Adequacy has in it the idea of being equal to something. If a purpose is wholly fulfilled then what happens is equal to what was desired to happen. A situation desired is a purpose. If a situation occurs just as we have wanted it to occur, what has been done is adequate to our desire or purpose.

Adequacy, then, implies equality to something in the future. There are various kinds of adequacy. If a bucket contains six gallons, and we have 24 quarts of wine, we can, if we care to, say that we have wine adequate to fill a six gallon bucket.

All kinds of adequacy have some kinship to the kind I have just described.

The world can be seen as inadequate. We ourselves can be seen as inadequate. Unhappiness of any kind means there is some inadequacy.

If a desire exists and that desire is not fulfilled, then some inadequacy can properly be supposed. And the inadequacy can be placed either in ourselves as going for that desire, or in the world as possibly granting it.

If we have desires we deserve to have, and we do not attain them, we can say that fate is inadequate, or things are, or people are, or we ourselves are.

It does seem, offhand, a little unusual, and quite inconsiderate of the world to make for desires in us—strong desires perhaps—and then to say, “You can’t have them.” An inadequacy not only of means, but of equity, can be said to exist if this is so. And there is some inadequacy in us when we have desires which we can’t fulfill.

It does seem right, when inadequacy exists, to ask how it came and just what it is. Is the inadequacy as such desired by us? Do we desire inadequately?

Since all our desires are got from something, it is necessary to be adequately interested in that something. And the question is, what is it to be adequately interested?

There are two meanings to the word adequate: We say that an actor is adequate when the play is not hurt by his being on the stage. He doesn’t stop the show in the sense that the badness of his acting interferes with the pleasant or engrossing effect the play might have on us. This is hardly a complimentary use of the word adequate; and actors quite understandably have been displeased when, in the morning papers, their performance has been termed adequate.

There is a great deal of this adequacy around. It means that you get by. And in this sense, everything in history has been adequate. People kept on living with slavery, monarchy, and feudalism, and ignorance, and lack of poetry, and most of them didn’t like the idea of not living. Adequate is like the term all right, as most often used: it means “It will do.”

However, the word inadequate is pretty terrifying. When a person is mightily depressed, he has feelings of inadequacy. Inadequacy to what?

This person feels he can’t be himself. He is inadequate to something in himself. This does seem strange. How can a self be inadequate to what it itself is? Isn’t it surprising and somewhat funny to see a self having the strength, or at least the desire, to make demands on itself which it can’t meet?

All inadequacy of a self gets down to inadequacy as to what it is. If we make demands of the world, or have purposes which cannot be met or fulfilled, we have been inadequate to what we are, for to ask ourselves to do things we can’t do means that as to knowledge of ourselves, we have been inadequate. We shouldn’t have desires we cannot get; if we do, our understanding of what we are is insufficient or inadequate.

If the world, however, could not grant us our desires, then again, we have been inadequate. If we had known what the world could do and couldn’t, seen its pleasure-giving ability and inability—then our desires would have been those we could have.

Of course, in these last paragraphs, the word adequacy has meant something else than what is meant by a tired drama critic, hard put for the subtle but not excessively laudatory adjective. Still, this use of the word is an inevitability.

How far shall our desires go? How much shall our life take in? How big should our experience be? One can say our desires should be adequate, our life should be adequate, our experience should be adequate. And the next question then is, Adequate to what?

It will be found that adequacy has an absoluteness to it, or an exactitude; or an accuracy of rhythm equivalent to absoluteness.

Let’s assume that Joseph Perrin can do so much with himself and can get so much from the world. However, he shouldn’t want to journey to the moon, want to kiss Cleopatra, or want to drink the Pacific dry in a minute. Even so, Joseph Perrin would like to know just what he can do and how much he can get from the world. This objective is an absolute—just as the answer 60% is to the question how much 3 shoes as to 5 shoes is. To say 100% would be inaccurate; the absolutely correct answer is 60%.

So if we assume that Joseph Perrin’s abilities, and the possibilities of the world pleasing him, are both limited, it is, nevertheless, important for Mr. Perrin to know exactly what these limitations are. If he desires too much or too little within these limitations, he has not been adequate towards himself. And if he expects too much or too little from the world, he has not been adequate to it. The first adequacy a self has to meet is, after all, adequacy of knowledge as to something.

Therefore, Joseph Perrin is, as we all are, in need of exactitude. The exactitude cannot be unless Mr. Perrin has knowledge of himself and the world.

However, if Mr. Perrin does come to have knowledge of his limitations, he has absolute knowledge of his limitations. This means that Mr. Perrin has a perfect knowledge of his imperfections. This further means that Mr. Perrin is adequate as to his inadequacy.

Let us suppose, too, that Joseph Perrin has a knowledge of the limitations of the world in pleasing him. (He certainly shouldn’t complain of the limitations of the world in pleasing him until he is sure that they exist.) He would then have an absolute or perfect knowledge of the imperfections of the world. He would be adequate to the inadequacy of the world. So he would, though limited, be absolute both to the world and to himself. The absoluteness of himself meeting the absoluteness of what was outside him, would make for a tremendously serene oneness. For three-fifths as to three-fifths is as one is to one; three-fifths and six-tenths get along perfectly.

This, I am sure, may seem abstract, even fanciful. However, as will be seen from further definitions, there is a most important possibility of being adequate about inadequacy, absolute about the relative, perfect about the imperfect, beautiful about the ugly, and just about the unjust. Two meanings of the world as adequate—one, as getting along; two, as perfect—will meet when the full meaning of the word is joyously and honestly acknowledged.