The Foundations of Personality [108]
make themselves felt, and at this time men (and women) need to add relaxation and pleasure of a legitimate kind. Golf, the fishing trip, games of all kinds; legitimate excitement which need not be inhibited is necessary. This need of excitement without inhibition is behind most of the gambling and card playing; it explains the extraordinary attraction of the detective story and the thrilling movies; it gives great social value to the prize fight and the ball game where you may see the staid and the sober giving vent to an excitement that, may fatigue them for a time but which clears the way for their next day's inhibitions. Unfortunately too many mistake excitement for happiness. The forms of relief from inhibition--card playing, sports, the theater, the thrilling story and the movie--grow to be habits and lose their exciting value. They can give no permanent relief from the pain of repression; only a philosophy of life can do that. A philosophy of life! One might write a few volumes on that (and there are so many great philosophers already on the market), and yet such a philosophy would only state that strenuous purpose must alternate with quiet relaxation; excitement is to be sought only at periods and never for any length of time; relief from inhibitions can only be found in legitimate ways or self-reproach enters. Play, sports, short frequent vacations rather than long ones, freedom from ceremony as a rule--but now and then a full indulgence in ceremonials--and a realization that there is no freedom in self-indulgence. I remember one Puritanically bred young woman who fled from her restrictions and inhibitions and joined a "free love" colony in New York. After two years she left, them and came back to New England. Her statement of the situation she found herself; it summarizes all attempts at "freedom." "It wasn't freedom. You found yourself bound to your desires, a slave to every wish. It grew awfully tiresome and besides, it brought so many complications. Sometimes you loved where you weren't loved--and vice versa. Jealousy was there, oh, so much of it--and pleasure disappeared after a while. It wasn't conscience--I still believe that right and wrong are arbitrary matters --but I found myself envying people who had some guide, some belief, some restrictions in themselves! For it seemed to me they were more free than I." The fact is, for most men and women inhibition is no artificial phenomenon, despite its burdensomeness. It is not only inevitable, it is desirable. A feeling of power appears when one resists; there is mental gain, character growth as a result. Life must be purposive else it is vain and futile, and the feeling of no achievement and failure is far more disastrous than a thousand inhibitions. Though man battles and compromises with himself, he also battles and compromises with his fellows and circumstances. That is to say, he must continually adjust himself to the unforeseen, the obstacle, the favoring circumstance; the possible and impossible; the certain and uncertain. Adjustment to reality is what the neurologists call it, but they do not define reality, which indeed cannot be defined. It is not the same thing for any two persons. For some reality is success, for others it is virtue. The scientist smiles at the reality of the love-sick girl, and she would think his reality a bad dream. The artist says, "Beauty is the reality"; the miser says, "Cash"; the sentimentalist answers, "None of this but Love"; and the philosopher, aloof from all these, defines reality as "Truth." And the skeptic asks, "What is Truth?" We gain nothing by saying a man must adjust himself to reality; we say something definite when we say he must adjust his wishes to his abilities, to the opposing wills, wisher, and abilities of others; to the needs of his family and his country; to disease, old age and death; to the flux of the river of life. In the quickness of adjustment we have a great character factor; in the farsightedness of adjustment (foreseeing, planning) we have another. Does a man take his difficulties with courage