adjuster among them; defining the limits of their actions, preventing and settling conflicts.
Its "supremacy" approximates that of the conductor of an orchestra, who makes no music himself but who harmonizes the activities of those who in producing it are doing the thing intrinsically worth while. The state remains highly important--but its importance consists more and more in its power to foster and co-ordinate the activities of voluntary groupings. Only nominally is it in any modern community the end for the sake of which all the other societies and organizations exist. Groupings for promoting the diversity of goods that men share have become the real social units. They occupy the place which traditional theory has claimed either for mere isolated individuals or for the supreme and single political organization. Pluralism is well ordained in present political practice and demands a modification of hierarchical and monistic theory.
Every combination of human forces that adds its own contribution of value to life has for that reason its own unique and ultimate worth. It cannot be degraded into a means to glorify the State. One reason for the increased demoralization of war is that it forces the State into an abnormally supreme position.
The other concrete fact is the opposition between the claim of independent sovereignty in behalf of the territorial national state and the growth of international and what have well been called trans-national interests. The weal and woe of any modern state is bound up with that of others. Weakness, disorder, false principles on the part of any state are not confined within its boundaries. They spread and infect other states. The same is true of economic, artistic and scientific advances. Moreover the voluntary associations just spoken of do not coincide with political boundaries. Associations of mathematicians, chemists, astronomers; business corporations, labor organizations, churches are trans-national because the interests they represent are worldwide. In such ways as these, internationalism is not an aspiration but a fact, not a sentimental ideal but a force. Yet these interests are cut across and thrown out of gear by the traditional doctrine of exclusive national sovereignty. It is the vogue of this doctrine, or dogma, that presents the strongest barrier to the effective formation of an international mind which alone agrees with the moving forces of present-day labor, commerce, science, art and religion.
Society, as was said, is many associations not a single organization.
Society means association; coming together in joint intercourse and action for the better realization of any form of experience which is augmented and confirmed by being shared. Hence there are as many associations as there are goods which are enhanced by being mutually communicated and participated in. And these are literally indefinite in number. Indeed, capacity to endure publicity and communication is the test by which it is decided whether a pretended good is genuine or spurious. Moralists have always insisted upon the fact that good is universal, objective, not just private, particular. But too often, like Plato, they have been content with a metaphysical universality or, like Kant, with a logical universality. Communication, sharing, joint participation are the only actual ways of universalizing the moral law and end. We insisted at the last hour upon the unique character of every intrinsic good. But the counterpart of this proposition is that the situation in which a good is consciously realized is not one of transient sensations or private appetites but one of sharing and communication--public, social. Even the hermit communes with gods or spirits; even misery loves company; and the most extreme selfishness includes a band of followers or some partner to share in the attained good. Universalization means socialization, the extension of the area and range of those who share in a good.
The increasing acknowledgment that goods exist and endure only through being communicated and that association is the means of conjoint sharing lies back of the modern sense of humanity and democracy. It is the saving salt in altruism and philanthropy, which without this factor degenerate into moral condescension and moral interference, taking the form of trying to regulate the affairs of others under the guise of doing them good or of conferring upon them some right as if it were a gift of charity. It follows that organization is never an end in itself.
It is a means of promoting _association_, of multiplying effective points of contact between persons, directing their intercourse into the modes of greatest fruitfulness.
The tendency to treat organization as an end in itself is responsible for all the exaggerated theories in which individuals are subordinated to some institution to which is given the noble name of society. Society is the _process_ of associating in such ways that experiences, ideas, emotions, values are transmitted and made common. To this active process, both the individual and the institutionally organized may truly be said to be subordinate. The individual is subordinate because except in and through communication of experience from and to others, he remains dumb, merely sentient, a brute animal. Only in association with fellows does he become a conscious centre of experience. Organization, which is what traditional theory has generally meant by the term Society or State, is also subordinate because it becomes static, rigid, institutionalized whenever it is not employed to facilitate and enrich the contacts of human beings with one another.
