Moreover, most of us practically find that there is more pleasure in doing what we are best fitted for than in having anything whatever; but still the dominant governing theory of humanity holds that a man’s real business is to get such and such good and that “he won’t be happy till he gets it”! I heard this theory well expressed in passing by two men in the street recently; well-dressed, important-looking, elderly men:
“Yes,” said one of them, shaking a handsome cane, “they get their money all over the world and come here to spend it, to live!”
A better expression of this dominant belief it would be hard to find. The immense world-wide activities of the business men alluded to were defined merely as “getting money,” and the spending of that money, the obtaining all manner of materials for consumption, was defined as “living.” Acting under this belief we see the majority of mankind using continual effort to get things for themselves and their families, and, when the things they desired are attained, yet no resultant satisfaction follows, they merely transfer the ideal and seek to get more, other, and different things. Against this tendency a minor line of philosophy has been levelled, preaching contentment, but this philosophy is still on the wrong basis, for it is still the things we are told to be contented with—those we have instead of those we have not, that’s all.
In practical truth the happiness of man in what he gets is limited, extremely limited, but the happiness of man in what he does is unlimited. The receiving capacity of our nervous system is soon exhausted, but the discharging capacity has no limit but that of natural periods of rest. The pleasure in expression increases with use, the pleasure in impression decreases with use.
It is interesting, pathetic, and absurd, to see the spasmodic contortion of nature under the effort to enjoy having things. We enjoy food, naturally. The use of food is, plainly, to enable us to do things, and if we do enough we always enjoy food. But the foolish person ignores doing things and seeks to enjoy food as an end in itself. The enjoyment soon palling, and even decreasing as the natural appetite decreases, the foolish person then pushes on in a line of artificial enhancements of this natural function, bringing in an elaborate convocation of other senses, with various luxuries and arts, so as to prolong and increase his enjoyment. The enjoyment receding vaguely before him, he adds eccentricities to his luxuries, runs the gamut of elaborate changes, and plays Hob with his internal organs, all in the persistent endeavour to hold on to the enjoyment of eating.
In this particular field of enjoyment no animal alive has attained such subtle, exquisite, and long-drawn pain as we have achieved withal. Our array of alimentary diseases is really instructive, yet does not seem really to instruct us. We still persist in putting the cart before the horse and looking for pleasure in what we get. In the field of economic action, this fallacy exerts a constant evil influence not only by checking the output, but by degrading and distorting that output to suit the growing vitiation of taste which always results from this belief.
The governing concepts of any society at any period tend inevitably to such and such results, but their effect is modified by interaction and by many external circumstances. As the society grows and circumstances change we may see one and another root-thought working to its special result; checked by this, modified by that, but always tending to its own end. So this one thought, acting with all our others, right and wrong, may be followed in the ever-present social tendency to luxury and excess.
If you believe that happiness lies in the impressions you receive, you naturally modify your action to the purpose of securing the desired impression. Seeing the impressions fail to produce the expected happiness, but still believing in the theory, you simply strive to secure further impressions. Finding, as jaded emperors have found, that to have everything in the world you want does not make you happy, you still hold on to the theory and merely sigh for new worlds to conquer; or, if your religion is also built on this theory, look forward to an eternity of having things to make you happy.
The demand for happiness is perfectly healthy and right, but we are mistaken as to the means. Every possible impression receivable by the human sensorium is merely an incentive to expression. We are transmitters of energy, not vats for storage. Our capacity for storage is merely to give us wider and longer range in our discharge. The living force of the Universe is pushing through man, and as that force is greater than he, so is the joy of doing greater than the joy of having. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Of course!
Let us study some of the practical results of this false concept of ours. One of the most exquisitely sublimated extremes of its action is seen in our distinctively human practice of what is called “collecting.” It is bewildering at first. That a squirrel should collect nuts, and, on the same line, that Pharaoh should collect wheat, or that the housewife should collect food in advance, is all “natural.” That anyone should collect that “greatest common denominator,” money, is the same tendency as above. But that a human creature should collect a vast supply of objects which he does not use, never intends to use, and could not use if he wanted to, is truly remarkable.