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PROPERTY OP THE

'nmsit

^ '^ T E S SCIENTIA VERITAS

COMMUNITY

A SOdOLOOICAL STUDY

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limtted

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA • MADRAS
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NSW TORR • BOSTON • CHICAGO
DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. Ltd.

TORONTO

COMMUNITY

A SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY

BEING AN ATTEMPT TO SET OUT THE NATURE
AND FUNDAMENTAL LAWS OF SOCIAL LIFE

R. M. MACIVER, D.Phil.

ASaOdATB PKOFBSaOR OP rOUTICAL SCIKNCS IN THK UNIVBKSITV OP TORONTO

Jeter let bates abttrattet de la lociologie — tel ett le but
manifettc et dtji pretque tympathique aux foulet, d€}k
etcompt6 par leur optimiime impatient, vert lequel conver-
gent let effortt det etpritt riflichit de I'^poque.

De Roberty, Nowveau Programme dt Sociokgie.

Nout atttttont aujourd-hui k I'avinement de la tociologie,
qoi ett le commencement d'une ^e nouvelle dant la philoto-
phie mtmc,

Fouill^ Le AfoMvmeent Patitiviste.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON

1920

Fim Bdidon 1917.
Second BditioD 1990.

GLASGOW : rRIMTBD AT THB ONIVnSITV PRBtS
Vt ROftBITT IIACI.BHOSB AND CO. LTD.

4 5 sv-

^- /'^y

TO MY FATHEB

PREFACE

I HAVE entitled this work Community, because that term
expresses best the object which social science as such
endeavours to study. It is in community, the common
life, that the interests represented by the specific social
sciences are bound together, made integral, and thus
amenable to a more comprehensive science. The work
which follows seeks to be an introduction to this wider
science. The vast extension of social knowledge due to
research into the life of primitive and barbaric com-
munities, as well as to recent study of all the great forms
of civilised association, political, economic, educational,
ecclesiastical, and so forth, increases at once the difficulty
and the necessity of the synthetic science of sociology.
Community resembles a country recently discovered — or
rediscovered — and suddenly overrun by explorers. Its
moimtains are being measured, its lakes fathomed, its
plains surveyed, its fauna and flora investigated ; but
there is still scarcely any clear comprehensive chart of
the whole country, based on the stores of information
supplied by so many diligent explorers. Perhaps it is
too early yet to expect a satisfactory map of the country,
but only through successive attempts can that result be
at last attained.

Detail has therefore been ruthlessly abandoned for the
sake of comprehensiveness. It seemed to the author

that <^Ka Tif^^f. ftpflATif.in.1 fftRfnrftfl nf r>nmTY^^|nH.y ftfft ilift

most often misconstru ed. There is nothing about which
men's mmds are more confused than about the vaster

viii PREFACE

social questions, such as the relation of community to its
associations, of the great associations to one another, of
the State to all the rest — ^nay, such as the very meaning
of community, its essential nature and laws, its life,
growth, decay, and immortality. To understand the
essential social relations is to find the locus, at which
the objects of investigation show, in the degree of their
nearness and according to the power of our glasses, their
true outlines. Our glasses may not be powerful, our
vision may not be keen — ^but even so to determine this
focus should always be within our power.

In an early essay I remarked that there was no definite
science of society beyond that contained in such specific
studies as economics and politics. That view I now
believe to be wholly mistaken, and I hope that this present
volume adds one to the many disproofs of it revealed by
the recent progress of the subject. There was some
excuse for the contrary opinion, for many a vain and
specious formula has been set forward in the name of
sociology, many a hollow generalisation has been declared
an eternal social law, and too frequently the invention
of terms has taken the place of the discovery of principles.
But the stars fulfilled their courses unmoved by the
imaginations of astrologers, and community works out
social law despite the errors of us who profess to study it.

nnipriTn^llltfy jp not only a real, it is ft yftftl anKJAftf. e\i

stud]

In these early days of social science we have b^gun by
arguing about community with so mething of that.jum^
plicity of convi c tion which t he early Greek jhiloff^p^ft^^
loaseaaed abon t tl^^ ypivft^T^ft Some have said that in
community all is struggle, others that all is adaptation,
some that selfishness rules, others that common interest
prevails, some that environment is supreme, others that
race is the master of environment, some that economic
interest is the primary determinant, and others that the
law of population determines economic law. Finally,

PREFACE ix

some have thought to resolve " the mystery in the soul
of State " by naming oommunity a supermechanism or a
superorganism, while others disoover it to be in reality and
no metaphor a supersoul. By no such apparent simplifi-
cation shall we attain the true synthesis of community.

The author is firmly convinced that pnfiial fifjiencs will
never advance except by freeing its elf from rmhjfiftrii^n
Co the inethods and formulae oi
logical science^ * As it has a subject-matter of its own, so
it has a method of its own. Social relations can nevei L
be^adequately stated in quantitative t erms orundOTstooii
as ex^Ssions oi quantit at ive laws. Certain writers have
declared that unless we can formulate the laws of society
with the same exactitude with which we formulate the
laws of physics, our subject is no science. It is unprofit-
able to quarrel over names. If men care to reserve the
title of science to those subjects which admit of quantita-
tive statement, they may be permitted the reservation.
But many kinds of knowledge, and among them those most
worth knowing, will then remain outside the sciences.

The greater portion of the work is concerned with what
seem to the author to be tjb^SLfundamental law social
dejeLopmeot. A necessary result of this method is that
many questions of moment are left undiscussed. I had
originally intended to add a book dealing with those
problems where no clear law is yet, to the author at
least, discernible. To such a sphere would belong, to
take one of many instances, certain questions connected
with the 8^:J^fe of our times. But I have found that
the consideration of such questions would have extended
the work beyond reasonable limits, and have reserved it
for a possible further work.

Since this work was written the one great catastrophe
which overshadowed community in our times has fallen.
What the restoration will be no man yet knows, but so
great a social cataclysm assuredly marks the ending of
an epoch. In the light of this event I would recall nothing

X PREFACE

of what I have written conoeming the place of war in the
world of civilisation. Militarism has been the enemy of
modem social development, and on the otiier hand all
social development makes militarism more evil. For it
makes greater and broader the social structnres which
war pnlls down, and it makes deeper and more universal
the sense of community which war confounds. If we
cannot overcome militarism, in all we do to build a
greater civilisation we are preparing greater offmngs to
the powers of destruction. Were the great nations of
Europe not interdependent, they would not at last have
been brought all together — ^in war ! The terrible irony
of history now points the lesson.

A small portion of this work has already appeared in
the form of articles contributed to The Sodalogical BevieWj
The Philosophical Beview, The Political Quarterly^ and
The IntertuUioruU Journal of Ethics. I am indebted
to The Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland
for aid given me, in the form of a Research Grant, towards
the study of the literature, especially foreign periodical
literature, devoted to the subjects discussed in Book III.
My obligations to many authors will be apparent from
the text — ^it may also be that I owe most to those authors
to whom I refer only by way of criticism. I am under a
very special obligation to Mr. James Turner, Assistant
to the Professor of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen Uni-
versity, who very kindly read through both typescript
and proof, and has aided me greatly by his careful and
critical supervision ; and to my wife, who has, besides
the invaluable aid of encouragement, rendered much
service in the preparation of the work for the press.

R. M. M.

KlKO*B CkllXBOK,

Abebdben, Sepi.t 1914.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

This edition has been revised throughout. Certain
additions have been made, and a few omissions. I have
omitted the discussion of the question of " acquired charac-
ters/' as the trend of biological science has led the
debate beyond the crude distinction I criticised. There
does not in fact seem to be any real disagreement on the
principle that the environmental stress to which one
generation is subject always, somehow or other, has
consequences, of some kind or another, for the generations
which succeed. I have also omitted the Appendix dealing
with the anti-social character of the institution of war,
this being, I hope, sufficiently obvious to-day. I am
indebted to various reviewers for suggestions and criti-
cisms. On one point only would I take issue with certain
critics who have objected to the omission of topics
which are properly relevant to some special social science,
as, for example, that of the legal '' personality " of
associations. The idea of the work is to show that there
is a real science of society whose content is not covered
by these special sciences such as jurisprudence or political
science j a science of s()ciety as a unity, i.e. of community .
Many works on sociology simply gather under one cover
an array of topics belonging to psychology or ethics or
economics or politics, gathered with a special intention,
to show how these specific subject-matters bear on the
question of social welfare or social imity — ^but that is
not enough to establish a new science. Is sociology a real
science, or only a bimdle of snippets hung on a thread of

xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

good intentionB 1 I hold it to be a real science, still in its
infancy. And this book is to be judged by its degree of
success in suggesting the subject-matter of that science.
If its contents can be divided up so that this part can be
assigned to psychology, this to economics, this to politics,
and so on, then the quest has been in vain.

Toronto, July^ 1919.

CONTENTS

BOOK I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE filEANING OF SOCIAL FACT AND

SOCIAL LAW

PAQB

1. SocuJ fact 3

2. Social law 10

</,

CHAPTER II
COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION

r. The genera] vdation of community and association - 22

2. Oommonity and State 28

3. State and otber assooiationB 39

CHAPTER III
THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY AMONG THE SCIENCES

1. Sociology and the special social sciences 48

2. Sociology and ethics ^

a. Sociology and psychology ^1

xiv CONTENTS

BOOK II
AN ANALYSIS OF COMMUNITY

CHAPTER I
1/ PAI^E PiERSPBCnVES OF COMMUNITY

1. Introdiiotoiy 69

2. Commanily BB organism 72

3. Gommanity as a mmd or soul 76

i. Commiiiiity as " gieater than the som of its parts '* • - 88

6. The practical results 92

CHAPTER n
^THE ELEMENTS OF OOMMUNITY

1. The objects and subjects of community - - - . 98

2. Forms of relation between wills or interests .... 102

3. The kinds of common interests 108

4. The oppositions and harmonies of common interests 116

CHAPTER m
1/ THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY

1. Associations as organs of community 128

2. Covenant and community 131

3. The uniTersal principles of associational structure 138

4. Some fallacies exposed 144

CHAPTER IV
INSTITUTIONS

1. The meaning of institutions r 163

2. Institutions as instruments of organisation and of control • 167

3. Institutions and life 162

CONTENTS

BOOK III

THE PRIMARY LAWS OF THE DEVELOPMENT

OF COMMUNITY

CHAPTER I

THE MEANING OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT

1. In what 861186 laws 169

2. The kinds of aooial development and the criteria of oommonal

development 178

Sw The meaning of stagnation, leaotion, retrogieBsion, and

decadence 188

4. The leaHty of communal development 197

CHAPTER n
THE SUPPOSED LAW OF COMMUNAL MORTALITY

1. A false analogy between individual and communal life - - 205

2. An appeal to history 210

3. The conditions of communal non-mortality - - -216

CHAPTER m

THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OF COMMUNAL

DEVELOPMENT

1. Some definitions 219

2. General ezplanation of the law 224

3. The differentiation of community as relative to the growth

of peiBonaHty 231

4. General conclusion 244

CHAPTER IV

PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE FOREGOING LAW:
(1) THE CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY

1. Statemsnt of the problems 249

2. The co-ordination of associaticnis 250

xvi CONTENTS

3. The oo-ordiiiatiaQ of looalitieB 268

4. The oo-ordiiiBtion of daaaes 209

5. The oo-oidinatiQn of nations or peoples .... 273

6. General survey of the problem of oo-ordination 291

CHAPTER V

PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE FOREGOING LAW:
(2) THE UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE

1. The problem 300

2. The basis of solution 312

3. Applications of the principle : (1) to a oonfliot arising from

aasociationai daims 320

4. Applications of the principle : (2) to a conflict of commmial

claims 327

CHAPTER VI

SECOND LAW OF GOMlfUNAL DEVELOPMENT •
THE CORRELATION OF SOCIALISATION AND COMlfUNAL

ECONOMY

1. General statement 334

2. The economic significance of the formation of secondary

common interests 340

3. The economic significance (rf the development of secondary

common interests 366

4. The economic significance of the development of primary

common interests • - 370

CHAPTER Vn

THIRD LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT : THE
CORRELATION OF SOCIALISATION AND THE CONTROL

OF ENVIRONMENT

iLrSommnnity and environment 373

2. The two ultimate factors of all development .... 376

3. The transformation within community of the principle of

adaptation to physiciBJ environment .... 385

4. The transformation within community of the principle of the

struggle for life 391

5. The transformation within community of the principle of

natural selection ..-..••• 398

6. Conclusion 414

CONTENTS xvii

/chapter vin

tkOM

STNTECBSIS 417

APPENDICES

Appendiz A. i/A oritioiBm of the neo-HegeUan identifioation of

^ " society " and " State *' - - - - 421

B. The com]atio& of life and environment in the

sphere of heredity •-.... 490

434

BOOK I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE MEANING OF SOCIAL FACT AND SOCIAL LAW

§1. Sodalfact

What is a social fact ? Many volumes have heen
written oi^ sociology which have not answeied, or have
answered wrongly, this preliminary question. It is true
that in the study of defined and specific social problems
we need not pause to discuss the meaning and delimita-
tion of social fact as such. But a general science of
society is vain if we have no answer, or a mistaken one,
to this question. The very first proof that a science of
society is possible must be a satisfactory working definition
of social fact.

Sociology is often said to be concerned with social as
distinct from individual phenomena. '' What a man
does without having learned from the example of another
person, walking, crying, eating, mating, is purely vital ;
whOe walking with a certain step, singing a song,
preferring at table one's national dishes and partaking
of them in a well-bred way, courting a woman after
the manner of the time, are social." This passage from
M. Tarde is quoted with much approbation by Professor
Boss, who adds :

** If the social is not the vital, neither is it the individual
psychic. So we might add as supplement to Tarde:
* When one fears the dark, delights in colour, craves a
mate, or draws an inference from his own observations,

(X)10CDNITY

that 18 mocel^ psyohio. Bat wben one dreads heroBy,
delig^ta in "good foim," daveB the femixiiiie type of
his tune, or embnoes the dogmas of his people, that is
aooial. '* Social" then are all phenompna which we
cannot explain without bringing in the action of one
human being on another/ " ^

This is all very unsatisfactory and very confusing.
Nothing a man can be or do is entirely uninfluenced
by "' others/' and all we can rightly distingnish is the
immediacy or remoteness of certain influences. Sodety
for every man is origin, atmosphore, environment, life.
How can he think or be at all out of relation to society ?
Alike the expression of his organic needs and the expres-
sion of his inmost individuality take social forms. Why
then should it be a social phenomenon to dread heresy
and presumably not a social phenomenon to embrace
heresy ? Even were the heresy "" anti-sodal," it would
still not be non-social, since heresy no less than orthodoxy
is a way of responding to social environment. Or again,
if a man fears the dark, why should that be " merely
psychic " (whatever that may be) ? Has he not inherited
the instinct from ancestors who knew good cause for
fearing the tenor by night ? Strangest of aU is the
statement that sexual attraction is not a social pheno-
menon. If a man craves a mate, is a craving which is
itself the very foundation and beginning of all society,
and owes its strength in each to an endless process of
social selection, the less social because it is " vital " ?

The trouble is that in the world about us there are no
facts which we can sin^e out as social facts and thereby
distinguish from others which are " purely " individual,
or " vital," or " psychic." Whatever a living being thinks
or does has both an individual and a social aspect. An
individual aspect, for it can never be adequately explained

^ BoflB, Foundations of SooMogy, pp. 6-7.

SOCIAL FACT AND SOCIAL LAW.

siinply as a social product ; every man's thoughts and
opinions, his loves and hates and fears, his activities of
every kind, are social relationships shot through, made
concrete and actual, by his character of individuality.
A social aspect, for actions and thoughts are all
resuliafUSy the responses of complex beings, having social
origins and socialised characters, to conditions of
environment themselves somehow and in some degree
socially determined. Every man's character is person-
ality woven of individuality and sociality ; every man's
environment consists of his fellow-men and the world of
his fellow-men. His actions and thoughts must therefore,
every one of them, be in some kind and degree social
phenomena. But we are not on that account compelled,
as sociologists, to make our study comprehensive of all
human thinking and doing. No one would argue that
the moralist, because he finds that the moral factor enters
into all human activities, must therefore study equally all
human activities. As he abstracts, so must we. As he
looks for the forms and laws of morality, so must we
look for the forms and laws of that yet more extensive
element, sociality.

Whenever living beings enter into, or maintain iciUed
relaiiona with one another y there society exists. All such
willed relations are the primary social facts, and their
consequences are the secondary social facts. As these
relations and their consequences reach to the world's end
and through all time, determining every possible activity
of man and all other living things, it is clear that society
Ib an element or function of life itself, present wherever
life is found, but present in a grecUer or less degree. As
we shall see later, the greater the likeness to one another
of the related, beings, the intenser is the social life : a man
may find society in the company of a dog or of a savage,
but his social relations become most complete when he

6 COMMUNITY bk. i.

finds a world of social beings most akin to himself ; and
we shall see also that the higher the life of each individual
being the more highly is it socialised.

It is, perhaps, better here to speak of witted than of
purposive or mental relations. I believe that all willing
in man and beast is in its degree purposive, and that all
life is conscious life in its degree. But the term " pur-
posive " tends to be limited to actions motived by clear
and definite purposes, and much of our activity is obscure
and seeming-blind. Much of it is too shallow to merit
the term '' purposive " as it is usually employed, much
of it, perhaps, too deep. For this reason the term
" willed " seems preferable. It is wise for us to
avoid the interminable discussion as to the relation of
" instinctive " and " rational " activity. However we
distinguish them, if we distinguish them at all, both
are activities of will as above defined. If in the study
of organism we pursue the question of instinct far enough,
we reach the obscure boundaries where mechanical reaction
seems to verge on living response. But in the study of
society there arises no such problem. Every social fact
consists in or arises out of a relation of wills to one another.

Again, it is better to say '' willed " than merely '' con-
scious " (or '' mental ") relations. If living beings are
merely conscious of each other — supposing such mere
consciousness possible — ^they have entered into mental
but not social relations. A relation becomes social in so
far as it involves interdependent activity on the part of the
beings related. Now all activities of a living being may
be called activities of will, whether the living being be a
termite or a man or a god. For willing is simply the
self-determined acting of a living thing, its being itself
in action. Social willing is, therefore, the correspondent
'' being itself " of each of a plurality of beings in relation
to one another in the endless and continuous situations

CH. I.

SOCIAL FACT AND SOCIAL LAW

determined for each by the presence and activity of the
others. Life is pervaded by society.

We may now summarily distinguish the main- types of
social fact.

These fall into two great classes, (a) social relations
proper — ^the actual interrelations of wills — and (6) social
institutions, which are not actual interrelations of wills,
but the determinate (and therefore willed) forms in accord-
ance with which men enter into social relations. The
distinction is very important, and the confusion of the
two classes has led to curious errors. A law or a code
of laws, a form of government, a class or caste system —
these are not actual relations of men, but the conditions
and consequences of relationship. Social relations are
activities, the threads of life ; social institutions form the
loom on which the threads are woven into a cloth.

The chief distinctions to be found among social relations
are as follows, and it is. obvious that the kinds of social
institution will correspond :

(1) There are infinite kinds and degrees of likeness
between individuals. Strictly speaking, sociology is con-
cerned with the likenesses of individuals only so far as they
involve or arise out of the relations between individuals,
groups in which the likes are brought together or whence
the likes result. These groups, as we shall see, fall into
two great classes which we may call the communal and
the associational, according as the like qualities deter-
mine a whole common life or merely a form of association
within that life : a city, say, or nation on the one hand,
a church, say, or trade-union on the other.

(2) There are infinite kinds and degrees of difference
between individuals. These, again, are objects of socio-
logical study only in so far as they create social relations.
These relations are of two types, relations of hostility,
the conflict of differences, and relations of reciprocity,

COMMUNITY

BK. I.

the harmony of differenoes. Complementary difiEerences
are the source of vastly important social unities, just as
antagonistic differences are the source of fundamental
social oppositions. Among social relations of interdepend-
ence we may name those of husband and wife, parents
and children, teacher and pupil, governor and governed,
employer and employ^, buyer and seller. These are but
some of the more obvious forms. Subtler forms of inter-
dependence emerge continually with the development in
every social sphere of the principles of the " division of
labour," and with the general differentiation involved in
the whole process of civilisation.

(3) There are definite ways in which the likenesses and
differences of men combine to produce social relations.
We may say that certain social relations are on the whole
due to the essential likenesses of men, others to the
essential differences of men, but along these lines we will
never advance to an adequate knowledge of society. All
social relations are in some degree resultants of the
likenesses and differences of men. Social life reveals an
endless process of adjustment, and men's purposes and
interests combine and cross in the most intricate ways.
This is seen more clearly if we turn from the actual
relations to the resultant institutions. None of the com-
plexer social structures can be credited to the simple
operation of either like-mindedness or felt interdependence.
Take, e.g. the form of the State at any given period. This
is an age-long construction resulting from the conver-
gences and conflicts of a thousand interests and purposes
in the members of a community. It is an easy thing to
describe the resultant, the system, the form ; it is an
infinitely difficult thing to reveal its genesis and growth
out of the complex social relations of the members of the
successive generations, in their varying degrees of station,
character, opportunity, and power.

cH, I. SOCIAL PACT AND SOCIAL LAW 9

A word may be added in conclusion as to the meaning
and value of social statistics. In the strictest sense these
statistics — ^totals, averages, ratios, graphs, and functions
— are not social facts, they are merely symbolic of social
facts, and must be interpreted in order to yield them.
It is the frequent dijficulty and uncertainty of interpre-
tation which leads to the common opinion that '^ statistics
win prove anything." We may illustrate this need of
interpretation by taking the simple case of averages. In
the first place it is only measurable things which can be
averaged, such as heights, weights, head-ratios, while the
essential social facts, i.e. social relations and social insti-
tutions, are not directly measurable. Cephalic indices and
all the other '' biometric " facts are in strictness no more
social facts than meteorological figures are social facts.
The biometric facts are intimately related to social facts,
determining and being determined by them, but meteoro-
logical facts are also intimately related to social facts.
Alike they are data to be interpreted by the sociologist,
but the former remain biological, the latter meteor-
(dogical. The necessity for this distinction will appear
in the next section. Again, the average always gives a
delusive appearance of exactitude. Suppose we are told
that the average height of three people is 6 feet 10 inches.
This does not tell us anything about the height of any
one of these people, nor yet about their relative heights.
They may be 5 feet 11 inches, 5 feet 10 inches, and 5 feet

9 inches respectively, or they may be 6 feet 4 inches,
6 feet, and 5 feet 2 inches respectively, or any other series
whatever which added and divided by three gives 5 feet

10 inches. Of course, the longer the series the greater
the probability that the mean or average value will reveal
a social fact about, say, the race or stock to which the
individuals belong, or about the effect of certain socially-
created conditions on the organisms of these exposed to

10 COMMUNITY Br. 1.

them. But this fact is not expressed by the average,
it is an inference or interpretation, and so with all other
kinds of statistics.

It must not be concluded that statistics are, therefore,
of little sociological value. On the contrary, they are
most significant. They are not only of immense im-
portance for the solution of questions of practical adminis-
tration, they can, rigkUy interpreted, give us glimpses not
otherwise obtainable into the most secret and spiritual
mysteries of society. We have greatly to lament the fact
that only for very recent times are accurate social statistics
available. The knowledge of the increctse or decrease over
a given period of the birth-rate, marriage-rate, death-rate,
suicide-rate, illegitimacy-rate, to mention only what are
called '' vital statistics," would throw more light on that-
period than volumes of historical records. The dry bones
of figures become to the true sociologist a standing army
of living witnesses, revealing social processes hidden for
ever from his direct gaze.

§ 2. Social law.

We are now in a position to determine the meaning of
social law. There are, of course, laws of society as there
are laws of all animate and inanimate nature. Where
there are no laws, there is no reality, no world, and where
there is no knowledge of laws thero is no experience, no
understanding of the world. There is no chaos in the
world, for the forms of law interpenetrate everywhere ;
and the chaos remaining within our experience takes on
order in the degree of the growth of knowledge. As we
advance in knowledge we see that all things are related
to one another, that the world is all threaded with iden-
tities and reciprocities, that every particular conforms in
every aspect to a principle holding for other particulars
as well. Such principles are laws. But there are different

CW, X.

SOCIAL FACT AND SOCIAL LAW

of law for different kinds of reality, and we must
not seek in social science — as some do — ^f or the kind of
law we can discover in mathematical or physical or
chemical science. If we so seek, we shall seek in vain —
we shall only rediscover the laws of mathematics, physics,
or chemistry, and be as far as ever from attaining the
knowledge of society.

The student of society must understand very clearly
the nature and the kinds of law, for social law is most

Law.

1- •

hvi]

(1)

Material, or of the inanimate,
(a) Physical, pure and

applied.
(6) Chemical.

Vital, or of the living.

I
Organic, or of

unconscious life.

Fisychical, or of
conscious life.

I III

Environmental, or of Intrinsic. Environmental, Intrinsic.
(2) the phyaioo-chemical or of the

factors of organism. organic factors of

consciousness.

(3)

I
Primary, or directly willed. Secondary, or

« indirectly willed.

(4)

I
Free

(in its completeBt form

the moral law).

Sanotioned.

(5)

I I !

Associational. Customarv, Religious,

i.e. imposea by i.e. imposed
the community, in the name

of deity.

Non-political,

i.e. imposed by associations

other than the state.

Political,

i.e. imposed by

the state.

distinctive and most complex, imique in itself yet con-
ditioned by every kind of law within the cosmos. In

12 COMMUNITY bk. i.

our sooial life all the laws of all reality are together
operative, yet its proper law is set sharply over against
all other laws. It is therefore most desirable that we
should thoroughly understand the various meanings of
the term laWy and to that end I have drawn up the fore-
going claedfication.

A short commentary will make the classification clear.

(1) Every kind of reality has its proper law, and the
great division of laws corresponds to the great division
of reality. There is one law for the unity of inanimate
nature, and one law for the unity of living nature. These,
for want of better names, I have called respectively
''material" and "vital" law. If we find that the
division of nature into animate and inanimate is one
of kind and not of degree, then there is a distinction of
kind between their respective laws. The law of the
inanimate world is, so far as we know it, the law of invari-
able concomitance or sequence, the fixed order of material
nature. It is in itself, and is so revealed where it exists
pure, i.e. in the world of the inanimate, inviolable, eternal,
and exceptionless. The law of the Uving is on the other
side revealed in the will of the living, unstable, relative,
riddled with cbangefulness and imperfection. The
difference is therefore profound, and especially so between
material law and that form of vital law which we have
called " sanctioned " law. The one states It %8 do, an
eternal fact, the other commands Thou ahaU or exhorts
TJum ahouJdst. It would seem as if here the difference
were too great to admit the comprehension of both under
one genus. Yet it is not without reason that both types
are called by one name. The " sanctioned " law will be
found to fall under the great form of vital law, and both
forms, material and vital, are in their kind and degree
principles of uniformity, revealing the universality of
many particulars. Not only so, but the law of the

«. 1. SOCIAL FACT AND SOCIAL LAW 13

animate leaflEbrms within its own sphere the law of the
inanimate. The one reveals the material worid, and the
other reveals the world of life.

We may contrast the distinction between material and
vital law with the distinction between the two great
fonns of vital law. If all life is one wherever it is found,
if sdf-conscionsness is but more consciousness, and con-
sciousness but more life, if instinct is but a limited
intelligence, and the purposes of men but completer
manifestations of the impulse that moves in plant and
animal — then no sharp division can be drawn between
(«ganic and psychical law. We may call organic the law
of living creatines in so far as they are not, or seem not
to be, guided by conscious will. It is the principle of
life where life is present in less degree or less developed
form. If this be true, then even the lowest life may
have its psychical character, though hard to trace, even
as the highest life retains an organic character. Thus
while we draw a distinction of kind between material
and vital law, we draw a distinction only of degree between
organic and psychical law. We understand life best if
we assume that the will and purpose which is the con-
scious master of its highest activity is but more of that
win and purpose which works darkly even in the turning
of a plant towards the light.

(2) Starting from this principle, we are enabled to
arrange aU kinds of law in a graduated series. For in
what we understand as organic life there is always opera-
tive physical and chemical law, not in their simplicity,
but under the partial and temporary dominance of life.
It is only the dead organism — ^what was, but no longer
is an organism — that is entirely explicable in physico-
chemical terms, and it is so explicable because it is dead.
The dead body, ceasing to be an organism, becomes a
physico-chemical fact. The living organism is something

14 COMMUNITY bk. i

more — ^it has, but is not, its physico-ohemioal conditions.
Vital law neither supersedes nor remains in isolation from
material law, but is in a sense built on the foundation of
that law. Further, as life becomes more complex and
fuller, its higher manifestations seem in a similar though
not an identical manner to be built on the living structure
of its lower being. Within either part of vital nature,
the organic or the psychical, we find a twofold enquiry,
one concerned with the way in which organic or psychical
life is determined by the laws of its environment, the other
concerned with the intrinsic nature of organic or psychical
life. Thus within the organic sphere we can distinguish
the intrinsic sciences of botany, zoology, physiology, and
biology, from the science of organic chemistry, and from
those scarcely-formulated sciences which study the effects
on organism of climate, habitat, and other physical con-
ditions. (It must not, of course, be supposed that the
former sciences are studied in isolation from the latter —
in the nature of the case they cannot be — the point is that
we cannot explain organism in terms of these conditions
or, in other words, we cannot ''explain it away.")
Similarly, in the psychical sphere the sciences which are
intrinsic for organism become now extrinsic or environ-
mental, and in particular we distinguish the science of
psycho-physics from the science of psychology proper.
There are great dijficulties involved in the interpretation
of the fact that every kind of vital law is thus dependent
on or conditioned by laws of another kind, but the general
relationship seems clear.

To express this truth in another way. Laws may be
arranged in inverse order of dependence and of quanti-
tative exactness. Just as the law expressing the actual
behaviour of a stone in motion (applied physics) is more
complex than the law expressing the relation to one
another of the sides of a triangle (abstract physics), so

cH. I. SOCIAL PACT AND SOCIAL LAW 16

the law expreegiiig the mode of growth of a plant (organic
law) is more complex than that expressing the movement
of a stone, and the law expressing the growth of a mind
(psychical law) is more complex than the law of vegetative
growth. The stone is a mere physical object, the plant
is a physical object and something more (though not by
way of mere addition), the man is an organic object and
something more (though, again, not by way of mere
addition). The social being has at once a phjmical nature
subject like the. stone to physical law, an organic nature
subject like the plant to organic law, a psychical nature
subject to psychical law and, therefore, to the law of
psychic interrelations, i.e. to social law. The social being
18 thus in a sense the focus of all the laws of the universe,
and thus, from the point of view of our knowledge, laws
take on more and more, as we pass from pure physics to
aooiology, the aspect of tendendea. Not that causal
relations are less binding in the latter sphere, but that
they are more complex. A science like geometry, able to
rule out all non-geometrical facts in its study at the bare
spatial framework of the world, can give quite absolute
results. But a social science can never rule out any
&cts. Whatever is not the intrinsic nature of social
law is its extrinsic condition, whatever is not end for
it is means. Even were the law of the living of the
same rigid character as the law of the inanimate, it
would still be far more hard to attain, for it is far more
complex.

Even were the law of the living of the same rigid
character — but the most significant fact for the under-
standing oi social law is that in no case is the law of the
living one in kind with material law. Even in that
region of life which seems as blind as the working of
material nature, we shall search in vain for the simplicity
of material law. " Iron sharpeneth iron, so a man

16 COMMUNITY m.i.

sharpeneth the oountenanoe of his friend " — ^here are two
laws set side by side, one physical, one social. For the
moment they seem parallel. Iron does not will to
sharpen iron, and the friend's countenance is sharpened
whether he will or no. Yet the measurable effect of iron
on iron is worlds apart from the unpredictable effects of
the meeting of wills. There are no " iron laws " of
society.

This is more obvious in respect of imperative laws of
whatever kind. If we are able to obey laws, it is because
we are able to disobey them. " In the sweat of thy
face shalt thou eat bread" — ^there are many to whom
this law literally appUes, 3^t it has not for them the
necessity of material law, or even of organic law. There
is no eternal and inviolable sequence here. " One must
live," said the prisoner guilty of stealing bread. " I do
not see the necessity," the judge replied. They spoke of
different kinds of necessity, of different kinds of law.
The imperative law states not what will be, but what
must. The material law states the " outer necessity,"
the imperative law states the obligation based thereon,
the " inner necessity."

(3) We are now able to explain the distinction between
the directly and the indirectly willed laws of conscious
life. It is a distinction generally overiooked and yet is
one of great significance. There are certain sciences many
of whose laws seem to Ue midway between the inner and
the outer necessity — ^we might instance sciences so far
apart as philology and economics. Certain laws of these
sciences gain their seeming-iron character because they
are in one way or another not direct and immediate forms
of willing. They are rather resultants due to the partial
convergences or oppositions of men's wills. Take for
illustration the economic law — the specific conditions
under which alone it holds good need not^concem

CI. SOCIAL FACT AND SOCIAL LAW 17

that as the demand increases the price rises. Men do

not directly will this law as they will, for instance, a

political law, yet it is the immediate consequence of their

willing, and as such it is subject to the fluctuations and

uncertainties of will. It is due to the interrelation of

wills as certainly as, though in a different way from,

political enactment. The increased demand for an object

is the willing of those who lack it to possess it or the

willing of those who possess some to possess more of it.

But these will also to buy as cheaply as they can, and

over against that will there stands the will of others to

sell as dearly as they can. Now the fact that, other

things being equal, men always buy as cheaply and sell

as dearly as they can, may be regarded as primary or

directly-willed law, but the fact we are here considering,

the fact of increased price answering to increased demand,

cannot be brought under the same category. It is rather

a resultant, itself unwilled, of men's willing, and as such

it must be regarded as more and not less dependent on

will than the law which expresses the direct fiat of one

or many minds.

(4) Law may be called free or sanctioned according as

it expresses autonomous activity or formulates imperative

enactment. Of the former type the moral law is the

completest instance, as of the latter the law of the state.

The former, properly understood, is determined simply

by the sense of right or inner obligation, the '^ inner

necessity " ; the latter is imposed under a sanction other

than the obligation to performance resident in the sense

each has of the value to be achieved by performance.

For every '' inner necessity " of each is variable and

thwarted by other necessities, inner and outer, of his

own and of others ; each is bound up with others so that

he cannot without their aid fulfil his ends. For such

fulfilment l^;al and other systems, the institutions of

18 COMMUNITY bk. i.

society, are a prior necessity. These men must first
establish, must first will, before they can attain the
nearer objects of their wills. And each society so organ-
ised must will the coercion of those errant members who
fail to respect, for themselves and others, the values in
the name of which imperative laws exist. For those
who remain unbound by these values other necessities
must be found, in the last resort the inexorable outer
necessity.

Men see, dimly or clearly, the necessity of imposing a
central order on their inter-relations, so that the ends
they severally pursue may be so far as possible harmonised
and thus made more attainable, and so that the common
ends springing from their common natures may be more
effectually attained in organised activity. Thus they
impose as organised societies, in dim or clear knowledge,
a new kind of law, determinate and sanctioned, expressive
of their general desire that the law of will should be as
binding as the law of the outer world.

// you desire to be healthy, you must fulfil these and
these conditions — so runs the law of health. // you
desire to be wealthy and happy, you must fulfil these
and these conditions — so runs the law of wealth and of
happiness. // you desire to pursue in peace and order
with all men your private and common ends, and if you
desire to avoid the penalties annexed to disobedience,
you must fulfil these and these conditions — so runs the
law of the State. If you desire — ^the appeal is to the
will, and behind all the if you desires of all socially-imposed
imperatives there lies the impelling and selective and
co-ordinating you ought of the moral imperative.

All vital law is in some way the law of the wiU of living
beings, but the greater the life the more autonomous the
law. The blinder life of man is, indeed, one with his
conscious life, but as his will emerges more and more into

CH. I. SOCIAL FACT AND SOCIAL LAW 19

the light of purpose he becomes more and more the master
of material law. In that higher activity physical and
organic law remain as binding as before, but they are now
become ministers to conscious purpose. This purpose —
implying at once power and choice — ^is the liberating
factor which turns nature's necessity into man's oppor-
tunity, and the whole evolution of man is a process of
liberation in which his very awareness of his subjection
becomes the condition of his mastery. The teleological
law based on, limited by, and yet controlling physical
and organic law, is the social law proper. It is as men
purpose in relation to one another that they build the
great structures of community. Purposive activity is a
cause of causes, yet neither mingles with nor abrogates
other causes.^ It exists in various degrees in the
various stages of life, and where it exists all other laws
are in that degree subordinate. This is the mystery of
teleological law that, though it always remains pure,
though no effect can ever be regarded as the restiUant of
teleological and other causes, yet this supervening vital
law has power within the sphere of material law.

The law of purpose runs through all life, it is the reve-
lation of life. To know what a being seeks is to know
what that being is. It is the ultimate explanation. As
our oiganic desires reveal our organic natm^, so our
spiritual desires reveal our spiritual nature. The simple
phrases in which we sum up our purposes are themselves

^ To take a simple illustration, if I seek to drive a ball to a certain
point and the baU is deflected by a cross-wind, the path of the ball
must not be regarded as a resultant of my purpose and the wind.
On the physical side it is the resultant of various forces acting on
the ball, and to add the purpose to these physical forces is needless
and indeed meaningless. If you ask again not how the ball got there
but why, the answer is — ^because I willed it to go somewhere else. If
I had allowed for the wind and succeeded in attaining the desired spot,
the ph3rsical series of caiises would stiU as always be complete. The
How is answered similarly as before, the Why is answered thus—
beesose I willed to send it there.

20 COMMUNITY bk. i.

no explanation of them. A man spends his days pursuing
some end of service or of knowledge. It is, we say, love
or patriotism or ambition, but are we saying anything
more than that the living being lives in and by seeking
these ends, and can we say anything more ? The fulfil-
ment is not in the attainment but in the pursuit, not in
the short hour of success, which if it comes is usually
unvalued, but in the long hours of striving. Our most
rational purposes stiQ so much resemble the blinder forces
of organic nature that it is perhaps wiser not to sum up
clear intentions in terms of further motives but dimly
understood. We still know better what we seek than
why. The difference of instinct and intelligence is amply
the degree in which we know the larger behind the im-
mediate purpose, the degree in which we know ourselves
and the laws of our being. It is the nature of life that
as it increases it should increase in knowledge of itself.
The teleological law becomes clearer as life develops, and
as it becomes clearer it becomes freer, until we can con-
ceive the highest life as one of perfect self-knowledge
and of perfect autonomy.

Such is the dominance of teleological law that in the
process of society every physical and organic factor of
human life becomes transformed into a value beyond the
mere structure and function. Consanguinity comes to
mean pride of race or family, creating social stations and
traditions. The sex instinct weaves the irradiations of
romance which colour our conceptions, not merely of the
opposite sex, but of our own as well, nay more, of the
whole world of nature, and even of God. Marriage is
raised beyond its organic function to mean all the intimate
values and satisfactions of the home life. Physical
contiguity comes to mean more than a physical fact,
it is interpreted into the value we attach to our life within
a town or district or country. Every physical and

cH. 1. SOCIAL FAC3T AND SOCIAL LAW 21

aigaxiio factor becomes enhanced into a value. In this
way we are aU idealists. All society depends on the
recognition of facts as values. The activity of every
association is the pnrstdt of the ends it is realised as
serving.

It will now be evident that the discovery and formu-
lation of the laws we have called free — as well as of those
secondary laws which reveal the inmiediate interrelations
of men's purposes — is the dijficult and important task of
social science. The laws of associations lie ready-made
before us, but they are merely materials for our study,
not the laws we seek, being themselves forms of organi-
sation based on individually determined purposes. They
may be quite arbitrary, revealing no true social purpose
but only the interest of the few or the folly of the many,
and when they are not arbitrary they are but the truer
reflection of the deeper-working self-determined purposes
of men. They are empty forms unless the wills of men
give them validity, static expressions of a dynamic will
which changes, creates, and destroys them. The ultimate
social laws are recorded in no statute-book, but must be
diligently sought in the history and experience of our
actual life. The ultimate social laws are those which
reveal the interrelations of the purposes of living beings,
their conditions and their consequences. To those who
understand the true relation of " individual " and
" social," it will appear no paradox that the fundamental
social laws are thus individually determined.

(5) The significance of the subdivisions of sanctioned
law will be made clear in the succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER II

COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION

§ 1. The general relation of eommnnity and association.

One of the greatest of the difficulties which at the present
day beset the social analyst is the confused nature of his
vocabulary. Unlike the students of most other sciences
he must accept the terms of everyday life. These terms
are lacking in aU precision, and if the sociologist is to avoid
disaster he must not hesitate to refine them to his own
purposes. This is the case with the essential tenns of our
sub]ect;^atter, the terms society, community, association,
and State. The looseness with which these terms are
often used even by professed authorities is remarkable,
and the results most unhappy. That must be our excuse
if at the outset we insist, in spite of popular usage, on
limiting each of these terms to a single and definite
meaning.

Society, the most general term of all, I intend to use
in a universal or generic sense to include every willed
relationship of man to man. If, then, we distinguish
community, association, and State from society, it must
be by delimiting the former as special kinds or aspects of
social fact. The essential distinction here involved, one
of the utmost importance, is that between community and
association.

By a community I mean any area of common life,
village, or town, or district, or country, or even wider
area. To deserve the name community, the area must

BK. I. cH. 11. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 23

be somehow distinguiBhed from further areas, the common
life may have some characteristic of its own such that the
frontiers of the area have some meaning. All the laws
of the cosmos, physical, biological, and psychological,
conspire to bring it about that beings who^live together
shall resemble one another. Wherever men live together
they develop in some kind and degree distinctive common
characteristics — manners, traditions, modes of speech, and
so on. These are the signs and consequences of an ^
effective common life. It will be seen that a community
may be part of a wider community, and that all com-
munity is a question of degree. For instance, the English
residents in a foreign capital often live in an intimate
community of their own, as weU as in the wider community
of the capital. It is a question of the degree and intensity -^
of the common life. The one extreme is the whole world
of men, one great but vague and incoherent common life.
The other extreme is the small intense community within
which the life of an ordinary individual is lived, a tiny
nucleus of common life with a sometimes larger, some-
times smaller, and always varying fringe. Yet even the
poorest in social relationships is a member in a chain of
social contacts which stretches to the world's end. In
the infinite series of social relationships which thus arise,
we distinguish the nuclei of intenser common life, cities
and nations and tribes, and think of them as jtar excellence
communities.

An association is an organisation of social beings (or a
body of social beings as organised) for the pursuit of some "
common interest or interests. It is a determinate social
unity built upon common purpose. Every end which
men seek is more easily attained for all when all whom it
concerns unite to seek it, when all co-operate in seeking
it. Thus you may have an association corresponding to
every possible interest of social beings. Community

24 COMMUNITY bk. i.

bubbles into associations permanent and transient, and
no student of the actual social life of the present can help
being struck by the enormous number of associations of
every kind, political, economic, religious, educational,
scientific, artistic, literary, recreative, philanthropic,
professional, which to-day more than ever before enrich
communal life.

\ A community is a focus of social life, the common living
of social beings ; an association is an organisation of
social life, definitely established for the pursuit of one
or more common interests.^ An association is partial,
a community is integral. The members of one ckssooiation
may be members of many other and distinct associations.
Within a community there may exist not only numerous
aasociations but aJantagoniic aseociatioBS Men may
associate for the least significant or for the most significant
of purposes ; the association may mean very much or
very little to them, it may mean merely the excuse for a
monthly dinner-party, or it may be the guardian of their
dearest or highest interests — ^but community is something
wider and freer than even the greatest associations ; it
is the greater common life out of which associations rise,
into which associations bring order, but which associations
never completely fulfil. If we reflect, we perceive at once
that there is a vast difference between the living together
of men which makes a village or city or country
on the one hand, and the association of men in
a church or trade-union — or even, as we shall see, in
a State— on the other. Often state-areas do not even
coincide with the areas of effective community, as, for
instance, when a subject-people, incorporated in an alien
State, continues to lead its own manner of life. A dis-
tinction of name is essential.^

^ The need for a difltinction of name has been etressed by Profeeaor
Ferdinand TOnniee. But Dr. TOnnies employs the German equivalents

CH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 26

It may be well to show how infinitely associations vary
in degiee of permanenoe and significance, and the main
leason of these variations, before we consider the relation
to commnnity of the most permanent and most compre-
hensive of all — ^the State.

Men may mass together without becoming organised.
A mere aggregation is not an association. Take the case
of a crowd casually collected to watch a fire. The aggre-
gation serves no end, each individual of the crowd could
watch the fire quite as well — ^better in fact — ^if the others
went away. A common interest keeps them together,
but it does not bind them to one another, it need bring
no individual into social contact with any other. It is
a physical and not a social contiguity. No association
is dissolved when the fire bums ou1r-^r when the poUce-
man moves the crowd away. But suppose the crowd
had resolved to fight the fire and had organised them-
selves to that end. At once the aggregation would have
been transformed into an association, its individuals
would have fallen into social relations with one another,
and the order which is attendant on social purpose would
have permeated the whole. As soon as men see that any
interest they share is furthered by. organisation, they are
preparing an association. So here an association would
have come into being for an hour — and in an hour would
have passed away.

Take next the case of men gathered to celebrate some
occasion, say the centenary of some historical event.
Here there is a purpose depending on and realised through
association. The meeting-together is an essential element

in rather a different signification. By "community" (Oemeinachaft)
be means reaies und organiaehu Leben, by " association ** (Oeseihchafi)
be nnderstands ideeUe und mechaniseh BUdung, Thus he would say
O e meit uehaft der Spraehe^ der 8iUe, dea Olaubens aber OeseUschaft dea
SrweHteSf der Reiae^ der Wiaaenaehafi. (TOnnies, Oemeinachaft und
O taeU e d i af L) The distinotion here seems one of degree rather than of
kind as above.

26 COMMUNITY bk. i.

of the celebration. Time and place and procedure are
predetermined, it is an organised association, not a
casual aggregation. But the purpose may be only a
trivial thing in the life of each member of the assemblage.
Tt brings him into social contact, but a very transient
and partial contact, with the rest. There is a conscious-
ness of common interest realised in association, but it
finds only a momentary expression. When the parade
is over or the procession has passed, or the bonfire
turned to ashes, or the dinner and the speeches are
ended, the association dissolves. Because the purpose
was transient, the association it created could not
endure.

Consider next an association created for the achieve-
ment of some specific reform, political or religious, say
for the passing of a bill or the formulation of a creed.
Here a more permanent purpose animates the association,
and works a deeper organisation. Each member of the
association has a definite point of contact with every
other. It is because each member has a certain indi-
viduality that he is a member. If he were different in
a certain important way, he would not be a member.
And in the association each holds a definite place, deter-
mined in part at least by his individuality. (For it is
a general law of association that the deeper the purpose
at work, the more complex becomes the organisation.)
Yet since the purpose is specific and temporary, the
association which pursues it pursues its own dissolution.
When the bill is enacted or the creed formulated, in the
fulfilment of its sustaining purpose the association itself
dissolves. When slavery was abolished, the associations
for the abolition of slavery were abolished also. Every
such association dies of its success. Sometimes an
association lives on when its primary purpose belongs
to the past, becoming either a venerable relic, like, say,

CH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 27

the Honourable Society of Fidimongers, or a social
obfltmction, like the Grand Army of the Bepublic.

Let MB turn next to an association of a very different
type, the association of marriage. The purpose on which
this association rests is the deep foundation of all life,
and that purpose is fulfilled not in the mere procreation
of offspring and their tutelage until they attain the
autonomy of manhood or womanhood. The profound
purpose of the marriage-association includes the present
as well as the future generations, and fulfils the lives of
those who enter into it no less than it creates and develops
the lives of those who issue from it. It is, therefore,
a continuous and — ^unless perverted — ^permanent purpose
of human life, and the association it creates is likewise
continuous and permanent, strongly rooted in the heart
of life.

Thus to a permanent purpose there always answers,
in the nature of things, a permanent association. This
appears still more clearly when we turn to such associ-
ations as Church and State. These rest on purposes
more lasting than any individuals, and are thus main-
tained through periods of time infinitely larger than the
life-periods of individuals. In so far as they are purposes
necessary to the fulfilment of life, they create associations
as immortal M life. And as the most enduring purposes
are also those which grow and change the most, there is
a continuous evolution of the greater associations.

Lastly, associations vary as much in extent as in per-
manence, and for the same reason. Wherever there is
a character common to social beings, a common interest
is impUdt, an interest, that is, which can be furthered
by organisation, by association. The extent of a common
interest should measure the extent of its correspondent
association. The most intimate interest is that which
most directly unites just two human beings, as in the

28 COMMUNITY bk. i.

association of marriage ; but at the other extreme are
interests miiversal as mankind — the interest we call
justice, for example — and the history of society is in part
a history of the widening of associations (and therefore
of community) as men more and more recognise how
much they have in common with other men, and more
and more understand that every common value is pro-
tected and furthered by association. So out of the small
circles of primitive society have grown the great and
ever-widening associations of the modem world.

We have been speaking of the State as simply one
among other associations, but the State has obviously
a very peculiar and distinctive place. Other associations
are limited to the pursuit of one or at most a few interests,
the State seems to have some care for nearly every interest.
Other associations cannot on their own initiative enforce
their decisions on recalcitrant members, the State can
and does. Other associations have their members scat-
tered over a city or district or country, the State includes
within its membership, or at least within its control, all
the dwellers within determined communal frontiers. It
is, therefore, highly important to determine the relation
of the State, first to community itself, and next to the
other associations within community.

§ 2. Oommunity and State.

Because the state, like conmiunity, has territorial
frontiers and because it exercises control over all, or
nearly all, other associations, many writers speak as if
community and State were one. This seems to have
been the view of Hegel and is certainly the doctrine of
the neo-Hegelian writers on the State,^ as well as of
many others to whom that epithet scarcely applies.
Here is a representative statement of this doctrine from

^ See Appeadiz A.

CH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCJIATION 29

the late M. Fouill^ : '' Imagine," he wrote, '' a great
dide i¥ithin whioh are lesser circles combining in a
thousand ways to form the most varied figures without
overstepping the limits that enclose them ; this is an
image of the great association of the State and of the
particular associations that it embraces." {La Scieiwe
Sodale CarUemporaine, p. 13.)

We shall see later that this doctrine, which makes
the State the limit of community and makes all other
associations but elements of the State, is contradicted
by the whole evolution of the modem State. For the
present it will suffice to show that the doctrine, so
strangely maintained in the face of history, is contrary
to the present fact. Here we are not concerned with
what the State ought to be and to include, but with what
the State actually is and does include. So regarded, it
is quite obvious that the State is neither conterminous
nor synonymous with community. Every State has
rigid territorial limits, but the modem world, marked
off into separate States, is not partitioned into a number
of isolated communities. We have already seen that
community is a matter of degree, that it is a network of
social interrelations, here denser, here thinner, whose ever
new-woven filaments join men to men across countries
and continents. The State, unlike conmiunity, is exclu-
sive and determinate. Where one State ends, another
begins ; where one begins, another ends.^ No man can
without contradiction owe allegiance to two States, any
more than he can serve two masters, but he can enter
into the life of as many communities as his sympathies
and opportunities will allow.

Quite obviously the metaphor of Fouill6e is false.
Let us draw our exclusive circles and call them England,

^ We need not delay to show that the case of federal States is only
an appaient ezoeption.

30 * . COMMUNITY bk. i.

France, Germany, and so on. By hypothesis, all associ-
ations fall within these circles, and do not intersect them.
Well, in which circle shall we place the international
economic associations without which none of the great
States could to-day exist at all ? In which shall we
place the numerous international unions, industrial,
scientific, religious, and artistic ? '' Without overstep-
ping the limits that enclose them " — ^that is the foundation
of the neo-Hegelian doctrine of the State, and it is a
foundation which is false in fact.

But, it will be answered, every association, inter-
national or intranational, is controlled by the State.
Intranational associations are controlled by the separate
States, international associations by agreement between
States. No members of any State can enter into any
association whatever unless that State permits it. Thus
every other association is subordinate to the State.

We may grant the contention. At a later stage we
shall see more clearly whence and why the will of the
State has this pre-eminence. At that stage we shall
understand more fully the distinction between com-
munity and State. Meantime we must insist that there
is a false inference if we say that because the State has
control over every other association, therefore all other
associations are absorbed into the State, are simply parts
of the State, or are completely circumscribed by its
frontiers. If we hold this view, the process of conflict
through which modem States have attained their present
democratic forms, and in especial the long agony of strife
due to the opposing claims of churches and of States,
is without meaning for us.

There is an easy and direct way by which we can
discover the limits of the State. The essential feature
of the State is political order, the primary instrument
of the State is political law. There has been community /

cm. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 31

where no State yet existed, and even to-day we may
discover, among certain Eskimo peoples, for instance,
primitive forms of communal life still uncoordinated
within a State. Wheie there is no political law, there
is no State. Political law is thius the criterion of the
State, and in learning the nature and limits of political
law we are learning the nature and limits of the State.

Political law is in its proper nature unconditioned,
formulated, and mainly negative. These characters
reveal the limits of the State.

It is unconditioned. The laws of other associations
bind their members, but if you don't like the laws you
can leave the association — ^unless the State forbids. If
you disapprove of the laws of your club or business-
association or trade-union or church, you can resign. If
any such association tries of its own accord to enforce its
laws on you, it comes into collision with the powers of
the State. It can properly do no more than deny you
its special benefits and privileges. So with communal
or customary law, properly so-called. If you break
the customs, traditions, fashions prevalent in your
community, you may expect its disapprobation. It will
boycott you, refuse to enter into social relations with
you, but unless you break also the law of the State, it
cannot otherwise visit upon you its displeasure. But
if you break a political law, you do not merely lose
privil^;e8. The State will do more than deny its benefits,
it will punish. It has behind it the united force of the
community, the final sanction attached to no other
kind of social law. Nor can you simply resign your mem-
bership of the State to escape its law. Even if you go
beyond its frontiers its claims may follow you, and within
the State, even if you shut yourself up within your walls,
you are subject to the laws of the State, to all the conditions
it may impose either directly or by delegation of authority.

7
/

32 COMMUNITY bk.

Why does the State hold this unique position ? Why
has it behind it the united force of the community ?
The force of the law is not an ultimate thing, it is always
and essentially dependent upon will. The State has this
power of compulsion because its members wXl that
_ power, because they subject themselves to its law and
unite their force to maintain it. To what end ?

No man can wholly cut himself off from social relations
while he remains in the world of men. We are forced
from all sides, by every instinct and every need, into
society, into relations with our fellows. Such relations
must be ordered^ or life is impossible. Mutual good
demands mutual service, mutual forbearance and re-
straint. Thus wherever society exists there exists a
system of obligations and rights. Society incessantly
creates these reciprocal relations between every man
and all other men. Sometimes they remain unformu-
lated and traditional, as in a primitive community ruled
by " unwritten law," but nearly always the most essential
of these relationships of right and obligation are set
out in clear formulse, as political laws, and protected
by a central authority endowed with communal power.
Any body of men so organised that a central institution
or government takes over the maintenance and develop-
ment of the essential system of rights and obligations
accepted among them is properly called a State. A

f State is thus the fundamental association for the main-
tenance and development of social order, and to this end
its central institution is endowed with the united power
of the community. It is not meant that the members
of a State consciously realise why they give or permit
it this final authority — if they did they would never have
suffered the endless perversions of government — ^but only
that as their political consciousness emerges, as they
ask themselves why they should contribute this might

CH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 33

to the State, the answer appears in this form. As the
State develops, as its members grow in social wisdom,
in the conscioiisness of their own needs and the possibili-
ties of satisfying them through political order, the power
of the State comes to rest more and more on its service
of that end— or else there is distraction, weakness, cleavage,
finally perhaps revolution.

Subjection to law is political obligation, which is only
the reverse side of political right. Beyond law, beyond
government, and beyond force lie the common ends, the
common wiU of community. The end is here as always
the revelation of meaning and the justification of exist-
ence. If the citizen owes obedience to government it
must be in virtue of some social good which in turn
determines the respect the government shall show to
him. Political right and political obUgation, as all
ri^t and obligation, are derived from the same source
and are meaningless if separated. Already we see that
the State and its government are not ultimate social
phenomena but rest on what is yet deeper, communal
life and will.

The special limits of the State are revealed when we
consider the further characteristics of political law.

In the second place, political law is expressed in definite
formulae. A political law defines certain categories of
persons as coming within its scope, and prescribes for
them as precisely as possible certain forms of conduct.
It is obvious, therefore, that it can apply only to general
situations and can enforce only external fulfilments.
Thus the State is at once outside large spheres of human
activity. It cannot control motives save indirectly. It
can enjoin actions, or rather activities, but not the
spirit of their fulfilment. But large classes of action
are wholly dependent on the spirit in which they are
fulfilled, and many associations exist simply to foster

34 COMMUNITY bk. i.

types of ideal or spiritual values. The State cannot
determine these associations, and it should not prescribe
any of those actions which derive their only value from
the spirit of their performance. The State can compel
people to attend church, but it cannot compel them
to worship, and therefore the former compulsion is
folly. The State cannot create by its fiat a church or
an artistic or literary association. It can protect and
maintain and even organise such associations — ^to do so
may be part of its function — ^but it cannot, if it is true to
its own nature, determine and control them. Further,
in its generality and externality it cannot touch (save
by way of repression) that spontaneity and initiative
of individual life which is the beginning of all social
process and the root of all social value. There are times,
pre-eminently the time of war, when cumulative force
matters for the time being more than spontaneity, and
the State inevitably becomes repressive. But this, like
nearly all the special phenomena of war, is a throwback to
the barbaric order. Certainly this repressiveness, when
continued into the time of peace by the momentum of
the war-habit, of necessity breeds grave social disturb-
ance and dissension. The State must, therefore, be
clearly distinguished from the community which creates
it. Community is the common life of beings who are
guided essentially from within, actively, spontaneously,
and freely (under the conditions prescribed by the laws
they make) relating themselves to one another, weaving
for themselves the complex web of social unity. But
the State works with an instrument which is necessarily
formal, prescribing the general external conditions of
social life, upholding the main system of those social
obligations which may be externally fulfilled. Its instru-
ment resembles, in Aristotle's phrase, no ** leaden rule "
which can adapt itself to the actual mouldings of the

CH.11. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 35

social stractuie, but an unbending rod which can measure
only itfl general outlines.^

Because it can determine only the external forms of
conduct, the law of the State must be mainly (though by
no means wholly) negative. It must for the most part
be content (as the neo-Hegelians themselves are forced
to admit, though they do not see the significance of the
admission) to " hinr^^^ TllTr'ilranfif'^ " to social welfare.
It can prevent or punish wrong-doing rather than endorse
ri^t-doing. It can create for men the external social
conditions necessary for the weU-living of their lives.
It can enforce these outer obligations without the fulfil-
ment of which the inner obligations cannot be fulfilled.
For this reason the sanction of political law is punish-
ment and not reward. We reward and honour only
what the theologian called '^ works of supererogation/'
not the minimal fulfilment of external law.

It is needless to say that in thus stating the limits of
political activity we are not belittling the immeasurable
Taloe of that activity. The point is that the State is
not equivalent to community, that the political associa-
tion does not include and can not control the whole life
of men« The State is seen to be not conmxunity but a
peculiarly authoritative association within it. The State
18 determinate, a closed organisation of social life ; com-
munity is indeterminate, a^ ever-evolving system spread-
ing beyond and only partially controlled within the
definite framework of any State. That framework gives
to the portion of community which it encloses a certain
miity and definition, but neither cuts it off from a wider
community of which it is essentially part nor within
that portion substitutes its own external mode of action,
its necessity, for the spontaneity that is the mark of all
life, social and other. Social life can no longer in practice

» Cf. Nie. Ethics, Bk. VI., c. 10, f 7.

36 COMMUNITY bk. i.

and should no longer in theory be summed up in political
life. The individual should not be summed up in his
citizenship, otherwise the claim of citizenship will itself
become a tyranny and its essential moral value be lost.
" The modem wilderness of interests " is not to be
straightened out into the simple road of citizenship.
For the main road of citizenship, which we must make
straight as possible, though it intersects a thousand
paths of social interest, cannot and should not absorb
them.

These paths of social interest do not stop at the frontiers
of States. The political interest is determinate and has
limits, the social has none. Hence for the proper under-
standing of international relations it is most necessary
to distinguish community and State. On the assump-
tion of identity we can have no social unity among the
nations until they are absorbed within some world-state.
For each State by its very definition is a determinate
and self-contained unit. In respect of the sphere of its
sovereignty every State is demarcated absolutely from
every other. Consequently, if political relationship were
identical with social relationship, the members of one
State would remain totally alien from the members of
every other State. Communities would stand to one
another as Spinoza and Hobbes imagined them to stand,
isolated as the pre-dvil individuals of their imagination,
totally irresponsible until some contract is agreed upon,
even then totally irresponsible because there is no pos-
sible higher will to make agreement binding. But, of
course, it is in international relations that the distinction
of State and community is most clearly revealed and
that the common interests of universal society most
manifestly weave new unities in spite of political separa-
tion. A man may perhaps " denationalise " himself
(though that is hardly the proper word) by leaving

C8» It.

COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 37

his country, but he cannot " desocialise ^' himself
without leaving the world of men, or at least of civilised
men.

Community, therefore, and not the State, is the
" woAd the spirit has made for itself." '' The spirit " does
not isolate itself in States, as Hegel's argument assumes.^
On the contrary, the growth of civilisation means the
growth of ever-widening community, the '^ reaUsation "
of social interest beyond the limits of politically inde-
pendent groups. Society widens and the sense of com-
munity grows. In particular, the privileged classes of
the different peoples, the authors of most past wars,
become more and more allied by social intercourse, by
common commercial and intellectual interests. M. Tarde
has pointed out how classes of men whose occupation,
even if in a competitive way, brings them into constant
association with one another, develop a friendlier spirit
towards one another than classes not subject to this
socialising influence. The same holds of peoples. It is
not civilisation but intercivilisation that develops mutual
sympathy between States. The highly socialised Greek
cities, because each held to an ideal of autonomy and
self -sufficiency, the ideal of ''completely independent
totality," were not intersocialised, and, accordingly,
displayed the intensest hostility to one another. But
the aloofness of Oreek states is impossible in the modem
world, which is pervaded by intersociaUsing influences
of literature and commerce. Conunon ideas and common
tnde have formed everywhere social bonds which cut

^ Hegel IB rather confusing on this point. For instance, he says
{Or, der PhiL Bechis^ f 330) that the Stote is **not a private person
but a completely independent totality/* and yet immediately adds
that it 18 ralaled to other States (331) and instances the nations of
Europe as '* forming a family on accomit of the imiversal principles
of their legislation, their ethical usages, and their civilisation " (339).
How can ** completely independent totalities ** form a family T See
further Appendix A.

38 COMMUNITY sk. i.

across the line of States, and have made western Europe,
looked on as a whole, an effective community. Thus
an educated Englishman comes to have more in common
with an educated Frenchman than he has, say, with
an English agricultural labourer. The alien, shut out
from his State, may yet have a closer social affinity to
him than his fellow citizen. And yet the prevalent
political philosophy blindly declares that " the State "
is " the world the spirit has made for itself," and that
** between State and State there can be no consciousness
of common good." Because certain dangerously anti-
quated modem governments retained that philosophy,
they have overwhelmed our common civilisation in the
consciousness of common evil.

If we turn for a moment from fact to ideal — ^two things
which the neo-Hegelians constantly confuse— we may
admit the desirability of a wider political co-ordination
of community than at present exists. This is to be
achieved not by our going backwards and cutting off
the bonds of relationship which make community wider
in area than any single State, but by our going forward
on the road of federation and making a union of States
great enou^ to comprehend the existing intercommunity.
The recognition of likeness of interests, purposes, and
needs is increasing and not diminishing in the people of
different nations. It is the State that is inadequate,
not community that is overstepping its due bounds.
The State must always, as we have seen, remain inade-
quate to comprehend and regulate aU community. But
it is more inadequate than need be, so long as the political
relations of States are capricious and unco-ordinated.
At present civilised States are like masters who
maintain splendid order and discipline within their
workshops, and thus feel free to go out and racket
in the streets.

CH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 39

3. State and other associationB.

We have seen that a State is not a community but a
peculiarly authoritative association within community;
we may now discuss briefly how States and other associa-
tions are related. Here, it must be noted, we are con*
sidering not what is but what ought to be, not the facts
of this relationship, but ^n ideal which may in any
parMoular State be wholly or partially unrealised. We
too often assume that all actual States conform to a
single type which we can identify as " the State." In
fact. States present and past have adopted every possible
attdtnde towards the other associations, sometimes heed-
less of them, often partial to some and repressive of
others, sometimes repressive of them all, sometimes
allowing certain associations (the church in particular)
to share or usurp its own proper authority, and some-
times not admitting the same associations to their own
proper place. All, therefore, that we can do here is to
show in an introductory way how the State — ^by which
we mean any and every State — shotddy in the light of the
social ends which it can serve, stand in relation to the
other associations which also after their kind pursue
social ends.

If the State does not absorb into its own life of organis-
ation the other forms of social life, the worlds of art,
science, religion, and social intercourse, not to speak of
the family life, in what relation does it stand to these ?
In the first place, because, as we have seen, the State
preserves and upholds through its organisation the very
existence of society, that being its primary end, it has
a certain supmorit^ of control, not merely of influence,
alike over the partial organisations and over the free
life of community — a i:ontrol which in no way contradicts
the essential claim to spontaneity made by that life.

[

40 COMMUNITY bk. i.

Suppose the state-authority iBnds that the teaching of
certain religious doctrines is calculated to undermine
the security of society, then it may forbid the teaching
of these doctrines, and if it is right in its conception of
the social danger and does no counterbalancing evil
by interfering, it is right also in its interference. Doubt-
less this is a dangerous responsibility, for the state-
authority is most liable to identify the security of society
with the security of the particular order or type of interest
it may happen to represent. But there is no safety
device that can be applied to the machine of State to
save us from the errors and perversions of duly-con-
stituted authority. That safety can in general come
only from the continuous alert criticism of a more edu-
cated people. Suppose again that the state-authority
finds that some economic association deprives its workers
of the opportunity to live a reasonable healthy life,
again it may interfere. It has the same right over
associations of individuals as over unassociated indivi-
duals. It has to protect the whole against antagonistic
acts of both alike, not only against deliberate acts of
encroachment but also against such general and unin-
tended social wrongs as deforestation, as the vitiation
of the air-supply, the water-supply, and the sun-supply.
Only thus can it fulfil its primary function as the guardian
of community.

But of course state-action has a much wider area than
that just indicated. Individualistic writers like Mill
and Spencer limited the State to that kind of action,
and so gave away their case. The State possesses the
most complete, powerful, and centralised of all organi-
sations. There seems no clear reajiflff wliy the com-
munity should not take all advanf ^age of the greatest
organisation it has built. There 'teems no clear reason
why the central organisation r should not be utilised

I
I

cH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 41

for the furtherance of all social ends which it is able,
without detriment to any more important ends, to
farther. Take, e.g, the economic life fulfilled by myriad
economic associations. To a certain extent, as experi-
ence shows, state-organisation can develop that life
without destroying its spontaneity — and so we find the
State regulating forms of contract, controlling coinage,
determining the conditions of limited liability, estab-
lishing banks, even assuming entire control of those
industries which, so to speak, bind all other industries
together and make their free development possible, the
industries of intercommunication. Or again, take family
life. The family is not simply an element in the State,
as Plato wished it to be, but essentially something more.
Yet the state does not merely recognise and protect the
family. It claims a certain control, for the benefit of
both family and State. It regards marriage itself as a
political institution so far as to insist on certain regulations
and conditions, and it defines to some degree the rights
imd duties of relatives, making them legal and not merely
moral rights and duties. It might reasonably, to the
advantage of both family and State, prohibit the marriage
of people suffering from certain forms of disease or in-
sanity, though here, as always, the limit of State-inter-
vention becomes a difficult pra^ical problem. Some of
these problems wiU meet us at a later stage.

The State, we see, may control an association while
yet the association remains voluntary, being, that is,
no mere part of the political organisation, being freely
established, freely entered into, freely directed, and in
some cases freely dissolved, by its members. The right
of free association is a most important factor in the
development of community, and of the State. It medi-
ates between the necessity of political government and
the casualness of wholly unregulated social relations.

42 COMMUNITY bk. i.

It ensures the expression and furtherance of those special-
ised interests of culture and doctrine, of art and science
which are so precious in our lives. It saves the State
from the alternatives of stagnation and ubitrary control.
It provides a ground for endless experiments in social
organisation. The voluntary association leads the way,
the State follows, often taking over the organisation of
those voluntary associations which have been bravely
but inadequately endeavouring to supply a universal
or necessary pubUc service. The provision of hospital
and other medical and charitable service is a case in point.
These services, .so necessary to the community, were
almost invariably established at the first by voluntary
associations, but gradually the need for a broader basis
of organisation was realised, and they are now in great
part undertaken by the State. In such a case the State
comes in, not to destroy, but to fulfil the work of the
voluntary association, and so long as it acts in that spirit
it cannot overstep its bounds.

It is to be noted that in the degree in which the State
assumes its proper function as above indicated the dis-
tinctive character of associations other than political
becomes clearly revealed. In the classical and mediieval
worlds the distinction of community and State was never
completely realised, and consequently the meaning and
value of the other associations were often misunderstood.
To illustrate : the Greeks tended to find their whole
fulfilment in the life of the polls, which was both city
and State, and in consequence the family-association
remained unhonoured, unliberated, and unfulfilled, to the
irretrievable loss of Greece. Again, the mediseval States,
failing to give precision and limit to the political authority,
failed also to give precision and limit to other associations,
such as the church or the gild. Take the gild as an
example. Mediieval gilds present a striking contrast to.. ,

ca. n. COMMUKITY AND ASSOCIATION 43

modem aasociations whether of capital or of labour.
The gild was hierarchical, excluaiye, often owning a
peenliar monopoly within the community, pursuing no
one clear interest but a medley of indeterminate interests.
A trade union or an employers' union is a voluntary
association, an association of likes, of members who are
regarded as possessing equal rights within it, who have
a conunon interest uniting them as an association, and
who usually pursue in comparative singleness of aim that
common interest. Thus in place of the old complex
associations of the middle ages — ^inadequate, ubitrary,
and often cofdpulsive, because of their confused relation to
the State— there have arisen the simple voluntary associ-
ations of to-day, each with a place of its own within the
community, each with a definite relation to the State
and a definite autonomy, each limited to one kind of
interest and composed of members who are alike in
respect of that interest.^

It must not be inferred that in the modem world the
respective places of St^rte and voluntary association are
to-day adequately and harmoniously assigned. In the
western States political evolution is certainly in advance
of orthodox political theory on this question, but it is
still far from being complete. In some directions,
especially in the industrial sphere, as we shall see later,
the need exists for a completer control by the State
over the liberties of associations ; in others there is
needed a completer liberation of associations from political
control. For example, medical, scientific, educational,
and other properly non-political appointments are still
too largely determined by political (or rather party)
considerations, and are often, as everybody knows,
given to less qualified candidates because they are of
the right party-colour. It is folly that the selection of

1 0:. Fournidre, L'lndividu, fAuoGiaiion, ei VEtat, ohap.l.

k
t

44 COMMUNITY bk. i.

the head of a medical school or of a university or of a
church should be determined by such considerations,
and it is bad both for the association and for the State.
It must also be admitted that the associations them-
selves do not always recognise the limits of their proper
spheres. The greater associations have in the past
frequently transgressed their bounds. The church in
particular has often claimed a compulsive power which
is not its own but the State's alone. And the curious
idea is still entertained by some that the inhabitants of
a country must have a single religion co-extensive with
and limited by its confines — ^a Church of Scotland peculiar
to and co-extensive with Scotland, a Church of England
peculiar to and co-extensive with England, and so on.
Again, a trade-union sometimes attempts to coerce
non-unionists into the association, though its proper
right is limited to the denial of its privileges to those
who refuse to enter. Or again, to cite a more harmless
instance of transgression, when a imiversity confers
its honorary degrees, which should stand for distinguished
services to literature, art, or knowledge, upon men who
have otherwise made themselves distinguished names,
say as soldiers, diplomatists, or merchants, but who,
in respect of the ends for which a university stands,
may be mere barbarians, it too is forgetful of its sphere.
Such a lack of discrimination is bad for the association,
because it obscures the meaning and lowers the value
of the honour when conferred on the true man of science
or seeker after wisdom.^

The question of the relation of the State to other

^ The habit of the university to decorate diplomatists, military
men, city dignitaries, etc., is peculiarly foolish, since for them nearly v
all other honorary distinctions, titles, and orders exist, and it is ridi|afk
lous and superfluous to extend to these the one distinction ^M^JIQeh
stands for service in the sphere of learning— or stands for nothin^ «

CH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 46

associations has in our own day taken on a new urgency.
In old times, when the church was the one powerful
association besides the State, a formula could be found,
by the distinction of sacred and secular, which granted
the essential claims of the church and yet left unchal-
lenged the supremacy and secular omnipotence of the
State. But no simple formula can demarcate the sphere
of the State from that of the organisations of labour
or of capital. All alike are necessarily concerned with
the same issues. It is easy to say that the State stands,
in ideal, for the general economic interest of the community
while capitalistic and labour associations stand for
partial interests. But the trouble is that these three
unities have not so much unco-ordinated functions as
unco-ordinated powers. The day is past when all power
lay with the State. Force in the narrower sense proves
to be only one form of power, and perhaps not the most
persuasive. Capital and labour wield economic powers
which not only deflect the policy of the State but may
also, on occasion, compel it to accept the policy of a
minority. Whether, for example, the South Wales
miners were justified or not in demanding a certain
minimnTn rate of wages or the U.S. Railroad Brother-
hoods in claiming a basic eight-hour day, there was
nothing to show that these policies were the expression
of the majority-opinion, and yet the State was compelled
to adopt them.

