Freud - Complete Works (729 page)

Civilization And Its Discontents

4493

   The liberty of the individual is
no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any
civilization, though then, it is true, it had for the most part no
value, since the individual was scarcely in a position to defend
it. The development of civilization imposes restrictions on it, and
justice demands that no one shall escape those restrictions. What
makes itself felt in a human community as a desire for freedom may
be their revolt against some existing injustice, and so may prove
favourable to a further development of civilization; it may remain
compatible with civilization. But it may also spring from the
remains of their original personality, which is still untamed by
civilization and may thus become the basis in them of hostility to
civilization. The urge for freedom, therefore, is directed against
particular forms and demands of civilization or against
civilization altogether. It does not seem as though any influence
could induce a man to change his nature into a termite’s. No
doubt he will always defend his claim to individual liberty against
the will of the group. A good part of the struggles of mankind
centre round the single task of finding an expedient accommodation
- one, that is, that will bring happiness - between this claim of
the individual and the cultural claims of the group; and one of the
problems that touches the fate of humanity is whether such an
accommodation can be reached by means of some particular form of
civilization or whether this conflict is irreconcilable.

Civilization And Its Discontents

4494

   By allowing common feeling to be
our guide in deciding what features of human life are to be
regarded as civilized, we have obtained a clear impression of the
general picture of civilization; but it is true that so far we have
discovered nothing that is not universally known. At the same time
we have been careful not to fall in with the prejudice that
civilization is synonymous with perfecting, that it is the road to
perfection pre-ordained for men. But now a point of view presents
itself which may lead in a different direction. The development of
civilization appears to us as a peculiar process which mankind
undergoes, and in which several things strike us as familiar. We
may characterize this process with reference to the changes which
it brings about in the familiar instinctual dispositions of human
beings, to satisfy which is, after all, the economic task of our
lives. A few of these instincts are used up in such a manner that
something appears in their place which, in an individual, we
describe as a character-trait. The most remarkable example of such
a process is found in the anal erotism of young human beings. Their
original interest in the excretory function, its organs and
products, is changed in the course of their growth into a group of
traits which are familiar to us as parsimony, a sense of order and
cleanliness - qualities which, though valuable and welcome in
themselves, may be intensified till they become markedly dominant
and produce what is called the anal character. How this happens we
do not know, but there is no doubt about the correctness of the
finding.¹ Now we have seen that order and cleanliness are
important requirements of civilization, although their vital
necessity is not very apparent, any more than their suitability as
sources of enjoyment. At this point we cannot fail to be struck by
the similarity between the process of civilization and the
libidinal development of the individual. Other instincts are
induced to displace the conditions for their satisfaction, to lead
them into other paths. In most cases this process coincides with
that of the
sublimation
(of instinctual aims) with which we
are familiar, but in some it can be differentiated from it.
Sublimation of instinct is an especially conspicuous feature of
cultural development; it is what makes it possible for higher
psychical activities, scientific, artistic or ideological, to play
such an important part in civilized life. If one were to yield to a
first impression, one would say that sublimation is a vicissitude
which has been forced upon the instincts entirely by civilization.
But it would be wiser to reflect upon this a little longer. In the
third place, finally, and this seems the most important of all, it
is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built
up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes
precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression or some
other means?) of powerful instincts. This ‘cultural
frustration’ dominates the large field of social
relationships between human beings. As we already know, it is the
cause of the hostility against which all civilizations have to
struggle. It will also make severe demands on our scientific work,
and we shall have much to explain here. It is not easy to
understand how it can become possible to deprive an instinct of
satisfaction. Nor is doing so without danger. If the loss is not
compensated for economically, one can be certain that serious
disorders will ensue.

   But if we want to know what value
can be attributed to our view that the development of civilization
is a special process, comparable to the normal maturation of the
individual, we must clearly attack another problem. We must ask
ourselves to what influences the development of civilization owes
its origin, how it arose, and by what its course has been
determined.

  
¹
Cf. my ‘Character and Anal
Erotism’ (1908
b
), and numerous further contributions,
by Ernest Jones and others.

Civilization And Its Discontents

4495

IV

The task seems an immense one, and it is
natural to feel diffidence in the face of it. But here are such
conjectures as I have been able to make.

   After primal man had discovered
that it lay in his own hands, literally, to improve his lot on
earth by working, it cannot have been a matter of indifference to
him whether another man worked with or against him. The other man
acquired the value for him of a fellow-worker, with whom it was
useful to live together. Even earlier, in his ape-like prehistory,
man had adopted the habit of forming families, and the members of
his family were probably his first helpers. One may suppose that
the founding of families was connected with the fact that a moment
came when the need for genital satisfaction no longer made its
appearance like a guest who drops in suddenly, and, after his
departure, is heard of no more for a long time, but instead took up
its quarters as a permanent lodger. When this happened, the male
acquired a motive for keeping the female, or, speaking more
generally, his sexual objects, near him; while the female, who did
not want to be separated from her helpless young, was obliged, in
their interests, to remain with the stronger male.¹ In this
primitive family one essential feature of civilization is still
lacking. The arbitrary will of its head, the father, was
unrestricted. In
Totem and Taboo
I have tried to show how
the way led from this family to the succeeding stage of communal
life in the form of bands of brothers. In overpowering their
father, the sons had made the discovery that a combination can be
stronger than a single individual. The totemic culture is based on
the restrictions which the sons had to impose on one another in
order to keep this new state of affairs in being. The
taboo-observances were the first ‘right’ or ‘law.
The communal life of human beings had, therefore, a two-fold
foundation: the compulsion to work, which was created by external
necessity, and the power of love, which made the man unwilling to
be deprived of his sexual object - the woman -, and made the woman
unwilling to be deprived of the part of herself which had been
separated off from her - her child. Eros and Ananke have become the
parents of human civilization too. The first result of civilization
was that even a fairly large number of people were now able to live
together in a community. And since these two great powers were
co-operating in this, one might expect that the further development
of civilization would proceed smoothly towards an even better
control over the external world and towards a further extension of
the number of people included in the community. Nor is it easy to
understand how this civilization could act upon its participants
otherwise than to make them happy.

