In so far as these impulses find an unimpeded expression
the man is free; otherwise he is under restraint.
Without rendering here a final decision upon the importance
of the role played in human life by pleasure and pain,
one feels impelled to ask the question whether the
goal of a man’s endeavors may not best be described
as freedom? Not freedom in the abstract,
freedom to do anything and everything, but freedom
to live the life appropriate to him as man, and as
a man of a given type. That this freedom is limited
in a variety of ways, by his material environment,
by the clashing of impulses within himself, by the
conflict of his desires with the will of the social
organism in which he finds his place, is sufficiently
palpable.
RATIONALITY AND WILL
53. THE IRRATIONAL WILL.—As dreams
do not consist of an insignificant medley of elements
drawn from the experiences of waking life, but, in
spite of their fantastic character, bear some semblance
of ordered reality, so the impulses of even the most
unintelligent and inconsequent of human beings are
not wholly chaotic, but differ only in the degree of
their organization from those of the most rational
and far-seeing.
Where there is even a glimmer of intelligence, ends
are recognized and means to their attainment are chosen.
Ends are compared, and the preference is given to
some over others. But, with all this, there may
be much incoherence and planlessness. Men can
live somehow without looking far into the future,
or keeping well in mind the lessons to be learned
from the past. They can manage to exist in the
face of no little short-sighted impulsiveness and
inconsistency. But it is palpable that they cannot,
under such circumstances, live as they might live were
they more truly rational.
The individual deficient in foresight and control
may, it is true, be carried along and defended from
disaster by the presence of these qualities in the
greater organism of which he is a part. The infant
is a parasite upon society; it is provided for independently
of its own efforts. The child would soon come
to grief were its ends not chosen by others and its
conduct kept under control. And a vast number
of persons not children are in much the same position.
There is foresight and rational purpose somewhere;
they profit by it; but of foresight and rational purpose
they themselves possess but a modicum.
Where breadth of view is lacking, where the future
is unforeseen or ignored and the past is forgotten,
where desires arise and impel to action in relative
independence of one another, the man seeks today what
tomorrow he rejects. We can scarcely say that
the man chooses. He is the scene of independent
choices, varied and inconsistent. He is the victim
of caprice, and appears to us largely the creature
of accident, a prey to the impulse which happens to
be in his mind at the moment. From such a man
we cannot look for an adherence to distant aims, and
the marshalling of the proper means to their attainment.
He cannot count upon himself, and he cannot be counted
upon. That he can play no significant role in
such stable organizations as the state and church is
obvious. His desires may be many and varied,
but they converge upon no one end. We set him
down as irrational.
