What we shall desire for individuals is now clear:  strong creative impulses, overpowering and absorbing the instinct of possession; reverence for others; respect for the fundamental creative impulse in ourselves.  A certain kind of self-respect or native pride is necessary to a good life; a man must not have a sense of utter inward defeat if he is to remain whole, but must feel the courage and the hope and the will to live by the best that is in him, whatever outward or inward obstacles it may encounter.  So far as it lies in a man’s own power, his life will realize its best possibilities if it has three things:  creative rather than possessive impulses, reverence for others, and respect for the fundamental impulse in himself.

Political and social institutions are to be judged by the good or harm that they do to individuals.  Do they encourage creativeness rather than possessiveness?  Do they embody or promote a spirit of reverence between human beings?  Do they preserve self-respect?

In all these ways the institutions under which we live are very far indeed from what they ought to be.

Institutions, and especially economic systems, have a profound influence in molding the characters of men and women.  They may encourage adventure and hope, or timidity and the pursuit of safety.  They may open men’s minds to great possibilities, or close them against everything but the risk of obscure misfortune.  They may make a man’s happiness depend upon what he adds to the general possessions of the world, or upon what he can secure for himself of the private goods in which others cannot share.  Modern capitalism forces the wrong decision of these alternatives upon all who are not heroic or exceptionally fortunate.

Men’s impulses are molded, partly by their native disposition, partly by opportunity and environment, especially early environment.  Direct preaching can do very little to change impulses, though it can lead people to restrain the direct expression of them, often with the result that the impulses go underground and come to the surface again in some contorted form.  When we have discovered what kinds of impulse we desire, we must not rest content with preaching, or with trying to produce the outward manifestation without the inner spring; we must try rather to alter institutions in the way that will, of itself, modify the life of impulse in the desired direction.

At present our institutions rest upon two things:  property and power.  Both of these are very unjustly distributed; both, in the actual world, are of great importance to the happiness of the individual.  Both are possessive goods; yet without them many of the goods in which all might share are hard to acquire as things are now.

Without property, as things are, a man has no freedom, and no security for the necessities of a tolerable life; without power, he has no opportunity for initiative.  If men are to have free play for their creative impulses, they must be liberated from sordid cares by a certain measure of security, and they must have a sufficient share of power to be able to exercise initiative as regards the course and conditions of their lives.