  
¹
The organic periodicity of the sexual
process has persisted, it is true, but its effect on psychical
sexual excitation has rather been reversed. This change seems most
likely to be connected with the diminution of the olfactory stimuli
by means of which the menstrual process produced an effect on the
male psyche. Their role was taken over by visual excitations,
which, in contrast to the intermittent olfactory stimuli, were able
to maintain a permanent effect. The taboo on menstruation is
derived from this ‘organic repression’, as a defence
against a phase of development that has been surmounted. All other
motives are probably of a secondary nature. (Cf. C. D. Daly, 1927.)
This process is repeated on another level when the gods of a
superseded period of civilization turn into demons. The diminution
of the olfactory stimuli seems itself to be a consequence of
man’s raising himself from the ground, of his assumption of
an upright gait; this made his genitals, which were previously
concealed, visible and in need of protection, and so provoked
feelings of shame in him.

   The
fateful process of civilization would thus have set in with
man’s adoption of an erect posture. From that point the chain
of events would have proceeded through the devaluation of olfactory
stimuli and the isolation of the menstrual period to the time when
visual stimuli were paramount and the genitals became visible, and
thence to the continuity of sexual excitation, the founding of the
family and so to the threshold of human civilization. This is only
a theoretical speculation, but it is important enough to deserve
careful checking with reference to the conditions of life which
obtain among animals closely related to man.

   A
social factor is also unmistakably present in the cultural trend
towards cleanliness, which has received
ex post facto
justification in hygienic considerations but which manifested
itself before their discovery. The incitement to cleanliness
originates in an urge to get rid of the excreta, which have become
disagreeable to the sense perceptions. We know that in the nursery
things are different. The excreta arouse no disgust in children.
They seem valuable to them as being a part of their own body which
has come away from it. Here upbringing insists with special energy
on hastening the course of development which lies ahead, and which
should make the excreta worthless, disgusting, abhorrent and
abominable. Such a reversal of values would scarcely be possible if
the substances that are expelled from the body were not doomed by
their strong smells to share the fate which overtook olfactory
stimuli after man adopted the erect posture. Anal erotism,
therefore, succumbs in the first instance to the ‘organic
repression’ which paved the way to civilization. The
existence of the social factor which is responsible for the further
transformation of anal erotism is attested by the circumstance
that, in spite of all man’s developmental advances, he
scarcely finds the smell of
his own
excreta repulsive, but
only that of other people’s. Thus a person who is not clean -
who does not hide his excreta - is offending other people; he is
showing no consideration for them. And this is confirmed by our
strongest and commonest terms of abuse. It would be
incomprehensible, too, that man should use the name of his most
faithful friend in the animal world - the dog - as a term of abuse
if that creature had not incurred his contempt through two
characteristics: that it is an animal whose dominant sense is that
of smell and one which has no horror of excrement, and that it is
not ashamed of its sexual functions.

Civilization And Its Discontents

4496

   Before we go on to enquire from
what quarter an interference might arise, this recognition of love
as one of the foundations of civilization may serve as an excuse
for a digression which will enable us to fill in a gap which we
left in an earlier discussion. We said there that man’s
discovery that sexual (genital) love afforded him the strongest
experiences of satisfaction, and in fact provided him with the
prototype of all happiness, must have suggested to him that he
should continue to seek the satisfaction of happiness in his life
along the path of sexual relations and that he should make genital
erotism the central point of his life. We went on to say that in
doing so he made himself dependent in a most dangerous way on a
portion of the external world, namely, his chosen love-object, and
exposed himself to extreme suffering if he should be rejected by
that object or should lose it through unfaithfulness or death. For
that reason the wise men of every age have warned us most
emphatically against this way of life; but in spite of this it has
not lost its attraction for a great number of people.

   A small minority are enabled by
their constitution to find happiness, in spite of everything, along
the path of love. But far-reaching mental changes in the function
of love are necessary before this can happen. These people make
themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by
displacing what they mainly value from being loved on to loving;
they protect themselves against the loss of the object by directing
their love, not to single objects but to all men alike; and they
avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by
turning away from its sexual aims and transforming the instinct
into an impulse with an
inhibited aim
. What they bring about
in themselves in this way is a state of evenly suspended,
steadfast, affectionate feeling, which has little external
resemblance any more to the stormy agitations of genital love, from
which it is nevertheless derived. Perhaps St. Francis of Assisi
went furthest in thus exploiting love for the benefit of an inner
feeling of happiness. Moreover, what we have recognized as one of
the techniques for fulfilling the pleasure principle has often been
brought into connection with religion; this connection may lie in
the remote regions where the distinction between the ego and
objects or between objects themselves is neglected. According to
one ethical view, whose deeper motivation will become clear to us
presently, this readiness for a universal love of mankind and the
world represents the highest standpoint which man can reach. Even
at this early stage of the discussion I should like to bring
forward my two main objections to this view. A love that does not
discriminate seems to me to forfeit a part of its own value, by
doing an injustice to its object; and secondly, not all men are
worthy of love.