The basic sentiments of interest, love and hate, projected
outward or inward, organize personality. Men's characters and
their destinies rest in the things they find interesting, the
persons they love and hate, their self-confidence and
self-esteem, their self-contempt and hatred. And it is true that
often we hate and love the same person or circumstance; we are
divided, secretly, in our tenderest feelings, in our fiercest
hate, more often, alas, in the former. For occasionally
admiration and respect will mitigate hate and render impotent our
aim, but more commonly we are jealous of or envy son, brother,
sister, husband, wife, father, mother and friend. We love our
work but hate its tyranny, and even the ideal that we cherish,
when we examine it too closely, seems overconventionalized, not
enough our own, and it stifles and martyrs too many unpleasant
desires. We rebel against our own affections, against the love
that chains us perhaps to weakness and forces us, weary, to the
wheel.
How deeply the feeling of "right" enters into the sentiments and
their labors needs only a little reflection to understand. Here
we come to the effect of the sentiment of duty, for as such it
may be discussed. The establishment of conscience as our inner
guide to conduct, and even to thought and emotions, has been
studied briefly. On a basis of innate capacity, conscience arises
from the teaching and traditions of the group (or groups). The
individual who has a susceptibility or a readiness to believe and
a desire to be in conformity accepts or evolves for himself
principles of conduct, based on obligation, expectation of reward
and fear of punishment, these entering in various proportions,
according to the type of person. In children, or the very young
child, expectation of reward and fear of punishment are more
important than obligation, and this remains true of many people
throughout life. Gradually right, what we call duty, becomes
established as a guiding principle; but it must struggle with
impulse and the desire for immediate pleasure throughout life. In
fact, one of the dangers of the development of the feeling of
duty lies in the view often held by those guided by principle and
duty that pleasure is in itself somehow wrong and needs
justification. Whereas, in my opinion, pleasure is right and
needs no justification and is wrong only when it offends the
fundamental moralities and purposes of Society.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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