The long-time controversy between rights and duties, law and freedom is another version of the strife between the Individual and Society as fixed concepts. Freedom for an individual means growth, ready change when modification is required.
It signifies an active process, that of release of capacity from whatever hems it in. But since society can develop only as new resources are put at its disposal, it is absurd to suppose that freedom has positive significance for individuality but negative meaning for social interests. Society is strong, forceful, stable against accident only when all its members can function to the limit of their capacity. Such functioning cannot be achieved without allowing a leeway of experimentation beyond the limits of established and sanctioned custom.
A certain amount of overt confusion and irregularity is likely to accompany the granting of the margin of liberty without which capacity cannot find itself. But socially as well as scientifically the great thing is not to avoid mistakes but to have them take place under conditions such that they can be utilized to increase intelligence in the future.
If British liberal social philosophy tended, true to the spirit of its atomistic empiricism, to make freedom and the exercise of rights ends in themselves, the remedy is not to be found in recourse to a philosophy of fixed obligations and authoritative law such as characterized German political thinking. The latter, as events have demonstrated, is dangerous because of its implicit menace to the free self-determination of other social groups. But it is also weak internally when put to the final test. In its hostility to the free experimentation and power of choice of the individual in determining social affairs, it limits the capacity of many or most individuals to share effectively in social operations, and thereby deprives society of the full contribution of all its members. The best guarantee of collective efficiency and power is liberation and use of the diversity of individual capacities in initiative, planning, foresight, vigor and endurance. Personality must be educated, and personality cannot be educated by confining its operations to technical and specialized things, or to the less important relationships of life. Full education comes only when there is a responsible share on the part of each person, in proportion to capacity, in shaping the aims and policies of the social groups to which he belongs. This fact fixes the significance of democracy. It cannot be conceived as a sectarian or racial thing nor as a consecration of some form of government which has already attained constitutional sanction.
It is but a name for the fact that human nature is developed only when its elements take part in directing things which are common, things for the sake of which men and women form groups--families, industrial companies, governments, churches, scientific associations and so on. The principle holds as much of one form of association, say in industry and commerce, as it does in government. The identification of democracy with political democracy which is responsible for most of its failures is, however, based upon the traditional ideas which make the individual and the state ready-made entities in themselves.
As the new ideas find adequate expression in social life, they will be absorbed into a moral background, and will the ideas and beliefs themselves be deepened and be unconsciously transmitted and sustained.
They will color the imagination and temper the desires and affections.
They will not form a set of ideas to be expounded, reasoned out and argumentatively supported, but will be a spontaneous way of envisaging life. Then they will take on religious value. The religious spirit will be revivified because it will be in harmony with men's unquestioned scientific beliefs and their ordinary day-by-day social activities. It will not be obliged to lead a timid, half-concealed and half-apologetic life because tied to scientific ideas and social creeds that are continuously eaten into and broken down. But especially will the ideas and beliefs themselves be deepened and intensified because spontaneously fed by emotion and translated into imaginative vision and fine art, while they are now maintained by more or less conscious effort, by deliberate reflection, by taking thought. They are technical and abstract just because they are not as yet carried as matter of course by imagination and feelings.
We began by pointing out that European philosophy arose when intellectual methods and scientific results moved away from social traditions which had consolidated and embodied the fruits of spontaneous desire and fancy. It was pointed out that philosophy had ever since had the problem of adjusting the dry, thin and meagre scientific standpoint with the obstinately persisting body of warm and abounding imaginative beliefs. Conceptions of possibility, progress, free movement and infinitely diversified opportunity have been suggested by modern science. But until they have displaced from _imagination_ the heritage of the immutable and the once-for-all ordered and systematized, the ideas of mechanism and matter will lie like a dead weight upon the emotions, paralyzing religion and distorting art. When the liberation of capacity no longer seems a menace to organization and established institutions, something that cannot be avoided practically and yet something that is a threat to conservation of the most precious values of the past, when the liberating of human capacity operates as a socially creative force, art will not be a luxury, a stranger to the daily occupations of making a living. Making a living economically speaking, will be at one with making a life that is worth living. And when the emotional force, the mystic force one might say, of communication, of the miracle of shared life and shared experience is spontaneously felt, the hardness and crudeness of contemporary life will be bathed in the light that never was on land or sea.
