XIX The Cynic Interjects a Question 151 XX Our “Lower” Nature Does Not Explain Our Bondage 156 XXI How Reason Itself Binds Us to the Irrational 164 XXII The Deep Depravity of Our Respectable Faults 170 XXIII Even Our Passions Are Precedent-Ridden 178 XXIV Free Men Fear Their Freedom. Why? 185 XXV The Motives of Youth Compared with Those of Age 196 PART IV HOW CAN THEY BE RELEASED? XXVI The Inescapable Task 209 XXVII The Function of Minorities 216 XXVIII Release Through Cooperative Thinking 230 XXIX My Intractable Self 242 XXX The Realm of Free Spirits 252 Index 261 INTRODUCTION I ON HAVING A GOOD SUPPLY OF WANTS Man wants but little here below, Nor wants that little long. So runs an old hymn. If it were true, we should be in a bad fix. A savage, indeed, wants little; this is what makes him a savage. You cannot pry him loose from his savagery except by the lever of increased desires, whether for a rifle, or for a piece of calico, or for a house with windows. Whatever keeps us going in any direction, together with whatever makes us select a new direction from time to time--in other words, our motivation--is what we are. Meagre wants, meagre manhood; enlarging wants, enlarging manhood. The man of heroic mold makes outreaching demands upon life, unabashed by the difficulty of supplying them. Even the Stoics who, superficially considered, practised renunciation of wants, in reality withdrew from smaller wants into larger ones. They did not forego but cultivated the cravings of intellect; in human relations magnanimity was their standard, with dignified friendship as an experience fit for a philosopher. It was this expansiveness of their motives that made possible their serenity of spirit. A generation that has a large supply of narrow-range wants, together with plenty of corresponding narrow-range goods, easily becomes self-deceived. Because it gets what it wants, it believes that it is efficient. It fancies that if one only enlarges one’s barns and fills them full one will live more largely, whereas, to live in the human way is to manipulate our wants, and to live largely is to expand, diversify, and re-create them.