The Foundations of Personality [60]
In my opinion, sex interest can be so handled and a blunt thwarting of this interest should be avoided. Some explanation leading the child to larger, less personal aspects of sex should be given. The interest of the child is often thwarted through sheer laziness. "Don't bother me" is the reply of a parent shirking a sacred duty. Interest is the beginning of knowledge, and where it is discouraged knowledge is discouraged. Any inquiry can be met on the child's plane of intelligence and comprehension, and the parent must arrange for the gratification of this fundamental desire. How? By a question hour each day, perhaps a children's hour, a home university period where the vital interest of the child will be satisfied. To return to the morbid interests: do they arise from secret morbid desires? The Freudian answer to that would be yes. And so would many another answer. It is the answer in many cases, especially where the desire is not so much morbid as forbidden. The virgin, the continent who are intensely interested in sex are not morbid, even though they have been forbidden to think of a natural craving and appetite. But when the interest is for the horrible it is often the case that the excitement aroused by the subject is pleasurable, because it is a mild excitement and does not quite reach disgust. Confronted with the real perversity, the disgust aroused would quite effectually conquer interest. And here is a fundamental law of interest: it must lead to a profitable, pleasurable result or else it tends to disappear. If this is too bold a statement, let me qualify it by stating that a profitable, pleasurable result must be foreseen or foreseeable. Either in some affective state, or in some tangible good, interest seeks fulfillment. Disappointment is the foe of interest, and too prolonged a "vestibule of satisfaction" (to use Hocking's phrase) destroys or impairs interest.
CHAPTER VIII. THE SENTIMENTS OF LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, HATE, PITY AND DUTY. COMPENSATION AND ESCAPE I shall ignore the complexities that arise when we seek to organize our reactions into various groups by making a simple classification of feeling, for the purposes of this book. There is a primary result of any stimulation, whether from within ourselves or without, which we have called excitement. This excitement may have a pleasurable or an unpleasurable quality, and we cannot understand just what is back of pleasure and pain in this sense. Such an explanation, that pleasure is a sign of good for the organism and pain a sign of bad, is an error in that often an experience that produces pleasure is a detriment and an injury. If pleasure were an infallible sign of good, no books on character, morals or hygiene would need to be written. This primary excitement, when associated with outer events or things, becomes differentiated into many forms. Curiosity (or interest) is the focusing of that excitement on particular objects or ends, in order that the essential value or meaning of that object or individual become known. Curiosity and interest develop into the seeking of experience and the general intellectual pursuits. We have already discussed this phase of excitement. An object of interest may then evoke further feeling. It may be one's baby, or one's father or a kinsman or a female of the same species. A type of feeling FAVORABLE to the object is aroused, called "tender feeling," which is associated with deep-lying instincts and has endless modifications and variations. Perhaps its great example is the tender feeling of the mother for the baby, a feeling so strong that it leads to conduct of self- sacrifice; conduct that makes nothing of privation, suffering, even death, if these will help the object of the tender feeling, the child. Tender feeling of this type, which we call love, is a theme one cannot discuss dryly, for it sweeps one into reveries; it suggests softly glowing eyes, not far from tears, tenderly curved lips, just barely smiling, and the soft humming of the mother to the babe in her arms. It is the soft feeling which is the unifying feeling,
CHAPTER VIII. THE SENTIMENTS OF LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, HATE, PITY AND DUTY. COMPENSATION AND ESCAPE I shall ignore the complexities that arise when we seek to organize our reactions into various groups by making a simple classification of feeling, for the purposes of this book. There is a primary result of any stimulation, whether from within ourselves or without, which we have called excitement. This excitement may have a pleasurable or an unpleasurable quality, and we cannot understand just what is back of pleasure and pain in this sense. Such an explanation, that pleasure is a sign of good for the organism and pain a sign of bad, is an error in that often an experience that produces pleasure is a detriment and an injury. If pleasure were an infallible sign of good, no books on character, morals or hygiene would need to be written. This primary excitement, when associated with outer events or things, becomes differentiated into many forms. Curiosity (or interest) is the focusing of that excitement on particular objects or ends, in order that the essential value or meaning of that object or individual become known. Curiosity and interest develop into the seeking of experience and the general intellectual pursuits. We have already discussed this phase of excitement. An object of interest may then evoke further feeling. It may be one's baby, or one's father or a kinsman or a female of the same species. A type of feeling FAVORABLE to the object is aroused, called "tender feeling," which is associated with deep-lying instincts and has endless modifications and variations. Perhaps its great example is the tender feeling of the mother for the baby, a feeling so strong that it leads to conduct of self- sacrifice; conduct that makes nothing of privation, suffering, even death, if these will help the object of the tender feeling, the child. Tender feeling of this type, which we call love, is a theme one cannot discuss dryly, for it sweeps one into reveries; it suggests softly glowing eyes, not far from tears, tenderly curved lips, just barely smiling, and the soft humming of the mother to the babe in her arms. It is the soft feeling which is the unifying feeling,