PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATION OF THE IDEA OF A REAL OR GENERAL WILL.
1. The object of the present chapter is to assist the reader in
bringing together the conception of the State or the Community on
the one hand, and that of an actual personal will, existing in an
individual mind, on the other. [1] We have seen that Self-Government
can only be explained if the centre of gravity of the self is
thrown outside what we are continually tempted to reckon as our
individuality, and, if we recognise as our real being, and therefore
as imperative upon us, a self and a good which are but slightly
represented in our explicit consciousness, at its ordinary level. We
have seen that all sound theory and all good practice are founded
on the insight or on the faith [2] that the common self or moral
person of society is more real than the apparent individual; and
we have followed Rousseau’s clue in criticising as defective and
contradictory the actual will of {156} given persons, and in looking
for its interpretation and completion in law and institutions as the
embodiment of the social spirit.
[1] Cf. ch. ii., p. 43.
[2] The faith may of course exist in minds which would absolutely
repudiate the theoretical form here propounded for it. No one could
have had a more ardent actual faith in the reality of the greater
self than Bentham and Mill.
But Society and the State present themselves at first sight as
indefinite multitudes of persons. Institutions are many-sided facts;
and an unreflective citizen could hardly say of what he takes them
to be composed. And though law and custom approach more nearly to
what we commonly understand by a “will,” yet they again are apt to
be regarded as a sort of dead external weight with which the living
volition of the ordinary man has little or nothing to do.
Our purpose, therefore, is to explain what is meant by saying that
“a will” can be embodied in the State, in society, in law and
institutions; and how it is possible for the individual, as we know
him, to be in an identity with this will, such as continually to
vary, but never wholly to disappear. How can a man’s real self lie
in a great degree outside his normal self, and be something which he
only now and then gets hold of distinctly, and never completely?
2. We will begin (1) by pointing out the analogy between the groups
or systems of which our intelligence is composed, and the groups or
systems which make up the fabric of society, and we will then go on
(2) to exhibit them as up to a certain point aspects of the same fact.
(1) We may note two degrees of connection between the members of a
whole, which we may call “Association” and “Organisation.”
(i.) When two individuals are so connected that where you find
the one you expect to find the {157} other, they may be called
associates. And any kind of habitual grouping, from a gang of
thieves to a scientific or philanthropic institution, may be called
an Association. Owing probably to the verbal force which it borrows
from the verb “to associate,” the term “association” implies the
intentional coming together of units which have been separate, and
which may become separate again. The word “Society,” on the other
hand, has not this verbal force, and although an “association” may
call itself “a society,” yet “Society” as such is not spoken of as
an “Association.” When we speak of “Society” we do not emphasise the
aspect of being put together out of elements which exist apart, and
therefore we habitually apply the word to that natural grouping,
which, at any rate, we do not normally think of as purposely put
together and liable to be dissolved again. When the State is treated
as an Association, a definite theory of its nature is implied, such
as is involved in Herbert Spencer’s comparison between it and a joint
stock company.
Now this same term “Association” is the most familiar expression for
a connection between elements of mind, analogous to that between
persons who are called associates. If two elements of mind are so
connected that, where we find the one we expect to find the other,
they are said to be “associated.” If the engine’s whistle makes me
think the train is going to start, then it would be said that the
idea “train starting” is associated in my mind with the idea “engine
whistling.” They have before entered into the same mental group or
whole, and so, where we find the one, {158} we expect to find the
other, just as, where my friend X is, his comrade Y is probably not
far off.
We may here note the analogy between these two modes of
association--that of persons and that of mental elements. In
both cases, according to the plain man’s view of the matter, we
are dealing with wholly casual conjunctions of units naturally
independent. The associates in either case need no better reason for
now being together than that they had been together before. Their
connection expresses nothing intimate or essential in their natures,
and, if they fall apart again, they will not be seriously affected by
the separation.
Now, of course, this idea of mere conjunction is not strictly true
even of the connections between the most casual associates. Every
association, whether of comrades or of ideas, is a connection between
qualities, and therefore a general connection between the natures of
the related terms. People are not really companions for no reason at
all; and ideas are not really units or atoms which stick together
by mere juxtaposition, so that when one is pulled up out of the
Hades of oblivion it drags the other with it. Both the association
of companions and the association of ideas are tendencies in which
some general connection of qualities is at work, and expresses itself
through the detail of the actual surroundings, so far as an opening
is left to it. When the association is made explicit by both members
being present together, there is an outlet or utterance of the nature
of the associates which there is not when they are separated.
