Page:Philosophical Review Volume 25.djvu/499

No. 3.] person, if only because of the 'side-stepping of civilization,' or the reversal of selective methods which Huxley has pointed out.

If we are to require in our morality satisfaction of the entire man—and this seems to me a just requirement—we must invoke, I believe, another principle,that of vicarious satisfaction among our wishes. This implies (1) that our various 'wishes' are not distinct entities (as the A and B of our illustration), but are related as species of a few more general wishes, perhaps ultimately of one most general wish; and (2) that the satisfaction of the more general wish is a satisfaction of the more particular wish. Instances of the operation of this principle are not far to seek. The love of fighting or of opposition is one which may be satisfied in many ways from the combat by fists to the rivalry of commercial undertakings or of political parties; William James has familiarized us with the notion of a 'moral equivalent' of the cruder pugnacity. Indeed, society may be said to be largely engaged in the work of discovering moral equivalents for our primitive wishes; and what we call a custom or an institution seems to be fairly describable as a social finding of this sort. It is because our wishes exist as generals, and not as specific particulars alone, that the process called by Freud "sublimation " is possible. This process, which seems to me to be the most important conception for ethical purposes that Freud has outlined (though he has rather assumed it than developed its theory), has its must obvious illustration perhaps in the æsthetic equivalent, or social equivalent, of sexual wishes; the general wish under which these specific varieties occur may be variously described as the wish to create, or the wish for union, etc. In this form it has variously appealed to social observers, as to Miss Jane Addams, to Walter Lippman and others. But its prevalence and fundamental character have hardly been recognized. It needs to be related to the process of the transformation of instincts which McDougall has touched upon and which all forms of education make use of. And it needs to be understood in terms of a tendency of the life of our wishes to reach successively more general interpretations, and to become subsumed ultimately under one comprehensive wish,—the 'will.' With