The word should is akin to the word ought. What we ought to do is what it is owing to us that we do, or owing to something else. If something is owing to us, and we don’t have it, we are incomplete; if something is owing to something else, and it doesn’t have it, it is incomplete.

The sentence “I ought to do it,” is like the sentence “I should do it.” What a person should do is what a person needs to do if he is to be complete. We are incomplete by what we don’t do. The word incompleteness has, in relation to should, these aspects: of pain, of lack of beauty, of insufficient ethics, of inefficiency; and there is an aspect of untruth.

When a person says, “More should be done about this matter,” what is to be done is certainly for something, in behalf of something. Should always points to a goal, an objective, a satisfaction. For if a thing were just as well without something done to it, or for it, or by it—well, nothing has to be done. So where anything has to be done or should be done, incompleteness, it is clear, is around.

Should may take with it the pain to be seen in incompleteness. If John Harkness says to his friend, Albert James, “You should go to a doctor,” John is saying that Albert will be pained and is incomplete unless he goes to a doctor. The statement could be made more impersonally this way: “A visit to the doctor should be made by Albert James.” If John made this statement he would be saying three things: Albert will have pain unless he goes to the doctor; Albert will be incomplete; Albert will be not right, or unethical.

The sentence, “The work should be done this way,” accents the efficiency in the word should. Should is big enough to take in pleasure, ethics, completeness—and consequently, efficiency.

In the sentence, “You should not mislead a person,” should is more obviously ethical. Still, what is being said is that it is better not to mislead a person. (The word better can be used in a threatening way in such a sentence as: “You had better not do it.” Should can approach the threatening, too.)

In the sentence, “You should ask for more money tomorrow,” prudence is accented. The word should points to the basic likeness of prudence and ethics: if it doesn’t, why have people persisted in saying, “You should eat more” and also, “You should love your neighbor”?

Should is also used for strict narration, with the conditional present. When a person says, “I should have done it had I been there,” the word should (though another form of would) expresses the “conditional narrative.” This presentation of happening, by means of should, can also be seen in, “They should be finished by now.” This statement is a calculation and a narrative. Like a sentence using should ethically, it has to do with the fitness of things.

And a painter may say, “It should be painted this way.” Here, ethics and beauty and accuracy meet. Some idea of better and complete is still had.

When we follow the meaning of the word should in further sentences like these:

 1. You should spell the word this way;

 2. You should have talked back to his mother;

 3. You should be ready in an hour;

 4. You should see more beauty in the “Ode to the West Wind”;

 5. You should take better care of yourself;

 6. You should get more languorous music into your verses;

 7. The world should know better;

 8. I should have shaken his hand, had I been there;

 9. People should know more;

10. Love should be sought—

then we shall see in a staple word of English that interaction of ethics, pain and pleasure, beauty and ugliness, efficiency and inefficiency, truth and untruth—and phases of these—which we can also find in reality as such, when we see its simplicity as its diverse surprisingness.

Since the word should in all its tones goes after completeness or wholeness, it is to be perceived that wholeness has to do with pleasure and pain, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and untrue, wise and foolish, working and not working. Completeness is exactness; and exactness is wholeness accompanied by flexibility.

Should be, it should be noticed, is like must be, ought to be, needs to be, better be, and—in the long run—is to be. For even now we say, “It is to be done this way,” meaning it should be done this way. The using of the present is for should points to a kinship of what is with what should be, when both are known. This goes for happiness of man, beast, and flower.