{159} But though all this is true, and can be detected in cases of
association by careful analysis, it is, relatively speaking, the
fact that commonplace association depends upon qualities which are
so superficial that they may set up a tendency to connection between
any units which are members of the same world. And, therefore, as
compared with any more thorough-going kind of connection, such
association may be set down as casual, and as determined by the mere
chance of juxtaposition.
(ii.) Let us compare the kind of connection just described as
association with that which we have agreed to call organisation.
Associates, [1] we saw, were together, as might roughly be said,
simply because they found themselves together. That is to say, they
were, after their association, what they were before it, and would
not be seriously affected if they were to be separated. Connections
of this kind are essentially between unit and unit. They fall short
of the nature of a plan which determines a great range of elements,
variously but with reference to an identical operation.
[1] An “Association,” it may be urged, generally has a definite
purpose, and so far, as indeed we said above, the associates come
together, and do not merely find themselves together. But this is
only an apparent difficulty. In comparison with the whole compass
of their nature, associates who come together for some limited
purpose--Bimetallism, Philanthropy, a political cause--do merely
find themselves together. They form, as the cynic will say, an
extraordinary menagerie, and their association may break up without
any apparent effect upon their nature. Obviously, however, there are
some purposes which go deeper into men’s characters, and others which
are shallower; and this merely illustrates our point that the most
casual association is a universal connection of qualities in disguise.
Beginning, as before, with the connection between {160} persons,
we may illustrate the difference by the comparison between a crowd
and an army. The mind of a crowd has indeed been taken as the type
of a true social mind. But it is really something quite different.
It is merely the superficial connection between unit and unit on an
extended and intensified scale. As unit joins unit in the street,
each determines his immediate neighbours, and is determined by them
through the contagion of excitement, and with reference to the
most passing ideas and emotions. What acts upon them in common is
necessarily what there is in common between persons meeting, as it
were, for no reason, and not knowing what they share beyond what they
immediately see and feel. The crowd may indeed “act as one man”; but
if it does so, its level of intelligence and responsibility will,
as a rule, be extraordinarily low. It has nothing in common beyond
what unit can infect unit with in a moment. Concerted action, much
more reasoning and criticism, are out of the question. The doing or
thinking of a different thing by each unit with reference to a single
end is impossible. The crowd moves as a mere mass, because its parts
are connected merely as unit with unit. Any form of connection which
could effect an organisation in the whole would make a demand on
the nature of every unit, which, where their conjunction is merely
casual, could not possibly be met.
An army, [1] no less than a crowd, consists of a multitude of men,
who are associated, unit to unit. Influences must pass and repass
between every one {161} of the men and those men with whom he is
standing in the ranks, or with whom he passes his leisure time. We
may note, by the way, that these influences are themselves of a more
permanent nature than those which pass between members of a crowd,
and that they must necessarily be modified by that other connection
of which we are about to speak. For the links of “association”
between man and man are not the determining force in the operations
of the army as such. The army is a machine, or an organisation, which
is bound together by operative ideas embodied on the one hand in
the officers, and on the other hand in the habit of obedience and
the trained capacity which make every unit willing and able to be
determined not by the impulse of his neighbours, but by the orders
of his officers. What the army does is determined by the general’s
plan, and not by influences communicating themselves from man to man,
as in a crowd. In other words, every unit moves with reference to
the movements of a great whole, with most parts of which he is not
in direct touch at all. He is not determined by simple reference to
the movements of his immediate neighbours. The army, that is, is a
system or organised group, the nature of which, or the predominant
idea embodied in its structure, determines the movements and
relations of its parts or members. The difference of the two modes
of determination is plainly visible on a review day, if we first
watch the compact regiments marching off the ground, and then the
crowd streaming away irregularly in search of rest or refreshment. By
organisation then, as opposed to association, we mean determination
of {162} particulars by the scheme or general nature of a systematic
group to which they belong, as opposed to their determination by
immediate links uniting them with what, relatively speaking, are
other particulars in casual juxtaposition with them. [2]
[1] The illustration was suggested to me by a passage in Mr. Stout’s
_Analytic Psychology_.
