_THE INADEQUACY OF THE ANALOGY OF THE ORGANISM AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE
SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS_[12]
I. THE VALUE OF THE ANALOGY
The analogy of the organism has played so large a part in the history
of thought, especially in the consideration of ethical and social
questions, that it is well worth while to ask exactly how far this
analogy is adequate, although the danger of the abuse of the analogy
is probably somewhat less than formerly.
It may be said at once that it is, undoubtedly, the very best
illustration of these social relations that we can draw from nature,
and it is of real value. It has had, moreover, as already indicated, a
most influential and largely honorable history in the development of
the thought of men. Its classical expression is in the epoch-making
twelfth chapter of I Corinthians, which makes so plain the ethical
applications of the analogy.
II. THE INEVITABLE INADEQUACY OF THE ANALOGY
1. _Comes from the Sub-personal World._--But it ought clearly to be
seen, on the other hand, that, considered as a complete expression of
the social consciousness, it is necessarily inadequate; and it is of
moment that we should not be dominated by it. Too often it has been
made to cover the entire ground, as though in itself it were a
complete expression and final explanation of the social consciousness,
instead of a quite incomplete illustration. For, in the first place,
the very fact that the analogy comes from the physical world, from the
sub-personal realm, makes it certain that it must fail at vital points
in the expression of what is peculiarly a personal and ethical fact.
We cannot safely argue directly from the physical illustration to
ethical propositions.
2. _Access to Reality, Only Through Ourselves._--Moreover, in this day
of extraordinary attention to the physical world, it is particularly
important that we should keep constantly in mind that we have direct
access to reality only in ourselves; that man is himself necessarily
the only key which we can use for any ultimate understanding of
anything; or, as Paulsen puts it, "I know reality as it is in itself,
in so far as I am real myself, or in so far as it is, or is like, that
which I am, namely, spirit."[13] We are not to forget that, in very
truth, we know _better_ what we mean by persons and personal
relations, than we do what we mean by members of a body and by organic
relations; and, further, that in point of fact, all those metaphysical
notions by which we strive to think things are ultimately derived from
ourselves; and that then we illogically turn back upon our own minds,
from which all these notions came, to explain the mind in the same
secondary way in which we explain other things.
3. _Mistaken Passion for Construing Everything._--Natural science,
with its sole problem of the tracing of immediate causal connections,
naturally provokes a persistent, but nevertheless thoroughly mistaken,
"passion," as Lotze calls it,[14] "for construing everything,"--even
the most real and final reality, spirit; which wishes to see even this
real and final reality explained as the mechanical result of the
combination of simpler elements, themselves, it is to be noted,
finally absolutely inexplicable. Such perverse attempts will be widely
hailed, by many who do not understand themselves, as highly
scientific. And one who refuses to enter upon such investigations will
be criticized by such minds as "hardly getting into grips with his
subject."
But it is a false application of the scientific instinct that leads
one to seek mechanical explanation for the final reality, or that
urges to precision of formulation beyond that warranted by the data.
It is from exactly this falsely scientific bias that theology needs
deliverance. "For," as Aristotle reminds us, "it is the mark of a man
of culture to try to attain exactness in each kind of knowledge just
so far as the nature of the subject allows." There is a wise
agnosticism that is violated alike by negative and by positive
dogmatism. It is often overlooked that there is an over-wise
radicalism that assumes a knowledge of the depth of the finite and
infinite, quite as insistent and dogmatic as the view it supposes
itself to be opposing. "I know it is not so," it ought not to need to
be said, is not agnosticism.
The guiding principle in a truly scientific theology is this, as Lotze
suggests: Just so far as changing action depends upon altering
conditions, we have explanatory and constructive problems to solve,
and no farther. No philosophical view can do without a simply given
reality. And we shall never succeed in understanding by what machinery
reality is manufactured--in "deducing the whole positive content of
reality from mere modifications of formal conditions."[15]
We shall not allow ourselves to be misled, therefore, by the
scientific sound of the _detailed_ application of the analogy of the
organism to the facts of the social consciousness. And it is a
satisfaction to see that the clearest sociological writers are coming
to agree that there is strictly no "social mind" that can be affirmed
to exist as a separate reality, supposed to answer to society
conceived in its totality as an organism.
III. THE ANALOGY TESTED BY THE DEFINITION OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
When, now, we test the analogy of the organism by its competency to
express the full meaning of the social consciousness, as it has been
defined, we must say that the analogy but feebly expresses the
likeness of men; it best expresses the inevitableness of mutual
influence, though even here there is no understandable ultimate
explanation; it fairly expresses the desirableness and indispensableness
of mutual influence, but, of course, with entire lack of ethical
meaning; and it quite fails to express the sense of the value and the
sacredness of the person, the sense of obligation, and the sense of
love. We need to see and feel exactly these shortcomings, if we are
not to abuse the analogy. There is no social consciousness that will
hold water that does not rest on what Phillips Brooks called "a
healthy and ineradicable individualism," in the sense of the
recognition of the fully personal. We are spirits, not organisms, and
society is a society of persons, not an organism, in a strict sense.
Why should we wish to make society less significant than it is?
[12] Cf. King, _Op. cit._, pp. 92 ff., 179.
[13] _Introduction to Philosophy_, p. 373.
[14] _The Microcosmus_, Vol. I, p. 262.
[15] Lotze, _The Microcosmus_, Vol. II, pp. 649 ff.