Poetry, art, religion are precious things. They cannot be maintained by lingering in the past and futilely wishing to restore what the movement of events in science, industry and politics has destroyed. They are an out-flowering of thought and desires that unconsciously converge into a disposition of imagination as a result of thousands and thousands of daily episodes and contact. They cannot be willed into existence or coerced into being. The wind of the spirit bloweth where it listeth and the kingdom of God in such things does not come with observation. But while it is impossible to retain and recover by deliberate volition old sources of religion and art that have been discredited, it is possible to expedite the development of the vital sources of a religion and art that are yet to be. Not indeed by action directly aimed at their production, but by substituting faith in the active tendencies of the day for dread and dislike of them, and by the courage of intelligence to follow whither social and scientific changes direct us. We are weak today in ideal matters because intelligence is divorced from aspiration.
The bare force of circumstance compels us onwards in the daily detail of our beliefs and acts, but our deeper thoughts and desires turn backwards. When philosophy shall have co-operated with the course of events and made clear and coherent the meaning of the daily detail, science and emotion will interpenetrate, practice and imagination will embrace. Poetry and religious feeling will be the unforced flowers of life. To further this articulation and revelation of the meanings of the current course of events is the task and problem of philosophy in days of transition.
INDEX Absolute reality, 23, 27 Kant and, 99 Abstract definition, 20 Absurdities, 10 Achievements, 194 Action, kind of, 80 Adult life, 185, 186 America, 41 Amoeba, 91 Animals, dramatisation in primitive life of man, 4 Antiquity, 33 Apprehension, 142 Aquinas, 55, 106 distinction in ends, 171; experience, 79, 80; forms, 105; on change, 107; on philosophy as contemplation, 109, 110; on slavery, 191; theory of the state, 44; ultimate reality, 106 Artisan, 15; knowledge, 110 Associations, 205; voluntary, 203 Astronomy, 75 Athenians, 13, 19 Augustine, St., 111 final, 161; seat of, 160.
_See also_ Final good criticism of the learning of his day, 29-30; experience, 97-98; "knowledge is power," 29; summary of ideas, 29 Being, perfect, 111 Being and non-being, 107 Beliefs and facts, 12 Bergson, 71 Berkeley, 50 Biology, 75, 84 Bliss, 111, 112 Bosanquet, 134 Bradley, 107 Bruno, 66 Butler, Bishop, 21 Capital, 43 Capital and labour, 191 Capitalism, 41, 182 Castes, material, 59 Casuistry, 166 Causation, 63 Causes, 59, 60 Certainty, 21, 22 Change, ancient idea of, 57; existing view, 113; law of the universe, 61; Plato and Aristotle on, 107; progress and, 116 Chemistry, 75 Child life, 91-92, 184 Christian mediaeval philosophy, 17, 19 Christian theology, 111 Church, 47; universal, 45 in the ancient conception of the world, 59 Common sense, 100 Communication at a distance, 118, 120 Comte, Auguste, 10 reconstruction in, moral, 161; truth, 156 Concrete cases, in morals, 161; in social philosophy, 188 Concreteness, 150 Condillac, 81 Conduct, 80; right course, 163 of ends, 166 Conscience, 46 Consequences, investigating, 163-164 Constant, 61 Contract theory of the state, 45 Control, 42, 64 Co-operation in research, 37 Cosmogonies and cosmologies, 9 Cosmology, 70, 75 Craftsmen, 12, 13 Criteria, 77 Crusades, 39 Cults, 8; consolidation, 9 Custom, 17, 161 Dante, 55 Darwin, 75 Deduction, 148 Delusions, 139 of facts, 66; significance, 209 discovery vs., 32 Descartes, 50 Desires, 110, 111; frustration, 104 Details, 141 Development, Aristotle's use of term, 57, 58 Diagnosis, 142 Direction, 176 Disagreeable, 103 Discord, 108 Discovery, contacts of 16th and 17th centuries, 39; demonstration vs., 32; logic of, 31, 33; moral, 174 Doctrines, 8; consolidation, 9 Dogma, 145, 159 world of, 7 Dualism, 173 Duties and rights, 207 Earth, ancient conception, 