[2] Ultimately, of course, the distinction is one of degree. What
operates is always a general connection between members of a whole;
the only question is what kind of whole, and, therefore, what kind of
connection.
In the working and composition of mind the same difference is
observable between association and organisation. Mere association
means that any perception or idea may suggest absolutely any mental
element whatever with which it has developed a connection by entering
into the same mental whole. A study of the purely associative mind is
sometimes said to be found in the character of Miss Bates in “Emma.”
Perhaps, as really uncontrolled association can hardly be found
in a sane intellect, we may say that the character in question is
something more subtle and more true to nature; and that is, a study
of the tendency to pure association continually breaking out, and as
continually repressed, or “herded back” to the main subject, to use
the expression which Walter Scott applies to the way in which just
such an associative talker [1] is brought back to his point by his
hearer.
[1] Claude Halcro in the _Pirate_.
In mind, as in the external world, the higher stage of association
is organisation. The characteristic of organisation is control by a
general scheme [1] as opposed to influence by juxtaposition {163}
of units. The zigzag course of thought which is represented in such
a character as Miss Bates is due to the absence of control by any
general scheme. Every idea--every significant word--has practically
innumerable connections in the mind. If the course of thought has no
general direction impressed upon it, no selective control operative
within it, it may change its line altogether at every principal word.
[2] The possibilities of the ideas at our command make them like a
complex of railways, wholly consisting of turn-tables, so that, on
any one of these component parts, the train may swing round and go
off in a wholly new direction. This is notably illustrated by the
sense of context in interpretation. For anyone who has no such sense,
possible errors are endless, beyond the hope of correction.
[1] For the psychological theory of such control see Stout, _Analytic
Psych_. ii. 3.
[2] If it has not enough control to complete a significant sentence,
of course there is insanity or idiocy.
The opposite of such a zigzag course is a train of thought such as
an argument. In a train of thought, one general idea prescribes the
direction, or forms the “subject,” or limits what has been called
the universe of discourse. Attention is wholly guided by the general
idea, and refuses to be distracted by any interest or suggestion
which does not bear upon it. Let the general idea be, for example,
the relation of wealth to the best life. Experience shows that it
is most difficult to resist the varied interests and distractions
which present themselves in the attempt to keep this relation in
view. Easy and attractive modes of acquisition, easy and attractive
modes of expenditure, force themselves upon the mind as isolated
{164} suggestions, and divert it from the question: “Shall I, or
will any one else, be the better for it, as I understand better?”
The effort of control, needed to keep in view the general nature of
our conception of what is best in life, and to attend to suggestions
which offer themselves as to acquisition and expenditure, only in
so far as they seem likely to promote that conception, means the
predominance of a scheme or general idea through all the varied
circumstances of economic possibility. It makes no difference whether
we are speaking of reasoning or of practice. The nature of the
control which insists on relevancy, and of the intellectual system
in which it exhibits itself, is the same in both cases. Every mind,
in fact, is more or less organised under the control of dominant
ideas, which belong to its habitual preoccupations and determine
the constant bias of its thoughts. There is a well-known story how
a traveller in a railway carriage undertook to detect the vocation
of each of his fellow travellers from their respective answers to
a single question. The question was: “What is that which destroys
what it has itself produced?” and a naturalist, so the story runs,
revealed himself by the answer, “vital force,” a soldier replied
“war,” a scholar “Kronos,” a journalist “revolution,” and a farmer “a
boar.” [1] Each answer was determined by the dominant bias or idea
which selected out of the possible answers to the riddle that which
would harmonise with the general mental system under its control.
Selection, it must be remembered, is at the same time creation. In
every situation, {165} theoretical or practical, the surroundings
as a whole are new, and the rule or scheme has to assert itself in
conditions which are not precisely repeated from any former case. In
so asserting itself it does not simply _reproduce_ something old,
any more than a batsman recalls a former movement when he plays a
ball, but it _produces_ that thought or deed which expresses its
nature with reference to the new surroundings in which it has to act.
[2] For it is a universal tendency, a scheme partly defined, and in
process of further defining itself by moulding the material presented
to it.