Such facts as these have led a new school of writers
to argue that what we really have in community is a
number of fairly independent associations, the State
being one of them, whose adjustment depends on the
relative extent and intensity of loyalty they respectively
command from time to time. The various associations
do not merely exercise autonomy in distinct spheres of
action, they exercise it within the same sphere. The

46 COMMUNTTY bk. i.

system they form, if it can be called system at all,
must be described as '^ pluralistic." ^ This reasoning,
to my mind, understands the general character of the
State too much in the light of present and particular
disharmonies. So long as the State represents predomin-
antly the interest of any one economic class or interest,
particularly if a minority interest, the others are obviously
tempted to use their economic powers in direct opposi-
tion to it. They are really attacking another interest
or association which has succeeded in making the State
its tool. Thus the rude conditions of war-time convey
political supremacy to a class which in peace proves
quite unrepresentative, and the immediate conflict of
policies thereby engendered, the conflict, for example,
between government and labour in respect of the proper
attitude of Western democracy towards the Russian
Revolution, very easily leads to " direct action " on the
I>aft of the politically impotent section. But this is
because the State is itself ** out of joint." As democracy
evolves a better machinery for the recording and expres-
sing of interests in their true proportions, such methods
may well prove but exceptional disturbances of an
established order. The State would still appear the
co-ordinating agency of the whole array of associations,
though itself but one of them. The truer view of the
place which the State is likely finally to assume in the
economic sphere seems to me to be attained by the gild
socialists who hold that while economic associations stand

^ This I understand to be the view of Mr. Ladd in his Studiea in the
Problem of Sovereignty. In his later and richly suggestive work,
Authority %n the Modem State, with most of which I am thoroughly
in accord, the same writer speaks of commimity being, in respect of
its various associations, "basically federal in nature" (p. 74). But
in a federation there is always a central organ. Where is it to be
found in community unless in the State T In that case the State
must be in some sense more than one of the federated associations,
though on the autonomy of the latter it is highly important to insist.
See also Bk. III. c. III. f 3.

CH. n. COMMUNITY AND ASSOCIATION 47

for the special interests of groups of producers, the
State must finally adjust their competing claims, standing
for the generic economic interest, roughly expressed as
that of the consumer. Every man is a consumer of
goods in general while producers are specialised. So,
more broadly, every man is of necessity a citizen of the
State while the membership of other associations is
specialised. Therefore the State must be the final co-
ordinator of community.

We have shown in mere outline that every association,
including the State, is an organised form of social life
within community, that each has its distinctive place
and meaning, while community is greater than any of
them, greater than all of them together. We may now
conclude this introduction by showing how community,
and not any or all of its associations, can be and is the
object of our present study.

CHAPTER III

THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY AMONG THE SCIENCES.

§ 1. Sociology and the special social sciences.

When a newcomer, bearing approved credentials, is
introduced into an old and exclusive circle, he proceeds
next to find his place within the circle. This process of
adjustment the newcomer sociology has been undergoing
within the circle of the sciences. Our subject is com-
munity, and the science of community is sociology. We
have shown that community is a reality which no study
of the particular associations will ever explain, since it
is greater and more comprehensive than any, itself the
common matrix of them all. We have shown thereby
the credentials of sociology, and it remains to show its
place and status among the sciences, in particular its
relation to those sciences whose claims the claim of the
newcomer may be thought to disturb or challenge.

We may divide these latter sciences into two classes.
On the one hand there are sciences which are at least as
generic or universal in character as sociology and yet
seem to occupy much of the same ground. These are the
sciences of ethics and psychology, and the problem of
their relation to sociology is most significant. On the
other hand there are special social sciences, sciences
dealing with special kinds of social fact, and, therefore,
clearly less general than the science of community as a
whole. We must arbitrate here between the claims of

CH. m THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY 49

the generic science and the claims of the specific sciences.
This latter problem is the easier of the two, and may be
resolved before we seek an answer to the dee})er problem.

Just as particular associations have at times sought to
sweep witlun their bounds the whole life of community,
so have particular social sciences sought to comprehend
the whole study of community. In particular men
have made this claim of comprehensiveness on behalf of
the sciences of politics and economics, claiming with
misguided enthusiasm that all social phenomena are
fundamentally political or economic. The former view
was held half unconsciously by an old order of historians,
the latter was consciously formulated by Karl Marx.
But as man cannot live without bread neither does he
Hve by bread alone. All these simplifications are false
to the many-sidedness of humanity. The social sciences
have their sphere within sociology, just as associations have
their sphere within community. The specific social sciences
are sciences of asaociatumal forms of life, and, therefore,
can never ascend the throne reserved for sociology, a
throne tenantless until she enter into her kingdom.

The purposes men pursue, and in the pursuit of which
they build associations, are most numerous and complex,
but they can be reduced under a limited number of
categories. To definite kinds of purpose correspond
definite forms of association, and these in turn give order
and precision to the correspondent social activities.
Hence there arise within social life great distinguishable
series of facts which are studied by distinct sciences.
The special social sciences — ^politics, economics, juris-
prudence, the study of the associational aspects of religion,
education, art, literature, and every other activity of
men — exist as such owing to the relative isolability of
certain kinds of social fact, the relative interdependence
of social phenomena belonging to the same series and

60 COMMUNITY bk. i.

their relative independence of social phenomena be-
longing to other series.

It may suffice if we consider in this light the best
formulated of all the special sciences, viz, economics.
MuUxtia mutandis^ the result of our consideration will
hold for each of the other social sciences.

The facts which fall within the economic series have a
certain relative independence and interdependence. For
example, we can investigate the relation of the cost of
production of an article to the amount produced and to
the demand, the relation of increase of capital to increase
of profit, the relation of the output of precious metal to
its purchasing power, and so with many far more complex
relations. Not that such economic relations are really
isolated, but we can suppose other social factors to
remain constant while the change in one economic factor
produces change in other economic factors. In so far^
the science of economics exists as an independent
study, but we must always remember that such inde-
pendence is very relative and very partial. The failure
to recognise this fact has been responsible for much
bad economics. It has, indeed, always been obvious
that the economic series was related to other definite
series of social facts, the political series, the legal series,
the series concerned with the growth of population, and
so on ; and the investigation of these imter-relationships
was regarded as constituting certain frontier-provinces
of economics, or perhaps common territories which it
shared with politics or ethics or jurisprudence. But
this is far from being an adequate statement of the case,
and the interrelation of definite series of social phe-
nomena, economic and political, economic and religious,
religious and political, and so forth, forms only a minor
part of the incessant interactivity of social forces. Thus
economic phenomena are constantly determined by all

ciL m. THE PLACE OP SOCIOLOGY 61

kinds of social need and activity, and in turn they
are constantly re-determining — creating, shaping, trans-
forming — social need and activity of every kind. Hence
there arises an incessant complication of interactive
factors, of which we can often distinguish only the social
resoltant, the outcome of interactive forces whose several
operations we cannot discern.

What then of the sphere of economics ? Is economics
properly limited to (1) the study of the interrelation
of phenomena within the economic series, so far as such
relatively interdependent relations can be discovered?
But this limitation would make of economics a very
fragmentary science. It would be condemned to dwell
in a middle region of abstraction, cut off from the know-
ledge of its communal source and significance. Shall we
then add, as the economic text-books do in practice
(though often rather half-heartedly), (2) the investigation
of the prior social determinants of economic phenomena,
so far as definite determinations can be established — ^the
study of varying climatic, cultural, religious, political,
and other conditions as economic determinants ? If so,
must we not add (3) the investigation of the prior economic
determinants of other social phenomena — ^for instance, the
study of industrialism as affecting morals, class-spirit,
the status of women^ religion, or international relations ?
The profound unity of communal life renders it impossible
wholly to separate (2) and (3), and, therefore, I assume
that economics, if it passes beyond (1), is bound to study
both of these ; but its interest would of course be one-
sided. As a specific science it is seeking throughout to
learn more about the nature of economic phenomena,
not directly about the other social series with which the
economic is so intimately bound. Otherwise it would
lose itself in the vaster study of community.

Let us then assume that we have here found the

62 COMMUNITY bk. i.

sphere of economics. We have found it to be con-
stituted of a complete study of one and a partial
study of two other series of social relations, the three
being relatively and in different degrees isolable within
the world of social phenomena, and thus capable to
a certain extent of independent study. But we must
see that by their very nature these series form part of a
greater system within which they arise and without
which they would be meaningless. Take the simplest
and most seeming-independent set of economic relations
you please, and consider how it implies the whole world
of social relations. Take the simple law of demand :
'' the greater the amount to be sold, the smaller must
be the price at which it is offered in order to find pur-
chasers." ^ But the ratio, as every economist points
out, varies very greatly according to the kind of article ;
according as it ranks as a luxury, a conventional necessity,
or an absolute necessity ; according to the power of
custom and fashion, the standard of civilisation and in-
telligence within a community. So that in our investi-
gation of the economic question we are led into the widest
realm of social, moral, and even religious relations. We
are led in particular to the consideration of certain
fundamental social laws which are common determinants
of many specific types of social phenomena, to the con-
sideration of the nature of custom, of social imitation
and suggestion, of group-feeling and group-thinking, of
temperamental and cultural unities and differences, of
social conflict and co-operation. But it would needlessly
enlarge the study of economics if we undertook a complete
investigation of all these phenomena, and it would mean
a needless overlapping of studies, since the other social
sciences have equal grounds for investigating the same
phenomena. These belong therefore to the general

^ So formulated by Marshall : Principles of Economies (6th ed.), p. 99,

cH.m. THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY 6S

sphere of sociology as distinct from the definite spheres,
of the specific social sciences.

In the wider sense sociology includes the special social
sciences. In the narrower sense, as a distinctive study
it investigates all those social relations which are too
broad or deep or complex to fall within the scope of any
one of the specific social sciences. For the diverse
associational activities which give rise to the several
social sciences are but aspects of the great communal
unity, depend on one another in most intricate ways,
and unite to produce resultants which can be called by
no other name than communal. The common deter-
minants of all specific activities, their greater inter-
relations and their communal resultants, constitute a
subject-matter the study of which is the heroic and
endless task of sociology. It is concerned with the
nature and development of community. Here there lies
still a vast territory to be explored. For we have in the
special social sciences been investigating, so to speckk,
the flora and fauna of the country, but the soil itself,
whence they alike spring and whereon they are alike
sustained, we have largely ignored. Or, to change the
metaphor, we have been examining the diverse coloured
threads interwoven into the web of community, and have
scarcely noticed the pattern which they weave. But
no study of the threads, of the specific series of social
facts studied by the social sciences, will yield a true
knowledge of that pattern, of community itself.

Community is the object of our study. The special
sciences consider the special associational activities in
themselves, sociology considers them as aspects within
a common life. We cannot live in mere economic or
political or ecclesiastical associations, we do live in a
oonununity of which economic, political, and religious
life are very necessary and real aspects. The need for

64 COMMUNITY bk. i.

'this synthetic study is indubitable and is becoming
realised. Mr. Gomme, the author of TJie ViUage Com-
munityy lays it down as a " fundamental proposition "
which he regards as '' the true basis of anthropological
research," that " enquiry into the culture and condition
of primitive man . . . can only be conducted by con-
sidering each item of culture which is the subject of
enquiry in association with all other items of culture in
the same social group." {Sociological Review, Vol. 11.,
p. 321.) If this principle holds of primitive communities,
it surely holds with equal force of the greatly di£Eerentiated
conmiunities of civilisation. The di£Eerentiation makes
the task not less necessary but more difficult.

Some twenty-three centuries ago Plato wrote a great
dialogue on the city-community and its right ordering.
We agree to call it The Repvblic, but it is in fact, as it is
strictly in name, a work on the community of the city ^
{iroXiTela)' It is not simply what we understand as a
treatise on political science, it is too concrete and com-
prehensive for what we usually understand as a treatise
on ethics, discussing as it does the principles of economics,
politics, family life, religion, education, philosophy, art, and
literature. Plato saw all these as factors of one common
life, bound together within the unity of that life. The
Republic was the first and greatest of sociological treatises.

But the unity which Plato's comprehensive mind had
found soon disappeared. It was partly that the social
world itself was differentiating, even when he wrote, into
something too complex to be contained under the form
of the city, partly that his successors had not the power
of their master to discover a new synthesis of community.
The greatest of Plato's disciples wrote a series of separate
treatises on the different aspects of social life. In parti*

• ^ As usual, the tranBlators of Plato nearly always render HXa as
"State** instead of "city,** thereby losing the orientation of the
oiiginaL

CH. m. THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY 65

cular he wrote one treatise on ethics and another on
politics, wiihout being dear about the relation of the one to
the oiher^ The co-ordination was lost, and men have
continued down to our own days to treat as separate
stndies economics, politics, religion, education, and so
forth, while little or no attempt has been made, until quite
recently, to show their interrelation and their basis in
communal life.

Yet The Republic was the greatest achievement of
Hellenic thought, and the greatest achievement of our
thought to-day might weU be a like synthetic inter-
pretation of our greater and more complex world. This
was the vision of Plato restored by Comte. The growth
of sociology since the time of Comte is a witness that
men are beginning to realise again that there is a unity
of social life, and are seeking to restore the lost synthesis
of community.

§ Z Sociology and ethics.

Is there a science of ethics ? If we turn to the authori-
tative works on ethics we find that they are devoted
primarily to the question. What is the supreme good,
or the supreme good of man ? All the other problems
which they raise, the ground of ethical obligation, the
meaning and relation of the virtues, the relation of the
good of the self to the good of others, are subsidiary and
imply the previous solution of that central problem.
But we discover soon enough that there is no body of
accepted doctrine in respect of that problem, and that
in the nature of the case there can be none. For if I
say that happiness is the supreme end of life and another
gainsays me, what way can be found of deciding between
our claims ? If I mecmt that men as a rule do seek

1 Contrast AriBtotle, ^te. Ethiee, V. 2. 11, PoUties, ILL 4. 4, and IV.
7. 2» with ^te. EtMea, X., ohapa. 7 and 8.

56 COMMUNITY bk.i.

happiness before everything else, my statement may
admit of verification or refutation, but if I mean that what
men (mght to seek is happiness, how can that statement
be controverted except by an equally dogmatic statement
that they ought not to seek it ? Now the distinctive
character of ethics is that it is concerned with the question
of ovjghty the question of right and wrong, good and bad.
It is concerned, that is, with a question lying beyond
the bounds of scientific procedure, beyond verification,
beyond induction, beyond actuality. Therefore, we can
have a history of ethics but no science of it. Instead of
a science we must be content with a philosophy — or rather
a series of philosophies, varying a/Ccording to the insight
and character of each philosopher, a series whose ethical
contradictions and antagonisms can never be dissolved
by any scientific procedure. All ethical claims are
claims of worthfulness, and we can neither confirm nor
refute them save by our own estimate of their worth.
In so far as they may mistake the true relation of means
to ends, in so far as they may maintain that a system
or mode of action contributes to some end to which in
fact it does not contribute, we may convict them of
scientific error, but in so far as they maintain that an
end is good in itself^ how shall we refute them if we dis-
believe — save by denial ?

Systematic ethics is, therefore, a philosophy, while
sociology is a science. This general distinction gives
the clue to those specific problems of relationship which
have needlessly agitated many minds. Philosophy and
science can live quite well together, even though their
representatives quarrel. The physicist must willy-nilly
be a metaphysician also, and he is never so much one as
when he derides metaphysics. Similarly, the sociologist
is an ethical philosopher also and he can never divest
himself of his philosophy. His ethics is conditioned by

CH. m. THE PLACE OP SOCIOLOGY 67

and to some degree dependent on his social experience ;
it is none the less not to be indentified with his sociology.

I have said that ethics is a philosophy and not a science.
But besides the metaphysical ethics of the schools there
is the applied and practical ethics of the moralist — the
social reformer. The latter is interested primarily in the
actual means by which ethical ideals have been and can
be realised, and especially in such re-organisation of social
relations as wiU create a social environment favourable
to theee ideals. He is interested in the liquor question,
in the treatment of crime, in the good and evil of charity,
in the problem of poverty, in housing, and so on. In
any of these investigations he is concerned, up to a
pointy with the nature and conditions of social fact, and
any science — ^for here we can speak of science — which
systematises such investigations is certainly a branch of
sociology. One might instance the science of education,
penology, hygiene, and the rudimentary science of
eugenics.

These are, so far <is they sUidy the relation of social means
to ethical ends, specific social sciences.

So far — ^but they are something more than that. We
shall have to insist at a later stage that no individual is
completely explained in terms of his social attributes,
and that, therefore, the ethical can never be identified
with the social. This fact renders the relationship more
complex. For ethics need not consider right and wrong
conduct simply in relation to its social effects, even al-
though we take it for true that all right conduct promotes
and all wrong conduct depresses social welfare. To be
true to one's own self may involve doing justly by all
other men, but the conceptions are not identical. The
greatest ethical systems (like the greatest religions) lay
stress on the individual character as end in itself
and not merely as means. This is as true of Kant as

58 COMMUNITY bk. i.

of Christ. They find the sanction of conduct rooted
in the nature of the being whose conduct it is, the
effects on others being regarded as secondary, the
consequence of an inner rightness. Thus, strictly speak-
ing, practical ethics may pursue the problem of good and
evil beyond the fields open to sociology, and in so far
may prove more than a branch of it.

The sociological interest lies in the question how far
existing social conditions, the actual relations of men to
men, further or retard the realisation of ethical ideals,
and how far social conditions can be altered for their
completer realisation. If we set up different standards
of value the antagonism is ethical, not sociological. For
whatever the standard be, whether we accept, say, the
ordinary doctrine of men that equity and altruism are
good ends to pursue, or the doctrine of Nietzsche, that
mastery and self-assertion are more to be desired, we
can with equal impartiality investigate how far the existing
conditions of society are favourable or unfavourable, and
how they can be made more favourable, to either end.
Were I a Nietzsche I would as sociologist enquire how
the spirit of the individually strongest can be best
conserved in, or in spite of, society. Were I a Schopen-
hauer I would enquire how society might best attain
Nirvana. Were I a Tolstoi I would enquire how social
conditions might most be made to conform to a certain
ideal of the simple " natural " life. Were I a Bismarck
I would seek the conditions under which peoples can
become hardened into world-powers. At a certain
point our sociologies will take different directions accord-
ing to our ethical ideals. Not that where our ideals conflict
our sociologies will also conflict, but rather that we are
answering different sociological questions. It is our
social interests that conflict. The conflict of ethical
ideas is, therefore, no ultimate problem for sociology.

cH.m THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY 59

Li so far as these confliot the socioIogiBts will ask different
questions and therefore find different answers.

Why, it may be asked, should sociology be involved in
the uncertainties of this ethical conflict ? Why cannot
it confine itself simply to the social facts, the causes and
the consequences, without naming them good or evil ?
The fuller answer to this question will appear later.
Meantime we may remark that the question would not
be asked at all were it not for an analogy drawn from the
" material " sciences. These, we suppose, are concerned
purely with facts and laws, not at aU with values. I
believe that our '' material " sciences are more entangled
with values than we usually imagine, that we cannot
study even stars or rocks or atoms without being some-
how determined, in our modes of systematisation, in the
prominence given to one or another part of the subject,
in the form of question we ask and attempt to answer, by
direct and human interests. The facts are not, but they
have, values. In the study of all human phenomena,
on the other hand, the facts, or some of them, not only
have, but are, values. There is no ought in chemistry,
no chemicaUy good or evil results and combinations :
there are no geologically good or evil types of rocks. In
all such sciences there is no teleology and no pathology.
But wherever the principle of life is found, the striving
towards a fulfilment envisaged or still unknown, there,
in plant, organism, mind, inevitably facts become more
than facts, something more compulsive and more arresting.
Wherever life exists, attainment and failure, growth and
decay, good and evil exist. Those who would make
sociology a '' natural " science, unconcerned with values,
would leave out of account the special characteristics of
the world of which it treats, in a vain attempt to ape
those sciences where such characteristics are unknown.
We are overmuch inclined to see in |)hysical science the

60 COMMUNITY bk. i.

type and model of aU science, and to imagine that mea-
surement alone is knowledge. Purposes are incom-
mensurate ; the movements of thought among a people
cannot be estimated by counting heads ; the power of
personaUty b not to be measured like the power of an
engine ; institutions are ideal constructions without
quantitative length or breadth. The things most know-
able are the things least measurable, purposes, passions,
desires, and the complex social world bmlt out of their
conflicts and co-ordinations. In truth, 3^u can measure
only what you cannot understand. You can measure only
the external, that which lies outside the grasp of the
imagination. But you can have no adequate interest in
society unless you are interested in it as fulfilling human
values. Its essential forms have been shaped by men's
purposes, and its development is wholly dependent on
the development of these purposes. These purposes have
all an ethical character. The very existence of society
means ethical purpose in its members. The sociologist
who has no ethical interest, no interest in social condi-
tions as relative to values, is a dilettante. He is like
a grammarian who studies the letters and syllables of
words but never thinks of the words themselves as
meanings. It is a possible method, and there is some
knowledge to be derived that way — but it is not the
knowledge of commimity.

So long as the sociologist never confuses what he wants
to exist with what exists, never lets his inevitable subjec-
tive valuation distort objective fact, his sociology and his
ethics will live together in peace. Putting it in the most
summary form, we may say that sociology is concerned
with facts. as values, ethics with values as facts.

Finally, it may be well to insist here, in view of later
discussions, that it is a false view of ethics which limits
its interest to a few social relations specially singled out

CK. m. THE PLACE OF SOCIOLOGY 61

as *^ moral." Every question of values is an ethical
question, and every purpose of men is relative to a value.
Ethical activity is thus peculiarly comprehensive. It is
not a species of activity co-ordinate with economic or
political or even religious activity. It builds no specific
association in the way that religious activity builds the
church or economic activity builds the industrial system.
It is not a specific type of activity at all, for it may be
revealed in all the specific types. Ethical activity is
wider in its range than any other, it is literally universal,
revealed in every activity of life. In its pure form it is
the most intimate and individualised and free of all
activities, and it makes unending demands on every
social organisation. Yet even if every association, even
if community to its outermost bounds, conformed per-
fectly to these demands, the ethical spirit would stiU
be partially unexpressed in its social constructions. It
\A more than the critic, it is the creator and maintainer,
the destroyer and renewer of all values. From the
conscience of the individual, where alone it resides, it
proclaims a law for the universe itself.

§ S. Sociology and psychology.

On no question is current sociological doctrine in so
confused a state as on that of the relation of sociology
to psychology. When the question is raised we are
generally put off with such statements as these, that
psychology is *' concerned with " the individual mind
and sociology with the interaction of minds, or — even
vaguer — ^that psychology " deals with " the individual
and sociology " deals with " the group, or — ^perhaps worst
of all — ^that psychology is '^ the science of the association
of ideas " while sociology is *' the science of the association
of minds." Statements like these merely confuse the
issue.

62 COMMUNITY bk. i.

Nor can we lay all the blame at the door of the sociolo-
gists. Some psychologists define their subject-matter in
a way which adds to the confusion. Thus psychology
has been recently defined as " the positive science of the
conduct of living creatures." ^ This definition is intended
to meet a not very serious difficulty connected with the
usual definition of psychology as ** the science of mind "
or " the science of consciousness," and is itself open to
more serious objections. The qualification " positive "
is meant to distinguish psychology from " normative "
studies such as logic and ethics, but since men often act
this way or that because they believe they ought to act so,
since they sometimes draw conclusions because they find
them validy the present writer at least fails to see how a
positive science of conduct can be built which fails to
investigate principles so essentially determinative of
conduct. However, we may leave the psychologist to
settle that issue with the students of logic and ethics.
There is a broader objection which concerns us more
directly. If conduct be the disHnctive subject-matter
of psychology, then psychology is an encyclopsedic
science of which sociology (including all the special social
sciences) is a part. The author of this definition illus-
trates the conception of conduct or behaviour by the
case of the guinea-pig returning to its hole, the dog
seeking its home even from a great distance, the exile
returning to his country after many years. But other
sciences than psychology take cognisance of these pheno-
mena. Are zoology, anthropology, and sociology simply
branches of psychology ?

The source of confusion here involved may be revealed
as follows. Every thing a living creature does or suffers,
every event in history or experience, is a psychical pheno-

^ W. M'Dougall, Phynohgical Psychology, p. 1 ; Psychology (Home
Univenity Library), p. 19.

cH, m. THE PLACE OP SOCIOLOGY 63

menon, and oannot be understood except in teims of
the purposes and needs and passions of psychical beings.
Herein alone is '* vital " law clearly distinguished from
" material " law. '^ Any external circumstances what-
ever which we designate as social would be a puppet-show,
as void of intelligibility and meaning as the interplay of
the clouds or the intergrowth of the branches of trees,
did we not, quite as a matter of course, recognise psychical
motives, feelings, thoughts, needs, not merely as bearers
(Trager) of these externalities, but as their reality and as
alone of intrinsic interest to us." ^ AU conduct, properly
so called, is therefore psychical, biU paychology is not
ikerefore the science cf aU conduct.

For conduct has a double character. It is the activity
of a mind in relation to a world other than itself. In all
it does, in all it thinks or hopes or believes, the mind is
always in relation to its world. The relation is indis-
soluble, mind apart from object is as utterly beyond
our comprehension as object apart from mind. Here is
where the difference between psychology and all other
Bcienoes — and the essential difficulty of psychology — ^is
revealed. The other sciences study this world of objects —
not merely material objects, for our ideas and imagina-
tions, our mental constructions of every kind, our institu-
tions and social forms, are also objects of mind. The
study of its objects, material and immaterial, is the
proper or natural direction of mind. It is the treatment
of objects as objects. But psychology essays a more
perilous task. It seeks to know mind, the knower ; it
seeks to complete the objective world of science by making
the essential subject itself an object, and an object to

paoBage ia from Professor Simmers remarkable Saziologie
(p. 21 ), one of the few works which appredate the bearing of our present
question. Bat I do not think that Professor Simmd*s oondusion,
whieh makes sociology a study of abstract social relations, is adequate
or

64 COMMUNITY bk

itself. The task has only to be stated for us to realise its
extreme hazardousness. In so far as we can know mind
at all, it must be through some kind of analysis of its
realisations in subject-object relations. Psychology, in
other words, can study the mind only in its relation to
objects ; but psychology is interested never in the object
as such, always in the object as itself manifesting the
character of the subject which perceives, thinks, knows,
feels, or wills it. Where the object of mind is material
(or physical) there is little danger of our confusing the
sciences which study the objects of mind with the science
which studies mind itself. But where the object of mind
is in some special sense the work of mind, a grave danger
arises, and here it is especially important to distinguish
the science of the mental object from the science of the
subject-mind, to distinguish, say, ethics, logic, sociology,
and philosophy from psychology. The only object which
the psychologist could study jar its own sake would be
mind as object, were it possible, as some psychologists
seem to believe, for mind to be object either to itself
or to some other subject ; and that object is totally
di£Eerent in character from what we call the " content " of
mind, from the concept which is in its very nature object,
not subject. The study of these concepts — ^for their own
sake, in the systems which' they form — ^is not psychology.
When, therefore, we study laws or customs or any social
institutions, in order to attain a knowledge of these things,
we are not psychologists but sociologists. Forms of
association or community are in their nature objective
things, just as truly as forms of speech or types of art
are objective, just as truly as colours or sights or sounds
are objective. They are what mind thinks, not what
mind is. They reveal mind, but they are not mind,
and their laws are not the laws of mind. Even the
so-called laws of thought are not the laws of the behaviour

CH.II1. THE PLACE OP SOCIOLOGY 66

of mind. They are laws of the behaviour of objects.
'* A thing oannot both be and not be ' V-that statement
is abont things, not about minds. Were it a statement
of the behaviour of mind, we might suppose that, if
minds were different, a thing might both be and not be ;
but the same supposition is equally true or equally false
in respect of every statement about things.

The confusion arises from the fact that some sciences
may be regarded as throwing a more direct light than
otheis on the nature of mind. Sociology in especial gives
aid to psychology, just as psychology gives special aid
to sociology. Human needs and purposes create social
fltmotuies. What is it on which our attention is f ocussed ?
If the nature of social structures, as created by and as
fulfilling men's needs and purposes, then we are sociolo-
gists. If the nature of mind as revealed in the structures
which they have built, then we are psychologists. It is
a difference of attitude in regard to a common material.
The study of these social relations is a sociological study,
but it provides the psychologist with data whence he
may derive psychological fact. Man's activity as a social
being, like man's activity in every sphere, throws light
on the character of mind. Men cannot dig or build or
analyse or philosophise without revealing their essential
minds — still less can they enter into relation with their
fdlows without so doing. Men are not always digging
or building or philosophising, but all men are always
revealing themselves as members formed within and
active within a society.

P&yohology when it studies mind as revealed in social
relation is often called " social psychology," an expression
which has given rise to much misunderstanding. For, of
course, social relations are the social relations of individuals.
There are no individuals who are not social individuals,
and there is no social mind that is not individual mind.

66 COMMUNITY BK. I. OH. m.

Hence " sooial " psychologjr. is rather an aspect than a
branch of psychology, smce there is no individual psycho-
logy from which it can be demarcated. Again, it is often
said that " social " psychology and sociology are either
wholly ^ or in great part * identical. But we must bear in
mind the distinction of attitude already referred to.
The psychological interest is distinguishable from the
sociological interest. This is easily seen in practice. If
we compare, for example, Mr. McDougaU's Social Payeho-
logy with the Social Psychology of Professor Boss, we see
that the former is interested in social phenomena mainly
from the psychological point of view, the latter mainly
from the sociological point of view. The one is interested
directly in the social relations of men, the other is on the
whole more interested in the light they throw on essential
mind. Both are interested in the conduct of living
creatures — ^psychology has no monopoly in that — but
the attitude is different, and that makes a world of
difference to the result.

> See, e,g,, Karl Pearson, The Oramtnar of Science, p. 627.
' See, e.g.. Ward, Pure Sociology, p. 69.

BOOK 11.
AN ANALYSIS OF COMMUNITY.

CHAPTER I

FALSE PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY

§1. Introdnctory.

The failure to understand the true distinction and the
creation of false distinctions between " individual " and
'' social " is a main source of sociological error.

There are no individudU who are not social individtuds,
and sodeiy is nothing more than individuals associated and
organised. Society has no Uf e but the Hf e of its members,
no ends that are not thdr ends, and no f ulfihnent beyond
theirB. There is no conflict between society and the
individual, between the welfare of society and the welfare
of (ke individual. The quality of a society is the quality
of its members. There is no social morality that is not
individual morality, and no social mind that is not
individual mind.

A recognition of these simple truths is a first step in
the understanding ot society. Yet they are often denied
and more often ignored. And the reason, strange though
it may seem, is the hold which bad metaphysics has upon
US, even — or especially — on those who abjure meta-
physics altogether. Many of those who regard a society
as other and more than the members who compose it,
might be surprised to learn that their doctrine rests on one
or other or both of the two oldest metaphysical delusions
known to the history of thought, the delusion that relations
are in some way independent or outside of the things

70 COMMUNITY bk. n.

related in them, and the delusion that the type exists
somehow by itself, " transcendental '' to its members !

A society consists of beings like to one another in various
ways, essentially like-minded, essentially like-bodied
also. Thus one can conceive a type of which each is an
instance or embodiment. All " share " a common nature.
Now the one metaphysical delusion is to regard this
common nature, this abstract type, as somehow sub-
stantial and real in itself. We first substantiate it, and
then empty into it the whole worth and value of the mere
individuals who "embody" or "exemplify" it. We
make flesh and blood and soul that which the sculptor
symbolises in stone and the artist caricatures on paper.
The sculptor embodies in stone his conception of Britannia,
the artist draws on paper his conception of John Bull, but
many of us, quite unreflectingly, r^ard our conceptions
not as abstract or symbolic or representative, but as real.
It is not possible here to explain the metaphysical char-
acter of this fallacy, it must suffice to point out its existence
and the misunderstanding which it creates. It is an error
that pervades both popidar and systematic thinking on
society, and it is as common as it is rarely noted. One
acute social observer has recently commented upon it.
Speaking of certain people whom he supposes guilty of
this fallacy he says : " They were, in the scholastic
sense — ^which so oddly contradicts the modem use of the
word — ^ Realists.' They believed classes were recU and
independent of their individuals. This is the common
habit of all so-called educated people who have no meta-
physical aptitude and no metaphysical training. It leads
them to a progressive misunderstanding of the world." ^
(H. G. Wells, The New MachiaveUi.) This fallacy is so

^ I fear the author is too optimistic as to the effect of metaphysical
training, since many of our metaphysicians have fallen into the sam^e
error.

cH. I. PAUSE PERSPECTIVES OP COMMUNITY 71

wide-spread and takes so many forms that we*shall have
frequently to refer to it.

Again, a society consists of beings related to one another
in various ways, some superficial, some deep and vital.
Into social relations men are bom, in them they live and
develop. None lives or dies to himself, and all are bound
up in one unity by reason of their social relationships.
It is when men reflect on this essential fact that they fall,
so often, into the second metaphysical delusion. They
come to think of these social relations as literary ties
between man and man, somehow outside the beings they
bind together, as railway couplings are outside the carriage
they connect. It is extraordinarily difficult, owing to
the poverty of language, to talk of relations without
making this false implication. The result is, as we shall
see presently, that men come to think of society as
''greater than the sum of its parts," as in some way
independent of its "parts." This false conception of
society disappears in a true estimate of the meaning of
relations. Consider for instance the " bond " of kinship,
say as between father and son. Here fatherhood as a
relationship is an element in the personality of the being
we call "father," just as sonship is an element in the
personality of the being we call " son." Or take the
rdationship of friendship. We speak of the ties of friend-
ship, but the ties are the reciprocal sentiments felt by
each towards the other of the beings so related. The
ties exist in the personality of each, and there alone.
Or take a political relationship, that of governor and
governed. There can be no governor where there is no
governed, and vtce-veraa^ but governorship is an activity
of the one, and subjection to government a corresponding
passivity and activity of the other. Social relations, in
a word, are simply those elements and functions of per-
sonality in each which are dependent on the elements

72 COMMUNITY bk. n.

and functions of personality in others. Society is there-
fore not relations, but beings in their relationships. It
follows that there is no social function which is outside of
the functions of personalities. Society is in us, in each
of us, in some degree in all, in the highest degree in the
greatest of us.

Having seen the bases on which they rest, we may now
examine the special errors into which men have been
misled in the general interpretation of society.

§2. Oommumty as organism.

We may take the oldest first. It was very natural that
when men first came to refiect on the life of a community,
they should have been struck by certain features of it
wherein it resembled the life of an individual animal or
organism, the persistence of the whole though members
pass away, the division of function between the members
serving the welfare of the whole, the dependence of every
member on the " corporate " unity of the whole. From
the observance of these and other resemblances — as they
were observed for instance by Aristotle and St. Paul —
it was only a step to the " explanation " of society in
terms of organism, and the establishment of a complete
and intricate analogy. This '' explanation " took whim-
sical form in such mediaBval writers as Nicolas of Cues,
who found that in the political life the offices of state
are the limbs, the laws are the nerves, the imperial decrees
the brains, the fatherland the skeleton, and the transient
human beings the fiesh ! ^ Thence the conception of
community as a kind of organism passed into the modem
world, finding countless expressions from the days of
Hobbes and his " Great Leviathan " until Spencer and
Schaffle arose in the fullness of time, and squandered upon
it their power and ingenuity.

^ Cf . Gierke, Political Theories oj the MiddU Age, n. 79.

ciLi. FAI£E PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 73

Yet it requires only a little analysis to detect the falsity
of an analogy which, valnable at first as a protest against
mechanical conceptions^ finally has wrought harm, not
only in the study of general sociology, but in ethics,
politics, psychology, and economics as well. There are,
indeed, as we have already admitted, several very signifi-
cant resemblances between community and organism.
But it is a false and pernicious deduction which regards
community as any kind of organism. To prove this
statement it is unnecessary here to enter into the details
of the analogy. One or two general observations will
suffice.

( 1 ) There is one essential difference between a community
and an organism which destroys aU real analogy. An
organism is or has — according as we interpret it — a single
centre, a unity of life, a purpose or a consciousness which
is no purpose or consciousness of the several parts but
only of the whole. A community consists * of myriad
centres of life and consciousness, of true autonomous
individuals who are merged in no such corporate unity,
whose purposes are lost in no such corporate purpose.
This difference was admitted by Spencer himself — ^there
was *' no corporate consciousness " within society — but
had he realised the far-reaching significance of that
admission he must have transformed his whole philosophy.
For this central difference determines a thousand other
differences, and reveals the analogy as merely superficial
even where it seems most apt. A community does not
act in unity like an organism, or maintain itself like an
organism, or grow like an organism, or reproduce like an
organism, or die like an organism. The central difference
renders the whole analogy vain.

(2) We know better the meaning of society than the
meaning of organism. When' we say " organism "
do we include the consciousness which, at least in the

74 COMMUNITY bk. n.

case of animal organisms, gives it form and meaning, or
can we somehow " abstract " the organic from the con-
scious life ? What are we to say of the relation of an
organism to its environment ? Is it merely mechanical
reaction or is it indeed an intelligent response — '' quasi-
intelligent " like all " quasis " begs the question ? Is it
physico-chemically determined, or is it '' free " ? If the
determination be purely mechanical, the failure of the
analogy is obvious ; and if it be other than mechanical,
must it not be purposive ? If then it be purposive, we
have already reached the stage of mind, and are speaking,
properly, not of bodily but of mental and spiritual powers.
Let us then take organism in this wide sense as having an
end or purpose — ^not merely a function — ^to which all its
parts, cells and organs, contribute. Still the central
difference makes analogy vain. For if the analogy is to
hold, the parts must have ends or purposes as well as the
whole— the cells must have purposes (if you regard the
cells as the elements in organism corresponding to
individuals in community), or the organs must have pur-
poses (if it is these that correspond), and the purposes of
the elements must give meaning to the whole, since in
community it is the purposes of the individuals which
alone give the purpose of the whole. But it is exceedingly
di£Scult to speak of cells or organs as having purposes.
Kant indeed defined an organism as '* a whole of which
the parts are reciprocally ends and means." Means,
certainly, but how ends ? Shall we say the heart is an
end for itself, or the liver, or the brain ? Is not such a
conception itself sociomorphic, derived from human
society and nowhence else, true of human society and of
nothing else ? It is in human society that we understand
the meaning of " reciprocal ends and means," in the inter-
actions of men who through interaction fulfil their indi-
vidual and common purposes. So we are here first of all

CH. I. FALSE PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 76

interpieting organism in terms of society, and then reflect-
ing the analogy back again. Which is as perverse as to say
of a man that he is a very good likeness of his portrait.
And in any case the likeness does not hold.

When the biologists have told us whether an organism
is an engine or a chemical compomid or a spirit or an
" entelechy " or all together, we shall better miderstand
the analogy it bears to a communal group — but before
that we may have gone a long way in the direct under-
standing of community.

(3) Sometimes men find the analogy to lie between
state and organism, sometimes between community and
organism, but generally they confuse the two. Now
community is a matter of degree, with no set bounds,
whereas organism is a closed system. Is the city of
Edinburgh a social organism ? But it is part of the
community of Scotland. Is Scotland an organism ?
But it is part of the community of the United Kingdom.
Is the united Kingdom an organism ? But a wider
community envelops and is enveloping it. Organisms
within organisms, and not as parasites !

We cannot run away from these difficulties by merely
prefixing an adjective, and speaking of " social " or
'' spiritual " or " contractual " organism. The prefix
only adds to the confusion. This is veiy evident in the
case of the prefix last mentioned. It is a contradictio in
adjedOy an implied denial of those very characters which
make an organism what it is. By calling society a
" contractual organism " Fouill^ sought to reconcile
the current opposition between organism-theories and
contract-theories of society.^ But the opposition is
foctitious and should be resolved, not reconciled. There
ought to be no opposition between contract-theories and
organism-theories. Contract, as we have already seen,

^ La Science SociaU Coniemporaine,

78 COMMUNITY bk. n.

us enter into any arrangement whatever, there arises in
some sort a system of '* mental or purposive forces," or»
more strictly, a certain relation of the purposive forces
oj each mind to those of the other. But. why are we to
call the inter-relation of ^' mental forces " a mind ? Does
the sjrstem so created think and will and feel and act ?
Does it perform a single one of those operations which we
recognise as the work of that essentially active thing, a
mind ? If a number of minds construct by their inter-
activity an organisation "which can only be described
in terms of mind," must we ascribe to the construction
the very nature of the forces which constructed it ? That
is surely impossible. Must we then, alternatively, postu-
late a mind which thinks the whole construction ? In
that case a " collective mind " would think the whole
structure of the collectivity of which it is presumably the
subject ; the " collective mind " of England, for instance,
would think the whole complex structure of the English
community. Unfortunately that greater mind does not
communicate its thinking to individual minds, else they
might learn directly from the subject what they com-
prehend only painfully and imperfectly from the study
of that structure which is its hypothetical object I Again,
social organisations occur of every kind and every degree
of universality. If England has a collective mind, why
not Birmingham and why not each of its wards ? If a
nation has a collective mind, so also have a church and a
trade union. And we shall have collective minds that
are parts of greater collective minds, and collective minds
that intersect other collective minds. But all these
"minds" lack the integrity and isolation and unity of
action which are essential to the very conception of
mind.

(2) The second argument is an obvious fallacy. If
each man thinks and acts differently as a member of a

C3H. I. FALSE PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 79

crowd or association and as an individual standing out
of any such immediate relation to his fellows, it is still
each who thinks and acts ; the new determinations are
determinations still of individual minds as they are
influenced by a^regation. When sheep play follow-my-
leader, we do not attribute the movement of the flock to
a flock-mind. When men congregate, each mind responds
in a particular way to this mind-environment, as it
responds in a particular way to any other kind of
environment, to sea or mountain or city or desert. But
in the former case the environment is intimate, akin,
mutually responsive. Take the simple example of the mob.
The environment changes with the response of each who
forms a constituent of it, and the change : Ji turn occasions
a new response of each, and so on. Tlxus a peculiarly
rapid process of mental change takes place in the members
of a crowd. Each becomes to a degree (Susceptible and
imitative. The mood of each is assimilated to that of
each other. To the onlooker it seems as though waves
of emotional agitation swept through the cix>wd. Each
is less than himself, not surely because he has become
part of a greater mind, but because the e£Fect of aggrega-
tion is to evoke in each a certain emotional response at
the cost of rationality. There is no structure of organisa-
tion within which the individual can find shelter for his
individuality against the overpowering cumulative in-
fluence of mass-suggestion and mass-imitation. But this
is merely an extreme instance of the obvious 1:act that
every mind is influenced by every kind of envi .*onment.
To posit a super-individual mind because iiidividual
minds are altered by their relations to one another (as
indeed they are altered by their relations to^ physical
conditions) ia surely gratuitous.

(I have taken this extreme case because it is to such
types of activity that men generally point when asked to

80 COMMUNITY bk.u.

exemplify the conception of '' collective mind." Strictly
speaking, it is no such thing. But it is interesting to note
that this case which most suggests a non-individualised
social mind f onus one of the lowest and not of the highest
social manifestations. It is the contagious psychical
influence that moves a herd of buffaloes or a human
crowd, the mood that responds to the waving of iSags, the
beating of drums, the shouting of the loud-voiced orator,
the appeal of the impassioned extremist. It is the con-
tagious psychical influence that carries a man out of him-
self, but rarely to a higher level, nearly always to a lower.
It is an influence that nearly all students of society regard
as evil, to be counteracted by education in self-control,
the retainment of individuality.^ The crowd is passionate,
stupid, mercilefjfi, and immoral. When its passion is just
the crowd acts like a fool, when unjust like a raging beast.
It understands^ only the simple and clamant and spectac-
ular. It cao^ destroy, but it cannot create. It chooses a
Barabbas beiore the Christ.)

It is imp|^itant to clear out of the way this misleading
doctrine ob gnper-individual minds corresponding to social
or communal organisations and activities, and therefore
it may hel^^\[ to go a little deeper in our analysis. Strictly
speakingj ^^ ^an hardly even say that, at least under
normal fjonditions, minds or mental processes irUeratt;
they arej „^ther interdependent, determined indirectly by

R^W^i^. PlfcMogy of StmesUan, Part m I^ Bon. ^'^ Orcwd,
^!"' ^nial Pmhohgy, olmp. v. Simmel (SoMogie) quotes 8ehiUer*8
epigram, | „^f leidlich Huge und verstandige Leute in ooipoie su

h»diJr3»B shows th»* BMW meetmgB amve at tne mom wron^
h^hL^edsiaiis, in ooiisequenee ot which the ^stein of delegates
uS^«2Sl in large measure substituted. '"«»«»»«»)»*«>*"?«'"■"
toal^-d mass and their conduct as an oiganiaed sooto^y differ
^iXSrkableway. ThisisweU murt«ted.«i.trj^-u^l«^r
they becked me, by the case of the dock-labonrew <rf London. Before
th^ ^«« oria^ they were a* the mercy of mob<.r«tor^ but
w^ ttnZr^S. of "^group-psychology lost their a«>endency
locker's union was property oonstitotea.

CH. I.

PAUSE PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 81

the activities of other minds. Such determination is of
two kinds ; the more immediate, where by symbolic
conununication — Slanguage, gesture, art — ^the thoughts
and purposes of one mind are represented to others, and
so affect the thoughts and purposes of others ; the less
immediate where each, by the physical operations
through which its purposes are pursued, alters thereby
the conditions under which others must act for the ful-
filment of their purposes, and so indirectly alters their
purposes and thoughts as well. The interests of all are
thus interdependent ; they harmonise so that they can
best be attained for each through the co-operation of all,
or they conflict, so that the attainment of his interests by
one means the negation of the interests of others. In
all conmiunity there is a vast complex of co-operative and
competitive forces out of which spring, as resultants, its
common properties, its customs and institutions. But
to tiie resultant unity there need correspond no unity of
mind. Often when we faU to perceive the complexity of
the process from which social institutions or movements
result, especially when they are hidden from us in the
scantily-recorded life of the past, we readily resort to a
simpiified explanation, as if they were the direct expres-
sion of a single purpose. Our knowledge of the com-
plexity of the social process in the present should make
us wary of these conclusions.

But, it will be said, there are purposes common to many
minds, and these express themselves as co-operant
activity in the formation of common institutions. Cer-
twily, and as will appear later, these common purposes
are the first foundations of all society. Here it is necessary
only to point out that the common or type element in
many minds does not constitute a common or type mind
in the sense of a super-individual entity. There is no
more a great ** collective " mind beyond the individual

82 COMMUNITY bk. h.

minds in society than there is a great " collective " tree
beyond all the individual trees in nature. A collection of
trees is a wood, and that we can study as a unity ; so a
congregation of men is a society, a much more determinate
unity : but a collection of trees is not a collective tree,
and neither is a collection of persons or minds a collective
person or mind. We can speak of qualities of tree in
abstraction from any particidar trees, and we can speak
of qualities of mind as such, or of some particular kind of
mind, or of mind in relation to some type of situation.^
But in so doing we are simply considering the character-
istic or like elements of individual minds, as we might
consider the characteristic or like elements discoverable
in individual trees and kinds of trees. To conceive,
because of these identities, a "collective'' mind as
existing beside those of individuals or a collective tree
beside the variant examples is to run against the dead wall
of the Idea theory ; it is to give a prima-facie obvious
but demonstrably false answer to the ancient question, for
ever haunting and unanswerable : Can the identities we
find in individual things, — ^type, stock, race, whatever
the identity be,— exist only in conception or idea, while
only the individual things themselves exist " in nature " ?
False, because the answer is got by supposing the abstract
to be concrete also, the attribute to be substance also ;
false because it is an attempt to image the invisible
moulds of things in terms of the things moulded, to
give to forms the qualities of Substance in the mistaken
belief that so they are rendered more comprehensible.
Fortunately, the sociologist has no call to answer the
real metaphysical question involved, since it does not

^ It is in this senBe we speak of the ** mind ** of a race, the ** soul **
of a people, and so on. We do not mean by it anything super-individual
or transcendental. But we should not speak in this connection of a
" coHecHve mind," any more than we speak of a " collective soldier **
when we mean an army, or a " collective tree *' when we mean a wood.

CHI. FALSE PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 83

arise in his sphere alone, and until men speak of the
unity or activity of super-individual tree or animal or
stone, we may well refrain from speaking of the unity
or activity of super-individual mind.

It will now be clear that when we speak of the will or the
mind or sentiments of a conmiunity , we mean no mystical
will or mind or sentiments. We are speaking of the like
willing or the like thinking or the like feeling of social
beings. If I love and honour my country, it is the love
and honour of a mind, of a uni-centred spiritual being.
But if a country loves and honours one of its members,
that multi-centred love and honour is a very different
thing. He loves it as a unity, but it cannot as a unity
love him in turn. Many hearts may beat as one, but the
heart-beats are still many. In a sense, perhaps in more
senses than one, that is true of community which Spinoza
said was true of God — ^if we love it we should not hope for
a love reciprocal to our own. The community which we
love does not as such think or feel. It has no unitary
mind or will or heart.

Appropriately enough, the only thorough-going attempt
to conceive a community in terms of a communal mind
was made in the Republic of Plato. ^ But Plato did not
think of a super-individual mind as existing beside or
beyond individual minds ; he rather regarded the minds
of the members of a community as together constituting
a greater mind like in every respect to the smaller. The
community is " the individual soul written large." We
can understand the microcosm of the individual if we
onderstand the macrocosm of community, and vice versa.
If there are three parts of the individual soul, there are
three classes of the community. As the parts of the soul
are related to one another, so should the classes of the
conmiunity be related to one another ; as there is a

^ See i?«p., pp. 368, 369, 435, 441,

84 COMMUNITY bk. n.

reasoning part of the soul which ought to control the rest,
so there is a reasoning class of the community which ought
to control the other classes, and as there is an appetitive
and again a '* passionate " element in the soul, so there
is an appetitive and again a passionate class in the com-
munity.

If taken at all literally, this is both bad psychology and
bad sociology. It is bad psychology, because you cannot
^' divide " mind into self-subsistent faculties. We think
with our whole mind, feel with our whole mind, will with
our whole mind. Reasoning, feeling, willing, perceiving,
believing, desiring — ^these are all complex activities in
which the whole mind, not mere " parts " of it, is active.
To speak sunmiarily, each involves the predominance of
an aspect of mind, not the pure functioning of a part.
And it is bad sociology, because you cannot make the
classes of a community correspond either to aspects or to
parts of mind. The analogy breaks down. You cannot
have one class which merely or even mainly thinks,
another which merely feels. (As it is, Plato's classes — ^the
philosophers, the guardians, and the workers — do not
really correspond to his divisions of mind into reasoning,
passionate, and appetitive parts.) The great defect of
any such conception is that it obscures the true unity of
community. For classes so distinguished are related only
by way of difference, each fulfilling its nature in con-
tributing specifically distinct functions, like the separate
parts of a machine each shaped differently to the service
of an end not its own, — ^nor yet that of the whole machine.

The nearest approach to the fulfilment of such a con-
ception would be some " aristocratic " state where classes
become castes, a state where unity rests, as it indeed rests
for Plato, merely on a ** justice " which sees that each
part fulfils its own distinct function, ''does its own
business." For justice is a principle of partition, the

ciLi. PAUSE PERSPECrriVES OF COMMUNITY 85

affligning to each that whioh is his own and no one else's.
Difference of function — ^in a narrower sense — ^is indeed
essentdal within a community, but beyond the difference
involved in external function there must exist, as we shall
see, an inward likeness. Society is not simply or primarily
the harmony of differences, but the union of likes. The
likeness is ultimate, and therefore justice is not the deepest
ground of social unity nor the completest social morality.
It is only the superficial social relationships — and these
only when fulfilled in a superficial manner — which rest
on mere difference, as the relation of master to servant,
employer to employee, buyer to seller. There the ex-
change of a quid pro quo may be all that is involved in the
relationship. But in a true community the ruler makes
laws for himself no less than for the governed to obey,
the imposer of taxes imposes them on himself as well ; so
the true priest confesses as well as hears confession, and
the true doctor prescribes for his patient only what in
like circumstances he prescribes for himself. The relations
of difference remain, but they imply an identity of nature
in the members so related, a relation of likeness on which
the rdation of difference is founded. Likeness of nature
involves likeness of ends and likeness of goods. There-
fore you cannot split up a community into classes corre-
sponding to distinct and exclusive elements, whether of
mind or of anything else.

All community is a web of likenesses and differences, of
what is common and what is diverse in the members of it.
It is thus a system complex and wonderful beyond the
complete understanding of any of its members. But we
must not invent a communal mind to think that greater
system. The bonds of society are in the members of
society, and not outside them. It is the memories,
traditions, and beliefs of each which make up social
memories, traditions, and beliefs. Society like the

66 COMMUNITY m. n.

kingdom of God is within us. Within us, within each of
us, and yet greater than the thoughts and understandings
of any of us. For the social thoughts and feelings and
willings of each, the socialised mind of each, with the
complex scheme of his relation to the social world, is no
mere reproduction of the social thoughts and feelings and
willings of the rest. Unity and difference here too weave
their eternal web, the greater social scheme which none
of us who are part of it can ever see in its entirety, but
whose infinite subtlety and harmony we may more and
more comprehend and admire. As a community grows
in civilisation and culture, its traditions are no longer
clear and definite ways of thinking, its usages are no longer
uniform, its spirit is no longer to be summed up in a few
phrases. It is only the primitive mind, or the civilised
mind reduced to primitiveness by the degrading obses-
sions of war, which applies its crude ethical antitheses of
"good" and "bad," "true" and "false," "brave"
and " cowardly " to whole peoples. But the spirit and
tradition of a people become no less real in becoming
more complex. Each member no longer embodies the
whole tradition, but it is because each embodies some
part of a greater tradition to which the freely-working
individuality of each contributes. In this sense the
spirit of a people, though existing only in the individual
members, more and more surpasses the measure of any
individual mind.

Again, the social tradition is expressed through institu-
tions and records more permanent than the short-lived
members of community. These institutions and records
are as it were stored social values (just as, in particular,
books may be called stored social knowledge), in themselves
nothing, no part of the social mind, but the instruments
of the communication of traditions from member to
member, as also from the desA past to the living present.

CH.1. PAi;SE PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 87

In this way too, with the increase of these stored values,
of which members realise parts but none the whole, the
spirit of a people more and more surpasses the measure
of any individual mind. It is these social forces within
and without, working in the minds of individuals whose
own social inheritance is an essential part of their in-
dividuality, stored in the institutions which they maintain
from the past or establish in the present, that mould the
communal spirit of the successive generations. In this
sense too a community may be called greater than its
members who exist at any one time, since the community
itself marches out of the past into the present, and its
members at any time are part of a great succession,
themselves first moulded by communal forces before they
become, so moulded, the active determinants of its future
moulding.

And as with knowledge, so with its concomitant and its
product — power, power as stored in all the contrivances
whereby man has harnessed nature to his service. Those
means of knowledge and of power are the capital of com-
munity, capital which is taken over by each successive
g^ieration and increased in the measure of the wisdom
of each — a true inheritance. This capital is the apparatus,
the property of community, external to it as an individual's
property is external to himself. It is none the less of
incalculable significance. Without it our history would
be an endless succession of futile beginnings. This has
been well emphasised by an American sociologist :
" Our prehistoric ancestors of the stone age, and of still
earlier times, dragged out their miserable lives with little
or no capital of any kind. And what should we of
western civilisation do, if, at birth, we were thrust into
the midst of the primitive struggle for existence ? What
would distinguish us from our prehistoric ancestors ?
Nothing of moment. Prehistoric men could not invent

88 COMMtJNITY bk. n.

the telegraph, discover the differential calculus, build a
sky-scraper, nor construct a steam-engine : and we, if
removed at birth from all contact with civilisation, with
its accumulated capital of all kinds, could not surpass the
achievements of our primitive ancestors. We too
growing up from birth wholly outside the influences of
civilisation, should live the life of primeval men." ^ Our
native '* inheritance," that self-hood which we are or
will attain, would be a frustrated and unavailing poten-
tiality in the absence of those tneana to knowledge
and to power which are in all literalness our social
inheritance.

All these facts we may gladly admit. They are of the
very greatest import, but that import is wholly mistaken
if we invent as the bearer of those great and secular
traditions some mind that is other than and beyond the
individual minds in whose interdependent activities
they have in the past been bom and in the present are
being maintained.

§ 4. Oommunity as " greater than the sum of its parts."
The facts we have just been instancing are often
regarded, even by those who reject the doctrine that
community is either an organism or a soul " writ large/'
as at least proving that community is somehow more
than its members, ''greater than the sum or resultant
of its parts." As this looser interpretation is also mis-
leading, and falsifies our perspective of some practical
problems of community, it may be well to devote to it
a little consideration.

When we speak of community as greater than the
sum of its parts, we are still thinking in terms of some
analogy, since the expressions " sum " and '' parts " are
not directly appropriate to society. Of what other

^ Wallis, Examination of Society, p. 273.

CH. I«

FALSE PEESPECnVES OF COMMUNITY 89

things can we properly say that they are more than " the
sum of their parts " ? If we turn to those who apply
the expression to society, we find that they make use
of such similes as this : Bronze has a hardness which
belongs to neither tin nor copper nor lead, its constituents ;
in like manner the character of a society differs from the
characters of its components, the individual men and
women. Or again they say : A body consists of parts,
of organs, but the whole body is something more than the
sum of its organs. Here we have the two types of instance
which suggest the statement that a society is ^^ greater
than the sum of its parts."

Let us look at the first type. The analogy is that of
the chemical transformation of elements when they enter
into composition. But the "parts" here are not the
parts of the compound, they are the elements, yet uncom-
pounded, which unite to form it. We are asked to dis-
tinguish such a chemical unity from a mere mechanical
one, which presumably is not ** more than the sum of its
parts." Thus M. Durkheim, in his advocacy of the
sodety-greater-than-the-sum-of -its-parts doctrine says :
'' I do not at all deny that the individual natures are the
components of the social fact. The question is whether,
in uniting to give birth to the social fact, they are not
transformed by the very fact of their combination. Is
the synthesis purely mechanical or chemical? There
ties the whole question."

Shall we ever learn to study society directly in itself, and
not in the distorting mirror of analogy ? The " whole ques-
tion " as asked by M. Durkheim is mere confusion. In the
case of chemical composition we are first given the elements
uncompounded. They enter into combination, passing
through a process of modification, and a new unity results.
Here not only is there no analogy whatever to social
process, but it is not even true that we have found a whole

90 COMMUNITY bk. n.

which, in the required sense, is *' greater than the sum of
its parts." For all that M. Durkheim and those who use
similar expressions mean is that the character and pro-
perties of the whole resulting from the chemical process
are different from the character and properties of any of
the several constituents as they existed before entering into
the combination. But the constituents so understood are
in no sense parts of the resulting unity, the copper and
tin and lead are not parts of the bronze. It is a still
greater confusion to say that community is greater than
*' the resultant of its parts." It should be obvious that
there is no analogy between the chemical process, or
any other process which gives resultants properly so
called, and the social process. We can find one only if
we fall back on some obsolete '* social contract " doctrine
of society which discovers men existing in some void out
of society and brings them in. If individuals never exist
out of society, where shall we find the non-social lead and
copper and tin which make the social bronze ? In truth
men are constantly being changed in the social process,
but the social process was there from the first, and it is
continuous and endless.

The second type is based on the organic analogy, that
fruitful mother of social misconceptions. Here one may
be brief, in view of what has been abeady said concerning
that analogy. Organs are essentially relative to the unity
and function of the organism, and to speak of the '' sum
of its organs " is mere nonsense. An organism cannot
be greater or less or in any relation whatever to the pure
figment, the '' sum of its parts." Any argument resting
on such an analogy is worthless.

There is no '* sum of individuals," no '' simi of the parts "
of a community. The social relationships of every
individual are not outside him, they are revelations of his
personality. How can you sum things if part of their

1. FALSE PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 91

consists in their relationships to one another ? To
talk of a " sum of individuals " is to think first of indivi-
duals as abstract, relationless, desociaUsable beings.
Understand individuals as concrete beings whose relations
to one another constitute factors of their personality, and
you realise that these are society, these and these alone —
and the metaphysical confusion which leads you to look
for something beyond this, something beyond these
unsummable social individuals, passes away.

There is a true distinction out of which these fake
distinctions may have arisen. For every association,
every organised group, may and does have rights and
obligations which are not the rights and obligations
of any or all of its members taken distributively but
only of the association acting as an organised unity. We
may therefore, in reference to any particular association^
distinguish associational (more loosely ^' social ") and
individual rights. What then are the former ? They
are the rights of the members of the association, or of
those whom they elect for that purpose, to act in a certain
capacity, in a certain predetermined way, in order to
attain certain common ends of all of them. To attain
these ends, a principle of organisation, limiting and direct-
ing the activity of the members, is imposed by the wills
which create the association. And so of duties. This
is simply an instance of the general case, that all rights
and duties are relative to particular situations. As a
unity the association may become a *' juristic person," a
'* corporation," and from the legal standpoint the char-
acter of unity so conceived is very important. But we
must beware how we substantiate the '' juristic person "
as integral mind or living body, when, as the old legal
saying made plain, it can suffer for its wrongdoings the
pains and penalties of neither. The ''juristic person"
is a real unity j and therefore more than a persona fieta.

92 COMMUNITY bk. n.

but the reality it possesses is of a totally difEerent order
of being from that of the persons who establish it.
What endless debate the writers on jurisprudence would
have been saved could they only have found for an
associational unity some other term than that of legal
person \ ^

Let us not conceive community either as mechanism or
as organism or as soul : for the unity of which we are
thinking is not mechanic or organic or even psychic, it is
properly named only with its own name, it is communal.

§ 6. The practical results.

I have dwelt so long on these false analogies because in
more or less subtle ways, under forms of expression too
rarely examined, they prejudice our study of social
questions. They are the sources of that most misleading
antithesis which we draw between the individual and
society, as though society were somehow other than its
individuals. Writers of a certain cast of mind are fond
of speaking as if the interests of society and of '* the
individual " (not of some individuals) were antagonistic.
Sometimes they maintain that '' the individual '' ought
to be subordinated to society, sometimes that " the indi-
vidual " ought to be delivered from society. One well-
known writer finds in the transition from a supposed age
in which " the individual " was the preeminent factor

^ Legal personality consists in the bearing of legal rights and obliga
tions, permissions and limitations which define the scope of their
activity. Notice that these are capacities with which the law endows
associations. Legal personality is granted, bestowed : it is therefore
not the essence c^ an association. It is a power or attribute which
no association ha$ in virtue of what it otherwise w. The English
trade union was not bom when it was granted legal personality
in the seventies of last century, nor was its character vitally
affected when it gladly divested itself in 1906 of a properly inseparable
attribute of l^gal personality. Personality in its full sense, as distinct
from " legal personality,** is essential quality or character, not title
or endowment. Hence we can with perfect consistency distinguish
associational from individual rights.

cH-i. FALSE PEESPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 93

to a supposed age in which society is the pre-eminent
factor the whole eicplanation of social evolution.^ Again>
these analogies seem to be responsible for those curious
distinctions between the " actual " and the " real " will
of the community which enable some writers to preach
autocracy in the name of democracy.* In a word, they
stand in the way of a true appreciation of that intricate
weaving of individuality and sociality which forms the
not-to-be-unravelled web of life. Analyse these mis-
leading analogies, and in the revelation of their falsity
there is revealed also the falsity of this essential opposition
of individual and society. Properly understood, the
interests of *' the individual " are the interests of society.
We were here talking not of two distinct things but of two
aspects of one thing. Oppositions there are within society
innumerable and endless, but these are all partial, to be
construed in a very different manner. They will be
discussed in their proper place — ^here we need only show
in conclusion how the doctrine of esaential opposition
distorts our practical philosophies.

It leads to either of two extremes. One is the common
doctrine emphasised by Comte and by Fichte that right
conduct is that in which the individual utterly forgets
hunself and remembers only his community. " There is
but a single virtue," said Fichte, '* to forget oneself as
individual. There is but a single vice, to look to oneself."
Noble as this ideal sounds, it is open to a serious criticism.
The virtue of self-negation, like its brother virtue of
obedience, may easily, when over-stressed, become the
too faithful servant of blind tradition or designing power.
We must insist, in the face of misinterpretation, that the
service of one's fellow or one's country or one's race is
not the complete end of life, nor fitness for such service,
'* fitness for citizenship," the complete end of education.

* Mr. Benjamin Kidd. ' See Appendix A.

94 COMMUNITY bk. n.

To make 8Uoh fitness or service the ethical ideal is to
reason in a circle, and is to darken the very meaning of
that vital fitness for service. It is to reasJn in a3e.
for if the fulfilment of each lies in the service of all, each
becomes a means to the ends of others who yet are them-
selves but means. All serve an end which is no one's end,
and therefore not the end of the whole. Each man may
find his welfare through social service, but his end is not
therefore social service. It is not what he is for. Nothing
extrinsic can be a man's fulfilment — or a people's. If we
serve the welfare of *^ the race," yet the race consists of
successive generations and the successive generations are
also individuals. If a social ideal be not fulfilled in the
lives of individuals present or to come, where is it ful-
filled ? And again, it is to darken the meaning of service,
for to serve others as individuals or as an association or
community is to strive for the well-being of one's fellows :
that well-being consists in definite conditions and activities
of life, and these ends for others, if they are true, are ends
for each. Speaking generally, it is only because they are
ends for me, because they are good things I have already
attained or am on the way to attaining, that I can seek
to help others to attain them also. In seeking others'
good we can find our own, but we can seek for others only
what we have already in some measure attained for our-
selves. The level of the individual gives the worth of
his social interests. The service of the unworthy is
unworthy service, and the love of the unworthy is un-
worthy love.

As individuality develops the more within society, the
more do we need a right understanding of individuality.
The social person is the only pure unit we know, others
are only relative. Sum up his social relationships, he is
more than these. Understand his environment, he may
not be there, he goes in and he goes out. Explain him by

CH. I

. FAI^E PERSPECTIVES OF COMMUNITY 96

heredity, you are eicplaining him by himself. All values
are finally personal, values of personality, and in the
service of personality alone are laws and institutions
justified.

As the one extreme doctrine sinks the person in his
social relationships, so the other and more dangerous
extreme elevates him beyond social relationships alto-
gether. This is the " amoralism " of Thrasymachus and
of Nietzsche, which regards the laws and institutions of
society as the cunning of the weak to bind the strong,
advantageous to the weak but prejudicial to the strong.
In Nietzsche this idea is bound up with a true and noble
sense of the value of self-directing individuality, but the
doctrine itself is contradictory and suicidal and is perhaps
best accounted for as a reaction against the other extreme
view just considered. The complete refutation of it was
given long ago by Plato, who showed that the social
virtues are not merely " another's good " but one's own.
{Republic^ Bks. I.-IV.) In other words social relation-
ships are not external things, not nets in which personality
is enmeshed, but functions of the personality of each, the
fulfilment of which is the fulfilment of personality. Once
let us understand that social relations do not lie somehow
between men but only within them, and we can never be
guilty of so fatal a confusion as that of Nietzsche and his
Greek forerunner.

We must not indeed suppose that the interest of every
individual will always coincide with the interest of his
society. There may be genuine conflicts of interest in
which an individual has to choose between his own
greater good and the good of his society. We cannot go
so far as to say with Fouill6e : '^ Tout ce que je vous dois,
je me le dois ; ce que je fais pour voud, je le fais pour moi,
ce que je fais centre vous, je le fais contre moi . . . Mon
soprgme d^sint^ressement est mon suprfime int6r6t, le

96 COMMUNITY bk. n.

parfait amour d'autmi est le parfait amour de moi-mdme."
{Lea Elements 8ociologiqu£8 de la Morale, p. 282.) These
are noble words, and bear witness to the profound inward-
ness of social relations. Yet there remain social dis-
harmonies, social sacrifices, and social tragedies.

This much at least we can say without fear of exception
or contradiction. As all individuality comes to fruition
in society, so all individuality must in some way give
itself up to society. To find itself it must lose itself. A
profound sense of final failure accompanies all individuality
which detaches itself from social service. One of the
most essentially gloomy novels of the age— more essentially
pessimistic than many which merely preach pessimism —
is Mr. Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives* Tale. A sense of
frustration, of the mere inevitable process of individual
life through wanton experience on to the ludicrous con-
clusion of old age and death, of the meaninglessness of a
world which breaks down what it builds, pervades its
pages. It is because none of its characters give them-
selves up to a cause larger than themselves, social or
ultra-social. In this the novelist reads more truly —
whether he sees the alternative or not — ^the destiny of
detached individuality than do the swarm of quasi-
optimistic writers who also seem to find nothing in life
but egoistic motives. This truth is notably stated by
Mr. Bernard Shaw in the following passage : " Put your
Shakespearean hero or coward, Henry V. and Pistol
or Parolles, beside Mr. Valiant and Mr. Fearing, and you
have a sudden revelation of the abyss that lies between
the fashionable author who could see nothing in the world
but personal aims and the tragedy of their disappointment
or the comedy of their incongruity, and the field-preacher
who achieved virtue and courage by identifying himself
with the purpose of the world as he understood it. . . .
Bunyan's coward stirs your blood more than Shakespeare's

I. FALSE PERSPECTIVES OP COMMUNITY 97

hero, who actually leaves you cold and secretly hostile. . . .
This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose
recognised by yourself aa a mighty one." (Man and
Superman.)

Only in society is personality at home. Only in a
highly developed society can the social initiates, the
children of society, develop their potentiality ; only in
serving society can the developed member attain the
further fulfilment of life ; and it is only the finely developed
personality, with the self-determination, initiative and
sense of responsibility which characterise such develop-
ment, that can create and maintain fine and deep social
idations. Society is nowhere but in its members, and
it is most in the greatest of them.

CHAPTER II

THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY

§ 1. The objects and subjects of commonity.

Having in the preceding chapter rejected certain false
accounts of the nature and meaning of community, we have
next to reveal its true character. We have to turn from
analogical reasoning, which nearly always misleads, to
the direct analysis of those communal factors which build
or determine the complex structure of communal life.

All social relations, we have seen, are psychical relations,
relations of minds. Whatever their physical and oiganic
bases, it is psychical laws alone that directly bind man to
man in society. This is the starting-point of all knowledge
of community. Conununity is no greater mind, but it is
created by that activity of men's minds in which they
relate themselves incessantly to one another.

Now the great distinction of psychical from all other
relations is that the former are not mechanically or
externally determined — ^but are motived. It is because
we seek, clearly or dimly, from prescience or instinct,
some end, some fulfilment of ourselves or others, that we
relate ourselves to one another in society. Here we
discern already the two polar factors, distinguishable in
analysis, indivisible in actuality, of all human activity ;
on the objective side the interest^ that for the sake of which
we will the relations of community, on the subjective side,
the ivilly the active mind for which the interest exists.
It is as men will in relation to one another that they

en. n. THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 99

create community, but it is by reason of, for the sake of,
interests.

(It should be noted here that when we call interests
the objects (or objectives) of our wills, we do not identify
interests with the material or other objects by means of
which they are attained. Thus when we seek food, the
interest in food is not to be identified loith bread and meat,
but is instead the satisfaction of hunger. In fact no
material object can constitute an interest, but only the
satisfaction of its possession or use, whatever satisfaction
it brings or is capable of bringing.)

These two factors of all activity, whether it be called
social or not, are, we must repeat, essentially correlative.
Where interest exists, there will exists, and vice versa.
Every relation of men's interests is a relation of men's
wills. There is no will without an interest and no interest
apart from a will. It is very important to bear this truth
in mind when we seek to analyse community. By so
doing we shall avoid the duplication and possible confusion
involved in a separate and abstract discussion of social
mind or will on the one hand and social ** forces " or
interests on the other. ' Throughout this chapter I propose
to speak mainly in terms of interests, but of interests
always regarded as objects of our wills, of our minds as
active. It is advisable to lay stress on the aspect of
interest, for the more objective we can be, the more
complete will be our analysis.

But first it is necessary to explain as clearly as possible
what we understand by interests, and to show that this
term is the most satisfactory which our vocabulary
contains to describe those objects of our wills which are
the determinants of all our relations to one another.

By interest we shall always mean some object which
determines activity. Hence it is more than mere desire,
it 18 mo?'e than the mere consciousness of a present lack

100 COMMUNITY bk. n.

of satisf aotion, more than the mere knowledge of the way
to a state of completer satisfaction. The prisoner who
knows that escape is hopeless feels no less the mihappiness
of durance, but that feeling stimulates no longer any
interest. Even when to consciousness of a possible
satisfaction there is added the knowledge of an available
way to its attainment, there may still arise no active
interest. The contemplated satisfaction may not be
pursued, it may be ignored either in favour of other
satisfactions or as itself unworthy. I may be conscious
of poverty, but if I can be rid of it only at the cost of
actual preferred ends of mine the desire for wealth may
never involve activity, may never create an interest.

Nor can we say that interest is always preceded by a
sense of lack and constituted by a desire to relieve it.
This common view is bad psychology, and leads to a
false and mechanical conception of the nature of conduct.
Our concrete experience contradicts the abstract notion
that life is a succession of endeavours to fill successive
emptinesses. Let a man reflect on his own conduct
during a day or an hour, and he must feel the inadequacy
of such an account. Often the ultimate motive of action
is the interest, behind which we can find no prior sense of
lack. We are so made that we pursue this end or that,
when the possibility of its attainment is brought to our
consciousness ; we pursue it before the thought ever
emerges of the deficiency its non-attainment would
involve, or before the deficiency itself ever creates a
conscious sense of lack ; we pursue it because we want it,
not merely or necessarily because we dislike the sense of
its absence. To fulfil an interest is not the same as to
destroy it. The interest in food is eliminated when a
man has starved to death, it has not been fulfilled. In-
terests are fulfilled only in the maintenance of a desired
state of consciousness, of a way of life. Inte^^ests are

CH. n. THE ELEMENTS OP COMMUNITY v "

indeed the spurs of life, but they do not drive it to its
own annihilation. It is not in terms of emptiness and
fulness alone that we shall understand the great motive
forces of community.

