PARTICULARISM _VERSUS_ THE ORGANIC VIEW
INTELLECTUAL PARTICULARISM—ITS FALLACY—ECONOMIC DETERMINISM—THE
ORGANIC VIEW AS AFFECTING METHODS OF STUDY—WHY PARTICULARISM IS
COMMON
We meet in social discussion a way of thinking opposed to the conception
of organic process as I have tried to expound it, which I will call
intellectual particularism.[7] It consists in holding some one phase of
the process to be the source of all the others, so that they may be
treated as subsidiary to it.
A form of particularism that until recently was quite general is one
that regards the personal wills of individual men, supplemented,
perhaps, by the similar will of a personal God, as the originative
factor in life from which all else comes. Everything took place, it was
assumed, because some one willed it so, and for the will there was no
explanation or antecedent history: it was the beginning, the creative
act. When this view prevailed there could be no science of human
affairs, because there was no notion of system or continuity in them;
life was kept going by a series of arbitrary impulses. As opposed to
this we have the organic idea that will is as much effect as cause, that
it always has a history, and is no more than one phase of a great whole.
In contrast to particularistic views of this sort we have others which
find the originative impulse in external conditions of life, such as
climate, soil, flora, and fauna; and regard intellectual and social
activities merely as the result of the physiological needs of men
seeking gratification under these conditions.
A doctrine of the latter character having wide acceptance at the present
time is “economic determinism,” which looks upon the production of
wealth and the competition for it as the process of which everything
else is the result. The teaching of Marxian socialism upon this point is
well known, and some economists who are not socialists nevertheless hold
that all important social questions grow out of the economic struggle,
and that all social institutions, including those of education, art, and
religion, should be judged according as they contribute to success in
this struggle. This is, indeed, a view natural to economists, who are
accustomed to look at life from this window, though most of them have
enough larger philosophy to avoid any extreme form of it.[8]
The fallacy of all such ideas lies in supposing that life is built up
from some one point, instead of being an organic whole which is
developing as a whole now and, so far as we know, always has done so in
the past. Nothing is fixed or independent, everything is plastic and
takes influence as well as gives it. No factor of life can exist for men
except as it is merged in the organic system and becomes an effect as
much as a cause of the total development. If you insist that there is a
centre from which the influence comes, all flowing in one direction, you
fly in the face of fact. What observation shows is a universal
interaction, in which no factor appears antecedent to the rest.
Any particularistic explanation of things, I should say, must be based
on the idea that most institutions, most phases of life, are passive,
receive force but do not impart it, are mere constructions and not
transitive processes. But where will you find such passive institutions
or phases? Are not all alive, all factors in the course of history as we
know it? It seems to me that if you think concretely, in terms of
experience, such an explanation cannot be definitely conceived.
I hold that the organic view is not a merely abstract theory about the
nature of life and of society, but is concrete and verifiable, giving a
more adequate general description than other theories of what we
actually see, and appealing to fact as the test of its value. It does
not attempt to say how things began, but claims that their actual
working, in the present and in the historical past, corresponds to the
organic conception.
Let any one fix his mind upon some one factor or group of factors which
may appear at first to be original, and see if, upon reflection, it does
not prove to be an outgrowth of the organic whole of history. Thus many
start their explanation of modern life with the industrial revolution in
England. But what made the industrial revolution? Was it brought into
the world by an act of special creation, or was it a natural sequence of
the preceding political, social, intellectual, and industrial
development? Evidently the latter: it is a historical fact, like
another, to be explained as the outcome of a total process, just as much
an effect of the mental and social conditions of the past as it came to
be a cause of those of the future. I think this will always prove to be
the case when we inquire into the antecedents of any factor in life.
There _is_ no beginning; we know nothing about beginnings; there is
always continuity with the past, and not with any one element only of
the past, but with the whole interacting organism of man.
If universal interaction is a fact, it follows that social life is a
whole which can be understood only by studying its total working, not by
fixing attention upon one activity and attempting to infer the rest. The
latter method implies an idea similar to that of special creation, an
idea that there is a starting-place, a break of continuity, a cause that
is not also an effect.
Such visible and tangible things as climate, fuel, soils, fruits,
grains, wild or domestic animals, and the like have for many a more
substantial appearance than ideas or institutions, and they are disposed
to lean upon these, or upon some human activity immediately connected
with them, as a solid support for their philosophy of life. But after
all such things exist _for us_ only as they have interacted with our
traditional organism of life and become a part of it. Climate, as it
actually touches us, may be said to be a social institution, of which
clothes, shelter, artificial heat, and irrigation are obvious aspects.
And so with our economic “environment.” What are deposits of iron and
coal, or fertility of soil, or navigable waters, or plants and animals
capable of domestication, except in conjunction with the traditional
arts and customs through which these are utilized? To a people with one
inheritance of ideas a coal-field means nothing at all, to a people with
another it means a special development of industry. Such conditions owe
their importance, like anything else, to the way they work in with the
process already going on.
Another reason for the popularity of material or economic determinism is
the industrial character of our time and of many of our more urgent
problems, which has caused our minds to be preoccupied with this class
of ideas. A society like ours produces such theories just as a
militarist society produces theories that make war the dominating
process.