[1] Steinthal, in James’ _Psychology_, II., 108.
[2] See Mr. Stout on “Proportional Systems,” _Analytic Psychology_,
ii. 167.
There is one more essential point. A mind has its dominant nature,
but is no single system equally organised throughout. It is rather
a construction of such systems, which may be in all degrees of
alliance, indifference, and opposition to one another. Each of such
systems, or groups of ideas and experiences, has its own dominant
scheme, and its own tendency in controlling thought or action. And,
as a general rule, in proportion as one system is active, all the
others are quiescent; in proportion as we are intent or engaged upon
one train of thought or one pursuit, we are not alive to suggestions
belonging to any other. Every system, or group of this kind, is
called in psychology an “Appercipient mass,” because it is a set of
ideas, bound together by a common rule or scheme, which dictates
the point of view from which perception will take place, so far as
the system in question is active. And without some “apperception,”
some point of view in the mind which enables the {166} newcomer to
be classed, there cannot be perception at all. The eye only sees
what it brings with it the power of seeing. Hence some of the most
striking instances of apperception are drawn from elementary cases
in which a really remote system is active in default of a better,
just because the action of some system is necessary and the nearest
responds. A child calls an orange “a ball”; a Polynesian calls a
horse “a pig.” These are the nearest “heads” or rules of apperception
under which the new perception can be brought. Every scientific
idea we apply, every set of relations in which we stand, and every
pursuit with which the mind is familiar, is a case of such an
appercipient mass, or rule or scheme of attention. And we know by
common experience how entirely quiescent is one such factor of the
mind while we are absorbed in the activity of another; how utterly,
for example, we disregard the botanical character of wild flowers
when we are clearing them out of the garden as weeds, and how wholly
we neglect the question whether they are “flowers” or “weeds” when
we are occupied in studying their botanical character. And in the
action of every appercipient mass, in as far as it determines thought
by the general nature of a systematic whole, rather than through
the isolated attraction exercised by unit upon unit, we have an
example of organisation as opposed to association; or, if we like,
of systematic connection or association between whole and part, as
opposed to the same principle operating casually and superficially
between unit and unit.
The scheme or systematic connection, it must be added, may work
unconsciously. Not all ideas {167} which control our thought and
action are explicit ideas in abstract form; and perhaps the general
nature and limits of a man’s mind are something of which he can never
be reflectively conscious, though he is aware of what he takes to
be his leading ideas. It is well known that principles which are
not presented to reflection may be intellectually operative, and
embodied in a train of results. Thus our appercipient masses may
have very different degrees of explicit system. But their action is
always systematic--the nature of the whole modifying what it comes in
contact with, and being modified by it.
With this conception of psychical systems before us, let us cast
one more glance at the organisation of society and the State. We
refused to take a crowd as a true type of society, and we looked to
the example of an army for the leading features of organisation as
opposed to casual “association.” The characteristic of an army on
which we insisted was the determination of every unit in it, not by
the movements and impulses of his immediate neighbours, but by the
scheme or idea of the whole. Now, on looking closer, we see that
society as such is a vast tissue of systems of this type, each of
them a relatively, though not absolutely, closed and self-complete
organisation. There are wheels within wheels, systems within systems,
groups within groups. But, speaking generally, the business and
pleasure of society is carried on by persons arranged in groups,
which exhibit the characteristic of organisation that the capacity
of every person is determined by the general nature and principle
of the group considered as a whole, and not by his relations to the
units who happen to be next him. {168} Such groups, for example, are
the trades and professions. Their structure may be very different.
In some the workshop is again a subordinate self-organised group. In
others the professional man works alone, and to all appearances goes
his own way. It is common to all of them, however, that they form
groupings of members, within each of which groupings all members are
determined in a certain way by the common nature of the group. Within
his trade or profession, a man acts, as it is said, in a definite
“capacity.” He regards himself and is regarded from a definite point
of view, and all other points of view tend to be neglected while
and in so far as he is acting in the capacity corresponding to his
membership of a certain group. [1]
[1] The group to which he belongs, as bound together by differences,
is often rather that of his clients or customers than of his
colleagues in his vocation. But there is generally a differentiation
within the vocation-group also.
