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.

The excuse for saying so obvious a thing is that, in spite of its obviousness, people do not believe it. If they did, the state of education and of religion, both of which have specifically to do with the ends of living, would be different from what it is. Churches and schools are peddling the wares that they already possess instead of stimulating a demand for better goods than we have in stock.

Dr. Faustus, in his meditative search for the foundation of existence, rejects the Johannine dictum, “In the beginning was the Word” (or universal Reason), substituting for it, “In the beginning was the Act.” He might well have said, “In the beginning was the Want.”

What then, are the motives of men? In particular, what are we capable of wanting, and what are we capable of doing with our wants? After moving some little distance from the wants of savages, must we pause and merely repeat our wantings henceforth? Or, indeed, are our desires in any significant way different from those of our savage ancestors? If we are able to manage our desires to any degree, what is the main problem of management, and how is it to be solved?

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