55; relation to universe, 66 Economic ends, 171-172 Efficient cause, 59, 60 Emotion, 103, 210 Empirical and rational, 81, 87 Empiricists, 78, 82 Ends, conflicting, 166; fixed, 70; intrinsic and instrumental, 170, 172-173; means and, 72-73; values, 175 English empiricism, 99 Environment, 10; life and, 84 Errors, 35 Esthetic and practical, 66 science and, reconciling, 127 Ether, 55, 56 Ethical theory, 161 Europe, nationalistic movement, 201; social cause of intellectual revolution in 16th and 17th centuries, 38-39 Evil, problem of, 177 Evolution, in Aristotle, 58; of the state, 200-201 Existence, two realms, 22 Experience, 32; as a guide in science and moral life, 78; basis of old notion of, 79; changed conceptions, 77; classic notion and modern, 81; combined doing and suffering, 86; evil result of unimaginative conception of, 100-101; Greek, 79; modern appeal to, 48; new conception, 83; Plato, 92; principles and, 48; true "stuff" of, 91 Experimental method, 13 Experimentation, 42 Exploration, 39, 40 Facts, 10, 98 Falsity, 158 Family principle, 189; in the world at large, 61-62 Fanaticism, 168 Fancy. _See_ Imagination Fear, 40 Feudalism, 43, 45; of the universe in ancient conception, 59, 61-62 Fighting, 15 Final good, 161-162, 183; existence of a single good questioned, 162 Fine arts, 126 Finite, 107 Finite and infinite, 66 Fire, 11, 56, 86 Fixed ends, 165 Flux, 57, 108 Formal cause, 59, 60 Forms of Aristotle, 105 Free will, 196 Freedom, law and, 207; religious, 46 Future, 48 Future aim of philosophy, 26 General notions, in morals, 161; in social philosophy, 188 Generalities, 174; social affairs and, 198 Geology, 75 German political philosophy, 200, 208-209 German rationalism, 99 Germans, system, order, docility, 98-99 Germany, 19 God, 10, 109 Golden Age, 48 Good. _See_ Final good Goodness, 179 ethical theory, 161; religion, 105; science and arts, 93 Growth, 184; of knowledge, 31; moral, 177 Happiness, 179 Heavens, ancient conception, 56 conception of the state, 200, 201; logic, 134 Helvetius, 81 Hierarchical order, 59 "Higher" ends, 172 Hindoos, 126 History, Hegel's conception, 201 History of philosophy, 25 Hobbes, 88, 188 _Homo faber_, 71 Human aims, 42, 43 Human life, "real" and "ideal," a live issue, 128 Humanism and naturalism, 174 Humanity, 206 Hume, 50, 83, 89 Hypotheses, 22, 145 Hysteria, 139 Ideal, changed conceptions, 103; problem of relation to the real, 130; real and, a human issue, 128 Ideal realm, classic and modern conceptions contrasted, 118 Idealism, 129; theological, 50; tragic kind, 129-130 Ideality, one with reality, 111; philosophic conception, 106 Ideas of Plato, 105 Idols, 36 Ills, 169; philosophy and, 177-178 Imagination, 211; empirical knowledge and, 73, 74; reshaping power, 103, 106 Independence, 110; social, 185 India, 41 concept as something given, 193; in social and moral sense, 194; social and, 199; state and, 190, 191 Individualism, 50; political, 45, 46; religious, 46; religious and moral, 46 Induction, 34 Industrial revolution and scientific revolution, 38, 41 Industry, movements, 47; Infinite, 66, 67 Initiative 46, 209 Innate ideas, 35, 82 Inquiry, 174; free, 146; impartial, 147; methods in moral ills, 170 Insincerity, 20 Instability, 107 Institutions, 196; true starting-points of inquiry about, 197 Instrumental ends, 171 Intellect, 6 Intellectual somnambulism, 140 Intellectualism, 117 as inquiry into consequences, 163-164; definition, 96 Interest, 194-195 International interests, 204, 205 Intrinsic good, 170, 206 Introspection, 196 Investigation, 147 Irresponsibility, 97 James, William, 21; Pragmatism, 38 Judea, 9 Judgment, 133; moral, 176; standards, 175 his philosophy and German character, 98-99 Kinship, 62 Knowledge, conception as beholding, 115; degrees, 108; empirical as organ of imagination, 73, 74; existing practice, 112; modern view of right way to get it, 113; positive, 12; positive vs. tradition, 16; practical and operative, 121, 122; spectator conception, 112, 117 "Knowledge is power," 29, 42, 51 Law, 61, 64; freedom and, 207; reason and, 98.
