POTENTIAL INSATIABILITY OF HUMAN ASPIRATIONS 227 



this is discovered, the discovery will bring weariness, bitterness, 

 and a sense of the uselessness of all effort. No one who has 

 thus struggled uselessly to attain a goal which is hopeless will 

 be satisfied and consoled with the thought that a struggle has 

 been accomplished. Action for its own sake is no stimulant ; the 

 most energetic man must have before him, as the reward of his 

 energy, the prospect of attaining something that is not illusory. 



Insatiability may thus rightly be regarded as a never-ending 

 source of sufEering. For the more we obtain, the more we 

 desire. Everything obtained does but serve to stimulate us 

 to further action, until we find out the vanity of all this struggle ; 

 and that discovery will but cause us to look upon life as one long 

 torture ; it will engender pessimism and disgust. The socialised 

 individual, left to himself, is condemned to never-ending suffering, 

 because his ideals are utterly disproportionate to the means of 

 satisfying them. His task is like that of Sisyphus rolling the 

 stone ; he is perpetually on the move, like Eugene Sue's wander- 

 ing Jew, searching to quench his thirst ; but the more he drinks, 

 the greater is his thirst. 



Insatiability, in an individual, is a symptom of moral insta- 

 bility. A society in which a large number of the members are 

 conscious, more or less clearly, of the insatiability of their 

 desires, of the consequent futility of all action, of all efEort, 

 wiU. be a society characterised by the prevalence of nihilistic 

 and pessimistic notions concerning life. For desire leads to 

 action ; and desire and action together make up life. So that 

 when we come to recognise the insatiabiHty of our desires, and 

 the consequent futility of all action, we will, at the same time, 

 recognise Ufe as devoid of all value, as a perpetual source of 

 vexation and trouble. 



In order to avoid the gangrene of pessimism, it is thus essential 

 that we should put a check on our desires, that we should Umit 

 our aspirations. But the individual, as we have seen, is not 

 capable of assigning a limit to desires and aspirations which, 



15—2 



