The Foundations of Personality [74]
really part of one's self; the fear of the rainy day is back of most of the thrift, though the acquisitive feeling and duty may also operate powerfully. Fear of venereal disease impels many a man to continence who otherwise would follow his desire. And fear of the bad opinion of others is the most powerful deterrent force in the world. "What will people say" is, at bottom, fear that they will say bad things, and though it keeps men from the "bad" conduct, it inhibits the finer nobler actions as well. There is a great deal of unconventional untrammeled belief in the world that never finds expression because of fear. How deeply the fear of death modifies the life of people it is impossible to state. To every one there comes the awful reflection that he, that warmly pulsating being, in love with the world and with living, "center of the universe," HE himself must die, must be cold and still and have no will, no power, no feeling; be buried in the ground. Most of the essential melancholy of the world is due to this realization, and most of the feeling of pessimism and futility thus has its origin. Mortal man--a worm of the earth--a brief flower doomed to perish--and all of it finds final expression in Gray's marvelous words: "The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r, And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, Await alike the inevitable hour. The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
[1] Hobbes made fear the most important motive in the conduct of man.
"Why strive, thou poor creature, for wealth and power; sink thyself in the, Godhead!" "Turn, turn from vain pursuits; fame, the bubble, is bound to break as thou art." This is one type of reaction against this fear,--for men react to the fear of death variously. If man is mortal, God is not, and there is a life everlasting. The life everlasting--whether a reality or not--is conjured up and believed in by an effort to compensate for the fear of death. I have a son who, when he was three, manifested great emotion if death were to enter in a story. "Will anything happen?" he would ask, meaning, "Will death enter?" And if so, he would beg not to have that story told. But when he was four, he heard some one say that there were people who took old automobiles apart, fixed up the parts and these were then placed in other automobiles. "That's what God does to us," he cried triumphantly. "When we die, He takes us apart and puts us into babies, and we live again." Thereafter he would discuss death as fearlessly as he spoke of dinner, and all his fears vanished. Here was a typical rationalization of fear, one that has helped to shape religion, philosophies, ways of living. And the widespread belief in immortality is a compensation and a rationalization of the fear of death. If some men rationalize in this fashion, others take directly opposite means. "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die." The popularity of Omar Khayyam rests upon the aptness of his statement of this side of the case of Man vs. Death, and many a man who never heard of him has recklessly plunged into dissipation on the theory, "a short life and a merry one." This is more truly a pessimism than is the ascetic philosophy. "Well, then, I must die," says another. "Oh, that I might achieve before death comes!" So men, appalled by the brief tenure of life and the haphazard way death strikes, work hard, spurred on by the wish to leave a great work behind them. This work becomes a Self, left behind, and here the fear of death is compensated for by a little longer life in the form of achievement. Many a father and mother, looking at their children, feel this as part of their compensation for parenthood. "I shall die and leave some one behind me," means, "I shall die and yet I shall, in another form, live." Part of the incentive to parenthood, in a time which knows how to prevent parenthood and which shirks it as disagreeable, is the fear of death, of personal annihilation. For there is in death a blow to one's pride, an indignity in this annihilation,--Nothingness. There is a still larger reaction
[1] Hobbes made fear the most important motive in the conduct of man.
"Why strive, thou poor creature, for wealth and power; sink thyself in the, Godhead!" "Turn, turn from vain pursuits; fame, the bubble, is bound to break as thou art." This is one type of reaction against this fear,--for men react to the fear of death variously. If man is mortal, God is not, and there is a life everlasting. The life everlasting--whether a reality or not--is conjured up and believed in by an effort to compensate for the fear of death. I have a son who, when he was three, manifested great emotion if death were to enter in a story. "Will anything happen?" he would ask, meaning, "Will death enter?" And if so, he would beg not to have that story told. But when he was four, he heard some one say that there were people who took old automobiles apart, fixed up the parts and these were then placed in other automobiles. "That's what God does to us," he cried triumphantly. "When we die, He takes us apart and puts us into babies, and we live again." Thereafter he would discuss death as fearlessly as he spoke of dinner, and all his fears vanished. Here was a typical rationalization of fear, one that has helped to shape religion, philosophies, ways of living. And the widespread belief in immortality is a compensation and a rationalization of the fear of death. If some men rationalize in this fashion, others take directly opposite means. "Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die." The popularity of Omar Khayyam rests upon the aptness of his statement of this side of the case of Man vs. Death, and many a man who never heard of him has recklessly plunged into dissipation on the theory, "a short life and a merry one." This is more truly a pessimism than is the ascetic philosophy. "Well, then, I must die," says another. "Oh, that I might achieve before death comes!" So men, appalled by the brief tenure of life and the haphazard way death strikes, work hard, spurred on by the wish to leave a great work behind them. This work becomes a Self, left behind, and here the fear of death is compensated for by a little longer life in the form of achievement. Many a father and mother, looking at their children, feel this as part of their compensation for parenthood. "I shall die and leave some one behind me," means, "I shall die and yet I shall, in another form, live." Part of the incentive to parenthood, in a time which knows how to prevent parenthood and which shirks it as disagreeable, is the fear of death, of personal annihilation. For there is in death a blow to one's pride, an indignity in this annihilation,--Nothingness. There is a still larger reaction