V What the Social Problem Is

BUT what if it is a good basis? What if “the foundation of virtue is the endeavor to preserve one’s own being” to the uttermost?¹ What if there is a way in which, without any hypocritical mystification, this self-seeking, while still remaining self-seeking, may become coöperation?

Spinoza’s answer is not startling: it is the Socratic answer, issuing from a profound psychological analysis. Given the liberation and development of intelligence, and the discordant strife of egos will yield undreamed-of harmonies. Men are so made, they are so compact of passion and obscurity, that they will not let one another be free; how can that be changed? Deception has been tried, and has succeeded only temporarily if at all. Compulsion has been tried; but compulsion is a negative force, it makes for inhibition rather than inspiration. It is a necessary evil; but hardly the last word of constructive social thinking. There is something more in a man than his capacity for fear, there is some other way of appealing to him than the way of threats; there is his hunger and thirst to know and understand and develop. Think of the untouched resources of this human desire for mental enlargement; think of the millions who almost starve that they may learn. Is that the force that is to build the future and fashion the city of our dreams? Here are men torn with impulses, shaken by mutual interference; is it conceivable that they would be so deeply torn and shaken if that hunger of theirs for knowledge—knowledge of themselves, too,—were met with generous opportunity? Men long to be reasonable; they know, even the least of them, that under the tyranny of impulse there is no ultimately fruitful life; what is there that they would not give for the power to see things clearly and be captains of their souls? Here if anywhere is an opportunity for such statesmanship as does not often grace the courts of emperors and kings!

How we can come to know ourselves, our inmost nature, how we can through this knowledge achieve coördination and our real desires,—that is for Spinoza the heart of the social problem. The source of man’s strength is that he can know his weakness. If he can but find himself out, then he can change himself. “A passion ceases to be a passion as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea of it.”² When a passion is tracked to its lair and confronted with its futile partiality, its sting is drawn, it can hurt us no more; it may coöperate but it may no longer rule. It is seen to be “inadequate,” to express but a fragment of us, and so seen it sinks into its place in the hierarchy of desires. “And in proportion as we know our emotions better, the more are they susceptible to control.”³ Passion is passivity; control is power. Knowledge brings control, and control brings freedom; freedom is not a gift, it is a victory. Knowledge, control, freedom, power, virtue: these are all one thing. Before the “empire of man over nature” must come the empire of man over himself, must come coördination. Achievement is born of clear vision and unified intent, not of actions that are but bubbles on the muddy rapids of desire.