endencies are our
basic instruments of action, so instinctive desires are our
basic ingredients of happiness. Just as all we can do is
limited by the mechanisms with which we are endowed, so what
we want is ultimately determined by the native desires with
which we are born. The control of action and of desire is
justified in so far as such control will the more surely promote
a harmonious satisfaction of all our desires. A society whose
arrangements are such that instincts are, on the whole, being
repressed rather than stimulated and satisfied, is frustrating
happiness rather than promoting it. At the very least, a life
whose natural impulses are not being fulfilled is a life of
boredom. The ennui which is so often and so conspicuously associated
with the routine and desolate "gayeties" of society,
the listlessness of those bored with their work or their play, or
both, are symptoms of social conditions where the native
endowments of man are handicaps rather than assets, dead
weights rather than motive forces. It means that society is
working against rather than with the grain. Discontent,
ranging from mere pique and irritability to overt violence, is
the penalty that is likely to be paid by a society the majority
of whose members are chronically prevented from satisfying
their normal human desires. No one who has seen whole
lives immeasurably brightened by the satisfaction of a suitable
employment, or melancholy and irritability removed by
companionship and stimulating surroundings, can fail to
realize how important it is to happiness that human instincts
be given generous opportunity for fulfillment.

One may say, indeed, that the evils of too complete repression
of individual impulses are more than that they produce
nervous strain, dissatisfaction, and, not infrequently, crime.
Happiness, as Aristotle long ago pointed out, is a complete
living-out of all a man's possibilities. It is most in evidence
when people are, as we say, doing what they like to do. And
people like to do that which they are prompted to do by the
nature which is their inheritance. Freshness, originality, and
spontaneity are perhaps particularly valued in our own
civilization because of the multiple restraints of business and
professional occupations. Even under the most perfect social
arrangements there will always exist among men conflicts of
desire. Their control over their environment will, of necessity,
be imperfect, as will their mastery