For my own part I could not see where Dodd's "figuratively" comes in.
The mind of the race is as real to me as the mind of Dodd or my own.
Because Dodd is completely made up of Dodd's right leg plus Dodd's
left leg, plus Dodd's right arm plus Dodd's left arm plus Dodd's head
and Dodd's trunk, it doesn't follow that Dodd is a mere figurative
expression....
Dodd, I remember, protested he had a self-consciousness that held all
these constituents together, but there was a time when Dodd was six
months old, let us say, and there are times now when Dodd sleeps or is
lost in some vivid sensation or action, when that clear sense of self
is in abeyance. There is no reason why the collective mind of the
world should not presently become at least as self-conscious as Dodd.
Boon, indeed, argued that that was happening even now, that our very
talk in the greenhouse was to that synthetic over-brain like a child's
first intimations of the idea of "me." "It's a _fantastic_ notion,"
said Dodd, shaking his head.
But Boon was fairly launched now upon his topic, and from the first, I
will confess, it took hold of me.
"You mustn't push the analogy of Dodd's mind too far," said Boon.
"These great Over-minds----"
"So there are several!" said Dodd.
"They fuse, they divide. These great Over-minds, these race minds,
share nothing of the cyclic fate of the individual life; there is no
birth for them, no pairing and breeding, no inevitable death. That is
the lot of such intermediate experimental creatures as ourselves. The
creatures below us, like the creatures above us, are free from
beginnings and ends. The Amoeba never dies; it divides at times, parts
of it die here and there, it has no sex, no begetting. (Existence
without a love interest. My God! how it sets a novelist craving!)
Neither has the germ plasm. These Over-minds, which for the most part
clothe themselves in separate languages and maintain a sort of
distinction, stand to us as we stand to the amoebae or the germ cells
we carry; they are the next higher order of being; they emerge above
the intense, intensely defined struggle of individuals which is the
more obvious substance of lives at the rank of ours; they grow, they
divide, they feed upon one another, they coalesce and rejuvenate. So
far they are like amoebae. But they think, they accumulate experiences,
they manifest a collective will."
"Nonsense!" said Dodd, shaking his head from side to side.
"But the thing is manifest!"
"I've never met it."
"You met it, my dear Dodd, the moment you were born. Who taught you to
talk? Your mother, you say. But whence the language? Who made the
language that gives a bias to all your thoughts? And who taught you to
think, Dodd? Whence came your habits of conduct? Your mother, your
schoolmaster were but mouthpieces, the books you read the mere
forefront of that great being of Voices! There it is--your antagonist
to-day. You are struggling against it with tracts and arguments...."
But now Boon was fairly going. Physically, perhaps, we were the
children of our ancestors, but mentally we were the offspring of the
race mind. It was clear as daylight. How could Dodd dare to argue? We
emerged into a brief independence of will, made our personal
innovation, became, as it were, new thoughts in that great
intelligence, new elements of effort and purpose, and were presently
incorporated or forgotten or both in its immortal growth. Would the
Race Mind incorporate Dodd or dismiss him? Dodd sat on his flowerpot,
shaking his head and saying "Pooh!" to the cinerarias; and I listened,
never doubting that Boon felt the truth he told so well. He came near
making the Race soul incarnate. One felt it about us, receptive and
responsive to Boon's words. He achieved personification. He spoke of
wars that peoples have made, of the roads and cities that grow and the
routes that develop, no man planning them. He mentioned styles of
architecture and styles of living; the gothic cathedral, I remember,
he dwelt upon, a beauty, that arose like an exhalation out of
scattered multitudes of men. He instanced the secular abolition of
slavery and the establishment of monogamy as a development of
Christian teaching, as things untraceable to any individual's purpose.
He passed to the mysterious consecutiveness of scientific research,
the sudden determination of the European race mind to know more than
chance thoughts could tell it....
"Francis Bacon?" said Dodd.
"Men like Bacon are no more than bright moments, happy thoughts, the
discovery of the inevitable word; the race mind it was took it up, the
race mind it was carried it on."
"Mysticism!" said Dodd. "Give me the Rock of Fact!" He shook his head
so violently that suddenly his balance was disturbed; clap went his
feet, the flowerpot broke beneath him, and our talk was lost in the
consequent solicitudes.
[Illustration: _Dodd the Agnostic just before the flowerpot broke._]