Even with respect to men who succeed in accumulating wealth it is a mistake to suppose that acquisitiveness plays with most of them a large role, beyond getting control of the tools of the game. Acquisition is necessary as an outcome, but it arises not from love of accumulation but from the fact that without a large stock of possessions one cannot engage effectively in modern business. It is an incident of love of power, of desire to impress fellows, to obtain prestige, to secure influence, to manifest ability, to “succeed” in short under the conditions of the given regime. And if we are to shove a mythological psychology of instincts behind modern economics, we should do better to invent instincts for security, a good time, power and success than to rely upon an acquisitive instinct. We should have also to give much weight to a peculiar sporting instinct. Not acquiring dollars, but chasing them, hunting them is the important thing. Acquisition has its part in the big game, for even the most devoted sportsman prefers, other things being equal, to bring home the fox’s brush. A tangible result is the mark to one’s self and to others of success in sport.
Instead of dividing sharply an acquisitive impulse manifested in business and a creative instinct displayed in science, art and social fellowship, we should rather first inquire why it is that so much of creative activity is in our day diverted into business, and then ask why it is that opportunity for exercise of the creative capacity in business is now restricted to such a small class, those who have to do with banking, finding a market, and manipulating investments; and finally ask why creative activity is perverted into an overspecialized and frequently inhumane operation. For after all it is not the bare fact of creation but its quality which counts.
That captains of industry are creative artists of a sort, and that industry absorbs an undue share of the creative activity of the present time cannot be denied. To impute to the leaders of industry and commerce simply an acquisitive motive is not merely to lack insight into their conduct, but it is to lose the clue to bettering conditions. For a more proportionate distribution of creative power between business and other occupations, and a more humane, wider use of it in business depend upon grasping aright the forces actually at work. Industrial leaders combine interest in making far-reaching plans, large syntheses of conditions based upon study, mastery of refined and complex technical skill, control over natural forces and events, with love of adventure, excitement and mastery of fellow-men. When these interests are reinforced with actual command of all the means of luxury, of display and procuring admiration from the less fortunate, it is not surprising that creative force is drafted largely into business channels, and that competition for an opportunity to display power becomes brutal.
The strategic question, as was said, is to understand how and why political, legal, scientific and educational conditions of society for the last centuries have stimulated and nourished such a one-sided development of creative activities. To approach the problem from this point of view is much more hopeful, though infinitely more complex intellectually, than the approach which sets out with a fixed dualism between acquisitive and creative impulses. The latter assumes a complete split of higher and lower in the original constitution of man. Were this the case, there would be no organic remedy. The sole appeal would be to sentimental exhortation to men to wean themselves from devotion to the things which are beloved by their lower and material nature. And if the appeal were moderately successful the social result would be a fixed class division. There would remain a lower class, superciliously looked down upon by the higher, consisting of those in whom the acquisitive instinct remains stronger and who do the necessary work of life, while the higher “creative” class devotes itself to social intercourse, science and art.
Since the underlying psychology is wrong, the problem and its solution assumes in fact a radically different form. There are an indefinite number of original or instinctive activities, which are organized into interests and dispositions according to the situations to which they respond. To increase the creative phase and the humane quality of these activities is an affair of modifying the social conditions which stimulate, select, intensify, weaken and coordinate native activities. The first step in dealing with it is to increase our detailed scientific knowledge. We need to know exactly the selective and directive force of each social situation; exactly how each tendency is promoted and retarded. Command of the physical environment on a large and deliberate scale did not begin until belief in gross forces and entities was abandoned. Control of physical energies is due to inquiry which establishes specific correlations between minute elements. It will not be otherwise with social control and adjustment. Having the knowledge we may set hopefully at work upon a course of social invention and experimental engineering. A study of the educative effect, the influence upon habit, of each definite form of human intercourse, is prerequisite to effective reform.
VI
No Separate Instincts
In spite of what has been said, it will be asserted that there are definite, independent, original instincts which manifest themselves in specific acts in a one-to-one correspondence. Fear,