_Prima facie_, there may be, as with systems which compose the
mind, all degrees of alliance, indifference, or opposition between
these groupings of persons; and the same person, belonging to many
different groups, may find his diverse “capacities” apparently at
variance with one another. A conscientious Trade Unionist may find
his capacity as a member of the Union, interpreted as binding him
to do his utmost for the amelioration of working class conditions
in general, apparently at variance with his capacity as the head of
a family bound to provide immediately for those whom he has brought
into the world. Or a judge or magistrate, obliged to {169} enforce
what he conceives to be a bad law, may find his official capacity
apparently at variance with his duty as a conscientious citizen. It
is plain that unless, on the whole, a working harmony were maintained
between the different groups which form society, life could not go
on. And it is for this reason that the State, as the widest grouping
whose members are effectively united by a common experience, is
necessarily the one community which has absolute power to ensure, by
force, if need be, at least sufficient adjustment of the claims of
all other groupings to make life possible. Assuming, indeed, that
all the groupings are organs of a single pervading life, we find it
incredible that there should ultimately be irreconcilable opposition
between them. That they should contradict one another is not more
nor less possible than that human nature should be at variance with
itself.
Thus, we have seen that the mind, and society or the State, are
identical in the characteristic of being organisations, each composed
of a system of organisations, every superior and subordinate grouping
having its own nature and principle which determines its members as
such, and every one, consequently, tending to impose upon its members
a peculiar capacity or point of view, which, in so far as a given
system is active, tends to put all other systems out of sight. The
connection between these systems is of very different kinds, and very
unequal in degree; but in as far as the mind and the community are
actual working wholes, it is to be presumed that in each there is an
ultimate or pervading adjustment which hinders {170} contradiction
from proceeding to destructive extremes. And neither the mind nor
the community, as working organisations, can be accounted for on the
principle of mere association.
(2) After pointing out the analogy between the organised structure
of minds and the organised structure of society, we now go on to
show that minds and society are really the same fabric regarded from
different points of view. The explanation may be divided into three
parts.
(i.) Every social group is the external aspect of a set of
corresponding mental systems in individual minds.
(ii.) Every individual mind is a system of such systems corresponding
to the totality of social groups as seen from a particular position.
(iii.) The social whole, though implied in every mind, only has
reality in the totality of minds in a given community considered as
an identical working system.
(i.) Society and the State and every institution present themselves
to us at first sight as a number of persons, together, perhaps, with
certain buildings and other external apparatus, and certain kinds
of work carried on and tangible results produced--so many children
“educated,” so many workmen “employed,” so many ships built or fields
tilled.
But if we could bring before ourselves the complete reality of any
social group or institution, we should find ourselves considering
a very different order of facts. Let us think for a moment of
a rate-supported elementary school. We imagine it as a heap of
buildings and a mass of children with a percentage of teachers
scattered among {171} them. But in what does its actual working
really consist, and on what does it depend?
The actual reality of the school lies in the fact that certain living
minds are connected in a certain way. Teachers, pupils, managers,
parents, and the public must all of them have certain operative
ideas, and must be guided according to these ideas in certain
portions of their lives, if the school is to be a school. Now, the
being guided by certain operative ideas is, in other words, the
activity of certain appercipient masses dictating a certain point of
view, in so far as those particular masses are awake. And it must
be noted that the connection or identity in which the school exists
presupposes a different activity, that is, a different appercipient
system, in every mind, and more especially in every class of mind
concerned. It is the same as in our old example of the screw and the
nut. No school could be made of teachers alone or of pupils alone;
nor, again, could a school be made with teachers who were all the
same, or with pupils who were all the same.
So, if we could visualise the reality of the school--the
institution--what we should see would be an identical connection
running through a number of minds, various and variously conditioned.
But within each mind the connection would take a particular shape,
such as to play into the connections with all other minds, as a
cogwheel plays into the other cogwheels of a machine. The pupil must
be prepared to learn in his particular way and the teacher to teach
in his particular way. The parents and the public also have their
{172} own relations to the work of teaching, and whether for good
or for evil they take up some attitude to it, and their attitude
modifies it. Thus the connection, as it is within any one mind,
is useless and meaningless if you take it wholly apart from what
corresponds to it in the others. It is like a wheel without an axle
or a pump handle without a pump. And it is because of this nature of
the elements which make up the institution that it is possible for
the institution itself to be an identity, or connection, or meeting
point, by which many minds are bound together in a single system.
