The future of an illusion

When one has lived for long within a particular culture^[1] and has often striven to discover its origins and the path of its development, one feels for once the temptation to turn one’s attention in the other direction and to ask what further fate awaits this culture and what transformations it is destined to undergo. But one soon finds that the value of such an enquiry is diminished from the outset by several considerations. Above all, by the fact that there are only a few people who can survey human activity in all its ramifications. Most people have been compelled to restrict themselves to a single, or to a few, spheres of interest; but the less a man knows of the past and the present the more unreliable must his judgement of the future prove. And further it is precisely in the matter of this judgement that the subjective expectations of the individual play a part that is difficult to assess; for these prove to be dependent on purely personal factors in his own experience, on his more or less hopeful attitude to life, according as temperament, success or failure has prescribed for him. And finally one must take into account the remarkable fact that in general men experience the present naïvely, so to speak, without being able to estimate its content; they must first place it at a distance, i.e. the present must have become the past before one can win from it points of vantage from which to gauge the future.

And so he who yields to the temptation to deliver an opinion on the probable future of our culture will do well to remind himself of the difficulties just indicated, and likewise of the uncertainty that attaches quite universally to every prophecy. It follows from this that in hasty flight from so great a task I shall seek out the small tract of territory to which my attention has hitherto been directed, as soon as I have defined its position in general.

Human culture—I mean by that all those respects in which human life has raised itself above animal conditions and in which it differs from the life of the beasts, and I disdain to separate culture and civilization—presents, as is well known, two aspects to the observer. It includes on the one hand all the knowledge and power that men have acquired in order to master the forces of nature and win resources from her for the satisfaction of human needs; and on the other hand it includes all the necessary arrangements whereby men’s relations to each other, and in particular the distribution of the attainable riches, may be regulated. The two tendencies of culture are not independent of each other, first, because the mutual relations of men are profoundly influenced by the measure of instinctual satisfaction that the existing resources make possible; secondly, because the individual can himself take on the quality of a piece of property in his relation to another, in so far as this other makes use of his capacity for work or chooses him as sexual object; and thirdly, because every individual is virtually an enemy of culture, which is nevertheless ostensibly an object of universal human concern. It is remarkable that little as men are able to exist in isolation they should yet feel as a heavy burden the sacrifices that culture expects of them in order that a communal existence may be possible. Thus culture must be defended against the individual, and its organization, its institutions and its laws, are all directed to this end; they aim not only at establishing a certain distribution of property, but also at maintaining it; in fact, they must protect against the hostile impulses of mankind everything that contributes to the conquest of nature and the production of wealth. Human creations are easy to destroy, and science and technical skill, which have built them up, can also be turned to their destruction.

So one gets the impression that culture is something which was imposed on a resisting majority by a minority that understood how to possess itself of the means of power and coercion. Of course it stands to reason that these difficulties are not inherent in the nature of culture itself, but are conditioned by the imperfections of the cultural forms that have so far been developed. Indeed it is not difficult to point out these defects. While mankind has made solid advances in the conquest of nature and may expect to make still greater ones, no certain claim can be established for a corresponding advance in the regulation of human affairs, and probably at every period, as again now, many men have asked themselves whether this fragment that has been acquired by culture is indeed worth defending at all. One might suppose that a reorganization of human relations should be possible, which, by abandoning coercion and the suppression of the instincts, would remove the sources of dissatisfaction with culture, so that undisturbed by inner conflict men might devote themselves to the acquisition of natural resources and to the enjoyment of the same. That would be the golden age, but it is questionable if such a state of affairs can ever be realized. It seems more probable that every culture must be built up on coercion and instinctual renunciation; it does not even appear certain that without coercion the majority of human individuals would be ready to submit to the labour necessary for acquiring new means of supporting life. One has, I think, to reckon with the fact that there are present in all men destructive, and therefore anti-social and anti-cultural, tendencies, and that with a great number of people these are strong enough to determine their behaviour in human society.

This psychological fact acquires a decisive significance when one is forming an estimate of human culture. One thought at first that the essence of culture lay in the conquest of nature for the means of supporting life, and in eliminating the dangers that threaten culture by the suitable distribution of these among mankind, but now the emphasis seems to have shifted away from the material plane on to the psychical. The critical question is whether and to what extent one can succeed, first, in diminishing the burden of the instinctual sacrifices imposed on men; secondly, in reconciling them to those that must necessarily remain; and thirdly, in compensating them for these. It is just as impossible to do without government of the masses by a minority as it is to dispense with coercion in the work of civilization, for the masses are lazy and unintelligent, they have no love for instinctual renunciation, they are not to be convinced of its inevitability by argument, and the individuals support each other in giving full play to their unruliness. It is only by the influence of individuals who can set an example, whom the masses recognize as their leaders, that they can be induced to submit to the labours and renunciations on which the existence of culture depends. All is well if these leaders are people of superior insight into what constitute the necessities of life, people who have attained the height of mastering their own instinctual wishes. But the danger exists that in order not to lose their influence they will yield to the masses more than these will yield to them, and therefore it seems necessary that they should be independent of the masses by having at their disposal means of enforcing their authority. To put it briefly, there are two widely diffused human characteristics which are responsible for the fact that the organization of culture can be maintained only by a certain measure of coercion: that is to say, men are not naturally fond of work, and arguments are of no avail against their passions.

I know what objections will be brought against these arguments. It will be said that the character of the masses, here delineated, which is supposed to prove that one cannot dispense with coercion in the work of civilization, is itself only the result of defective cultural organization, through which men have become embittered, revengeful and unapproachable. New generations, brought up kindly and taught to have a respect for reason, who have experienced the benefits of culture early in life, will have a different attitude towards it; they will feel it to be their very own possession, and they will be ready on its account to make the sacrifice in labour and in instinctual renunciation that is necessary for its preservation. They will be able to do without coercion and will differ little from their leaders. If no culture has so far produced human masses of such a quality, it is due to the fact that no culture has yet discovered the plan that will influence men in such a way, and that from childhood on.

It may be doubted whether it is possible at all, or at any rate just now, in the present stage of our conquest of nature, to establish a cultural organization of this kind; it may be asked where the throng of superior, dependable and disinterested leaders, who are to act as educators of the future generations, are to come from; and one may be appalled at the stupendous amount of force that will be unavoidable if these intentions are to be carried out. But one cannot deny the grandeur of this project and its significance for the future of human culture. It is securely based on a piece of psychological insight, on the fact that man is equipped with the most varied instinctual predispositions, the ultimate course of which is determined by the experiences of early childhood. But the limitations of man’s capacity for education set bounds to the efficacy of such a cultural transformation. One may question whether and in what degree it would be possible for another cultural milieu to efface the two characteristics of human masses that make the guidance of men’s affairs so very difficult. The experiment has not yet been made. Probably a certain percentage of mankind—owing to morbid predisposition or too great instinctual vigour—will always remain asocial, but if only one can succeed in reducing to a minority the majority that is to-day hostile to culture, one will have accomplished a great deal, perhaps indeed everything that can be accomplished.

I should not like to give the impression that I have wandered far away from the chosen path of my enquiry. I will therefore expressly assert that it is far from my intention to estimate the value of the great cultural experiment that is at present in progress in the vast country that stretches between Europe and Asia. I have neither the special knowledge nor the capacity to decide on its practicability, to test the expediency of the methods employed, or to measure the width of the inevitable gulf between intention and execution. What is there in course of preparation eludes investigation, for which it is not ready; for this our long consolidated culture presents the material.