How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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The hormic reconstellation of so primitive a need as the urge to eat in order to keep alive, has been reconstellated by the necessity of closer social bonds into such purely social manifestations as tables, knives, forks, and spoons, glasses, table decorations, table manners, and the like. Eating in civilized society is as much an occasion for social intercourse as for the nutrition of the body. Similarly clothes, at first a compensation for man’s nakedness and the means of effecting a purely biological attempt to protect the body, have become instruments of social defence and offence, of social intercourse. Surely a lady’s lace evening gown and a gentleman’s white tie and silk hat have little to do with man’s primitive need for bodily protection. They have suffered a hormic reconstellation under the influence of the social need. The need for closer social relations has similarly given us art and literature as hormic reconstellations of the original need for communication, while plumbing, skyscrapers, newspapers, life insurance, sports, and a host of other everyday activities can be analysed as hormic reconstella- tions of biological activities instinctively carried out by our anthropoid ancestors. The complexity of modern civilization with its tendency toward specialization, decentralization, and depersonaliza¬ tion of all human effort, has effected a radical change^in the meaning of sexual activity in the economy of man’s life. We can imagine primitive man mating in blind obedience to a primitive and unconscious biological urge to pro¬ create. In early savage societies the communal activities of hunting, hut building, warfare, dancing, and other social activities gave the savage a sense of meaning and value in life. In the early civilizations, with their emphasis on individualism, opportunities for finding social signi¬ ficance were even more plentiful. But with the increase of power, machinery and the depersonalization of human labour, the rise of mass dwelling-places in our large cities, a tremendous need arose for a more immediate circle of human beings toward whom a man could feel his personal obligations and from