I propose to follow Batzenhof er in consistently calling
these motive forces irUereats. This term seems for our
purpose more serviceable than any other. The term
aocial force is itself too indistinctive, and too readily
suggests mechanical or impersonal power. The term
desire is too subjective, it is also too comprehensive since
what we require is a term for such objects of desire as
determine activity ; these latter have also a certain
permanence and stability and correlation which the term
desire, unlike the term inkresty does not suggest. The
terms purpose and end refer too exclusively to rational
objects of the will, to determinants of conduct whose
meaning stands revealed in the light of self -consciousness.

For we must note that our interests vary infinitely in
the degree of their clearness or rationality. We may
realise their meaning in the whole scheme of existence
or we may be blind to everything beyond the immediate
fulfilment of our desire. Much of our life, much of our
social activity, seems almost as lacking in prescience as
is the work of bees, almost as much the driving of some
necessity we do not realise or understand. In much of
our activity, particularly that which we label " instinc-
tive," we find a resultant which we neither foresaw nor
desired to produce. In so far we act much like the
Oeator in Oenesis, who, having done his work, sees
that it is good. But a great and ever-increasing and
dominating part of social life reaches into the sphere of
deliberate purpose. These purposes may be shaped by
the same needs that guided our blinder activity, but they
are sought and attained in directer ways, by the conscious
adaptation of means to ends. With the growth of these

*<^ COMMUNITY BK. u.

clearer interests community is revealed as existing for
their realisation, and its institutions become more and
more directly adapted to serve them. It is a question
of degree, since all social relations are psychical. Society
rests not on the common organic principle of all that
lives but on the peculiar type of connection and interaction
which mind always creates, but which grows ever com-
pleter as man comes to realise his place in nature and his
capacity of fulfilment through social relations.

ThA interests of men, so understood, are the source of
all social activity, and the changes in their interests are
the source of all social evolution. Interests increase and
differentiate ; some are eternal, others change and pass,
and as they grow stronger or weaker they transform the
associations they have created. Always it is interest that
is prior. Community comes into being because interests
are realisable only in common life. Community is not
all psychical relationships of human beings, for war is
also relationship. But the interests realisable in com-
munity outweigh the dissociating interests, the interests
realisable only by conflict. Thus the permanence of
community is assured. We shall see later that the
socialising interests increase continually where life itsdf
increases, while the desocialising interests diminish con-
tinually. Thus the expansion of community is assured.

§ 2. Forms of relation between wills or interests.

We may now proceed to an analysis of those general
relations between men's interests on which depend the
permanence and expansion, the strength and degree of
community. As before we shall speak mainly in terms
of interests, merely repeating that, wherever a relation
exists between the objects of the wills of different men,
there too a relation must exist between wills them-
selves.

cH. n. THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 103

There are in the first place two great classes of interests
which must at all hazards be kept distinct in our thought.
The confusion of them has vastly retarded sociological
reasoning, and it is pwt of the nemesis attaching to
imcritical discussion that however we now distinguish
them our terms can only with difficulty be kept free from
wrong associations. When each of a number of beings
pursues an interest like or identical in type to that which
every other pursues, say a livelihood, or reputation, or
weaMiy or any other interest which is for each discrete
and personal, we may call the interests they severally
pursue like interests. Such interests do not necessarily
involve any community, any social relationship, between
^ the beings who will them, however like the interests
are. The interests of all the beasts of the field when they
seek their food create no unity, and were there food
enough for all would create no conflict. The interests of
all are identical in type, but there is no common interest.
When, on the other hand, a number of people all pursue
one single comprehensive interest of them all, say the
welfare or reputation of town or country or family, or
again the success of some business in which they are all
concerned, we may call that interest a common interest.
The pursuit of the common welfare of many remains a
common interest, no matter what ulterior interest may
inspire that pursuit. The consideration of motives may
lead us into a further sphere of like interests, as when
men seek the welfare of their community for the sake of
some direct or reflected glory it brings themselves, but
the interest itself remains common. Often the attainment
of like interests is sought through the establishment of a
common interest, as in the ordinary economic corporation.
Here the common interest, that in the welfare of the
corporation as such, as a single indivisible organisation,
is secondary, the like interests being prior. In other

104 COMMUNITY bk. n.

cases the oommon interest is primary. These two form
the inextricably entwined determinants of the greater part
of our activity. But it is for that very reason we must
keep them distinct in our analysis. Otherwise we shall
find in social phenomena a simplicity they do not possess.
By secondary common interest I mean that interest in
associational or communal welfare which is itself dependent
on a further exclusive interest, as when men seek the good
of others because of the advantage or glory it brings
themselves. Primi^ common interest is that which is
dependent on no such further interest. Primary and
secondary common interests are the mingled sources of
all our social activity. The love felt for an association
or community is very often like the love of many parents
for their children, whom they love as a kind of extension
of their own individuality, as a kind of property, or
again as the bearers of their own peculiar virtues beyond
their own lives and limitations. Bven when the primary
interest is predominant, the secondary interest supports it.
The two are npt so much kinds of oommon interest as
its factors. In all our relations with others it is difficult
to evade the promptings of the intrusive self-interest.
The psychologist finds in his sympathy with the sorrows
of others an element of reflected sympathy with himself
conceived as in a like situation, in his efforts to relieve
the sufferings of others a desire to attain also a certain
self-satisfaction and to - banish a cause of self -pain ;
he finds his sympathy with the happiness of others
crossed by pangs of envy if the same happiness has
passed him by, and his efforts to bring happiness to others
stimulated by the reflected happiness the endeavour
brings to himself. The mind of man is infinitely too
complex to admit of " single-mindedness " : it has been
shaped by infinite experiences that reach out of all
imaginable time. It is only a lunatic, a man whose past

GH» n.

THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 106

has suffered violent diflsooiation from his present, whose
motiTes are ever simple. To have abBchUdy simple
motives i« to be a Innatio, for not even genius can ever
attain to such simplicity.

We can now make some further distinctions. Like
interests fall within the wider class of discreU interests,
f.e., interests as pursued by each for his own personal or
individual fulfilment. It is better to call these interests
*' discrete " than ** individual," since of course all interests
are individual in one sense, i.e. that they are all interests
of individuals. When several persons pursue discrete
interests which yet are like or identical in type, we have
Uke interests ; when they pursue discrete interests which
differ in type, we have unlike interests. Unlike interests
are interests which, so far as those who pursue them are
concerned, lie in unrelated spheres of activity and so do
not involve or create any direct social relations. For
example, the interests of philately and astronomy need
never bring the philatelist and the astronomer into social
relations. But such isolation of interests is always
relative. Again, intermediate between like and unlike
interests are the very significant class of complemefUary
interests, partiy like, partiy unlike. When the interests
of two or more persons, while not wholly alike, are yet
interdependent, involving reciprocal service, we may
call them complementary. The most obvious examples
are sexual interests, but others of very great importance
are revealed in the division of labour within community
and in the whole fabric of reciprocal rights and obligations.
It is obvious that complementary interests do most easily
and immediately create common interest.

A further distinction, within like interests, has already
been implied. Men may pursue their like interests in
social isolation ; their interests may run parallel, involving,
for the individuals in question, no contact whatever. Or

106 COMMUNITY bk. n.

again their pursuit of like interests may bring them into
relationship either of oonflict or of harmony. When
two or more persons pursue an object of such a character
that the attainment of it by one involves in so far the
failure of the others to attain it^ we have conflicHng
interests. In the simultaneous pursuit of such an exclu-
sive object, there results, as Kant said, the kind of " har-
mony " involved in the pledge of Francis I. to the Emperor
Charles V., " What my brother wants " (i.e. Milan),
'" that I want too." But on the other hand many objects
which men seek, each for himself, are yet either expansive
through co-operation, or at any rate such as to be more
easily attainable by each through the co-operation of all,
and under these conditions the like interests are con-
cordani. Co-operation increases, conflict diminishes, the
objects to which the like interests of men are directed.
This fact that like interests may lead either to harmony
or to conflict, that these attitudes are in some measure
alternatives, has vast significance for tiie evolution of
community.

Finally, in view of the importance, especially from the
standpoint of political science, of a clear terminology as
a basis for the discussion of social willing, we may insist
onoe more that the relations of wills are best understood
and explained if we start from the objective side, the side
of interests. If we substitute the term '' will " for the
term " interest," the definitions given above will then be
adequate for the subjective aspect. Thus when each of
a number of beings pursues an interest like or identical in
type to that which every other pursues, we may call their
several wills like tviUs, Again, when a number of people
all pursue one single comprehensive interest of them all,
we may call their willing in so far a common tviU. And so
for the remaining distinctions we have made.

It is essential to remember that '"interest," as used

CH. n. THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 107

throughout this work, means strictly that which is the
object of will. For '' interest " may be used in a wider
sense, as equivalent to advantage or welfare, whether that
advantage is or is not willed by those whose advantage it
may be. But unless that advantage is the object of some
will, it is not an interest as above defined. The failure
to distinguish these two meanings has brought confusion
into political theory. If " interest " be used as meaning
simply '' advantage " or '* welfare," then something may
be an individual's or a community's interest which he or
it not only does not pursue, but even repudiates. It is a
perfectly legitimate use of the term '' interest," but it is
not legitimate to pass from the one meaning to the other
and speak of such an '' interest " as representing the " real
will " of individual or community. We shall avoid this
confusion by using the term in one sense only, viz., as
that which actually motives will. Again, if we use
" interest " as equivalent to " welfare," we can no longer
pass from the " general " or '' common interest " to the
" general " or '* common will " as if these were equivalent
or co-extensive. A single individual may seek the
general welfare in a way unregcuxLed by his community,
but we shall then call his interest (the object of his will)
not a conmion interest, but an interest in common welfare.
It becomes a common interest, as we use the term, when
it is pursued by him and others in concert, not discretely
but through their joint activity.^

^ The iftilure to make these distinctiona leads Dr. Bosaaqaei tnlo
confiudon in his account of the '* real ** and the *' aoCaal will " in The
Pkiloaopkieal Tkmny a/ tfts Aofe. A similar confusion was involved
in Il ouB Be >u *s account of the will *' of all " and the " general will."
The " will of all ** is '* merely a sum of particular wills ; ** whereas
the *' general will ** " regards only the common interest," and " what
generalises the will is not so much the number of voices as the common
interest which unites them." Here then he meant by the '* general
will " the will corresponding to the interest in general welfare, which,
of conzBe, on any particular issue may not be the will of the whole com-
munity, since many members of it may be considering only particular
intefeats, and these may be opposed to the generid welfare. But,

108 COMMUNITY bk. n.

We may now map out the whole field of interests, from
the standpoint of sooial relationship, as follows :

Intbrbsts.

Unli

Discrete. Common.

! J

ike. Complementary. like. Secondary. Primary.

Conflicting. Panillel. Concordant.

§ 3. The kinds of Oommon interests.

We have next to enumerate and classify the various
types of interests which create and sustain community
and its associations. The task has often been attempted
in recent years, and various helpful classifications have
been made.^ If we do not adopt any of those it is because
none of them is made from the point of view set out in
the introduction of this work. A completer classification
than any yet offered is necessary for our purpose. In-
terests are the springs of community, and a compre-
hensive classification of them is a necessary preliminary
to the study of it.

Our concern here is with interests as pommon and not
as discrete, for it is common interests which are the
sources of community. All like interests are potential
common interests ; in so far as that potentiality is realised
community exists.

like interests pass by endless transitions from the most
universal, shared by all men, down to the most particular

again, he says, ** the will is either general or it is not ; it is either that
of the body of the people, or that of a portion only.** Here obviously
the will is called general because it is that of the whc^ community.
The transition from one meaning to the other has led to much sophistical
writing, by no means in the CorUrat Sooial alone. For a completer
analysis of these fallacies see Appendix A.

^ Perhaps the best of these classifioations is that of Lester Ward,
Pure Sociology (2nd ed.)> p. 261.

CH. n. THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 109

and intimate. All men are alike in respect of certain
fundamental interests. We all have like organic needs,
needs of food and drink, air and light, clothing and
shelter. As these are needs of all living beings, they
create Uke interests for all living beings. But every like
interest, as we shall see more clearly at a later stage, is
best secured for all when all whom its pursuit brings into
contact pursue it in common, under regulated social
conditions. The universality of like organic needs is thus
in the long run a mighty socialising force.

Some psychical interests seem equally as universal as
are organic needs. For example, justice and liberty
(properly defined) are interests of all men, demanding and
creating social unity — ^though not yet in the measure of
universality. But on the whole the more specific psychical
interests are not so universal as the specific organic
interests. If we adopt Aristotle's distinction of " life "
from '' good life," we may say that universal like interests
are those on which '' life " depends, while the particular like
interests of men reveal their varying conceptions of " good
life." Men seek power, distinction, adornment, knowledge,
and endless forms of spiritual satisfaction, but not with
the unanimity of their pursuit of organic necessities.

The like interests of likes become in part the common
interests of likes. In so far as men realise that likeness
of nature or of interest means potential common interest,
in so far as they realise the value of community, they
create associations for its furtherance. In the classifica-
tion which follows interests are viewed in relation to
the associations which they create. These associations
answer to (a) the whole complex of communal interests, or
(6) some less extensive group of interests, or (c) single
specific faiterests.

(a) ^ community is a social unity whose members
recognise as common a sufficiency of interests to allow of

1 10 COMMUNITY bk. n.

the interactivities of common lifej We have akeady
seen that community is a matter of degree, and that it is
most readily determined by territorial boundaries. For
local contiguity not only permits the conversion of pre-
existent like interests into common interests, but itself
ensures the operation of biological and psychical laws
which constantly weave new common interests.

The completest type of community is the nation, and
when a nation is allowed free expression it creates an
autonomous State. Within the State there are established,
corresponding to the narrower communities within the
nation, the local governments of district and town. The
State and its sub-divisions are associations, organised
forma of society. Communities must create associations
in order to uphold communal interests, associations
which pursue these interests in specific ways. And the
State is the greatest of associations because it upholds,
in its specific political way, the greatest recognised
complex of common interests, those of a determinate
community.

(&) When a group is held together by a complex of
interests, but itself is constituted as a portion and not the
whole of any community, it is usually called a class. A
class may have some one predominant interest round
which the others cluster and which gives its name to the
class. Thus we speak of governing classes, in terms of a
predominant political interest, of leisured classes, working
classes, professional classes, agricultural classes, and so
on, in terms of their respective economic interests. Or
again we distinguish classes as upper, middle, and lower,
in terms of social status. To constitute a class, a group
must have a complex of common interests, and these
common interests must distinguish them from other
groups of the community possessing other, and it
may be antagonistic, conmion interest. The extreme

OH. n.

THE ELEMENTS OP COMMUNITY 111

of this opposition is revealed when claisses constitute
castes.

A class in turn pursues its complex of interests through
associations. Being only an element in a community,
its members cannot constitute a state, but they create
associations, of which the type is the political party,
which seek to control the policy of the State. We may
include here also those associations which foster and are
held together by group-sympathies or "' class-spirit,"
that general sociality which exists between the members
of any group.

(c) Men are not content to pursue conmion interests
merely in so far as these form complexes of greater or less
completeness. They come more and more to establish
associations for every common interest in its specificity.
Only by the help of such associations can the endless
d^rees and varieties of likeness (and thus of conmiunity)
in interests be adequately recognised and furthered.
Whenever men discover that they have any common
interest, the ground is prepared for the corresponding
association. It is in the Une of evolution that these
associations should grow continually in extent, in number,
and in singleness of aim. Already they present a vast
and bewildering array.

It is exceedingly difficult to classify, completely and
without cross-division, these specific interests and the
associations which they create. One obstacle to classifica-
tion is the lack of definite names for the various groupings
of social phenomena. A more serious obstacle is that
interests lie behind interests in the most perplexing ways.
We have, for instance, an interest in wealth, but it is in
general for the sake of further interests which wealth^may
serve. Or we have an interest in knowledge, but it may
be for the sake of the wealth which the knowledge may
bring, and thus ultimately for the sake of the further

112 COMMUNITY BM.n.

satisfaotions which wealth may acquire — or it may be
for the sake of knowledge itself. Or again, we may
have a political interest which is determined by an
economic interest, and so on.

Reflection on this difficulty leads to the first division of
spedfic interests, that into ultimate and derivative. For,
although any specific interest whatever may be derivative,
t.6. may exist as an interest because it is a means to some
ultimate interest, yet some are essentially derivative and
others are in their proper nature ultimate.

Of derivative interests the two great clsisses are the
political and the economic. The political interest is
directed towards the character of that great oiganisation
of society which upholds liberty in order, the condition
of the fulfilment of all other interests, and whose policy
and direction is of vital significance for these other
interests. It is for the sake of these that the political
interest, in all its degrees and forms, exists. The economic
interest is in like manner derivative. This interest is so
universal simply because it too is a means of all ultimate
interests. It is in no way limited to the field of industrial
and commercial activity, but it is bound up, in one way
or another, with the pursuit of every interest. If men
paint or preach or philosophise they usually expect to
derive from that work, besides the satisfaction it may
bring, the means of satisfying their other interests, just
as certainly as if they cultivated the land or manufactured
goods or bought and sold. Man has many ultimate
interests, and he can satisfy them only if he adds these
derivative interests to the rest.

Of ultimate interests the two main classes are those
based on organic needs and those based on psychical
needs. We may, for the sake of conciseness, call these
respectively organic and psychical interests, but we must
in^so'doing^remember that all interests are psychical, the

c«un. THE ELEMENTS OP COMMUNITY 113

interests of minds. But some interests are created by
organic needs and some by non-organic needs. There
is no line of demarcation between the two, they pass
by subtle transitions into one another. They are inter-
dependent and are indeed meaningless apart. Again,
interests of the one type may be made the means to
interests of the other ; we have derivative organic
interests, dependent on ultimate psychical interests, and
we have the reverse order of dependence. But both types
may be pursued, and usually are pursued, though not in
equal degrees, as underivative.

Organic interests are best divided, for our purpose, into
sexual and non-sexual. The former have a social signifi-
cance and a character of complementariness which dis-
tinguish them sharply from all organic interests.
The term '' sexual " is here used in a wide sense, to include
all those interests which we ascribe to sexual love, family
affection, and the spirit of kinship. Non-sexual interests
comprise our interests in food and drink, in exercise and
recreation, in clothing and shelter, in whatever fulfils all
the other organic needs.

From these we pass to psychical interests. These are
both difficult to distinguish, at the border-line, from
oiganio interests, and are themselves so interwoven and
complex as to render classification difficult. The following
line of distinction seems the simplest and may be adequate
for our purpose. We adopt the psychological distinction
between knowing, feeling, and willing as aapecta of mental
activity, and distinguish interests according to the
predominant aspect in each case. (1) There are interests
in which the intellectual aspect predominates, the scientific,
philosophic, and educational interests in the discovery,
systematisation, and communication of knowledge. To
discover, to systematise, and to communicate, these are
interdependent activities and form a unity of interests.

114 COMMUNITY bi:. n.

They create the multitude of scientific associations, whose
labours have both widened the horizons of our knowledge
and are in especial the source of those technical utilities
which are constantly transforming our whole social world.
We must add to these the specifically educational associa-
tions, which, however diverse and comprehensive their
aims, can pursue them in one way only, by imparting
knowledge. (2) There are interests in which the emotional
aspect dominates, the artistic and religious interests.
The former creates a multitude of associations, artistic
(in the narrower sense), musical, dramatic, Uterary ; and
the latter creates that most significant association, the
church. (3) We may add to these the interests in which
the aspect of will predominates, the interests in power,
prestige, and self-assertion. These do not directly create
specific associations, owing to their lack of content or
definition, but they also are actively at work shaping
associations, determining both their internal structure
and their modes of operation. They are especially
important as determinants of the derivative interests,
for government and wealth are in a peculiar way at once
the forms and the sources of power.

All specific common interests of men fall within the
scheme we have outlined above. Every one of these
interests, it must be noted, may be pursued either as
primary or as secondary, eith^ for the sake of the common
good involved or for the sake of the private advantage
it may bring to the pursuer ; and usually the two motives
are inextricably blended. It is therefore a mistake of
analysis to add the " egotic " as a kind of interest compar-
able with, say, the organic interests. Egoism and altruism
are not kinds of interests at all, but rather ways in which
we relate ourselves to our interests. Even the interests
in power and prestige may not be *' egotic." The power
sought after may be that of family, class, or nation, and

cH.n. THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 116

even when we seek power for ourselves it may be for the
sake of any of these. Again, it is a mistake to place the
" ethical interest " alongside, say, the scientific or artistic.
If we speak of an ethical interest at all, we must count it
as general and not as specific : for the ethical idea works
in and through aU interests, their universal and final
determinant.

As we have said, it is only in later stages of social
evolution that specific interests are demarcated and create
specific associations. In primitive community they exist
only as complexes of interests. This does not mean,
of course, that in civilisation these complexes are broken
up ; on the contrary, they become greater and completer.
Differentiation never means the dissolution of unity but
only the revelation of its character.

We may, in conclusion, present our results in tabular
form as follows, showing both the kinds of common
interests and the associations which correspond :

Iktebbsts Corbbspondinq Associatioks

A, Otneral

The interests of social- Associations of social inter-

ity, dependent on course and camaraderie,

general (group or clubs, etc.
communal) hke-

JB. Specific
L Ultimate

(a) Interests based on organic needs

1. Non-sexual Agricultural, industrial,

and commercial associa-
tions. (These also serve
the interests under I.

Hygienical, medical, and
surgical associations.

2. Sexual Marriage and kinship as-

sociations, the family.

COMMUNITY

BX. n.

InTBRBSTS CiOBBBSPONDINO ASSOCIATIONS

(&) Interests baaed on psychioal needs

' 1. Scientific,
philosophical^
and educational

2. Artistic and
religious

Scientific and philosophical

associations ; schools and

colleges.
Associations of art, music,

literature ; the theatre ;

the church.

3. Interests in
power and
prestige

(All interests under B, I. may be combined in any
number and d^pree to form complexes of interests, i.e.
group and communal interests. Both singly and thus
combined they create derivative specific interests.)

II. Derivative, of which the chief types are :

(a) Economic

(6) Political

[Financial and trading associa-
I tions, banks, trust com-
panies, joint stock com-
panies, trade-unions, em-
ployers' associations, etc.
Also nearly all associations
under J3.

(1) The state and its sub-
divisions. (Corresponding
to communal interests.)

(2) Political parties. (Corre-
sponding to group inter-
ests.)

(3) Associations for the politi-
cal furtherance of specific
interests.

(4) All associations, legal,
judicial, etc., directly de-
pendent on but not simply
parts of (1).

§ 4. The oppositions and harmonies of common interests.

Every social phenomenon emerges out of the meeting

of interest-determined wills, out of their collisions and

above all out of their harmonies. In the understanding

cH.It THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 117

of these collisions and hannonies lies the understanding of
oommunity.

We musty therefore, investigate the nature and degree
of opposition and harmony which exist, in mere fact or
of necessity, between the interests classified in the pre-
ceding section. It will appear as the result of our inves-
tigation that while oppositions of interests are necessary
and ubiquitous they are yet subsidiary to a still more
aniversal unity of interests. The deepest antagonisms
between interests are not so deep as the foundations of
community. Every opposition on analysis turns out to
be partial, not absolute. What is true of the whole
universe, that differences prove to be but differences
within unity, is true of our social world.

We have to apply to the interests classified in § 3 the
distinctions set out in § 2. We have seen that likeness of
interests may lead either to opposition or to harmony.
Here is the great source of social oppositions, and here is
perhaps also, if we go deep enough, the final source of
social harmony. Mere unlikeness of interests never
creates either conflict or harmony, only indifference.
Unlike interests of different persons or groups must
depend on a more ultimate likeness before it brings them
into contact. Conflict and harmony spring out of the
common nature of those who enter into such relations.
Difference of interests leads to oppositions only because
it leads to coincidence of like interests. Even the most
primitive savage, who hates all aliens from his tribe, hates
them, so far as he reasons at all, not because of their
difference alone — ^what is absolutely unrelated to him
would be absolutely indifferent to him — but because that
diff^ence implies the antagonistic pursuit of interests
they alike possess.

In order, therefore, to understand the oppositions and
hannonies of different interests we must go beyond that

118 COMMtJNiTY M. 11.

difiEerence to a unity or likeness of nature which in their
several ways these interests serve. For every individual
there is always present the necessity of choice between
conflicting interests of his own ; for every community
there is always a conflict of interests among its members,
its associations and groups. Intra-individual conflict
and harmony of interests is relative to the unity of
the individual being, social conflict and harmony to
the likeness to one another of the members of com-
munity. The latter is our direct concern, but it must be
preceded by a consideration of the former. Under what
conditions, we must ask, do the specific interests conflict
and harmonise within the individual life ? A brief con-
sideration of this question will throw light on the question
of social harmony and conflict.

1. Intra-individual conflict and harmony of inUreals.
Let us consider in this regard the specific interests as
classified above. Essential organic interests, it will at
once appear, are in their nature harmonious and not
conflicting. The unity of the organism binds them
together. The welfare of the whole organism is found in
the welfare of all the parts. '' Whether one member
suffers, all the members suffer with it ; or one member be
honoured, all the members rejoice with it." For the
individual there is, therefore, no conflict of interests in
the pursuit of organic welfare. And there is notably a
complete harmony between the two divisions of organic
interests. The endurance of the sex-interest is normally
an index of the period of organic vigour.

Not only so, but the adequate fulfilment of both is a
necessary basis of the higher psychical life. That higher
psychical life is rooted in organic needs. Suppose
man's sexual interests to disappear, how much of art and
poetry and religion — aye, and of the sheer intelligence
that probes into the causes of things — ^would disappear

CH. n. THE ELEMENTS OP COMMUNITY 119

as well I Suppose all his organic interests to disappear,
while mental activity somehow continued, that mental
activity would become the idlest dreaming within the
void. If body is one and mind is one, mind and body
are also one. So we can add that essential organic
interests are in their nature harmonious with psychical
interests. Despite secondary exceptions a healthy organic
life is a condition of a vigorous psychical life. On the other
hand, body and mind are so related that an intense
psychical activity, if it be spontaneous and not imposed by
outer necessities, sustains and prolongs organic f unctioping*

We have already implied that essential psychical
interests are harmonious with one another. It is a con-
fusion of thought which inspires the belief that the
suppression of our emotional nature is an aid to intellectual
strength. // our emotions are enlisted on the side of our
intellectual pursuit, they are in the degree of their strength
a stimulus to it. Without emotional driving we have
no intellectual interest at all. To employ the language
of Aristotle, it is never the appropriate emotion, but only
alien emotions, that interfere with our intellectual
interests.^ It is, therefore, never emotion as such that
is an enemy to science and philosophy. On the contrary,
the highest intellectual eminence is associated with
emotional intensity, and the greatest artists, poets, and
founders of religion have been greatest because their
intelligence was most adequate to the strong demands of
their emotions. Finally, it is obvious that the interests
in power and prestige are themselves spurs to all other
psychical interests.

What then of the conflict of interests which eternally
besets the individual life ? Let us examine one of the

^Aristotle speaks in tenns of ** pleasure/* not "emotion."

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120 COMMUNITY BK. tt.

oommonest forms of such conflict. A man has often to
choose, we say, between his economic interest and his
culture-interests. This is not, however, the ri^t anti-
thesis. For, as we have seen, the economic interest
is derivative, the culture-interests are ultimate. The
economic interest is a condition of all other interests,
cultural and non-cultural. It is in no necessary opposition
to either kind, being a condition of both. If it were in
opposition to any ultimate interest, it would be in opposi-
tion to all, but such opposition would be an opposition
between the means and the ends of life. There is an
opposition involved, an opposition of a very real nature,
but it is none the less accidental. Where there is a
common means which serves many ends, the limitation
of that means involves a limiting choice between ends.
Here is the heart of this most significant opposition. It
is an illustration of thq universal principle that the
limitation of means, not only economic means, but the
means we call time, opportunity, physical and mental
energy, imposes upon us eternal choices between ends.
If we pursue one interest intensely, the more must we
limit the intensity of other pursuits. If we specialise in
one direction, we are thereby prevented from specialising
in another. Thus partial oppositions are created on every
hand. Partial oppositions, for they arise from the limita-
tion of the common means to all our ends. Partial,
because all ends of the individual spring from the unity
of his nature. For what is it that must determine the
choice between alternative ends ? Surely their relative
values for the being to whom they are values, for the being
who is himsdf at every stage a unity, and who is ever
seeking to realise himself as a unity.

2. Social conflict and harmony. ^Ihe pursuit of any
interest by individual or group may be either an aid or a
hindrance to its pursuit by other individuals or groups.

CH. n. THE ELEMENTS OP COMMUNITY 121

This is the social significance of likeness of interests.
That likeness is itself the great cause of social opposi-
tions and the sources of social harmonies.

The very fact of individuality creates an eternal
possibility of opposition between the interests of every
self and those of every other. The correlative fact that
all individuality is socially determined and socially con-
ditioned eternally breaks down the absoluteness of such
opposition. It is instead revealed as partial and relative.
All oppositions of interests are secondary to the conmion
interest of an association or at least of a community.
This we may summarily show by considering oppositions
as they occur (a) within and between associations^
(6) between groups within community, and (c) between
communities.

(a) Within every association, however narrow or how-
ever wide the unity of interest on which it rests, opposi-
tions inevitably arise. If men are united as to any end,
they are not thereby united as to the means of its pursuit.
If they are united upon the means, they are not thereby
agreed as to their relative positions within the organisation
8o determined, and their relative shares in any positive
or divisible product of the oonmion activity. Always,
within any social unity, we find the common interest but
partial and imperfect. Likeness of interests is never, and
from its nature can never be, transformed into perfect
commimity of interest. But the oppositions fall within
the association, they are not so great or so powerful in
dividing as the common interests are great and powerful
to unite. Otherwise the association would not endure.

For instance, in an economic association, such as factory
or store, there must always remain a difference of interests
— or, to speak more strictly, a likeness of interests not
reduced to community of interest — ^for the different
members of it. This difference is inherent in its nature.

122 COMMUNITY bk. n.

It may show itself deepest in the division of employer
and employee, or perhaps of manager and workman ; these
are the greater cleavages, while lesser divisions scarify
the whole fabric of the association. Yet community of
interest is still stronger than difiEerence, and the fabric
holds because that community is never cut through by
these divisions. True, on the basis of this difference,
the employees may form or enter another kind of associa-
tion as well, one devoted entirely to the interest of
employees, and the employers may form or enter another
association devoted to the interest of employers. Now
between these latter associations there may seem to be
no community of interest. CSertainly there would be
little if they stood alone and apart from all other
associations, but, as we have just seen, they come into
being only because other associations exist in which
employers and employees have common interests. The
sharp conflict of trade-union and employers' association
is one in respect of the division of the joint product,
and more recently in respect of the control of the common
means of production. Are both employers and workers
necessary to production ? Under the present system
they certainly are, and so long as it lasts the co-opera-
tion of workers and employers is more fundamental
than their conflict. It is because they unite in produc-
ing that it is possible for them to disagree over the
method and over the product. A moment may indeed
come, has already come in some countries, when one
industrial order is broken down and another set up.
That moment brings to birth* new oppositions, but also
new harmonies. Always the oppositions fall within
some order, so long as society exists at all. If we consider
the deepest antagonisms within the economic system,
the conflicting like interests of competitors, the conflicting
like interests of labour and capital, of cultivation and

CH. n.

THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 123

manufacture, of invention and exploitation, of manu-
facture and distribution, of supply and demand, we see
that they are all not only partial but secondary, that
they would not exist at aU toere there no prior community
of interest.

If this holds in a sphere of association where interests
are essentially derivative, where the primary common
interest is relatively least and the secondary common
interest is relatively greatest, it holds a fortiori within all
other assooiational spheres.^

(6) The opposition of groups within a community is
more continuous and embittered the greater the complex
of interests which at once unites the members within the
group and separates the group itself from others. For
since the members of groups must be alike in most of their
interests, the extent and number of exclusive group
interests indicates the degree in which the like interests
of the respective groups remain unreconciled. Thus the
extreme form of intra-communal opposition is that
between caste and caste. Here the division is so sharp
that only by the aid of adventitious interests, interests
determined by tradition and religion, is community
maintained. It is maintained too only at the cost of the
intrinsic interests of the community. For progress is
possible only through the transformation of like*interests
into common interests, and the exclusiveness of caste
bars the way. The divisions of caste almost destroy the
community and would altogether break it up were it not
that extrinsic common interests, traditional and religious,

* At the same time it is significant that the bitterest antagonisms
between associations have belonged to the assooiational sphere perhaps
fnxtheet moved from the economic. They have arisen between
cfamrches. But here the antagonism has been largely due to extra-
social interests, «.e. to interests founded on dogmatic interpretations
of religion. TTiis antagonism dies down as opposing dogmas cease
to hold captive the minds of men, and the spirit of religion becomes
finer, if also rarer.

124 COMMUNITY bk. n.

prove substitutes for those intrinsio common interests
which the caste-system rejects. There exists a com-
munity of interest, of a kind, to which even caste-
divisions remained subordinate. Thus the community
endures.

It is needless now to show that doss differences are also
subordinate to community of interest. But the distinc-
tion of caste and class suggests an interesting corollary.
Were absolute equality of opportunity attainable, there
would still remain social classes, but all trace of caste
would disappear. Glasses a« distinct from castes rest on
true personal differences, differences of occupation,
ability, character, and manners. The more they rest on
significant personal differences the further are they
removed from the evils of a caste system, from the dis-
union and stagnation it entails. Where intrinsic differ-
ences help to determine classes there is a constant transi-
tion and possibility of transition — ^intrinsic qualities not
being simply heritable — from one class to another, which
lessens the antagonisms bred of difference. And further,
in so far as intrinsic differences determine classes, in so
far it is unlike interests, not exclusive like interests,
which distinguish class from class. The former, we saw,
do not create division, the latter are its primary causes.
Intrinsic differences are of course insignificant beside
intrinsic likenesses, so that the more rational the basis
of class-distinction, the narrower becomes the range of
exclusive class-interests, and the broader the basis of
community.^

^ It is not, of course, implied that our claasee are absolutely or even
very laigely distinct from castes. The ideal of classes fotmded purely
on intrinsic differences is not and never has been realised. But whereas
in eastern civilisations the chief determinant of class and status was
birth, in the western civilisation of to-day wealth is a class-determinant
of equal or perhaps greater importance, and wealth is a less rigid deter-
minant than birth : it is concreter, and thus its claims are more easily
challenged ; itself a matter of degree it is less apt to create distinctions
of kind; alienable, acquirable, and transferable, it draws no such

cH. n. THE ELEMENTS OP COMMUNITY 126

Oppositioiis may arise between other intra-communal

groups than castes and classes. We may illustrate by the

veiy significant opposition arising out of the increased entry

of women into industrial life. A partial sex-opposition

here arises, for example in so far as the willingness of

women to accept lower wages reacts detrimentally on the

employment and wages of men. But an examination of this

opposition shows at once how far it is from involving any

essential antagonism of interests between the sexes. For

women are able to accept lower wages largely because

the economic support of the family, itself more central

to women's life than to men's, falls mainly upon men. If

then the lower rate of women's wages acts to depress the

wages of men or throw them out of employment, it is the

whole commimity that suffers : it would mean that men

are less able to support or establish families, a result

disastrous to the welfare of women, and disastrous most

of all to the welfare of the race which lives and has its

being in the common interest of men and women. As

for the wider antagonism of interest between men and

women which some misguided people have proclaimed,

that is in reality the merest figment. The common

interest of men and women is laid in the foundations of

life and reaches to its pinnacles. What hurts either

hurts both. If man is primitive and unenlightened, he

treats woman as a chattel ; and

" If she be small, sUght-natured, miserable,
How shall man grow ? "

permanent lines of cleavage as does birth; and lastly, being itself
in some uncertain degree a return for service, it is never purely a caaU-

We may note that a group must possess a quasi-communal character
in order to constitute a caste or class, t.e. the members of it must
shaiw in some degree of common life, must to a certain extent live
together. Now in the modem world of intercommunication this
hving-together, in towns at least, is chiefly determined by the type
of honae inhabited, in other words, by the amoimt of rent the occupiers
can afiford to pay. Thus writers on social classes find it easiest to
distinguish them in terms of rent, i.e. in terms of wealth.

126 COMMUNITY bk. n.

The oommon interest of all intracommunal groups is,
we may conclude, superior to the dividing interests.
The interests on which community rests are greater
than the interests on which the groups within it rest.
The objective witness to the superiority of common
interest within and between associations and groups is
the very fact of the State. This greatest of associations
stands for the co-ordination of all the interests of a com-
munity, thereby setting itself, in view of the incessant
partial conflicts within community, a vast and endless
problem, but also, in view of the greater common interest
which these conflicts cannot destroy, a problem pro-
gressively soluble.

(c) The fact of the State has always made it compara-
tively easy for men to recognise the superiority of common
interest within a State-determined community. The
actual limits of states have at the same time made it
difficult for men to recognise the further extension of
community. But we have already seen that community
by its very nature is more extensive than any State, and
we shall see later that the disparity in extension has
grown with the growth of civilisation. For the peoples
separated by the frontiers of states have like interests,
and no power on earth can destroy or limit the law that
like interests are most attained when they have created
a common interest as well.

We need only say here, by way of anticipation, that
the only common interest which can be bounded by the
limits of a State is the interest of nationality, and that
the interest of nationality can only at one moment be
the decisive interest of a state-determined community,
viz., when some other nation, under the guidance of the
primitive nation-idea, threatens it with that armed
violence of conquest which is the prostration of all
interests.

CH. n.

THE ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY 127

This study of interests enables us to understand more
clearly why no metaphor derived from any other form
of unity can describe for us the unity of society. We
may perhaps think of the specific common interests as
the strong bonds imiting men to men, while the indefinite
instinctive interests of sociality and tradition resemble
the myriad fine threads of social unity. But interests
aie not external bonds, not couplings which might be
uncoupled or removed while the beings remain unchanged ;
they are the interests 0/ each, not merely between each
and every other ; they exist only as the objects of men's
wills, and they unite men in a spiritual harmony never
to be understood in any -terms of physical conjunction
or organic oneness. They bind heart to heart, but they
liTe only in the hearts they bind; they are common,
complementary, antagonistic, merged and opposed in a
thousand modes, yet they exist only in the activities of
individual minds. It is no wonder men look round for
metaphors to express so unique a unity, and it is no wonder
they stumble in seeking to represent what can be under-
stood only by itself.

CHAPTER III

THE STRUCTURE OF COJOfUNITY

§ 1. Associatioiis as organs of commnnity.

In the last analysis oommunity is nothing but wiUs in
relation, if we understand by will ao abstract faculty or
power but mind as active. The indissoluble unity of all
conscious life, that of subject and object, mind and its
world, knower and known, appeared for us therefore in
the form of will and interest ; and looking mainly at the
objective side we were able to perceive the great forms
of social unity that, though pierced by endless forces
of division, cohere victoriously in communal life. How
they so cohere, how the various common interests (or
wills) which create associations are co-ordinated into
commimity, this we must next consider.

First we must note that communal life is not confined
within those associational moulds which answer to
specific types of common interest. The life of community
encompasses those forms and as it were clothes with living
flesh and blood that associational skeleton. When,
therefore, we have shown how associations are co-
ordinated, we shall not have revealed the whole unity of
community. We shall have shown merely the structure
of its framework. To understand the whole reality of
community we must keep in mind also the endless un-
formulated relations into which men enter, relations of
infinite variety and of every degree of complexity, by

cH, m. THE STRUCTURE OP COMMUNITY 129

whose means every man is brought into nearer or remoter
contact with every other, joined in a solidarity and inter-
dependence which none can ever fully estimate. This
important truth has been well expressed by Simmel in
the following passage :

** Men regard one another, and men are jealous one of
another ; they write one another letters or dine together ;
they meet in sympathy or antiiMithy quite apart from all
tangible interests; their gratitude for altruistic service
weaves a chain of consequences never to be sundered ;
they ask the way of one another and they dress and adorn
themselves for one another ; — ^these are instances chosen
quite at random from the thousand relations momentary
or lasting, conscious or unconscious, transitory or fraught
with consequences, which, playing from person to person,
knit us incessantly together. Every moment such
threads are spun, are dropped and again caught up,
replaced by others, woven up with others. These are
the reciprocities between the atoms of society, recipro-
dties that only the piercing vision of psychology can
investigate, which determine all the tenacity and elasticity,
aU the variegation and .unity of this so intelligible and
yet so mysterious life of society." (Soziologiey p. 19.)

Associations are the definite forms under which the
more permanent and specific types of social activity, of
relation between will and will, are co-ordinated. They
are as it were the various lines and figures standing out
on the web of community. They form an integral pattern,
as we shall see, but the integrity of the pattern is as
nothing to the integrity of the web. Community is the
whole incalculable system of relations between wills ; an
association is the pre-wiUed form under which a definite
species of relation between wiUs is ordered. A imiversity,
for instance, is a definite organisation ordering the research
and communication of knowledge. Men study and teach

130 COMMUNITY bk. n.

apart from any association^ but they have willed specific
organisations directing the main relations of student to
student, of teacher to taught. And so of the greatest
associations, the industrial associations, the church, the
State.

U Thus we see that every association is both an organisa-
tion within community and an organ of community. The
incalculable complex of the interactivities of common
life are yet reducible under a certain number of categories,
as we saw in the last chapter, and men will corresponding
associations, giving a certain fixity and order to the
further acts of willing which fall within any given category.
Such types of willing are themselves throughout dependent
on types which fall under other categories. Community
is not broken up into its associations. Its unity reaches
deeper than the co-ordination of its associations. Com-
munity is prior to its associations. It is communal
will which creates associations. Take the case of the
State, that completest organ of community. Community
existed before any State. It was the slow-developing
wiU of men in community to create the State which
graduaUy brought the State into being. Community
was there from the first, but the State has been con-
structed.^ The Stat« is an association men as social
beings have wiUed to create and now will to maintain.
There is thus a will in community more fundamental
than even the will of the State. It is the will to maintain
the State. If all men adopted the principles of anarchism
that will would exist no longer — ^there would be no State.
The State (like every other association) is a manifestation
of common will, and the will manifested in the creating
and maintaining of states and churches, industrial and

^ Ab Spencer and others have pointed out, there Btill exist primitive
communities, groups of Eskimos, Digger Indians, etc., which show
no trace of political organisation. Cf. Spencer, Princifha oj Sooiology,
Part v., chap. 2,

CK. m. THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY 131

commeroial associations, oiroles of sociality, and so on, is
the completest and profoundest reality which the word
of commnnity contains. It is in every sphere of its
operation the nearest living approach to the ideal
" general will " of the philosophers.

Every association is thus an organ, greater or smaUer,
of commnnity ; greater or smaller according to the
strength, number, and unity of the wills which maintain
it. The different associations within community are
not created by separable groups, for men combine in
most diverse ways with one another to maintain diverse
associations. Every man is a member of more than one
association and in each he forms part of a different
unity. Associations are thus unities within, but they
are not units of, community. Common interests overlap
and interlace, and common willing is but the sub-
jective aspect of common interest. How, despite
these overlappings and interlacings, common interests
as organised in associations are co-ordinated in one
system, forms the final problem of this chapter. Before
we resolve it, however, it will be well to consider more
closely than we have yet done the meaning of this fact
that the establishment and maintenance of every associa-
tion is a manifestation of common will.

S2. Oovenant and community.

Every associeUionj every organiaaiion of men, came
itUo being through a covenant of men to establish it,
and exists in a covenant of men to maintain it. Without
this agreement of wills there could be no organisation,
no constructed system of order and procedure. The
old doctrine spoke of a social contract or covenant,
and would have escaped the fallacies of which it is
accmsed if it had only distinguished community from
State and recognised that while all associations, the State

132 COMMUNITY bk. n.

included, rest on covenant, community itself is prior to
and the necessary precondition of dll covenant. A social
covenant to establish society (or community) is a contra-
diction. A social covenant to establish or maintain the
State is a great reality. It is visible in the obedience men
pay to political laws determined by a majority alone ; it
is visible in the continuous transformation of the State, in
accordance with changes in the social wiU. Community
is co-eval with life, associations are merely its products.

The distinction between eternal community and con-
structed association is vital to our purpose, and to explain
community we must show exactly in what sense associa-
tions have been constructed, in what sense they are based
on a covenant once prior in time, always prior in logic,
to themselves. The statement that all associations rest
on covenant is liable to misinterpretations. These we
must remove.

In the strict sense, a contract is a definite form of
agreement between two or more parties, determining
their several rights and obligations in respect of some
common interest, these rights and obligations being in a
legal contract enforced or vindicated by the authority of
the State. In this definite form the State at least cannot
arise from or rest upon contract, and no one has ever
maintained so contradictory a doctrine. The truth of
the social-contract theory is that the State rests on a
covenant of its members, not necessarily formulated at
any time but implied in their actions as members of the
State, a covenant to maintain the existing State and its
laws or even (in new colonies, for instance) to establish a
State and system of laws. So far the social will to estab-
lish or maintain the State is co-ordinate with the social
will to establish, say, a church. But once the State has
been established it exercises sometimes a limiting, some-
times a repressive, power over all other manifestations

cH.in. THE STRUCTURE OP COMMUNITY 133

of social will. In this way the oovenant on which the
State rests becomes differentiated from the covenant on
which any other association rests. In this way, too, the
social will to maintain the State may become deeper and
more comprehensive than the social will to maintain
any other association. All associations are organs of
community, but the State becomes the co-ordinating
organ of them all.

In the light of this fact we can examine more closely
the meaning of the basis of covenant on which every
association must be constructed. We shall consider
various types of association in this regard, beginning with
the simplest contractual type and ending with the State.

1. As an instance of the simplest type of association
we may take the limited-liability company. The phrase
is significant, for the whole activity of the association is
closely determined by contractual limits. The objects
of the company, the particular form of manufacture,
trade, or other economic enterprise with which it is
concerned, the means at its disposal, the constitution of
the directorate, the responsibility of the shareholders,
these are all '^ nominated in the bond."

2. It is instructive to compare with such a type that
of the club or association for social intercourse, existing
not for the attainment of the economic means of life like
the limited-liability company, but for some form and
degree of common life. This association too is based on
a oovenant, it has a certain constitution, with rules and
regulations to which all its members must conform. In
I'ocoming a member I most certainly covenant with all
ether members to observe these rules and regulations,
uid the observance of them is for me as for every member
the condition of the social intercourse and other privileges
v«rhich the club provides. But the covenant does not
define the activity of the club in the same way as the

134 COMMUNITY bk. n.

contract defines the activity of the limited-liability com-
pany. You cannot define social intercourse in a charter,
you cannot define or contractually limit the relations of
common life.

3. Take again the case of a church. It too has a
contractual constitution, in the form of articles and con-
fessions which its members covenant to accept. But
the constitution can define only in the most general way
the end for which the church exists. In a word, the church
is based on a covenant, but it is not comprehended within
a covenant. The latter may be modified, reformulated,
according to changes of thought and life within the former.
Without the contractual basis the life of religion would
indeed remain chaotic, yet the articles of contract axe in a
sense subordinate to that life, they cannot properly
express it, and they almost necessarily give more attention
to minor matters than to greater, to the form than to the
spirit.

4. Let us next turn to a type which is most significant
as leading up to the consideration of the State — the family.
Marriage involves a contract — ^but how inadequate any
contract must necessarily be to express the life so deter-
mined ! The contract can but rule out certain forms of
action which would disintegrate the association or destroy
its meaning, and insist on a few primary positive obliga-
tions which, vital as they are, are beyond measure too
meagre to comprehend and express the society they
determine. Suppose married life widens into family
life, of that widened association it is true to say that the
place of contract is still further restricted. The parents
covenant to maintain the child, but not with the child.
It is no longer a covenant^ of all with all. But the reason
is significant. It is because the child is not yet an
autonomous being with a formed character, with ^
autonomous will by which to enter into covenants. Me

caLm. THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY 136

is in a peculiar sense dependent upon his society. (It is
because of this dependence within the f amily, as opposed
to the autonomy possessed by the members of any other
association, that we can regard the family as a communal
unit. Biologically it is of course ^e unit of organised
group life.) When the child has become adult and
autonomous, then if he remains on within the family
association, it is because he now agrees to remain, and the
bmily association again takes on a broader basis of
covenant, in other words it now rests more completely
on an agreement of wills. But it is very necessary to
notice that this further agreement involved in the new
autonomy of the adolescent members is, as a rule, unlike
the marriage-contract, no formal compact but an un-
formulated relation of will to will ; and that also, unlike
the marriage-contract, it comes into being at no one
moment of time but as the revelation of growth. In
these two aspects the family a£Eords a significant parallel
to the State.

Some further points of importance have already
emerged and may be insisted upon before we consider the
crucial instance of the State. First, we have seen that
contract or covenant may be the basis of an association
and yet be quite inadequate to express the character of
the social activity thereby determined. The terms of
contract can never comprehend the meaning of a kind
of life. We must not think of contract merely in terms
of limited liability. Again it does not follow that because
an association is based on, or determined by, covenant,
it is therefore conventional or arbitrary. Will is the
subjective aspect of interest, and the more fundamental
the interest the more fundamental the will. A covenant
may thus be rooted in the deepest needs and desires of our
nature. We must not identify what is willed with what is
voluntary or optional in the sense that one may choose it

136 COMMUNITY bk. n.

or not at pleasure. On the contrary, what we will is what
we are, the expression and realisation of our being.
Because we have a certain nature, we will inevitably certain
things, we form inevitably certain associations. Take the
marriage-association, for example. This most certainly
involves a covenant — ^but we cannot dissolve the covenant
at will as we enter it at will, the reason being that it is
recognised to be no arbitrary agreement. It is indeed
something agreed upon, something contracted into, but
it is agreed upon in virtue of needs and elements of
human life which are in no sense arbitrary or transient
but necessary and vital. Or take the case of the church.
Here one is free to leave as one is free to enter the associa-
tion. But the church (or any '' voluntary " association)
is not therefore arbitrary. It corresponds to a need of
human nature, and so long as that need remains the wiU
remains. Many things we will because we mvM will
them, because it is our nature to will them. Such is
the will to live itself. Such is the will to maintain the
greater associations. New autonomous wills for ever
emerge within community, but because many interests
are imiversal the great associations which pursue them
endure.

5. We may lastly apply the doctrine of contract or
covenant, so clarified, to the State, showing that it too,
though itself the precondition of contract in the narrower
sense, rests upon an agreement of wills.

If we reject this doctrine there are but two dear
alternatives open, one that political imity exists only or
mainly as an unwilled accidental coherence of men, the
other that it rests on force. The second of these alter-
natives may be at once ruled out of court. In the face
of nearly all our traditional jurisprudence it remains true
that there can be within a community no force which is
so strong as its most common will. Force is by its very

cH. in. THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY 137

nature the servant of wiU. This is as true of any eastern
despotism as it is of any western democracy. As Green
said : "' If a despotic government comes into anything
like habitual conflict with the unwritten law which repre-
sents the general will, its dissolution is beginning."
(Principles of Political Obligation^ § 90.) If a State is a
despotism it is because its members want or acquiesce in
(which also is a form of willing) a despotism. If the
many obey the one, they must have willed to obey. What
distinguishes a despotism from a democracy is not so
much the form and source of will as the form and source of
public opinion. There must be agreement before there
can be compulsive force, since there is no political force in
the world except that of men who unite or delegate their
individual powers. And in the long run the strongest
determining force in the world is that of the most common
will within it. The other alternative might seem at
first more plausible. No doubt the State has emerged
out of a condition of social coherence in which men
scarcely realised any of the significance of common
life, in which they were ruled by traditions and necessities
they did not understand, much as ants and bees do not
understand, we may suppose, the communities they
build. But we must remember that the State, the
political organisation, has come into being ; it is only
community that has been from the first. As the State
develops its nature is revealed. *' For what each thing
is when fuUy developed, that we call its nature." (Aris-
totle, Politics, I. 2. 8.) We do not see clearly the nature
of the State in that primitive world where it is almost
indistinguishable from community. The State is an
organisation, a construction ; we can trace the process
of its building and rebuilding, and where we find the
building completest there we should most seek for its
meaning and ** form." Now, as civilisation and culture

138 COMMUNITY bk. n.

advance, as men gain in intelligent appreciation of the
social world they make and inhabit, growing more
autonomous, less dependent on tradition and custom, —
the State becomes more and more determined by the
concerted willing of the members of community, reveals
more and more a real though unformulated covenant of
these. Of course many reputed members of every State
never, or only at rare intervals, realise this social will to
maintain it. In so far they never become social adult
beings. But the State still rests on a covenant, not of
all but of some. It is a social organisation, and social
organisation is the creation of common will. It is those
citizens who will the maintenance of the State who both
make and are the State, the rest are merely its subjects.
The broader the basis of contract becomes, the stronger
and more unified becomes the State — but without some
basis of contract there is no State.

We have thus shown again from another standpoint
that every association is created and maintained by a
social will which is prior to, more fundamental than, the
will of the association : in a word, that every association
is an organ of community.

§ 3. The universal principles of associational structure.

While all associations are organs of commimity, one of
them, the State, stands out as co-ordinating them all.
It is more than one among other organisations, it is
also the organisation of organisations. We have already
discussed the principle, often abused and often mis-
understood, which determines the proper limits of its
co-ordinating activity. Its chief instrument, political law,
is mighty but not all powerful, and there are spheres into
which it cannot enter or can enter only to destroy. But
every association has its outer as well as its inner side,
every interest, however inward and spiritual, stands

CH. m. THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY 139

somehow related to external means and thus within the
world of external organisation, a world that must be
co-ordinated and can be co-ordinated only by the
State.

It is not my purpose here to discuss the various ways
in which different States seek and have sought to realise
this principle of co-ordination. That enquiry belongs to
the specific region of political science. I propose instead
to show the imiversal principles of the structure of associa-
tions, with special reference to the structure of the State.
By this method we shall at once complete the analysis
of association and reveal the essential character of State-
co-ordination.

We have seen that the social will to maintain an
association is more fundamental than the will of the
association itself. For example the will to maintain the
State is prior to the will of the State itself. This is no
mere metaphysical distinction, but a vital sociological
fact. The wiU of the State is revealed in the laws of the
State. Nearly every such law is bom out of political
conflict, it is scarcely ever what all the members of the
State want and directly will, it is usually determined by a
majority of voices or votes and is often bitterly opposed
and resented by a minority. Yet it becomes the deter-
minate will of the State. (If the will behind law is not
the will of the State, then there is no wiU of the State.)
It is obeyed by those who opposed as well as by those
who supported it. Why is this ? It is not merely, we
shall see, because the majority has also the greater force.
It is finally because there is a will more ultimate than
the will of the State, the will to maintain it.

It is never the whole but at most a majority that decides
the general policy of any association. This is inevitable,
it is a principle rooted in the nature of men. If all men
are agreed on the primary ends of an association, if there

140 COMMUNITY bk. u.

is a fundamental common interest for which it stands,
there is not on that account agreement on the means by
which these ends shall be fulfilled, or on the endless sub-
sidiary interests which every association creates. The
question of policy, of how the association is to attain its
ends, has always divided and wiU always divide its
members. So long as men differ in knowledge, in experi-
ence, in character, in temperament, in circumstances, they
must differ in opinion. This is as true of the State s& of
every other association, and in this respect our language
about the '' general will " as sovereign tends to mislead
us. For the State is directed not by a single unitary will
like that of an individual, as the organism-theory would
imply, but by a partial will somehow predominant, in
the prestige, power, or number of those to whom it is
common, over a partial opposing wiU. In a democracy
it is or may be the will of a majority, and this majority-
will is there the true ultimate sovereign which sets up
and pulls down governments and which dictates the
lines of their policy.

There are, we must now see, in every developed associa-
tion three distinct kinds or stages of common wUl. There
is first the social wUl to maintain the association, prior
to and more universal than what we must call the will of
the association, the will which decides its course or policy.
It is the former that is alone truly general. In the case
of voluntary associations it is indeed a universal will, a
will common to all the members, in the case of the State
alone it may be less than universal (since entry into the
State alone is not free but in some degree compulsory),
but it must still be general. Next, within the association
there is active that policy-directing will which, always
partial and always changing, is yet at every moment
the supreme determinant of direction. Lastly, every
association possesses not only a policy-directing will, but

CH. m. THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY 141

also a specific administrative will. Common action
cannot proceed simultaneously from a great number of
autonomous wills, however common their interest.
Every association must have a centre or focus in which
its activity takes determinate form. Such an organ is a
necessary means for the carrying out of the policy of the
association. In the case of the State this organ is the
government, and we may call the government the legislative
sovereigny as distinct from the majority-will which in this
instance we may call the ultimate sovereign.^

It is the latter we must investigate in our endeavour
to understand associational structure, and we have in the
first place to fathom the measure of the instability of
that will which is the de facto ultimate sovereign within
every developed state. We looked for a general wiU and
we have found a partial one. We look for a stable will
— and we find one that fluctuates incessantly. It is no
hard-and-fast majority that sits as sovereign on the
political throne, it varies infinitely, so that surely every
citizen is at some time in regard to some question a
member of the determining majority. Yet this very
iostability is a factor of its success. Why do oppositions,
representing a temporary minority-will, harangue and
appeal, intrigue and criticise ? Simply because they hope
that, in the subtle process of action and re-action, per-
suasion and repersuasion, which constantly affects all
human willing, this minority-will may be converted into
a majority-will. A rigid cleavage, unmitigated by this
hope, would create a deeper antagonism.

It matters not whether the sovereign we have found
has none of the a priori attributes of kingship, no

^ The tenn " sovereignty ** is at present indiscrimmately used in both
theee sen aee t hus we speak of the " sovereignty of parliament " and
of the '* sovereignty of the people '* — and this has led to much con-
tndiciioii in political philosophy « In especial, it has created £he
contradiction between the view of Bentham, Austin, and their sue-
»r8, and that of Rousseau and his successors.

142 COMMUNITY bk. n.

permanence, no fixity of resolution, no majesty. It may
be a sovereign unworthy of the political philosopher, it is
none-the-less the sovereign. Majority-rule is sometimes
spoken of as a modem '' superstition." On the con-
trary it has been in some sort a social necessity from
the beginning, from the time when the loudest shout first
carried the day. For what alternative is there ? If
the autonomous members of an association are not
unanimous — and that they can never be on any question
of policy — ^the alternatives are to act at once by a
majority-decision or to wait for unanimity till the Greek
Kalends. In fact all historical attempts to establish
the principle of unanimity, as in the Roman tribunate,
in the Polish Reichstag, in the assembly of German mark-
proprietors, in the Cortes of Aragon, have meant the
domination of the minority, that privilege of veto by which
a single dissentient can frustrate the wUl of all the rest.
It is one of the major defects of the Peace Treaty of 1919,
that, in respect of the constitution of the League of Nations
it insists in certain important points on unanimity,
that is, on the right of veto. In this stipulation there is
an ominous reminiscence of the hapless Federal Diet of
the Peace of 1816. Such systems are doomed to failure.
They seek to establish an impossible universal wiU in
the direction of policy and they succeed only in making
the less universal will, the will of the minority, prevail.
Decision by majority is in matters of policy a practical
necessity.

We may grant that it is beset by dangers. A majority
of voices makes nothing right or wise. A true form of
constitution can save us from the tyranny of minorities,
how shall any constitution save us from the tyranny of
a majority ? Only an enlightened and educated public
opinion can avail us here. In the world of to-day, com-
mitted necessarily — and rightly — ^to majority-rule, our

CH. m. THE STRUCTURE OP COMMUNITY 143

only hope lies in social education, in the inculcation of
social responsibility, in the insistence on the value of all
personality, on the primary worth of spontaneity and the
secondary worth of compulsion, on the expediency of
waiving those claims the insistence on which, though
legally and politically permissible, would create deep or
abiding oppositions and diminish the strength of com-
munity. Most men feel, for instance, that the decision
of vital political issues by a bare majority is invidious,
and that any measure involving coercion, however justi-
fied otherwise, should have a substantial preponderance
of voting power in its favour.

We may point out some further facts which reduce the
invidiousness of a sovereignty so far removed from the
philosophic ideal. In the first place laws, though deter-
mined by the will of at most a majority, are in profession
and principle enacted for the welfare of the whole com-
munity. The end therefore is or should be universal.
It is or should be what the majority will as for the good
of the whole. When they act on any other principle and
legislate in view of a mere sectional, class, or party good
which is inconsistent with the good of the whole, their
action is false to the nature of law and false to the spirit
of obedience to law which rules in conmiimity. Law
makes a universal claim, even though it never or rarely
proceeds from a universal will. Again, though nearly
every law issues out of conflict, the system of these laws
comes in the process of revision and the consolidation and
readjustment of opinion to represent not merely the will
of a partial and changing sovereign, but that deeper
social will on which the State is based. Thus the system
of the laws of a country reveals the continuous set of the
social will as it is shaped by the continuous experience
of age after age. It reveals the character of those who
form the State, the nationality, in the widerjjsense of

144 COMMUNITY bk. n.

that term, of those included within the State. The
changes in that system from age to age, the transformation,
for example, of English criminal law during the nine-
teenth century, witness to changes in the national char-
acter. It shows that in spite of the divisions of class and
party a people has still a character, a nationality. On
the systems of laws created by that unstable fluctuating
sovereign-will there is directed the constant selective
criticism of this greater if more elusive will. Parts of
the system grow obsolete, parts are repealed, but what
endures becomes the central framework of all associa-
tional life, a living and growing framework capable of
co-ordinating all the vast associational activity of com-
munity. Here at last, when we turn our attention from
that moving changing will which at every moment of
time determines the direction of the State, and look
to the enduring product of its activity, realising how
the permanent social will has herein come to reinforce the
unstable political sovereign, we have discovered the
secret of the structure of community.

§ 4. Some fallacies exposed.

Our analysis of will and interest may now be applied
to expose some common fallacies as to the unity, integrity,
and inerrancy of common will. We have seen something
of the marvellous complexity of the interests which are
bound up in community, we have seen that community
presents no smooth surface but one scarred by oppositions
of every kind and degree, that it is directed by no integral
will but by whatever will is at every moment victorious
over an opposing will. These facts are too often over-
looked and a false simplicity given to the social life, a
false integrity to history. We may point out three
forms of this false simplification.

(1) Interest lies behind interest in endless degrees of

cH. m. THE STRUCTURE OP COMMUNITY 146

compttoation. Men may unite in willing some activity,
some policy, and yet be determined by different interests
and so far by different wills. We have seen how rarely
the policy porsued by an association represents the deter-
minate concerted willing of all its members. Yet such
a rarity is common compared with the cases — if such
even exist — ^where many men, united on one policy, have
therein the self -same interest, and seek the same particular
consequence of its fulfilment. An illustration of to-day
may bring this truth home. Suppose the policy of the
United Kingdom in respect of free trade were changed
through the election of a tariff-reform government. This
change would mean that a majority of electors voted
for the tariff-reform party, but behind that conmion act
what variety of motive would lie concealed I The
majority-voters would not aU have voted the same way
because they all wanted tariff-reform, just as the minority-
voters would not all have voted the opposite way because
they all disliked tariff-reform. Concede for simplicity's
sake that the question of free trade versus tariff-reform
were the only issue— an absurd concession, except in the
case of a referendum on a non-party question. Still
variant will and variant interest would have entered,
contradicting the prima facie integrity of the decision.
Some would have voted from general attachment to
party, some from dislike of the opposite party, many
from personal considerations of various kinds. The
remnant reaUy desirous of the policy would have desired
it from various motives and combinations of motives,
because particular industries would benefit from the
change, because the country as a whole would, because the
eiiange was bound up with other interests, say imperialism
or militarism. And so with every measure of every govem-
n&ent. In every State, in every association, this common
will of which we speak so glibly is the rarest thing to find.

146 COMMUNITY bk. n.

There is a common will or no free association could exist.
But that will is not expressed in every act of the associa-
tion in such a way that we can say ofEhand — ^The
association acted thus because of this or that interest.
The philosophic historian is peculiarly liable to that error.
He tells us so readily what the Greek or Roman or Teuton
thought and willed at every juncture of Greek or Roman
or Teutonic history. But history so written proves no
better than what Napoleon (who made some) declared
that history was, '' a fable agreed upon," and the historian
so writing is attributing to some fictitious unity of mind
results and decisions that are bom out of the partially
common, partially conflicting interests of many minds.
The historian so writing regards those conflicting interests
as though at most they were merely motives swaying
one undivided will until one strongest motive determines
the unity of decision. Not in this way shall we attain to
a knowledge of that sure reality of common nature which
is fundamental beyond all antagonisms. If one only
realised the complexity of any social system, where
authority direct and indirect subordinates will to will ;
where interests combine and clash in a multitude of
ways ; where every degree of ignorance and enlighten-
ment underlies decision ; where custom and convention,
the menl^al habits of uniformity, are incessantly at
warfare with the liberating enterprise and ambitions
of individuality — ^we would avoid for ever the easy
simplification that finds one motive behind every
social decision, one will behind every social fact.

(2) Still more hazardous is the process of finding,
behind the historical succession of events constituted by
the action and fortunes of a people, a unity of mind that,
like the mind of each of us, is determined in its successive
acts by its previous experience, so that behind them we
can trace a continuous policy and set purpose. Historians

cH. m. THE STRUCTURE OF COMMUNITY 147

often exaggerate the unity of purpose which underlies
the movements of an age, postulating at every stage a
single-minded entity called Rome or Greece or Egypt
or England, and scarcely realising the difficult problem
of unity in difference set by the succession of men and
generations. Again, I am far from denying the unity in
the life of peoples — ^but I do dispute its simplicity, and
wholly oppose the idea that this unity is like the unity
of an individual mind ; for the latter is a single centre of
experience, modified by all its past doing and suffering,
the former is a common principle living in and trans-
mitted through the multitudinous variant minds of
successive generations.

(3) Lastly, a special danger besets us when we seek to
discover behind the records of a people not simply the
" mind " of that people but the ''mind " of the race to
which it belongs. The danger here is that we attribute
to one factor what is the resultant of several. When we
attribute — ^to take one of many instances — ^to the Hellenic
spirit a love of autonomy, art, culture, outdoor living,
adventure, and so forth, we are certainly speaking of
qualities which to a greater or less degree (art and culture
at any rate were sought even in Athens by the few alone)
characterised some or all of the Greek communities.
But by what title do we credit these qualities to an original
racial temperament alone when we know that physical
barriers preserved isolation, that a poor soil, indented
coasts, an island-strewn sea, and rich neighbouring
continents promoted adventiu^, that a Mediterranean
cUmate, in an age when sanitary science was unknown,
made outdoor living far preferable to indoor ? Doubt-
less these physical and economic factors helped to form
communal habit and outlook, so that the people spon-
taneously tended to activities which their conditions
necessitated. But that spontaneity itself is derivative.

148 COMMUNITY bk. n.

There are instances of peoples which, changing their
habitat, have chcoiged also their habits, and there are
many instances of peoples — compare, for example, the
Hellene of Arcadia with the Hellene of Attica, or, if
you like,' the Englishman of Australia with the English-
man of India — whose portions, occupying territories
of different characters, have developed in correspondingly
different directions. This will be brought out more fuUy
when we come to discuss certain questions of heredity
and environment. Meantime it is sufficient to point out
that in nothing are we more liable to go astray than in
the search for the race-spirit, if by that we mean a focus
of original characters revealed as independent of environ-
ment. To find it involves a perilous initial process of
abstraction, the almost or altogether impossible process
of unravelling the web of life and character woven by the
constant infinite reactions of circumstances and the
minds of men.

One further fallacy is deserving of mention here, because
of its importance in the history of the doctrine of common
will. It is the doctrine of its inerrancy, sometimes held
without qualification, sometimes limited to moral in-
errancy. " The people," said Rousseau, " are never
corrupted, though often deceived, and it is only then that
they seem to will what is evil." (Contrai Social, II. 3.)
It is an idea which in one form or another is or has been
widely prevalent, having been held not only by certain
political philosophers but also by the unphilosophical.
To illustrate, a saying existed among the Greeks to the
effect that there is a certain divinity in the voice of the
multitude,^ and in the middle ages there arose the proverb
(though possibly in a somewhat different signification)

1 Cf . Hesiod, Worka and Daya,

^im 9* oihu rdfira^ ar^XXvrcu, 1j¥ rtpa \a.ol
roXXoi ^fd^vai' Bthn rd rU icri kqI a^,

referred to with i^probation by AristQtle, Nie, Ethics^ VII. 13. 6.

ciL m. THE STRUCTURE OP COMMUNITY 149

that vox paptUi was vox dei, while there is a Moslem
proverb which says outright that '^ error is impossible in
the united deliberations of the community." There is
indeed a core of truth in the idea. If it merely meant
that the need or the good of the community is better
interpreted by the many than by the few, since a dominant
minority is often perverted by selfish interests, that claim
is well established by history. Or if it means that " in
the multitude of counsellors there is wisdom," that also
may be true in general, since reasoning and argument
may count for something, prejudice may counteract
prejudice, and the exposition of the partial views of each
may lead to a wider comprehension of the issue by all.
But taken more literally the doctrine is so obvious an
error that it is strange any intelligent being should have
given it credit. It is a belief resting on the illusion of the
super-individual mind, strengthened by the dogmatic
principle which makes for every people its own present
customs and traditions sacred and best. As entertained
by Rousseau and his Hegelian followers it seems to lead
to the pre{)osterous conclusion that all the individuals
who compose a people may be going to hell while the
people itself progresses heavenwards. Doubtless it is
less probable that many shall fall into some form of error
than that one of them shall — ^but there is no subtle social
alchemy which can transmute the errant wills of in-
dividuals into the infallible will of a community.

The same doctrine is sometimes stated in a vaguer and
more elusive form. There is a proposition sometimes
made by moral philosophers that the moral and the social
are one. The expression is misleading. If it simply
means that morality is that which, if translated into
conduct by the members of a society, would ensure an
ideal social order, the doctrine is true enough, it is merely a
partial statement of the meaning of morality. But then

160 COMMUNITY bk. n.

the statement is misleading, for the expression, ''the
moral," when used without qualification, always refers
to a conception of an ideal or '' ought " (thi ugh the con-
ception may be mistaken), whereas " the social " is
generally and properly used as signifying the actual, the
existent order of a society, which not even its component
members may regard as the order which ought to exist.
In other words, the moral and the moral '' ought " are
one, the social and the social '' ought " are not necessarily
one. Hence those who use the expression in the sense
just mentioned would avoid needless ambiguity if in
place of saying that the moral and the social are one, they
said rather that '' the moral " and the '' ideal social "
are one,-^o expressed, the contention is not without
justification, though as we shall see later it does less than
full justice to morality. But if on the other hand the
expression that the social and the moral are one means
that morality consists in conformity to the existing social
order, then (unless we are illegitimately using the expiession
'' the moral " in its etymological sense, as signifj^ing the
customary, that which accords with usage) the doctrine
is false for the reasons already given. Doubtless every
social order embodies some elements of universal morality.
Otherwise it would be no order at aU, nor could the
society at all exist. As Plato pointed out, without some
justice, without some morality, not even a band of pirates
or of thieves could keep together as a society. And yet
the very perfection of the social order among thieves or
pirates, the unity and coherence of their society, is the
measure not of the moral good within the society but of
the moral evil which they can compass. We see here
already, what will appear more clearly in the next chapter,
that social institutions however perfect in form are but
the means to social values, the means to good and evil,
to the welfare or disaster of men. The order and coher-

OH. m. THE STRUCTURE OP COMMUNITY 151

ence of a socdety of thieves, is the means to moral evil ;
the same order and coherence in a society of honest men
would be the means to good. The end is aU.

Not among any one people nor yet in any one age can
we seek for the norm of wisdom or morality. Yet a
broader and surer standard of judgment somehow comes
to birth. The excess of one age is revealed to the next
and in the process of action and reaction we may perhaps
grasp the more comprehensive truth, the more central
judgment, the profounder morality. The reaction of
successive ages from extreme to extreme — ^profligacy
to Puritanism, puritanism to profligacy, dogmatism to
scepticism, scepticism to dogmatism, materialism to
idealism, idealism to materialism, — ^is a witness to no
essential instability of human nature but to its essential
sanity. The pendulum must swing from extreme to
extreme before it can find rest at the centre. It
is because it can rest only in the centre that it swings
not from extreme to centre, but fij^t from extreme to
extreme. Each of us has known the satiety and revulsion
which comes from dwelling long with false or partial
ideals, the assertion of the more permanent against the
more transient will. The same process goes on endlessly
in the development of a people through its ever-fresh
generations. It is really an amazing thing, and very
reassuring, that for all the caprices and prejudices of
individual men, and for all the blindness and narrowness
of the judgments with which every age judges of its own
works, there yet arises in the course of time a saner,
brocMier, almost universal judgment in regard to these.
Every age may follow some wandering fire, but a later
age at length pierces the illusion. Every age may
contemn or stone its prophets, but in the eye of later
generations wisdom is justified of her children. Every
age may raise to ridiculous eminence some undeserving

162 COMMUNITY bk. n. ch. m.

contemporaries, but the slowly yielded wisdom of suc-
ceeding ages surely dethrones them. So in the succession
of generations men attain that retrospective judgment
which we call in implicit trust, as though it were too sane
and comprehensive to be the judgment of men, '' the
judgment of time " itself.

CHAPTER IV

INSTITUTIONS

§ 1. The meaning of intrtitntions.

