Still, I would say that I think the creation of moral persons depends more on the education of the affections than on the education of the rational faculty, and that for ethical purposes, it is more important that man is a gregarious and emotionally interdependent animal than that he is a rational animal. Plato thought that stories and fictions make people worse, but I think just the opposite, because I think stories extend the listener's capacity for empathy. And I place that capacity at the pinnacle of importance for the improvement of the human species. But that's not the same thing as finding a universal law of human nature. For any Y you could name, I could undoubtedly find plenty of people who doesn't desire it.
Human drives seem capable of extraordinary plasticity.
I have a notion about that. One of my old philosophy professors used to talk about questions that are not answered, but that, after various kinds of interior progress, 'dissolve', i.e. cease to need to be asked. I've always thought the question of the meaning of life to be of that sort. It seems to me that this question, when it is answered, is answered on the emotional plane rather than the rational one. If one feels enough about certain people or activities or things, one does not have a hard time feeling one's life to be meaningful.