abeyance, among these derivative things.


2.7. THE SYNTHETIC MOTIVE.

Such it seems to me are the chief masses of the complex of motives in
us, the group of sense, the group of pride, curiosity and the imitative
and suggested motives, making up the system of impulses which is our
will. Such has been the common outfit of motives in every age, and in
every age its melee has been found insufficient in itself. It is a
heterogeneous system, it does not form in any sense a completed or
balanced system, its constituents are variable and compete amongst
themselves. They are not so much arranged about one another as
superposed and higgledy-piggledy. The senses and curiosity war with
pride and one another, the motives suggested to us fall into conflict
with this element or that of our intimate and habitual selves. We find
all our instincts are snares to excess. Excesses of indulgence lead to
excesses of abstinence, and even the sense of beauty may be clouded and
betray. So to us all, even for the most balanced of us, come
disappointments, regrets, gaps; and for most of us who are ill-balanced,
miseries and despairs. Nearly all of us want something to hold us
together--something to dominate this swarming confusion and save us from
the black misery of wounded and exploded pride, of thwarted desire, of
futile conclusions. We want more oneness, some steadying thing that will
afford an escape from fluctuations.

Different people, of differing temperament and tradition, have sought
oneness, this steadying and universalizing thing, in various manners.
Some have attained it in this manner, and some in that. Scarcely a
religious system has existed that has not worked effectively and proved