In the last chapter we analysed the structure of com-
munity and found it to consist of a '' framework " of
associations co-ordmated under the association of the
State. But surely, it will be said, it is instittUums that
are the structure of community ! Surely it is these alone
that give it character, that are its enduring forms, like
continents of land amid the oceans of ever-dissolving,
ever-recreated life ! Here we raise a question on which
the text-books of social science are curiously silent, the
question of the relation of institution and association.
Yet the answer is by no means obvious. We speak, for
instance, of the family and the church as '' institutions,"
and they are certainly also associations ; we speak again
of property as an '* institution," and it is certainly not
an association. Are associations then simply one form
of institution ? But we would not call a small newly-
established trading company an institution, though it is
certainly an association. Once more we must raise the
preliminary, possibly tiresome, but in a subject such as
ours most necessary, question of names. What is an
institution ?

We would all agree that every institution involves a
certain social recognition or establishment and that
nearly every institution possesses a certain permanence.

164 COMMUNITY bk. n.

Permanence without establishment is not enough. It is,
for instance, inappropriate to speak of poverty (or '' the
poor ") as an institution, for though the poor are with us
always their poverty is not deliberately established by
society. Poverty is an institution in a monastic order
or among yogis, and it sounds cold-blooded to talk of
poverty as an institution of the wider community simply
because it implies a similar establishment. Again, the
very fact of recognition and establishment impUes a
certain permanence. What then is it that is thus per-
manent, thus established ? It is not, we must see, any
mere object standing in outer nature. The land on
which we live, most permanent and fitrt recognised of
all external things, is not an institution. On the other
hand the mode of its cultivation, of its possession, and
of its inheritance, say the run-rig system, communism,
entail, mortmain, primogeniture, are clearly institutions.
These are, or were, permanent forms of relation between
men in respect of the land, forms recognised by com-
munities or associations. It appears then that institutions
are forms of order established within social life by some
common will. The qualifying phrase, '^ established by
some common will," enables us to distingidsh these from
customs, which are also permanent ways in which men
relate themselves to one another. It may be only a
question of degree, but institution implies a more definite
recognition, a more determinate will. Customs are but
the habits of community. As one man falls imper-
ceptibly into a habit so do many men, the members of a
group, form imperceptibly common habits, that is, cus-
toms. These customs may come to be recognised and
instituted, they may come to be honoured, or perhaps to
be condemned as a burden and restriction — or they may
be as little felt by those who share them, as little known
to them, as is the weight of the atmosphere. Our whole

CH. IV. INSTITUTIONS 166

lives are threaded by unfelt, unrecognised customs, of
which we can make ourselves aware only by an effort of
reflection. These latter can scarcely be called institutions.
They are but the raw material of institutions, and common
will is for ever taking customs as they emerge into common
consciousness, and insHtuting them. So it has been from
the beginning. Even monogamy was a custom before
it became an institution. The traditional law-givers of
the peoples, such as Ammur-abi, Moses, and Lycurgus,
were men convinced of the importance of fixing customs
as institutions.

The qualifjing phrase, ** established by some common
will,'' also enables us to determine the relation of associa-
tion and institution. An association is a body of social
beings as organised for the pursuit of some common
interest or interests. It stands in contrast to community,
the common life of social beings. C!ommunity is any area
of common life ; an association is a definite organisation
pursuing some specific interest or pursuing general
interests in some specifc way« The distinction of
association from institution should now be obvious.
For institutions are forms, established forms of relation
between social beings in respect either simply of one
another (as in the institution of rank) or of aome eittemal
object (as in the institiition of property). An association
is more tban a form, it is the creator as well as the created,
it is a source of institutions. An association has a
subjective as well as an objective aspect, it too is created
by common wiU, but it consists in wills as organised in
respect of some common interest. An institution has
an objective aspect alone, it is a means alone. The
association may modify its institutions, may dissolve
some and create others, as the State for instance is con-
stantly doing. So the association outlives its institutions.
Therefore if we are to be strict in our thinking, we should

166 COMMUNITY bk. n.

speak of the family as an association and of marriage as
an institution, of the State as an association and of repre-
sentative government as an institution, of the church as an
association and of baptism as an institution. The susHSOci-
tion is a living thing, the institution is but a form, a means.

A difficulty in the observance of this distinction arises
from the fact that some terms stand both for the associa-
tion and for the institution through which it works, i.e.
either the principal institution or the complete set of
institutions belonging to the association. This is the
case with the term '' church," and still more clearly with
such terms as '' hospital " and '' university." Take for
instance the term '' hospital." It stands for a definite
system, through which medical and nursing skill is applied
to suffering or disease. It may stand also for an associa-
tion of doctors and nurses who supply that need. This
association, we must note, is not equivalent to the
institution, for the institution is a form or system con-
stituted by the relation of the members of the association
to those who require its aid. It is this relation that is
instituted, it is this form of activity, this means of supply-
ing need, which t^ the institution.

From this it also appears that institutions are not, as
is sometimes imagined, external things. Sometimes we
point to a building and say, '' This is that or the other
institution " — " This is the University, this is the
Infirmary." We mean, however, that these are the
buildings belonging to the institution, the home and
visible body of the institution. Institutions are organ-
ised forms of social activity, and have therefore an external
aspect, an aspect in time and space.

Finally, we may note that institutions may be created
either by definite associations or by community itself.
We cannot attribute to the will of any specific associations
the greater institutions of our common life. The State

CH. IV. INSTITUTIONS 157

builds forms of govemment, but can we say that the State
has equally built the institution of property, or the vast
mechanism of co-operation and division of labour which
is established in and beyond all associations ? And what
shaU we say of that most significant institution of
prostitution before which its laws are vain ? The State
protects, recognises, or at least permits many institutions
which community and not the State alone has built.

§2. InstitutionB as instruments of organisation and of
control

If then institutions are the creation of common will
they must have been created as its instruments, for the
service of common interests. Whatever is instituted is
purposed, and therefore has its meaning only in the end
it serves. If we ask then how institutions can serve
interests, the answer is, by organising and by controlling
them. TJiese ways of service art clearly distinct, though
in fact inseparable and interdependent, and it is highly
important that we recognise the distinction.

The organising function of institutions need not detain
us here. Every extension of organisation, instituted by
the further or fuller association of human wills, is an
extension of the power of every will therein concerned.
It places at the disposal of each, new common factors of
power. It prevents waste of life by focussing and unifying
activities. It increases the sphere within which each
may exchange services, select activities, seize oppor-
tunities. When men create institutions they pursue
not only their respective interests, they make themselves
in so far, whether they design it or not, means to the ends
of one another ; and the ideal of association is realised
in so far as all men become means to the ends of one
another while they remain ends to one another and to
diemselves.

168 COMMUNITY bk. n.

Again, institutions are instituted customs, generally so
in their origin, always so if they endure. An institution
need not always have been preceded by a corresponding
uninstituted custom — ^we can hardly say, for instance,
that political institutions such as a bi-cameral parliament
or a system of proportional representation arise out of
precedent custom — ^but if any institution endures it
necessarily takes on also the quality of a custom. It
thus performs that kind of service which habit or custom
performs, making ismooth and easy the paths of social
activity, minimising the expenditure of physical and
psychical energy and thus liberating it in new directions.
Not only so, but because of its permanence as objective
form it fulfils a service which mere habit cannot fulfil, it
saves social beings from the necessity of building afresh
with each generation of them the structure of their social
world.

The controlling function of institutions demands our
closer consideration, for it raises questions which have
sharply divided the social thinkers of every age, and
which have sometimes even sundered states and peoples.
Yet these very confiicts, it may not be too rash to assert,
have thrown such a light on the questions at issue as to
guide to the only possible solution all who study them
with an open mind.

Every institution has a controlling as well as an organis-
ing function. For institutions, being established fonns,
constitute an inner social environment. This environ-
ment, like any other, reacts upon those who are exposed
to its infiuence, and so the relation of institution to
social life becomes very complex. They do not merely
reflect and express social life, they modify it profoundly ;
they do not merely fulfil men's purposes, they are means
by which these purposes are determined. Who can
estimate the indirect control, the reaction upon human

CH. !▼. INSTITUTIONS 159

purposes, of the institutions of property, of urbanisation,
of industrialism ? The very presence of the institutions
they have themselves created, their magnitude, unity,
and permanence, stimulate and unify, confirm and
arrest the wills of men.

It is this indirect or reactive controlling function of
institutions whose significance is most easily forgotten or
misunderstood, and we must therefore consider it more
particularly ; but before doing so we may distinguish it
from two more direct forms of institutional control. Of
these one is the control self-imposed on every member
of an association or community as he understands the
neceesity of conforming to its institutionB if he would
attain the ends these institutions serve. This is the
necessary discipline involved in all collective action. It
is a discipline rendered more complete and imperative
wil^ every extension of social organisation, and becomes
an ever more important factor in the socialisation of man.
The other is a more limited type of control ; it is that
imposed, through institutions, by some members of society
upon others, imposed upon the rest by those who, from
strength of numbers or of prestige, are dominant in the for-
mation and maintenance of institutions. It is not difficult
to show, by comparing the religious and political insti-
tutions of primitive and advanced peoples, that this
other-imposed control grows narrower as the former, the
self-imposed control, grows wider.^ Among primitive
peoples political and religious institutions are essentially
instruments of coercion. As society advances political
obligation ceases to be arbitrary, based on the mere fiat
of a governing will. The law comes more and more to be
obeyed because the body of citizens identify their good or
interest with obedience to the law. The civil code grows
immensely in comparison with the bulk of the criminal

* See, e,g.» Dorkheini, Division du Travail Social, I., chaps, v.-vi.

160 COMMUNITY dk. n.

code. It becomes in some measure realised that law
and liberty, instead of being irreconcilable, are cause and
efEect ; for though there can be law without liberty there
cannot be liberty without law. Control by government
becomes more firmly rooted in ethical control, so that the
compulsion which it must still bring to bear upon the few
is exercised not in the mere name of itself or of the many
but in the name of social welfare. The same process is
revealed still more fully in the sphere of religion, for though
there must always remain some elem^it of compulsion in
the political sphere there is no such necessity in the
religious sphere. The coercive function of religion has
diminished continually, a fact obvious to everyone who
knows the part played by religious institutions among
primitive peoples of the present and the past, within the
tribe, the village-community, and the early city, who
knows also and understands the meaning of the world-
shaking strife waged for many centuries between the
upholders of religious coercion and the champions of
religious liberty.. In fact, as society develops, it seems
driven more and more to the final source of social security,
ethical control. The minds of men change from age to
age, but the necessity for social control is continuous and
unchanging, and if one form grows weaker another must
be strengthened. Here is revealed the immense import'
ance of social education which, becoming now of necessity
an education for ethical autonomy, becomes the very
basis of communal strength and requires of community
its most devoted care and service.

These direct effects of institutions are at least in some
degree intended, when men create them, but there are
further effects by way of control which lie outside the
direct purposes of men. We may express the difference
as follows. Men will, as ways of furthering common
interests, the two forms of social control just considered.

CH. IV. INSTITUTIONS 161

but the third or reactive form of control is in the first
place not determined by but determinant of common
will. It is one form of that endless reaction of environ-
ment, eyen of the environment we have made. It is a
control which may, though unintended, be of profound
service to society. It is one of the chief agencies in pro-
moting social solidarity. To illustrate, it is very signifi-
cant that, though nearly every law issues out of conflict
and is carried by a majority in the face of the opposition,
often the bitter opposition, of a minority, yet the whole
established code of laws comes to have th,e general support
of nearly the whole community. It is not merely that
the l&ws which offended large minorities are repealed —
comparatively few of them are ; it is in general because
the Tery fact of establishment reacts on the wills of all,
not of a majority alone, creating a common attitude of
acceptance, ownership, or even reverence.

On the other hand it is a control to which a grave
danger is attached. Its reactive character obscures the
original purpose of an institution, and tends to make men
ding to it without consideration of the interest which it
may serve. The hardening of institutions into a rigid
" shell '* is in fact, as Bagehot and Maine have strikingly
illustrated, the greatest hindrance to the development of
life. Doubtless a strong social life can always break the
shell, and it may be because the spirit of a people is itself
stationary that it stagnates into the institution-ridden
life. But new life-movements are at first always small,
and are easily controlled out of existence by the rigidity
of institutions. In such cases the security afforded by
institutions is bought at the cost of progress, life is bought
at what may be the unnecessarily high cost of good life.
Wherever institutions as such become sacred, wherever
the form is reverenced apart from the life it serves and
the letter of the law divorced from its social bearing, there

162 COMMUNITY bk. n

institutions beoome dangerous. This is true not simply
of primitive peoples. The history of progressive peoples
constantly reveals the danger which curises when institu-
tional forms become ossified, the danger that they may
pervert instead of furthering the spirit, tradition, way of
life out of which they rose. This is pre-eminently true
where the institution is invested with sanctity, as in the
case of ecdesiastioal institutions. Again and again in
the course of history the religious nisus has created
institutions by which to express and develop itself, again
and again these have petrified and so crushed the leHgious
spirit. For in religion more than anywhere else a free and
not a merely formal or constrained attitude is essential,
a free attitude of reverence, love, and selfHsurrender
towards a power felt to be infinite and good* No aspect
of life is in more urgent need of constant renewal, in none
is renewal so dif&cult. That is because in this more than
in any other sphere it is hard to reconcile the fiexibUity
of institutions with their sanctity.

§3. Institatiomi and life.

If we have seen the double necessity of institutions, as
means by which social life is both furthered and controlled,
we have seen thereby that institutions are not good in
themselves but only in the service of life. Institutions
are the mechanism of society. That is why an institution
may be good at one stage of society, and bad at another.
There is perhaps no institution we can name, however
rightly detestable to-day, which has not at some time, in
some social sphere, become beneficent. Slavery, war,
tyranny are all evil in the world of civilisation ; can we
deny that even these have wrought good in more primitive
worlds ? Institutions are good or evil according to the
ends they serve. They do not exist in their own right, to
overpower men, but only to^serve them, and when they

GH. IV. INSTITDnONS 168

cease to serve them na antiquity and no sanctity can save
them from condemnation. The new wine will at last
burst the old bottles, and alas I both the wine is spilt
and the bottles rent. It was so in the French Revolution,
and in oar own age the Russian Revolution has reaffirmed
that greatest of political lessons.

It is impossible to understand the doctrine that the
whole can grow otherwise than by the growth of its parts,
that the individual can wither while the world grows
moro and more. Men can indeed transform mechanism
bom means into an end, exalting mechanism at the
expense of life. They may become slaves of the machine
as bees or ants seem to become slaves of their social
machine, sdgnificantly losing the primary life-functions
in the process. Men never become slaves of their machines
of wood and iron, these remain instruments of liberation.
They become slaves only to the mechanism which they
create within themselves, when the instituted form of
activity becomes master instead of servant. Men can
contrive to live in a world of abstract institutions as they
sometimes contrive to live in a world of abstract concep-
tions, oonc^tions. drawn from forgotten realities, institu-
tions created by forgotten needs.

It has been well pointed out that the continuity and
permanence of institutions, as contrasted with the short-
lived race they serve, gives them often to our eyes a false
character, as if they existed for themselves or for some
supra-personal end. An excellent illustration of this
tendency, in respect of the relations of the family associa-
tion to the civic institutions which it has brought into
being, has been given by Dr. Leslie Mackenzie in volume
I. of the Sociological Review. He points out how, *^ as
the individuals whose massed activities have generated
the great city all pass away, we are continually obsessed
with the illusion that the city has come from some other

164 COMMUNITY bk. n.

than a personal source " ; and shows the great dangers
of that illusion, on the one side the exaltation of mere
officialdom and its divoroe from the ideal of service, on
the other side the consequent reluctance of those for
whom the institution exists to take advantage of its
service. The attitude of citissens towards the hospital,
particularly in Great Britain, is a case in point. They
cease to realise that the institution exists not for the
sake of its doctors and nurses but for the sake of its
patients — ^that in fact it exists for themselves and has
no justification save in their service. They cease accor-
dingly to take the best advantage of their institutions.

It is very important that we should realise the true
relation of institutions to the life that creates them.
Every kind of common life creates appropriate institu-
tions, the life of religion ecclesiastical institutions,
the life of trade economic institutions, and so forth.
Each form of life must live by institutions, never for
them. The obscuration of this truth leads to two false
extremes of theory. It may lead to the principle of
regimentation, which makes institutions prior to life, or
it may lead to the principle of anarchy which, protesting
against the elevation of institutions into ends, fails to
allow for their necessity as means.

Now institutions, being objective forms, do not change
after the imperceptible manner of the unresting life
process. An institution may remain seemingly unchanged
while the life which created it has changed entirely, or
even when there is behind it no life process any more.
Or again, an institution may be created, changed, or
destroyed in an hour under the sudden creative or destruc-
tive impulse of a life that has moved in silence to new
ends. But if institutions are to serve life to the utmost,
they must be changed as life changes, transformed as life
itself takes new directions.

CH. nr. INSTITUTIONS 165

The lessons of history are notoriously insecure, and
men can adduoe history, as formerly they were wont to
adduce the Bible, in support of any social prejudice
whatever ; but if history teaches an3rthing at all, it must
surely teach us this, that no community can save itself
which regards its institutions as unchangeable, which
does not subject them continually to the test of the service
of the common weal.

In the prinutive world a single set of institutions
enclosed the life of a people. It was then easy to find a
simple external sanction for all conduct. As community
develops it unfolds within itself many associations, and
these all build their own institutions and call with many
voices to many allegiances. Thus the social being can
no longer find the unity of his life in the mere acceptance
of any single social claim, but only in so far as these
various claims have been related and harmonised in the
focus of his own responsive personality. That is the
ethical realisation, the ethical priority which yet appears
last in time. When traditions multiply, the claim of
each must cease to be absolute ; when and if traditions
break — and they must break sometimes if conmiunities
advance— it is vain to lead men straight back to them
again. If traditions lose their hold, the only security is
to lead men from the outer sanctions which they have
rejected to the inner sfiknctions which can renew the
world. When a community has rejected the old traditions
there is no direct way back to them. It must recreate
what it cannot restore. For institutions are but means,
and the adjustment of institutions to the demands of life
constitutes the unceasing social problem.

BOOK III

THE PRIMARY LAWS OF THE DEVELOP

MENT OF COMMUNITY

CHAPTER I

THE MEANING OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT

§ L In what sense laws 7

In an earlier chapter we attempted to discover the
meaning of social law and its relation to all other kinds
of law. It was unnecessary there to raise the question
of the existence of such laws. No one, I suppose, doubts
to-day that there are social laws, that there are, for
instance, laws of economics as certainly as there are laws
of physics. But when we come to consider, not the
specific laws revealed in definite spheres of association,
but the general laws of that community which unifies all
associations, and especially when we speak of such laws
as laws of development or evolution, we expose ourselves
to the attacks of innumerable critics. Some would dis-
tinguish development from evolution, others evolution
from progress, afSrming one and denying the other.
Some deny social development in toto, others admit it
but deny that it has laws. The only adequate refutation
of the latter criticism must be the demonstration of these
laws themselves, but before entering upon that demon-
stration we may consider the implications we make when
we assert that there are laws of the development of
community.

Here is the issue we must always face when we speak
of devdopmental laws. Are these merely statements
summing up an actual process of development, historical

170 COMMUNITY bk. m.

or desoriptive summaries tme of this particolax process
but not to be regarded as universal principles of develop-
ment wherever it occurs, true perhaps of the development
of western civilisation at a particular epoch but not
necessarily true even of communal development as it
has taken place almost contemporaneously in the Orient,
still less of forms future and unknown ? Or are they
principles revealing the real nature of communal develop-
ment, rules to which every conmiunity must necessarily
conform in passing from certain stages of its existence to
certain higher stages, because these rules aare what develop-
m«it at these stages meand ? The difference is vital : if
the former alternative is true, we are still outside any
real sociology ; if the latter, we can confidently claim for
sociology a place amongst the sciences. Of the answer I
feel no doubt. The term " law " is strictly applicable to
the laws of communal development I am about to formu-
late. Wherever communal development has taken place
it has been in accordance with these laws : and whatever
communal development will henceforth take place will be
in accordance with these laws.

Two aasomptioDS underlie this seemingly bold assertion.
We have assumed in the first place that development is
something distinct from mere process. The term " evolu-
tion " is rather ambiguous in this and some other respects,
and may for the moment be left out of the discussion.
But tiie terms '' development " and " progress " imply
not merely process but process in a certain direction here-
after to be specified. These two terms, though they are
sometimes distinguished, I shall (for reasons shortly to
appear) use as equivalent, preferring, however, the term
" development " because of a certain narrowed etldcal
significance sometimes attached to the term " progress.*'
It will now appear that the assertion set out above is not
so vast or bold as it may have sounded. We are con-

cH. I. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 171

cemed, not with^the' laws^^oFall commmuJ pxooefls, but
only with the laws of that process which is deyelopment.
• If there aie laws of non-jM^ogressive commmiBl transf or-
matioii they do act ocmcem us here. We do not say that
all communities or any community must develop, bat we
do say that those which do develop will confonn to the
laws to be set out in this book.

The other assumption — an assumption which is the
necessary preliminary of every such investigation — ^is
the definition oi the nature of community expounded m the
preceding books. Community is simply common life, and
that common life is more or less adequate according as
it more or less comjdetely fulfils in a social harmony the
needs and personalities of its members, according as it
more or less completdy takes up into itself the necessary
differences which individuality imjdies, so that they be-
come differences within a unity and not contradictions of
that unity. Common life is thus a question of degrees,
and all existent communities realise only in degree the
idea of commuiiity. The laws to be set forth are laws of
the completer realisation of community, and wherever a
community moves towards a more perfect communal
form, there these laws, some or all, are exemplified. The
laws are indeed more than mere inductions from history,
for how shall history tell us which is more perfect and
which less ? Here we see the nature of the initial assump-
tion, that we know what is meant by community, not
meiely as exhibited at various historical stages, but in
idea. These laws are the explication of the idea of com-
munity, they are not simply laws in accordance with
which development takes place, they are laws themselves
revealing or even constituting the nature of devdopment.
History exemplifies them in developing communities, but
their necessity follows from the idea of community. So
we can say not only that communities at a certain stage

172 COMMUNITY bk- m.

of devdopment have actually followed or are actually
foUowing these laws, but that if a community is to com-
tinue development from a certain stage it must follow
these laws. They are revealed to us in history, but only
because, guided by the idea of community, we know what
to look for amid the vast welter of historical vicissitude
and contradiction. If it be said that such procedure is
arbitrary and circular, that we start with an a priori idea
of community, and merely select as laws of development
those historical changes which conform to it, it may be
sufficient to reply — though there is doubtless a deeper
answer — that all evolutionary science is faced with the
same difficulty. All evolutionary science, however
scientiEtts may seek to conceal it, speaks necessarily in
terms of development no less than of procesch~else there
would be no system, no hierarchy, no succession, no law.
Evolutionary science is concerned not with the history
of the world but with the history of selected elements of
the world. It is not a kind of history revealing successive
stages of life. The amoeba did not disappear when man
arose. It is not simply a study of the appearance through
time of newer and ever newer forms of life. The facts of
reversion and retrogression dispel the idea that we can
equate evolution with temporal sequence. Evolution in
this connection must mean not change but change in a
determinate direction. Take away the idea of develop-
ment, leave only the idea of process, and evolutionary
science would become a mere reflection of the myriad
inchoate contradictory processes of nature, no science,
but an endless series of inconsequent descriptions with no
guiding thread.

It is most worthy of notice that the difficulties which
the idea of development introduces into all other evolu-
tionary science, so that scientists with good reason seek
to avoid introducing it, do not exist in the sphere of

OIL 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 173

soience. Here and here alone is the idea of develop-
ment unambiguously present and realised. We are con-
cemed here with the laws in and through which the
nature of community is fulfilled, in and through which
community attains ever truer forms, purified of alien
elements and contradictions through the activities of
human beings who increasingly understand its nature, as
gold is purified of dross through the activities of men who
understand the nature of gold. We are concerned with
the unfolding of the nature of community, as a biologist
is concerned with the unfolding of the nature of organism :
but the activities which make and transform community
are in their degree purposive activities, the activities of
purposive beings. These purposes we know, and we know
no other purposes in the universe.

Apart from the idea of purpose social devdopment has
no meaning. The idea of heterogeneity or complexity is
not enough. Is not chaos the very expression of com-
plexity, unordered heterogeneity ? The idea of temporal
succession is not enough, else we could not talk of decad-
ence or retrogression. The idea of co-ordination or system
is not enough. Do not primitive communities often
exhibit, in respect of kinship and marriage relations, for
instance, a very elaborate order, a sometimes too elaborate
system ? If we ask why, for instance, we r^ard modem
western civilisation as more developed than mediaeval
civilisation, the answer is not simply that it is more
complex, but that it satisfies more interests, higher
mterests. If we ask why it has developed, the answer
must be that men have found more interests, higher
interests, and have found better ways of satisfying them
through social relations. The institutions and customs
of community are more developed when they serve life
more, community is more developed when it is a greater,
better common life. Alwajrs in the study of community

174 COMMUNITY ml m.

we are brought back to this ethical ideal, this ideal of
completer life which must nevertheless be assumed, never
demonstrated. The ethical ideal must remain as rich
and concrete and inner and as inexpressible as life itself,
at whatever cost to the completeness of our theories.
The development of community is an aspect of the develop-
ment of life, the development of institutions means their
transformation to the completer service of life. When
we study community we are studying a world of values,
and in the study of values it is impossible to retain the
ideal whioh perhaps inspires the student of external
nature. We must speak of better or worse institutions,
of higher or lower stages of devdopment, just because it
is values we are concerned about. It is the meaning of
values that we should treat them so. It is their essential
fact. We must, of course, always beware lest we allow
our conceptions of what ought to be to pervert our under-
standing of what is. We must record existence with the
coldest impartiality, but the very meaning of value-
existence is lost if we do not treat it as such.

So, alas 1 we escape one set of difficulties only to be
faced with another. We escape the difficulty of the
natural sciences which must use the language of develop-
ment and yet cannot introduce that principle which alone
gives clear significance to development, tiie principle of
purpose and value. We are in turn faced with the new
difficulty which the idea of value introduces, the difficulty
that standards of value vary from man to man, from
people to people. This is a real difficulty, but it must
not be exaggerated. We have already seen that the
conflict here suggested is primarily ethical, not socio-
logical. We must also note that there is after all a
general agreement among men in so far as there are
certain universal ends whioh all men seek and thus admit
to be good or desirable. The greater divergencies arise

CH. 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 175

over the question how far certain formB of community,
certain institutions, further these ends. When men dis-
pute concerning " socialism," for instance, they dispute
on a basis of agreement in respect of universal ends, they
differ on the question how far a certain organisation of
community would further or retard these ends. Other-
wise no argument would be possible. When they dispute
concerning the institution of war, the point on which they
differ is the effect of that institution upon a common weal
in which they alike believe. If, therefore, men apply
contradictory ethical epithets to social institutions ; if
some believe that war is good, others that it is evil ; if
some approve of dominion over alien peoples and others
condemn it ; if some esteem the present worse than the
past, and others the present better than the past ; we
must not assume that here we have an ethical conflict
and one, therefore, insoluble. The effect of institutions
on life is a sociological question, an entirely objective
question, and one absolutely soluble, if not to-day, yet
as a result of more prolonged research into social causes
and effects. It is, indeed, dif&cult to study with im-
partiality these relations of cause and effect. It is not
dmply because oertain institutions have a peculiar signi-
ficanoe or value for us that we are so prone to bias,
even against our wills, in the study of them. It is because
we have abeady made decisions in respect of them, not
merely academic decisions, but decisions engraved in our
very nature, in our emotions and character, decisions felt
and lived, not merely thought. It is these deep-rooted
decisions of the whole being which so easily defeat the
claim and endeavour of impartiality. And yet every
enquiry into the effect of institutions admits of and
demands scientific resolution, and the deeper the effect
upon oar whole nature of a way of thinking about them,
the more vital if the more difficult is the knowledge of

176 COMMUNITY bk. in

its truth. For it is impossible to believe that in a world
bound fast in causality, ignorance and error should in
anything profit us in the place of knowledge.

We should note here the necessity to distinguish
between the development of oommunal institutions and
the development of communal life. In one aspect associ-
ations and institutions are more continuous than life, for
a single association may last through millenia and a
single institution outlive many generations of life. In
another aspect life is more continuous than its created
structures. For associations may pass away, institutions
may be replaced by totally different institutions, but life
is in essence the same wherever it is found, being present
in greater or less degree. The will and intelligence which
to-day creates the communities of Western Europe is but
more of the will and intelligence which integrated the
pre-historic horde or clan. Can we not go yet further ?
Just as the divine mind may be conceived to comprehend
and enjoy the illimitable universe, so the blind worm
that feels dimly towards another of its kind is in the
measiue of its life comprehending and enjoying that much
of the universe.

We are to be concerned with the growth of a life as
revealed in the structures it has built. In whatever is
written about a living developing thing there is almost
sure to be some error, but in the study of community
there is a peculiar danger. For what we are studying is
in process of a development nowhere previously completed
before our eyes. We know what a seedling or an embryo
will become, for there are previous examples before us of
the course of development of individual plant or animal,
we know the completed form no less than any present
stage of development towards it. But the process of
community is as imfulfilled as the process of the universe
within which it falls. We know in the early spring what

CH. 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 177

the sprouting lily will become in April, but how shall we
know what is spring or summer — ^if , indeed, we can speak
of either — ^in the history of community ? Life may at
any time rise intenser and contradict us. We are studying
a force whose strength we do not know, for it is revealed
in its effects alone ; whose full character we cannot know,
for we cannot certainly say that it is now near or far
from fulfilment, and only in its fulfilment — ^if there be
any — is its nature fully discerned ; whose future is at
best a probability. What we know is only direction.
What we can say is only that, if the force be not spent,
the maintenance of the present direction will probably
lead to such and such results. But we can, it seems,
affirm in spite of all uncertainties that certain results are
probable. For though at times in the past the force
seemed spent, and though at times the direction seemed
reversed, the more comprehensive view made possible by
anthropology reveals a general direction and a permanent
driving force. The intelligence of man may grow feebler,
through inner failure or environmental stress, but it has
in fact grown stronger ; his plasticity and educability may
diminish, but it has in fact increased ; his power of will
and control of means may slacken, but they have hitherto
in the process been beyond measure reinforced.

Finally, we should understand that it is only forma
which can in the strict sense be said to evolve, to open
out or unfold ; powers and energies do not evolve, but
increase. We are using the term " development " to
denote the whole process in which the forms of life evolve
correspondent to the increase of the powers of life in
individual and race. And the laws of community are
laws revealing (he connection between the evolviion of aocial
forms and the increase of human life or personality y however
we care to name that power which we all find within
onraelves, more than any forms but for ever formative.

178 COMMUNITY bk. m.

These principles are so vital for the study of community
that we must pause to consider more fully their meaning
and truth*

§ 2 The kinds of social development and the criteria of
communal development

A thousand social interests are bound up within com-
munity, but not in so complete a harmony that the
development of one must mean the development of every
other. One interest may be pursued to the neglect of
or even to the detriment of others. Thus a community
may seem to be at once progressive and retrogressive,
moving to one social good whUe it loses another. It
may, for instance, attain a high level of external civilisa-
tion while its moral standards are abased, as Was the
case with some Italian cities of the BenaiBsance. It may
reveal a high moral tone (in the narrower sense of the
term " moral ") while its culture remains low, as is said
to have been the case with the Qermanic tribes at the
beginning of the Christian era. It may pursue economic
interests to the detriment of the health-interests, as has
been the case in the earlier stages of our industrial era.
Or it may pursue the health-interests to the neglect of
the culture-interests, as in ancient Sparta. What, then,
shall we call the development of community ? Is there
any unity of forw&rd movement which we can name
communal development, any unity of backward move-
ment which we must name communal retrogression ?
The complexity of communal life renders this a difficult
question, and as a preliminary to its solution we may
consider in turn the various kinds of social interest bound
up in community, enquiring into the criteria of develop-
ment within each kind. Thus we shall be better able to
seek for that more general development which alone can
be named communal.

CB. 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 179

We may take as basis of enquiry the classification of
inteiests already set out. Specific interests were divided
into the two main classes of ultimate and derivative.
Now interests which are essentially derivative, although
from other p(»njts of view of primary importance, are
obviously secondary from the point of view of our im-
mediate enqniry. For economic and political systems
are but means to the ultimate ends of men. They derive
their value from the nature of the ends which they effec-
tively serve, and like all means they may be applied to
the service of diverse ends, even of contradictory ends.
Hence the only form of development within the sphere
of derivative interests which concerns us here is their
devdopment as estiiuated by the service they actually
render, i.e. as esitimated by the development of ultimate
ends. The perfection of economic and political systems
as pieoes of machinery is therefore nothing for our present
enquiry and need not be discussed. In no sense could
we say that a community has developed merely because
its economic or political sjmtem has become intrinsically
more complex or more extensive. This fact is often over-
lodked and the problem of communal development made
to i^pear even more difficult than it actually is. Take
the economic system, together with the system of tech-
nical and mechanical appliance on which it largely
depends. This is often what we think of when we use
tiie term '' civilisation," but it affords no measure what-
ever of communal development. It would in fact be
well if we could restrict the term " civilisation " to this
^ole system ol communal mechanism, and reserve the
term " culture " to those interests which are or should
be sought for their own sake alone, as ultimate. The
importuice of marking this distinction is so great as to
outweigh our reasonable reluctance to refine on the terms
of every-day speech. For " civilisation " so understood,

180 COMMUNITY BK.m.

though it is itself a condition of advanced culture, may
yet become a substitute for it or even an enemy to it.
It has been weU said that '* nothing probably is more
dangerous for the human spirit than science without
poetry, civilisation without cuitiue/' ^ and the life of the
capitals of civilisation, ancient and modem, has often
illustrated the truth of that saying. Once the distinction
is realised, we realise also the deceptiveness of '* civilisa-
tion," and are better able to look beyond those trappings
of glittering mechanism which so often conceal or even
foster an inner primitiveness of life. Or take again the
political system. Some look upon the area of a State
or its dominions in the same ignorant admiration as leads
the rustic to gape at the high buildings and long streets
of the city. But who that knows would estimate the
worth of the city in these terms, and who that knows
would estimate in these terms the worth of a State or
nation ? The standard of intelligence and endeavour
may be higher in the few square miles of Attica than
in the vast expanse of Persia, in the little circle of
Florence than in the gross Germanic Empire : if it is,
then is the smaller people the greater — and not in any
paradoxical sense, for life is then more worth living for
the members who compose that people, and any great-
ness other than that is a mere phantom, magni nominis
urnbra.

Our problem is now reduced to simpler terms, for we
need only enquire into the criteria of development in the
sphere of ultimate interests and seek there for some
correlation or unity which may give meaning to the
expression " communal development." We divided ulti-
mate interests into those based on organic and those
based on psychical needs. We may for shortness call

1 Cf. H. 8. Chamberlain, FaundaHona of the Nineteenth OenHtry
(English tranalation). Vol. I.» p. 36.

CH.1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT l8l

these organic and physical interests respectively, pro-
vided we bear in mind that both classes are in the strict
sense psychical, and that we in especial are concerned
with them only in so far as they create, reveal, or express
the interrelations of minds, i.e. social relations. We are
concerned with development neither from the standpoint
of biology nor from that of psychology, and we must
employ the conclusions of these sciences only as a
basis for our own. It is for this purpose that we now
enquire into the criteria of biological and psychological
development.

Organic development has an outer and an inner aspect,
a structural and a functional aspect, and here again it is
important to notice that for the study of development
the functional aspect is prior and alone conclusive. If
we look at structure alone, we must find development to
consist in (1) the increased differentiation of organ from
organ and the increased co-ordination of them aU into
the unity of organic structure, (2) the increased complexity
of the separate organs and thus of the whole organism.
But these criteria are by themselves totally inadequate.
For (1) you may have pathological differentiation of
structure, a differentiation harmfid to the life of the
organism. It may, of course, be said that such differ-
entiations are not co-ordinated in the unity of the organism,
but how are we to estimate the co-ordination of organs
save as the co-ordination of their functions in the service
of the life-function itself? (2) Complexity within an
organ or within the whole organism may also be patho-
Ic^cal. A cancerous organism may from the structural
point of view be more complex than a healthy one. Mere
complexity in organism or in institution is never a good,
always an evil. In a healthy organism tisdess com-
plexities atrophy, and it is a sign of organic health that
in our human bodies there are many atrophied and

182 COMMUNITY ^k. m.

atrophying organs.^ It is a sign that nature creates and
supports complexities not for their own sake, bat only
for the service they render, a lesson that men might weU
ponder over.

It is very needful to insist on the fact that even organic
development cannot be understood in terms of the differ-
entiation, interdependence, complexity, and co-ordination
of organic parts. This is especially so in viiew of the &ct
that some writers stUl view the development of community
as analogous to that of organism. A perception of the
real meaning of organic development would save such
writers from falsely mechanical ideaJs of community.
They would no longer think of the members of a com-
munity as fulfilling their nature and function when they
merely setve as differentiated parts of the social toiaohine
or as cells of the social organism. They would no longer
exaggerate specialisation and division of labour into
intrinsic ends. They would no longer ooncdve of com-
munity as some great Leviathan Which in its own inexor-
able power carries hither and thither the many members
of its one body. Finally, they would no longer Conceive
false views of individuality and individualisation, and so
misuiiderstand the first and greatest of laws, that social-
isation and individualisation are one. The development
of the organism is the development of its life, and the
development of community is the development of the life
which exists in its members.

We are thus driven from structure to Bf e in our search
for criteria of development. Differentiation that furthers
life is development, complexity that inci'eases life-capacity
is development. We must mean by an organism ei^er
the living creature or the physical vehicle of its life. Hie

1 '* Wiedersheiin in hiB "Der Bau det Mtnachen reckoDB in human
beings fifteen organs that are progressing^ seventeen that are deeajring^
though still partially useful, and one hundred and seven that wee
rudimentary and altogether useless.*' {Bdinburgh Befriew, 1911.)

CH. 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 183

deyelopment of a living thing is the development of its
life, so that it exhibits greater power, greater vigour,
greater mental or spiritual comprehension. Wherever life
exists more abundantly it does exhibit signs of differ-
entiation and complexity, but it is always life that creates
the structural development. The study of organic de-
velopment merely leads us on to the study of psychical
development, forming a useful guide to what we are
seeking but not in itself the object of our search. It is
the psyche, the life, which must answer our question :
and if we know what psychical development is (taking
" psychical " in its widest sense, the adjective corre-
sponding to the substantive '' life "), we know already
the meaning of communal development ; it is psychical
development as fulfilled through common life.

Happily there is a very simple method of tracing
psychical development. Every psychical being passes
from infancy towards maturity. In the process the whole
life develops, not this or that aspect or capacity alone ;
develops not indeed equally in all directions but yet as
a whole. No lapses in individual instances, no perver-
sions, no instances of arrested precocity or of one-sided
growth, can conceal from us the truth that there is a
general development, a development of the whole life,
in the transition from infancy to adolescence. The
psychologist readily devises comprehensive tests of
psychical development, and we are all so far psychologists
as to be able to trace the general characteristics of de-
velopment in the multitude of instances that fall within
our experience. Further, if we accept the principle that
certain adverse influences are *' devolutional " in the
sense that under them capacities disappear successively
in the inverse order of acquirement, the last in acquisition
being the first to disappear, we have a means of checking
the results obtained by the director method of study.

184 COMMUNITY bk. m.

It is held both by biologists and psychologists that the
influence of excessive passion, of alcohol and certain
other drugs, of the conditions which induce general
paralysis of the insane and other pathological derange-
ments, is devolutional in the sense described.^

It is impossible here to discuss and justify the various
criteria of development which we obtain by the application
of these methods. We might cite, for example, the
ability to meet new situations, the power to reason or
synthesise, to conceive and express ideals, the power to
control passion by the idea of permanent Ufe-ends and to
control imagination by relevant fact. But our concern
is with the directly social criteria of development, and of
these the most important discoverable by the application
of these methods are perhaps the following : the power
to understand and estimate the claims of others in com-
parison with our own, the power to enter into relations
with an ever-wider community, and to enter into more
and more complex relations, the autonomy attained by
the individual in these relations with his fellows, and his
sense of responsibility towards others within these rela-
tions. These are all qualities entirely absent in the
earlier stages and activities of conscious life, and slowly
acquired in some degree by all educable beings. They
are the social qualities first diminished under the influence
of organic or psychical influences which totally derange
organic and psychical life. They are also the social
qualities which seem to suffer most when old age mocks
at maturity and declines to second childhood. For all
these reasons we seem justified in regarding them as
criteria of the general development of the social life of
each.

With these criteria before us, if we have grasped the

^ See, e.g. Ribot, Psychology of the Emotions, chap. xiv. ; de Greef,
Le Transjormisme Social, Part II., chap. 3.

cH. I. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 185

true relation of individuality to society, the main difficulty
of estimating communal development disappears. If
these are indeed criteria of individual development, they
are by their very nature criterlb of communal develop-
ment, and it must follow that those communities are
most developed whose members are most advanced when
measured by these standards, and whose institutions are
most calculated to promote them. It will be shown in
the course of this work that the various criteria we have
inst mentioned are bound up together and accompany
one another. It will also be shown that the development
which they measure involves on the whole a correspondent
development of the organic basis of life as weU.

If we compare the life of communities which we aU
acknowledge to be at higher and lower stages of develop-
ment, if we compare, say, the West-European life of
to-day with the life of Negritos, Australians, Bushmen,
Veddahs, and other most primitive peoples, or if we
consider the life of a continuous community at what we
ail acknowledge to be higher and lower stages of its
development, the life, say, of the English people in the
thirteenth century with their life to-day, we discover that
the stage of living we call higher is one of which this at
least is true, that the qualities referred to above are
present in it in higher degree.

Let us set out these criteria from the standpoint of
community. It will be found that they are reducible
under the following heads :

I. (1) The regard or disregard of personality, and of
life and health as the basis of personality — the regard or
disregard of the personality of the physically weaker, .of
the poor, of women, of those subject to government, of
children, of strangers and aUens. (In ILantian language,
the degree in which each counts as end and not merely
as means.) Of this criterion the following are corollaries :

186 COMMUNITY bk. m.

(2) The absence or presence of arbitrary control,
political, religious, and general, and the absence or pre-
sence of the spirit of servitude which accepts or welcomes
arbitrary subjection. The iorm and degree of the exercise
of force.

(3) The diversity or uniformity of the members within
a community, and the correspondent hghtness or heaviness
of communal custom.

n. (1) The simplicity or the complexity and the loose-
ness or the strength of the autonofn(msly determined
relationship between each member and the whole of any
community to which he belongs. (This correlation of
simphcity and looseness, complexity and strength, will be
justified in Chapter III. It wiU filso be shown that
II. (1) is simply the reverse of I. (1), so that we shall have
finally attained a single criterion of communal develop-
ment.) Of this criterion the following are corollaries :

(2) The multiplicity or paucity of associations within
community.

(3) The breadth or narrowness of the largest community
of which each individual is a member, the breadth or
narrowness of the bounds within which social life is
enclosed.

What we have been seeking and now seem to have
found, though subject to confirmation by our further
study, is a simple criterion whereby to estimate the
development of conununity. But we must not suppose
that all our difficulty is thereby solved.

For we must remember that a community, even a close
and near community, remains but a more or less imperfect
co-ordination of the various aspects of life and of the lives
of its various members. The action and reaction of
interest upon interest or will upon will, the processes of
imitation and assimilation, the adaptation of all its
members to one physical environment, these influences

CH, 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 187

do ensure a certain general standard of life and thought
for all within it. But the various portions of a community,
whether we divide it in terms of locality or of class, cannot
be said even roughly to present a uniform degree of
development. Further, it may so hi^pen that one portion
attains its completer development through means, say
slavery, war, the exclusive possession of land or capital,
which depress the development of another and perhaps
greater portion. Lastly, changes constantly ooour and
loosen the existing co-ordination of community, so that
even if the change be progressive there is a certain loss
beside the gain. Such loss is often in fact the debt which
the changing present owes to the evil and the good of the
still active but irrevocable past. For example, when
the wandering barbarian learned to take the great fitep
from nomadic to settled life, a step on which aU further
development depended, he probably suffered a certain
loss — ^though one which I believe may easily be exag-
gerated '—of the sense of comradeship. The few gained
at the expense of the many, so that for a time it would
have been hard to equate the profit and the loss. The
first settled possession of land brought, in a kind of neces-
edty, the institutions of forced labour, serfdom and slavery,
dividing the commimity into castes, determining the many
as the chattels of the few ; and men have had "to redeem
slowly and painfully the loss involved in the very meaos
of gain.

Sinoe community is not wholly integral, and since our
criteria refer not to those institutions which are its common
forms of organisation but in the first place to the lives
which its several members and portions live under the
different conditions created for them by common institu-
tions, our problem remains as yet in part unsolved. We
have discovered the criteria of development, we have yet

1 Cf . Wallis, Sociological Study of the Bible, p. crvii.

188 COMMUNITY bk. m.

to show that there is at any period or on the whole a
unUy of communal movement in one or other direction.
We have in particular to consider more fully the nature
of retrogression, dec€Mlenoe, and kindred phenomena ; and
in the light of that investigation we have to discuss the
reality of communal development.

§ 3. The meaning of stagnation, reaction, retrogression,

and decadence.

There are, we have seen, certain social phenomena
which forbid the most optimistic to regard community
as pursuing one continuous process of development.
These phenomena can be classed under the heads of
stagnation, reaction, retrogression, and decadence. These
terms are not at all synonymous, but stand for various
forms of non-progressiv; mormen;. and the consideration
of these forms serves as a useful introduction to the study
of communal development.

I have called them forms of movement, and it may be
objected that atagncUion is a form of inertia, not of move-
ment. Yet of one thing we may be sure — ^life never
stands still, life is activity, and all activity, physical and
psychical, leaves its world inexorably changed. For a
time the sun may seem stationary in the sky, for a time
the life conditions of a people may seem unchanging. If
the people be a primitive one, the period of seeming
changelessness may be considerable. Their life-conditions
are simpler, their life-activities less intense, and the life-
movements therefore slower. Again, such peoples are
remote from ourselves, if not in place yet always in spirit,
while their history remains largely unwritten and un-
known, and so we are the less ready to discern the changes
actually occurriing within them. But closer observation
reveaJfl everywhere under seeming inmiobility the pro-
cesses of change> the transitions that aU life must welcome

CH.1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 189

or undergo. Occasionally a people, as the Japanese,
whom we have regarded as belongmg to the categoiy of
stagnant communities seems to change in a day before
our eyes, revealing the hitherto hidden processes of its
changing life.

The incessant changes of human life are obvious to
every eye, but it is sometimes held that they are insig-
nificant and leave the essential nature of men unchanged.
This also is inadmissible. It is only the misunderstanding
of history and the ignorance of anthropology that make
possible such a dictum as this of Schopenhauer's : '' The
true philosophy of history consists of the insight that
throughout the jumble of all these ceaseless changes we
have ever before our eyes just the same unchanging being,
pursuing to-day the same course as yesterday and always."^
It is open to any one to argue, though the argument
would involve a curious reversal of all accepted ethical
and intellectual standards, that the essential changes of
human nature in the course of the more universal history
have been changes for the worse and not for the better ;
it is possible to argue that they have now elevated, now
lowered human nature : it is entirely foolish to argue
that there have been no significant changes. There are
principles of conduct active in the world to-day, there
are modes of thought familiar to the least intellectual of
ordinary men — ^take for instance the prevailing attitude
towards the '* emancipation " of women, or again towards
the claim of the adolescent son or daughter to decide his
or her own career and in particular to choose his or her
partner in marriage — ^which would have been utterly
unintelligible to the members of any people within a
quite measurable past.

What then must be the meaning of stagnation if our
conception is to correspond to social reality ? If life

1 Schopenhauer, Welt als WiUe und VorsteUung, II., ohap. 38.

190 COMMUNITY bw.

always changes, what remains unchanged ? It is the
system of institutions by which life is both served and
* controlled. Not that these can remain absolutely un-
changed, but they may be so much more rigid than life
that they crush its new impulses. Hence there exists
for any community a grave danger whenever it rests so
confidently on an existing system as to exclude new
forces. Every institution that makes an absolute claim
brings danger. For an institution is merely a social
vessel created by the human spirit, and it must age.
The necessity by which the form always ages is the
reverse side of the liberty by which the spirit always
recreates. To deny all need for social reparation and
reconstruction is to deny the necessity that the form
must age, and involves the yet vaster denial, of the
liberty wherein the spirit can create. The resistance to
the beneficent recreative force is most visible in com-
munities where seniority serves as the special qualification
for social ofBice, where the elders of the people, grey in
traditions and sfHritually ossified, strive witii all the
unreason of age to suppress the new life-movements that
would preserve society itself from greyness sad ossifica-
tion. A state oi stagnation exists wherever the slow and
t^ider beginnings of sodal movement are continually
repressed by the weight of social control. Doubtless, if
that control remains very rigid, it remains so because the
life-movement is slow within the community ; so that
the state of society in which rigid control is enforced is
the very state in which rigid control is most dangerous.
(It may, at the same time, be true that it is the very
state in which rigid control is most necessaiy, amoe the
outward control requires to be strongest where the inner
control is weakest — ^but such necessities are idso full
of peril.)
In a state of communal stagnation there is an unre-

OB. I.

COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 191

fleeting infiistenoy on inherited custom and tradition. The
community holds passionately to its past, seeking to
make the present conform to it. Li reality they seek an
impossibility. The present refuses to be an enforced and
thus unreal copy of its past. We must change, whether
we will or not : if we refuse or are unable to go forward
we must slide backwards. If the present is conformed to
the past it loses the spontaneity, freshness, reality of that
past. Listitutional stagnation, if it does not provoke
that violence of revolution which is simply the bursting
of suppressed and accimiulated life, leads either to retro-
gression or to decadence. The spirit of adaptability is
the essential principle not simply of progress but of life
itself. " The prolonged continuance of a race under the
same social conditions is generally fatal to the life of that
race." (Ouyau, Edvcation and Heredity, c. viii.)

When a community seems to return to an earlier stage
of development, we may call its movement retrogression.^
When a community consciously endeavours to return to
an earlier stage, we may speak of the movement as
reaction. Reaction is thus a special kind of retrogression,
one in which the community directly wills the return,
setting forward the idea of it as an end. Retrogression
may take place apart from such conscious endeavour
through unfavourable changes of environment, or through
evil forms of social selection. It should be remembered
that reaction and retrogression indicate not simply a
return to a prior social condition — ^for a prior social con-
dition may have been better than the existent one — but
a return to a state that as measured by our criteria is
itself less developed. Man so fears the new that he often
tries to smuggle it under the aegis of the old, and the
greater the revolution the farther back does he go to find

' The term ** reversion *' has a definite biological meaning, and should
not be used as equivalent to retrogression.

192 COMMUNITY bk. m.

its justification. So the Japanese statesmen who abolished
the feudal system in 1871 looked back eleven or twelve
centuries, to the time of Fujiwara Kamatari, for the model
of their new administration,^ while the intellectuals of the
French Revolution, scomers of tradition more than most
men, must needs caU this revolt a return to primitive
simplicity. It is perhaps fortunate that there is always
somewhere in the past the memory of a tradition to which,
any new spirit may claim affinity.

Ilie life-histories of individuals often provide us with
instances of reaction. Often men in their old age resort
to principles opposed to those on which their whole
development was built. A formidable array of names
could be set out illustrating this tendency of old age and
showing unfortunately that old age and wisdom are not
such inseparable companions as men have often supposed.
One instance may here suffice, the case of David Hume.
Every intelligent student of his life must have been struck
by the growth of the spirit of reaction upon him in his
latest years, slowly overcoming his powerful mind, trans-
forming his most characteristic opinions, leading him, for
instance, to modify a work originally written to vindicate
"The Liberty of the Press,'' so that he declared this
liberty to be " one of the evils attending mixed forms of
government," a declaration totally contradictory of its
central plea. It is needless to illustrate further,* because
our own world constantly presents instances of men for-
saking the lines of their development and returning, like
Plato's Cephalus, to the superstitions of their childhood.
Some men seem to retain to the end the principle of their
growth, and the very greatest men, such as Shakespeare,
Kant, and Goethe, are shining instances of this truth.

' Cf. Murdoch, Hietory of Japan, Vol. I., p. 21.

' Various inBtances, including that of Hume, are given in Mr. J. M.
Robert8on*B BMoy in Sociology, in the essay on CuUure tmd Reaction.

CH. I. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 193

(This is in keeping with the general principle that the
highest peoples are those whose members are slowest to
aitain their full maturity.) But there are sufficient
instanoes to establish the reality of reaction and to enable
us to observe its characteristics.

It must be cleariy understood that communal reaction,
the reaction revealed at times in the life of peoples, is not
to be explained on the simple ground that peoples too
grow old. The individual life is bound to an ageing
organism, whereas a community consists of lives young
and old, and is not bound to the organic wheel that
turns full circle at the last. We may call a commimity
reactionary when its members are predominantly re-
actionary, or when those members who most determine
its policy and direction are reactionary ; in other words,
when so far as it acts as a unity it exhibits those charac-
teristics of reaction which we so often find associated
with the old age of men.

Communal reaction manifests itself in many ways.
Sometimes it appears as a kind of tiredness which falls
upon men, when they have not the elasticity to meet the
incessantly new demands of life. Sometimes it is the
rebound from a good custom whose very excess seems to
be corrupting the world so that men realise no longer
even its intrinsic goodness. Sometimes it is a kind of
revulsion which seizes men when they have prized over-
much some in itself to be desired end ; when they have
built new institutions in the vain hope that these alone
can renew the world and have discovered the vanity of
that hope ; when they have in any way or for any cause
expected too much of the world and pass from the illusion
of easy progress to the denial of progress altogether. ^

^ The educational principle of suggesting to children that social
and political institutions are perfect in wisdom and goodness, that
their country is beyond compare, that their city is all a city should
be, is very dangerous for that recMon. Would it not be wiser as well

194 COMMUNITY jbk. m.

Sometimes it is men's unreasoned fear that what is new
will disrupt the social world as it disrupts the world of
their own thoughts, and the belief that seoiuity can be
attained only by shutting out every disturbing element.
But in every form it involves a cessation of that difficult
open-mindedness and sympathy which sees other men
not as mere masses or mere types, or mere instances of a
type, but as real striving personalities. A group is re-
actionary when it sets a lower value upon personality
and upon the autonomy through which alone it can be
realised ; when it narrows down its world and sets up
nearer frontiers to its thoughts ; when it becomes more
completely self -enclosed, like the old German gilds that
sought vainly to save themselves from a widening civilis-
ation by making their own doors more fast.

All retrogression is not leaetion. life is bound fast
to physical and organic conditions, and these may change,
whether through man's activity or not, in directions
hostile to his progress. Thus the land may grow arid,
as Persia seems to have done, through deforestation
or from natural causes. The soil may lose its fertility, or
the mineral wealth of a country may become exhausted.
These things by themselves may suffice to bring about
the decay of a civilisation. Or a virulent endemic disease,
such as small-pox, venereal disease, or malaria, for which
in the past no prophylactic or remedy was known, may
drain the vitality of a people, as is alleged to have been
the case with the malaria-ridden Greeks. Again, the
ordering of a community may create conditions of social
selection which operate to. the detriment of the race,

as more honest if we taught children from the beginning that they
live in a world which may be bettered, but which is bettered only in
so far as men will to better it, and that they too will have a share in
that great and difficult task, no easy entrance into an inheritance
fully prepared f Would it not save something of the disillusionment
and cynicism which in certain cases is the rebound from the placid
lessons of perfection too often learned in early youth f

OH. 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 196

lowering the life of the successive generations. In various
ways men may fall to lower stages of development, apart
from that turning of their faces backward which is reaction.
Only we should note that retrogression is never simply a
return to an earlier stage. It is something worse and some-
something different, as certainly as " second childhood "
is something more pitiable that the first ; it is somethmg
pathological and evil. For those beings who have once
entered upon the way of development there is, strictly
speaking, no return. They are like men who have begun
cultivating a garden (except that they and the garden
are one) : if they stop the last stage is worse than the first.
The cultivated plant never returns simply to its less
developed form ; it has become dependent upon cultiva-
tion. So in the world of men. What intelligence has
begun to construct, intelligence must maintain and
develop. The forces of nature renew the external world,
the forces of intelligent life must renew the world it has
conquered— or its failure is disastrous in the degree of its
earlier success.

Hence the failure of life may manifest itself in a way
of life which bears no close resemblance to that of the
more primitive stages of development. It is then to be
named cZecodence, the decay of community revealed rather
as a slackening of its life than as a return to more simple
farms of life. Again we must bear in mind that such
decadence is not equivalent to the " natural " process
of decay which awaits organic being, the process of
crumbling change through which time leads all that is
organic, but is a psychical or spiritual declension (doubt-
less correlated to some form of organic failure), a declen-
sion not after but in place of fulfilment. In the light of
what has been already said, the signs of such decadence
are easily set forth. They are briefly a lack of thorough-
ness in endeavour, an engrossment in the mere ornamental

196 COMMUNITY bk. m.

fringes of life, a search after subtle and often perverted
satisfactions, organic and spiritual, (satisfactions that
in Spencerian language do not subserve but hinder
life,) an intellectual childishness that always seeks
distraction in some new thing, a flippantly cynical
philosophy of life, a detached and goal-less "individu-
alism" that denies the deeper responsibilities of each
to his society, and to the race which lives only in its
members and whose immortality its living members
hold in fee.

Decadence is thus a failure of life. Historians are fond
of giving reasons for the decline of peoples and the fall
of States. Generally these reasons, if our account is true,
are at best secondary conditions, results of a lowering of
the spiritual activity rather than its causes. Mr. Balfour
in his essay on Decadence ia right in refusing to admit that
mere historical circumstances, external events, the defeat
of armies, the mistakes of statesmen, constitute the full
explanation of the waning of social life, the social enfeeble-
ment that is made catastrophic when it involves the dis-
solution of a State. " It is vain that historians enumerate
the public calamities which preceded and no doubt con-
tributed to the final catastrophe. Civil dissensions,
military disasters, famines, pestilences, tyrants, tax-
gatherers, growing burdens, and waning wealth — ^the
gloomy catalogue is unrolled before our eyes, yet somehow
it does not in all cases fully satisfy us. We feel that some
of these diseases are of a kind which a vigorous body
politic should easily be able to survive, that others are
secondary symptoms of some obscurer malady, and that
in neither case do they supply us with the full explanations
of which we are in search." Defeat, pestilence, and
famine may decimate a people and not crush its spirit
or its vitality. It is the strength and character of its
spiritual unity that makes or unmakes a people. Not

CH. L COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 197

decimation of numbers, a loss speedily reparable, but the
narrowing or enfeeblement of its spirit, however con-
ditioned and however explained, is the ultimate social
misfortune and the cause of social disaster.

§ 4. The reality of commonal development.

Is it true that in spite of reaction, retrogression,
aberration, decadence, w6 can trace in the life of com-
munity a process of development even as we can trace
a process of development in the individual life ? The
question can be answered on no a priori grounds. We
cannot infer that because an organism or a mind under-
goes a process of development, therefore the succession
of organically-conditioned minds which make the suc-
cessive life of community must also reveal development.
We can answer our question only in the study of the
history of manHnd.

There are moments in the history of nearly all men
when the selective imagination, spurred by some ex-
perienced stroke of fate, masses all the evil contingencies
of life, bereavement, the blasting of promise, the malevo-
lence of men, the ruthlessness of the world's wheels,
guided by no ethical charioteer, the inevitable onset of
organic decay, all the indignities that the spirit suffers,
and, under a sky black with the clouds of human sorrow,
sees vanity of vanities written over the world. It is
not with that mood or that mode of thought, whether
temporary or in rare cases permanent, that we are
concerned, but with the reasoned judgment that
strives to see impartially the actual process of human
history.

Again, the social phenomena we have just been con-
sidering may easily lead the impatient thinker to a
doctrine either of the unchangeableness of human nature
or of its present decadence. Often the impatient thinker,

1 98 COMMUNITY bk. m.

seeing liberty become licence, half believes that tyranny
is itself a good ; seeing democracy become corrupt
bureaucracy, prefers — ^in the distance — the unqualified
government of the unelected few ; seeing a world re-
nouncing the bondage of hereditary and caste determina-
tion only to give itself over to the worship of wealth,
applauds imaginative reconstructions of andens rSgimea.
The inference of a present decadence or a permanent
tendency to decadence in human nature is one dear to
a certain type of mind in every age. The earliest records
of the world are full of stories of man's declension from
the standards of a yet further past, full of stories of the
undegenerate days of the great dead, " mighty men which
were of old, men of renown " ; and not an age since but
has f oimd voices to echo that complaint. It is as promi-
nent in the literature of the ages we now regard as
golden " as in those which we call " silvern " or
leaden." It is, therefore, obvious that there are sources
of this doctrine other than the comparative study of past
and present. As old age is inconceivable to the young,
so youth becomes inconceivable to the old ; and people
often think their community is growing old merely because
they are growing old themselves. On the other hand,
it is a curious fact that a common incentive to reflections
of man's decadence is the actual progress of the reflecting
mind, which makes it the more conscious of the evils that
exist. These suggestions also we must seek to discount
if we are to estimate the reality of conununal develop-
ment.

It is also a common habit of mind to condemn social
developments because of incidental evils, to condemn
blindly, without considering the necessity of the develop-
ment or the incidentalness of the evil — ^to condemn the
city, for example, because it is supposed to lower
vitality, or industrialism, because of the evils of excessive

CH.I. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 199

competition, or democratic liberty, because of the power
it gives to the ignorant. It may be wiser to accept the
city, and show that it can be made healthy ; the indus-
trial system, and reveal the truth that it need not
involve excessive competition ; democracy, and strive to
make it enlightened.

Sometimes the impatient thinker concludes that human
nature changes little after all, or merely abandons one
form of error to embrace another equally grave. He
sees reaction after progress, extreme succeeded by ex-
treme, high ends degenerated into the means of ignoble
ends, the vision of the few transformed into the blind
dogma of the many, and confident schemes and prophecies
of social regeneration proved to be illusions ; so he con-
cludes with Machiavelli ^ and Schopenhauer that under
all the changes of customs, laws, and governments men
remain unchanged in nature, imchanged in the good and
evil of their hearts, in the wisdom and folly of their
thoughts. But this too may be reaction, reaction fiom
the unqualified dream of easy progress which seems the
natural outlook of youth.

A true view of human development in community is
possible only if we survey the great secular movements
of human life, counting the changes within a single age
or within the limits of a single interest as of little moment ;
and it is possible only if we can read behind the more
salient and picturesque-seeming events which the his-
torian loves (massed as they are for us into a drama
unwitnessed by the agents and contemporaries of them)
the life of real men and women, so understanding the
falseness of the enchantment which distance lends to
outgrown institutions. When we rid ourselves of our
false conceptions of the " noble savage,"and learn from
anthropology what a mean and miserable creature he

^ Diacarai, passim.

200 COMMUNITY bk. m.

really was, when we dispel the glamour of retrospective
romance that hides from ns the social and economic
wretchedness of our forefathers, and forget the narrow
and dubious glory of king and warrior to remember the
dismal subjection of the peasant, then we may under-
stand how the endless activity of man does not after all
go for nothing, but indeed in great things no less than
in small is painfully creating a world nearer to his desire.
In a word, if we take all the life-conditions together, and
take large enough periods of time for comparison, com-
munity is revealed beyond any doubt as having already
imdergone, within the era bounded by the limits of our
knowledge, a vast process of development.

The only complete proof of this statement would be a
history of society in which the criteria of development
were rigorously applied to the conditions of every age
and every community. Such a work is far beyond our
present purpose, since we are concerned not with the
history of development but with its meaning and kws,
laws revealed in that history but not constituted by it.
We can merely assert that a social history so written
would modify considerably our conventional estimates of
the relative advance of different ages and peoples, and
show that the line of development, though very far from
straight, is clearer than has generally been supposed. To
take an illustration. In the history of England we often
think of the Elizabethan Age as a very peak of progress.
We think of Shakespeare and the Armada, and forget —
how much ! Applying our tests of communal develop-
ment we discover a community essentially less developed
than our own to-day. Personality was held of less account,
as is witnessed by the degree of actual coercion, religious,
economic, civil, personal, which characterised that age.
An age which believed in religious persecution and tortured
innocent human beings for '' witchcraft," an age which

CH, 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 201

suffered a thousand arbitrary restraints on personal
liberty, an age whose methods of government first fostered
economic misery and then attempted to coerce it by
making liable to severe punishment the unemployed poor,
an age which counted the peasant as a chattel attached
to the land — such an age must be regarded as exhibiting
a distinctly lower stage of development than our own.^
A similar analysis would reduce many of the seeming-
glorious ages of history to lower levels.

The essential progress of men, discontinuous and appar-
ently capricious, but, if we make the periods large enough,
certain and verifiable, is made clearer if we remember our
distinction of external civilisation and inner culture. As
arphaeology uncovers for us the vast ribs of ancient
civilisations, and shows us skill and art in places where
we never suspected its presence, we are apt again to
think that the world has gone backward and not forward.
The men of to-day, we think, cannot equal the men of
forgotten pasts in moving mountains of stone or in fitting
stone to stone with scrupulous nicety, or in building
age-enduring roads and aqueducts, or in mixing unfading
colours, or in carving marble. If this be true — and there
is a vast deal to set against the contention — ^it is but
the lesser side of the truth. Look away from the stone
and the marble to the life and spirit which built and
carved. So we learn, for example, that those Egyptians
whose vast temples demand our admiration built them
in a spirit of abject barbarism, in the degraded worship
of ibises or cats or jackals, in the worship of primitive

i One xnight here refer to the attitude of Shakespeare himself, in
whose plays ** the commons *' are characterised as ** rude unpolished
hinds,** ** the sweaty mob/' and so forth. It is true these are the words
of patrioiansv but the charaoteristio treatment of the masses in the
plays, merely as uncivilised and gullible animals, and of their units
merely as comic foils, suggests little of that wider imderstanding which
is one of the criteria of social development. If it were the case that
Shakespeare portrayed these classes as they were in reality, it would
merely strengthen our conclusion.

202 COMMUNITY bk. ra.

priest or king, or in the worship of a sun and stars so
little glorified that their kings are conceived to spend
an after-life in consuming them. The land of these vast
temples is revealed as indeed the land of bondage, of
spiritual bondage. Or again we learn that the Greeks,
certainly a far stage advanced beyond the Egyptians,
were yet, for all the marvel of their poets, artists, sculptors,
and philosophers, at no high level as communities. Rest-
ing on the insecure and degrading basis of slavery, alter-
nately tyrannising and being tyrannised over, divided
city against city no less than every city against itself,
finding no reproach in infanticide or in the subjection of
women, openly addicted to the most anti-social of vices,
exposed to the constant ravage of disease and helpless
before the onset of pestilence, they are found wanting by
every criterion of development.

It is not to be assumed that in seeming to deprecate
the past we wish to exalt the present. It is a question
of comparative estimate. Judged by even the standards
of the present, our communal life is in many respects
rudimentary. We are at best on the verge of civilisation
in its larger meaning. A world full of prejudices, ex-
clusivenesses, and dogmatisms, a world in which only
the few even among the most civilised peoples understand
the wider interests and only the few care, in which worth
is largely estimated in terms of wealth, in which nearly
a third of our Eui^pean population are on the verge of
hunger, in which catastrophic wars can still engulf the
peoples — such a world wiU fill no impartial thinker with
complacency. Nor, again, do we for a moment imply
that the development revealed in history must continue.
This is a subject on which it is impossible ever to
prophesy.

Yet we may point out that the conditions of physical
and organic life indicate possibilities of completer develop-

CH. 1. COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 203

ment. Life is dependent on these conditions, though we
most never regard them as constituting life. Under
unfavourable conditions life cannot develop, under favour-
able conditions it can — ^if the life force is there to seize
them. Now human control over the conditions of life
has grown amazingly, and is still growing. Over many
forms of disease scientific genius has proved triumphant,
and has revealed the possibility of completer triumph.
Already, thanks to investigators like Jenner, Pasteur,
Lister, Ehrlich and the Curies, we have that knowledge
which is gradually becoming power over organic evil.
Li like manner we have gained and are beginning to
utilise immense power over the physical resources of the
earth. We are becoming masters of our world. Doubt-
less there are even in our mastery some elements of
danger, some possibilities of unknown disaster. But to
those who suggest unknown perils we may well reply
that there are also unknown powers of control. The
forces of the present will never meet the problems of the
future, but there are forces in the womb of the present
of which the present does not dream.

Another ground of hope is revealed by biological science.
The invisible processes of our bodies, the inscrutable
wonders of the organic maintenance, and above all of
the reproduction, of life, reveal a wisdom and power
infinitely greater than is ever manifested in our conscious
activities. The conscious operation of the finest intel-
ligenoe is but a blind fumbling compared with the sure
and delicate operation of minute orgaiiic cells. '' Even
the amoeba is no fool," say the authors of a little book
on Evolution.^ It is true, but it is also true that even
the most successful functioning of the highest human
intelligence is incomparably clumsy beside the elaborate
exactitude of organic adaptations. May not this know-

^ ThomsoD and Gtoddes.

204 COMMUNITY bk. m. ch. i.

ledge of wisdom and power within us but not yet ours
be, as it were, a glimpse of the long road of conscious
development yet to be trodden — ^if only we have the
strength to pursue it ? Always there remains that if.
We cannot determine it in the affirmative, but neither
can we, as the next chapter will show, determine it in
the negative.

CHAPTER II

THE SUPPOSED LAW OF COMMUNAL MORTALITY

§ 1. A false analogy between individual and communal
life.

It is often supposed, even by those who admit no other
laws of communal development, that every community
is subject to this one law at least, that it comes into being,
runs its course, and passes away, fulfilling thus the curve
of life traced by the individual organism. This is a mis-
take which we must disprove before we can reveal the
true principles of development. We are here to show that
community is in its nature non-mortal, that it is subject
to no law of mortality. Ji it were so subject, it would
have of necessity certain positive characters, like those
of the mortal organism, which would make its develop-
ment merely an episode in its career. Such a law would
not only narrow the meaning and interest of that develop-
ment, it would be contradictory to the main principles
we are seeking to establish. Hence the necessity of
proving in the first place the fallacy of all reasoning on
which the doctrine of communal mortality has been based.

Nothing has more impressed the mind of men in
all ages than the fate which has overtaken great
empires. The mortality of the individual we can take
for granted, we know the conditions of life ; to decline
and die is part and conclusion of the sequence that begins
with birth. We see and accept the end in the beginning.

206 COMMUNITY bk. m.

But it is surely difEerent with a community, where genera-
tion sucoeeds generation, and new lives in endless suooes-
sion replace the old ? The decline and f aD of a nation
is an instance of mortality beyond our reckoning. It is
catastrophic. It is a failure of the source of life, a failure
in the natural process of society. For social rejuvenation
would seem as much a natural law as individual senes-
cence. It seems as natural that life should renew itself
in succeeding generations as that it grows old in each.
The dissolution of a nation seems therefore a catastrophe
of nature, not, like death of an individual, a fulfilment
of nature. Though every individual dies, life may go
on unabated, but if a people die, a whole area of life is
lost.

Yet, if catastrophes these be, we tend to look upon
the whole of history as a record of such catastrophes.
" Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what are they ? "
If social dissolution is catastrophic and not natural, why
should all the empires of the past have disappeared ?
Is there any hope that we in our turn shall escape from
what seems the operation of a mysterious law ? The
Greek moralised on the fall of Persia ; the Roman on
the fall of Greece ; as to-day we moralise over Bome^
will not some future nation moralise over us ? We may
remember how, in one of the most touching and human
letters preserved to us from the ancient world, "the
Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind *' sought to
console that mind in its sorrow for the loss of an only
daughter, pointing out the insignificance of individual
loss in the face of the more universal catastrophe that
overtakes a people. " As I was returning from Asia,
on the voyage from Assyria to Megara, I cast my eyes
on the surrounding lands. Behind me lay Aegina, before
me Megara, on the right, Piraeus, on the left, Corinth.
These cities at one time flourished exceedingly, and there

CH. n. LAW OF COMMUNAL MORTALITY 207

they stood to view dismantled and in ruins. I began
to reason thus i¥ith myself. Good cause forsooth have we
mannilrinfl for repining when any of us, short in com-
parison as our lives must be, dies or is slain, seeing a
single region can show the lifeless forms of so many
cities." Nor have there been wanting men like Bj^on
to apply the moral to ourselves. Indeed it requires little
imagination to conjure up, with Macaulay, the picture
of a future age, when our country too will show only
the ruins of a vanished glory. It is a commonplace of
reflection, the thought that our time is coming, that
perhaps even now the hour is struck which numbers us
also with the past. We are possessed by the idea that
the same law of mortality holds for communities as for
men. The seeming universality of the fate which has
overtaken all the greatest nations of history has led us
to regard that fate as inevitably awaiting those that now
exist, to believe that for the community as for the single
life there is no escape from an immutable law of mortality.
On such a view, the downfall of nations is only catas-
trophic when untimely, like the death of a young man,
the hastening of a consummation that might have been
delayed — ^for a time. I hope to show that this common
view is superficial and false, and that, if ever a nation
is wiped out or dissolved, such a disaster is no necessary
fulfilment of the law of its existence. Because a com-
munity lives, it does not follow that it shall die.

