THE FUNCTION OF PUBLIC WILL
PUBLIC AND PRIVATE WILL—THE LACK OF PUBLIC WILL—SOCIAL WRONGS COMMONLY
NOT WILLED AT ALL.
What I shall say about Public Will—which is only another phase of the
Democratic Mind—might well have been introduced under Part III; but
I put it here because in a sense it rounds off our whole inquiry,
involving some general conclusions as to the method and possibility of
social betterment.
By public will we may understand the deliberate self-direction of any
social group. There is, of course, nothing mysterious about it, for it
is of the same nature as public opinion, and is simply that so informed
and organized as to be an effective guide to the life of the group. Nor
can we say just when this state is reached—it is a matter of degree—but
we may assume that when a group intelligently pursues a steadfast
policy some measure, at least, of public will has been achieved. Many
savage tribes have it in a small way; the Jews developed it under the
leadership of Moses and Joshua; the mediæval church and the Venetian
aristocracy displayed it. It is capable, like individual will, of
indefinite improvement in insight, stability and scope.
Just as public and private opinion are general and particular phases
of the same thing, so will is a single complex activity with individual
and collective aspects. But there is this difference between public and
private will—just as there is between other individual and collective
phases of mind—that the activity usually appears less conscious when
looked at in its larger aspect than when considered in detail. I
mean that we generally know a great deal better what we are about
as individuals than we do as members of large wholes: when one sits
down to dinner he is conscious of hunger and has a will to appease
it; but if his action has any bearing upon the community, as no doubt
it has, he is unaware of the fact. In the same way the activities of
business have much consciousness and purpose when looked at in detail,
but little when taken collectively. A thousand men buy and sell in
the market, each with a very definite intention regarding his own
transaction, but the market price which results from their bargaining
is an almost mechanical outcome, not a matter of conscious intention
at all. On the other hand, there are conscious wholes in which the
general result may be as clearly purposed as the particular; as when an
intelligent crew is working a vessel, each attending to his own work
but understanding perfectly what the general purpose is and how he is
contributing to it.
So if we restrict the word will to that which shows reflective
consciousness and purpose there is a sense in which a certain choice
(as of the purchaser in the market) may express individual will but
not public will: there is a public side to it, of course, but of an
involuntary sort.
We must remember, also, that although large wholes are, as a rule, much
inferior to individuals in explicit consciousness and purpose, they
are capable of rational structure and action of a somewhat mechanical
sort far transcending that of the individual mind. This is because of
the vast scope and indefinite duration they may have, which enables
them to store up and systematize the work of innumerable persons,
as a nation does, or even an industrial corporation. A large whole
may and usually does display in its activity a kind of rationality
or adaptation of means to ends which, as a whole, was never planned
or purposed by anybody, but is the involuntary result of innumerable
special endeavors. Thus the British colonial empire, which looks like
the result of deliberate and far-sighted policy, is conceded to have
been, for the most part, the unforeseen outcome of personal enterprise.
An institution, as we have seen in previous chapters, is not fully
human, but may, nevertheless, be superhuman, in the sense that it may
express a wisdom beyond the grasp of any one man. And even in a moral
aspect it is by no means safe to assume that the personal is superior
to the collective. This may or may not be the case, depending, among
other things, upon whether there has been a past growth of collective
moral judgment upon the point in question. The civil law, for example,
which is the result of such a growth, is for the most part a much safer
guide regarding property rights than the untrained judgment of any
individual.
But after all public thought and will have the same superiority over
unconscious adaptation (wonderful as the results of that often are)
as private thought and will have over mere instinct and habit. They
represent a higher principle of coördination and adaptation, one
which, properly employed, saves energy and prevents mistakes. The
British may have succeeded on instinct, but probably they would have
succeeded better if more reason had been mixed with it; and the latter
may save them from the decay which has attacked other great empires.
It is quite plain that the social development of the past has been
mostly blind and without human intention. Any page of history will
show that men have been unable to foresee, much less to control, the
larger movements of life. There have been seers, but they have had
only flashes of light, and have almost never been men of immediate
sway. Even great statesmen have lived in the present, feeling their
way, and having commonly no purpose beyond the aggrandizement of their
country or their order. Such partial exceptions as the framing of the
American constitution by the light of history and philosophy, and with
some prevision of its actual working, are confined to recent times and
excite a special wonder.
