§ 13. Animal choice. The problems of human life and conduct are never quite simple and there is another side to the question of luxury. Its frankest defenders, while recog nizing the fallacy of the make-work argument, and admitting its dangers to the individual, claim that in its general effects it is a great incentive to economic progress. There the argu ment for luxury has some validity, and to appraise it better, let us recall the function of developing desires in impelling men to greater effort.
Choice among animals depends on the environment; that is to say, all that the creatures below man can do is to take things as they find them. And so the environment shapes and affects the animal. The fish is fitted to live in the water, and suffers and dies if long out of it. The horse and the cow like best the food of the fields. And so each species of animal, in order to survive in the severe struggle for existence, has been forced to fit itself to the conditions in which it lives. After the animal has been thus fitted, its choice is for those things normally to be found in its surroundings. So different ani mals choose different things, but in most cases it is the en vironment that determines the choice, and not the choice that shapes the environment. However, migration with the chang ing seasons, or in search of food, is a most effective method by which the animals, led by their instincts, bring about a change in their environment; and many other methods are employed, such as nest-making and food-storing.
§ 14. Choice by primitive men. In simpler human soci eties, choices are mostly confined to physical necessities; that is, in the earlier stages of society, man's choices are very much like those of the animals. Man, like the animals, feels the pangs of hunger and he strives to secure food. He yearns for companionship, for it is only through association and mutual help that men, so weak as compared with many kinds of animals, are able to resist the enemies which beset them. He needs clothing to protect him against the harsher climates of the lands to which he moves. To protect himself against the cold and rain, he needs a shelter—a cave, a wigwam, or a hut. Man is thus impelled to bend his energies to the choice of the things necessary to survival.
In the rudest societies of which there is any record, savages are found with desires developed in many directions beyond those of any animals. Men are not passive victims of cir cumstances; their desires are not determined solely by their environment, but are drawn to things beyond and outside of the provisions of nature.
masters of circumstances, their desires anticipate mere phys ical needs; they seek a more varied food of finer flavor and more delicately prepared. Dress is not limited by physical comfort, but becomes a means of personal ornament. Men seek and choose the beautiful in sound, in form, in taste, in color, in motion. The rude but or communal lodge to protect against rain and cold becomes a home. Out of the earlier rude companionship develop the sentiments of friendship and fam ily life. And finally, as the imagination and intellect de velop, there grow up the various forms of intellectual pleas ures—the love of reading, of study, of travel, and of thought. Desires develop and transform the world.
In recent discussion of the control of the tropics, the too great contentedness of tropical peoples has been brought out prominently. It has been said that if a colony of New Eng land school-teachers and Presbyterian deacons should settle in the tropics, their descendants would, in a single generation, be wearing breech-clouts and going to cock-fights on Sunday. Certain it is that the energy and ambition of the temperate zone are hard to maintain in warmer lands. The negro's con tentedness with hard conditions, so often counted as a virtue, is one of the difficulties in the way of solving the race problem in our South to-day. Booker T. Washington and others who are laboring for the elevation of the American negroes, would try first to make them discontented with the one-room cabins, in which hundreds of thousands of families live. If only the desire for a two- or three-room cabin can be aroused, experi ence shows that family life and industrial qualities may be improved in many other ways.
§ 16. Function of modern discontent. Not only in Amer ica, but in most civilized lands to-day, is seen a rapid growth of desires in the working-classes. The incomes and the stand ard of living have much of the time been increasing, but not so fast as have the desires of the working-classes. Regret has been expressed by some that the workers of Europe are be coming "declassed." Increasing wages, it is said, bring not welfare, but unhappiness, to the complaining masses. If dis content with one's lot goes beyond a moderate degree, if it is more than the desire to better one's lot by personal efforts, if it becomes an unhappy longing for the impossible, then in deed it may be a misfortune. But a moderate ambition to bet ter the conditions of one's self, of one's family, or of society, is the "divine discontent" absolutely indispensable if energy and enterprise are to be called into being.