The chief scientific support of the popular idea is found
in the vicious *' social organism " theory. If we regard
community as an organism, we are ready to attribute
to the larger unity the qualities that distinguish the
smaller. An organism is bom, develops, reaches maturity,
declines and dies. It comes into being and passes out
ci being. Within these limits of appearance and dis-
appearance, its life may be represented as a simple curve

208 COMMUNITY bk. m.

slowly mounting up and more suddenly declining. If
the supposed analogy holds, a community too is born
into being and passes out of being, a community too may
be represented as following a gradual upward curve tUl,
having reached a culminating point, it descends quickly
through decline into extinction. Such an idea ia un-
doubtedly at the back of our minds when we speak of
the *' decline and fall " of nations or even of the
" maturity " which preceded the decline, maturity being
the culminating point of the simple curve of life. But
all the time we are thinking on the lines of a most inapt
analogy. A community is not bom, and a community
does not necessarily die. A community has no maturity,
no predestined culminating point. We know of maturity
only in beings who are but members in the chain of
generations, and we know nothing of maturity apart
from such succession. We speak of civilisations " flower-
ing " when they have reached some highest point of
attainment, but again the analogy cannot be pressed.
Humanity itself ia the chain, the stock which " flowers "
through successive generations, and the relation of flower
to plant is in no sense the relation of the highest reach
of civilisation in any given period to the preceding and
succeeding levels of civilisation. It is not time that makes
us old, but the limits of our organism. If the limits are
removed, as in the healthy succession of the generations,
time, so far, counts for nothing. Mankind is incalculably
old, but the eyes of a child are no less bright to-day ;
nature is incalculably older, but her garment of green is
as fresh and young to-day as in her past infinitude.

It may seem a hard saying this, that a community is
not bom and does not die. Has every community existed
before time was ? Does not history tell us of the begin-
ning of some communities, even modem history ? Did
the communities of America have no beginning ? Can

CH. u. LAW OP COMMUNAL MORTALITY 209

we not name the very year of their birth ? And if they
have had a beginning, must they not too have an end ?
Can a commmiity be an exception to the general law
that time devours all his ohildien ?

The answer is simple. Li a community, the generations
of life are integrally bound together, young life with old
life, parents with youth. Now life is a process of evolu-
tion, and evolution knows nothing of beginning or end.
It knows nothing of a time when life sprang out of life-
lessness, and nothing of a time when life shall be resolved
in lifelessness. Evolutionary science cannot say whether
there has been a beginning or will be an end. It knows
an intermediate space only. It has the vision of a
traveller on a road who can trace backwards the path
he has trodden and foresee a very little of the path to come,
but cannot even conceive a beginning to the road or to
his travelling. A living thing cannot by its very nature
conceive a beginning to life. But life is essentially and
always communal life. Every living thing is bom into
community and owes its life to community. Wherever
there is life, there is a community, however rudimentary.
Science, knowing nothing of the birth of life, knows there-
fore nothing of the birth of community. And the same
is true of its end. It is only that which is bom that
must die, and unless we show that a community has
been bom, we can never show that it must die. Indi-
viduals, generations, succeed each other in a chain of
life. But community is always there, not successive like
the generations but continuous, changing incessantly but
never dying. Every individual presupposes precedent
individuals, but a community does not in like manner
presuppose precedent communities. Every living thing
is bom into a community of which he in time becomes a
member, and so the community itself, its spirit constantly

renewed by its successive members, the inheritors of the

210 COMMUNITY bk. m.

traditions and thoughts and usages of their fathers, lives
on. It is like a flame that never dies because it is con-
stantly fed. So long as a sin^e human being endures,
that is sufficient evidence for the non-mortality of com-
munal life, for he ia an inheritor of that life. Every
living being is thus a member of a community which has
endured. The very existence of a single community
to-day is the last proof that communities do not neces-
sarily follow a simple curve of life, up to maturity and
thence down to extinction. The law of evolution reveals
direction alone, not beginning nor end, the pathway of
life and neither its entrance nor its goal. It reveals an
up or a down, a progress or a retrogression. It reveals
no law of mortality. Therefore to understand the pro-
gress or the decline of a community, we must remember
that we have no right to make it subject to that law of
mortality which inexorably governs the living body, the
organism.

Communities develop, they do not begin. The new
life in America did not begin when Engh'sh adventurers
settled in Virginia, or English Puritans in New England.
Alike they brought their social life into the new land.
There are no new communities save in the division or
extension or reformation or development of pre-existent
communities,

§ 2. An appeal to history.

If we appeal to history, we find instant confirmation
of this view. Were the social organism theory true, every
community must have a time of birth, a time of develop-
ment, a culmination, a time of decline, and an hour of
death. That is the process of the organic life. Every
present conmiunity would be at some stage in that pro-
cess of growing old, whether young, adult, or senescent.
And the last stage would mean an inevitable process

cH. n. LAW OF COMMUNAL MORTALITY 211

towards dissolution, ivithout hope of reoovery, to be
evaded by no effort its members could make. And there
would be on record many instances of past communities
which had run their course and disappeared out of life.

History shatters that illusion. History indeed shows
that communities are not necessarily immortal. Peoples
have perished of violence and of disease. Caribs, Fueg-
ians, American Lidians, and Polynesian peoples are
dead or ahnost dead. There are to-day on the earth
communities of human beings which are undoubtedly
in process of extinction, where no new life in equal quantity
and vigour is united to the old to continue the community.
There are aboriginal peoples who are dying out under
the conditions of life brought to them by superior races.
Therefore a community is certainly exposed to the danger
of mortality ; it may die, but yet it is not its nature to
fulfil a cycle of life that ends in death. The wrecks of
history are like the fossils of prehistoric animals, they
tell us that some types of living creatures have disappeared,
leaving no successors ; they do not tell us that all types
must so disappear, for we know in fact that many types
have survived, some with no discernible change, others
changing under changing conditions. We do not predict
the death of mankind of racial old age because we have
discovered the fossils of saurians. Some types must have
lived on or there would be no life to-day.

We may now take some historical instances, those that
most readily occur when we talk of the fall of nations,
and show that, whatever their decline and fall may mean,
it does not mean the passing out of existence of a com-
munity. Let us take first the community or communities
that made ancient Greece, as we know it from the time
depicted in the Homeric poems. We may say that
Homeric Greece passed away, that the Greece of Hero-
dotus and Thucydides passed away, that the Greece of

212 COMMUNITY bk. m

the Macedonian supremacy passed away ; we may take
broader periods, and speak of ancient and medisBval and
modem Greece. But make the periods what we please,
there is never a point at which the community dies, as
there is an hour in which the organism dies. There has
been a continuous Greek community from the beginning
of history untU to-day, a community whose level of
civilisation and vigour has risen and fallen and risen
again. What we find is never the death of a body, but
always the transformation of a spirit. The former is
momentary, determinate, final ; the latter is gradual,
continuous, infinite. Here there is no body that as it
ages at last subdues the spirit. For a conmiunity is
neither old nor young, and need not grow older or younger.
Hence its history is not subject to the rhythm of organic
life or to the law of organic mortality. The organic life
appears at a definite point out of the unknown and,
fulfilling its simple curve, disappears at a definite point
into the unknown. But for the curve of communal life
there is no base-line whence it arises and into which it
faUs. This is evident if we trace the course of the Gre^
communities, from the days of Homeric barbarism,
barbarism half hidden by the splendour of the poet, up
to the height of fifth century achievement, down through
Macedonian and Roman domination, and lastly Turkish
oppression, and up again after it all, not indeed to its
former distinction, but at least to the higher level revealed
in new national unity and consciousness of liberty.
Customs and manners and institutions and forms of
civilisation pass away, but the communal life, of which
these are merely expressions, may persist throughout it
all. To that life we can assign neither beginning nor
end.

We may take as a further illustration the case of that
community whose downfall has more than that of any

OR. n.

LAW OF COMMUNAL MORTALITY 213

other impressed the historian with a sense of the mor-
tality of all things human. It is an illustration which
brings out olearly the need for distinguishing the passing
institutions from the undying life of community. At a
certain period of history, the communal life centring
round the city of Rome had extended so far as to make
of Italy a communal unity. The decline of that com-
munity is perhaps the most momentous in history, but its
life has survived every historical disaster. Through all
the history of Rome there has lived a continuous com-
munity, sometimes threatened with destruction, at the
hands of Gauls or Carthaginians or Goths, but never
destroyed, rising and falling to social heights and depths
alike almost unparalleled, sometimes torn and disunited,
sometimes almost overwhelmed by the wave of barbaric
immigration, but in the end revealing in rediscovered
unity the immortal integrity of communal life. The
Roman empire passed away, but the communal life of
Rome and Italy never failed altogether. The life changed
just as the language changed in which it found expression,
but both life and language remained. States come into
being and are dissolved, but community which creates
them is greater than they. The Roman empire was not a
community, not a living thing, but an imposed system,
an institution. When the communal life of Italy slack-
ened, it could no longer enforce that system over the
communal life of its subject-communities. The system
collapsed, the life survived. It may even be that the
growing life of these subject-communities — '' the bursting
of the ripe seed," as one recent writer has expressed it —
was as much responsible for the collapse of empire as the
weakening life of Italy. As a community grows strong it
refuses to accept institutions imposed from without,
institutions it has not itself created for the furtherance of
its own life. At any rate we must distinguish the fall of a

214 COMMUNITY bk. m.

State from the death of a commiinity. The State and its
institntions collapse, it may be in an hour, the community
lives on and creates new institutions, a new State. The
fall of a State is a commonplace of history, the death
of a community is an event rare and abnormal. Most
of the communities that have figured in history have
indeed suffered eclipse, but none of these has perished,
and some have risen again and are even now rising, a
witness to the eternal possibility of communal rejuvenes-
cence.

We talk of young peoples, of new nations. Let us
remember that no nation is younger than another, except
in spirit, except in the strength of communal purpose.
The peoples of America are no younger than the peoples
of Europe ; the new nations of our empire, of Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, are the children of
an older England only in the same sense that we ourselves
are its offspring. If their spirit is younger, it is because
new conditions of life stimulate old energies, because
new opportunities and new freedom renew the spirit.
But let us not for one moment suppose that a new country
is the only or the surest stimulus of the spirit of society.
Far more potent forces exist stored in every Community,
the challenge of the ideal still so imperfectly realised,
the vision of present attainment which past attainment
has made possible. When that challenge and that vision
enter the hearts of the members of a community, uniting
them more closely in common effort, in social solidarity,
its life is already renewed. " Here or nowhere is our
America."

Even to the individual, bound as he is to the wheel of
organic change, there comes at intervals, longer or shorter,
a period of renewal, a sense of greater good, of greater
worth in existence, as if fresh oil had been poured on
the flame of life. So there seem to be times when the

CH. II. LAW OF COMMUNAL MORTALITY 216

breath of a new spirit^wakens within an age. To the
unageing community that breath may come at any time.
Oar organic bodies refnae at last to respond to the call
of the spirit. They lose that power of response which
is the very principle of life. But a community can always
renew its body, the shell of institutions and customs it
has created for the protection of its spirit. If these grow
old it can cast them off like an outworn garment, it can
replace them, as it has done before, by new and better
mstitutions and customs. Our will at last avails not,
for all our vision of health and strength, to stay the
oncoming of decay, but the will of a community avails ;
if only it sees the vision, if only it hears the challenge.
It is therefore absurd to talk, as men have talked in
every age, of the inevitable decadence which must some-
time at the last befall our country. For indeed com-
munity is a spiritual thing to which there belongs no
natural destiny of decay or death. Into that ever re-
juvenated life each of us is taken up, in spite of our mere
organic fate. If that life fail, it is a failure of the spirit
unpredictable as the coming and the going of the wind.
And if it fail, it may be renewed ; for the failure is not
the inexorable failure of old age preceding dissolution,
but like the falling of the wind, the abating of a power
which again may spring into rediscovered life.

§ 3. The conditions of communal non-mortality.

The " law " of communal mortality has turned out to
beaniUurion. In truth oommumtii grow in experience,
in knowledge, and in power, in so far as each generation
hands down its gains. They do not grow in age, for each
generation is new, new as was the inconceivable beginning
of life, indeed with an increased capacity of life in so far
as past generations have striven to improve it. (Com-
munity alone is granted that rare and inestimable posses-

216 COMMUNITY bk. m.

sion, the advantage of experience without its penalty of
powerlessness. To grow wiser without growing older is
perhaps the highest boon a man could ask of the gods.
That boon is granted to community.

But it is granted at a price. It is literally true that
a community to save itself must lose itself. The im-
mortality which it may attain is an immortality of
continuity, not of self-sameness, continuity secured
through the surrender of self-sameness. It becomes, in
fact, immortal in so far as the constituents of its life lose
their self-sameness through intermixture. By this, it
must be clearly understood, we do not for a moment
mean that a community is other than its members, or
that it is made immortal through the sacrifice of the
personality of its members. On the contrary, in its con-
tinuity the personality of its members is fulfilled. Yet
it remains true that only as each enters into relationships
with others does he contribute to the continuity and
immortality of communal life. It remains true, both
biologically and socially, that the greater the life the
wider must be the intermixture of its units in order that
it may survive.

The earliest life is asexual. The beginning of the
increase of life was the development of sexual repro-
duction. The attainment of this first form of inter-
mixture meant a mechanism elaborate beyond our power
of understanding, a rebuilding of the first foundations
of life, and a transformation of all its modes. This was
not necessary for the mere continuance of life but for
its advance alone. life might have continued for ever
by the simple way of monogony, without advance, with-
out pain or toil or death, but because increase of life
necessitated intermixture, nature undertook (if we may
use anthropomorphic language to cover our ignorance)
the vast labour and the prodigal expenditure and the

OH. n. LAW OF COMMUNAL MORTALITY 217

endless problem of sex. Life was reconstituted so that
it should henceforth be bom out of essential intermixture.

The process of intermixture \ddened \¥ith the increase
of life and consciousness. Community as it became more
intensive became more extensive also. The family group
gained an intenser life by breaking down its bounds, by
losing its self-sameness. We have in the preceding
sections of this chapter spoken of communities as though
they were absolutely and not relatively integral wholes ;
it is necessary here to insist again that community is a
matter of degree. Its non-mortality is bound to that
principle.

From the biological standpoint, families no less than
individuals are successive and not continuous. If they
abide centuries, they abide only in name. With every
new marriage a new family comes into being, and it is
only the custom of agnatic nomenclature which deceives
us into supposing that it merely carries on an original
family. If we take family in the wider sense of a kin-
group, the general statement still holds true. We might
suppose that where close intermarriage is a rule within
a group the larger family remains permanent. If it is
a large group, it may well so abide for a time — ^though
at last it is sure to have the alternative of fusion or
extinction. If it is a small group, the more it retains
its family -identity, the more surely it decays.

The community to which we ascribe non-mortality is
a common life of individuals and of families, successive
in themselves ; and the only community which we can
so isolate as to call it integral and immortal is the largest
area of common life within which individuals and families
enter, have entered, or shall enter into living relations.
Perhaps in the fullest sense, over a wider period of time
than our minds can grs^sp, the only community which
owns an absolute and unconditioned immortality, as it

2 1 8 COMMUNITY Bk. m. oh u.

is the only commiinity which can be absolutely
integral, is the community of all mankind. The
others, the smaller areas of common life, are only rela-
tively or in some cases even nominally immortal. This
does not mean that the smaller communities must pass
away. It means that in the course of the ages they
receive elements of life from a greater whole to which
they belong, as they give of their life to it in return.
They are for ever continuous, but they are for ever
changing. Relating themselves to one another, they
form portions of a never-ending and ever-new-bom com-
munity, since it is only from within humanity that human
regeneration can proceed.

CHAPTER III

THE FUNDAMENTAL LAW OP COMMUNAL

DEVELOPMENT

{ 1. Some definitions.

The law we are to set out in this chapter is the first and
greatest of all the laws of community, and all its other
laws are, in fact, but corollaries or implications of this
law. It is the key to the whole process of communal
development. It is a law whose significance most of the
greater writers ^ on society have felt, though, perhaps
from its obviousness, it has rarely been formulated
in any precise manner or given its true place in the
communal scheme. It may be expressed as follows :
SociaUsaiion and individualiaation are the two aides of a
single process.

In this brief statement we have used two terms which
require careful definition. When we say that a being
has become more individualised, we mean that he has
become more an autonomous being, more a distinct per-
sonality self-directed and self-determining, recognising
and recognised as having in himself a worth or value of
his own. When again we speak of socialisation we mean
the process in which a being strikes deeper root in society,
in which his social relations grow more complex and

> Among more recent writers who have lealised its signifioanoe,
in general or in particular aspects, one might instance J. S. Mill, Bain,
Ledie Stephen, T. H. Green, Herbert Spencer, Professor Alexander,
and Professor Hobhouse.

220 COMMUNITY bk. m.

more extensive, in which he finds the fulfihnent of his
life in and through the increase and development of his
relations with his fellows. We can thus express the law
as follows : Sociality and individvality develop pari passu,
sociality and individuality being the qualities correspond-
ing to the processes of socialisation and individuaUsation.

It must be noted that we are here using the terms
'' sociality " and " socialisation " in a somewhat wider
sense than they often bear. A man is sometimes said
to be '* socialised " when he adopts the current usages,
ideas, standards, of a given social milieu. But we are
using the term to indicate adaptation to social life in
any form and any degree, so that to be completely
socialised would mean to have one's nature brought into
complete harmony not simply to the ends of a specific
association or community, but to the ends of the widest
community to which the individual is capable of respond-
ing, ends deep enough and wide enough to fulfil every
potentiality of his being. Socialisation does not mean
reduction to any given social type. It would be absurd,
for instance, to regard the man who carelessly accepts
and reflects the existent social order as more socialised
than the man who spends his life in an earnest endeavour
to improve social conditions ; or again, to regard the
completest pirate in a community of pirates as not less
socialised than the completest patriot in a community
of patriots. The latter has his being rooted far more
profoundly in society. And we shall see as we proceed
that the prof ounder his socialisation the wider the potential
community to which an individual belongs. The roots
that strike deepest will, if they are allowed, extend also
furthest.

We must also hedge round the terms " individuality ''
and '' individuaUsation " from possible misinterpretations.
By individuality we mean not the whole nature of the

OH. in. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 221

individual, but a certain aspect of it. It was pointed
out at the beginning of this work that every man's char-
acter or self is personality woven of individuality and
sociality. When we speak of individuality we mean that
quality and power of self-determination and self-expres-
sion which is as necessary to the growth of personaUty
as is the social environment. Individuality does not
therefore mean mere difference, still less mere eccentricity.
Certain philosophies have spumed individuality because
they have conceived it in this abstract and unreal form,
but that self-determination which is the core of indi-
viduality need not and should not be baaed on the differ-
ence of man from man. Personality is the substantial
reahty and end which individuality and sociality together
determine, and any doctrine which exalts either of
these aspects at the expense of the other, or either of
them at the expense of their unity in personality, is
partial and untrue to the facts of life. To understand
how individuality and sociality have revealed their con-
sentaneous growth in the concrete personalities of men,
as these have emerged out of the meagre group-controlled
umf ormities of primitive life into the richer and more
autonomous natures which even the most ordinary mem-
bers of our own civilisation possess, that is the key to
the understanding of the whole process of communal
development.

For community, let us insist once more, holds nothing
but its related members, nothing but those actual socialised
men and women in whose likenesses and differences, in
whose int^relations and interactivities, type and differ-
ence, nationality and race, individuality and sociality
find their sole realisation. Community is the common
life of persons, and its vitality depends on the individu-
ality and sociality of these persons. These are the tests
of all community, not one alone, but both together. For

222 COMMUNITY bk. m.

as each of us makes his society, so does our society make
each of us. Our iadividuality, if it is strong, goes out
to strengthen — ^if it is weak, to weaken — our society ;
and to our society we owe in turn the measure of our in-
dividuality. The opposition of sociality and individuality
is accidental, in essentials they develop out of one another ;
and as a true society seeks to develop individuality, so
the most gifted individuality finds its expression and
fulfilment in society. The more the members of a com-
munity enter into the life of that community, the richer
by the amount of what they themselves have brought
becomes that life. Its quality is the quality of the social
units whose common life it is — if the fuel is poor, how
can the flame be bright ? Its intensity is the degree in
which these members are united in that common life, —
scatter the coals and what once glowed in a radiant focus
will flicker feebly in dispersed and meagre fires. It is
this spiritual activity we call society, this conscious co-
operation in a great common life, that sustains within it
the life of every contributor, as the energy of its ardent
centre keeps every coal in the fire aglow. To fall away
from that fire is to pale and grow cold like a cinder, to
lose the communion of society is to lose the community
in which each life is quickened.

There are two other antithetical terms which we must
define in order to prevent misconception of our funda-
mental law. These are the terms " individualism " and
'' socialism," coins worn and almost indecipherable
through long circulation in the market place. It must
at the outset be noted that our law is in no sense concerned
with the principles we call individualism and socialism.
For while individuality and sociality are qualities and
individualisation and socialisation processes, individual-
ism and socialism are ideals or theories. Our law
expresses a de facto relation between two actual processes.

OH. m. LAW OP COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 223

it is not concerned with any theory as to how individuals
ovgJU to be related within society. Lidividualism and
socialism are in all their variants theories of that char-
acter. SociaUsm in its narrower sense is the theory that
the means of production, distribution, and exchange
should be owned collectively ; in its broader sense it is
any theory which insists on the importance of collective
action and control. Individualism means sometimes the
opposing theory which insists on the importance of private
ownership and control, sometimes the theory that each
individual is essentially independent of his society, some-
times the claim that any individual should be allowed
to express and practise his own ideas when they are
opposed to those of the majority, and sometimes is a
mere euphemistic expression for the claim of egoism.
All these theories must be judged by their results ; the
only justification of any individualism or any socialism
1b the furtherance of personality which its adoption would
ensure.

We may note in passing that when the interest of one
individual lb opposed to the interest of his fellows it is
strictly an opposition between private and common, or
between particular and general, not between individual
and social interest. Nor again should we speak of indi-
vidual veratis social action when we really mean dis-
tributive veratis collective action. We have always to
remember that every individual is a social individual,
and that his activity as an individual may stUl be for
the sake of social ends. The terms '' individual " and
" social " are scandalously and most unnecessarily over-
worked. So men fall more readily into that gross con-
fusion which sets the end or good of the individual (not
some individuals) over against the end or good of society.
Even if, as the old theory declared, every individual
had to suffer some loss for the sake of the whole, he is

224 COMMUNITY bk

. III.

yet a member of the whole so benefited ; or even if, as
a newer theory may insist, every present individual has
to make some sacrifice that the race, the successive gener-
ations, may prosper, it is always a succession of social
individuals for whose welfare we thus toil and make
sacrifices.

Lastly, let us note that we are not at aU concerned
here with the metaphysical problems of individuality.
What ultimate unity holds individuals within itself, how
they may all be but '' moments " or elements or " indi-
viduations " of universal being, concerns us not. It is
enough that in the world of social experience men grow
in individuality as they grow in sociality.

§ 2. Oeneral explanation of the law.

We have now seen that individuality and sociality are
aspects of the unity of personality. The living whole
is the individual person or the union of persons as com-
munity, to both of which we attribute individuality and
sociality. Our thesis, therefore, takes the form that as
personality developSy for each and for oS, it reveals the
twofold development of individtuUity and sociality.

If we reflect for only a moment, it becomes obvious
that all values are personal values, that all sodal develop-
ment is the development of some kind and degree of
personality, or secondarily of that system of mechanisms
and institutions which are the means of personality. All
art, all science, all progress consists in the free expression
of creative personality, stimulated into activity by the
union of its opportunity and its need, its need of trans-
lating idea into reality, its opportunity of an outer en-
vironment which provides the means of translation, and
of a social environment which permits the translation
because its constituent personalities can receive the idea.
All religion is but the apotheosis of personality, stimu-

CH. m. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 226

lating the finite life by the effective conceptions of less
finite personality. In all our life, that which gives
interest both to work and play, to living in short, is the
exercise of personality, at the least the witnessing of the
revelation of personality afforded by social intercourse,
by novel and drama, at the highest the furtherance of
personality within the greatest social milieu to which
our influence extends. The power of an institution or
an association is measured by its hold and influence
upon the persons whom it serves. When it makes a
deep effective claim on personality it is strong and
lasting. The strength of State or church is proportioned
to the degree of the devotion of its members, which is
the degree in which their personalities are identified
with its existence. On the other hand, the more
permanent the need which an association satisfies, the
more permanent the devotion which it demands. Finally,
community itself is strongest in the measure in which
the claim of every association is proportioned to the
service it can render to personality, so that each
member, obeying all claims harmoniously, attains the
fullest harmony and completion of life.

It follows, if we are right in regarding personality as
a unity whose factors are individuality and sociality,
that where personality most exists, there will individuality
be most advanced and there too will the social relations
of men be most extensive and most profound. This
principle is revealed wherever social life exists. We shall
therefore in the present section explain and illustrate
its universality, proceeding thereafter to the specific
application of the principle within our own present social
world.

Let us take first the aspect of individuality. Indi-
viduality is least in the lowest. In plant life (propagated
by suckers, buds, layers, grafts, etc.) and in the lower

226 COMMUNITY bk. m.

forms of animal life (Polyps, Infusorians) even that first
form of individuation, the physical demarcation of indi-
vidual from individual, is often very incomplete. Greater
individuation, first organic, then psychical, is charac-
teristic of whatever life we call higher, and it is by the aid
of this individuality that still higher stages are attained.
'"It is essentially the free-living and self-supporting
creatures that really get on, that evolve in the best
sense." {Evolution, Thomson and Geddes.) If we turn
to human society we find that all anthropologists, though
they may differ in their explanation of the fact,^are
agreed as to the relative insignificance, of individuality
in primitive life. In the primitive clan or tribe we find
an almost complete imiformity of custom correlated to
a very great uniformity of character. Where interests
are non-individualised, race-interest, sex-interest, social
interest of any kind, the interests are in fact undeveloped.
When the type is uniformly realised in each, the value
of the type is in fact low. When custom is all-
comprehensive and coercive, the custom is in fact
primitive.

As personality grows, non-individualised social interests
are transformed into individualised social interests. The
race-interest, as pursued by a primitive tribe or clan or
nation, was undifferentiated. The great image of his
victorious type, the principle of the excellence of his race
(itself the primitive form of a high moral principle),
formed the semi-altruistic motive which inspired the
noblest efforts and sacrifices of the kinsman for his kin.

^ For instance, no writers have more insisted on the correlation
between individuality and civilisation than Herbert Spencer and
M. Durkheim, but they differ very profoundly in their respective
attempts to account for it. See Durkheim, Division du Travail Social,
Book I., chap. v. It may be suggested that no such incidental fact
as the primitive necessity of militarism (Spencer), or the absence of
centralisation and of division of labour (Durkheim), can be adequate
to account for a law so fundamental as that we are considering.

CH. m. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 227

The value of the type was realised, but the nature of the
type was of necessity misunderstood. It was thought
to stand in mere contrast to all other types, and it was
thought to be endangered by its own variety. Men
sought for the social fact, of course after the obscure
primitive way of seeking, in a highest common factor
rather than in a lowest common denominator. Their
social discipline repressed individuality, insisting on the
customs conformed to the identity of type in the many
and endeavouring to suppress the variation of type in
the few. In such a society the shibboleth, the taboo,
the proverb, the fixed epithet are dominant. But as
personality (in spite of the attempted repression of indi-
viduality) grows slowly greater, as the more compre-
hensive mind attains the knowledge of wider values, the
differentiations revealed in personality become more
prized and protected. A wider liberty is realised, the
condition of the revelation of the infinitely variant per-
sonalities who are indeed the completer expressions of
the type.

For the interests of individuality are not properly
opposed to those of type, whether expressed as race or
sex or class, but are a development of these interests.
Our organic or racial interests do not disappear when
they become individualised. Through individualisation
they may be limited, but through individualisation they
are at once shaped and realised. The organic need, the
racial interest, the type factor remains. The civilised
being feels no less the driving of the sex-interest and the
family-interest, but the satisfaction of these is no longer
simple, for the interest lb no longer a mere sex-interest,
a mere family-interest. It is complex and differentiated,
Sex means more — and less. Its satisfaction requires
ultimate and peculiar conditions ; it necessitates indi-
vidually-determined choice, for it is (apart from the mere

228 COMMUNITY bk. m.

momentary eruptions of suppressed desire) not any man
but this man (or, at least, this kind of man), not any
womaii but this woman. So otir instincts widen out
into complex and wonderful interests, no longer isolated
impulses independently satisfied but interwoven life-
principles springing from the unity of personality and
demanding harmonious realisation.

The growth of individuality within society involves a
transition from abstract to concrete values, from the
obsciue estimation of the mere type to the clarified
estimation of the type-realities, from the belief that the
type is best preserved and realised in the suppression
and subordination of the individuals who represent it
to the discovery that the fulfilment of the members is
the realisation of the type also. It is said that abstract
ideas are a late growth of intelligence, but in truth abstract
ideas dominate the human mind from the beginning, and
only by slow degrees is it liberated in the understanding
of the ever more concretely comprehended fact. In the
earliest stages the idea of the group is so abstract that
it must be symbolised by totem or incarnated in a tribal
god. The first comprehensive effort to think out the
meaning of the social world, the marvellous work of
Plato, was based on a similar abstract notion to that
which permeated the whole thought not of the Greek
cities alone but of every tribal community, every village
community, every empire of antiquity, to wit the notion
of the race, the stock, the breed, in a word the type, ab-
stracted from the living individualised members who more
and more resist definition in such terms. The philo-
sopher, when philosophy took a '' surer hold on him," ^
came to see that the differences are no less real and
significant than the identity, that the type or form is
realised in every detail of sense, down even to those

1 Cf. Parmenides, 130.

ctt. m. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 229

things '* of which the very mention may provoke a smile,
things like hair, mud, dirt, and whatever is paltry and
of no account." So to the social consciousness in its
own sphere those early notions of race or tribe or nation
appear abstract and inadequate as the living and growing
complexity of civil or national life, the increasing differ-
entiation of the members of a people or a nation, is realised.
The abstractness disappears together with the exclusive-
ness of early views, and race and nationality are revealed
as indeed permeating and decisive factors, but factors
alone, not moulds from which the individual members
issue.

Let us turn next to the aspect of sociality and show
that the growth of personality involves the correspondent
growth of this factor as well. It is this correlation which
is most easily misunderstood. Sometimes it is even
thought that as personality grows men become more
independent of society, but this false conception dis-
appears when we understand that society is a life and not
a mechanism or mere system of order.

Sociality is least in the lowest and increases with every
increase of life. Whatever form of life we consider we
find that the degree of sociality, the degree in which the
individual is rooted in and dependent upon social life,
corresponds to the capacity of growth in each. The
greater that capacity the greater the benefit an organised
and co-operative community can confer on its members
as they grow up to maturity within it. The greater
that capacity for growth the more do the growing members
need the service of society. For such capacity implies
that the individual no longer moves in the deep narrow
secure grooves of instinct, it means a greater initial help-
iesanesB and uncertainty, a greater need to learn as well
as a greater facility for learning, a greater dependence
on society as well as a greater fulfilment through society.

230 COMMUNITY bk. m.

The less a being depends on instinct the more it depends
upon society.

In the lowest stages of life the young animal is thrown
freely at birth into the hazards of its environment, aided
not at aU by the services of parental or other social care.
As we ascend the scale we see the young, less equipped
in decisive instincts, fostered by the care of parents while
the more elaborate structure of their intelligence is being
formed — socially formed. So the horse, the dog, the
monkey emerge into an intelligent life proportionate
at once to their initial helplessness and to the care of
the older generation. In the highest type of all not the
family alone but also the wider community serve the
increased helplessness of the young. Human beings are
of all beings the most helpless at birth, of all beings the
most plastic and potential, the most able to profit by
the stored experience of community. The better a com-
munity is organised, the more it serves the needs not
only of its adult individualities but also of its potential
members. When a community is so organised that not
the family alone but all associations within the com-
munity contribute their full respective shares to the
formation of new individualities no less than to the
expression of those already formed, then socialisation
may be said to be complete and individualisation advanced
to the highest capacity of its members.

It is a serious mistake to regard primitive peoples as
more socialised than the peoples of civilisation. The
member of a primitive people seems more sociaUsed only
because his social relations are more simple. He owes
one allegiance instead of many — ^but he owes it in a more
mechanical way. The more primitive the community,
the less has each a unique place within it, a place of his
own. Society is more homogeneous — ^take any member
away, and there is no gap in the social structure, dvilised

CH. m. LAW OP COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 231

society is in this respect more organic.^ The social relations
of the civilised man ramify further. Community grows
more complex and differentiated as it responds to the
demands of autonomous personality foirsocial fulfilment,
and the member of the differentiated community is of
necessity more and not less socialised than the member
of the undifferentiated.

We are now able to express our law as follows : The
differentiation of community is relative to the growth of
personality in social individuals. Under this form we
shall consider more concretely its fimdamental character
and significance.

§ 3. The differentiation of community as relative to the
growth of personality.

Looked at externally, the differentiation of community
is the process in which its various associations emerge in
their distinctness, each with its proper place and claims,
in which community ceases to be identified with or wholly
subject to any single form of social life, in which the
circle of social relationship becomes more extensive and
reveals within it, as it widens, grade beyond grade of
common life, in which each social relation grows more
complex and each social being more closely bound to
each in the interdependence of the whole. In this section
these essential characters of communal differentiation will
be examined, and shown to be determined by, as they
in turn determine, that growiAg personality of men which
seeks fulfilment by the double way of sociality and
individuality.

'' In the beginning " community was without form.
Family was State and State was family, church was
State and State was church. The isolated primitive
community held together inchoately, without distinction

^ See Durkheim, Division du Travail Social, passim.

232 COMMUNITY bic. m.

of principles or separation of associations, all the elements,
not yet become forms, of social life. The ostensible basis
of community might be common kin or common worship,
but the real basis is homogeneous tradition extending to
every relationship of life. For kin itself is not yet a
demarcated principle, nor is worship. There is no family,
no State, no church as we to-day understand these terms.
Law, custom, and morality were undifferentiated, and
therefore none of these were realised in their present
significance.^ Even in the age depicted in the Homeric
poems, morality and religion were regarded as nearly
equivalent.* Even in classical Greece and republican
Rome the civic grouping was not clearly distinguished
from the kinship grouping. Even in the eighteenth
centiuy in England, political unity was confused with
religious unity. Even to-day race and nation are in the
common prejudice identified. The history of society is
on the whole the history of the slow, and even in the most
advanced communities still very incomplete process in
which the various social forms emerge in their distinctness,
and as they emerge become co-ordinated, strengthened,
and purified within the widened imity of communal life.

It is obviously impossible here to trace even in outline
this vast process of differentiation. Our object is to
show that the differentiation of community corresponds
in general to the growth of personality and is determined
by its double claim. To this end we shall briefly consider
the significance of certain primary forms of differentiation.

(a) Tt^ demarcation of the political life.

No other process in human history has been so slow
and none is still so far from finality as that whereby
community and State have grown not separate but

^ This is illustrated by the history of such terms as dharma, B4fut,
8lK7f, fas, mishpat, recht, rigJU.

' Cf., e,g,, Grote, History of Greece, Pt. I., chap. xx. ; De Coulanges,
La CiU Antique, paseim.

OH. in. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 233

distinct. Let us, as we have hitherto done, take law
as the criterion of the existence and character of the
State. We can then regard the process in which law
emerges out of custom, in which unwritten or customary
law becomes the written law of code and legal precedent,
as revealing the slow development o( the State proper
within community. Or we can trace the same process
in the obscure evolution of the law-giver, judge, or king
out of the patriarch or tribal chief, or again in the tran-
sition from communal to legal punishment. The endless
details and obscurities of these processes cannot detain
us here. What alone is clear and what alone concerns
us is the immensely significant result (and at least partial
cause) of that differentiation. It is the recognition of
the many-sidedness of human nature, the fact of per-
sonality destroying the homogeneity of custom, so that
the tide of communal life no longer moves as a complete
consentience of the members of community. Law emerges
from custom, because distinctions in the rigour and
necessity of social relationships are being revealed.
Patriarch and law-giver cease to be identical, because
the claim of family is becoming distinguished from the
claim of State. Many loyalties are revealed, each with
its own limits, where formerly only one seemed to exist.
When the State comes to distinguish breach of custom
from breach of law, when it assumes the sole right of
punishment, suppressing vendetta and private war, when
it distinguishes criminal from civil offence and thus limits
its own right of punishment, it is shaping itself for the
greatest of all social functions, it is emerging out of
community as a vast organ for the universal protection
and furtherance of community.

A com{)arison of the great States of antiquity (and
especially the Greek States) with the great States of
to-day offers an excellent illustration of this process. In

234 COMMUNITY bk. m.

the strictest sense there was no Greek State, just as
there was no Greek church. There was no term to dis-
tinguish community or city from its State-form. The
TToXi^ was undifferentiated, it meant more than the term
State by which it is so often rendered. This lack of
differentiation is revealed in the inclusive character
of the ancient '' State/' in the all-comprehensiveness of
citizenship, with its " moral-religious " no less than
" legal-poUtical " character ; ^ it is revealed in every
communal institution, military service, marriage-regu-
lations, system of land-tenure, administration of law and
administration of rights. The iroKi^ was in truth a
'' partnership in all science, a partnership in all art, a
partnership in every virtue." But an unlimited partner-
ship of that kind, involving as it must unlimited control,
meant endless enforcement or endless division. It has
often been pointed out that liberty meant something
quite different in ancient Athens or Rome from what it
means for us to-day.* It was rather the liberty of the
city regarded as a unity over against other cities than
the liberty of its citizens. But in truth the city hardly
ever was a moral-religious and legal-political unity, and
the attempt of each division to determine that fictitious
unity was disastrous to the whole civilisation of Greece.
Demarcation of State and community was .a profound
necessity for the development of social life. Itself
stimulated by the claims of individuality it was also
the condition of the deepening and strengthening of
sociality.
The earlier life and custom of the city-conmiunities of

^ Cf. Mommsen, History of Rome (tr. Dickflon), I., 246.

"This was noted even by Hobbes {Leviaihan, c. 21). Renan (La
Ri/orme InUUeduelU et Morale) remarka, qtCon U regrtUe ou qu*on
e'en rijouisee, la liberty modeme n^eet nuttement la liberU anUque ni
ceUe dee ripubUquee du moyen dge. EUe est bien plus r4eUe, mate beau*
coup mains brilkaUe.

OH. ni. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 235

Greece and Borne, in the absence of distinction between
community and State, rested on the principle which
regards the city, and not the citizens, as the miit of per-
sonality. The principle worked well for a time. It is
a principle that gives to a community a vast effectiveness
in the primitive operations of war, conquest, and domi-
nation. But a time comes when it no longer meets the
expanding spiritual necessities of personality. The danger
then is that in its revolt against traditional social claims
it will deny the validity of every social claim. So arose
the false '* individualism " of the Stoic, the Epicurean,
the creedless cosmopolite, aye, and of the early Christian
too, an individualism which indeed makes the person the
focus of his own personality, but makes him focus and
circumference as well. The individual finds his indi-
viduality within his social relations, but they sought to
find it by stripping him of social relationships. In thus
making him all they emptied him of all. The true rela-
tion of sociality to individuality is realised as men &ad
both the necessity and the limits of the State, as it be-
comes demarcated within commimity.

A new stage of political demarcation is now in progress.
What made it hard to perceive the State as an association
and not as community was its secular omnipotence, un-
challenged by any other association save for the adventure
of the church that brought the '' Babylonian captivity."
Nan est potestas supra terrain quae comparetur et , quoted
Hobbes of the political Leviathan. It is no longer true.
Vast economic associations have arisen which to-day claim a
more extensive, though more partial, range. In particular,
the growing solidarity of labour and the subtler solidarity
of capital have proved the distinction between economic
and political power. No sooner was that distinction
perceived than it was also perceived that the government
of the State might be, had been, and still largely is,

236 COMMUNITY bk. m.

identified with the interest of one or other of these mighty
antagonists. Hence, on the one hand, a new struggle
for control of the State, not as hitherto by similar groups
striving to wrest political supremacy from one another,
but by distinctive and fimdamentally opposed associa-
tions, pursuing permanently unlike policies. The primacy
of control seems to lie no longer with the State as such,
but with those great complexes of associations whose
well-defined economic interests drive governments this
way or that. Not infrequently we are o£Eered the spec-
tacle of the capitulation of government to the demands
of some ofiEended economic interest. For instance, the
miners of Wales and the railroad brotherhoods of America
have wrung legislation from an unwilling parliament or
congress. And in a quieter way capital constantly brings
its formidable power to bear on legislative programs.

In the world of Marxist theory, and in those less advanced
countries where the reality corresponds, the control of
the State is a simple issue between two and two only
economic classes. How true the Marxian diagnosis was,
the revolution in Russia and its repercussion on govern-
ments and the mmds of men in other countries have shown.
Nevertheless the diverse evolution of government in
other countries, notably in England, in Australia, in New
Zealand, in France, and in America, shows that the
economic parties and powers contending for the control
of the State cannot be dichotomised merely as labour
and capital. Economic interests in these countries are
far too complex and varied to be summed up under the
Marxist formula. It does not place the considerable
class which combines wage-earning with some little
control of capital, or the small entrepreneurs, farmers,
retailers, and so on, or the professional classes, or the civil
service or the technicians, classes which are by no means
essentially *' capitalistic " in character or sentiment, and

CH. m. LAW OP COMMXJNAL DEVELOPMENT 237

which are also becoming, through their associations,
influential as determiners of government.^

Here we have not merely a struggle between other
associations to control the State but also an arrogation
to themselves by these associations of functions which
formerly the comprehensive State assumed, and thus a
de facto limitation of the powers of the State. It has
been wisely recognised in the Whitley Report that the
function of the State is wider in respect of those indus-
tries which are not properly organised by associations
than in the case of those which possess such organisation.
When, for example, trade unions and employers' associa-
tions, acting as qualified representatives of corresponding
interests, enter upon a compact of terms or working
conditions, that decision is in fact an alternative, clearer,
and more direct way of attaining what otherwise might be
sought through political legislation.

When these interests are adequately organised and
come to an agreement, the function of the State is in this
direction limited to the protection of any other interest,
or that of the community as a whole, against encroach-
ment by the contracting parties. For all other associa-
tions pursue partial interests, but the State is by nature
the special guardian of the general welfare.

The more therefore a community becomes organised by
means of other associations, the more does the true place
and limit of the State appear.

{b) The demarcation of the religious life.

Originally religion is simply an aspect of the undiffer-
entiated communal life. When first the gods become

^ Ck>nflider, for example, the growth of the orgaDisation of the pro-
feanonal classes in Great Britain (see Supplement to the ^eu; StaUaman,
April, 1917), the tendency of American i^illed labour to form a separate
interest from that of labour in general, the struggle of the French
civil service for the right of association (see Laski ; AuihorUy in the
Modem State, c. five), and the new movement, marked in Italy and
France, towards the distinctive organisation of technical and adminis
trative skill.

238 COMMUNITY bk. ra.

oonceived as persons and not as mere nature-forms —
for until then there is strictly speaking no religion —
they are conceived as members of or powers within the
community. The circle of community and the circle of
religious worship are coincident.

In the primitive world the gods are conceived first as
nature-powers, the causes behind natural phenomena.
Some of these nature-powers are local, the gods of streams
and mountains, others are more universal, powers of the
sky and sea and earth. As men's conceptions of per-
sonality grow stronger, the nature-powers are trans-
formed from mere elemental beings vaguely anthropo-
morphic into the definitely personal if superhuman
guardians, judges, and lawgivers of men. The process
might take either of two forms. Sometimes men came
to conceive more personally the already local powers,
the geographical gods of the fatherland, while the more
universal powers remained distant and insubstantial.
Or else the universal powers themselves might be narrowed
to local habitations and names, as Zeus the rain-god
became the god of the Achaeans, and Yahweh, also a
god of the thunder and rain, became the god of Israel.
In either case it is the limited deity who becomes the
centre of worship, the real and e£Eective god to whom
prayer is made and who answers prayer, for whom men
fight and who aids men in battle. Thus the Attic ephebos
swears to uphold and honour, not the Olympian hierarchy
in the due order of their majesty, but *' the gods of the
fatherland, Agraulos, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo,
Hegemone." The position of Zeus and Ares in this list
of obscure deities shows that the Zeus reverenced here
is not regarded as the mighty "father of gods and
men," but as a nearer local power, that Ares is not the
universal god of war, but a special deity of Attica. It
is significant, as Professor Gilbert Murray has said, that

CH. m. LAW OP COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 239

the temple of Olympian Zeus begun by Peisistratus re-
mained unfinished throughout the whole period of Greek
history while the temples of the localised Athena and
Poseidon, '' the native Earth-maiden and the native sea/'
received all the treasures of Athenian genius and Athenian
wealth.^ The Greeks, indeed, were generally too reason-
able ever completely to confine their religion to the
worship of local or tribal gods, and their religious history
illustrated the conflict between the claims of the nearer
and the farther gods. Many a similar conflict must lie
unrecorded behind the scanty history of ancient peoples,
but one, the issue which transformed the god of Israel
into the deity of western civilisation, has become a supreme
factor in the world's development.

Yahweh, first conceived as an elemental power, became
the god of Israel, and even if the Israelites considered
him the maker of heaven and earth, it was because their
god must be mightier than other gods — ^he stiU guided
only the Israelite, his chosen people. Their land is his
"inheritance," within whose frontiers alone is his law
proclaimed. To enter into the land was to come within
the place of his worship. When the Moabite Ruth follows
her Israelitish mother-in-law Naomi out of Moab into
Judah, she cries to Naomi, " Thy people shall be my
people, and thy God my God." {Buth i. 10.) To be
cast out of the land was to be exiled from the presence
and worship of Yahweh. When Saul pursues David from
the land, David declares that his enemies have driven
him out "from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord,
sa3nng. Go, serve other Gods." (1 Sam. xxvi. 19.)
Doubtless in later days the Jews learned to carry their
religion with them through the world, to serve as essential
bond imiting the scattered people, but in these and like
passages we have the earlier conception. Yahweh reigned

^ See Murray, Four Stages of Oreek Religion,

240 COMMUNITY bk. m.

in Israel 843 Chemosh reigned in Moab, as Milcom reigned
in Ammon and Dagon in Philistia. So every nomadic
tribe and every settled community had its own god or
gods who had no care for any other tribe or community.
Every settled land was the inheritance of its proper
divinity who, like a human ruler, had no jurisdiction
beyond its bounds, but within them was named supreme
judge and lawgiver, the god of their hosts, strong to aid
them in battle.

In our world to-day the wider and ultra-social char-
acter of religion is so clearly realised that we can scarcely
understand this original undiSerentiation, this communal
limitation of deity. It is for that reason I have insisted
at greater length on the primitive fact. To trace the
process of the emergence of the religious life would be
to summarise the hiirtory of both philosophy and religion,
and in particular to explain the significance of the tran-
sition from Hebraism to Christianity. One aspect of that
transition will be considered in a further chapter. Here
we must again limit ourselves to pointing out its in-
spiration and result. It is the purification and deepening
of religious life as it becomes self-determined and free
from alien claims and limitations. Religion finds its
true significance as it reveals itself to the free reverence
of social beings, in their free union as members not simply
of one community but of one church.

It may seem at first glance curious to assert that the
family-association itself becomes strengthened and purified
as it becomes differentiated within community. We think
of the fierce insistence of early peoples on the blood-bond
and assume that with the advance of culture the family
loses rather than gains. In reality, it is only as the
family comes to limit itself within a wider life that it
comes to realise itself. To establish this principle let

OH. ra. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 241

us in the briefest fashion trace the stages of the evolution
of the family within community.

The earliest forms of " family " which we know are
almost self-sufficient, for then family is itself almost or
altogether identical with commimity. We need not go
back to the fabled Cyclopes^ for instances of this con-
dition, nor is it peculiar to such isolated peoples as Ved-
dahs, Eskimos, or Australian Blackfellows. Nearly every-
where in primitive life kinship determines status, assigns
rights and duties. The whole community is held together
by family tradition, the spirit of *' clannishness." The
family protects, aids, and avenges its members. Each
is then literally his brother's keeper. In Anglo-Saxon
England an outcast was a '^ kin-shattered " man. The
levirate of the Hebrews (Deut xxv. 5) and the niyoga
of the Hindus are crystallised forms of this principle.
In China public opinion still compels the son-in-law to
support his parents-in-law. In ancient Athens, on the
other hand, a brother had become legally responsible for
his deceased brother's wife and daughters. It is of im-
portance to note that here the kin-obligation, in becom-
ing crystallised into a legal form, has lost its primitive
character.

Such survivals point back to a still less differentiated
form of community, and our point is that in this primitive
form the family means less not more. The first form of
community may be called a larger family, but it is a
confused family. The meaning of the family life is
obscured. We see extreme forms of this obscuration
among the peoples who adopt the " classificatory system "
of kinship, in accordance with which a man calls all the
men who belong to a certain exogamous group his fathers,

^ Among the Oyolopei,

TtUiiatf "ifd* dX^xWf o08' dXXi)X(tfi' dXiyowri, Od, iz« 114-6.
Cf. Plato, £aci7«, iii. 680, and Ariatotle, Politics, I. 2. 7,

242 COMMUNITY bk. ra.

all the women of a certain group his mothers, making
no distinction of name between his actual mother and all
those women whom his actual father or any male of the
same group might have married, and so for all other
relationships.^ Here it is obvious that no true family
exists at all. The family as we understand it is a small
intimate unity. The more it appears as a large kin-group,
the less it can possess that intimacy and unity. It is
significant that a single term is generally used by a
primitive people for family proper and for the wider
kindred.^

As community advances, the family loses its former
self-sufficiency. Communal custom grows wider than
family-custom. New economic conditions break down
the economic autonomy of the family-group, wider
political laws abrogate the supreme control of the head
of the family over its members and the right of the
family to avenge itself, and a profounder religion can
no longer find its centre of worship in the family-altar,
among the Lares and Penates of the family. Yet through
the process of limitation the family attains a completeness
impossible before. Its members may now realise within
it what is in truth the life of the family, for it now retains
alone within its limits that principle of mutual affection
of husband, wife, and children which alone is its exduaive
possession.

Let us illustrate by the extreme case of delimitation,
that of the family in the dense competitive city.' Here
exist in their highest power all those conditions which
break up the old family, the cluster of relatives with their
corporate responsibility, and reduce it to the essential

1 Fraser, Totemism and Exogamy, Vol. IV., " Summary and Con-
clusion,** I 3.

' So even in Anglo-Saxon. Cf. Phillpotts, Kindred and dan^ p. 216.

*Cf. Dr. Leslie Mackensie, The Family and the Ciiy {Socioiogical
Review, Vol. I.).

CH. m. LAW OF C0MMX7NAL DEVELOPMENT 243

family-form, the parent-children group. Here the self-
sofficienoy of the family is least, for the parents cannot
within its narrowed bounds fit the child to succeed, even
to live, within the \nder community. They cannot
directly clothe or educate him or cure his ailments. Yet
the child is better clothed, better educated, better attended
to than before. In abandoning its self-sufficiency the
family has achieved the greater fulfilment of its members.
The wider community which the members of many
families have built (though not as families alone) limits,
emphasises, and strengthens the family. It reveals the
essential nature and the essential basis of the family
and enables it the better to perform its own most dis-
tinctive service in the fulfilment of its members.

We have taken these primary forms of differentiation
simply as illustrations of the universal principle. It
might similarly be shown that as university, trade-union,
professional associations, and so forth, differentiate the
more within community each comes to fulfil better its
essential function. Now this differentiation of associa-
tional forms means that community has become a far
greater and profounder unity. The differentiation of
community, which looked at formally means the demarca-
tion within a social unity of the specific aspects and
functions of society, means intrinsically the double and
correspondent development of the sociality and the
individuality of its members.

It must not be supposed that the process of communal
differentiation which we have illustrated in this section
has followed any straight or simple course, or any clear
order of succession. Each stage in the process has every-
where contained factors adverse to any further stage —
which is but a way of saying that no external form is of
avail apart from the continuous energy of the life which
created it, that no social attainment is of avail save for

244 COMMUNITY bk. m.

those who have themselves the capacity to attain. Some
delays and obstacles of the process will be illustrated in
the succeeding chapter.

§4. General concloBion.

Society is not prior to its members, as Aristotle de-
clared, for society exists only within its members. For
the same reason the members of society cannot be prior
to their society, as the social contract theorists imagined.
All such theories of priority and posteriority are due to
the false abstractions we have already analysed.

It is true that partial oppositions constantly arise
between individuals and the social forms within which
they live — ^between, that is, some members of society
and the prevailing social conditions which express the
mind of a majority or dominant portion. It is also true
that there are forms of society which may be adverse
to the interests not of a few only but of a majority within
the society. If we say that the welfare of men is realised
only under social forms, we do not say that it ia realisable
under any social forms, or that men are always so en-
lightened as to build such social forms as best realise
their social needs. It is conversely true that differentia-
tions, forms of individuality, do occur which are most
certainly adverse to the unity of society, the individualities
for instance of the hermit, the sexual pervert, the unsocial
mystic, the anchorless cosmopolite. In such cases we
have a sundering of the two necessary elements of life,
individuality and sociality, but it is a pathological con-
dition, it is adverse to personality. Examine carefully
any instance where individuality breaks away, not from
perverted social forms, but from society altogether, and
you find that such individuality is evil and frustrate,
involving the loss of one or other of the essential elements
of personality.

CH. III. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 245

The olaim of individuality and the claim of sociality
are in the last resort not two but one. The daim of
individuality is autonomy, that self-direction through
which personality may be fulfilled, that social oppor-
tunity by which capacity emerges into expression and
service, the release of personality from subjection to mere
status itself unacquired by personality and from that
subordination to mere media of personality, to mere
possessions, which creates in every stage of community
one of the most serious problems of communal life. But
autonomy is empty except within society, self -fulfilment
is meaningless except in social relations, and deliverance
from servitude is vain unless it means also deliverance
for service. Liberty in the void is valueless. It demands
equipment of many kinds to be of any avail, in a word,
it demands society.

It is well to note that by the claim of individuality
we do not mean the claim of every individual for liberty
of action over other individuals. The claim of egotism
is self -contradictory because in the name of the indi-
viduality of one it seeks to constrain the individuality
of others. It is only because the essential claim of
individuality is also the claim of sociality that it is free
from this contradiction. Within a society where all men
alike claim individuality, the common claim, if realised,
destroys the contradictions which may lie in separate
claims ; it becomes a claim for such a social order as
will most further the individuality of each in its degree.
This is the true claim of individuality, and it is part of
our contention that it can be realised only by extending
and perfecting social order.

Liberty, let us admit, is undoubtedly liberty to go wrong
no less than liberty to go right, to be self-seeking no less
than to be altruistic. Liberty is a condition and not a
kind of life. Until it is defined within a definite situation

246 COMMUNITY bt. m.

it is an abstract thing which cannot be adjudged. The
claim of individuality is not a claim for absolute liberty,
but for an ordered liberty, subject to all needful com-
pulsion. The acceptance of its claim makes social order
so much the stronger. For realised liberty narrows and
determines the place of the individual no less than does
extreme tyranny. Only in the former case the narrower
place is that determined by the nature of the individual,
his own place in the complex structure, his not by external
appointment but by inner quality. Surely the whole
structure is strengthened thereby.

If we take a broad enough survey of the development
of community we see that more and more the power of
selection, of direction, faUs to the individual. Direction
in such matters as religion, marriage, occupation, decided
in the past according to general communal traditions,
more and more comes to depend on individual choice.
The opportunity for capacity to reveal itself extends, so
that it need not be lost as before in predetermined tasks.
Men are not tied in the same way to the grosser necessi-
ties of labour. As the machine develops, the value of
the man and his autonomy grow together. With the
growth of knowledge, and especially of the knowledge
of the power of association, the few are less able to exploit
the many. Whatever forms of the repression of indi-
viduality may remain, however gloomy the " industrial
serfdom " of the present may appear, relatively there has
been a remarkable release of individuality, to the enrich-
ment of personality, to the enrichment of community.
How far more intricate, intensive, and extensive do social
relations grow where men grow more autonomous !

A good illustration may be found in the changing
position of women in modem life. The '^ woman's ques-
tion " arises out of the increasing differentiation of women,
on the whole the less differentiated sex, having remained

CH. m. LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT 247

closer to type in thought and activity than men. This
differentiation reveals itself not merely in increased
initiative or individuality, but also in a deepened sociality,
a wider interest in social matters, a fuller entry into
social relations. We are not here concerned with the
special problems thereby raised. What concerns us is
that the movement illustrates the correlation on which
we have insisted. Women too, like all beings who come
to self-knowledge, are claiming to be regarded as values
in themselves, as ends not less than as means. For
longer than men women have been regarded, and have
regarded themselves, as means alone, to husbands, to
families, and to the race. If our contention holds they
will serve husband, family, and the race the better as
they grow more themselves. And certainly it is apparent
that their growth in individuality means also, if we
neglect the perversions which accompany every change
in human life, a deepening of social relations. One
indication is the number of women who have done notable
social service in recent times.

Nature scorns our doctrines of '* natural " limits. The
wisest of the Greeks held that the barbarian, the non-
Hellene, was '' by nature " a slave. The wise men of
every people have taught that woman is ''by nature "
the subject and the servant of man. And to-day many
wise men among ourselves still declare that woman is
'* by nature " unfitted for citizenship. To nature they
appeal, and by nature, by human nature, they must be
justified. If nature destroys the frontier lines which we
presume to set up, if women so grow as to seek a wider
life, on what grounds can it be denied them ? We may
perceive the deep problems which such a claim must
raise, we must perceive also the necessity which creates
these problems. Those who fear the dangers attached
to such a movement should find comfort in the know-

248 COMMUNITY bk. m. ch m.

ledge that the process of individualisation, though it
may break some established institutions, proves, over
any wide period of history, to be a process of socialisa-
tion as well.

For type and difference, sociality and individuality,
are as warp and woof of the personality of men and of
communities, personality shaped under the stimulus of
individual need and ideal, individual situation and endow-
ment on the one hand, and on the other under the pressure
of common race-impulse, conunon temper and fate, and
the common control and necessity and law of social
environment. And yet warp and woof proves an in-
sufficient analogy, for ia this case the strength of the
warp and the strength of the woof are interdependent.
On the same wheel by the same unknown power the
thread of both is spun.

Why should this law of reciprocity (and more than
reciprocity) characterise communal life ? Why personal
values should essentiaUy harmonise and not essentially
conflict, why the activity which furthers each distinct
personality should not only be made possible within com-
munity, but should on the whole and essentially further
and be furthered by the corresponding activities of other
personalities — ^this is the deepest question of social philo-
sophy, part of the great integral wonder of the unity of
the cosmos, of the fact whose completer understanding
is the aim and result of all our knowing, that we do in
truth live in a universe.

CHAPTER IV

PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE FOREGOING LAW :
(1) THE CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY

§ 1. Statement of the problems.

We have already attempted to reveal the principle of
the co-ordination of communal life, but our general account
took little heed of the problems which the incessant process
of differentiation is always raising afresh. We must now
seek to understand more particularly the adjustment to
one another, and to the whole, of the multitudinous
differentiated associations, locaUties, classes, and nations,
which become revealed as factors or elements within the
widened and differentiated community. The fierce activity
of social development is always dissolving past forms of
co-ordination and seeking after new ones. What we have
to show is the application, under the incessant changes
within community, of the principle of co-ordination we
have already discovered. This subject is so vast that it
can be treated in the merest outline alone.

There are two aspects of this supreme problem of
co-ordination. If we look at the enormous number of
associations which emerge within the differentiated com-
munity ; if we observe that these associations cut across
the lines of other groupings, locality- and class-groupings ;
if we observe also that the only unity within which these
associations, localities, and classes are organised, that of
the country-community acting through the State, is itself

250 COMMUNITY bk. m.

not large enough to circumsoribe their various interests ;
we realise at onoe the problem of the relative places and
claims of all these intersecting /orm^ of society. If, again,
we remember that every association, every class, every
nation consists of persons, each of whom in the multitude
of his relationships has somehow to find a reconciling
unity of life and end, a second form of problem emerges-
The first wiU be considered in the present chapter, the
second, whose solution will but complete the solution of
the first, will be treated in the succeeding chapter.

§ 2. The co-ordination of associations.

When the forms of association grew first distinct within
community, there was bom a problem of co-ordination
which worked itself out through the strife of many cen-
turies. The lessons of that strife, in respect of the true
co-ordination of associations, seem to the writer to be
these.

(1) Each form of association has its distinctive place and
character which cannot wiihovi social loss he usurped by
any other association.

Each of the greater forms of association has sought to
make its own peculiar bond the bond of all community.
Most generally it is kinship or race. Among primitive
peoples the range of this one social factor, real or assumed,
as a rule determines the limits of all others. Sometimes
the dominating bond is religion. Then the believer in
one dogma can have no social dealings with the " infidel "
who believes in any other. Difference in respect of one
social factor means exclusion from, likeness in that respect
means inclusion within, the circle of community. Other
forms of association have made more partial attempts
at domination, for instance, the guilds of the middle
ages sought to identify civil rights with guild-rights, and
thus to usurp the place of the city proper. FinaUy, the

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 261

State, to which alone is given the power and right to
defend for each association its due place in the whole*
has instead sought at times to make itself the whole
which it should protect and further, not only making
its own limits the limits of other associations but also
dominating the iiitemal character of these. In the
extreme case it abolished them altogether.^

This domination of associations over community, as
they emerge within it, checks the process of development
of which the emergence of associations is itself a sign.
It represses for a time the spontaneity of social relations. It
sacrifices in the name of a wrong conception of social unity
the many-sidedness of social life. For when one associa-
tion makes its single principle the rule of all, the true
character and service of all other associations is obscured.
Hence the necessity for the corollary which follows.

(2) The more each kind of aeaociation devotes itself to a
single appropriate type of interest^ the better its service to
community.

There are two wajrs in which associations have violated
this principle. They have, as we have just seen, at-
tempted to include more than rightly belongs to their
sphere, they have at the same time imposed arbitrary
limitations on that sphere. The sins of commission and
omission have generally been concomitants here. For
example, the university, before it learned its true and
universal function, used to impose irrelevant conditions
upon its membership, thus at once arbitrarily extending

1 *' The abolition of every kind of corporation formed among citizens
of the same State is a fmidamental basis of the French constitution/*
(Declaration of the French Revolutionary Assembly, 1791.) We
might compare the English Combination Law of 1800. To-day, on
the contrary, in the most civilised States there is practically complete
liberty on the part of the citizens to form, subject to the ordinary laws,
unions or associations. In truth, the greater the State is, tod the
more ** democratic '* it is, the more chaotic also must it remain, a mere
jnmble of undistinguished interests, unless it permit the distinct
organisation of interests by association.

262 COMMUNITY bk. in.

and arbitrarily limiting its sphere.^ If oommunity is to
find its true co-ordination, ei>ery association mnst have
its limits of interest in, of right over, its members, its
limits also of exclusiveness. It is a general principle
that with all individualisation the exclusiveness of some
association is broken, and with all socialisation the limits
of some association are widened.

Where exclusion from an association is determined by
considerations irrelevant to the proper end of the associa-
tion, where, for example, plebeians are excluded from
government not because of their lack of governing capacity ,
the poor excluded from higher education not because of
their inability to receive it — there is from the standpoint
of community this evil consequence, the essential waste
of elements of personality and service, insomuch as not
only are the excluded themselves prevented from develop-
ing their powers, but they are prevented also from ren-
dering the social services which they are willing and would,
if liberated, have been enabled to render. The distinc-
tions between men are essential in some regards, accidental

^ For example, the medisBval university of Bologna denied the right
of memberahip to those who had attained the civil rights of Bologna.
In this way it usurped a privilege of the city, and it denied the universal
function of the university. Oxford and Cambridge until 1871 excluded
non-conformists from their degrees, fellowships, and offices, and still
exclude women. Yet in respect of the end of a university proper,
religion and sex are equally irrelevant. It is not, of course, implied
that the members of one religion or of one sex may not legitimately
create a university for themselves, although it is probable that a
university so limited will fulfil less completely the function of a uni-
versity ; but it is implied that all who have the requisite capacity and
desire should be eligible for the corresponding instruction and its
privileges. Thus in this particular instance, where women or noncon-
formists have enjoyed all the teaching and proper training of a
university, to deny them on the ground of sex or religion alone the
degree equivalent to their training is to impose an irrelevant condition.
A recent instance may be added. It has been proposed by certain
members of the University of Cambridge that nulitary training should
with certain exceptions be a condition in respect of its baccalaureate.
This also is a confusion of spheres. It is for the State and not for the
university to exact this kind of service. These confusions do harm to
the national life.

OH. IV. GO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY . 263

in other?. In so far as the accidental is confused with
the essential, community remains undifEerentiated. Thus
rank and wealth and religion are properly accidental in
respect of the rights of citizenship, and where they deter-
mine citizenship, the community is incomplete ;
nationality is properly accidental in respect of justice,
and where it limits justice the community is incomplete.
The evil consequences of the domination or exclusiveness of
associations, as they resist the claims of developing sociality
and individuality, were never so well revealed as during
the tragic confusion of the spheres of church and State. ^
A moment's comparison of the associations of the
Middle Ages with those of to-day makes the advantage
of due limitation clear. The mediaeval association —
State, church, corporation, or gild — ^was complex and
intrusive, its hierarchy controlled not one but many
kinds of interest. Neither State nor church set limits to
its sphere, the '' art " or gUd was a jumble of political
and social no less than industrial interests.' These old
associations were complex and inadequate, they pursued
no single end, they were involved in the contradictions
and disruptions of conflicting aims, such as must attend
all associations devoted to interests not intrinsically
unified. The efficiency of the new industrial associations

^ Note in pasaing the special gain of the State when it admits the
process of social differentiation. It is thus enabled to retain the un-
divided allegiance of its members. Could an English Catholic before
1829 have worked as whole-heartedly for his State as he can to-day 7
Could England and Scotland have formed an effective political union
if that had meant also a unity of religion 7

' It might be said that the modem trade-union also seeks political
as well as industrial ends. But the trade-union seeks politiofd power
for one definite purpose, the advantage of an industrial class. Its
members, unlike those of the "art/* are clearly differentiated as
employees. For the hierarchy of the ** art/* involving difference
of interest, is substituted the equality of those who meet on the ground
of identical interest. It may be added that the proposal of a new
*' Guild System,*' which has recently found an able advocacy, is in
no sense a proposal to restore the ancient gilds. Such a proposal
would to-day be meaningless.

264 . COMMUNITY bk. m.

is due to their self-imposed limitations. Each pmmies
a unified interest, its members are members only because
they share that interest, and each wisely endeavours to
include, so far as is compatible with common action, all
to whom the interest itself is common. This process of
inclusion and clarification is made possible by the exten-
sion of the area of effective community. The smaller
the circle of community, the less easy it is to keep interests
simple and pure. As in the smaU workshop many per-
sonal and social complications influence both employer
and worker which axe unknown in the large factory, so
in the small community as compared with the greater.
Associations as they transcend accidenial limits of locality,
class, or even nationality, attain to purer forms. This
is illustrated by the progress of the modem trade-union,
at first local, graduaUy becoming national, and finally
endeavouring in some respects to transcend even the
limit of nationality. As it has so grown, its interest
has become more specific and clear. Wherever like
interests extend they caQ for a unity of association to
promote them. Like calls to like everywhere, but in
the past like has generally called in vain to like across
boundaries of class or locality or coimtry, because a
certain primary and instinctive form of likeness was
supposed, in the absence of easy or free communications ,
to be determinative or at least indicative of all like-
nesses. The development of associations has meant
the making common of like interests hitherto kept apart
within confusedly exclusive circles. As the exclusive -
ness breaks, a great federal system comes into being,
each degree and kind of likeness finding associational
form.^ This phenomenon will be explained more fully
in the succeeding sections.

* In the economic sphere* in eBpeoial» this growing federalism is
manifest. Each trade or craft is subdivided according to locality

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 265

It is often wise for an association, seeking to establish
its specific interest, to combine therewith the gerieral
interest of sociality, stimulating solidarity through
entertainments, festivals, processions, meetings of all
sorts for social intercourse. It is a method of which
the church made frequent use, and the organisers of
trade unionism have been learning the lesson, particu-
larly as applied to the initial stages of organisation.
This IS the ocean of community into which all may dip.
But it is dangerous for any association, standing for a
specific interest, to combine therewith any other specific
interest. Family, church, economic association. State,
each has its proper function and value which none other
can possibly fulfil. If an association has any right to
exist at aU, it is in virtue of its peculiar function alone,
and it cannot properly fulfil that function unless it has
learned to distinguish it from every other.

Let us take by way of illustration the much-debated
question of the relation of ecclesiastical to political
divisions. The tendency of these to correspond so that
one church is identified with one political party, another
with another, is a dangerous thing to community. For
men of one political creed come to regard the church

and specific function {e.g,, the railway-men into signalmen, shunters,
etc., organised both locally and nationally) and yet forms a unified
or " amalgamated " association (e,g, the Amalgamated Society of
Railway Servants). This whole asscxsiation in turn forms part of the
vaster association of the unions. It is very significant how, in countries
like England, France, and Germany, and to a less extent in America,
the principle of federation is overcoming the cross-divisions, competing
jurisdictions, and subordinate but troublesome differences of interest
within the world of labour. See, for example. Cole, IntroducHan to
Trade Unumiam. Hitherto isolated conmion interests are constantly
revealing themselves and finding a common rubric for association,
witness the coming together of clerks, or government employees, or
shop-assistants, and so forth. These new associations are greatly
aided by the growth of economic legislation, involving specific enact-
ments for the special conditions of every form of occupation. In the
United Kingdom the "Shops Act" and still more the "National
Health Insurance Act '* have recently stimulated this movement.

266 COMMUNITY bk. ra.

identified with another as a mere party-instrument. Its
muversal meaning is obscured, its universal message is
subtly vitiated. It is true that the earnest ohurch leader
is in a difficult position when he believes that one party
is right and another wrong. But he must realise the
peril of advocating a party's programme. The religious
spirit is the subtlest and most easily perverted of aU
spirits. If it is not first of all an attitude of worship
and reverence towards some conception of the universal
being, it loses all its distinctness, its apartness, its value.
It is merely taking the place or sharing the work of
other associations which profess their ends with greater
candour. Certainly the religion of a man permeates his
whole character, and afiEects his opinions on every social
question (just as his social outlook afiEects his religion).
But the church which is convinced that the principles
of its religion involve this or that social application,
when the application is one on which political opinion
is divided, should trust to the power of the principles
themselves acting on the minds of its members. If the
appUcation is valid, the principles will themselves per-
suade in that direction those who believe them. For
example, the Christian churches worship a God conceived
as of perfect justice and uprightness. They cannot
honestly so worship unless they believe in justice within
society. They believe in a God before whom all men
are equal. They cannot honestly worship such a God
unless they believe also in the greatest possible equality
of opportunity for all men. They profess belief in a
God who abhors oppression and the lawless use of force.
If their profession is not vain they must abjure the
principle that might is right in the relations of men and
of States. Now there are certain clear social applications
of the ethical principles involved in such a religion.
Others, again, violently divide political parties. In regard

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 267

to these latter the church should simply insiat on the
principles involved and the necessity of following them.
As a church it so fulfils its duty. Its members, as citizens
and not as churchmen, must be left to decide all question-
able political issues. This is the only safe course for a
church, the only way in which it can keep religion pure,
and avoid the miserable results which all through history
have followed the confusion of church and State. Re-
ligion is an attitude of spirit, a recognition of essential
values derived from, reflected in, and contributing to
the conception of God. Social institutions axe forms,
means towards values, in Carlyle's language clothes of
the spirit, without which it could not live in a world
where spirit discovers itself only as incorporated, incar-
nated, vestured. As we conceive values we shape insti-
tutions. As the church conceives values, so will its
members, animated by the stimulus of its conception,
work in every sphere of social activity for the establish-
ment of constant institutions.

Whatever type of association we take, it can be simi-
larly shown that before it can do its proper work it must
find and guard its proper place within community.

(3) The different types of associcUion do not form a
hierarchy within, commurwty btU a co-ordinate series under
the organisation of the State.

Since each type of association has its proper and
unique function, no one, at least of those which pursue
intrinsic and not derivative interests, can be made directly
subordinate to any other. Associations certainly dififer
in their service to community. In particular, the family,
as nearly every sociologist since Le Play has insisted (in
striking contrast to its comparative neglect by the thinkers
of the ancient world), has a fimdamental importance as
the primary mould of hfe, no less than as the most intimate
condition of human happiness. Yet the family has not

268 COMMUNITY bk m.

on that aooount any hierarchical relation towards other
associations, for the others have also after their kind
their own unique and exclusive places.

The position of the State might seem an exception to
this rule, but on the contrary it is the position of the
State which makes the rule possible. For the State has
its own unique fimction, that of protecting and organising
all the others, protecting each in the fulfilment of its
essential service, co-ordinating them all under its common
law, lending to each the aid of its central organisation.
The State has in its own political way to adjust the
respective claims and further the respective ends of all
the associations, groups, and smaller conmiunities whose
single common instrument it is.

§ 3. The co-ordination of localities.

The extension of the area of community, no less than
the differentiation of its associations within any given
area, is a necessary aspect of the process of development.
Under this aspect also very serious problems arise. The
extension of community intensifies, where it does not
create, the problem of the relation of localities to the
widened community.

The extension of community is generally at the first
a more or less mechanical thing. The simplest form is
created by conquest, being the rude imperial relation of
victorious to subject people. Another form is voluntary
aggregation or ^* synoecism " for defensive or other pur-
poses. In both we have, apart from governmental
centralisation or the privilege of superiority on the one
side and the necessities of subordination on the other, a
mere juxtaposition of communities. We find instances
of this aggregation or juxtaposition not only in all the
empires of the past but even in the small communal
units, the small primitive city-community or the smaller

cH. IV. COORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 269

and more primitive village-community. The ancient city
of Teheran, for instance, was divided into twelve dis-
tricts, almost totally isolated from one another and per-
manently at variance with one another, so that the
resident of one district never entered into another.^ In
early Rome we witness the spectacle of a not yet co-
ordinated city which is in fact two externally related
communities, that of the patricians and that of the
plebeians. There is some evidence that the English
village-community represented " the tribe with a village-
community in serfdom." * These instances could be
multiplied endlessly. Without doubt, everywhere in
early times the extension of community is very external
and mechanical, as is witnessed by the relation of clans
to totem-groups within the tribe, of domes within the
city (as in Hellas), of towns within the league (as in the
Hansa), of provinces within the empire (as in the Roman
Empire), of districts within the coimtry (as in Saxon
England), of fiefs within the feudal commimity. It is
a compartmental system only slightly disturbed by the
necessities of military or governmental centralisation.
Every primitive community of any size is more an
agglomeration than a unity.

