Heart and Soul | Page 3

controlled by the idea of good and bad, reward and punishment; certain pleasures and pains have to be balanced against each other to determine a choice. But from beginning to end, it is all concerned in considerations of advantage--what is best for self, at the time being, or in the long run--in this world or the next. Why do this, that, or the other? because you will gain most by it, in the end. At bottom, the motive is taken for granted, whether openly admitted or more or less thinly disguised--self, self-interest, selfishness.
Then we turn and look upon a mother and her child--and we find that all thought of personal advantage can be transferred to another. Self-interest can be controlled and obliterated by a new and mysterious principle--the principle of love.
There are various kinds and degrees of feeling that go under the name of love and nothing in life is more interesting or more vitally important to study and understand. But in this preliminary summary it is enough to signal its existence as one of the factors in the problem of life.
It may be just as well to note, in passing, that mothers are to be found whose love for their children is not so completely unselfish. Mothers are to be found who care very little about their children. Mothers are to be found who regard children as a nuisance and a disadvantage and prefer to be without them. That will be found to be one of the curious side-lights of the problem when time comes to discuss it.
It does not alter the fact, however, that love exists, that the true mother's love of her child is the most complete and universal illustration of it.
Also in many other forms of love and affection, it is easy to recognize this same tendency toward unselfishness--a readiness to sacrifice one's personal pleasures and inclinations for the joy of another. A father may have this feeling for his son, or his brother, just as he may have it for his wife, or his mother. A man, or a woman, may have it for a dear and intimate friend, and be willing to make real sacrifices in order to benefit them.
This, then, is the fourth consideration--a fourth factor in the problem of life--and to avoid misunderstanding and confusion of ideas, we will call it affection--the influence of affection.
There remains one more consideration--one further class and kind of influence--which has its bearing on conduct. This may be summed up, in a general way, as love of an ideal, or an idea. Although it is less wide-spread and less potent in most lives than affection for fellow beings, yet it is, in varying degrees, a real factor that cannot be left out.
A sense of duty exists, to greater or less extent, in nearly all people. In people of breeding and good family it may become pride of race--noblesse oblige. A certain individual may have a strong affection for his home town, the little community with which he has been identified as a boy and man. Another is devoted to a cause, a political party, a Red Cross movement; while others have a strong feeling of patriotism, they love their country, their flag, and they are ready, at any time, to give up something for the good cause.
Broadly speaking, and for lack of a better name, we may call this fifth principle in the problem of life--devotion to an ideal.
As a result of these influences, the character of an individual is formed, his conduct is determined. At any given time, in the presence of any given question as to what he will, or will not do, the answer will depend on the relative force, or sway, of the conflicting considerations.
This is merely stating an application of a general law--that all effects must have their causes. Only in the conduct of an individual, the causes at work are often very subtle and complicated.
If the average individual at the present time is behaving differently from the way he used to act, it is obviously because of some change in the influences. Certain motives and considerations which used to be decisive have now ceased to dominate. Other considerations have superseded them. So much is fairly obvious, and very little reflection is needed to locate these in a general way. They lie in the second group of our summary--the control of desires from without, enforced by rewards and punishments.
In the life of the average individual, this influence has become weaker all along the line. It is probably less dominating and decisive to-day, than it has ever been before in any period of civilization, ancient or modern. And the weakening of the influence begins in the earliest childhood, with the punishments of nurse and parents and extends right on to the end, through