_See also_ Final good Learning, Bacon's three kinds, 29 Licentiousness, 163 Life, 167, 211; environment and, 84-85 Literary culture, 39 philosophic empiricism, 82 Logic, a science and an art, 135; apparatus, 20, 21; importance, 138; in morals and politics, 138; inconsistencies, 134; new, 36; of discovery, 33; of discovery vs. that of argumentation, 31; theory, chaotic state, 133 Logical system, 9 Lotze, 134 Making a living, 211 Man, perfectibility, 49; primitive, 4, 5; savage and civilized, 85; tool-maker, 71 Marcus Aurelius, 106 Matter, 72, 211 Means and ends, 72-73 Mechanics, 67, 69; Greeks and, 67 Mechanism, 211 Mechanisation of nature, 71-72 Meliorism, 178 Memory, 1, 6, 103; emotional character, 2; individual and group, 8; primitive, 3 Methods, 149; social philosophy, 193; true, 32 Military art, 15 Mill, J. S., 132 Mind, pure, 111 Miracles, 125 Mistakes, 175 Modern thought, 52; Bacon as founder, 28; early, 49, 50.
_See also_ Thought Mohammedans, 39 Moral ends, 169 Moral life, 165 Moral science. _See under_ Science Morality, pragmatic rule, 163; standard of judgment, 176 Morals, 126, 169; politics and, 197 National state, 200; end or instrument, 202-203; rôle of the modern, 201 Nationalistic movement, 201 Natural Science. _See under_ Science Naturalism and humanism, 174 Nature, contrast of ancient and modern conceptions, 53-54; loss of poetry when considered as mechanism, 69; profound change in man's attitude to, 115; value of mechanisation, 71-72; web imposed on, 35-36 Neglect, 97 Neo-Platonism, 111 New World, 39 Non-being, 107 Noumenal reality, 23 _Nous_, 36 Obliviscence of the disagreeable, 103 Observation, 140 Optimism, 178 Opportunity, 211 Organic society, 187 Organisms, 86 Organisation, 206-207 Oriental nations, 127 Pantheon, Greek, 105 Past, 212 Perfectibility of mankind, 49 Perfection, 177 Persuasion, 31 Pessimism, 178 Phariseeism, 176 Phenomenal reality, 23 Philosophy, emancipation, 123; function, 111, 122; future aim and scope, 26; hard and fast alternatives of English and German schools, 99-100; history, 25; opportunities, 49; practical nature, 121; proper province, 21, 124; work, 18 Physician, 168 Physics, 75 dramatic sense, 15; experience, 79, 92; ideas, ideal realm, 105; on change, 107; social arts, 94; ultimate reality, 106 Pleasure, 181 Plotinus, 106 Pluralism, 204 Political changes, 43 Political organisation, 44 Politics, 125; morals and, 197; movements, 47 Possession of knowledge, 31 Potentiality, Aristotle's use of term, 57, 58 Practical and esthetic, 66 Pragmatism, 38 Pretensions, 21 Primitive man, 4 criteria of experience, 48 Probability, 21 Production, 181 Bacon and, 32, 34; economic and moral, contrast, 125 Proof, 20 Property, 182, 189 Protestantism, 46 Proudhon, 189 Prussian State, 190, 201 change in, 84; malicious, 82 Pure reason, 78 Rank, 63 Rationalism, 97; rigidity, 98 Real, changed conceptions, 103; ideal and, a human issue, 128; problem of relation to the ideal, 130 Reality, 23, 27; classic conception, 105; nomenal vs. phenomenal, 23; ultimate, 106; ultimate, one