But to aggregation there succeeds a unifying process,
that endless social process wherein like calls to like across
the barriers which have isolated them, abolishing irrele-
vant oppositions, making their like interests a common
interest and thereby ensuring a greater fulfilment. The
increase of efficiency ensured by community of interest
is sooner or later realised, in one aspect or in many, by
all intelligent peoples. Associations intersect the boun-
daries of localities, and unity succeeds agglomeration.

It must not be supposed that such a unity, say the

^ Cf. Rend Maunier, VOrigine ei la FoncUon ticoniomique des ViUea,
" Cf . Gomme, The Sociological Review, Vol. II.

260 COMMUNITY bk. m.

unity of a nation, has been anywhere attained, so far
as it is attained, without endless historical vicissitude.
Excess of centralisation succeeds defect of centralisation.
The true co-ordination of localities is hard to attain, and
will always present fresh problems for solution.

But there is one universal problem which presents
itself wherever localities — ^villages, cities, counties or
greater areas — ^form part of a larger community. For
the unity which the large community attains is not the
unity which the smaller community had previously
attained. The former pays a price for its greater univer-
sality and efficiency. If needs essentially universal find
their purer form in the large community, there are more
intimate needs, needs more deeply rooted in the emotional
nature, which it cannot satisfy. It cannot take the place
of the nearer community, but can only supplement it.
In so far as it becomes a substitute for the near com-
munity, men have but found one good at the cost of
another.

The service of the large community is to fulfil and not
to destroy the smaller. Our life is realised within not
one but many communities, circling us round, grade
beyond grade. The near community demands intimate
loyalties and personal relationships, the concrete tra-
ditions and memories of everyday life. But where the
near community is all community, its exclusiveness rests
on ignorance and narrowness of thought, its emotional
strength is accompanied by intellectual weakness. Its
member becomes the slave of its traditions, the prisoner
of his own affections. Without the widening of gates —
nay, without the breaking down of walls — ^there is no
progress. Here is the service of the wider community,
not only a completer ^^ civilisation," but also the freedom
of a broader culture. Often historically it has been the
incorporation of small communities in a wider that has

OH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 261

broken down the petty tyrannies of the former.^ The
forces moving in a great community take the edge off
all dogmatisms and break the compulsion of many uni-
formities. In the large community every interest new
awakened can search and find a like interest and thus
become socialised and strong. In the small comimunity
an isolated independent spirit can rarely assert its inde-
pendence in the face of the overwhelming forces of con-
formity, and its pecuUar value, its peculiar contribution
to community, is lost ; in the large community it may
easily be saved.

Again, let us insist that the larger community gains
these advantages at a price. Often at the cost of emotioneJ
warmth, of the effective moving force of near affedaons,
of the intimate unity where the whole folk is bound up
in personal relationships. The centre of the great com-
munity is further removed from most of its members.
The relations binding men to the whole become more
partial, more impersonal, more distant. For the near
personalities which direct the small community there
seem to be substituted either distant personalities or
even abstract principles. Associations and institutions
grown great seem to become remote from humanity in
the process, and greatness itself proves no true substitute
for intimacy. This is well illustrated by the modem
devotion to the nation. That devotion is itself the
highest emotional achievement of the widened com-
munity, but how difficult it proves to comprehend pro-
perly the object of our attachment ! How partial is the
ideal of national greatness which inspires the most of men,
mere greatness without content ! And how often, unable
to realise the meaning of this vast community, do we have
recourse to personal loyalties insteady devotion to some
mere representative of it, to some mere symbol of it !

1 One might illiistrate by the case of the Qerman free towns.

262 COMMUNITY bk. m.

The claims of the smaller and of the greater community
have been in antagonism all through history, for history
is in large part the record of the widening of community.
In every case the widening of community has involved
conflict. Generally the rude means of conquest has
settled the question whether men shall belong to smaller
or larger communities. But underneath the conflict of
arms, and asserting itself when that noisier conflict is
stilled, there has always been the spiritual conflict, the
conflict between the spiritual claims of the small and of
the large conmiunity. Men have found it most di$cult
to realise the necessity of both, to realise that their
claims are antagonistic only through a false exdusiveness
on either side, and that intrinsically they axe not opposed
but complementary.

When we see that the widening of community need
not and should not mean the abolition of the small
community for the sake of the greater, since the small
community fulfils a service which the greater cannot
fulfil, we have begun to understand the true co-ordination
of localities in the national or wider conmiunal life. Some
definite aspects of this co-ordination may now be pointed
out.

(1) The true relation of localities to the whole community
may be described as federal.

I use the term '' federal " for want of a better, to
describe the general relation of local to national autonomy,
though this term is commonly limited to the relation
of part-states to a greater inclusive State. It is the
same principle in both cases. Some needs being universal
are more fully maintained and more purely organised
directly by the more universal community. Others,
being local or sectional, are narrowed in their degree
to more intimate circles. All men have a direct in-
terest in equity, justice, freedom of communication

c». IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 263

or travel, and freedom of thought, and therefore the
widest community possible should directly establish
these. But all men have not a direct interest in, say,
the water-supply or the road-system of a particular town.
The locality, through its local associations, has to apply
the universal principle within its area. Because the
prindiple is universal, the autonomy of the locality must
be limited ; because the application of the principle
within a locality has a special interest for its inhabi-
tants, the autonomy of the locality should be real. This
is the wider meaning of federalism, the reconciliation of
the nearer specialised claim with the more universal
claim.

It follows also that the local should be connected as
directly as possible with the national. It is impossible
here to enter into any detail, but the following applica-
tions are obvious. There should be a direct relation
between local and national councils of every kind, so that,
for example, the former may serve as a stepping-stone
to the latter. In this way not only does the dignity of
the former acquire a much needed enhancement but also
its significance for the wider community is made more
manifest. Again, national projects should as far as is
compatible with efficiency be executed through local
councils. It is well to have the wider social responsi-
bilities made real by the nearer obligation of each locality,
for, as we shall see in the next chapter, neither official
nor la3rman can feel the significance of his action as a
member of a vast whole in the way that he may learn
to feel it as a member of a closer circle.

The principle of federalism is simple, its application
is hard. Both within the State and within other associa-
tions such as trade union, church, scientific association^
industrial combination, and so forth, there has been a
rich variety of experiment and compromise in respect

264 COMBffDNITY bk. m.

of the relation of central to local jurisdictions,
is a branch of social science, and more particnlarly of
the science of government which, considering both its
importance and the wealth of data, is curiously incom-
plete. Here we can merely point out that there is,
wherever men are free to act, a constant process of
adjustment between nearer and wider claims. In the
first instance it is always hard to establish the wider
unity or federation, for men instinctively narrow the
more universal principles and interests to the circle in
which they have already felt their operation. Taniae
molis erat — ^what Virgil said of Rome might be repeated
of every greater unity the world has known. The
jealousies, prestiges, powers, and rights of localities
desperately resist at first the extension of organised
relationships. To few has it been granted, as perhaps to
Hamilton and his colleagues, to persuade a people into a
reasoned federation. In the political sphere extem€J
pressure or the domination of part over part has commonly
been the rude nurse of federation. *' Blood and iron," as
much as the logic of imderstanding, has over-ruled the spirit
of particularism from the dajrs of Pericles to those of
Bismarck. Nor was the opposition of that spirit without
some justification, for the way of inclusion generally leads
next to excess of centralisation. Then a new form of
protest begins, with demands for greater local autonomy,
for ^' regionalism," as it has been named in overcentral-
ised France. So backwards and forwards the great
adjustment moves.

The co-ordination of loccJities differs in certain im-
portant respects from that of federated States or pfiu*t-
states. The units in the latter case retain a partial
sovereignty. If this has any intrinsic meaning, it must
be because of broad communal distinctions of character
and interest. This raises in an intensive form a question

OH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 266

which is generally dormant within the unitary State,
the question of the compulsion^ of whole communities.
In the unitary State, save wher^. ^ieither historically or
through uncontrolled immigration, there a^ islands of
raciaUy distinct peoples, the locality rarely rtpj^esents
an integral body of opinion vitally opposed to the 2po)^ -
of the rest of the country. But this does at times occur
in the relation of part-states to a federation. In the
unitary State majority-rule becomes an axiom, and in
any case the opposition of minorities is in the name of
economic interest, religion, and other claims which usually
cross the lines of locality. But majority-rule is, by
the nature of the case, not absolute over the whole range
of a federation. Certain powers are expressly assigned
to the federal authority, the residue of sovereignty lying
with the part-states, as in the United States ; or the
special powers of the part-states are determined while
the remaining powers, specified or unspecified, reside
with the federal authority, as in Canada. Hence the
part-state is a community in a completer sense than the
locality or region. Such being the case, it is hard to
see why a part-state or group of part-states should not
have the right as against the federation, when on some
issue it is overwhelmingly and bitterly opposed to a
principle of policy accepted by the rest, to claim exemp-
tion from that principle. In spite of the verdict of the
American Civil War, it may be generally better for the
federation as a whole to su£Eer the inconveniences and
hindrances resulting from the concomitant operation of
contrary principles than to enforce its majority-rule
against the determinate opposition of a real community.
It may be wiser to trust to the processes of assimilation
and education under free conditions than to insist on an
unwilling conformity which generally creates a wider
estrangement. The double case of Ireland is as cogent

266 COMMUNITY wt. m.

as the case of the slave-owning South. Generally speak-
ing, this reservation of ^ the fights to be exempted (or
. in the last resQjrf; lkK06cede) would make the operation

^ of the fed^RfTprinciple easier where it is most necessary

and m(tkt hard to establish it, viz., in those countries
^'^^^TOert; as within Ireland, in the Balkans, and in the
old Austrian Empire, difiEerent peoples are too closely
bound up to form separate States and too much separated
to feel themselves a single community.

But this is a problem which faces the State alone
among associations. In all others the right of secession
in the last resort is admitted or assumed, since compul-
sive power belongs to the State alone. It is therefore a
problem not for sociology in general but for political
science.

(2) Under such a ^^ federal " system there is no contra-
diction hetv)een the completest activity of the smaller and the
completest activity of (he greater community.

Local activities demand central activity, central activity
is fulfilled through local activities. In this point the
simile of the organism is relevant, in respect that there
is no opposition but rather a necessary harmony between
the smooth and free functioning of each organ and of
the central system. Where opposition exists, a true co-
ordination has not been attained. If the activity of the
organ of the great community, the central State-govern-
ment, depresses rather than stimulates the activities of
the local areas, it is a sign of excessive centralisation.
If, on the other hand, the activities of the part-com-
munities impede the united activity of the whole, we have
the opposite condition. What is wrong in either case is
not the amount of activity undertaken by one or the other,
nor even to a large extent its kind, it is mainly the method,
the failure to apportion to each its due share of responsi-
bility and co-operation within a common service.

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 267

•

We may illustrate the general argument as follows.
The city of Cologne is perhaps the most enterprising
municipality in Europe, exceeding in both the range and
thoroughness of its services the usual progressive city,
making fuller provision for the sick, the crippled, the
out-of-work, and the destitute, holding itself responsible
for the greater municipal institutions of university, opera-
house, theatre, library, picture-gallery, controlling the
planning and building of the city and the land necessary
for both housing and recreation. Now, supposing aU
cities emulated Cologne in the completeness of their ser-
vices, these municipal activities, properly undertaken,
would certainly enhance the central activity of the State,
since they require in some way the support and sanction
of a central organisation, and since they inevitably in-
crease the supreme task of State co-ordination. It might
on the other hand be shown that the greater legislative
activity displayed by West-European States in recent
years has added greatly to the dignities and responsi-
bilities of localities, even though rarely has the fullest
possible advantage been taken of their services.

It may be noted in passing that the conditions which
favour the extension of community may also make the
nearer commimity more intensive. Thus facility of com-
munication not only brings a wider area into community,
it may also increase the solidarity of the smaller. A
local press may stimulate local unity just as a national
press stimulates national unity. At the same time it
must be remembered that in the realisation of the wider
unity many interests formerly localised are revealed to
be broader than locality and cease to be identified with
its range. Thus locality both loses and gains in the
process of the extension of community.

(3) WJiere localUies have huiUy for the furtherance of a
specific common iniereet, a central association, that central

268 COMMUNITY bk. m.

associcUion should he no longer organised according to local
divisions but according to the intrinsic divisions of the
specific interests concerned.

A simple, illustration will make this point clear. At
the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow the students
still vote by ** nations " or localities, a relic of the times
when universities, in the poverty and uniformity of their
studies, were organised according to local divisions. Of
course such an external grouping has in all other respects
long since given place to the essential organisation of a
university, that according to faculties or branches of
study. This brief illustration is significant of many wider
cases. Localities do not stand for specific interests, being
areas of community which circumscribe only a very
limited and, with the extension of community, less and
less definite exclusiveness of social type and interest.
It is in very great measure the mere convenience of
contiguity rather than the intrinsic distinctiveness of
local interests which makes the locality an efiEective
social unit. But in the central association that con-
venience no longer counts and here organisation by local
divisions is, except under special circumstances, a mere
impediment to the activity of the association. The case
of representative government has interest in this con-
nection. While the unit of election remains locality,
the division of interests within the central legislature
scarcely ever follows the lines of locality. Consequently
it becomes very difficult to attain any form of true repre-
sentation on the basis of local election. Members osten-
sibly elected to represent a locality often in fact represent,
though inadequately on account of the mode of election,
not merely the broad policy of a party, but the special
interest of some association, some trade or jirofession or
church or other grouping. The defectiveness of locality
as the basis of a great organisation has begun to appear

OH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 269

in other directions also, notably in British trade-unionism,
where the recent '' shop-stewards " movement has meant,
with the growth of the scale of industry, a break-away
from the more primitive organisation accor:ding to the
district in favour of organisation on the basis of the work-
shop.

The method of ''proportional representation," first
advocated by Hare and Mill and already widely used
in many forms, offers in the political sphere the most
practicable solution at the present time. By extending
the locality and increasing the number of representatives
from each, it removes the artificial dichotomy of local
interests and allows every interest of any magnitude the
opportunity of representation (provided that interest is
foremost in the mind of the electors concerned) pro-
portional to its extent. This plan is easier, simpler,
more adapted to the changing stresses and variations
of interests than the alternative plan by which interests
as organised by associations, particularly economic
interests, would be entitled directly to elect the political
representation. This cross-representation is creating one
of the most difficult problems within the sphere of politi-
cal science.

§ 4. The co-ordination of clasBes.

We have seen that the extension of community often
means at the first the accentuation of class differences.
What has hitherto been an independent community often
sinks into the inferior and exploited caste of the enlarged
community, and class stands external to class as locality
stands external to locality. Such a relation means con-
tinual oppression and division, the double waste of energy
always involved in the opposed standpoints of tyrant
and of slave. Such an extreme cleavage is, as a rule,
only temporary. The barrier of caste, like the barrier

270 COMMUNITY bk. nr.

of locality, is broken across by new or widened associa-
tions, established to further interests that have proved
more universal than that of caste. So there comes a
true community into being, that of the nation or people,
which feels and knows itself one. But however intense
this feeling of unity it can never dissolve the distinctions
between classes. Some inequalities of birth, fortune,
ability, opportunity, and power must always remain as
dass-iete^nts m anyLial world which we can at
present conceive, and the practical issue comes to be
the relative priority of these various determinants in
the formation and maintenance of classes.

We have already pointed out that the interests of
community are best served when classes rest as far as
possible on intrinsic differences, as little as possible on
mere privilege or status not acquired by the personal
qualities of their possessors. The degree in which ex-
trinsic differences determine classes represents the degree
in which community loses the intrinsic qualities thereby
subordinated. It is, therefore, an evil to the whole
community when the members of any class feel them-
selves cut ofiE, apart from any ability they may possess,
from a share in the direction of the community, from a
share in the completest life or the highest culture of the
community. This feeling of irrelevant exclusion is the
true basis of '' class- war."

The check given to socialisation by irrelevant social
barriers is, of course, at the same time a check to indi-
vidualisation. Men can realise their individualities only
within the appropriate social relations. In the light of
our general law it is therefore easy to state the conditions
of class-relationship which would best serve the welfare
of the whole. They should be such as would both give
every kind of capacity the opportunity to reveal itself
and permit revealed capacity to f imction at the highest

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 271

level of service for which it is adapted, not debarred from
that service by any consideration of social status otherwise
determined. No forms of social service, least of all the
highest, should be the privilege of any pre-determined class.
In Plato's metaphor, no social function — and all human
activity is also social function — should be either inaccessible
to the g(Jden offspring of, it may be, silvern parents or pre-
alloted to the silvern offspring of, it may be, golden parents.
In the greater democracies of our day these conditions
are, on the whole, more adequately fulfilled than perhaps
in any community of the past. With the ever-increased
accessibility of both general education and specific train-
ing there is scarcely a form of service which remains
wholly closed to any who reveal a high and early aptitude
for it. Even military rank ceases to be wholly the privi-
lege of a class, and the companion career of diplomacy
alone retains almost intact, together with its ancient
rubrics and often antiquated ideals, its ancient class-
exdusiveness.^ Everywhere the conditions of social ser-
vice have become clarified, if we compare them with past
conditions, by the increased recognition of the importance
of personal capacity. It is true that in this as in every
other respect we have to strike a balance between the
gain and the loss due to the more complicated conditions
of modem service. Thus in the wide world of industry
the division of labour has brought both loss and gain,
loss in so far as the increased necessity for specialised
ability has narrowed its scope and its chances of pro-
motion, gain because the expansion of the industrial unit,
workshop or factory, has made more possible the reve-
lation of organising ability, which, being less specific
and restricted than technical ability, can be transferred
from grade to grade, from department to department,
and even from occupation to occupation.

1 But this was written before the war. Now there is hope.

272 COMMUNITY bk. m.

For the further development of community there is
necessary such an organisation of social function as would
give every qualified aspirant direct access to the next
higher grade within his sphere of service. The more
that ideal is realised the more will classes come to be
based on considerations of intrinsic quality, for social
function always in the long run gives significance to
social class. Here we must point out the chief obstacle
in the way of that further fulfilment. It is the power
which inherited property retains as a determinant of
social function, forming part of that vast problem of
property which every social thinker is compelled to face.

Here indeed we have the most obstinate of all the
problems of co-ordination. Class distinction based on
the possession of income-yielding property is the
only extrinsic distinction which effectively resists,
within our Western civilisation, the general advance of
democratic criticism. All other extrinsic hierarchies,
hereditary dignities and privileges, military, racial, and
ecclesiastical castes, governing oligarchies of every sort,
where they do not actually disappear, now draw most
of their vitality through economic taproots. No open-
minded observer can fail to see that the dissociation of
income from service, or in other words the derivation
of income through property alone, stabilised by modem
forms of investment on the one hand and on the other
enhanced by the oligarchical control of modem industry
and fioance, constitutes the precarious foundation of
modem classes. Nor can he fail either to observe on
the one hand the passionate devotion to this order of
the privileged classes or on the other the no less passionate
revolt of the unprivileged. Such an antithesis, where
it is stripped of '^all modifying factors, inevitably breeds
revolution. This was clearly discerned by Marx, and he
sought in fact to create, for the sake of that revolution,

OH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 273

the sense that all uniting interests must shrivel before
this flaming sword of division, until it has cleft asunder
the system on which these classes rest. As has already
been pointed out, Marx minimised, under the guidance of
the " economic interpretation of history," the intricacies
and involutions of social interest, even of economic
interest. But this is the habit of all protagonists of
social change. The fact remains that there is here a
vital cleavage in community, expressed in the anti-
thesis of capital and labour, which can be bridged only
by the construction of such a system as makes labour
no longer a mere instrument of a productive mechanism
controlled by another class for its own ends, such a system
as carries into the economic sphere the same liberation
of individuality (together with, here as elsewhere, the
integration of community) already achieved in respect
of other interests. That S3rBtem is in fact in progress
of birth in all industrial communities where free associa-
tion is permitted, through the organisation of labour
into powerful associations from whose clash with the
associations of capital must come, according lo the
wisdom or folly of men, either a progressive or a catas-
trophic reformation of the basis of classes.

§ 6. The co-ordination of nations or peoples.

When the barriers of locality and class are broken
across by the recognition and establishment of wider
common interests, the nation or people emerges as an
integral community. This attainment of nationality re-
presents a vast step on the way of development. It
is the complete afBrmation of the superiority of common
interest over the differences determined by locality and
class. When the nation learns its unity, its ministering
association, the State, definitely sets itself the task of
co-ordinating all social groupings within its limits, associai-

274 COBOHJNITY bk. m.

tions, localities, classes. Thus the whole community is
closely knit together, so that the imaginations of men
can ignore the differences that remain and credit the
nation with being a single ''soul." But there is, in
truth, no end to the process, no national unity of soul
such as can stand conclusive of all common interests.
The nation is a profoundly significant circle of community,
it does not reach its outermost circumference. Like calls
to like across the boundaries of nations as across the
boundaries of classes, and nations with their territorial
limits stand in need of co-ordination no less than their
component localities. The nature of this co-ordination
concerns us here, but in order to appreciate it we must
clearly realise the meaning, the service, and the limits
of nationality.

(1) Let us in the first place understand that we are
here concerned with the relationships of nations and not
at all with those of rtices. Distinctions of race, par-
ticularly as between civilised peoples, are at best partial
and always largely hypothetical, so that they are never
the true determinants of communal areas. Community
can be nowhere identified with race, and that for two
reasons. First, there are no pure races, no races whose
blood is free from admixture with that which flows in
other races. In the endless vicissitude of human migra-
tions and conquests all the streams of human Ufe, parted
from some unknown and doubtless single source, have
met and mingled and parted again. The races of men
are not species or subspecies of the genius man.^ Even
if we could regard the peoples which appear distinct at
the beginnings of our historical knowledge as themselves
pure races, a most hazardous hypothesis, successions of
invasions along the great routes of peoples have destroyed
that original distinctness. The so-called great families

^ Cf.» e.g., Deniker, The Raeee oj Man, chape, i. and yiii.

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 276

of peoples, Aryan, Caucasian, Semitic, and so forth, repre-
sent unities or similarities of language, from which there
is no true inference to common racial origin. Many
specific branches of these putative families have inter-
mingled again and again. All the great peoples of the
ancient and the modem world are known to have resulted
from intermixture, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans,
even the Hebrews, as well as the Teutons, the Latin
peoples, the Chinese and the Japanese. It would, indeed,
seem as if appropriate intermixture were a very con-
dition of national greatness, as if racial fusion, like spiritual
contact, were a stimulus to development.

Anthropology confirms the conclusion derived from
history. Whatever criterion of race we consider most
decisive, colour of skin, eyes, or hair, texture of hair,
cephalic, orbital, gnathic, or nasal index,^ it is impossible
to regard the somatic character so chosen as an adequate
criterion of psychological or social type as well. The
attempts of such writers as Taine, Renan, Gobineau,
Lapouge, Kossinna, and Stewart Chamberlain to explain
national character or literature or history purely in terms
of race have come to shipwreck over facts to which their
theories rendered these writers blind. In particular they
all belong to that great order of theorists who fail to realise
the reanUani character of all social phenomena, bom as
these are out of the incessant action of their varying and
multiple environments upon the native capacities of men.

Here we are brought to the second reason why the
race can never be identified with the nation. When a

^ It is significant that the different somatic indices give very different
classifications of racial types. It has been pointed out, for instance,
that there is no correlation between the cephalic index (the relation
of the antero-posterior to the transverse diameter of the head or cranium)
and the c<4our of the skin, and that there is no complete correspondence
between the nasal and the cephalic indices. For a critical discussion
of these indices see Mariano-H. Comejo, Revue JrUenuUionaie de Socio-
hgie^ March, 1911,

276 COMMUNITY bk. m.

once homogeneous people expands so that different por-
tions of it become exposed to different geographical
conditions, or when a portion is brought into contact
with the influence of another civilisation, the former
homogeneity disappears, so much so that the portions
thus differentiated may become distinct peoples. The
Greek of the plain differed greatly from the Greek of
the mountain ; the English Canadian or Australian feels
himself different from the Englishman at home. All who
have observed how readily the children of one people
when educated in the home-life of another assimilate
the new atmosphere and come to find that of their parents
alien, how readily, for instance, English children educated
in France or Germany develop French or German traits,
realise that national characteristics are in great measure
due to physical influences emanating from individual
points or developed imder the specific conditions a.nd
opportunities of a common environment. Men become
in all literalness '' naturalised '' to their social surround-
ings. It may be that environment modifies the physical
character,^ it is beyond all doubt that environment has
a powerful influence on the social type. The unity of
the American nation, built out of the fragments of many

^ The evidence of the United States Inunigration GommiBBion ahows
that the children of Europe immigrants to America tend to approxi-
mate to the American type, the extreme head-formations, represented
by the Jews on the one hand and by the Sicilians on the other, being
modified in opposite directions towards an intermediate and charac-
teristically Axnerican form. Dr. Lomer (BuOettn Mensuel de VInaUhU
de Sodologie SohxMy, 1910) corroborates this view from personal
observation, and believes also that in Japcm and China children of pure
European origin approximate to the native facial type. Bidgeway
holds that the inhabitants of mountain cotmtries become round-headed
in the course of a few generations, just as the long-headed Boer horse
becomes round-headed when reaied in the Basutoland mount^ains.
Again, the investigations of Lapouge and Ammon lead to the con-
clusion that, within certain regions, the long-headed type prevails
more in the city than in the surrounding country, but here, as in so
many cases, >an alternative explanation is possible. See Ripley, The
Races of Europe, chaps, xix. and xx.

CM. IV. CO-ORDINATION Of COMMtJNlTY 211

and diverse peoples, and under the diverse conditions
of a broad continent, is the most signal proof of the
reality of social assimilation.^ Common life is a factor
in the formation of national like-mindedness, and conmion
origin cannot therefore be more than a factor. In view
of the deep interactions of environmental and native
influences it is mere blindness to equate commimity and
race.

(2) But the nation is a community, it is the resultant
of these factors, not a hypothetical structure like race, but
a concrete living reality. It means a certain community
of nature, however brought into being, the like-minded-
ness that by the laws of our physical being develops
in any group associated into common life, that con-
geniality of a people which as culture advances seems
to support itself less and less on the idea of consanguinity.'
The idea of race is abstract and can give no concrete pur-
poses to the community it binds. It can suggest no further
ideal than the continuance, propagation, and dominance
of the kin. It is but the expression of the undifferentiated
life-force which has not yet discovered definite forms of

^ Of course men differ as to the relative efficacy of assimilation in
particular instances, as to how far, for example, the United States
to-day assimilates its constant stream of immigrants. Thus M. Jean
Finot (Contemporary Review, 1011) believes in the almost unlimited
assimilative power of the United States, while Mr. A. £. Zimmem
(Sodologieal Review, 1012) strenuously denies that America to-day
is a " melting-pot " of the nations. But all writers assume that there
is an American nation and an American character to which aliens
are or are not assimilated. It is noteworthy that writers tend to differ
as to the efficacy of assimilation according as they think it desirable
or not, those who think it undesirable tending to deny it.

Of course where aliens form a small compact conmiunity within
a greater, such as the foreign quarters in large cities, or the ethnic
settlements in rural areas of Canada and the States, the process of
assimilation is necessarily retarded.

'This is insisted on by Durkheim, Diviaion du TravaU Sooial,
Book n., chap, iv., who, however, speaks, not quite correctly, in terms
of '* heredity,** and by Ratsenhofer, who sums up the matter in these
words, Fiir die wiehUgen CuUurvdUcer ist, dem Wesen nad^, doe Bluiband
em uberwundenea Iniereeee {Die Sooiologieche BrkemUMea. 1808, p. 217).

278 COMMXmiTY mc m.

activity, and while a group inspires itself with that
abstract ideal, it too remains priniitive and undiffer-
entiated, its consciousness the mere vehicle of blind
desires. A community that finds its unity and its in-
spiration in the blood-bond alone, and not on any intrinsic
interests this may be held to involve, can scarcely have
any definite object beyond mere aggrandisement and the
reduction of rival communities. A community must
transcend the ideal of race or remain limited, thwarted,
and irrational.

Nationality too, as we must see, proves but a limited
social inspiration, but the nation, unlike the race, is
nevertheless a true community, revealing that degree of
like-mindedness which makes it a strong and definite unit
of common activity. Even in primitive communities the
need for this concreter unity was felt, and the blood-bond
was often the simplified popular representation of nation-
ality. This is witnessed to by the primitive custom of
'' adopting " individuals or groups from beyond the sup-
posed limits of the kin,^ whereby the aegis of race was
cast over them to bring them into community.

The intense consciousness of nationality, like the in-
tense consciousness of race with which it is so easily
confused, represents a stage in social development, and
is the means by which a widened form of social unity
is maintained. It fulfils a double service. Negatively,
it is an important protest against false universal claims,
the claim, for instance, of political Rome over the world,
or, again, the claim of ecclesiastical Rome over the world.
It was largely through the spirit of nationality that these
claims were overthrown. Positively, it provides a ground
for the union of localities and for the reconciliation of
classes, often in the past so widely separated in interests,
giving a somewhat vague though often very effective

^ Cf. Maine, Ancuni Law, ohap. v.

OH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 279

sentimental community to those divided by hard dis-
tinctions of class, station, and culture. The idea of
nationality is thus, on the other hand, an expression of
the widened social thoughts of men. Again, and in con-
sequence, the principle of nationality enables those who
share it to unite efiEectively for the common pursuit of
the concrete interests which also they share. It is the
basis on which men build the association of the State,
on which, through its aid, they realise in harmony that
community of human interests which is deeper than all
the differences of men.

Here it is necessary to draw an important distinction,
that between nationality as fact and nationality as ideal.
The fact of common nationality is definite and deter-
minative, not to be denied or renounced, a real basis of
unity and condition of common action. Whether the
ideal of nationality grows stronger or weaker in the future,
the fact of nationality, though of constantly changing
nationality, will always remain. All the laws of life con-
spire to give a common and distinctive character to
every area of community, and especially to those areas
bounded by the frontiers of States. The great currents
of culture that sweep over continents and even over the
world along the increasing channels of communication
will never obliterate but rather will enrich that character
of national individuality. Nevertheless the ideal of
nationality is vague and confused, and, save in one
respect, can give little or no true guidance to the spirit.
It is one of the greatest errors of our time to confuse
the significance of the fact of nationality and the signifi-
cance of the ideal of nationality.

Nationality, in a word, is properly the groimd and not
the inspiration of common action. Let us illustrate from
one of the most important forms of modem national
activity, that of economic legislation. Do we pass these

280 COMMUNITY bk. m.

Acts, say the Factory Aots, because we are thinking of
the national characteristics of Englishmen (while, at the
same time, the Germans pass similar Acts because they
are thinking of the peculiar needs of Germans), because
we regard cleanliness and fresh air as good for the English
physique, because we think English children are in-
jured by long hours in factories, because we think English
workers require security against accident ? Is the stress
laid on the nationality of the worker or on the fact that
the worker as such requires protection ? Is nationality
the inspiration of the common activity or rather the
basis of the association which achieves it ? The answer
is plain. Nationality is, as it were, the colour of com-
munity, not a name for the whole complex of communal
interests. The distinction is manifest again if we ask
how far nationality is the inspiration of national litera-
ture. How thin and lifeless are those dramas and
tales which set out to portray national differences,
supposed national characteristics, how inevitably they
run into broad caricature or foolish laudation ! Take
any national literature or other art, and you perceive
that its great works are concerned with essentially
human problems, the creators of them revealing their
nationality in their very attempt to reveal humanity.
Nationality is a way of being human, a communal
individuality. Just as no individual can find inspiration
if he looks to his own individuality instead of realising
it in intrinsic interests, so no nation can find true
inspiration if its eyes are turned to its own distinctive
nationality.

The one respect in which nationality can serve as the
ideal no less than as the basis of community is here
revealed. It is simply when men seek this basis of com-
munity. It is simply the ideal that the nation should
govern itself, should form an autonomous unit for the

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 281

achievement, through the State, of intrinsio interests.^
That inspiration has been one of the most vital and
effective ideals in modem history. It is also, let us add,
the most imperative, since the achievement of an adequate
basis for common action is prior in claim to any further
common end. But when the ideal is achieved, it is vain
to regard it as any longer an ideal. When the principle
of national liberty has been achieved, the true inspiration
of nationality is fulfilled, and nationality having become
the basis of community must cease to be also its
ideal.

In aU higher stages of culture most of the interests
pursued by any people are, in respect of any other people,
either complementary or common or both. They are
complementary in so far as relative opportunities for the
pursuit of interest leads to exchange of services, not
only in the economic, but in every sphere of activity.
They are common in being intrinsic universal interests,
of value not to a particular people alone. In barbarism,
interests are discrete — ^the interests of the Bushman or
Basuto are his alone, what concern are they of the Fiji
or Eskimo, what of any people besides themselves except
as they may effect their relative strength should they
meet in antagonism ? If the peoples are too remote for
contact, their interests are whoUy exclusive. But the
interest which the Japanese pursues to-day are of moment
also to the German and the Englishman because alike,
as civilised peoples, their concern is with intrinsic values
which are values for aU men. Whoever seeks knowledge

^ Of oourae thiB ideal can be realised only where a nation exclusively
occupies a determinate area, or in other words is itself a determinate
community. Wherever different peoples, at or near the same cultural
stage, are through any historical vicissitude ifUermingled upon a com-
mon territory while yet retaining their national distinctness, a situation
of great difficulty exists, and the only hope of peaceful development
lies in the further operation of that process of social assimilation which
we have already seen to be the principle determining the formation of
nationality.

282 COMMUNITY bk. m.

or practises an art, whoever subdues the human environ-
ment or interprets human nature, whoever speculates
on human destiny or divine existence, however coloured
his views may be by national prejudices, however deter-
mined by national temperament, is engaged in a work
that is contradictory or futile unless the results achieved
stand as an achievement not of the individual, not of
his nation alone, but of humanity.

This is not the denial of intermediate interests nor the
advancement of any claim of cosmopolitanism. As a
work of art gains, in place of losing, in value for other men
because of the individuality of the artist — and all work at
the level of intrinsic interests is served by the individuality
of the worker — so the work of a people is of greater
and not less value to other peoples because of its
nationality, because it reveals the individuality of a
people, because it enables those others to look from
standpoints not their own, with eyes not their own, at
their own indisputable world. It is true that as culture
advances communities, becoming more differentiated as
to their members, become less differentiated from one
another. Savage peoples, though they may stand on a
common level of ignorance, superstition, and narrow-
mindedness, reveal, as a result of the exdusiveness of
their interests, very great contrasts in customs and
institutions and beliefs. But the advance in culture
involves the discovery of intrinsic interests and is there-
fore inconsistent with a complete difference of character
between commuhities. However widely separated two
primitive peoples may be in form and custom, the process
of differentiation is much the same for both, the division
of labour creating like specialised faculties, the growth of
competition creating like habits of mind, like unities of
group against group ; while over against these uncon-
scious forms of rapprochement there is at work the

CM. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 283

conscious unifying thought bom of the increasing know-
ledge alike of the common elements and conditions of
our humanity and of the common world in which we
live. Ignorance separates and knowledge unites. In the
process of development communities grow in essential
likenesses because they reveal their essential characters.
As in the intercourse of men, so in the intercourse of
peoples, what cannot stand contact with others is either
weakness or foUy or mere eccentricity. If in the multi-
tude of offerings which intercommunity brings some are
universally seized upon and utilised, we need feel no
surprise, it merely teUs us again that the likenesses of
men lie deeper in their nature than do their differences.

The current of social intercourse brings physical stimu-
lus to individual and nation ; contact with other peoples,
as with other men, brings new ideas, the salt of society
without which one way of custom good or bad, one
standard growing more rigid as its spontaneity wears
away, inevitably corrupts the world. The growing differ-
ence between the newer and the older ways of nationality-
contact forms one of the best reasons for the hope that
our world of to-day may not, like the world in other
ages, hairden in tradition while it weakens in character,
until the institutions its younger spirit built become mere
vessels to contain its decay.

(3) Understanding the service and limits of nationality,
we are now in a position to consider how nations both
are and can be co-ordinated within the wider community
which they buUd. Such co-ordination can be directly
achieved only through the State, which is the primary
association corresponding to the nation. It is true that
the limits of nations and States are still far from being
coincident, but the great historical movements have been
leading towards that ideal. The Peace of 1919 has,
while making serious reservations and even some

^84 COMMUNITY bk. m.

retrograde stipulations, momentously advanced this cause.
Certainly it must be the co-operation of States, their
frontiers coinciding as far as possible with national
limits, which will bring order into the still existing chaos
of the nations.

Our distinction between the fact and the ideal of
nationality is here applicable. The State should be, as
it in fact tends to be, based on nationality, which seems
to represent the degree of community requisite for
effective political activity. But since the interests of
any nation are wider than its nationality, being so largely
interests complementary to and common with those of
other nations, the State is more than the mere protector
of nationality, it is the protector and maintainer of each
concrete nation, the community of which nationality is,
as it were, the colour, and aU interests within that sphere,
those which unite no less than those which separate the
community from others, are its great and ever-deepening
responsibility. For the protection of the wider common
interests inter-State action is necessary and inevitable.
This is becoming more and more apparent in the modem
world, for, with the development of the means of com-
munication, there has come a great development of
common interests, a great transformation of like interests
into common interests. Wherever an interest is realised
as common, the corresponding common will organises it
under an associational form. Hence the numerous inter-
national associations which have sprung up in recent
years, associations of commerce and industry, of scientific
research, of art, religion, music, letters. Like calls to
like across the boundaries of States as surely as across
the boundaries of localities and classes. But no single
State can give sanction and protection to associations
which outpass its bounds, for the State, unlike com-

unity, has rigid frontiers. So come the agreements

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 286

of States which have abeady oreated elementary inter-
national organisation for the civilised world, witnessed
for instance by the International Post€il Union, the Uni-
versal Telegraph Union, and the Universal Wireless
Telegraph Union, by international agreements for pas-
senger and freight transportation by sea and land,
international maritime codes and shipping regulations,
international rules of patent and copyright, international
rules of war itself.

But mere rules of this character, and the spasmodic
conventions which have established them, are wholly
inadequate for the co-ordination rendered necessary by the
growth of common interests. The protection of the vast
extent of common interests formed and forming, no less
than the settlement of the differences which are incidental
to all community, necessitates some permanent form of
international federation and some sanction, hitherto
wanting, of international agreements. The promise
of this federation and of this sanction is at last offered
to the world in the new-formulated League of Nations.

With the growth of this international organisation and
of the consequent interdependence of nations, there has
developed a clearer recognition of the nature and sphere
of the State. It has been weU said that ever since the
beginning of the modem era two opposing views of the
State have been struggling for predominance.^ These
are (1) the '' Machiavellian," as it is popularly though
perhaps not rightly called, the view that States are wholly
unlimited powers owing no responsibility to one another,
bound to one another by no rights and obligations save
those they choose to establish, and by these only so long
as they do not choose to repudiate them, and (2) the
Grotian or Althusian, the view that States exist for the
establishment and maintenance of rights, that therefore

1 See Hon. D. Jasmee Hill, World Orffoniaation and the Modmn State.

286 COMMUNITY bk. m.

their powers are limited and that they have duties towards
one another, being themselves members of a society of
States. At various times and in different States one or
other view has prevailed, but the growth of intercom-
munity is turning the scale generally in the most civilised
States in favour of the Grotian doctrine. It would, in
fact, be the only scientific doctrine, the only one con-
sistent with an understanding of the essential nature of
the State, even if States were self-sufficient and not
united by common interests. For it is law that assigns
the sphere, and reveals the meaning and limitations of
the State. The State exists first of all as the upholder
of law, its first business is therefore justice, the meting
out of what is fair and the repressing of lawless might.
It is therefore a '' juristic person," and a '' juristic per-
son " cannot claim arbitrary right in respect of another
'* juristic person " without denying the very nature of both.

The absence of settled juristic relations between States
works in its degree the same effect as the absence of
settled juristic relations between individual men. Just
as surely as for individual men, in the degree of their
approach to a *' state of nature " where no established
law civilises their relations one to another, life remains,
in Hobbes' famous phrase, '* solitary, poor, nasty, brutish,
and short," just as surely does it hold that States, in so
far as they remain irresponsible, unsocialised, political
leviathans beyond the greater law, must also be poorer,
more unhappy, and more brutish in their kind. Poorer
because of the economic insufficiency of each, more un-
happy because of the all-round insecurity of men's lives
and wealth, more brutish because public policy reflects
and reacts upon every standard of life.

(4) The development of common interests is making
the institution of war between nations irrational and
vain. War is a relation of hostility between peoples as

OH TV.

CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 287

organised by States. Its methods of mere destruction
implies that there is a complete antagonism of interest
between the warring peoples. But the interests of
civilised nations are no longer isolable, one civilised
people cannot hurt the interests of another without
hurting its own as well. It is only when communities
are essentially isolated, or when the relation between
them is that of dominant to subject peoples, that the
hurt of one can be the good of the other. Therefore,
as intercommunity extends, war becomes more and more
irrational. This is most obvious in the economic sphere,
owing especially to the intemationalisation of capital*
so that one civilised community, in destroying the com-
merce and capital of another, is destroying or injuring
the investments of its own members. Again, as inter-
national trade grows, more and more members of each
community live by the commercial prosperity of other
communities, and are necessarily ruined when that
suffers.^ Commerce affords the simplest illustration of
the fact of intercommunity, and in considering it we ought
to distinguish commercial relations proper from the
rivalries and struggles of commercial nations to seize and
exploit undeveloped territories. The latter struggle, the
" war of steel and gold," has had great significance as a
source of international conflict. The balance of good and
evil resulting from this conflict we cannot here consider.
It has recently formed the subject of admirable investiga-
tions.* But the case of commerce in the proper sense is

^ Consider the Bignificance of such a fact as the following : The
trade of Germany with the British Empire " has more than doubled
since 1902, and has now reached the enormous total, in 1911, of 185
millions sterling. In fact, so far as our people live by trade, one-tenth
of our population are absolutely dependent upon German trade.**
(P. A. Molteno, Contefn/porc^ Review, Feb., 1914.)

■Particularly Braikf ord : The War of Steel cmd Chid. A good
analysis of mercantilist error is found in Conrad Gill, NaUonal Power
and Proeperity. Cf. also Angell, The Oreat lUusian, Part I., and The
FoundaHona of IfUematUmal PoUiy, chap. iii.

288 COMMUNITY bk. m.

clear. The militarist joins with the mercantilist in
stressing the commercial antagonisms between nations, not
understanding that all commerce is an exchange, that aU
exchange is motived by mutual advantage, and that
therefore, between nations, the gain to a particular
interest through the extinction of competition by ex-
clusion is in general outweighed by the loss of that
advantage to the whole.

War is a means by which States settle their differences,
and if the differences are real, they are differences in
respect of such interests as are bounded by State-frontiers.
These are at most interests of nationality. But war
destroys other interests than these. The State does not
determine all community, nor does nationality sum up all
communal interests. There are many interests which
divide the citizens of one State, there are many interests
which unite associations, groups, and classes across the
frontiers of States. A State which initiates war destroys,
in the name of at best some national interest, those further
unities of interests in which the members of nationalities
are joined. Civilised men have come to realise the irra-
tionality of war instituted by non-political associations,
the fatuity of the religious wars in which churches in-
volved communities ; they have abjured also the resort
to war by groups or classes within a community, stig-
matising it as " civil war " ; and to-day the same
reasons which are the condemnation of war as between
churches or classes are in operation to condemn warfare
between nationalities. The spirit of militarism alwajrs
seeks to isolate the interests of civilised peoples, in this way
to exalt one at the expense of the other ; but the growth
of intercommunity renders its efforts vain, it can no
longer dissolve the interdependence of nations, it can
only ruin the nations which are interdependent.

(6) We have been hitherto concerned with the relations

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 289

of peoples standing on similar levels of culture, but there
is another problem of co-ordination, and one more diffi-
cult to solve. When peoples representing very different
stages of development are brought into contact, their
relations cannot be adjusted on the simple lines we have
just indicated. Relations of superiority and subordina-
tion inevitably take the place of relations of equality.
There can be no equal interchange of services, no free
adjustment of differences through the agreement of wills.
This is clearly seen in the economic sphere. The more
advanced people is almost inevitably led to exploit the
less advanced, at the least to utilise the natural resources
which the latter are incapable of utilising. On the other
hand the more advanced people, from the very fact of
their higher culture, cannot meet on equal terms, even if
otherwise they were willing to do so, the economic com-
petition, in respect of the less skilled forms of labour, of
the less advanced people who can live more cheaply.
The superior people, owning that predominance of power
which higher intelligence can nearly always command,
inevitably subordinate the interests of the less advanced
people to their own.

Yet it must be admitted that relations of predominance
and subordination involve danger for both the lower and
the higher people. For then the higher, if in close con-
tact with the lower, tend to harden into a stubborn
conservatism. In resisting the influence of a lower social
environment they easily shut out progressive influences
as well : they must deaden on one side their social sug-
gestibility and thus tend to deaden it on every side,
thereby retarding the whole social process. This has
nearly always been a characteristic of white populations
who live surrounded by blacks. Again, the lower rarely
gain by such contact, for in general they are merely
exploited as a servile race, and often, losing traditions

290 COMMUNITY bk. m.

and not gaining responsibilities, they fall victims to the
stock-destroying vices which flourish in the absence of
these prophylactics. (Even the attempt to enforce higher
customs may be prejudicial to the lower people, since
it is easier to destroy the old than to construct the new.)
Thus the common danger of the ordinary relations of
predominance and subordination suggests that here too
the common interests may be prof ounder than the opposi-
tions which create these relations. For these dangers
are minimised in so far as the superior people, while
retaining their necessary predominance, learn to adopt
the attitude of tutelage in place of the attitude of ex-
ploitation. We may contrast in this respect the com-
parative success of the American nation in their dealings
with inferior peoples and the complete failure of the
older Spanish colonists of the New World, whose methods
were disastrous at once to the natives and to themselves.

No empire, in the ancient sense of the term, can be
enduring, for empire of such a kind means the direct
subjection of people to people. This subjection is no
longer possible if, as so often has happened, the subject-
peoples attain a level of culture near to that of the domi-
nant people. The successive granting of autonomy to
its parts, as these attain political insight and the desire
for self-government, is the only possible way in which
such an empire can, if only in name, remain entire. For
when, of two peoples not remote in culture, one holds
the other beneath the political yoke, there is no acquies-
cence, no assimilation, no peace, until the subject-people
is either liberated or destroyed.

In the modem world the sphere of empire, in the
ancient sense of a centralised, military, tax-collecting
system, is becoming more and more circumscribed.
Modem States have been interested chiefly in the indus-
trial exploitation of their colonies, but in course of time

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OP COMMUNITY 291

the colonies come to safeguard their industrial interests
as autonomous units. An excellent illustration of the
disappearance of the ancient colony or '' dependency "
is afforded by the history of the American continent,
where State after State in a long succession, the United
States (1774-5), the Argentine (1810-16), Chile (1810-17),
Paraguay (1811), Colombia (1819), later divided into the
independent republics of Venezuela, New Granada, and
Ecuador (1829-30), Mexico (1821), Brazil (1822), BoUvia
and Peru (1824), and of course, though by a more gradual
process, Canada, passed from subordination to autonomy.
It is no mere accident that all the empires of the ancient
world have passed away, nor is it mere accident that
the empires of the modem world are being transformed,
where empire means the political subordination of peoples
not remote in cultural stage from the governing people,
into loose federal unities.

§ 6. Cteneral survey of the problem of co-ordination.

All community is a matter of degree. Our life falls
within not one but many communities, and these stretch
around us grade beyond grade, building associations of
every kind. They make diverse claims upon their mem-
bers, claims which historically have been in fierce opposi-
tion, but which in the advance of society we more and
more perceive to be reconcilable. The revelation of the
likeness which is deeper than difference is the revelation
of the meaning of difference also. The widening of the
social consciousness is the deepening of the social con-
sciousness, not the making of it shallow, as some suppose.
Immanent in men, and graducJly manifested in the growth
of indulgence, is the capacity of many devotions, to
family, to city, to nation, to the world of civilisation, to
the world of humanity itself. There remains much con-
fusion within this growing hierarchy of communal life.

292 COMMUNITY bk. m.

and there are infinite partial attractions and repulsions
within every area of community. But the map of com-
munity is already, we may hope, sufficiently unfolded
to enable us to perceive the general principles of its
co-ordination.

Every great civilisation has in its course brought to
birth the conception of a community extending far beyond
the exclusive limits of any one people or State. Indeed,
this conception is a necessary consequence of the growth
of intelligence, and the modes and places of its emer-
gence, seen in their historical setting, are most significant,
for they reveal to us the central drama of all history,
the thousand-times renewed confiict between the nearer
and the wider social claim. The nearer claim, the claim
of kindred or city or nationality, is always at the first
exclusive and complete. Such exdusiveness is a necessary
safeguard of the narrower mind which, unless it find
one simple allegiance to which it can cling, must drift
in helplessness. But in time the peril of exdusiveness
becomes greater than its security. If the spirit of
exdusiveness remains triumphant, the exclusive com-
munity must yield before its wiser neighbours, for its
exdusiveness means not only inferiority of wisdom but
also inferiority of power. How often might a community
have been saved from submergence or decay if its
members had been wise enough to know the wisdom of
its greatest minds !

'' And who is my neighboiur ? " asked the Jewish lawyer
who would justify himself. The answer had been clear
enough to the Jew of the Pentateuch. Did not Yahweh
command him to have no dealings with '* the Gentiles *' ?
'' Thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them ;
thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy
unto them." {Deut, vii. 2.) With scarce a protest, this
spirit rules throughout Jewish history. Bound to this

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 293

exclnsive^creedy and yet blindly seeking the Messiah who
would save him from the impotence and failure it ensured,
the Jew heard in vain the message of Jesus, bidding
him see in every man his neighbour. That any salvation
should come with the breaking down of exclusiveness
seemed foolishness to him. So the message passed to
his more universal-minded neighbours. " Seeing ye put
it from you," cried Paul — ^who himself had lived '' after
the most straitest sect of our religion " — " lo, we turn
to the Gentiles." {Acta xiii. 46.) So while Paul preached
the more universal law ''where there is neither Greek
nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free " {Col. iii. 11), the Jews pursued
that stubborn principle of exclusiveness, which brought
upon them the destruction of their temple and city,
and ended in their dispersal throughout the world, to
be the homeless dependents of all other nations. Never
was the nemesis of unyielding exclusiveness more
complete.

The problem of the wider and the narrower community
was set for the Greeks in a still acuter form, while their
failure to solve it, despite the teaching of their greatest
men, was no less striking. Here it was in the first place
civic and not national allegiance which men failed to
reconcile with the idea of a wider community. Not even
the fact of participation in common nationality, culture,
religion, and speech, not even the experience of common
^nger scarce outlived and the knowledge of common
danger still impending, not even the recognition of the
endless disaster of intranational division could break the
exclusiveness of the city-community. Leagues and con-
federacies and common festivals there were by the score,
but every attempt to create the sentiment and establish
the reality of the wider community was frustrate or
partial or momentary or perverted by the spirit of

294 COMMUNITY bk. m.

domination. In vain their poets and artists revealed the
oommon mind of Greece. In vain Thuoydides pictured
the ravages of intra-Hellenic divisions, in vain Demos-
thenes pled for intra-Hellenic imity, in vain Plato declared
that the strife of Greek with Greek was '' civil discord ''
{(rraa-i^) and not '' war," and conceived a more ideal
Hellenic community whose members, all '' philhellenes,"
would regard Hellas as their country, share its temples
in common, and '^ never bring themselves to tear in
pieces their own nurse and mother." {Repvblic, pp. 470-1.)
Too late the Greek cities laid aside their enmities, seeking
the remedy of federation only when already the yoke
of strangers was laid upon them. Too late they learned
as subjects of a seemingly universal empire the claims
of the wider community which they had rejected as
free citizens — and even so learned them in one-sided
fashion, never reconciling the '^ community of man " with
the nearer community of the city. It may be that, as
a recent historian has claimed, the city has a better
chance than the nation of extending its particular free-
doms and gifts to the wider world ; the Greek city, at
any rate, never learned to reconcile its life with the life
beyond its gates.

We shall indeed misconceive the problem if we regard
the solution as the throwing open to the whole world
of the proper liberties and privileges of the small com-
munity or city. This, the Roman solution, was in its
turn equally extreme. It is a problem of the co-ordina-
tion of communities, not of the proper way to extend
to the greater the privileges and rights of the smaller.
It is a problem of the reconciliation of allegiances, not
of the reduction of all allegiances to one. The Romans
who extended the citizenship of Rome to the conquered
peoples were wiser than the Greeks, who knew no third
course beside local independence and mere empire, but

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 295

they still were far from realising the meaning of the
wider community. They extended to the world a citizen-
ship that grew more unmeaning with each extension.
They had nothing but citizenship, admission to the privi-
leges and rights of the one city, to offer the world : they
would make the world a greater city, instead of the city
part of the greater community of their world. They
achieved no political co-ordination of the smaller and
the greater community ; they found no middle terms
between '* citizen of Bome," to the last the badge of
political right through the vast empire, and '* citizen
of the world," the equally extreme watchword and re-
joinder of the philosophers. The idea (like the name)
of humanity, unknown to Greece, was discovered in the
Roman world, but was regarded as in mere contrast
to the idea and the name of Rome, and so remained
barren and abstract. It was only in the sphere of law
that any real reconciliation and harmony was made
between the interests, claims, and necessities of the city
and those of the empire.

Certainly as intelligence grows there is an increased
recognition of the preponderance of uniting over dividing
interests. The primitive and the superficial intelligence
see only difference where the widened mind sees the
vaster likeness. It was in the name of the essential
likeness of Jew and Christian that Shylock is represented
as protesting against the persecution of his people.
*' Hath not a Jew eyes ? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? " It was no
wonder, therefore, that men passed from the narrow
doctrines of the city-state to an extreme of cosmopoli-
tanism. In that extreme form was expressed the greater
enlightenment of both the Stoic and the Christian. So
Paul had demanded for the Gentile from the Jew the
same toleration which in the revolution of the ages the

296 COMMUNITY bk. m.

Jew was driven to demand from the Gentile. ^^For
there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek."
{Bomana x. 12.) So Marcus Aurelius insisted on the
oneness of reason or spirit in all peoples. For every
man's nature is '' kindred to my own, not because he
shares the same flesh and blood and is sprung from
the same seed, but because he partakes of the same
reason and the same spark of divinity." (MeditationSy
n. 1.) As men grow wiser, as they realise their own
world the more, they see more the depth and potentiality
of their like natures, the community of their hopes and
fates.

But the necessities of social life cannot be satisfied
in a single vast community of all men. Within the
widened conmiunity there must always remain the
numerous likenesses and differences of social groups.
The character of a people is not obliterated by inter-
community with others, any more than the character
of an individual is obliterated by his social intercourse.
In both cases intercommunity is a psychical stimulus, a
stimulus to the development of character. These like-
nesses ancl differences necessitate nearer centres of social
activity, nearer unities. Further, the activities of men
are determined by the necessities and limitations of
locality, so that each area of community requires its
own autonomy. Decentralisation is as necessary as cen-
tralisation. If Greece erred in one direction, Rome erred
as grievously in the other. The true principle is federal,
a common organisation for common interests, special
organisations for special interests, centralisation for uni-
versal order and security, decentralisation for the fulfil-
ment of life.

The true principle of the co-ordination of community
began to be realised at the dawn of the modem world.
The co-ordination of the universal medieeval church sug-

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 297

gested the oo-ordiiiation of universal community. This
conception is ahready clear in the mind of Aquinas,^
and finds later a remarkable expression in the De
Monarchia of Dante. Each area of community, Dante
pointed out, has its proper place and end in the fulfil-
ment of the whole ; each is partial in some respects,
integral in others. Beyond the household extends the
village and the city, beyond the city the kingdom, beyond
the kingdom the world of men {universitaa humana), not
as a mere conception but as a reality necessitating a
single government after its kind, just as each smaller
area requires its own unity of government after its kind.^
But many barriers had to be removed before even the
beginning of such an order could appear. In particular
the disintegration of medieeval society made a decisive
centralisation a necessary preliminary. Centralised and
exclusive nations arose in strength out of the chaos of
empire, and for a time each of these great areas, unified
under the form of the State, seemed to satisfy within
itself all the needs of community.

But there remained everywhere at least one association,
the church, which crossed the now so exclusive frontiers,
and there arose many associations whose activities came
to undermine the basis of centralisation. From this con-
fusion community is even now emerging. Speaking
broadly, we may say that the greatest social and political
movement of the eighteenth century in the west was
concerned with the overthrow of smaller associations
which had taken despotic and arbitrary and narrowing
forms, in favour of the claim of the greater State. The
nineteenth, on the other hand, we may say in the same
broad fashion, has been concerned in building up the

^Cf. Gierke, PolUical Theories of the Middle Age (tr. Maitland),
f{ I.-IV.

' De Monarchiat I., ohap. v., ft.

298 COMMUNITY bk. m.

smaller associations on a new basis, not in their old
arbitrary independence, but in their due relation to wider
claims. The twentieth must attempt to resolve the chief
antagonism thus revealed, that springing from the
unequal character of capitalistic industry, while at the
same time, bearing the profound memory of a desolating
war, it is engaged in the construction of an international
order.

From the standpoint of community, the general result
has been the development of the principle of federation.
In this way the small community regains what it loses
in its first submergence in the great community. And
our social world assumes the form of community beyond
community, from village or parish or town-ward out to
the greatest area of federated territory whose common
interests we have the intelligence to discern and the
wisdom to unite. For the final law revealed in federation
is this, that so far as common interest extends, so far
and in so far ought community also to extend. Not
isolation and not absorption, not parochialism and not
cosmopolitanism — ^but narrower and wider circles of com-
munity in due correspondence to narrower and wider
needs. Not parochialism and not cosmopolitanism — for
if we justly condenm cosmopolitanism in the Ught of
the history of Rome, shall we the less condenm paro-
chialism in the light of the history of Oreece ? Not
isolation and not absorption — ^for strength without liberty
is blind, and justice without affection is empty.

From the point of view of the sociologist the internal
progress of any particular group or community is neces-
sarily partial in so far as it does not bring that group
or community into completer harmony with others. This
is a necessary implication of our fundamental law of
development. Since the widening of community is itself
one result of the growth of personality, we cannot r^ard

CH. IV. CO-ORDINATION OF COMMUNITY 299

the ideal of progress as attained apart from the com-
pletest possible harmony of all men, all interests, and
all groups. In the light of this law he is not a sociologist^
but a partisan, who refuses to construct the ideal of
progress from the standpoint of humanity itself. The
sociologist can no more retain the primitive though still
predominant attitude of men towards their respective
nations than the scientist could retain the primitive
idea of the universe. Men found the earth to be the
whole meaning of the universe just as men still find
their country to be the whole meaning of community.
These theories are very comfortable and come very easy
to our egoisms. But when men comprehended the truth
about the earth, all the broken fragments of their physical
knowledge were pieced together as parts of a hitherto
undreamed-of harmony of science. In like manner when
men realise that their own country is but a part of the
meaning of community, all the broken social interests
of to-day will be revealed as co-ordinated within the
universUas humana. And men wiU despise the lesser if
more comfortable thoughts of our age, as we despise the
ignorance of the Pre-Copemicans.

CHAPTER V

PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE FOREGOING
LAW : (2) THE UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL
LIFE

§ 1. The problem.

In the primitive world where community is undifEeren-
tiated, the members of society find the unity of their
lives in an easy fashion, for a single system of sanctions,
customs, and traditions hedges them round. There is
no opposition of standards or ideals, no conflict of duties
necessitating the search for an inner principle. The
uniformity of the social environment determines the rule
of conduct as simple devotion to one allegiance. This
conformity gives its security and stability to primitive
life.

But when associations within community difEerentiate
and when society reveals itself as no longer one enclosing
circle but a graded series of communities, a problem of
great significance arises. As associations multiply, each
acquires its own distinctive customs and traditions, its
own distinctive morality, in respect of the life-conditions
with which it is especially concerned. Thus each acquires
its average or characteristic form of honour, as, for in-
stance, the honour of the soldier, of the lawyer, of the
tradesman, of the doctor, down even to the honour among
thieves. A man, as a rule, follows a single profession,
and therefore the difEerence of standard between these

w. m. OH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 301

may involve no direct conflict of ideals ; but every man
belongs also to various associations, family, club, church,
economic associations, and so forth, the variety and
uncertainty of whose standards, unless he finds a prin-
ciple of harmony, may weU bring confusion into his life.
Again, as the life of men becomes involved in nearer
and farther circles of community, it becomes more and
more difficult to find any general or communal traditions
such as can comprehend all their activities. The differ-
entiation of community, we have seen, stimulates both the
sociality and the individuality of men. We now see that
it raises perhaps the ultimate practical question in life,
that of the unity of life for each individual as an active
member of society. As community differentiates and
individuality grows, men lose the security, the comfort
of conformity, and are driven to seek, through perils
and negations, a profounder source of unity. This is a
necessary episode in all transition from tutelage to man-
hood. The social being who formerly accepted a prin-
ciple of unity has henceforth to attain it.

A man is more than a soldier or a lawyer or a merchant
or a mechanic, wrought as his occupation is upon his
character ; he is more than a member of a family or a
church or a city or a nation, nay, he is more than a member
of a famUy arid a church and a profession and a city aitd
a nation. For a man's character seeks to be a unity.
Not only does the personality of man refuse to be summed
up under a single social relationship, it is not wholly
revealed as the total of a serieei of social relationships.
Historically it was seen that a social individual was more
than a citizen because he was also a kinsman and a
churchman, but finally he is more than a citizen because
he is a peraon. The increase of the social relationships of
men, as their mdividuality grows, more and more fulfils,
but it never exhausts, the personality of men. Some-

302 COMMUNITY bk. m.

times men seem to contract into the mere type of a
profession or class, becoming, say, professionalised into
mere ofBioial or mere ecclesiastic. Yet, however conformed
a man may be to the tradition of profession or class, in
his highest moments he will rise above that conformity,
as in his lowest he may sink beneath it.

We think too much in types. The idea we form of
another's personality is always generalised and imperfect,
because we cannot fully conceive the elements of unlike-
ness to ourselves which it contains. How often do we
dismiss a man as the member of a social type, especially
if his activities lie in social spheres remote from our
own, as a grocer or a priest or a concierge or a member
of parliament or whatever it may be, who, if we knew
him better, would appear less and less the type, the mere
member of an occupation or a class, more and more the
person, a being with the richness and elusiveness and
incompleteness — and seeming contradictoriness — of per-
sonality. Simmel has well remarked that, even when
we apply no definite category to a man to sum up his
personality, we yet characterise him nach einem toorUosen
Typvs^ mit dem aein reines Furaichsein nickt zuaammen-
fdllL {Saziologie, p. 33.) Finally, we can never form
a completely true idea of a personality because its revela-
tion is itself fragmentary, not integral. '' We are all
fragments, not only of humanity, but of ourselves."

The growth of personality renders the acceptance of
traditional standards less easy, it also obscures these
standards themselves. Associations and circles of com-
munity are not isolated, so that men can retain clear
and distinct principles within each. If, therefore, men
seek merely to follow in each sphere of social activity
whatever ruling traditions they can still find within it,
they lose the imity of life. This is generally realised
to-day. As Professor SmaU says : " Speaking generaUy,

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 303

our ethical capital consists of a heterogeneous collection
of provincial moralities. ... By means of them society
keeps in motion, but in spite of enormous waste consumed
upon the frictions which retard the motion. We have
no universal ethical standard to which one class may
appeal against another class and get a verdict which
the defeated litigant feels bound to accept." {Oeneral
Sociology f p. 667.) It is right that there should be a
specific code of ethics for every situation, but the specific
code should be an application of the universal code. If
the code is limited to securing the interests of the specific
class or profession, without consideration of the part that
class or profession plays in the whole community, does not
the principle come dangerously near to that of " honour
among thieves " ? " What do we more than these ? "

Professor Small uses the following illustration. " Sup-
pose, for example, we are in the midst of a labour
confiict. It is proposed to arbitrate the difiiculty . Repre-
sentatives of the conflicting parties meet. A looker-on,
if he happen to be a philosopher, soon discovers that the
issue cannot be decided on ethical grounds, for the con-
flicting parties, and perhaps the arbitrating board, have
each a different standard of ethics. The employers' ethics
are founded upon conceptions of the rights of property.
The employees' ethics take as their standard certain con-
ceptions of the right of labour. The arbitrators' ethics
may vary from the lawyer's interpretation of the civil
code to the speculative philosopher's conception of the
ideal rights of the generic man. There is no common
ethical appeal. Neither litigants nor referees can con-
vince the others that they must recognise a paramount
standard of right. The decision has to be reached either
by resort to force or by a compromise of claims, each of
which contiaues to assert its full title in spite of the
pressure of circumstances." (P. 659.)

304 COMMUNITY bk. m.

It is not to be supposed that the codes of different
classes or types will ever fully agree, or that the situation
dramatised by the author of Strife will ever disappear.
But the chaos of our ethical standards might well be
reduced to some degree of order if we were taught to
think in terms of community, if we were taught to realise
the universal meaning of the ethical daim upon us, calling
to us not merely as members of a class or profession
but as finally responsible personalities. Our specific codes
are like little land-locked harbours whose mouths have
been silted up in the process of time, so that the waters
become stagnant. Were the entrance deepened, the
stagnant waters would share in the universal and purifying
ocean-tide.

There are many social allegiances, and each has its
place and its necessity. How the variety may be made
consistent with the unity of character is our present
problem. It is now obvious that in the differentiation
of community the older harmony of the tradition-deter-
mined life is destroyed, but it will make the problem
so created clearer if we show some of the ways in which
during that process the nature and the need of a pro-
founder unity are revealed.

One aspect of the external and uniform character of

primitive conduct is the corporate responsibility of group
or community, whereby the whole is held accountable
for the wrong-doing of any unit, the whole family for
the action of any member, the children for the sins of
their fathers, and so forth. In the Old Testament the
sin of Achan is visited not only upon himself, but also
upon his sons and his daughters (Joshua vii. 24-6), as
the Mosaic law prescribed ; and, similarly, the medieeval
church laid its curse not on the offender aJone but on
all his kin. In the vendetta of barbaric peoples the
kin-group avenges the death of the kinsman by slaying

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 306

some member of the kin-group to which the slayer belongs.^
The sense of corporate responsibility decays as the true
basis of conduct in personality is found. It is only the
primitive mind among ourselves which regards the ofEence
of a foreigner as somehow the act of the nation to which
he belongs.' The reflecting mind can no longer accept
the principle of group-ethics, it demands, as it rests upon,
the self-standingness of every man as an ethical being.
We may recall how the more enlightened ethics of the
Hebrew prophet moved him to protest against the older
code. "The word of the Lord came unto me again,
saying. What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concenung
the land of Israel, sa3nng, The fathers have eaten sour
grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge ? As I
live, saith the Lord Grod, ye shall not have occasion any
more to use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are
mine ; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son
is mine." ' The denial of the doctrine of corporate re-
sponsibility is, here as elsewhere, the affirmation of the
ethical autonomy of the social being.

This ethical autonomy, we have pointed out, is not
truly opposed to socialisation but only to the reduction
of the person to a uniform social type. This is illus-
trated by the case of the social genius, the person who,
as it were, cuts the steps up which the rest of his society
may learn to climb. No great man conforms to whatever
average standards of thought rule within his society.
His greatness consists in being ahead of these, ahead of
his society in knowledge, in wisdom, in morality, in
religion. In this sense his thoughts are out of conformity

^ Cf. Weotermarok, Moral Ideas, Vol. L, ohap.

■ Another and very persistent form of the assumption of corporate
responsibility, though scarcely realised by those who act upon it,
is that of sex-responsibility in sex relations, a conmion source of
misogyny and misandry.

* Etekia zviii. 1-4 ; so also Jenmiah xzxi. 29-30.

306 COMMUNITY m. m

to those of hifi sooiety, and that is at onoe his crucifixioii
and his greatness. It is why the prophets have been
stoned, it is also why the prophets have been willing
to endure being stoned. Their society stoned them
because they were prophets, but to be a prop|iet was
itself a social function. If it had not been for their
deep concern with society, for their socialisation, they
never would have been stoned. On the other hand, nc
man can be great unless his society is in some measure
fitted for his greatness. A Socrates, Shakespeare, or Kant
among South Sea Islanders is inconceivable, and that
not merely because the genius is still a member, though
exceptional, of his stock and people, but because a genius
can no more arise and function in a wholly irresponsive
social environment, unsupported by some degree of sym-
pathetic fellowship and understanding, than a living
thing can breathe in the void. Genius develops by
communication, and communication with oneself is only
a metaphor. You cannot even protest your non-con-
formity except to those who understand your protest.
The prophets whom they have raised reflect credit on
a people even when they stone the prophets.

Another aspect of the external and uniform character
of primitive conduct is the rigorous supersocial sanction
attaching to it. This is inevitable where the inner obliga-
tion remains undeveloped. Primitive men require super-
social sanctions for social conduct, because the true
reason for it, the true necessity of justice, for instance,
can appeal only to the autonomous personality. The
need for justice, more obvious than the basis of it, created
a supersocial sanction. Primitive men are like children
who have the intelligence to obey the law but cannot
perceive the true reason of the law which they obey.
"It is the Law," they say, with the conclusiveness of
the animals in the Jungle Books.

CH. V. UNITY OP THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 307

In the difierentiation of community that attitude also
passes away. The social meaning of social obligation
must be realised before the obligation can itself serve to
guide the widened life. The spirit of law-abidingness
must rise above the uniformity and externality which
characterise all conduct whose purpose is unrevealed.
This is another aspect of the emergence of the ethical
sentiment. In seeking the reason of the law it trans-
forms the law and discovers an inner sanction for it.
The power and the claim of ethical thought is most
triumphantly revealed in the transformation of religion.
Even though religion continues to provide a sanction
for conduct, it is the ethical spirit that is the primary,
the transforming power in the creation of that sanction.
Religion is brought into harmony with that spirit, for
its conception of deity cannot resist the fierce ethical
claim of awakened personality.

We may illustrate from the history of the literature
of Oreece. In the age represented in the Homeric poems
few ethical demands are made of the greater gods, and
this corresponds to a stage of development in which
the external law of social customs rules among men. In
Homer there is no true ethical condemnation of the per-
jurer, the adulterer, the murderer. They are offenders,
when they are supposed to offend at all, against the
code, the custom of the tribe or city. It is as breakers
of the customary law that they are regarded, and it is
that law alone which prescribes punishment or retribu-
tion, not the outraged heart with its own conviction of
the inherent hurtfulness of the offence. But the social
status of the heroes of epic places them in a way beyond
the reach of customary law, and ethical sentiment has
not yet sufficiently advanced to disentangle itself from
that law. The conduct of epic heroes is as unquestioned
as that of the gods on Olympus, and for the same reason.

308 COMMUNITY bk. m.

They are alike in their degree beyond the operation of
customary law, and the deeper ethical judgment which
goes beyond established law and custom, to transform
them in the end, judging everything in terms of its
inherent rightness or wrongness, has not yet emerged.
On his guilty heroes the poet passes no moral judgment,
but not merely because he is wise enough to perceive
that '' poetic justice " may be untrue to life. Odysseus
the murderer, Paris the adulterer, Helen the curse of
men and cities, receive honour and not shame. And
these heroes justify themselves, if they feel the necessity
of justification, in terms of the supersocial sanction, pitting
it against the social need. " Not I but the god in me **
is the excuse of the guilty Helen,^ just as '' Not we but
the gods and heroes " is the boast of the triumphant
Oreeks after Salamis,* a contrast which reveals the in-
adequacy of the supersocial sanction. But in the later
poets of Oreece the ethical sentiment has awakened, and
they mete out '^ poetic justice " to the unscathed and
guilty heroes of the earlier epic ; reshaping the old legends
to show that sin from its very nature brings and demands
suffering, that wealth or power wiU not save him who
" kicks into nothingness the great altar of Justice," that
God will not justify men who '^ trample on the grace
of holy things." The inevitable conflict that signalises
every process of development is here strikingly illus-
trated by the story of Stesichorus, the lyric poet of
Himera. In the Homeric story, when the long war is
over, Helen, its guilty cause, is restored to her true
husband Menelaus, lives in honour for many years, and
is fated at the last to pass immortal with Menelaus into

^ Odyney, iv. 261-2 ; of. lUad, iii. 164 sq.^ and vi. 357.

'HerodotuB, viii. 109; of. Murray, Th» Riw oj th^ Qrteh Bpic,
p. 199. On the whole subject see P. Barth, Die Frage dee eiUUehen
FortechriUe der Menechheit (VierteljahrechHJt Jiir wieeenachaftUehe
PhUoeophU, vol. xziii.).

cH V. UNITY OP THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 309

the Elysian fields, becoming a goddess to men. Stesi-
chorus at the end of the seventh century, resenting the
lack of ethical justice in the old legend while he accepted
the literal truth of the story, in that middle stage of
enlightenment inveighed against Helen in the candid
speech of moral indignation. The story runs that the
impious poet was struck with blindness, whereupon he
wrote a ** palinode " or recantation, and so received back
his sight. Whatever the facts in the life of Stesichorus
on which the tale was built, we have here a most interest-
ing glimpse into the transition process in which the ethical
judgment fearfully shakes itself free of prescription, of
deference to tradition and custom and dogma. In the
succession of the Attic tragedians we can observe the
ethical judgment still further liberated from that external
deference, until in Euripides it is revealed in its own neces-
sity, the fearless and final judge before whose bar every
custom and every institution must come, to be justified
or condemned according to its ethical worth alone.