It may seem as if this way of analysing an institution was reducing
a solid fact into mere thoughts. But it is not really so. Taking the
ideas of all concerned as they really are, we have the facts in space
and time--buildings, appliances, hours of work and attendance, and so
on--included in them. It is impossible to state the idea fully and
correctly without including the environment on which it rests, and
the activities in which it is realised. We are not to omit the facts
in space and time from what we mean by an institution; the only thing
is that we have not known them as they really are till we have known
them as bound into unity by the mental systems of which they are the
context or the expression. The child and the teacher alike must think
of their work with reference to particular times and places, or they
would not do it at those times and places; and it is only in actually
doing it at those times and places that the idea, or point of view,
which stands for the school in each of their minds, is able to assert
itself without frustration.
{173} Thus we may fairly say that every social group, or institution,
is the aspect in space and time of a set of corresponding mental
systems in individual minds. We may draw corollaries from this
conception, both as to the nature of the individual will, or active
mind, and as to the nature of the social and political whole.
(ii.) Every individual mind, in so far as it thinks and acts in
definite schemes or contexts, is a structure of appercipient systems
or organised dispositions. Now, we do not suggest at present that
all appercipient systems can be represented as social groups, though
there are few, if any, such systems which do not involve some
relations with persons connected in time and space. But it is clear,
from the explanations of the last section, that every social group
or institution involves a system of appercipient systems, by which
the minds that take part in it are kept in correspondence. Every
individual mind, then, so far as it takes part in social groupings
or institutions, is a structure of appercipient systems, answering,
each to each, to the different capacities in which it enters into
each grouping respectively. We have already remarked on the way in
which the distinction between different “capacities” answers to the
psychological tendency for the activity of one appercipient system to
obstruct the activity of all others. It is hardly necessary to point
out that, partly for this reason, though the mind must be an actual
structure of systems, it is very far from being a rational system of
systems. The fact that, when one system is active, all others, as a
rule, are inert, conceals the contradictions which {174} underlie the
entire fabric, and protects them from criticism and correction.
But though the mind is thus implicitly self-contradictory in various
degrees, this does not alter the fact that its general nature is to
be a unity of organised ideas answering to the actual set of parts
which the individual plays in the world of space and time. Thus each
individual mind, if we consider it as a whole, is an expression
or reflection of society as a whole from a point of view which is
distinctive and unique. Every social factor or relation, to which it
in any way corresponds, or in which it in any way plays its part,
is represented in some feature of its appercipient organism. And
probably, just as, in any man’s idea of London, there is hardly any
factor of London life which does not at least colour the background,
so, in every individual impression of the social whole, there is
no social feature that does not, in one way or another, contribute
to the total effect. In the dispositions of every mind the entire
social structure is reflected in a unique form, and it is on this
reflection in every mind, and on the uniqueness of the form in which
it is reflected, that the working of the social whole, by means of
differences which play into one another, depends. If, so to speak,
we lay a mind on the dissecting table, we find it to consist for the
most part of a fabric of organised dispositions, each disposition
corresponding to a unique point of view or special angle [1] from
which it plays a part in some human function. About the precise
relation of a human function to the fact that, as a {175} rule, it
connects together a plurality of human beings, we shall have more
to say in the following chapter. It is enough for the present that
whatever does connect a plurality of human beings depends on the
operation of appercipient systems in their minds, and therefore every
individual mind is, as Plato has told us, so far as it goes, for good
or evil, the true effective reality of the social whole. And it is
easy to see when we consider the working of organised apperception,
how it is possible actually to will more or less of our own
volitional system. There is first the contrast between appercipient
systems which are at any time active and those which are not active,
and then there is the contrast between our actual volitional nature
at its actual fullest, and the demands implied by the nature of
the whole, from which it is inseparable. These demands are always
appearing more or less in every act of willing our own will.
[1] I owe this comparison to a lecture by Prof. S. Alexander.
