DISCOVERY 



179 



of man, who still carries with him an eqtiipment of 

 instincts necessary in a primiti\e mode of life but 

 often difficult to utilise or satisfy in an environment 

 that civilisation has sometimes made all too equabk-. 

 A conflict is, therefore, liable to arise between the 

 " pleasure-pain " principle of the primitive child-self 

 that demands the satisfaction of its wishes forthwith 

 and that more adult, civilised and social self that seeks 

 " to adapt the organism to the exigencies of reality, 

 to subordinate the imperious demand for immediate 

 gratification, and to replace this by a more distant 

 but more permanently satisfactory one." ' 



But imagination comes to the rescue, and that faculty, 

 which was evolved, we may suppose, to enable man 

 to cope more effectively with reality, provides him with 

 a ready means of escape from it by constructing a 

 substitute, or a more genial version of reality. 



The easiest escape is into the day-dream where the 

 difficulties and handicaps that keep us from realising 

 our desires are abolished and even the laws of time 

 and space hold no swav. Here the effort of adaptation 

 to life is abandoned and the problem solved — for a time 

 — b}- adapting reality to ourselves. 



A little introspection will show that day-dreams 

 are commoner than we might be disposed to admit, and 

 a real and valuable relief to tired or hurt minds, for 

 the day-dream builds itself and is singuarly effortless 

 compared with that process of directed thinking — 

 of thinking in order to act. The day-dream forms, we 

 know, a large part of the mental life of the child, but 

 there are few who leave it entirely behind, and we still 

 build castles in Spain, the romantic country that 

 provides also the " Spanish prisoner " to play upon 

 our eternal day-dream of getting rich quickly. 



Generallj^ our grown-up fantasies are somewhat 

 prosaic ; we recast the events of the day as we would 

 have had them happen, or live in a future of personal 

 or professional success. Sometimes these reveries 

 justify themselves practically and " ideas come to us " 

 that had escaped the pursuit of our more active think- 

 ing, ideas that were, perhaps, held back because our 

 conscious self found them a little too bold or because 

 the observations and feelings that gave rise to them 

 were individuallv too faint and elusive to be recognised 

 and formulated into a logical sequence ; for man sets 

 too much store by the efficiency of his reasoning powers 

 to accept the end-product — the inspiration or intuition 

 — when he cannot discover the process that led up 

 to it. But if our day-dreams are prosaic, we can pur- 

 chase something more elaborate from the artist who 

 lives by his imagination (which is not to say that 

 all literature is " dream-pedlary "), and we may realise 

 our desires vicariously in romances of luxury or ad- 

 venture or love. 

 1 Ernest Jones. Papers on Psycho-Analysis. 2nd Edition, 3. 



It is perhaps significant of a change in our national 

 psychology' that tragedy is no longer popular, that a 

 happv ending to the drama is demanded. It seems as 

 though the deep tragic note of the old ballads and 

 folk-songs were no longer bearable and the robust 

 enjoyment of BjTonic melancholy or Victorian pathos 

 an impossibility to the general public of to-day. 



If the habit of reading were universal, the type of 

 literature most popular might be expected to throw 

 a good deal of light on the psychological needs of a 

 people and the trend of their unconscious desires, but 

 the public that reads imaginative literature is a com- 

 paratively small one, and a more ample reflection of 

 these needs and desires may be found to-day in the 

 cinema. Here the spectator is spared the trouble of 

 conjuring up for himself a visual image out of the 

 written words, and he can become, with a minimum 

 of mental effort, a participator in that drama " silent 

 like a dream " that is played out before him ; and the 

 drama is of his own choosing, for competition is keen 

 and the producer is assiduous to supply the demand 

 as perfectly as he can. 



Naturally enough, the old type of melodrama is 

 still popular, for it is reassuring to believe, even for 

 an hour, that virtue in the end will be rewarded and 

 vice suitably punished, and it may help a little to 

 reconcile a man with the realities of a life in which 

 these dramatic conventions do not seem to hold. If 

 we are tempted to speculate upon the moral (or de- 

 moralising) influence of the cinema, it is well to reckon 

 with this aspect of its melodrama in which we can 

 almost see a literal fulfilment, here and now. of the 

 promise of the Beatitudes. 



But all film plays are not coloured by the high moral 

 tone of the melodrama, for, on the other hand, we have 

 the glorification of the successful criminal, a theme 

 that has been popular since, to go no farther back, 

 the days of Robin Hood or Dick Turpin. It has been 

 said that every man is potentially a criminal, which 

 is true in a way, since we begin life as pure egoists and 

 our education consists to a great extent of a gradual 

 subjugation of our personal desires to the interests 

 of society, and, however philosophically we accept our 

 citizenship, we still retain a trace of the primitive 

 anarchism of the child. In the person of the criminal- 

 hero the spectator escapes from the reality of his own 

 moral restrictions and, for a brief while, usually with 

 superhuman luck and agility, triumphantly defies 

 society, and having, as it were, worked off his anar- 

 chism, is more likely to return with greater patience to 

 his old submission to law and order than be tempted 

 to any grandiose acts of rebellion. 



There are certain themes that recur in myths and 

 legends in mdcay parts of the world and are also foimd 

 in the fantasies and day-dreams of individuals, though. 