It is easy to show that the “_mores_ of maintenance,” the way a people
gets its living, exercise an immense influence upon all their ideas and
institutions.[9] But what are the “_mores_ of maintenance”? Surely not
something external to their history and imposed upon them by their
material surroundings, as seems often to be assumed in this connection,
but simply their whole mental and social organism, functioning for
self-support through its interaction with these surroundings. They are
as much the effect as they can possibly be the cause of psychical
phenomena, and to argue economic determinism from their importance begs
the whole question. Material factors are essential in the organic whole
of life, but certainly no more so than the spiritual factors, the ideas,
and institutions of the group.
Professor W. G. Sumner, probably by way of protest against a merely
ideal view of history, said: “We have not made America; America has made
us.” Evidently we might turn this around, and it would be just as
plausible. “We” have made of America something very different from what
the American Indians made of it, or from what the Spaniards would
probably have made of it if it had fallen to them. “America” (the United
States) is the total outcome of all the complex spiritual and material
factors—the former chiefly derived from European sources—which have gone
into its development.
To treat the human mind as the primary factor in life, gradually
unfolding its innate tendencies under the moulding power of conditions,
is no less and no more plausible than to begin with the material. Why
should originative impulse be ascribed to things rather than to mind? I
see no warrant in observed fact for giving preference to either.[10]
It is the aim of the organic view to “see life whole,” or at least as
largely as our limitations permit. However, it by no means discredits
the study of society from particular standpoints, such as the economic,
the political, the military, the religious. This is profitable because
the whole is so vast that to get any grasp of it we need to approach it
now from one point of view, now from another, fixing our attention upon
each phase in turn, and then synthetizing it all as best we can.
Moreover, every phenomenon stands in more immediate relation to some
parts of the process than to others, making it necessary that these
parts should be especially studied in order to understand this
phenomenon. Hence it may be quite legitimate, with reference to a given
problem, to regard certain factors as of peculiar importance. I would
not deny that poverty, for example, is to be considered chiefly in
connection with the economic system; while I regard the attempt to
explain literature, art, or religion mainly from this standpoint as
fantastic. But when we are seeking a large view we should endeavor to
embrace the whole process. No study of a special chain of causes is more
than an incident in that perception of a reciprocating whole which I
take to be our great aim.
If we think in this way we shall approach the comprehension of a period
of history, or of any social situation, very much as we approach a work
of organic art, like a Gothic cathedral. We view the cathedral from many
points, and at our leisure, now the front and now the apse, now taking
in the whole from a distance, now lingering near at hand over the
details, living with it, if we can, for months, until gradually there
arises a conception of it which is confined to no one aspect, but is, so
far as the limits of our mind permit, the image of the whole in all its
unity and richness.
We must distinguish between the real particularist, who will not allow
that any other view but his own is tenable, and the specialist, who
merely develops a distinctive line of thought without imagining that it
is all-sufficing. The latter is a man you can work with, while the
former tries to rule the rest of us off the field. Of course he does not
succeed, and the invariable outcome is that men tire of him and retain
only such special illumination as his ardor may have cast; so that he
contributes his bit much like the specialist. Still, it would diminish
the chagrin that awaits him, and the confusion of his disciples, if he
would recognize that the life process is an evolving whole of mutually
interacting parts, any one of which is effect as well as cause.
It should be the outcome of the organic view that we embrace specialty
with ardor, and yet recognize that it is partial and tentative, needing
from time to time to be reabsorbed and reborn of the whole. The Babel of
conflicting particularisms resembles the condition of religious doctrine
a century ago, when every one took it for granted that there could be
but one true form of belief, and there were dozens of antagonistic
systems claiming to be this form. The organic conception, in any sphere,
requires that we pursue our differences in the sense of a larger unity.
I take it that what the particularist mainly needs is a philosophy and
general culture which shall enable him to see his own point of view in
something like its true relation to the whole of thought. It is hard to
believe, for example, that an economist who also reads Plato or Emerson
comprehendingly could adhere to economic determinism.
There are several rather evident reasons for the prevalence of
particularism. One is the convenience of a fixed starting-point for
thinking. Our minds find it much easier to move by a lineal method, in
one-two-three order, than to take in action and reaction, operating at
many points, in a single view. In fact, it is necessary to begin
somewhere, and when we have begun somewhere we soon come to feel that
that _is_ the beginning, for everybody, and not merely an arbitrary
selection of our own.
Very like this is what I may call the _illusion of centrality_, the fact
that if you are familiar with any one factor of life it presents itself
to you as a centre from which influence radiates in all directions,
somewhat in the same way that the trees in an orchard will appear to
radiate from any point where you happen to stand. Indeed it really is
such a centre; the illusion arises from not seeing that every other
factor is a centre also. The individual is a very real and active thing,
but so is the group or general tendency; it is true that you can see
life from the standpoint of imitation (several writers have centred upon
this) but so you can from the standpoint of competition or organization.
The economic process is as vital as anything can be, and there is
nothing in life that does not change when it changes; but the same is
true of the ideal processes; geography is important, but not more so
than the technical institutions through which we react upon it; and so
on.
Another root of particularism is the impulse of self-assertion. After we
have worked over an idea a while we identify ourselves with it, and are
impelled to make it as big as possible—to ourselves as well as to
others. There are few books on sociology, or any other subject, in which
this influence does not appear at least as clearly as anything which the
author intended to express. It is not possible or desirable to avoid
these ambitions, but they ought to be disciplined by a total view.
I have little hope of converting hardened particularists by argument;
but it would seem that the spectacle of other particularists maintaining
by similar reasoning views quite opposite to their own must, in time,
have some effect upon them.
_PART II_
PERSONAL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL
PROCESS