Harmony and Conflict in the Living World - Alexander F. Skutch [95]
But to create a "unitary man" by impressing a stereotyped pattern of behavior upon the nervous system, somewhat in the manner of instinct-guided animals, is not a promising solution to the problem. To accomplish this, it would be necessary to reverse the course of evolution, which is an essentially irreversible process. Moreover, such a solution would deprive us of the freedom and flexibility of thought and action that humankind has struggled so long and painfully to win. We can recover the wholeness that is the birthright of many other creatures neither by external threats and inducements nor by impressing a pattern of behavior upon our nervous system, in the manner of the squirrel and the sparrow. The only promising course is to integrate our lives in accordance with an ideal of conduct inspired by harmonization and deliberately cultivated by the mind. To become good and whole, we must first create an ideal of goodness and wholeness, and cleave to it with such intense love that no other emotion can overpower it.
But we cannot win wholeness and freedom by adopting some ideal that ignores the conditions of our present existence, one of the most obvious of which is the spirit's close association with an organic body. An aspiration ignoring this insistent fact is likely to dissipate itself in vain strivings. The ideal of conduct that liberates us must be formed with full cognizance of our dual nature as an
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organism living in precarious balance with a mutable environment and at the same time a spiritual being whose life and aspirations can never be contained in, or limited by, the needs and appetites of the body to which it is joined. For its own continued existence and tranquility, the mind must recognize the body's needs and reconcile them with its own equally urgent needs in a way that does justice to both and ensures the success of the partnership. Thus, the ideal relationship of spirit and organism is not one of coincidence, or identity of interests, but rather one of balancesuch a balance as will bring health to the body, freedom and tranquility to the mind. In the measure that it can achieve this equilibrium, the mind will fulfill its ancient obligation to guide and serve the body, yet enjoy the freedom and detachment that is its aspiration and its destiny.
Of all the lessons that the sages of ancient Hellas and India taught, none is of more perennial worth than their doctrine that we can escape the bondage to the passions in which the dawn of history found us only by the deliberate cultivation of an ideal of conduct. Doubtless they often oversimplified the problem, viewing too narrowly the whole range of interests that should be included in this ideal, failing to do justice to aspects of our nature that, when intelligently cultivated, enrich and ennoble character. These were errors of the sanguine youth of philosophy, of minds newly escaped by their own efforts from thralldom to the senses and rising so strongly on unwearied wings that they seemed capable of soaring to the stars. If they failed because the atmosphere at last became too thin to support them, they at least rose higher than most of us of a later age can follow.
We are even in danger of forgetting their lesson that only the self-directed mind, loyal to an ideal it has created or at least freely accepted, is stable, dependable, and free. Neither rules of conduct attributed to some supernatural source nor the stringent regulations of society can ever replace this capacity for complete self-guidance, which belongs to every animal equipped with its full complement of instincts, and is regained by the human mind when at long last it has passed through