In particular the democratic movement of modern times has been chiefly
unconscious. As De Tocqueville says of its course in France, “... it
has always advanced without guidance. The heads of the state have made
no preparation for it, and it has advanced without their consent or
without their knowledge. The most powerful, the most intelligent and
the most moral classes of the nation have never attempted ... to guide
it.”[171]
Will has been alive only in details, in the smaller courses of life, in
what each man was doing for himself and his neighbors, while the larger
structure and movement have been subconscious, and for that reason
erratic and wasteful. For it is just as true of large wholes as of
individuals that if they blunder on without knowing what they are doing
much of their energy is lost. No doubt it is better to go ahead even
blindly than to stand still, and remarkable things have been achieved
in this way, but they are little to what might be done if we could
work out our highest human nature intelligently, with assurance and
prevision, and on a large scale. A society which did this would have
the same sort of superiority to present society as man to his sub-human
progenitors.
The very idea of Progress, of orderly improvement on a great scale, is
well known to be of recent origin, or at least recent diffusion, the
prevalent view in the past having been that the actual state of things
was, in its general character, unalterable.[172]
Even at the present day social phenomena of a large sort are for the
most part not willed at all, but are the unforeseen result of diverse
and partial endeavors. It is seldom that any large plan of social
action is intelligently drawn up and followed out. Each interest works
along in a somewhat blind and selfish manner, grasping, fighting and
groping. As regards general ends most of the energy is wasted; and
yet a sort of advance takes place, more like the surging of a throng
than the orderly movement of troops. Who can pretend that the American
people, for instance, are guided by any clear and rational plan in
their economic, political and religious development? They have
glimpses and impulses, but hardly a will, except on a few matters of
near and urgent interest.
In the same way the wrongs that afflict society are seldom willed by
any one or any group, but are by-products of acts of will having other
objects; they are done, as some one has said, rather with the elbows
than the fists. There is surprisingly little ill-intent, and the more
one looks into life the less he finds of that vivid _chiaroscuro_ of
conscious goodness and badness his childish teaching has led him to
expect.
Take, for instance, a conspicuous evil like the sweating system in
the garment trades of New York or London. Here are people, largely
women and children, forced to work twelve, fourteen, sometimes sixteen
hours a day, in the midst of dirt, bad air and contagion, suffering
the destruction of home life and decent nurture; and all for a wage
hardly sufficient to buy the bare necessities of life. But if one
looks for sin dark enough to cast such a shadow he will scarcely find
it. “Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents.” The “sweater”
or immediate employer, to whom he first turns, is commonly himself
a workman, not much raised above the rest and making but little
profit on his transactions. Beyond him is the large dealer, usually
a well-intentioned man, quite willing that things should be better
if they can be made so without too much trouble or pecuniary loss to
himself. He is only doing what others do and what, in his view, the
conditions of trade require. And so on; the closer one gets to the
facts the more evident it is that nowhere is the indubitable wickedness
our feelings have pictured. It is quite the same with political
corruption and the venal alliance between wealth and party management.
The men who control wealthy interests are probably no worse intentioned
than the rest of us; they only do what they think they are forced to
do in order to hold their own; and so with the politician: he finds
that others are selling their power, and easily comes to think of it
as a matter of course. In truth the consciously, flagrantly wicked
man is, and perhaps always has been, a fiction, for the most part, of
denunciation. The psychologist will hardly find him, but will feel
that most sorts of badness are easily enough comprehensible, and will
perhaps agree with the view ascribed to Goethe, that he never heard of
a crime which he might not himself have committed.
Naturally the more mechanical the system is the less of will and of
live human nature there is in its acts. So in Russia, says Tolstoy,
“Some make the laws, others execute them; some train men by discipline
to autocratic obedience; and these last, in their turn, become the
instruments of coercion, and slay their kind without knowing why or to
what end.”[173] In our reading and thinking democracy there is at least
the feeling that the working of the whole _ought_ to be the fulfilment
of some humane purpose, and a continual protest that this is not more
the case.
I cannot hold out a prospect of the early appearance of an adequate
public will; it is a matter of gradual improvement, but it seems
clear that there is a trend this way, based, mechanically, on recent
advances in communication, and, as regards training, on the multiform
disciplines in voluntary coöperation which modern life affords.
FOOTNOTES:
[171] Democracy in America, vol. i, Introduction.
[172] Of course the Greeks had the philosophical conception of general
flux, but I do not know that they applied it to society with such
distinctness as to give anything worth calling an idea of progress.
[173] My Religion, 45.