Necessity has been declared to be a very wonderful thing. But necessity is a word which has been taken rather loosely for granted. Opportunism seems to have been read largely into necessity. What is necessity? Besides being the “mother of invention,” is it a dramatic, sudden thing which excuses wars and murders, which touches a man only when he is about to starve? Or is necessity a much gentler and less dramatic quantity? “Everything,” according to the Greek philosopher Leucippus, “is driven by necessity.” This is a keynote of much theorizing down through the ages. Driven: that is the key to the error. Driven, things are driven. Necessity drives. Pain drives. Necessity and pain, pain and necessity.
Recalling the dramatic and overlooking the important, man has conceived himself, from time to time, to be an object of chase by necessity and pain. These were two anthropomorphic (manlike) things which, in full costume, stuck spears at him. It can be said to be a wrong concept merely because it does not work to produce more answers.
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