown. The ships of the Vikings would go out and raid the ships and seaports of other peoples, and carry off booty and captives, and the men who did that were sung as heroes of the nation. The British sea-captains of the time of Queen Elizabeth—Drake, Frobisher, and the rest of them—are portrayed in our school books as valiant and hardy men, and the British colonies were built on the basis of their activities; yet, according to the sea laws in force today, they were pirates. We regard a cannibal race with abhorrence; yet there was a time when all the vigorous races of men were cannibals, and the habit of eating your enemies in battle may well have given an advantage to the races which practiced it. On the other hand, you find sentimental people who reject all competition on principle, and would like to abolish every trace of it from society, and especially from education. But stop and consider for a moment what that would mean. Would you abolish, for example, the competition of love, the right of a man to win the girl he wants? You could not do it, of course; but if you could, you would abolish one of the principal methods by which our race has been improved. Of course, what you really want is, not to abolish competition in love, but to raise it to a higher form. There is an old saying, "All's fair in love and war," but no one ever meant that. You would not admit that a man might compete in love by threatening to kill the girl if she preferred a rival. You would not admit that he might compete by poisoning the other man. You would not admit that he might compete by telling falsehoods about the other man. On the other hand, if you are sensible, you admit that he has a right to compete by making his character known to the girl, and if the other man is a rascal, by telling the girl that. Would you abolish the competition of art, the effort of men to produce work more beautiful and inspiring than has ever been known before? Would you abolish the effort of scientists to overthrow theories which have hitherto been accepted? Obviously not. You make these forms of competition seem better by calling them "emulation," but you do not in the least modify the fact that they involve the right of one person to outdo other persons, to supplant them and take away something from them, whether it be property or position or love or fame or power. In that sense, competition is indeed the law of life, and you might as well reconcile yourself to it, and learn to play your part with spirit and good humor. Also, you might as well train your children to it. You will find you cannot develop their powers to the fullest without competition; in fact, you will be forced to go back and utilize forms of competition which are now out of date among adults. I have told in the Book of the Body how I myself tried for ten years or more to live without physical competition, and discovered that I could not; I have had to take up some form of sport, and hundreds of thousands of other men have had the same experience. What is sport? It is a deliberate going back, under carefully devised rules, to the savage struggles of our ancestors. The very essence of real sport is that the contestants shall, within the rules laid down, compete with each other to the limit of their powers. With what contempt would a player of tennis or baseball or whist regard the proposition that his opponent should be merciful to him, and let him win now and then! Obviously, these things have no place in the game, and to be a "good sport" is to conform to the rules, and take with enjoyment whatever issue of the struggle may come. But then again, suppose you are competing with a child; obviously, the conditions are different. You no longer play the best you can, you let the child win a part of the time; but you do not let the child know this, or it would spoil the fun for the child. You pretend to try as hard as you know how, and you cry out in grief when you are beaten, and the child crows with delight. And yet, that does not keep you from loving the child, or the child from loving you. The purpose of this elaborate exposition is to make clear the very vital point that a certain set of social acts may be right under some conditions, and desperately wrong under other conditions. They may be right in play, and not in serious things; they may be right in youth, and not in maturity; they may be right at one period of the world's development, while at another period they are destructive of social existence. If, therefore, we wish to know what are right and wrong actions in the affairs of men, if we wish to judge any particular law or political platform or program of business readjustment, the first thing we have to do is to acquire a mass of facts concerning the society to which the law or platform or program, is to be applied. We need to ask ourselves, exactly what will be the effect of that change, applied in that particular way at that particular time. In order to decide accurately, we need to know the previous stages through which that society has passed, the forces which have been operating in it, and the ways in which they have worked. But also we must realize that the lessons of history cannot ever be accepted blindly. The "principles of the founders" apply to us only in modified form; for the world in which we live today is different from any world which has ever been before, and the world tomorrow will be different yet. We are the makers of it, and the masters of it, and what it will be depends to some extent upon our choice. In fact, that is the most important lesson of all for us to learn; the final purpose of all our thought about the world is to enable us to make it a happier and a better world for ourselves and our posterity to live in. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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