The emergence of the ethical sentiment in history is
most fully revealed in the conflict of the ethical spirit
against the dogmatised ethics of the past. The ethics
of the past becomes entrenched In religious forms and
is dislodged only after the age-long assault of new ethical
claims. For religion can never be separated from ethics,
from the social ideal. Religion is the form of an ideal,
and in the long run there is but one ideal, an ethical
one. If men worship power, that is their ethical ideal ;
if they worship beauty, that is their ethical ideal. When
a conflict arises between ethics and religion it is in reality
a conflict between the ethics of the present and the
ethics of the past. This is the great drama of all history,
and the history of Christianity might be shown as the
greatest act of that drama. Christianity came as the
protest of the ethical conscience against the external

310 COMMUNITY bk. m.

claim of dogma, the dogma of scribe and Pharisee. It
amiounced for ever the cardinal and inextinguishable
ethical principle, the principle of personal responsibility
and obligation, the principle that the social individual
is the judge and the creator and the redeemer of social
claims. It announced that the only value on earth is
the value of the " souls " or lives of men, and that systems
and creeds are vain and corrupt except as they fulfil
these values. It announced that not tribe or nation,
not class or station, not sect or school, avails anything,
but the men that are bom in the race or hold the station
or believe the dogma. It announced that the only fidfil-
ment and the only reality of empires and principalities
and powers are living men. It announced in a word
that religion is a life and not a form, and that the true
way to serve and love God is to serve and love one's
feUows. '' Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least
of these, ye did it not to me." This is the final principle
of all ethics, which refuses to stop at the generality of
class and nation, and finds the heart and conscience of
particular men. But the church was unequal to the
spirit of its message and built greater dogmas in its name.
It devised a theological mechanism of salvation out of
the very words which breathed the eternal free spirit
of ethics. It turned the symbol of the spirit into the
shell of the spirit. It found the service of God in the
renunciation of the duties and privileges of life. It dis-
tinguished ofiEences against Grod from ofEences against
one's fellows, branding the former phantasmagoric sin
as deadly, and counting the latter reality of wrong as
venial. It made death more significant than life, and
final absolution more potent than the whole conduct of
life. It made the acceptance of a creed of more avail
than the formation of character. Time and again, often
not understanding itself, the ethical spirit has raised its

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 311

protest, melting the rigid iron of institutionaUsm in the
flame of its indignation. Time and again the institution
has rehardened — and it will always continue to reharden
until perhaps men learn that the only safety of any
institution, and especially of any religious institution,
lies in its constant redemption from the letter through
its constant subjection to the spirit.

If this ethical claim is dangerous, it is also, we must
see, necessary. In the differentiated community the
sanctions of the undifferentiated community are simply
unavailing. That is proved by their decay. A different
unity is necessary for the life of the social being who
would be equal to the social opportunities of the co-
ordinated community.

All forms of the merely external sanction are subject
to the same decay, and therefore it is not possible to
solve the problem by leading from one to another. Such
a course is sometimes advocated, as in the following
passage : '' The fact that the weakening of the power
of the supernatural sanctions of morality seems to be
an inevitable accompaniment of high civilisation, renders
the development of the national sentiment a matter of
extreme importance ; for in no other way, it would seem,
can the great masses of mankind be supplied with motives
that will effectively take the place of the motives of
personal religion in prompting and sustaining the higher
forms of moral effort." ^ But the problem is not ade-
quately put if its solution is conceived in such a form.
For it is at least equally characteristic of high civilisation
that the customary and ruUumal sanctions of morality
progressively diminish — and that for the same reason,
because it is the very nature of morality that its sanction
must be inner, that you cannot '* supply with motives "
the developed moral being. His motives are indeed

^ From an article in the Sociologieal Review, April, 1012.

312 COMMUNITY bk. m.

determined as before by hk heredity and environment,
but only because these factors determine him^ his morality
being the free expression of his nature so determined.
The reason why merdy supernatural sanctions (wrongly
identified in the passage quoted with aK reh'gious sanc-
tions) fall away is because such a sanction is merely
external, like the sanction of tradition, national or other.
Their falling away, if (heir place be taken by an inner
sense of responsibility ^ is the witness to the adolescence
of social man. Adolescence is a dangerous age. It may
be that even the most civilised people has not yet reached
the stage where it can trust freely to the guidance of
the free ethical sense of its members and can freely
criticise its institutions in the light of that morality.
But one thing is sure — ^in so far as in fact the external
sanctions fall away and cease to be determinants of men's
conduct, it is no use any more herding them back to these,
and attempting to supply them with motives. They may
attain to a new unity of life — they cannot regain the old.

§ 2. The basis of solution.

All action involves a choice between possible ends of
action. If I act at all it is because I choose action before
inaction. If I a»ct this way or that, the way I choose
is the value I in the moment of action prefer. Even
if I act under some overmastering necessity, inner or
outer, the menace of death, the imperiousness of passion,
the craving for a drug, an alternative is never excluded ;
it is still a choice between values. It is not, of course,
implied that a man deliberately reckons, or clearly recog-
nises, the alternatives when he acts. Still less is it
implied that to choose between values is to choose the
greater value. But to act is to choose, to pursue one
among alternative ends. Conscious a^stivity is always
preferred activity, and all preference is between values.

OH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 313

Every social olaim is a demand for the maintenanoe
or the realisation of some value. Every kind of associa-
tion exists for the pursuit of values, every area of com-
munity is held together in that common pursuit. Every
interest is in the end a practical interest, determined,
that is, by a sense of value.^ Further, all values are in
practice comparable. No abstract measuring-rod can be
found, but no person can act at all unless he can choose ;
the necessities of life and character are necessities of
choice. When community differentiates, when social
claims are no longer simple but manifold, the necessity
of choice is deepened. The widened claim of sociality
is an intenser demand on individuality. But the whole
social situation implies that values are comparable, that
they are forms of a single value. That is the pre-con-
dition of the co-ordination of community, that is also
the pre-condition of the unity of life.

No social claim is absolute. It is an estimate of values.
No one form of society is adequate to the fulfilment of
personality, therefore none has an absolute claim. That
belongs to personality alone. There are times when some
social claim is so imperative that the individual is called
upon to use up his life, to surrender himself wholly to
that alone. But that is because though no institution
is absolute many are necessary, and when the essential
social structure is endangered at any point all within
it are called thither peremptorily to its defence. Here
as in every other situation a choice among values is
offered, and right action, the action which also conserves

1 AUes IntertMe iai zuUia praklisch (Kant). Cf. RatsEonhofer, Die
SoeMogxBche ErkenfUniaai AhstracU ItUeressen gib^ ea niefU; denn
die AhstracUan %H gegtnuber dtm InUreawnbegriff etn oontradictio in
adjecto ; der Menach mU aeinem ctngdiomen Intereaae iai unfdhig, aieh
irUereaaeloa einer Idee hinxuffef>en, und jedea Iniereaae unsneU in leUsUr
Hinnchi in der reaien Entwickhmg dea IndMduwna^ aeiner Lebena-
bedingungen^ aevnea Himmeiak&rpera, dea Univereuma oder der Urkraft,
welche daa Leben erhdU (p. 225).

314 COMMUNITY bk. m.

the unity of life, is the choice and pursuit by the social
being of the greatest value which he can discover to
claim realisation through his conduct. It is of the essence
of the distinction between interests and duties that there

must always be a choice between interests, but that
there can never be a choice between duties ; there can
be only one duty where alternative courses of action
are open, the pursuit of the highest value the social
being is able to conceive within the situation.

A famous case from the ancient world will illustrate
this point. Antigone has to choose between two claims,
each of which would be a duty were it not an alternative
to the other, a religious duty, the fulfilment of the rites
of burial due to her brother, and a political duty, obedience
to the edict which forbids these rites. The former to
Antigone is paramount, the greater value, and in fulfilling
it she disobeys the edict of Kreon the king. There is
but one duty, therefore, and there is but one tribunal
to decide it, the sense of value in the heart of Antigone.
Likewise there is but one duty and one tribunal for
Kreon, for whom the edict is justified by the treachery
of Polyneikes. When Hegel declares : '' The meaning
of Eternal justice is shown herein, that both are wrong,
because they are one-sided ; but at the same time both
are right,"^ this aloof and would-be Olympian utterance
defeats itself, offering no •solution whatever to the con-
crete situation. For each of these tragic figures is under
a necessity to choose one of two alternatives. Antigone
must choose either to obey the edict or, defying it, to
fulfil the behests of her religion ; just as Kreon had the
choice of permitting or refusing the rites of burial to
Polyneikes, and later of exacting or remitting the penalty
sanctioning his edict. One of two courses mtLSt be chosen
by each, one must therefore be right, not in part but in

^ Religum^hUoaophie, 11. ii. iii. c.

cH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 316

whole, for each. Were there ever a situation in which
men were given a choice of exclusive alternatives such
that the adoption of neither could be absolutely right,
such that every choice must be wrong, the whole moral
universe would be by these alternatives dissolved.

The thought that every possibility of conduct involves
wrong as well as right arises from a confused appre-
hension of the truth that, from the point of view of
choice and action, values or goods cannot be wholly
harmonised. If I seek one value I must neglect another,
nay, I may be able to attain the one only by means
that destroy the other. The world is made so. It is
a fact over which my present wiU has no power. It
may be a condemnation of the world, but it is the justi-
fication of the will that follows the greater good. If
the world is such that a man cannot dig without cleaving
worms, or light a candle without destroying moths, or
maintain a State without inflicting loss and suffering on
many men, he must stUl choose one of the alternatives
his world provides. The poet may hope

That not a worm is cloven in vain ;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire ;

in other words, that the appearance of antagonistic values
is illusory. But the antagonism is real and insurmoimt-
able for us as ethical agents. The hope of the poet
may be vain, but there is a less visionary, if more
modest, hope for the sociologist, that of a world where
essential values have grown more harmonious.

It is the business of the advocate to show that there
are good or evil results of any course of action ; it is
the business of the judge to consider whether the total
result is more of good than of evil, or more of good and
less of evil than any alternative course of action would
bring. As social beings we are judges and not advocates.

316 COMMUNITY sk

m !■■•

There are arguments against every course of aotion,
against every proposed change of institution for instance
-—otherwise the change would be already actual ; so
there are arguments for every proposed change-^other-
wise it would never have been proposed. Nothing is
justified or condemned because there are reasons for or
against it, because it involves some profit or some loss.
It is a question of comparative values, the surplus of
welfare over hurt, hurt over welfare. Here is the bare
formula for the solution of the conflicting social claims
of our differentiated social world.

It is easy to exaggerate this ponflict, if we consider
social claims in the abstract. Within the particular
social relations of every personality there is endless choice
between interests, but the sense of acute antagonism
between their claims is rare. But such situations do
arise, rendering it necessary that we should make explicit
first the formula of solution and then its application to
the particular case.

Every person is a focus of community, and has to
reconcile within the unity of his life' the claims arising
from many social relations. He is never in the strict
sense a private member of society, for all activity is
relative to social situations. These differ endlessly, not
only for different persons^ but for the same person, and
as they differ so do the calls upon him, his obligations
and his rights. His duties as a layman are not his duties
as an official, his responsibilities as one in authority differ
from his responsibilities as one imder authority. But
his life has no unity except in so far as he is able to apply
a single standard of value to all the diverse situations
within which he is called to act. The only universal
ethics is that which can be absolutely particularised, and
the only being who can ever be truly socialised is he whose
ethical individuality is revealed in every social situation.

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 317

It follows that in the developed community the main
source of law-abidingness is some perception by the great
majority of the end or value served thereby. It also
follows that in matters of policy affecting the whole of
an association or community aU important decisions must
depend on the will of a majority. Thus only can the
claims of personality be reconciled with the necessities
of action. It is far from being a perfect way, and we
must face presently some of the difficulties which it
brings, but there is and there can be no better way.
It is also to be remembered that the growth of personality
in each which renders the principle necessary involves
the growth of the sense of responsibility towards other
personalities. It might seem to the superficial observer
as if the increase of control, inspection, regulation, under
democracy meant a greater abrogation of personality.
But it is necessary to weigh liberty against liberty, and
then we see that on the whole (whatever criticisms and
exceptions we may make) the newer restrictions on
liberty are incidental, leaving the essential individuality
free, as contrasted with the older restrictions which
struck at the very heart of individuality. People cry
out that it is the end of personal liberty when they are
compelled to attend to their drains or to admit light and
air to their factories, or even to educate their children.
But what restrictions does the fulfilment of these social
duties put upon their spirits ? The unworthiest of aU
liberties, the furthest from the essential values of life,
is the liberty to make or save wealth at the cost of the
welfare of one's fellows. Between liberties as between all
ends there must be a comparison of values. liberty may
be sacred or it may be despicable. liberty is the final
condition of all progress, but the very same name is
inscribed on the banners of the blindest and most selfish
defenders of unjust privilege old or new.

318 COMMUNITY bk.

As oommunity differentiates, the place of force becomes
narrowed. Force remains effectual against isolated indi-
viduals or small minorities, keeping these law-abiding or
at least vindicating against them the law they may have
broken. Criminal law necessarily depends on force, the
force determined by the will of the great law-abiding
majority. But force cannot be effectual against the great
and growing non-political associations within community,
and it cannot be effectual against the large political
groups and oppositions which majority-rule engenders.
Here there is no hope for community, and for the State to
which it surrenders the right of force, except in the
development of the sense of obligation, in the realisation
of the greater as against the lesser values alike by other
associations and by the State. The greater the differentia-
tion of community, the greater the need for social educaUon.
It is in the fuller development of personality alone that
the dangers can be met which developing personality
brings.

The final guide in morals, where there is dispute, must
be the conscience of each, the sense which each man
owns of right and wrong, of values. Where there is
dispute, the claim of a tradition becomes itself a claim
of value, and it accepted must be accepted as such, not
merely as a tradition or social observance. Doubtless
we should be wary of opposing the standards in morals
which hold for an age or people, realising that these
standards are the growth of long social experience vast
and far-reaching beyond our knowledge. Yet these
standards live only if they live in us. For we, too,
those who assent and those who dissent alike, are the
offspring and the inheritors of the past ; we, too, if we
are wise enough, may be older in experience than any
previous age, since our reason and our conscience are
themselves the birth of time. Therefore we can accept

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 319

tradition only when it is our tradition, the tradition that
by its nature oompels our allegianoe. It is no ethical
justification of conduct to say that it is ''in accord with
the spirit of the age/' imless the conduct so determined
is the best or the only means the age permits of for the
fulfilment of ethical ends. To appeal to traditions only
because they are traditions is vain, to bid us accept
standards that our conscience rejects, merely because
they are the standards of others, few or many, or to
accept values that contradict the valuations of our intelli-
gence is to solicit us to treachery. That way liee ship-
wreck. It is not without significance that the greatest
of English orators, refusing to admit the right of final
judgment that resides in the conscience of each, and
bidding men relinquish that for prescription, which is
after all but the voice of men's consciences from the
past, is at last driven to vindicate the right of prejudice
itself, and in that defence is by a nemesis led to speak
of moral rights, which in truth express the essential
character of human life, as though they were but " pleas-
ing illusions " and draperies to cover the nakedness of
life.*

Such false views are related to equally false fears.
The more the person finds himself the more he finds
himself within society, the deeper he enters into the
meaning of life the deeper does he strike root in society .<
There is no opposition between the growth of personality
and the security of community, but the reverse. If we
would interpret man and society aright, we must regard
as fundamental, not the subordination of the social

^ Burke, ReflecUona on the French Revolution,

' It has been well remarked by Simmel that in antiquity die Seele
ging weder to weit aua eieh heraue noch so weit in eioh hinein, wie ea
apdter durch die Syntheae, oder auch Antiiheee, dee chriaUichen Lebena^
gefahlea mit der modemer jVoltir- und Oeachichtawiaaenaehaft geachehen
iat. ISozidogie, p. 758.)

320 COMMUNITY bk. m.

person, but the maintenaiioe in unity of his sociality
and his individuality, not his subjection to society, but
his fulfilment within society.

§ 3. Applications of the principle : (1) to a conflict arising
firom associational claims.

It is clear from what has been said that whenever a
conflict arises between social claims, the problem so created
falls wholly within the ethical sphere. There cannot
under any circumstances be any conflict between an
ethical and an economic claim, between an ethical and
a political claim, between an ethical claim and the claim
of any specific interest whatever. These are all confiicts
within ethics, confiicts between values. If the ethical
claim is not always and everywhere valid, if any oiher
claim can be set against it, the ethical claim itself becomes
meaningless. Every association, standing for a specific
interest, seeks to advance one form of value, but its
claim is relative to the totality of values, never absolute
or self-sufficient. No man is a mere ^' economic man "
or a mere *' political animal." If he were, ethics would
coincide with economics or politics ; since he is not,
these latter studies can never justly put forward ideals
which confiict with those of ethics, for their ideals can
only be aspects of an ethical ideal, subordinate to its
unity as realised in the personal and communal life.

Let us illustrate our principle by considering the famous
historical opposition which has arisen between the claims
of the State and the wider ethical claim, falsely called
an opposition between ethics and politics. '' It is not,
perhaps, the same thing in every case to be a good man
and to be a good citizen." {Ethica Nicomachea, v. 2. 11.)
In this tentative form Aristotle gave expression to a
doubt which has often been echoed since his day, alike
in philosophic thought and in popular representation.

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 321

Thinkers and statesmen alike have declared that other
than ethical principles ought to rule in politics, not recog-
nising the total contradictoriness of such a thesis.^ To
resolve their difficulty, we have clearly to recognise that
the political relation is one particular type of social
relation. The political claim is not endangered by that
recognition, nor its importance and necessity diminished.
On the contrary a clear recognition of the claims and
services of the State is possible only when its limits also
are recognised. Its very definite limits constitute the
reverse side of its very definite services, and it cannot
fulfil these services imless it observes those limits. The
State is not " the ethical whole " of the Hegelian doc-
trine, but a means of realising that "ethical whole.'*
If it seeks to be the whole, it is thrusting its externality
upon the inner life and thus frustrating its end of pro-
tecting and furthering the whole.

There cannot be two opposing oughts, one ethical, one
political. If life has any meaning, there is always but
one ought, and the different associational claims are
determinants, not absolute expressions, of it.

This conclusion contains the solution of the problem
we are considering, but the subject is of such importance,
historically at least, that it may be advisable to work
out the solution in more detail. There are two forms
in which the problem has historically arisen, correspond-
ing to the political distinction between ruler and subject.
One, touching the duty of the citizen or subject, may be
called the problem of Aristotle, while the other,, touching
the duty of the ruler or legislator, may be called the
problem of Machiavelli. The latter may be first disposed
of, being more obviously due to a confusion of thought.

^ Lord Aoton, in his introduction to Mr Burd*8 edition of Maohia-
veUi*B The Prince, collected a remarkable number of representative
opinions bearing out the above statement.

322 COMMUNITY bk. m

Maohiavelli sought for the principle by which in an
age of corruption a ruler could maintain a united State,
and his observation told him il was not by following
the recognised principles of ethics but rather by violatiiig
these. Hence his famous advice to the prince — "You
have to understand, that a prince, especially a nev
one, cannot observe all these things for which men are
esteemed, being often forced, in order to maintain the
State, to act contrary to fidelity, friendship, humanity,
and rehgion." So he boldly declared that right and
wrong have nothing to do with government.

The faultiness of this analysis is obvious. The ethics,
the right and wrong upon which he turns his back, pie-
scribes law for an abstract being who is a man and yet
not a citizen ; his politics dictates to a citizen who is
nothing more. Thus his politics by its own false abstract-
ness has given an abstractness to his ethics. Hence a
wrong use of abstract terms, and a wrong dilemma. He
says, for instance, '* Inasmuch as it needs a good man
to reorganise the political life of a city, and a bad man
to become by violence lord of a republic, it is therefore
very rarely found that a good man will desire to acquire
rule by bad means, even for a good end,^ or that a bad
one, having acquired rule, will act justly or think of
using for good the authority he has won by evil," Strictly
speaking, this distinction of good " end " and bad
" means " is impossible and meaningless. If goodness
or badness is an attribute of will alone, a means cannot
in itself, in abstraction, be judged either good or bad^
In so far as it is merely means, in so far as the sole reason
why it is entertained is its causal relation to the end,
so far it cannot be judged as if it stood as end in itself,

^ Cf. the words of Walpole : ** No great country was ever saved
by good men, because good men will not go the length that may be
necessary."

.<-»

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 323

but must be regarded in the light of the end. So the
question comes to be-— Is a certain end such as to justify,
not a moral wrong (for if justified it cannot be such :
there is neither here nor elsewhere question of the greater
right set over against the lesser wrong), but a certain
loss of those *' goods " which in one way or another
(according to our conception of the moral end) morality
secures ? It is a question not between ethics and politics,
but within ethics, a problem of value, a question to be
answered only in the light of the ethical end, of such a
final standard of value as we are able to set up. Similar
questions arise everywhere in the interweaving relation-
ships involved in the different social activities, and these
are all ethical questions.

For the ruler or statesman the problem seems greater
because the values with which he is concerned are so
great, but the ethical problem before a Cromwell or a
Lincoln or a Bismarck, before Mr. Lloyd George when
pressing to power in 1916 or President Wilson at the
Peace Conference, differs not at all in kind from the
choice of values offered every day to the most obscure
of men. It is impossible to perform a great service
without causing some disservice, to construct a great
good without destroying some lesser good. Sometimes,
especially when community is chaotic and unco-ordinated,
as in the times of Machiavelli, the greater good can be
attained only at heavy cost, but if the good is greater
it is moral weakness to flinch before the cost. There is
no opposition, as Machiavelli thought (and as some of
his commentators still seem to think), between might
and right. Every true cause yokes might to right, every
untrue cause yokes might to wrong. The opposition lies
between right and wrong only, between might and weak-
ness only. Might is an instrument alone, neutral in
itself ; without might there would be no wrong, but,

324 COMBIUNITY bk. m.

while wrong exists or is possible, without might there
can be no right.

n we turn next to the side of the subject in the State,
another form of the same difficulty presents itself. This
form arises ultimately from the fact that political self-
government is at best only a partially realised ideal
and that tjierefore there must be occasions when the
law will come as an external command, alien or even
antagonistic to the inner principle. The general case is,
of course, where the end secured by " loyalty " out-
weighs in importance the end the law seems to contradict,
primarily where disobedience would strike at the security
of the State or tend seriously to weaken the habit of
law-abidingness so essential to an ordered community.
In that case, since the security of the State is indeed the
basis of all moral life, since at the least it protects the
'' life " without which the '' good life " is impossible, its
claim is paramount. It follows that there is a special
obligation to obedience on those who administer, execute,
interpret, or enforce the laws, since disobedience on their
part strikes a more serious blow to the security of the
State and may even involve a kind of treachery, the
turning against the supreme or legislative power of the
forces which are in the true ordering of the State neces-
sarily subordinate to and dependent on that power. But
here again it remains a comparison of values, and it is
only out of that conflict of values which is the heart of
every moral issue that even this obedience can be estab-
lished as the ought. In a word, it is always " conscience "
—or whatever the inner principle of action be called —
that is the ultimate court of appeal, even though it err.
Because conscience is essentially individual, always, how-
ever clarified, a particular perapecUve of the universal,
we must alwa3^ remain at the point of view of the indi-
vidual, with his recognition of a common good.

ofl. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIB*E 325

It is possible to misapprehend this point. It is in
no sense an argument for "individualism." The indi-
vidualism which followed Aristotle did not really solve
Aristotle's problem, for while the Aristotelian view
seemed to regard man simply as a member of the iroki^f
the post- Aristotelian philosophy regarded man simply as
an abstract individual, and since the latter being was
the greater abstraction of the two, the reaction, as may
sometimes happen, represented less the true aocoimt. It
had not yet become dear that the individuality asserted
is a question more of freedom, of spontaneity, in action
than of difiEerence in action, that, in fact, the principle
of freedom, instead of narrowing, really widens the area
of the common will. The more adequate conception of
individuality, the realisation that man is a member of
the State and also something more, disposes of the Aris-
totelian problem by modifying the Aristotelian theory
of community. For either the '* goodness " of a citizen
is not to be regarded solely in the light of State-claims,
or else such '' goodness " is to be distinguished from
true ethical '' goodness," and the " good " citizen, like
the ''good" economist and the ''good" churchman,
ceases to be identified with the " good " man. But in
the latter case, if we talk of " good economist " or " good
citizen," we are really using the term "good" in a
specialised sense, and no true opposition is logically
possible. A " good economist " may be a " bad man "
without raising any problem of ethics. There is, therefore,
no possible conflict between ethics and politics, as if
these provided two opposing or even distinct forms of
conduct. Even such a question as that of " priority "
between the two, elaborately discussed, for example,
by Sidgwick,^ is essentially meaningless.

In conclusion we may indicate, in a word, what real

^ Methods of Ethica, Book I. chap. ii.

326 COMMUNITY bk. m.

problem underlies the false distinotion made between
ethios and politics. The inward oharaoter of ethical
action obviously renders possible an opposition between
the claim of the State as a whole and the sense of obliga-
tion constraining some of its members. We have seen
how obedience even to an alien political end, such obedi-
ence being calculated to further the ethical end, may
often remain free or ethical. On the other hand, it is
obvious that oaaoB must arise where the motives inspiring
such obedience cease to bear, where particular conceptions
of the public good refuse to coincide with the State-
conception. This is the real problem, nor, after what has
just been said regarding the nature of ethical action, oan
we agree with those thinkers (e,g. Plato and Spinoza)
who held that it is in every case the dissentient's duty
to suppress his own conviction in favour of that imposed
by the authority of the State. It is noteworthy that
these philosophers held a purely static view of political
society, whereas perhaps the strongest argument in sup-
port of the claim of each to obey his conscience is based
on the developing, progressive character of society. As
a community advances on its way; it must move from
one conception of the end to another. But the recog-
nition of the broader, or the altered, end does not come
as a revelation to a whole community at once. The way
of change is from the smaller to the greater, the recog-
nition moves from a single individual to the whole society.
It operates first at a particular point. It manifests
itself in the fierce devotion to a principle from which
the will may be turned aside by no penalties or pains.
That energy may burn itself away, or it may '^ light
a candle," for the illumination of the world, '^ which
shall never be put out." We dare not condenm the
adherence to profound conviction of the ''passive re-
sister " or the '' conscientious objector " of to-day any

CH. V. UNITY OP THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 327

more than we oondemn the great witness of those who
in the past through faith subdued kingdoms.

Here we are brought to the irreducible ethical con-
flict, the conflict of principles. There is no solution of
that contradiction. Doubtless, if men grow more en-
lightened, they will prize more the inner weU-spring of
conviction, the sense of individuality, and so learn to
narrow compulsive enactments to the limits of clearly-
perceived necessities. Doubtless also the same enlighten-
ment would lead men closer to the universal foundations
of conduct, and so cancel a thousand petty difEerence-
breeding bigotries. But enlightenment must always vary
from person to person, and in any case conflicting interests
are always powerful to shape the sense of right and wrong.
The conflict therefore can never wholly cease. The
State must enforce its law, however '' conscientious "
be the objection of the dissentient. The individual
must seek to be loyal to the ethical end, even when such
loyalty is incompatible with obedience. Considering
the fimction of the State and the ethical implications of
majority-rule, the cases where disobedience would be
the greater loyalty may weU be rare, but, considering the
difficulty of realising self-government, the cases where
obedience finds its ethical justification only in a con-
sideration of the greater as opposed to the lesser good
may not be inconsiderable.

§ 4. Applications of the principle : (2) to a conflict of
communal claims.
We may lastly consider a less determinate but no less
real form of social conflict, that between the claims of
narrower and wider circles of community.* We have seen
that in our differentiated world men owe allegiance not
to one community only, but to many. When we enter
or establish the greater, we do not thereby abolish or

328 COMMUNITY bk. m.

abandon the smaller. The primitive tribesman belonged
to his tribe alone, the primitive villager to his village
alone. We are members of a town, of a? country, of a
kingdom, of an empire, of a civilisation, and must some-
how reconcile for ourselves the claims of them all. It
is never for us a question of choosing whether we shall
belong to one or other, greater or smaller. We must
belong to all in some degree, and the only question is
'' What shall we render to each ? " How shall we live
in them all so that we gain the comprehensiveness and
liberty of the widest and keep the warmth and strength
of the innermost, so that we bring into the greater com-
munity a heart animated by the nearer enthusieksms,
and retain in the nearer community a mind enlightened
by the sanity and justice of the greater ?

That for the member of the co-ordinated community
an opposition does arise between nearer and further
claims, a very simple illustration will show. Any one
who observes the placards issued by newspapers, especi-
ally by evening and provincial papers, will notice that
the framers of them, whose business it is of course to
attract attention, are often divided as to the relative
attractive powers of a small but near event and a distant
but great event.^ It is because there are two great

1 For instanoe, I observed during a week or so the oorresponding
bills of a particular edition of two evening pi^rs published in the
same town and appealing to the same public. They exhibited the
following contrasts (I call the papers A and B respectively) :

Oct. 14, 1912. A. '* Invasion of Servia.*'

B, '* Heavy Sentence on Local Wife-beater.'*
Oct. 17, „ A. *' Declaration of Porte. First Naval Battle.**

B. ** Prison Experiences of . . . at . . .** (a local convict
prison).
Oct. 19, ,. A. *• Typhoid in ... "

B. " War by Microbe."

{A referred to a local outbreak, B to a supposed
outrage in the Balkans.)
Oct. 22, „ A. '* 1600 Greeks killed.**

B, ** Murder of English Inspector.'*

cH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 329

springs of the interest we feel in the events of the social
world about us — ^the nearness of the event and the degree
of intrinsic significance we attach to it. What happens
in our own street or in our own town excites us more
than what happens far away : what happens to a friend
or relative or associate more than what happens to a
stranger. The near event, ceteris paribus^ is more inter-
esting than the far event. The vaster event, that affect-
ing more people or more permanent interests, is also,
ceteris parilms, the more engrossing. The one measure
of interest, that of nearness, is more emotional, the other,
that of vastness or of intrinsic significance, more intel-
lectual. And the important point is that in our every-
day life and thought there is a kind of opposition between
the two claims upon our interest, the nearer and the
wider. We find it hard to comprehend the two. We tend
to lose either the near enthusiasm or the wide sympathy.
As there arises a conflict of interests, so there seems
to arise a conflict of claims. Many a man is deeply
interested in national politics who cares nothing for the
affairs of his city ; others are so preoccupied with local
interests as to lose sight of their relation to national
interests. Thus various spiritual errors beset our social
service, parochialism, false '' patriotism," empty cosmo-
politanism. Many a man professes, and really feels, a
deep interest in the welfare of his country who yet cares
little for the welfare of his employees. It is only a true
recognition of the relation of the narrower to the wider
circle which can save us from the perverted service of
either, a recognition of the interdependence and ultimate
oneness of all social values.

In no caae did either bill refer to the event or rumour to which the
other gave prominence.

On a newsbill, issued by a Scottish newspaper, I once observed the
following contrast: At Uie top, in heavy type, "Strong Lcmguage
by Locsl Bailie,'* below, in small type, " Qreat Earthquake in China ** !

330 COMMUNITY bk. m.

As that recognition grows, the conflict between the
claims of the nearer and the wider circle becomes trans-
formed into a certain harmony. The co-ordination of
community is the necessary external condition, the recog-
nition of the common meaning of social values is the
inner condition, of that transformation. Immanent in
us, waiting the appropriate social stimulus, is the spirit
of attachment to many degrees of community, from village
or town right out to the world of humanity itself. " A
peculiarity of the group-sentiments," it has been said,
'' which renders them powerful to move men in many
circumstances is that a man may acquire a hierarchy
of such sentiments ; sentiments of attachment to each
of the successively wider or more inclusive groups which
themselves form a hierarchy. Thus a soldier may share
in the group-sentiment of his company, of his regiment,
of his army corps, or of his particular branch of the
service, and, at the same time, in that of the army as a
whole. And in a properly organised character the several
sentiments of such a hierarchy are in no sense anta-
gonistic to one another, but rather the sentiment for each
lower group lends whatever strength it has to add to the
strength of the sentiment for the more inclusive group.
For, just as the individual identifies himself and ia identified
by others with his group, so each group is identified by
himself and others with the more inclusive group ; so
that the good of the larger becomes for him at the same
time the good of the smaller group, and vice-veraa,^* ^

This reconciliation, we must carefully note, is an inner
one, the expression of the unity of life attained by per-
sonality in society. There can be no external rule to
reconcile the conflict of claims. No mere rule of pre-
cedence will suffice. This is a truth often forgotten,
especially in the instruction of the young as to their

^ Dr. MaoDougall, in The Sociological Beview, April, 1912.

cH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 331

duties in the now so wide world of community. I may
quote as an example of such instruction the following
advice of Lord Bosebery to some Midlothian Boy Scouts :
''Therefore, boys, remember you are first members of
the Empire, next Scotsmen, and thirdly, Midlothian lads."^
But such a mode of reconciliation is too formal and
external to be effectual. What sort of inspiration will
a man find if he bases his social activity primarily on the
fact that he is something which he shares with Austra-
lian, Canadian, Indian, and Boer, but not with Frenchman,
American, or Dutchman ? In the near and necessary
life of every day how will that formal priority serve
to guide his relations with his fellow-men, with friend,
kinsman, and townsman ? Our service of the large com-
munity must be mainly through our service to the smaU
community, and we can do so much more, most of us
infinitely more, for the smaU than for the large. In
fact, if we mtiat have an external order, the order should
be reversed, for the richer in content should come first,
and to be a Midlothian lad is to be also a Scotsman and
a member of the Empire. It is a mistake to regard
community in an external way. In space, in externality,
the larger circle includes the lesser, but in the world of
community it is the near relation which includes the
wider. But again, no external priority of any kind will
serve as guide to the unity of life. For, finally, every
man is more than any of his memberships, and it is only
in the unity of his own self that he can find the focus of
the thousand social circles wider and narrower. The
qualities recklised in the small and in the great community
are in fact complementary, and so their claims become
complementary when men, establishing the co-ordination
of community, seek therein the unity of the individual
life, bringing each social claim after its kind to that

^ From a speech delivered July 20th, 1912.

332 COMMUNITY bk. m.

responsive centre. Only when a man has found in him-
self that unity can he fulfil these many social obligations
of our ever more complex world. When a man has
foimd that unity, he cannot help fulfilling them all, for
to fulfil them is to be true to himself, and he needs no
longer measure by external rule the extent of his duty
to town and country and empire.

The whole history of society bears out this truth that
only at the last and in his full development does the
social being find the social focus in himself. To the
primitive man the group is aU. He finds himself in
the group, but he never finds himself. He is not a per-
sonality, but one of the bearers of a type-personality.
He is summed up in the group, the clan or tribe. So
it is with the boy, the analogue of primitive man. He
need not be bidden to remember that he is first a member
of a school or family and then an individual. To his
undeveloped mind the group is a circle with no centre,
for he can find a centre only when he finds himself. The
boy has a passion for uniformity, and regards all diver-
gence from the group-custom — the school-custom or what-
ever it is — with something of that abhorrence which filled
the mind of the primitive tribesman in beholding the
violation of his sacred tribal law.^ More and more, as
the boy grows and as the community grows, the centre
of initiative and responsibility becomes the individual.
So the individual becomes the focus of his own personality,
to the enrichment of personality, thus to the enrichment
of community.

^ This is well illustrated by the life of the publio school, where the
boy has the opportunity of forming a little community of his own.
The spirit of Eton, for example, with its rigid customary laws prescribing
minute details of clothing and minute forms of observance (even to
the side of the street on which a boy must walk), with its taboos and its
horror of non-conformity, reminds one strongly of the spirit of the
primitive village or tribe. The schoolboy carries something of that
spirit into the university, but it dwindles in the widened life.

CH. V. UNITY OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 333

So the smaUeet cirole is revealed at last as the centre
of the greatest. In realising the most intimate society,
finally in realising ourselves, we are most realising
humanity. It is in the attainment of personality, the
progressive union of sociality and individuality, that com-
munity is fulfilled, and the law of the small and the law
of the large community reconciled. This is no doctrine
of egoism but the reverse, for the only enduring self is
a focus of social values, and the greater the self, the
more social values does it comprehend. Such a recon-
ciling individuality, instead of loosening the bonds of
community, makes them strong, for they become con-
scious inner bonds, imposed by no external power or
unreasoning instinct, but revealed as the very fibres of
personality, bonds no longer, but essential threads of
Ufe.

■1

CHAPTER VI

SECOND LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT: THE
CORRELATION OP SOCIALISATION AND COM-
MUNAL ECONOMY

§ 1. Cteneral statement.

If we compare any two communities which, as measured
by the criteria we have ak-eady discovered, stand on
different levels of culture, we find that the activities
pursued by these differ not so much in kind as in the
mode of their pursuit and in the relative prominence
assigned to each within the life of the whole. The social
forms under which interests are pursued, as well as the
importance assigned to various types of interest, change
as we pass from lower to higher. The changes conform
to a certain general principle which we must now set forth.

If we use the term '' economy " in the widest sense,
to signify the conservation of values not only material
but spiritual, the conservation of life itself, the conser-
vation of the means of life, and the conservation of per-
sonality or the intrinsic values of life, we may call the
principle which these changes reveal the principle of
communal economy. There is throughout the develop-
ment of community a constant transformation of social
relationships which can be understood only as fulfilling
this principle. Many ends of human activity remain
unchanging, and must ever so remain, but the way of
the attainment of all ends is transformed.

BK. m. OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 335

Outside society there is no economy and no question
of economy. Economy is relative to purpose and intelli-
genoe, and can be established only in so far as purpose
and intelligence are revealed. As purposive beings we
seek ends, but as intelligent beings we seek them in the
least wasteful manner — that is the meaning of intelli-
gence. The lower the intelligence the smaller the
economy, and the absence of intelligence is necessarily
the absence of economy. Nearly all naturalists in these
latter days have been struck by the seeming wastefulness
of '' nature," how *' she " produces myriads of seed in
every generation of life for every one that attains fruition,
so that the total potentiality of life becomes infinitely
greater than the amount conserved and made actual.
A single plant or tree of almost any species produces so
many fertile seeds that, did they all come to fruition,
they would in a few generations cover the whole earth.
In a few years of like unimpeded fruition the sea would
become solid with fish, and the land would have only
standing-room for its multitudes of animals. But this
most profuse expenditure cannot be named waste.
Waste is needless expenditure, expenditure without retui^i
or without the greatest possible return. Nature's ex-
penditure is not superfluous, for only by the multiplication
of chances is life conserved in a world in which inteUigence
has not eliminated chance.^ The sum of expenditure is
necessarily directed not to the development but to the
multiplication of Ufe. Whether we say that this very
multiplication is itself the work of intelligence, certainly
over the multiplied lives chance and not intelligence rules,
and only in the multiplication of chances is chance
defeated.

There are still some among us who do not perceive
that the difference between the expenditure of lower

1 Cf . Leeter Ward, Psychic Factors of CivUisatum, chap, xxxiii.

336 COMMUNITY bk. m.

nature and the economy of man is due to the absence
of inteUigenoe in the one and its presence in the other.
They even bid us turn and follow the methods of lower
nature. This is mere atavism. When you have a cal-
culating machine, it is waste of time to go through the
ordinary processes of addition and subtraction ; without
the machine it is not waste. Where you have mind it
is waste to employ the ordinary methods of nature ;
without mind, in nature itself, it is not waste. Those
who bid us " foUow nature " are bidding us throw aside
our calculating machines.^

In the degree in which society comes into being, a
method other than that of the multiplication of chances
is introduced. For society is the first creation of intelli-
gence. As soon as society reveals itself, the excess of
reproduction over survival diminishes, and it continues
to diminish in the degree of the development of society.
In the animal world the higher animals, at once the
most intelligent and the most social,* are remotest from
the amazing fertility of herring and cod. Within human
conmiunities the same general principle holds ; birth-
rate and survival-rate approximate more and more as
we pass from the most savage to the most civilised.
Here is the primary economy revealed in society, that
economy of the stuff of life which is the saving of energy
for life's development.

Could we regard this primary economy as a sufficient
criterion of development, there would fall to be recorded
a vast communal advance within recent history. It is
recorded that in London in the year 1730 there were

^ We may note in paasing that the '* waste ** of nature serves man*s
ends in many ways, making his food-supply easy, giving him a remark-
able control over nature and power of experiment. The *' waste **
of nature is thus a means to the economy of man, but the waste within
human life is a means to no end whatever.

' To be social is not necessarily to be gregarious.

CH. Yi. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 337

17,118 births, and that in the same year 10,368 children
under two years of age died, an infant mortality-rate
rejoeeenting nearly two-thirds of the total birth-rate.^
Before the end of the nineteenth oentory the ratio had
fallen from two-thirds to one-fifth. In the twentieth
century the economy of life has advanced at a yet
faster rate, not in any automatic way, but through
the purposive co-operation of a more enlightened
people. The following extract from the (1912) Annual
Report of the Registrar General of Births, Deaths, and
Marriages in England and Wales ■ reveaU strikingly this
truth. " Of the 486,939 deaths registered during the year
in England and Wales, 82,779 or 17-0 per cent., were
those of infants under one year of age, corresponding
to a mortality-rate of 05 per 1000 births. This rate was
30 per 1000 births, or 24 per cent, below the average in
the preceding ten years, and 23 per 1000 births, or 19
per oent. below that of 1906-10. It was the lowest rate
on record, being 10 per 1000 births below the lowest rate
previously recorded, that for the year 1910, while during
the nineteenth century the proportion of deaths had never
been lower than 130 per 1000 births. These facta illus-
trate the rapidity with which infant mortality has fallen
in reoent years in this as well as in most other European
oountries," These figures have a vast significance if we
have the imagination to interpret them into terms (rf
human health and human happiness. Nor is there any
reason to suppose the limit of progress has been reached.
It has been stated by a competent doctor ■ that 60,000
lives of infants oould be saved every year in Great Britain,
and there is still a vast loss of ante-natal as weU as post-
natal life doe to mere purental unenJightenment.

> ThcM figures are quot«d from De Oreef, La Tranajonninne Soeiai,
p. 40S.

* Cd. 7028. ■ Dr. BliKabeth Hloaa ChewiT.

338 COMMUNITY bk. m.

We may note in passing that the primary form of
social eoonomy affords a progressive resolution of that
opposition between perpetuation and individuation on
which Herbert Spencer laid such stress. The opposition
only arises as the individual life realises its own worth,
and the conditions which create it break it down again.
The lower creatures devote to reproduction all the energies
not expended in the sustenance of their own lives. The
plant lavishes its strength first on the flower-stalk, then
on the ripening of the seed. The life of the animal is
largely determined by the special necessities which the
reproduction of its species involves. But we cannot say
that in these cases there is any opposition between repro-
duction and individuation, for that has meaning only
where these are offered as alternative ends. It is only
where life wakes to clear self-consciousness that such
an opposition can arise, and concomitant with that clear
self -consciousness is a social economy which breaks down
such opposition. Where the excess of reproduction over
survival is reduced to a minimum, reproduction and
individuation cease to be alternatives for social beings
in general. Special circumstances may indeed create an
accidental opposition, but these special circumstances
nearly always mean an imperfect social economy of
another kind, poverty and inequitable distribution of
the means of life, and are not due to any proper oppoaiticm
between the claims of individuality and the necessities
of reproduction. For, as the sheer waste of life is
diminished, the reproduction of life fulfils the individuality
of the parent-lives, the compensations of parenthood
vastly outweigh the burdens which it imposes, and the
sex-society becomes from every point of view a form
of life's fulfilment.

In so far as a lower birth-rate is due to a lower death-
rate it is sheer gain. It means, on the one side, the

OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 339

better upbringing of the children, an increase in the
quality and the standard of life ; on the other, the de-
iverance of the parents from unavailing care and toil.
As the parents are able to devote themselves to the
betterment, as distinct from the mere sustenance, of
offspring, they find in that devotion a means to their
own greater happiness. The mother, in especial, through
the limitation of the mere necessities of reproduction
made possible by the greater protection of young life,
is saved from becoming the mere drudge-servant of the
race, and serves the future the more as she ceases to
serve it at the cost of the present. If there is not com-
plete harmony, there are yet infinite possibilities of har-
mony between the needs of each generation and the
needs of the race.

It should be noted that we are here concerned simply
with the relation of birth-rate to survival-rate. The
raising of the survival-rate has without doubt a correlation
with the lowering of the birth-rate, and it is in that
aspect only we have here considered the birth-rate.
But many other questions arise in connection with this
development, and some of these will demand our con-
sideration presently.

The primary economy just described is but one form
of order within the vast system of social economy. The
meaning of society lies in the purposive relations of social
beings. Society is therefore meaningless, or more strictly
non-existent, except in so far as men are conjoined in
efforts for the preservation of values, except in so far
as its members, by the union of will and intelligence,
raise themselves above the non-economical ways of lower
nature. Economy in this wide sense is a necessary aspect
of all society. There is society only in so far as

All, as in some piece of art.
Is toil co-operant to an end.

340 COMMUNITY bk. m

This eoonomy develops wherever society develops. It
is the stimulus of that progressive transformation of
social activities which we are next to describe.

§2. The economic signiflcance of the formation of
secondary common interests.

In our analysis of community we discussed the various
ways in which will may be related to will and interest to
interest. We saw that there were two great classes of
interests, designated discrete and common, and that one
kind of discrete interests, designated like interests, had
in especial to be distinguished from common interests.
The results of that earlier analysis, and the meanings
attached to the various terms in our analysis, must be
kept in mind in what now follows.^ We are to consider
a progressive transformation of the modes by which men
pursue like interests, i.e. interests in the attainment of
the same or similar objects, material or other, regarded
not as a common or comprehensive good but pursued as
the separate or discrete good of the several units who
pursue them. In the earlier analysis we r^arded, for
simplicity's sake, the single person as the unit in question.
We may now add that for the relations between associa-
tions or groups the same terminology holds. Thus when
each of a number of associations or communities pursues
as a separate or discrete unit an interest like or identical
in type to that which every other pursues, we may call the
interests they severally pursue like interests. Within the
unit there is then a common interest, but as between
the units we have like interests only. We shall find that
the formula of transformation can be expressed as follows :
TJie development of community involves the gradual trans-
formation of conflicting and parallel like interests into con-

» See pp. 102.8.

CH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 341

cordant like interests through {he establishment of secondary
common interests. And we shall find that this formula
is one particular expression of the general law of com-
munal economy.

If we consider the ways in which men or communities
can pursue their several like interests, they will be found
to fall under the following heads :

A. TAe method of direct antagonism. Under this fall
aU relationships in which the activity of one individual
or group is directed to cripple or destroy the activity of
another individual or group. The perfect type of this
method is war, involving the reciprocal destruction of a
portion of the active manhood of communities. In all
direct antagonism effort is destructive of effort, not con-
structive of something beyond the struggle. We are in the
region of purely conflicting interests, or rather of interests
regarded as such, and no common interest is recognised.

B. TAe method of isolation. This is the absence of all
relationship between individuals or groups in the pursuit
of their like interests. We are in the region of parallel
interests, and here also common interest is wholly absent.

C. TAe method of competition. Under this heading come
all relationships in which it is primarily ends and not
means or activities which are opposed. Here the success
of one individual or group in part or in whole thwarts
the success of other individuals or groups. It is dis-
tinguished from the method of direct antagonism because
it involves an ordered system within which the conflict
falls. There is community beyond the opposition of
interests. Beyond it there stretch the wider common
interests of town and country, of class and party and
the inclusive State, of church or other cultural association.
There is opposition in respect of one particular interest,
not of all interests. In direct antagonism the opposition
is absolute, in competition it is partial. Hence the

342 COMMUNITY wl m.

essential difference of the two methods. When men ran
a race, they do not trip up one another. When mer-
chants compete, they do not endeavour directly to prevent
one another from offering and selling their goods, they
do not destroy one another's goods, still less one another's
lives. Because the opposition falls within community,
it is subordinate to common interest. Here we may
perhaps make a further distinction. If in respect of the
particular interest they pursue by way of competition
men recognise no community, but only in respect of
further interests, then competition is pure or unmodified.
If even in this sphere they realise some d^^ree of common
interest, then competition is modified. It is so modified
when, for instance, competitive merchants yet make
common cause in seeking to advance the status of their
occupation, when they make certain agreements in respect
of selling prices and so forth, when they unite to^ secure
more favourable terms from manufacturers. Practically
all competition is to-day thus modified. Especially in
the professions is the edge of competition blunted by the
clear recognition of important common interests within
the actual sphere of competition. In pure competition
the interest in question is wholly conflicting, in modified
competition it is partly conflicting and partly concordant.
In the latter case a secondary common interest is already
established, but being, perhaps necessarily, imperfect, it
does not involve the co-operative pursuit of the interest,
it only limits competition.

D. The method of co-operation. Under this heading
come all relationships in which the activity and success
of one directly furthers the activity and success of others.
In so far as co-operation exists, the like interests of men
or groups of men have become concordant. Thus it
differs from the method of direct antagonism, according
to which like interests are treated as purely conflicting^

CH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 343

and from the method of competition, under which some
like interest remains at least partially conflicting. Wher-
ever the method of co-operation is established, a secondary
common interest (if no more) has been created which
renders some like interest concordant. So men pursue
directly the general or common interest, the success, say»
of a trading company, and find therein the fulfilment of
their particular like interests.

Within this sphere we may distioguish two types of
co-operation, which may be called (a) partial and (b)
complete. When men barter or exchange goods, when
one buys and another sells, when one renders some service
in return for the service rendered by another, there is a
certain degree of co-operation involved, for the activity
and success of the one contributes to the activity and
success of the other. But only in part, for there remains
an opposition of ends. There is a gain on the whole
transaction or it would not take place, there is therefore
co-operation and common interest ; but the cheaper the
buying the less (within limits) the gain of the selling, and
the more valuable the service the more (within limits)
its cost, thus there remains a conflict of interests. The
interests of buying and selling, of demand and supply,
the interests involved in aU exchange of services, are
complementary, but only up to a certain point. They,
therefore, create secondary common interests, but not
such as to make like interests wholly concordant. For
this reason this form of co-operation must be distinguished
from complete co-operation.

We may now set out summarily the ways in which
like interests can be pursued, as follows :

A. The method of direct antagonism, (Interests con-
flicting, no common interest.)

B. The m^hod of isolation. (Interests parallel, no
common interest.)

344 COMMUNITY bk. m.

C. TJ^ meJthod of competition, (a) Pure competition.
(Specific interest conflicting, wider interests common.)

(b) Modified competition. (Specific interest partly con-
flicting, partly concordant ; wider interests common.)

D. The method of co-opertUion. (a) Partial co-operation.
(Specific interest complementary, hence partial common
interest.)

(b) Complete co-opercMon. (Specific interest common.)

It will be observed that the modes of the pursuit of
like interests set forth above are arranged in a certain
order, according to the absence or presence of common
interest, and in the latter event according to the degree
in which common interest is present. Both in direct
antagonism and in isolation there is no common interest
established, but in the former case the relationship of
activities is the direct opposite of that relationship which
corresponds to common interest. It destroys the poten-
tiality of common interest, whereas isolation merely fails
to realise it. Hence direct antagonism stands at one
end, and complete co-operation at the other.

We have now to show, what indeed requires little
demonstration, that the order so expressed is also the
order of increasing economy, and finally that the develop-
ment of community means a gradual substitution of the
more economical for the less economical form of relation-
ship. The more a common interest is established, the
more is society established, and every increase in society
is an increase in economy.

It is obvious, at any rate if we look at the whole situation
and do not narrow our gaze to either side alone, that the
method of direct antagonism, the method which destroys
potential common interests, is of all methods of attaining
ends the most wasteful. It is the nullifying of activity
by activity, not only such that the success of one side
must be won through the failure of the other, but also

CH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY ' 346

such that there is necessarily a nett loss within the whole
field of interests. It is a method of attaining one value
through the destruction of other values. This is the
economic condenmation of war,^ and it applies in par-
ticular to warfare between peoples at similar cultural
levels. For in these circumstances an alternative method
is always possible, and it is in these circumstances also
that war is most truly war, the equal clash of forces and
not the mere overwhelming of the inferior by the superior.
The method of direct antagonism, unlike every other
method of pursuing interests, is destructive only. Com-
petition, though it involves opposition, is a stimulus to
creative activity, for it is the pursuit of ends beyond the
struggle. Success in competition, though it means the
comparative failure of others, means also doing better
than others in some constructive way, manufacturing
better, selling better, understanding better what the
public wants. Even if it mean only advertising better,
it is still the means of satisfying interests, something
created or constructed, that men advertise. The activity
of each competitor is free, the direct pursuit of ends,
not the nullifying of their pursuit by others. There is
thus on the whole nett gain, as opposed to the nett loss
of war. Further, in estimating the total result of direct
antagonism, we must include the waste involved in the
preparation for it, a waste that becomes greater in pro-
portion to the civilisation attained by communities. It
is the same kind of energy, of skill, and of sacrifice which

^ The idea that the victor in war can recoup himaelf for the material
losses sustained in war through an indemnity which further impover-
ishes the vanquished contains also a large measure of meroantilist
fallacy. The great argument of The Oreat lUuaion may be overstated,
but it contains an important truth, springing from the very nature
of international trade. TerritorieJ gains in exploitable regions are a
different matter. Under meroantilist conditions, t.e. where each
State regards colonies as exclusive preserves, it is relatively a great
advantage tp a country to acqmre new territories ; but it is the whole
mercantilist-militarist position which is here impugned.

346 COMMUNITY m. m.

produces the agencies alike of destruction and of con-
struction, and so far as both men and means are devoted
to the one they are lost to the other. It is the same
social beings who practise the destructive art of war
and the constructive arts of peace, and so far as they
are devoted to the former they are lost to the latter.
In all preparation for antagonistic activity there is there-
fore a twofold loss, and this form of waste, though not
to be compared with the waste of war, itself constitutes
at the present time ^ an enormous and wholly unprece-
dented drain on the resources of our civilisation. It
is due to a failure or absence of society, the absence of
established intercommunity between States.

Closely connected historically with the method of direct
antagonism, and in many cases both the cause and the
effect of that method, is the method of isolation, the
isolation of groups or communities. This comes next
in the order of economy. Mere isolation neither destroys
nor realises the potentialities of common interest. It
means the waste of values through the failure to establish
common interests. There is no loss of present values,
but there is a vast loss of potential values. All the
advantages of co-operation are lost, and the extent of
that waste is measured only when we count the gains
of co-operation. To illustrate, over large parts of India,
until quite recently, the small villages among which the
greater part of the population is scattered remained
almost completely isolated from one another, although
separated often only by a mile or two. The economic
isolation of each district was thus extreme. When there
was an abundant harvest, the district did not export,
when there was a failure, it could not import ; in the
one case wasteful plenty, in the other needless penury.
The establishment of communication has checked both

^ Written before the war.

cH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 347

forms of waste, given a new stability to social life, created
new forms of industry, new specialisation, and conse-
quently new resources. If further illustrations are needed
they are amply provided by the isolations created by the
war, wheat wasting in Australia while Europe hungered,
plethora and &tmine near one another in Russia, and so on.
Isolation always means waste, for community always
means economy.

The economic advantage of competition over direct
antagonism and over isolation has already been indi-
cated, and is in fact so obvious as to require no exposition.
But one point is worthy of special notice. The method
of antagonism is appropriate only when the interests
pursued by different individuals or groups are conflicting
in their entirety. Now interests are conflicting in their
entirety when they are directed towards an exclusive
object such as is incapable of increase or development
through co-operation. There is only one material object
which fulfils that condition, i.e. land, for all other objects
may be to some degree increased (or, in the last resort,
replaced by substitutes) through the co-operation of men.
Further, the one object which human ingenuity cannot
increase is itself the source of the multitude of objects
which human co-operation does progressively increase.
Again, non-material exclusive objects, such as distinctions
and offices, fall within a social order which makes their
pursuit by the method of direct antagonism meaningless.
Hence the only form of opposition which is in general
justified by the objective nature of interests is the com-
petitive form, under which opposition is partial only and
relative to an inclusive community. Because material
objects are exclusive, the element of competition must
always remain, but because they are expansive, the
method of co-operation must increase until the limit of
co-operative benefit is reached. Now every increase of

348 COMMUNITY bk. m.

intelligence, as will appear in the next section, places
that limit farther back, and makes the method of co-
operation more and more an alternative to the direct
forms of competition.

Where the two methods are in fact alternative, the
method of co-operation is necessarily the more economicaL
The social process since the first establishment of indus*
trialism is one long proof of that statement. Since under
co-operation ends are not directly opposed, a great waste
of efEort is avoided. There is no longer the exhaustion
of strength on that indirect countering of effort by effort
which corresponds to the direct collision of activity in
war. There is less of that social friction which, like
mechanical friction, impedes the progress of the whole
and wears its parts. Competition undoubtedly tends to
develop certain anti-social qualities, particularly decep-
tion and ill-will,^ while co-operation tends to develop the
contrary social qualities. Finally, and this is the decisive
consideration, free competition involves the exploitation
of all who are inferior cts competitors^ although the well-
being of these may have vital importance for the whole
community. In this class must be included not only
women and children — whose exploitation in industrial
competition, now mitigated in most counlaries though
far from absent in any, has inflicted grave harm on the
common welfare— but also aU workers of every condition
who, owing to the stress of competition, are compelled
to excessive periods of work or to excessive application,
or who are subject to the wearing anxiety of irr^^ular
employment, or who receive a return for their labour
inadequate to the demands of healthy existence. Such
conditions induce that chronic depression and fatigue

^ ExoeUent illustrations are provided by the Bulletin on TruH Law$
and Unfair OompeHUan, co. vi. and vii., published by the U.S. Bureau
of Ck>rporations.

CH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 349

whioh really means a poisoning of the whole organism,
and whioh, as it develops, reduces not only industrial
effioienoy but every wider value of life.

To sum up, direct antagonism is appropriate only where
interests are entirely conflicting, and wherever society
exists, interests cease to be entirely conflicting ; com-
petition is appropriate where interests remain partly con-
flicting though partly concordant, and all development
of society, involving the development of intelligence and
of constructive power, makes interests more concordant
and less conflicting ; co-operation is appropriate in so
far as like interests are or can be made concordant. It
is to be remembered that we are considering here like
interests only. The primary common interests, not being
exclusive, can be effectively pursued only by means of
co-operation. Strictly speaking, one scientist cannot com-
pete with another in the pursuit of scientiflc research,
but only in respect of incidental distinctions, and one
patriot cannot compete with another in the service of
his country, but only in respect of incidental distinctions ;
in so far as men are scientists or patriots or seekers
after religion or any other inclusive end, they cannot
compete.

The whole of the above argument may be granted and
still an objection be raised against the conclusion. For,
it may be and often is said, there are values to be con-
sidered other than those directiy sought for through
antagonism and competition, farther values which these
methods themselves bring into being. It is true that
war and competition are wasteful in respect of the im-
mediate interests concerned, but are they not the means,
"Nature's" means, to unsought gains, to values un-
dreamed of by combatants and competitors ? Is not
war the spring of national unity, the great stimulus
to effective solidarity ? Is not competition similarly an

360 COMMUNITY bk. m.

incentive to the activity of individuals and groups, a
spur to inventiveness and industry, so that the whole
gains through the competing activities of its members ?
If these further values are served by war and competition,
the order of economy established by the narrower argu-
ment may not be the true order after all, for there is loss
as well as gain in the substitution of the method of co-
operation.

This objection is seen to be a false one, if we under-
stand why^ with the growth of culture, the methods of
direct antagonism, competition, and co-operation become
in reality alternative, and why the order of preference,
when they become alternative, corresponds to the order
of economy. The change is one aspect of that super-
session of blind by conscious forces which marks the
development of mind. Every living thing that is to
maintain or improve its place in the order of life must
have such a stimulus, extrinsic or intrinsic, as will spur
it to constant endeavour. Where the intrinsic stimulus
is weak or absent, the extrinsic stimulus must be Strang,
but where the intrinsic stimulus is strong, it proves
infinitely more effective than the extrinsic.

All life is warfare, it is said, and all history but the
record of warfare, but we must see, if we have eyes to
trace the broader movements, that in the course of it
new forms of conflict arise as substitutes for the old.
Through conflict all things grow strong, * but there are
many forms of conflict. Intelligence brings ever less
wasteful forms. The spasmodic conflict of war, that
begins in hatred and fever and clamour, and ends in
revulsion and the counting up of loss, becomes super-
fluous as a stimulus when men enter into the endless and
fruitful struggle involved in the mastery of environment
and the conquest of essential evils. Apart from other
considerations, the latter provides a better stimulus than

CH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 351

the former. For war, from its destructive nature, can
spur the people only to occasional endeavour. Where war
is the chief stimulus to solidarity, its necessary intervals
are full of danger. It is the warrior who, away from
war, becomes luxurious and degenerate, it is the war-
sustained people which, when it ceases to fight, falls
into decadence, simply because the more persistent
stimuli involved in constructive effort cannot so effec-
tively appeal to these.

The end is life, not the struggle for life. It is life^
life's maintenance, increase, fulfilment, that we will ; we
must not make any of the means to it an end, thereby
rejecting other and perhaps better means. If war the
divider itself heal division, shall we call it good in dividing
or in uniting ? If in uniting, must not war be evil in
that it also divides ? What absolute claim can so broken
an instrument make on that intelligence which, as it
grows, finds ever new means and forms of unity ? What
is true of the relations of individuals is true of the relations
of their commimities : in both alike, as the next chapter
will more fully show, the more the struggle is a struggle
for life, a direct struggle of living thing against living thing,
the less is life itself fulfilled ; the more each is set against
each, the less does the inclusive whole attain ; the greater
the energy expended in extrinsic conflict, the more does
society become an exchange of losses instead of the
exchange of gains.

Competition, it is said, works a further unintended
good. " Countless times it fulfils that service which
besides itself love alone fulfils, for it discerns the inmost
wishes of another before they have become conscious
even to himself." (Simmel, Soziologie, p. 286.) It is
claimed that in all competition the rest of the community
is a tertiua gavdens blessed in the service which the
competitors render, not because they seek to serve the

352 COMMUNITY bk. m

community, but because they are competing for the
rewards which service brings. But this further value, so
far as it is real, cannot count for so much as to reverse the
order of economy abready set out. For, in the first place,
the gain of the public is diminished in that it must pay
somehow the cost of competition, the cost of the multi-
plication of activities, agencies, machinery, and so forth,
which it involves. It is diminished also in that the
measure of success in competition need not coincide with
the quality of the service rendered, but may depend
much more on the efEective employment of the com-
petitive methods themselves. Again, no properly
organised co-operation does away with the incentives
to efEort which competition possesses, for such co-opera-
tion is capable of enhancing the rewards of service. It
is an outworn fallacy that co-operation must mean the
slackening of activity and the equalising of rewards.
Finally, in so far as competition benefits the third party
at the expense of the competitors, they are competing
to their own hurt. But this sic voa rum vobis does not
appeal to any intelligent beings, and competitors in the
degree of their intelligence seek to diminish it, organising
themselves to renounce the wasteful elements in com-
petition ; in other words, to limit or even abandon com-
petition. Hence agreements in respect of selling prices
and rebates, hence rings, amalgamations, cartels, and
trusts of every kind, so that the end of competition is
monopoly. True, it may be said, but this monopoly is
one of the evils of co-operation. But, we must answer,
if it brings loss to those outside the co-operation, it is
because it brings gain to those within it. And furth^,
it is only by corresponding co-operation on the other side,
say by a co-operation of consumers over against the
co-operation of producers, or by a wider co-operation
still, say by the concerted action of the State, that these

OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 363

evils can be met. When, for example, the fruit-growers
of California or the grain-growers of Alberta think them-
selves subject to selling oombinations, they organise
strongly and successfully on the other side. When the
unorganised consumers feel the pressure of some strong
organisation of producers they now instinctively call for
protection from the State. Many questions are here
involved, which obviously cannot be discussed within
our limits, but enough may have been said to show that
the order of social economy already established is not
reversed when we take account of the further values
involved.

Economy, the utilisation of means for the conservation
and increase of values according to their kind, is a neces-
sary consequence (as well as a cause) of socialisation.
It must follow, therefore, if we remember the relation
of socialisation to personality, that where men are most
autonomous, most prosperous, and more intelligent, there
the less economic ways of pursuing like interests are most
relinquished in favour of the more economic ; in a word,
that where men are most advanced, they are least isolated
in small groups, they compete more readily than they
fight, and they co-operate more than they compete.
Every page of history will illustrate this law. To trace
the growth of community from the dim origins of " Cyclo-
pean" family-community, through primitive clan and
tribe and horde, through isolated or semi-isolated com-
munistic village, through warring city community and
badly integrated empire, through feudal confusion on
to the close-knit social life of modem Western States,
is to follow the process, indirect, indeterminate, broken,
yet victorious, by which human life has been reclaimed
from the waste as the principle of co-operation has more
and more become active within it. Isolation is broken
down wherever culture develops. As intelligence grows.

364 COMMUNITY bk. m.

the impedimentB in the way of good life found in geo-
graphical differences and spatial barrier^ become less and
less, and the services rendered by these differences become
greater. As intelligence grows, it discovers the means
and the utilities of intercommunication of every kind.
Money-currency succeeds kind-currency, and on the new
basis a vast international banking system comes into
being. Men learn to exchange not only material goods,
but also those cultural gains the exchange of which
involves no loss of that which is given in return for what
is taken. The most advanced peoples carry the prin-
ciple the farthest. In England, France, and Germany
there is a degree of social co-operation unknown t<i Spain
or Turkey. The most advanced periods are periods of
the greatest social co-operation. Lastly, the most ad-
vanced classes of a community always co-operate the
most — ^lawyers, doctors, and parsons do not advertise,
and do not "cut" prices against one another. It is
said that the modem world is pre-eminently an age of
competition, but as an eminent economist has pointed
out, this statement has certain false implications, the
real characteristic of the modem industrial world being,
not competition, but the self-reliance, independence of
judgment, and deliberate forethought which characterise
its members.^ It is true that the first age of indus-
trialism introduced new forms of competition, but we
have to remember that on the other side it enlarged the
competitive unit, substituting in many instances the
factory for the home, and thus increased the range of
co-operation as well. Further, the increase of com-
petition which it involved is now generally admitted
to have been an evil rather than a good, and the classes
who speciekUy suffered by it, the working classes, are
now, in their turn, as they become more educated socially,

» Marshall, Prineipks of Economics (6th ed.), p. 6 ff.

OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 366

defeating these evils by their own oo-operation. Thus
the test of experience, here for its vastness merely
indicated, is conclusive. The law of success is the
law of co-operation. Man to succeed must subjugate
nature, the whole world of laws that hold outside
his f purposes, not by opposing or breaking these
laws, which he is powerless to do, but by bringing
them into his service. And the greatest means employed
by mind in that transformation is co-operative
service.

We have in this section been considering how the
discrete interests of men, the interests determining every
man in the maintenance of his own life and the satis-
faction of his own needs, the distributive interests in
earning bread, finding shelter and comforts, pursuing
personal advantage generally, are affected as to the mode
of their pursuit by the progress of community. It is
these like interests, unharmonised, that in our still primi-
tive world of civilisation create endless chasms within
the unity of the common life, and it is the progressive
harmonisation of these like interests that most clearly
reveals the immense potencies of community. The mode
of harmonisation we have now seen ; it is the creation
of secondary common interests wherein men unite to
pursue their like interests, so rendering them concordant.
It is a mode not only of harmonisation but of economy,
and is thus a particular case of the general principle that
the development of society is the development of social
economy.

We may now turn to consider the way in which the
pursuit of interests ahready established as common,
whether secondary or primary, is transformed in accord-
ance with the same general law.

366 COMMUNITY bk. m.

§3. The economic signiflcance of the development of
secondary common interests.

Economy or efficiency in the pursuit of interests is
relative not alone to the extent or area of socialisation bnt
also to its character and degree. Thns the development
of community is a process not only of the formation of
common interests but also of their transformation. As
men grow in intelligence they increasingly pursue common
interests, but they pursue these in changing ways. Here,
again, the correlation of economy and society is revealed.
For the transformation of common interests instituted
by the growing intelligence of men means at the same
time a higher degree of socialisation and a higher degree
of economy.

What are the factors, we must first inquire, which
determine the degree of success of any association ? We
have seen that the increase in extent of an association,
the increase in the number of those who share a common
interest, is an increase in economy in so far as it means
the co-operation of those who were previously anta-
gonistic or competitive. We cannot, however, infer that
every increase in number is an abaohUe advantage, that
the larger the association the greater its absolute economy
and efficiency. This is true only under certain limita-
tions which cannot here be discussed, but we may say
at least that every increase of the other factors deter-
mining success makes it possible also for a greater number
to associate to the absolute advantage of them all. This
will be evident if we reflect on the character of these
other factors. They fall into three classes, which may
be distinguished as physical, institutional, and material.
By physical factors I mean (1) the strength, persistence,
and unity of the common will relative to the interest,
(2) the degree of intelligence which directs the common

OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 357

aotivity so inspired, and (3) the authority and prestige
wit^ which, for whatever reason, the association is in-
vested. Intelligence and authority form the subjective
means which both shape the institutional conditions of
success, and develop and utilise the material conditions.
Intelligence above all is the primary means which adapts
to the needs of the intelligent being both the institutional
order and the external world, the inner and outer environ-
ments in and through which it works and lives.

The institutional factors of success we must presently
discuss more in detail. It is obvious that certain forms
of social co-ordination and organisation are more advan-
tageous than others, and it is the differentia of the more
advantageous forms which we are seeking.

The material factors of success consist of all material
resources regarded as and employed as agents of pro-
duction, as means. These are summed up by economists
under the terms '' land " and '' capital." The machine is
for our purpose a specially significant form of capital.
Intelligence not only utilises the "gifts of nature," not
only develops the environmental conditions favourable
to success, it creates two forms of order for its purposes, an
inner and an outer mechanism, the institution and the
material machine.

It is important to note that all these factors are in
some way interdependent. Intelligence, the primary and
creative factor, is itself dependent for its growth and
manifestation on appropriate environmental conditions.
It is the same intelligence which both creates the inner
or institutional environment and transforms the outer
or physical environment. Again, it is through institu-
tional means that intelligence is enabled to transform
so completely this outer world. Finally, the discovery
and utilisation of mechanical means involve a trans-
formation of the social order.

368 COMMUNITY bk. m.

Our speoial object is to show that all institutioiial
changes towards inoreased economy, towards the greater
conservation and completer attainment of values, are
changes involving a deepened and developed socialisation.
If we can show this to be the case it will be evident, in
view of the interdependence of all the factors of economy,
that any increase whatever in social economy, or, in
other words, every increase in the success wherewith
men pursue their common interests, means a further
development of community itself.

The chief institutional factors which determine success
are obvious. It is obvious that the greater the ease of
communication between those united by a common
interest, the more effective will their pursuit of it be.
The machinery of communication belongs itself to the
material means, but the effective concentration which
it makes possible is an institutional factor. If, for in-
stance, there are ten thousand lovers of music scattered
through a country and forming an association, they will
constitute a less successful association than if they were
united within a single great city. Their organisation will
be different, less '' economical," less effective. It is again
obvious that the general co-ordination of the community
within which an association falls is a factor in the success
of the latter. If, for instance, an association of scientists
pursues its interest in a country where there is hostility
displayed against science, say by a powerful church, it
will be less successful than where the general advance
of culture provides for it a congenial community. Once
more, it is obvious to every one to-day that the division
and the sub-division of labour is, at any rate up to a
certain point, a factor in economy. When the pursuit of a
common interest is so organised that each worker or group
of workers performs unlike and specialised operations,
the organisation so constituted is a factor in economy.

OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 369

The division of labour forms a test oase for our purpose.
It is clear that the other institutional factors to which
we have referred are dependent on the progress of social-
isation, but it has often been asserted that the division of
labour means the division of society as well. If it were
true it would be the completest refutation of our gencoral
principle. For division of labour is the most striking
characteristic of all economic development. It has been
continuously advancing since the very beginning of
civilisation, and has received a vast impetus wit^ the
coming of a mechanical and industrial age. It is also
a process which is confined to no sphere of human activity,
but prevails within t^em all, being as necessary to the
successful pursuit of cultural interests as it is within the
strictly economic sphere.

It is objected that this vast and seemingly endless
process destroys the earlier unity of communal life, that
the specialisation of interests narrows the common ground
on which the members of a community can meet. It
is also objected that the division of labour, perfected
as it is through mechanical developments, renders the
work of men also more mechanical, narrower, and more
monotonous. If these objections are sustained, then the
development of social economy is not necessarily in every
case a process of socialisation, the development of society
itself.

