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ESSAYS IN PERSUASION

PART

however distasteful and unjust they may be inthemselves, because they are tremendously use-ful in promoting the accumulation of capital,we shall then be free, at last, to discard.

Of course there will still be many peoplewith intense, unsatisfied purposiveness who willblindly pursue wealth—unless they can findsome plausible substitute. But the rest of uswill no longer be under any obligation to ap-plaud and encourage them. For we shall in-quire more curiously than is safe to-day intothe true character of this “purposiveness” withwhich in varying degrees Nature has endowedalmost all of us. For purposiveness means thatwe are more concerned with the remote futureresults of our actions than with their own qualityor their immediate effects on our own environ-ment. The “purposive” man is always tryingto secure a spurious and delusive immortalityfor his acts by pushing his interest in them for-ward into time. He does not love his cat, buthis cat’s kittens; nor, in truth, the kittens, butonly the kittens’ kittens, and so on forward forever to the end of cat-dom. For him jam isnot jam unless it is a case of jam to-morrowand never jam to-day. Thus by pushing hisjam always forward into the future, he strivesto secure for his act of boiling it an immortality.

Let me remind you of the Professor in Sylvieand Bruno :—

“Only the tailor, sir, with your little bill,” said ameek voice outside the door.

“Ah, well, I can soon settle his business,” the