(iii.) The social whole, regarded from a corresponding point of
view, would be a whole consisting of psychical dispositions and
their activities, answering to one another in determinate ways. It
would therefore be of the nature of a continuous or self-identical
being, pervading a system of differences and realised only in them.
It differs from a machine, or from what is called an “organism” pure
and simple, by the presence of the whole in every part, not merely
for the inference of the observer, but, in some degree, for the
part itself, through the action of consciousness. But it would be a
mistake, we should observe at this point, to identify the presence
of {176} the whole for the part by means of consciousness, with the
consciousness of the part that the whole is present to it. The latter
is a speculative idea, the former is a fact which embodies this idea
for the observing theorist, but not necessarily or usually for the
working consciousness itself. In the shape of our minds and their
adjustment to our work, of which we are unconscious, there is an
irreducible analogy between human society and the lower organisms.
The consciousness which guides our lives is a consciousness of
something, but not as a rule a consciousness of the place of that
something in the whole of life. We live in our objects, but we do not
know how or how far our objects identify us with the whole to which
we ultimately belong.
It is plain that the social whole can, in practice, only be complete
in a plurality of individuals. We know that in the development of
human nature, which we take as the ultimate standard of life, no one
individual can cover the whole ground. As in the natural world in
space and time, so, in the world of human beings which on one side
belongs to it, differentiation implies dispersion into a plurality
of centres. The same man, according to what seems to be the limit
of physical and psychical possibility, could not be both Plato
and Aristotle, nor both Greek and Jew, not even both Spartan and
Athenian, not to say both man and woman. We are on less secure ground
when we say that he could not, effectively and as a rule, be both
statesman and shoemaker, or soldier and clergyman. It is plain that
in some cases capacities may be united which in other cases are found
apart. {177} The same man may be a good architect and a good workman,
or again, the architect and the workman may be different persons,
though suited to work together. We may reply, of course, that
whatever abilities lie within one personality, effective work demands
the division of labour. This is true, but is obviously a matter of
degree. The man who does only one thing does not always do it best,
and it is not easy to say what “one thing” means.
The point of these suggestions is to make it clear that, while
plurality of human beings is necessary to enable society to cover
the ground, as it were, which human nature is capable of covering,
yet actual individuals are not ultimate or equal embodiments of the
true particulars of the social universal. We thus see once more
that the given individual is only in making, and that his reality
may lie largely outside him. His will is not a whole, but implies
and rests upon a whole, which is therefore the true nature of his
will. We also gain some light on the unity of the social mind. For
it seems plain that one actual human being may cover the ground,
which, in other instances, it takes many men to occupy. And in
some such examples--not, or not obviously, in those where a high
intensity of genius is the essential quality--there seems little
reason to distinguish the correlation of dispositions within the one
person from the correlation of the same dispositions if dispersed
among different persons. If I am my own gardener, or my own critic,
or my own doctor, does the relation of the answering dispositions
within my being differ absolutely and altogether from what {178}
takes place when gardener and master, critic and author, patient and
doctor, are different persons? My instructions to my gardener are
conveyed in language, it will be said, while I know my own wishes
directly. And this is not the place to press the problem home either
psychologically or metaphysically. But, just to induce reflection,
it may be asked whether my instructions to myself are not as a rule
conveyed and remembered in language. If we consider my unity with
myself at different times as the limiting case, [1] we shall find it
very hard to establish a difference of principle between the unity of
what we call one mind and that of all the “minds” which enter into a
single social experience.
[1] Cp. p. 110 above.
In any case, we have said enough to suggest that Society _prima
facie_ exists in the correlated dispositions by which a plurality
of individual minds meets the need for covering the ground open to
human nature, by division of labour in the fullest sense. But we have
further pointed out that the true particularisation of the human
universal does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between
different persons, and that the correlation of differences and the
identity which they constitute remain much the same whether they
chance to fall within a single human being, or to be dispersed over
several. The stress seems, therefore, to lie on the attainment of the
true particularisation which does justice to the maximum of human
capacity, rather than on the mere relations which arise between the
members of a _de facto_ plurality. Not that the presence of human
nature in any {179} individual does not constitute a claim that it
shall be perfected in him, but that its perfecting must be judged by
a criticism addressed to determining real capacities, and not by the
accidental standard of a given plurality. We shall pursue these ideas
further in the following chapter.
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