with ideality, 111 Reason, 83, 174; as a faculty separate from experience, 95; as re-adjusting intelligence, 96; changed conceptions, 77 Reasoning, 32 Reconstruction of philosophy, 52; essential, 51; historical factors, 28; in moral conceptions, 161; scientific factor, 53; social philosophy and, 187; specific present problem, 43; value of a solution of the dilemma of reason and experience, 101 Reform, 179, 180; starting-point, 196 Relativity of sensations, 88 movements, 47 Religious freedom, 46 Religious spirit, 210 Renaissance, 29 Research, 42; co-operative, 37 Responsibility, 163 Revolution of thought, 60 Rights and duties, 207 Rome, 9 Ruler and subject, 44; in nature, 64 Rules of conduct, 165 Sailors, 11 Salvation, 112 Santayana, George, on Locke, 82 Satisfaction, 157 Savage, 85, 176 Scholasticism, 30 Science, 11, 23; advance in, 53; estheticism and, reconciling, 127; human value, 173; natural, 42, 48; open world of, 61; origin, 12; picture of universe, 64-65; relation to experience, 95; separation of natural and moral, 173; so-called, 36; traditional, 30 Scientific revolution, 53 Self-delusion, 140 Sensations, 84; as points of readjustment, 89; relativity, 88 Senses, 84, 87 Sentimentalism, 73 Shakespeare, 94 Slavery, 191 Social belief, 26 Social development, 43 Social evils, 182.
_See also_ Ills Social philosophy, reconstruction, 187; reconstructive impact, 193 Social unit, real, 204 Social welfare, 180 Sociality, 185 Society, 200, 205; defect of usual theories about, 188; individuals and, three views, 187-188; philosophy and, 124 Socrates, 14, 17 Soldiers, 139 Sophists, 13, 14 Space, 118-119, 120 Spinoza, 106 Standards, 175 State, Aristotle's theory, 44; contract theory, 45; current conception, 200; importance, 204; individual and, 190, 191; modern, 44; origin, 44; supremacy, 202, 203 Subject and ruler, 44; in nature, 64 Success, 179 Supernaturalism, 47 System, 98, 99 Telegraph, 120 Telephone, 120 Terminology, 21 Theories, 144, 145; validity, 156 Theory and practice, 140 Things as they are, 115 Thinking, habits, 74, 75.
_See also_ Thought Thomas, St. _See_ Aquinas Thought, 117; good and bad thinking, 136; instrumental nature, 145-146; its origin in difficulties, 138-139; kinds, 135; logic and, 134; place, 96; systems, 145 Tolerance, 46 Tradition, 14; positive knowledge vs., 16 Transitoriousness, 106 Travel, 39, 40 Trouble, 138, 140 Truth, as utility, 157; defining, 159-160; logical conception, 156-157; old and new, 33, 34; pragmatic conception, 156, 159; test of, nature of, 155, 166; why the modern conception is offensive, 157, 158 Unity, 108 Universal, 64 Universe, closed conception, 54 Utilitarianism, defects, 181; merit, 180; need of reconstruction, 183 Utility, 157 Valves, 15 Verification, 156 Virtues, 164 Vision, 21 War, 204 War, world, lesson, 129; nationalistic phase, 201; "real" and "ideal" in, 128 Wealth, 40, 42, 125 Wind, 11 Work, 181 Workingmen, 139 World, closed and open conceptions, 54, 60-61; modern conception as material for change, 114; nomenal and phenomenal, 23