Perspectives in Biology and Medicine

PERSPECTIVES IN BIOLOGY AND MEDICINE Volume IX · Number 4 · Summer 1966 THE LAMENTABLE DECLINE IN SELF-SATISFACTION PEYTON ROUS* To be self-satisfied in the world of today is only possible to certain gifted personalities. And this is lamentable since the practice ofself-satisfaction is a most economical way not only ofpursuing happiness but of catching up with it. Of course I do not refer to the kind which finds expression in a lubberly shouting about self, which is even more irritating to others than somebody else's snore. Self-satisfaction ofthe right sort is a concealed asset, a secret awareness that things are ticking along as they should in relation to one's personality. Without this assurance and support the human spirit is hable to break out into dismal blotches, to suffer from day blindness, and to undergo a pallid wasting; whereas the possession ofit is more sustaining than riches, and as vitamin it deserves the biggest letter ofthem all. It gives a bounce and a fillip to life, ensures good digestion —which waits far more upon self-satisfaction than upon appetite— and makes for larger and finer deeds. It is as natural as breathing; it seeks nothing, makes no pretenses: it is. It enables creatures to be equal to their occasions, and incidentally to enjoy themselves. There have been many times during the centuries when man was fortunate and possessed it. But these times have passed, and the events oftoday make them seem far off. The meaning a word now possesses often tells a hard tale of human experience. Many of the compounds which begin with self are just so many documents attesting to man's bad behavior. "Self-centered," "selfsatisfied ," "self-opinionated" are terms laden with horrid implications. It is clear that human society must have suffered greatly at the hands of persons who found themselves more interesting than other people, or gained solace from their own company, or were set on their own views, natural though such actions would appear to be. There must once have * The Rockefeller University, New York, New York. Reprinted with the kind permission ofthe Charaka Club of New York. 439 been a time when these selfwords and their like got offto a good start: it was mankind who did them in and brought them to their present low estate. Indeed, as one goes through the myriad words in the Greater Oxford , which express the attitude ofpeople toward themselves, one perceives that it is unsafe for a man to regard his personality with anything more amiable than respect. His own company somehow debauches him the moment he unbends in it. Original sin was never more clearly shown. Self-respect he can have, of a Spartan sort, and self-reliance, and remain tolerable to his fellows; but ifhe is self-sufficient they becomejustifiably annoyed and alarmed, and they fly from him if he has self-assurance, much less self-pity or -esteem. So easily does he get the bit into his teeth when any ofthese is the case, and so incorrigibly does he then run away down hill, that society has become stern and no longer grants him any such opportunities. Though living with himself all his days, he is expected , for the good ofothers and incidentally for his own, to be unselfish, self-forgetful, self-denying and self-sacrificing. In so doing he comes up to an ideal, but that is not why it is demanded of him. For people had learned through dire experience, thousands of years before Christianity began, that a fellow is hard to bear, not to say dangerous, ifhe is a selfist, or self-minded or selfish—all words expressing mental attitudes which would be innocent were man not what man is.1 Self-content takes nobody anywhere, self-esteem has no blood in it, and though self-respect can carry one far it does not give initiative. In 1908 the Saxons were having the mid-summer shooting contest with the crossbow on the bird meadow, the Vogelwiese by the river in Dresden. There, while the local nobility, announced by rank and by name, advanced one by one in ritual order to the edge ofa pavilion and strove...