The former objection has been so completely met by
M. Durkheim in his study of the social consequences of
the division of labour,^ that it is perhaps sufficient merely
to refer to that remarkable work. In a word, M. Durk-
heim shows that the division of labour creates a new
kind of social solidarity, which he distinguishes as
" organic " in opposition to the '' mechanical " solidarity
characteristic of more primitive life. The one is based

^ Dimaion du TrawM 8oe%dU

360 COMMUNITY v. m.

on likeness alone, the other is built on reciprocities in-
volving unlikenesses. The one is relative to the absence
of individuality, the other exists only through the develop-
ment of individuality. It is, indeed, obvious that the
more considerable the division of labour the more inter-
dependent men become, each being dependent in new and
more complex ways on the whole of which he is a member,
and on the variant activities of many groups and associa-
tions within that whole. It is not, we must insist, on
differences alone that the division of labour depends.
Unless unity underlies differences, there is no division of
labour, for division of labour and co-operation are two
names for a single fact (or two aspects of a single fact),
and if men co-operate it is in view of common interests,
to which their differences must be both subsidiary and
subservient. Men never, consciously at least, co-operate,
like the parts of a machine, to effect some result whose
attainment serves themselves in nothing, as means to
an end in no wise their own. If they fulfil an end beyond
themselves, they fulfil it in fulfilling themselves. This
is why the relation of men, in their pursuit of variant
activities is incomparable with the relation between the
parts of a machine. Dr. Bosanquet has suggested, with
perhaps conscious humour, that, *^ If minds were visible,
as bodies are . . . they would not look like similar
repeated units, but rather each would appear as a member
of a mechanism pointing beyond itself and unintelligible
apart from others — one like a wheel, another like a piston,
and a third, perhaps, like steam." ^ On the contrary, if
minds were visible, they would be just as like and just
as unlike as the bodies are by which they manifest them-
selves. It is unnecessary at this stage to repudiate the
suggestion that community is mere mechanism. Men
do not, even in respect of their specific functions in the

^ The Valfie and DeHiny of the Individual, p. 60.

cH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 361

sphere of labour, form a meohanism properly so called,
but become, in E^ant's language, '* reciprocally ends and
means," means to the ends of oiher men, means thereto
because other men in the same process become means
to them, means only because they are ends to tiiemadvesy
and fulfil their own ends by serving also the ends of
others. It is only because the likenesses of men are
deeper than their difiEerences that division of labour is
possible between intelligent beings, and itself intelligible.
The basis of social unity is always likeness.

The only inherently evil division of labour is, in fact,
such as would reduce men to the place of parts within
a machine, one a wheel, one a piston, and so forth, so
that the very incompleteness of each became the condition
of his service, so that work and worker were alike frag-
mentary. The efficiency of workmen secured by their
reduction to such a condition would not be economy,
but that most tragic form of waste, the form practised
by the miser, the saving of the means of life at the cost
of the ends of life. This is the objection which, not
without some truth, is brought against the new '' scien-
tific management " expounded by Taylor, Emerson,
Gantt, and others. In so far as it is true, these systems
prove in the widest sense most uneconomic, for they
fail to enlist that co-operation of the workers which is
more important than any mechanical economies.^ But
the actual division of labour has not this consequence.
To make this clear we must consider the second objection,
the charge that division of labour brings narrowness
and monotony into the work by which we live.

It must first be noted that in the sphere of cultural
interests specialisation is often largely due to, and is

^ Cf. Hozie, Scientific McMOffcmerU, The inevitability, the peril,
and the advantage of ** adentiflo management/* in a more general
sense, are well pointed out in Josephine Qoldmark*B fine study, FaUgue
and Efficiency.

362 COMMONITV bk. m.

always promoted by, the intensity of interest felt by the
worker. In all the higher forms of labour it is the
specialist who is the ardent devotee, it is he who finds
completest satisfaction in his labour. It is true the satis-
faction may sometimes appear a narrow one, but this
is often only the view of the outsider who cannot per-
ceive the complexity and dept^ of interest enclosed
within seemingly narrow bounds. If the satisfaction is
indeed narrow, it can only be, in a world which encloses
infinite space within a nutshell, because the mind itself
is narrow to which it makes its appeal.

On the other hand the value of external variety may
easily be exaggerated. No occupation is less specialised
than that of the domestic servant, and none is lees in
demand. Change of task breaks up interest just as much
as does monotony ; and it lacks the powerful antidote
of habit. Consider, for example, the life of the pioneer.
The following description of it by a careful observer is
apposite. '* Between each two economic processes
there is generated for the worker at varied trades a languor,
which burdens and confuses the work of the man who
practises many trades. This languor is the source of
the emotional instability of the pioneer. The pioneer's
method of bridging the gap between his many occupa-
tions was simple. When he had been hunting he found
it hard to go to plowing ; and if plowing, on the same
day to turn to tanning or to mending a roof. When the
pioneer had spent an hour in bartering with a neighbour
he found it difficult to turn himself to the shoeing of a
horse or the clearing of land. For this new effort his
expedient was alcohol. He took a drink of rum as a
means of forcing himself to the new occupation. The
result is that alcoholic liquors occupy a large place in
the economy of every such pioneer people." ^

^ Wilsoti, The Evohai&n of the Country Commtm4»y,

OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 363

The charge has greater relevance in respect of machine-
determmed industrial labour, but even here it can be
raised, as a general accusation against the principle of
the division of labour^ only by those who refuse to survey
the whole situation. We have at the outset to remember
that if the work of men becomes specialised and in that
sense narrowed, it is because their world is becoming
more varied and more complex. What is lost in one
way may thus be more than restored in another. If
man loses variety in his work he gains it in his world ;
and since specialisation is a process of economy, so that
less expenditure of time and energy are necessary to
produce any determinate result, it may leave the worker
a greater leisure, and more physical and spiritual energy
to enjoy the world his work contributes to make. If
it does not, then there is a failure of economy somewhere
else.

We have here assumed that the effect of industrial
specialisation is, in fact, to make work generally narrower
and more monotonous than before, but this assumption
must itself be disputed. For it is just the mechanical
necessities of life which can be taken over by the machine.
It is routine, monotonous repetition, of which alone the
machine is capable. In so far as the machine takes over
these tasks, persons are liberated from them. Machines
as mere means can take the place of persons as mere
means, and allow the persons to becomes ends as well.
It may be answered that the technical worker is tied
down by the nature of the machine to an exceedingly
monotonous service of it, and this is true in many cases.
But the more monotonous and mechanical the task
becomes the greater the possibility that a further develop-
ment of machinery will transfer that task itself to the
machine. Further, the persons who perform the most
mechanical services are those who would otherwise have

364 COMMUNITY bk. m.

been driven, in vastly greater numbers relative to the
size of the oommunity, to perform the labour which the
machine performs instead. The routine of the machine-
feeder is deadening, but not more so, and now not nearly
so prolonged, as the routine of the *' man with the hoe."
Before any position whatever of a community can be
free for higher or cultural pursuits, it must command a
vast amount of mere drudge-service. The process of
civilisation has meant the gradual redemption from such
service of an ever-greater portion of the commimity . The
existence of a preponderating slave-class was a necessary
condition of all ancient civilisations, for the slave wsrS the
" animate tool " who released his master from like
servitude. Before the age of machinery, even where
slavery in the strict sense disappeared, the great majority
in every community, however free in name, remained
in a state of real serfdom. Without the machine men
remain the slaves of their necessities, even when no
longer the slaves of one another. By aid of the machine
the amount of mere drudgery and the comparative number
dedicated to it have already been vastly diminished. We
can never escape the whole of this unloved burden of work
which brings no joy to the worker, but if social wisdom
and mechanical ingenuity increase together, we may
well look. forward to the progressive deliverance of an
ever-greater majority. When we condemn the necessity
imposed by the machine, let us remember the necessities
from which it delivers us. Let us remember, for instance,
that the engineer often loves the engine which drives
his ship through the sea, but no ancient galley-rower
ever loved the oar.

In considering the effect of specialisation on personality,
we must further distinguish between specialised work
and specialised ability. Specialised work may make
demands on the general ability of the worker, not merely

OH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 366

on a special facility of a limited kind. *' Manual skill,"
according to Professor Marshall, ** that is so specialised
that it is quite incapable of being transferred from one
occupation to another is becoming steadily a less and
less important factor on production. . . . We may say
that what makes one occupation higher than another,
what makes the workers of one town or country more
efficient than those of another, is chiefly a superiority
in general sagacity and energy which is not specialised
to any one trade." ^ " Further, just as industrial skill
and ability are getting every day to depend more and
more on the brotid faculties of judgment, promptness,
resource, carefulness and steadfastness of purpose-
faculties which are not specialised to any one trade, but
which are more or less useful in all — so it is with regard
to business ability. In fact, business ability consists
more of these non-specialised faculties than do indus-
trial skill and ability in the lower grades : and the higher
the grade of business ability the more various are its
applications." '

Finally, we should note that the development of
machine-determined specialisation involves in general a
gradual reduction in the value of the mere physical energy
of men and a corresponding gradual enhancement in the
value of human intelligence. The development of
machinery puts at the disposal of men an amount of
physical force vastly greater than that which their own
bodies can generate. To-day, for example, in the United
States, it is computed that every workman controls on
an average an amount of physical energy equivalent to
the physical force of twenty workmen unaided by animal
or machine power. It follows that physical force, relative
to human intelligence, is becoming cheaper, and thus

^ PrinoiplBs of Eeonomiea (6th ed.), p. 207.
* Jhid,, p. 313.

366 COMMUNITY bk. m.

we are approximating nearer to the ideal that man, as
compared with inanimate objects and impersonal forces,
should be as dear as possible, that man should count
for less and less as himself a mere machine, a mere pro-
ducer of energy, and for more and more as a personality,
a value to whose service the impersonal forces are
bound.

These considerations are sufficient to show that the
division of labour is in itself both a form of social economy
and a factor of socialisation, that it serves at once the
development of personality and the solidarity of com-
munity. We can now affirm that every transformation
of the pursuit of common interests due to the principle
of economy means an increase in sociality. We have
seen that society and economy are correlative, we now
see in particular that where economy is greatest there
society is most.

We might regard the argument as now complete, but
to do so would be to leave a false impression as to the
perfection of the social economy at present attained by
the most developed communities. It must be borne in
mind throughout that we are concerned with comparative
estimates, that the communities we call most developed
are so only in comparison with others at still lower stages,
and that any goal of development, so far from being
attained, is yet invisible. Every increase in social
economy reveals unattained possibilities of social economy,
just as every advance of community reveals the way to
futher advance. Viewed from the standpoint of present
attainment the immense incompleteness of our social
economy is only too apparent.

The means which serve life and personality have been
enormously increased. The gains of each generation,
what it has instituted, what it has wrought and dis-
covered, are in large measure handed on, so that the

OH. VI. SOaAUSATION AND ECONOMY 367

total resources of community are growing constantly
greater. The control of man over nature, due to scientific
discovery, is already sufficient, if applied intelligently, to
provide all men with all the equipment needed for the
enjoyment and realisation of life. But for all the legacy
of the past and the power of the present, multitudes are
being dwarfed through mere material privations, em-
bittered by the sordid necessities which cramp their
desires, and reduced to despair in the unequal fight for
the mere animal requirements which foxes and birds can
satisfy more easily than they. Waste and superfluity in
one direction, destitution in another, convict society of
economic incapacity to apply the power it possesses, to
direct its forces in due proportion to production and
distribution, to utilise proportionately to the needs of
life and personality the means to life and personality.

It must be remembered that every increase in human
resources, in the control of environment, opens up alter-
native ways of application, alternative possibilities of
satisfaction. Thus every development of industrial power
makes possible either (a) the increase of luxury or refine-
ment, or (&) the diminution of poverty, or (c) the develop-
ment of cultural interests. (The third is made possible
because increased industrial efficiency releases more mem-
bers of the community from the necessity of industrial
toil, and also provides completer material equipment for
the pursuit of certain kinds of cultural interests.) The
alternatives are not completely disjunctive, for all three
forms of satisfaction advance together as a rule, but a
certain opposition does arise. The opposition is sharpest
and most direct between the first two alternatives, and
undoubtedly raises a fundamental problem in social
economy. If material wealth is concentrated in the
hands of a small minority, the demand for luxurious
forms of satisfaction tends to turn productive activity

368 COMMUNITY bk. m.

exclusively in that direction, and superfluity and desti-
tution appear in evil and dangerous fellowship. The
problem may be as insoluble as many seem to think,
it is none the less a problem, and its existence is
none the less an exceedingly grave defect of social
economy.

Yet it is not unreasonable to suppose that this problem,
too, is progressively soluble. It is not within t^e scope
of this work to consider possibilities of development
nowhere yet realised, but one or two inferences from our
study may be drawn. If intelligence and economy, and
again society and economy, are correlated as we have
seen reason to believe, then any further development
of intelligence among men, or any further development
of sociality among men, will necessarily bring them a
stage further towards its solution.

There are facts connected with the recent development
of community which encourage this hope. Of these
perhaps the most significant are the facts which prove the
falsity of the forecast of Marx that wealth would become
the possession and power of an ever-richer and ever-
smaller minority. On the contrary, although the control of
wealth tends to become still further centralised,^ the owner-
ship of wealth has become more diffused. Income tax
statistics seem to show that the number not only of the
wealthy but also of the moderately well-to-do increases
both absolutely and relatively to the whole population.
What is most significant, a general tendency, fostered by
but not wholly dependent on legislation, is revealed
whereby the land itself is ceasing to be the absolute pro-
perty of a few great land-owners, and is passing into the
hands of a vast number of small proprietors. In some
parts, as in France, Holland and Bavaria, this process is

^ Witness for America the Report of the Pujo Committee, popular-
ised in Mr. Justice Brandeis' pungent book on Other People's Monty,

OH. VT. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 369

almost oomplete ; in others, as in Russia, Galicia, and
Ireland, it has rapidly advanced in recent years ; elsewhere,
as in England, there is a slower movement in the same
direction. The import of this change can scarcely be
exaggerated, and its universality is evidence that here
is a phenomenon not due to accidental or transient causes,
but marking a stage of communal development.^

It is most noteworthy that the failure in economy we are
considering involves also a failure in sociality. So long as
great numbers are, through no fault of theirs, destitute and
expropriated, t^ey cannot attain any adequate socialisa-
tion. They cannot root themselves in community, for com-
munity means for them merely a system of driving outer
forpes to which they are subject, and which they cannot
in the least control. On the other hand, the industrial
conditions which produce this expropriation have also
made wealth, in the form of capital, more completely
alienable from the personal significance of the possessor
than any form of possession the world had previously
known. Undoubtedly the right of conveyance, especially
conveyance by bequest, is the crux of the position ; for
when a man transfers wealth he transfers not merely
an external thing which may benefit its new possessor,
he transfers also power over other men, it may be a
power of life and deat^. This transference is a vital
concern of society, and may well be limited by con-
siderations of social welfare. Control over property is
control over men. If then the few defend a socially
unlimited control on the ground that property is necessary
for personality, shall not the many reply, " Are we too
not persons " ? If on the ground that they have created
this property, shall not the many reply, " Have you

^ For the facts and flgaraa relative to this movement, see Makaxewios,
SodaU Enhricklung der Neuteit^ in the Arehiv fiir Reehia- und Wirt^
sehafltphfUatophief April and July, 1914,

370 COMMUNITY bk. m.

tiien also oreated us " ? If on the ground that to limit
property is to limit power, shall they not say, '' It is
also to limit our powerlessness " ?

There oan certainly be no real development of com-
mimity which does not mean an increased economy.

§4. The economic sigmflcance of the development of
primary common interests.

Outer necessities are the first springs of action. Pain,
hunger, thirst, the pangs of appetite, these are the almost
automatic determinants of animal activity in the highest
as in the lowest. But in the lowest the activities so
determined sum up the whole of life, in the highest they
fall within a life which consciously pursues further ends,
more intrinsic ends. As in the growth of a child the
outer necessities come first and the intrinsic interests
gradually supervene, so in the growth of community.
This is in accord with the principle that social develop-
ment means the growth of co-operation at the expense
of antagonism and competition. For where interests are
intrinsic they are essentially common interests, so that
antagonism necessarily impairs and co-operation neces-
sarily furthers them. Further, t^e different modes of
activity are at the same time different stimuli of activity.
Now the stimulus of direct antagonism cannot enter in
the pursuit of intrinsic interests, while the stimulus of
competition is merely an extraneous aid which becomes
increasingly less valuable for all who have come to find
in any pursuit not an external necessity of life, but life's
realisation. Thus, for instance, in the education of youth
competition is at first a very useful stimulus to activity,
in so far as the end sought is nothing to the seeker,^

^Noie in puiwiiig that competition is a n eeoMo ry stimuluB in all
games, simply because the end immediatriy sought in them is nothing
to the seeker.

CH. VI. SOCIALISATION AND ECONOMY 371

being merely imposed by an outer authority which recog-
nises its value for him ; it is less valuable in the higher
stages, where the enfranchised student, the student in
his own right, pursues knowledge because he himself
desires it, seeking not merely its incidental reward ; and
it is perhaps valueless in the very highest stage, wherein
the pursuit of knowledge has become the essential fulfil-
ment of the seeker. So far as stimulus is found in social
relationships at all, the only form which can appeal at
this stage is the stimulus of co-operation, the stimulus
found in the aid and appreciation of fellow-workers pur-
suing a common end, above all in the thought that each
is seeking a value that is a value for all men. This
social stimulus provides indeed one of the highest and
most enduring of human satisfactions. In co-operative
activity we best realise the integrity, the unity, and the
worth of that commonweal towards which our eyes are
turned.

All interests which are pursued for their own sakes,
and not as mere means to some further interests^ not as
mere necessities of life, may be called intrinsic interests.
Through these interests personality is directly fulfilled,
in the pursuit itself and not merely by aid of its results.
It is obvious therefore that with all substitution of in-
trinsic for extrinsic interests there goes a development
of communal economy. Both community and economy
increase, for instance, whenever the conditions of work
are so altered that men are enabled to take joy of their
work, to express and find their nature in and through
it. It is significant that the demand for the joy of work
should have arisen only in very recent times, even though
some of those who voice it have cast longing eyes on
past ages wherein, as they supposed, that joy was present
in fuUer measure. Now nothing contributes more to this
fulfilment than the sense of responsibility, and nothing

372 COMMUNITY bk. m ch. vi.

creates the sense of responsibility sa muoh as co-operation.
The more men are devoted to the common interest, tlie
more they realise themselves within it. This, too, is
economy, for the pursuit has value no less than the end
attained. It is clear that it is in the pursuit of primary
common interests that the greatest social economy is
realised.

Blind forces, as seemingly mechanical in operation as
those which rule external nature, guided all the activities
of the primary world ; but as the child passes from
outer to inner guidance, so does mankind. Men eat
the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Conscious forces supersede, in whatever measure, blind
forces. Intelligence, seeking to save the values which
are revealed to it, discovers that in everything the way
of economy is the way of community.

CHAPTER VII

THIRD LAW OF COMMUNAL DEVELOPMENT: THE
CORRELATION OF SOCIALISATION AND THE
CONTROL OF ENVIRONMENT

§ 1. Oommnnity and environinent

The growth of community, involving the transfor-
mation, in the manner akeady described, of the relations
between the members of it, involves also a transformation
of their common relation to an external world. This
transformation is also a continuous process, admitting
of endless degrees, and each degree is directly concomitant
with, and causally related to, a degree of development
within community. The changes within the relations of
men which we have seen to mean a development of
their sociality, these are changes correlated to changes
in their common relation to their environment. Men
cannot alter their relations to one another without at
the same time altering their relations to the whole uni-
verse ; and, on the other hand, in seeking to control to
their purpose the world lying outside them, they inevit-
ably widen and deepen their social relations. The growth
of knowledge is the progressive revelation of this most
significant of all truths, that the inner and outer worlds,
the world of mind and the world of '^ nature," are in
the end one world. ^'The mind is organic to the uni-
verse," and cannot function either in isolation from, or
in opposition to, the rest of it. One aspect of this unity

374 COMMUNITY wc. m.

ooncems us especially as students of the development of
community, the law of concomitance connecting the
growth of sociality among men with a definite process
of transfonnation of the modes of their relationship to
the environing world.

We have already seen in general how the development
of community has involved the transformation of the
physical environment. If, for instance, common life in
Aristotle's time meant only the life of a few thousand
people within a single town, while to-day conunon life
may extend over continents, this dilSerence, so momentous
for the spiritual development of man, has been made
possible by the extension of man's control over physical
forces. It might likewise be shown that every great
social development is accompanied by an alteration of
the physical conditions of life. Here we are thinking
of the direct action of mind upon the physical world,
but in this way we will never, reach the heart of the
problem or understand the full principle of correlation.
For the nearest environment of mind is the organic body,
which in one sense lies intermediate between the psychical
and the outer physical worlds. The body must in a
sense contain the harmony of both spheres, be the resul-
tant of both sets of forces. The growth of society means
not only a progressive control over outer physical forces,
it means in especial the modification of the relation
between the organism and its environment. Psychical
and physical forces meet, though how we may not under-
stand, in the organism, and the development of psychical
forces revealed in the growth of purposive relations, in
the development of community, transforms the mode
in which the organism is dependent on physical forces.
How this happens may also be beyond our understanding,
but the fact is clear and the process may easily be traced
and its significance revealed.

OH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 376

But before doing so we must explain, in view of certain
prevalent confusions, the universal relation of life to
environment, we must explain, in other words, the very
meaning of environment. We have already pointed out
how material law is a basis or condition of vital law.
This truth we have now to make explicit.

§ 2. The two ultimate factors of all development

The connection of life and environment is as insepar-
able as that of subject and object. For environment
does not mean simply that which is external to life, but
that external correlative of life apart from which life
would remain an unconceived and inconceivable poten-
tiality ; just as object means not simply that which is
external to subject, but that external correlative of sub-
ject apart from which its being and activity as subject
would be meaningless and for ever unrealised. Life apart
from environment of same kind is as impossible as motion
apart from some material thing. Environment pierces
to the very heart of life. If we probe to the beginnings
of life, it is there no less iatimately dependent on environ-
ment than in its oompletest manifestations. We never
find and never can conceive life pure, unenvironed.

So intimate is the relationship that every difference
whatever of life from life involves a dijSerence of environ-
ment from environment. Not only is life incarnated in
endless diverse organisms which themselves reflect every
change of the life-activity withia them, but every kind
of organism has a different kind of outer environment, a
different place in the world, and every change whatever in
the state of any organism involves som^ change of the en-
viranment in which it lives. This statement will appear
exaggerated only if we fail to understand what a complex
and specific thing an environment is. We all inhabit a
single world, but the world is somehow different for every

376 COMMUNITY bk. m.

species, nay for every living thing within it. Thousands
of species of organic creatures live side by side, yet each
has an environment not wholly that of any other. The
earth is infinitely diversified, a house of very many
mansions for the reception of living beings, and each
somehow finds a different mansion. Each kind of organic
creature selects and uses in different degrees the different
elements and situations of the common world of them
all, and thus tnakea an environment for itself. For en-
vironment is not simply the external world, but the
external world as it is related to life. This will be shown
more explicitly in the following section.

The study of the correlation between specific types of
physical environment and specific forms of social life is
one of the most interesting and one of the most successful
pursuits of present-day sociology. We might instance
in particular the work of Demolins and his collaborators
in La Science Sociale. Such work, though liable to a
certain misinterpretation which will presently be pointed
out, reveals in a very impressive way the constant rela-
tivity of life and environment.

Environment is the means, the opportunity, and the
home of life. In the organism life and environment meet
in a manner more intimate than we can understand,
while the organism in turn mediates between life and
the outer physical environment. Life is that which feels
and knows and wills, that for which values exist and which
itself exists as value. Each life is environed at once by
an organic body, by an outer physical medium of the
organism, by other lives likewise incarnated, and by the
social order which together they create. It is thus
obvious that environment is an exceedingly complex and
many-sided factor.

If then every change of life is relative to a change of
environment, it is clear that there are two ultimate factors

OH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 377

deteormining all development, (1) what we must call,
though It be merely naming the unknown, the inner
potency, that energy or spirit of life which must never
be identified with the environment it finds or chooses,
with the physical nature whose laws it both commands
and obeys, and (2) a world so various, so complex, and
so plastic, as to provide a continuous succession of en-
vironments corresponding to and making possible every
impulse of life towards fulfilment. We have seen how
the social environment changes with the development
of life ; we have next to see how, correspondent to that
change, the relation of the organic environment of living
beings to the outer world of nature is by their own activity
transformed. To this end it is very necessary to insist
on the twofold determination of all development, on the
equal necessity of native capacity or endowment on the
one hand and of fovourable environmental conditions of
every kind on the other. This seems a truism, but it
will appear that many theories of development foil to
recognise its truth.

It b impossible to say that either of these factors is
more important than the other, since both are absolutely
necessary. But the inner capacity is logically prior, that
of which environment is but a necessary condition, as
the channel is of the stream. Environment gives or
withholds opportunity, determines direction, but it is
the life-capacity which seizes opportunity, which follows
this or that direction. The way in which life responds
to environment, changing to its every change, is not to
be regarded as a witness to the characterlessness of life,
but rather as evidence of its infinite capacity for seizing
every opportunity which environment provides. Thus
a change of outer environment does not mean merely a
propartioniate change in the organism, as if development
were the simple resultant of two like forces. The change

StS COMMUNITY M. m.

is the opportunity for a further revelation of life, wholly
incalculable in advance. We find not simply ^* varia-
tion," but, as de Vnes has so completely shown, ** muta-
tion." To illustrate, the common primrose {primula
officinalia) has a variety which loves damper and cooler
soil {primnla elatiar), but we do not have all degrees of
approach to the latter variety according to the degree
of humidity of the soil. Instead we find a plant of a
distinctive character in one kind of environment, a variety
of a distinctive character in another. Differences of outer
environment are measurable and continuous, varieties
of organism are immeasurable and discontinuous. It is
as if the incalculable Proteus-principle of life, eternally
lying in wait behind material phenomena, wrought of
every physical change an organic means for its own
revelation.

So within the sphere of human society we can on the
whole say what conditions of physical environment are
most fovourable for the appearance of new energies ;
we know, for instance, that certain climatic conditions
are good and others bad : but the quality, the ideals,
so evoked and made actual through the fovourableness
of environment, these no man can predict. life is no
quantitative thing whose increase is the mere adding of
like to existent like.

The constant relativity of the two factors of develop-
ment places, we must admit, a serious obstacle in the
way of the determination of their respective rdles in any
given situation. We cannot refer absolutely the differ-
ences between members of the same species, stock, or
family to one or the other alone. Environment is in-
finitely complex, never quite the same for any two living
creatures ; it is ever present, never to be entirely known
or estimated ; it is modified by the beings whom it
modifies, in an endless and never wholly calculable

CH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENViRONMENT 379

reoiprooity. But at least the same reciprocity is decisive
against any theories which deny the significance of either
factor, which attribute development wholly either to
conditions of environment or to the inner potency of
life. It may be well to examine briefly certain of these
theories, since they stand in the way of the law of corre-
lation we have finally to set forth.

One form of error is the explanation of all differences
of development as simply due to differences in environ-
ment. This appears generally as a reaction against the
opposite and more popular mistake. Thus Mr. J. M.
Robertson,^ while finely protesting against the faoUe
theory which attributes to distinct racial capacities all
differences of social and political development, seems to
deny any differences whatever of native endowment and
capacity between peoples. He protests, for instance,
when Lord Morley * speaks of " peoples so devoid of the
sovereign faculty of political coherency as were the Greeks
and the Jews." But conditions, even on the most favour-
able hypothesis, will not explain everything. Switzer-
land is more mountainous than Greece, and the Swiss
are divided in tongue and race and religion in a way
unknown to Greece; but in striking contrast to the
Greeks the Swiss have created the longest-lived of federal
unions. If we say that it was the menace of surrounding
hostile States which inspired the federation, can we deny
that Greece was exposed to an equal peril ? If, there-
fore, the Greeks failed to federate successfully, must they
not have lacked a faculty of political coherency which
the Swiss possessed ?

It is certain that every difference of environment
corresponds to some difference of life. Just as in every
different situation of the material world — ^in air, earth,

^ The SvoluUon of States, Ft. I. ohap. iv., and poMtm.
' ComproimM (ed. of 1888), p. 108.

380 COMMUNITY m. m

and sea, in every latitude and every soil, in alien growth
on plant and tree and animal, and out of the corruption
of death itself — ^there is bred a different form of life for
every difEerence of setting, as though behind all that
variety there moved a universal force everyhow and every-
where seeking what incarnation it can find ; so in especial
human life breaks out into the myriad difiEerences of
humanity, the highest creative form of tiiat universal
life, driving towards expression through the ever more
plastic-growing media of the environments which it
builds. It may therefore be that, looked on svb specie
aeiemitatis, all life would appear as the manifestation in
greater or less degree of some one spirit of life. But
even so we cannot conclude that the difiEerences of en-
vironment in any given historic situation wholly account
for difiEerences of character. The type, the stock, is
already formed through endless past processes of inter-
action between life and environment. As life appears
in each new generation it cannot be regarded as some
mere undirected force, wholly shaped by the conditions
there represented. Doubtless the recreation of the type
in every birth and generation saves life from the fote
of imprisonment in its created forms. The plastic
capacity of development in every new generation stands
in contrast to the hardening of the once plastic form of
every older generation. But it is always the plasticity
of a given form, always the modification of a given
character. The Hottentot, the Egyptian, the Teuton,
placed at birth in the same general environment both
material and social, would certainly respond difiEerently
in virtue of pre-determined capacities. It is the char-
acteristic of a superior people that they can respond in
more complex ways to the calls of environment. It has
often been observed that the members of primitive peoples
attain their maturity very early in life, their character

OH. TO. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 381

becoming fixed and stereotyped in each much more
quickly than that of more highly developed peoples.
This means a difference in the power of response to the
calls of environment. It is evident, therefore, that,
staffing from any histarieal aituatum^ we cannot explain
simply in terms of environmental conditions all the
differences between people and people.

We do not explain a thing if we '' explain it away,"
if we resolve it into its own *' conditions." The wind
may no more blow where it listeth, for we know some-
thing of the conditions which determine its direction and
its power, yet the wind is no more its conditions than
before. As once Ihe wind, so stiU the spirit of human
achievement seems most unaccountably to come and go,
but even were our ignorance completely removed that
spirit would not a whit be resolved in its revealed con-
ditions, for it is itself underived, itself also an integral
force.

Probe we never so far into causes, there remains a
point where our search must end. We have been using
the metaphor of plasticity, but at the last this metaphor,
like all metaphor, proves defective. For the responsive
power of life is not mere plasticity, not the mere poten-
tiality of the clay to take on whatever shape the hand
of the potter may devise, still less the characterless fluidity
of water that will flow by whatever channel we dig. The
reaction of life to environment is a true response, not a
mere following or flowing ; the response of a nature, not
the mere acconunodation of some formless stuff (named
psychical) to the impress of a die. Life is itself the prior
force in its own unfolding. Life is itself the shaper, not
environment. Character is the expression and form of
life, not of environment. Environment is the occasion,
the stimulus, and not the source of character. If material
forces have their own specific natures, are psychical forces

382 COMMUNITY bx. in,

mere resiliences ? It is surely foolish to write as if every
external and material force had its own proper and definite
nature, while spirit alone existed featureless and blank,
the name of an unknown impressionability, until these
outer forces gave it character.

The form of error we have been considering is, from the
practical standpoint, less dangerous than the other fsAae
extreme. The opposite error, which belittles the signifi-
cance of environment, discourages that struggle for its
control which we shall see to be a determinant of develop-
ment. If the native force of the human spirit is anyhow
dependent on conditions of environment for its mani-
festation, direction and fulfilment, it is of paramount
importance that we gain what mastery is possible over
them. Our knowledge of the immense det^mdnative
power of that greater body of our spirits which we call
environment is the revelation of the incalculable import-
ance of social co-operation. To know these environ-
mental forces is to know that we are more than they,
for it is to know our power over them, the prior power
of spirit over body which alters body for the sake of
spirit. The keys of life itself are in our hands. Each
owes his very birth to the will of the most intimate and
primal of societies, and the environment into which each
enters has been essentially determined by the willing of
a mjnriad generations. If our impotence in the &ce of
natural forces is vast, so is our power. In our hands is
the sling with the little stone which may bring down the
giant circumstance. Circumstance dulls the sense of the
earth-bound labourer as it sharpens the pitiful precocity
of the city waif, it turns the primal instincts of the street-
woman to wretched viciousness, it leads the native endow-
ment of the child of undisciplined luxury into the service
of inept vanity — ^just as it evokes skill and courage,
patience and strength, in the leader, the thinker, the

CH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 383

worker. It is in great measure the aotivity of men in
community which has created the differences of circum-
stance to which these differenpes of character correspond,
and if men realised more fuUy their dependence on com-
munity-created conditions of environment they would
will more earnestly and unitedly the transformation of
unfavourable conditions.

Some forms of the opposite error, that which denies or
minimises the significance of environment, must next be
considered. We have already noticed in passing ^ the
grosser fallacy of attributing to a peculiar race-endow-
ment all the achievements in culture and civilisation
which a particular community or any member of it may
have achieved. There is indeed a still grosser form which
attributes to the pure race-endowment of some one people
not only all their own achievements in culture, but all
or almost all that humanity itself has achieved, so be-
littling both culture and humanity for the greater glory
of a figment. But this fallacy, dear to Herr Stewart
Chamberlain and the PoliHaeh'Anthropologiacke Revw,
leads its champions into such blunders that it needs no
other refutation.

The biology of inheritance, as expounded by the
Darwinians and more particularly by the Weismannists,
has seemed to bring scientific confirmation to the idea
that environment is negligible or ineffectual in respect of
the life-principle as it manifests itself in the succession
of the generations. This was supposed to follow from
the doctrine ambiguously called the ''non-transmission
of acquired characters." It appeared to be, and is still
so understood by many who seek to draw out its social
implications, a denial that the correlation of life and
environment holds at the very source of life. If it were
so, it would be the destruction of the principle we have

* See pp. 276-7,

384 COMMUNITY bk. m.

set forth. But as the clouds of controversy roll away,
the question is seen to be, very much like the eighteenth
century controversy over ** innate ideas/' largely a matter
of the interpretation of terms. At any rate su£Bcient
ground is yielded to satisfy the sociological principle we
are discussing. Thus even Weismann acknowledges the
importance of nutrition, and suggests that differences
of nutrition may determine variations.^ It is well
known that in the case of bees the female larvae when
poorly fed develop into sterile workers, when well fed
into fertile queens, and that a similar relation of nutri-
tion and fertility holds ia the case of ants and termites.
Weismann points out that this environmental influence
is properly a stimulus to which the organism responds
in a predetermined manner.* Now this principle may
lead us very far. If oscillations of nutrition have so
significant an effect upon the germ-cells and the germ-
plasm, what other effects may they not have ? And
what of other oscillations, those nerve-oscillations which,
as Weismann admits, affect nutrition, those psychical
" oscillations " whose effects on the organism as a whole
are manifest to every one ? Where then can we stop ?
It is, for instance, admitted by all impartial students
of the subject that poisons such as alcohol so act on the
body as to affect the germ-cells, harming not only the
individual but his offspring also.' But if the toxins
of the body affect the germ-cells, why not the '"anti-
toxins " ? If we believe that stocks or peoples may

^ The Oerm-Plaanit p. 417. * Bomanss Lecktft, 1894.

' It 18 not admitted by the profeMor of Eugenics at London UniTer-
aity, but the evidence againat him ia quite eonolunve. The xnTeetl-
gationa of Dr. Laitinen of Helatngfora in regaid to infant mortality
are alone a aofBoient refutation. Laitinen*B experimenta on *»i^*»«3«
(aa alao those of Hodge and Bluhm) prove the fallacy of the favourite
argument of the ''natural selectionists** that the alooholiam ia merely
a symptom and not at all a cauae of degeneration. For a short sum-
mary of the efiecta of alcohol-poiaoning see Schallmayer, VereHnmg
und Aualese (2nd ed.), e. viii., § 1.

OH. TO. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 386

acquire speoifio inunnnities from disease, these im-
munities must be " acquired characters/' if any are ;
and they may be due to specific '^ anti-toxins." Every
condition of the body may involve specific toxins or
" anti-toxins/' just as we know the condition of fotigue
to involve the former. And again where can we stop ?
" Microbe or toxin," that is the reply of the Weismannists
to the conclusions drawn from such experiments as Brown-
S^uard's. Call it what you will, it is all the admission we
require to establish the reciprocity of environment and life.
The evidence for the environmental influence of body
upon germ-cells, whether we affirm or deny that this
means the ** transmission of acquired characters," could
be extended indefinitely, but the forgoing considerations
may suffice.^ They justify us, I believe, in our con-
tention that life and environment are cUtoaya correla-
tive. Every development of life implies and neces-
sitates the modification of its whole environment. We
have seen how such development means a transformation
of the social environment, the forms and institutions of
community ; it means no less a transformation within
the physical environment, so that, as it changes, life
becomes dependent upon it in different ways than before.
Each step in the growth of community is correlative with
a change in the conditions of the organic life of social
beings. The law of this process we must now endeavour
to set forth.

§3. The transformation within community of the
principle of adaptation to physical environment

The law of life, we miM conclude, is relative to the
kind of life, and changes with its changes. Thus can
we differentiate natural from vital law. For material
law has an absoluteness denied to vital law. Where

* Some further evidences appear in § 6. See also Appendix B^

386 COMMUNITY bk. ra.

there is no life there is no response, no growth of a power
revealing itself in difference in every stage of growth.
The stone is moved and lies. The dead tree is a log.
The living cell alone resists. Within it is that power
of response that acts back m being acted upon, in ways
incalculable until they are actually made manifest. The
growth of life is revealed not as quantitative increase
alone, but as qualitative difference.

If a principle of life is discovered to be active in the
lower organic world, and more and more suspended in
human society as it grows, it is the curious obsession of
certain biologists that it ought to be made operative
among men also, although the more obvious inference
might seem to be that, unless some other explanation
is forthcoming, the relative absence of the principle in
the human sphere is due to its humanity, in a word to
its advance. The obsession of the biologists in question
is increased because they often regard these principles
as absolute in the lower organic spheres, thus confusing
material with vital laws. In reality, as we shall see,
they are only partially realised within them — a iaot of
great significance. They are never like the laws of the
material world, descriptions of invariable sequences or
concomitances. They are not laws at all as the phjrsioist
understands the term '^ law." The true lau)8 of life are
laws of concomitant variation^ laws of concomitance
between the growth of life and the transformation of its
inner and outer conditions.

The " laws " which the biologist deduces from the
study of lower organic life are summed up under the
expressions, "adaptation to environment," struggle for
life," and '^ natural selection." Although these expres-
sions are often used as equivalent names for a single
law, it makes for clearness if we take each of them separ-
ately, and show that it expresses only a relative, partial,

OH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 387

and partially supersessionable principle, the degree and
form of ita operation being relative to the degree of
oommnnal development.

Nothing illustrates better the confusion of material and
vital law than the frequent mis-statement of the prin-
ciple of '* adaptation to environment." Regarded purely
in its physical aspect, every organism is alwajrs adapted
to its environment, since there is no break in the order
of physical causality. But this law must be clearly dis-
tinguished from the law of life of which it is merely the
basis. Mere adaptation to environment may mean for
the living being either progress or retrogression, either
the increase or the decrease of the amount and quality
of life. All the organic beings on the earth, low and
high, strong and weakly, healthy and diseased are alike,
as physical beings, perfectly adapted to their physical
environments. The tree with the young foliage of spring
is no more and no less adapted to its environment than
the tree shedding the withered leaves of autumn. The
mulga shrub, hard, dry, and stunted, is no less and no
more adapted to its environment than the luxuriant vege-
tation of the Amazonian selvas. The pinched children
of the poverty-stricken are no less and no more adapted
to their environment than the healthful children of the
well-to-do. Is it not because the former are so adapted
that they are pinched ? Every being is always adapted
to its environment if it lives at all, and when it dies its
death is the final triumph of adaptation. The phenomena
of retrogression furnish as good illustrations of continuous
adaptation as do the phenomena of progress. The rotting
leaf IB adapting itseU to its environment by rotting, the
neglected rose by reverting to the wUd. The beaver,
harried by man, forsakes his wonderful dams and sinks
to a less constructive, less social mode of life,^ and that

^ Fouillte, Les Elemin$9 Soeiologiques de la MoraU, p. 216.

388 COMMUNITY bx. m.

degeneration is alfio adaptation. This truth was pointed
out more than fifty years ago by Huxley,^ but owing to
the prevalent confusion of material and vital law it is still
far from being universally recognised. There is here no
imperative for the living creature. It is needless to bid
us be adapted in this sense to our environment, for we
always are so adapted, and even as we change it we
become adapted to its changes.

It is when we state this universal law of causality in
the form of an imperative law of life that confusion
arises. We say that to succeed or to survive every
organism mtist conform to the conditions of its environ-
ment. If this must is an imperative, we are construing
adaptation in quite another sense. We mean that under
certain conditions of its physical environment an organism,
in the process of adaptation, decays or perishes, and that
to thrive or survive it must find or create other conditions.
And this is an imperative not of conformity but seemingly
of non-conformity. But, if physical adaptation is uni-
versal, how can an imperative of such a nature be possible ?
To answer this we must pass from the sphere of material
to the sphere of vital law. We must take account of
that formative life-activity which characterises every
living thing. Then it appears that we are concerned
with a relative principle, relative to the kind of life.

Every living creature in some degree determir^es its own
environment^ and the more developed the life the greater the
control of environment. This increasing coTiirol is secured
chiefly through the increase of social co-operation.

We have seen that the physical world provides endless
possibilities of new or different environments. En-
vironments are not separate spaces pre-allotted to the
different kinds of life. The environment of each species
— and in a lower degree of each individual— depends in

^ Oriiiciam» on the Origin of Speciea, 1864.

cH. vu. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 38S

some way on the active nature of each. The allotment
of eaoh environment to eaoh species is not accidental,
the organism is not passive in acceptance of its environ-
ment and active only in conforming to it. All life is
endowed with mobility — even the most vegetative, for
its seeds wing themselves or are transported over the
earth, its roots may pierce from the dry to the moist
soil, from sand or rock to clay, and its leaves turn from
the shade to the siin. These least mobile of organic
forms are thus actually choosing between environments,
not merely conforming to one pre-determined situation.
If this holds for vegetative life, it holds in ever higher
degree for animal and human life. In general the plant
has a minimum power of choosing between different given
environments, while the more mobile and creative animal
has both a greater variety of choice within existing en-
vironments, and, still more important, an increasing power,
relative to its intelligence, of modifying these environ-
ments. This latter power, on which all human progress
ultimately depends, introduces an essential relativity into
the principle of adaptation, for in the degree in which
man (or any other organic being) possesses it he becomes
master no less than servant of circumstance, so that his
purposes are armed with conscious might against the
blinder mights of outer nature.

Such a power in no way contradicts the universal
principle of physical adaptation, or, to use a less mis-
leading term, causality. It is because men cannot be
other than *^ adapted " to their actual physical environ-
ment that they endeavour to transform it, so that it
shall be a different actual environment which makes this
ungainsayable demand. Adaptation to a more favour-
able environment means progress, adaptation to a less
favourable environment means retrogression, the necessary
harmony of adaptation b^ing in itseU no value, but the

390 COMMUNITY bk. m.

condition of values, and the condition of evil no less than
of good. It is here the vital law appears in contra-
distinction to the material law. Man changes his
environment so that his necessary adaptation to it
shall farther and not hinder his pursuit of ends or
values.

The less intelligent the species, the more must it accept
the existent conditions of its environment; the more
intelligent, the more can it refuse to accept these con-
ditions in the knowledge of its pow^ to alter them. So
civilised man most of all builds up his new world within
the old, his world of community. In this highest level
of achievement each builds least for himself alone, and
most as fulfilling some part in a concerted whole of
endeavour. Thus only, by the increase of society, does
he gain progressive control over environment. Com-
munity, we have seen, implies co-operative activity
towards common ends. This co-operative activity is
in the main directed towards the control of physical
conditions, so that human life is raised from that mere
subjection to them, that ** state of nature " which is so full
of misery, insecurity, internecine struggle, and squalor
of every kind, to that mastery of them, that social state
wherein the struggle for insufficient means is gradually
transformed into the co-operative and thus productive
pursuit of more abundant means.

Finally, it is probable that the higher the life the lower
its organic plasticity. This, at any rate, is the conclusion
to which many facts of comparative zoology lead. To
illustrate, the more highly developed the organism the
less easily can it regenerate lost parts. ^ Now this prin-
ciple means that the higher the organism the less can

^ There are exoeptioDB. The power of regeneration aeeme to be
■Ughier in fish than in more highly orgaaiaed amphibians, siioh as
TrUon,

CH. VII. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIIlONMENT 391

it directly change in response to changes of environment
so as to maintain its life throughout these changes. It
was the opinion of Lamarck that while environment
had direct power in changing plant-organisms it had no
such power over the more active animal-organism. It
may, however, be a question of degree. In which case
the relevant law of life would be that the higher the life
the less is it direcUy modified by the changes within its
physical environment and the more does it modify that
enwronm^nt and its changes into conformity to its own
purposes. Intelligence in its degree fences a space of
life against the immediate and minor surges of the en-
vironmental flux, so that life may reveal itself within
that space the more.

Since we have seen that the degree of intelligence
measures the degree of society, the correlation between
socialisation and the control of environment is now
definitely established. In the remaining sections we shall
consider some more particular aspects of that correlation.

§4. The transformation within commonity of the
principle of the struggle for life.

The two expressions '^ struggle for life " and " natural
selection " are often used as practically synonymous.
But there are two kinds of struggle which need to be
clearly distinguished, the struggle of living thing against
living thing on the one hand, and, on the other, the
endeavour of living things to maintain their lives and
purposes against the unfavourable conditions of their
environment. Here we shall consider only the former
of these, leaving the latter for consideration under the
wider rubric of '^ natural selection."

We have already seen that in the process of communal
development the modes of the activity of social beings
are transformed. We have seen that the principle of

392 COMMUNITY bk. ni.

the '* struggle for life," understood as the direct struggle
of living thing against living thing, is modified or even
abrogated in that process. In civilised society, the
struggle is not for life but for a kind of life, and the goal
of the struggle is attainable not in direct conflict with
others but by their direct and indirect aid. The full
significance of this &ct becomes dear when we under-
stand the correlation of environment and life, in par-
ticular the necessity by which life as it grows greater
controls and modifies in greater measure the conditions
of its environment. To that end the activity of social
beings must become increasingly a co-operative activity,
and in that direction must their co-operative activity
be increasingly turned. We can now, therefore, complete
the argument of the preceding chapter by showing that,
under the conditions of environment corresponding to,
and dependent on, the increase of life, the necessity and
the value, no less than the extent, of the individualistic
struggle are continuously reduced.

The contrary argument may be summed up as follows :
(1) the law of individual struggle rules lower organic
life ; (2) it is a beneficent law for such life, securing the
elimination of the weak and the diseased, and the survival
of the strong and healthy ; (3) it is, therefore, a good
thing that this law shoiM remain in operation within
human society. Again we have the statement of a sup-
posed universal law of lower life, again also the transition
from a descriptive to an imperative law, from what is
or is supposed to be in the lower organic world to what
ought to be in the higher. And again we shall see the
transition to be false. Nay more, in this case we shall
see that the descriptive law is itself unsound.

The principle of the individualistic " struggle for life *'
is not absolute at any level of life. Strange though it
may seem, under the conditions of environment which

CH. VII. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 393

detennine survival for the lowest forms of life, the prin-
ciple is non-existent. Where there is no determinate
purpose there can be no struggle of this kind. When
purpose first clearly emerges, the direct struggle for life
does appear, but as purpose grows with the growth of
mind, the struggle for life becomes, as we have already
seen, modified through social co-operation. What then
becomes of the descriptive law ?

In the lowest regions of life there is no proper struggle
of living thing against living thing. If of the multitude
of seeds and fruits of nearly every tree, only one or two
survive to carry the species on through time, it is not
because the race is to the swift or the battle to the strong.
'^ Time and chance happeneth to them all." It is truer
of Nature's sowing than of man's ,that some seeds fall
by the way-side and are devoured, others upon stony
places and are scorched, others among thorns and are
choked. Likewise of the countless eggs of the low forms
of animal life, marine and terrestrial, there is here no
struggle to survive nor fitness in survival. The drift of
the tides, the mercy of the winds, the accident of escape
from the devouring mouths, these are the conditions of
survival, no merit of the surviving units of the host.
As weU say that in a modem battle, when the collective
fire of many guns and rifles sweeps the extended lines,
it is the individual brave or keen-eyed or clear-brained
who are spared by shell and bullet. When next we
mount the scale of life and observe the dawning of clear
purpose, the principle of individual struggle appears as
a very partial and limited condition of survival. The
intelligence which makes it possible is always breaking
it down again. All higher animals are to a certain extent,
some to an amazing extent, social animals, and have
broken the struggle for existence by co-operation.
Further, it is not between members of the same species

394 COMMUNITY bk. m

but between members of different species that the process
of elimination is most ruthless, and this is " rather accom-
modation than struggle." It depends scarcely at all on
individual differences. It is not the difference of speed
between deer and deer that decides which the Uon shall
make his prey. It is not the difference between sparrow
and sparrow that decides which shall fall a victim of the
hawk. A moment's reflection will show that here is no
law of individual struggle, but a process shaping the
conditions of the survival of dpecies. One way in which
a species is fitted for survival in the &ce of its enemies
is rapid multiplication, but this means no increase of
strength or skill to the individuals of it, rather the reverse*
The law of racial survival has here no implication of
individual development. In fact, it might seem that the
ordinary statement of the law of struggle — ^implying as
it does that the better-equipped units survive— can apply
only to a struggle between likesy where strength is pitted
against strength, fleetness against fieetness, cunning
against cunning. In such a struggle, when the arena is
cleared for ity the stronger and the fleeter and the more
cunning do for the most part triumph. But such a
struggle, although often taken for granted even by dis-
tinguished scientists, seems in &ct somewhat rare in
nature. It is most clearly exemplified in the strife
between members of the same species, a kind of strife
best known in human society. In truth one is some-
times tempted to think that the law of organic struggle,
in the individualistic interpretation usually given to it,
applies scarcely at all to nature outside certain kinds
and stages of human society. It is significant that Darwin
himself acknowledged that he was led to his doctrine of
selection through struggle by the reading of Malthus.
But Malthus was concerned with the competitive and
purely human struggle of likes of the same species, not

CH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 396

of unlikes of different species. It would be curious if
here too, as so often elsewhere, our interpretation of
nature turned out to be anthropomorphic at the last.

But we have already seen how in the development of
human society the struggle suffers transformation. The
control of environment is possible only through a social
unity which contradicts the principle of the '' struggle
for life." The history of civilisation shows that one form
of conflict is substituted for another, for the barbaric
conflict of like against like the constructive conflict of
likes towards the mastery of nature, the discovery of her
laws, and the utilisation of her resources.

This truth, obscured or seemingly contradicted while
the first triumphant discovery of the principles of organic
evolution still dominated scientific thought, is only now
beginning to be realised. It was Huxley, in his justly
famous Romanes lecture on Evolution and Ethics , who first
dearly championed the method of socialisation where it
differs from the '* individualism " of lower life. But Huxley
expressed the contrast between '' cosmic " and social law
in too extreme a form. He still spoke as if men in their
social activities simply reverse some earlier process, the
ways of ape and tiger. ^ '' Let us understand," be said,
'" once for aU that the ethical process of society depends,
not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running
away from it, but in combating it." The road turns
back upon itself. But in truth the ethical process is
more an upward spiral ascent, involving at no point a
sudden change of direction. If we interpret the law of
struggle in the only sense in which it can be called a
law at aU — as a condition of the survival of species —
the sheer antagonism Huxley found between the cosmic

^ One wonders if those who pretend to believe in the supremacy
of the " ape and tiger '* ways ever reflect on what has befallen those
animaJs themselves, how the tiger is confined within an ever-nanowing
belt of jimg^ and the ape makes sport for ohildisiL

396 COMMtFNITY bk in.

and the social process is broken. The social process
means the increasing socialisation of the human species
or portions of the human species, through the increasing
application of inventive mind, with its principles of
economy, order, and the direct adaptation of means to
ends, for the furtherance of the unity of individual and
social good. The rudiments of that process exist already
in lower organic nature, and so &r as it exists the process
works the same advantageous effects for the socialised
species as it does for man. But it is only very partially
exhibited because free inventive mind is almost wholly
absent in the underworld. Animal societies lacking this
guidance lack the success it brings, but this does not
mean that animal life owes its development to an opposite
principle, to anti-social antagonism among its members
and to the passive acceptance of whatever good or evil
the environment may contain. With greater truth we
might say that it owes its lack of development to the
comparative absence of this principle of socialisation.
Wherever this principle is introduced ab extra into the
lower organic world, it ensures the rapid development
of the species concerned, as every breeder and horti-
culturist will bear witness. The breeder and the horti-
culturist are employed all the time in modifying natural
conditions, no doubt for their own purposes. But if only
the animals and plants themselves possessed inventive
minds, they would modify for their own ends, as men
for theirs, these natural conditions.

There is not, therefore, any antagonism of principle
between the law of success in lower organic life and in
human life. It is not so much that there is present in
nature a mighty organic law, running counter to the law
of society, as that there is absent the mighty social law.
In human social life a transforming element has appeared
I and become operative. Mind reveals a new road to

OH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 397

success, a new means of attaining ends hitherto attained,
if at all, in slower and more imperfect ways. I do not
know if mind tends to substitute altruistic action for
egoistic. There is altruism and egoism at every different
level of intelligence. But I am sure that mind increas-
ingly discovers, in ways before undreamed of, the de-
pendence of the interest of each upon the interest of all.
It reveals that the fundamental needs of each are best
realised in the community of all, and that, as Plato saw
clearly long ago, '* in respect alike of pleasure and repute
and utility the approver of social justice speaks the truth,
and the disapprover is all unsound and knows not what
he does in disapproving.'' ^ It reveals that the measure
of the socialising of man is the measure of the develop-
ment of man.

' As the struggle changes, so does the meaning of victory
change, and therewith the quality which ensures it. The
whole work of that reason which builds community is
the endeavour to ensure that what is revealed to it as
best shall be at the same time strongest. It seeks so to
control the conditions of life that they shall less and less
advanliage the socially worse and more and more advan-
tage the socially better. All progress everywhere can be
resolved into this, the control of the conditions of values
for the securing of values. However imperfect the attain-
ment, there is the goal which every community, which
every true association must pursue. Further, though no
one can say that this power, even were it to become fully
reasonable, will ever become supreme, though no one
knows what limits a *' step-motherly nature" without
or a failure and arrestation of the social spirit within may
set to this control, we must acknowledge that never in
history has it been so great as it is to-day. '^ The dis-
tinguishing characteristics of our time are that civilisation

^ Bepublie, 689 c. I traxuilate rd StKoiop by " social juatioe.'*

398 COMMUNITY bk. m.

for the first time has the upper hand, that the physical
conditions of life have come and are rapidly coming more
and more within human control, and that at least the
f oundationsi have been laid of a social order which would
render possible a permanent and unbroken development." ^

§5. The transformation within community of the
principle of natural selection.

The effect on the race of the individual " struggle for
life " was supposed to be the maintenance and increase
of its vigour, since only the strongest and " fittest "
survived to reproduce their kind. To the same end the
whole of existence also conspired. The organism grows
in a world full of ordeals for it, fraught with the con-
ditions of pain, misery, and disease. The old-world view
regarded these as simply evil, due to a spirit of evil
seeking its will over man, though destined to final over-
throw. A newer-world view dramatically reversed the
doctrine, conceding indeed, as it must concede, that these
were evUs for the individuals who succumbed to them,
but adding that they were the essential conditions of
the progress of the race. Not only was there a soul of
good in seeming evil, the latter was the very condition
and origin of good.

Unfortunately this vindication of " the cosmos " was
the condemnation of the activity of man. For that
activity is directed just to mitigate those evils which,
if the vindication holds, are blessings in disguise. Man
seeks — and cannot help seeking — to conquer his poverty,
to heal his diseases, to raise himself from subjection to
those forces which, on this doctrine, are the very means
of his salvation. To-day, for instance, man seeks to
overcome the " sinister trinity " of diseases, tuberculosis,
syphilis, and cancer, which threaten his whole civilisation,

^ Hobhouae, Social BvoluUon and Political Theory , p. 163.

cH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 399

and he is told, in respect of the first of these, that " if
to-morrow the tubercle bacillus were non-existent it would
be nothing short of a national calamity." ^ So, in spite
of the vindication of nature, the ways of nature and man
stiU seem at strife, or rather, a more implacable strife
takes the place of the old. For man must, by his very
constitution, seek relief from misery and disease, he must
in the degree of his intelligence, pursue those researches
into the conditions of life whence he comes back armed
with greater power over them. He is so constituted that
he must seek to destroy the conditions of his welfare !
His gods have disguised themselves so terribly that he
must always continue to attack them as demons instead !

The application of the principle of the relativity of
life and environment relieves us, I believe, from so ironical
a situation. It enables us to comprehend under one law
what truth underlies both the newer and the older doc-
trine. The older doctrine looked forward, the newer
doctrine looks back. But life and environment are
always changing together, and as environment differs
for different kinds and stages of life, so does its selective
force. There is no one constant operation of nature
which we can call '* natural selection." Every environ-
ment is selective according to its kind, but the kind of
selection and the operation of selective forces vary with
the kind and the activity of life.

Let us again, as a convenient starting-point for the
application of this principle of relativity, set out the
extreme doctrine of those who seem to admit it least.
They hold (1) that the principle of " natural selection "
is the main determinant of all the evolution of life, (2)
that the attempts of man to eliminate or modify " natural

^ So the doctrine is interpteted in a speech delivered by the Prendoit
of the AuBtralaaian Medical Gongreos at Sydney, September, 1911
(quoted in the Economic Journal for September, 1912). But why
wUiontU T

400 COMMUNITY bk. m.

selection " defeat themselves or, if they succeed at all,
do evil instead of good. They therefore tell us (3) that
we ought not to interfere with the operation of that
principle. Once more we have the transition from the
descriptive to the imperative law, and once more we shall
find the transition to be invalid.

(It is significant, we may note in passing, that a similar
imperative is discovered whenever men begin strenuously
to control the social environment. The same latsaez-faire
was proclaimed when the first serious attempts were made
to protect men and women and children from the
operation of uncontrolled industrialism, and is again
proclaimed at every transition from competition to
co-operation as between individuals, associations, or
oommunities. The same spectre cries '' Back " at every
turn of the road, and it is to be laid everywhere in the
same way.)

The principle of " natural selection," so far from being
absolute and alone determinative of evolution, is (1) at
no stage of life an all-sufficient explanation, and (2) less
and less adequate, as community grows, to account for
each successive development of life within community.
The principle of "natural selection" looks upon life
simply as acted upon by natural forces, but the more
life grows the more it acts back on these. The develop-
ment of life is the development of selective forces of
another order than those we call "natural." The kind
of aelecUon is reUUive to the kind of life.

(!) It is impossible within our limits to set out the
evidence which has led the great majority of modem
scientists to regard " natural selection " as by itself an
inadequate explanation of organic evolution. It is indeed
unnecessary for us to do so, if we can show the gradual
diminution of its rdle within the world of community.
It may, therefore, suffice to repeat that all life is active

CH. VII. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 401

and itself makes in part the conditions under which alone
selection can take place. If life displays an infinity
of forms, if in its highest manifestation it reveals an
infinity of individualities, the very existence of these is
sufficient proof that environment provides no single and
inexorable test of fitness to survive within it.

(2) All socialisation involves the increased operation
of socially-determined selective forces and the consequent
decrease of the selective activity of the forces of outer
nature. We may point out some of the ways in which
this principle is revealed.

(a) The growth of socialisation, involving as it does
increased economy of and control over material resources,
takes the edge ofi the " struggle for Ufe." It does not
dim i nish struggle but it transforms it, so that it becomes
a struggle for something other than mere life, for the
goods of Ufe however understood. Now, where the
struggle is not for Ufe, failure in the struggle does not
necessarily mean the forfeiture of Ufe. The defeated in
the struggle neither die nor cease to reproduce their
kind — on the contrary they often breed the more for
their adversity, so completely is the principle of selection
transformed by the very existence of society.

(&) The less prolific a species is, the less possible is
its salvation by ''natural selection." The method of
^' natural selection " presupposes a considerable pre-
ponderance of birth-rate over survival-rate, the surplus
being eliminated as less ** fit," less " adapted." Now
we have seen that with the growth of society the surplus
of birth-rate over survival-rate diminishes constantly, and
therefore the method of a selective death-rate becomes
less and less effective.

When Huxley, only a quarter of a century ago, was
discussing the possibiUties of human control over environ-
ment, he saw one grave difficulty besetting that accom-

2.C

402 COMMUNITY bk. m.

plishment . * ' The Eden would have its serpent, and a very
subtle beast too. Man shares with the rest of the living
world the mighty instinot of reproduction and its conse-
quence, the tendency to multiply with great rapidity.
The better the measures of the administrator achieved
their object, the more completely the destructive agencies
of the state of nature were defeated, the less would that
multiplication be checked." ^ Consequently, as multipli-
cation advanced, '' the fierce struggle for existence must
recommence and destroy that peace, which is the funda-
mental condition of the maintenance of the state of art
against the state of nature." But it is now manifest that
as civilisation advances multiplication does not also
advance. In the lower world multiplication does not
mean increase, because the high death-rate counter-
balances the high birth-rate. In the world of civilisation
a different equilibrium seems in process of being attained,
one not imposed but willed. The transition from one
to the other, like all transitions, is perilous, but the
process cannot be denied. Nor should we regard it as
necessarily evil. It is needful to protest against the
blind and clamorous arithmeticians who can count heads
but cannot read the signs of the time, who measure the
progress or decay of a people by the increase or decrease
of its surplus of births over deaths, never reflecting that
there waits somewhere a limit beyond which increase may
be disastrous, and that there are for peoples, and for
all mankind, periods and stages of numerical equilibrium
determined, according to the development of Ufe, either
by ruthless outer forces or by the spirit of self -adjustment
within society. Again we see that the greater the develop-
ment, the more inadequate the method of " natural
selection " proves.

How inadequate that method proves within society is

^ ProUffomena to EvoktHon and Ethics (1894).

OH. vn. SOCilALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 403

seen if we consider some oonditions which stimulate the
growth of population. " Misery promotes population,"
ran the mid- Victorian formula,^ and the wretched popu-
lation so produced breed new misery for themselves and
a further posterity — a vicious circle of misery. The
population statistics of many lands now show that high
birth-rate, high death-rate, low efficiency, and low
standards of living are in general directly correlated.
There are sufficient grounds for believing that the Mal-
thusian order of causality, which made high birth-rate
entirely consequence and not cause of high death-rate,
is not adequate to explain the facts. The whole social
situation — inefficiency, poverty, ignorance, lack of fore-
sight, low standard of life — ^breeds the wasteful equi-
librium of high birth-rate and high death-rate. A
different social situation which, measured by our criteria
of development, is higher in the scale creates a new and
in the best sense a more economical equilibrium.*

'' In degenerate families," according to Dr. Tredgold,
** where children are passed over to the special schools,
there is an average of 7*3 children, excluding still-bom, as
compared with 4 for families whose children attend public
elementary schools." ' These facts illustrate in the first
place the general law that the less advanced breed the
most, but there is a further point to be noted. These
degenerate families live in a social world which not they
but their superiors have built, and actually endanger its
welfare by sharing its advantages. For outside the world

1 Cf. Thornton, On OverpapukOion (1846).

* For the facts of. Newshokne and Stevenaon, Journal of the Royal
SuaiHioal Sooieiy, 1906 ; Bertillon, BuUeUn de rimtUiU InUmatumale
de StaHaUque; and Mobert, Studien zur BevMerungthewegung in
DeutaMand, A good short review of these facts is given in Taussig,
Prineiples of Economics, Vol. II.

' Quoted from Mr. and Mrs. Whetham, The family and the Naiion,
p. 71.

404 COMMUNITY bx. m.

of social law these certainly would never have lived on to
reproduce their kind. Here, then, is a socially-created .
danger, and the dangers it creates society itself must
overcome.

We have nullified the methods of ^'nature," which
lead down from barbarism to savagery and the dark
worlds of lower life, and we can never restore these
methods unless we ourselves take again that downward
road. Besides, these methods, like all unintelligent
methods, were spendthrift, imperfectly efficient, repres-
sive of good not less than of evil. But the services
rendered by that imperfect and ruthless ministry are
still necessary. Since the " natural " selective agency
diminishes, the more perfect and direct selective agency
of human purpose must increase. The '' nahiral " method
is a selective death-rate, now of less avail because it selects
too late ; the finer method is a selective birth-rate, the only
adeqvate method in a world in which the excess of repro-
duction over survival constantly diminishes.

(c) The selective efficiency of disease becomes less witii
the growth of society. In wild nature, disease claims its
victims more rapidly, and leaves them no opportunity to
reproduce their kind. It is quite other under human
conditions. Those who fall victims to the very worst
diseases, those who do not recover, yet linger on to
reproduce a weakened offspring. In fact, the curious
reversal of *' natural selection " which we have already
noticed seems to hold here also, for these are often more
productive than the healthy. If they mated with them-
selves alone, the disease might, by its earlier incidence
in the successive generations, act selectively, in other
words, eliminate its victims ; but intermarriage does not
follow these lines, and no such result is actually attained.
There is only one way left, it becomes necessary not
simply to combat disease where it already exists, but

OH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 406

still more to prevent it. To that end social man is now
beginning, none too soon, to apply the resources of society.
The trial of the organism by disease is not as individualistic
an affair as our forefathers' conception of the day of
judgment. In society the stronger and the weaker are
so bound up together that in certain respects the weak-
ness of the weaker weakens the strength of the stronger.
The perception of this fact changes our whole outlook.
Take the simplest of all cases, that where the wage earner
of a family is struck down by some disease. If no cure
be found, his dependents, the healthy members of the
family, become destitute, suffer privation, are weakened,
and perhaps in turn contract the disease, to the endan-
gering of a wider community. If, on the other hand,
medical skill, under that social control which should
always accompany social interdependence, find a cure,
it means not only the restoration of the affected member,
but also the probable preservation of the health and
vigour of the rest. Again, social conditions greatly in-
crease the dangers of infection from disease, so that it
has opportunities never given to it in nature. Now it
is the young who are most endangered by infection,^
and therefore it is vitally important for the race that
society should protect its children from the dangers it
creates for them. If the lives of individuals were isolated,
disease might perhaps be regarded as a purely beneficent
agency, but how can we hold to that doctrine if we
realise the interdependence of men ? In truth disease
becomes a poorer selective agency as society advances,
and we must find better agencies to replace it.

It is said, on the contrary, that the preventive agencies
of man are useless or worse, and that ^' Nature is solving

^ " Young animals are oai>able of being infected by a smaller quantity
of microbes than adults.** (Archdall Reid, The Principles of Herediiy^
p. 129.) *' Young Knglmh soldiers perish more readily of cholera and
dysentery than adults.** (/bid., p. 173.)

406 COMMUNITY bk. m.

the problem for us." ^ Nothing could be more erroneous.
" Nature " solves no problem which society creates. We
have seen that in society disease does not eliminate itself
by eliminating its victims — ^it is alas ! too obvious that
to wait for ''Nature's" aid is to wait on the bank till
the stream runs past. It is, happily, also becoming clear
that the purposive activity of man can, here as elsewhere,
progressively control his environment. Whether or not
the bold prophecy of Sir E. Ray Lankester be true, that
'' by the unstinted application of known methods of in-
vestigation and consequent controlling action, all epidemic
disease could be abolished within a period so short as
fifty years," ' it is certain that in a much shorter period,
since men have begun to realise the need of control,
most encouraging results have been attained.' The posi-

^ Cf. Karl Pearson, TvbercuUma, Heredity, and EnvinmmerUf p. 45.
* Bomanea Lecture, 1905.

> Professor Karl Pearson, in his pamphlet on Tuberculoaia, Heredity,
and Environment, provides graphs sho¥mig that the rate oJfaU in the
death-rate from taberouloeis in this comitry has decreased since the
fight against tuberculosis has become more active. Vi^enoe he aigues
that the fight in question is useless or pernicious. If we take his own
figures and omit others which tell a very difEerent story, the conclusion
remains curiously illogical. If a man digs a pit, let us say, and finds
that the deeper he goes the less is the rate of progress, it would f oUow,
on the same reasoning, that his activity was hindering the work !
Has Professor Pearson never heard of the law of diminishing returns ?
Really, it is curious that so eminent a statistician, who can give you
in exact percentages the correlation of symi>athy, truthfulness, dutiful-
ness, and so forth, as between husband and wife, should fall into the
obvious errors that disfigure the pamphlet in question.

It may be well to give some positive evidence. In France, two
public-spirited men. Professors Calmette and Courmont, instituted a
consistent *' fight against tuberculosis ** in Lille and Lyons respectively.
** That the results were ezceUent was shown by Calmette*s figures.
Before 1901 the public health office in LQle recorded yearly from 1,000
to 1,160 deaths caused by tuberculosis. In 1907, after six years* work
of the dispensary, the record was 860 deaths among 205,625 inhabitants,
and in 1911, 704 deaths among 217,807 inhabitants. Similar results
had been observed in Lyons. From 1900 to 1904 the average death-
rate from tuberculosis had been 35*4 per 10,000 inhabitants; in 1911
it had gone down to 26*1 per 10,000.** (From the account given by Dr.
£. Rist at the Conference on Tuberculosis held in London in 1913.)

It may be added that in Qermany, where the fight against tuber-

CH. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 407

tive character of these results, the elimination of small-pox
for instance, or the achievements of the Rockefeller
Foundation in combating hookworm and other diseases
stands in striking contrast to the dubious results achieved
when '* Nature " is allowed to solve the problem for us.
The laissez-faire argument rests entirely on precarious
hypotheses. It is not established either (1) that those
who are immune from attack escape by reason of their
essential Ufe-fitness, or (2) that those who are attacked
and recover are stronger and not weaker for the battle
they have fought, or (3) that those who are attacked
and evidently succumb leave the race the stronger for
the elimination of the weaklings. The last of these
hypotheses is disposed of by the considerations we have
already set forth. The other two may be briefly dis-
cussed. (1) The theory of immunity, except for certain
very special cases, is yet unverified. It is in any case
certain that the immunity '' naturally " acquired by a
people, say against consumption or malaria, is always
of a most partial character, contrasting sharply with the
immunity which man has secured for himself against
certain diseases. Again, recent researches tend to show
that, where immunity does exist, it is of a specialised
character, in other words, it is not that the body as a
whole is rendered stronger and therefore more resistant,
but that special protective substances are evolved to
counteract the poisoning agencies. Immunity, so far,
would mean not general fitness, but fitness in respect
of immunity. We do indeed find a champion of ' ' Nature ' '
telling us that measles confers distinct benefit on people
by making them immune — ^to measles I ^ One may note

culosis has been very Bystematically conducted, the rate of JaU in the
death-rate from tuberculosifl has increaatd in recent yean. In Praflsia
since 1892 the death-rate from tuberculosis has declined about 50 per
cent.

^ Cf. Archdall Reid, Heredity, pp. 112-3.

408 COMMUNITY bk. m.

in this connection that perhaps the most recent theory
to account for the rekUive immunity of Europeans from
tuberculosis — ^that of Professor Metchnikoff — ^regards it
as due to the existence of mild strains of the disease with
which the young unwittingly inoculate themselves. '' It
is a matter of chance," so Sir E. Ray Lankester expounds
the theory, ^' whether on the one hand, the child thus
becomes infected with a comparatively mild or benign
' strain ' of the bacillus producing only scrofula or hip-
joint disease, or possibly no noticeable malady, but re-
sulting in protective immunity, or, on the other hand,
has the misfortune to infect itself with a deadly * strain '
producing pulmonary phthisis and consequent death.''
Whether this be so or not, it is quite clear that in respect
of that other disease which most of all endangers the
life of future generations and which is alarmingly preva-
lent in the civilised world to-day, neither is immunity
being acquired nor is infection a consequence (but only
a cause) of physical disability,

(2) The victory may or may not be to the strong, it
remains unproved that the victors emerge stronger and
not weaker for the battle. The virulent bacillus is a kind
of poison, or poison producer. Is it, then, a good thing
for the organism to be tried by poison ? We shall see
presently how difficult it is to answer in the affirmative.

A further point may be made. There is indisputable
evidence that, however well selected men may be in
respect of previous health-character, they fall victims
to the diseases favoured by unhealthy conditions. For
instance, soldiers, a selected body in respect of general
health, suffer far more from tuberculosis than the general
population, because of barrack-conditions. It is also
quite clear from statistics ^ that the life lived in prisons,
nunneries, etc., increases susceptibility to tuberculosis.

^ Cf. Hireoh, QtograpMcal and Hiatorieal Pathology, III., p. 222 ff.

ok. vn. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 409

We mast therefore ask of those who hold that this kind
of " struggle " is good for the race, How much of it is
good ? The amount which our prison-conditions induce,
the amount which our city-conditions induce, or how
much ?

{d) An analogous argument holds in respect of all con-
ditions of life which have evil effects on the present
generation — these are, at any rate wherever society is
firmly established, evil also for the race, for the future
generations. The case of alcoholic poisoning, already
referred to, is here apposite. We cannot admit here the
easy doctrine of immunity which the natural-selectionists
uphold. "It is an absolute rule to which there is no
exception," says one of them, " that, given an abundant
supply of alcohol, every race is temperate strictly in
proportion to its past experience of the poison." ^ This
is an entirely misleading statement, as the case of France
alone is sufficient to prove. And again, which is more
temperate in respect of opium, England with its little
experience of it or China with its great experience 1 If
it be said that the supply is less abundant in England,
that, so far as it is true at all, is due to social conditions.

Or take the case of those who work in poisonous
materials such as lead. The effect of their trial by
poison is undoubtedly to lower the general average of
health as well €bs to increase the mortality-rate and to
decrease the birth-rate.' The effect of industrial poisons
on women-workers is especially serious. According to
Dr. Hirt,' the mortality among infants bom of women
employed at a certain form of glass-making is 56 per
cent., and for the children of women who work in lead

^ Reid, The Principles of Heredity, p. 199.

* Cf. Legge and €k>adby. Lead Poieoning and Lead AbsorpUon (1912).
The diminution of the birth-rate is a Bpecifio result of the poison.

' Die gewerhUche TkatigkeU der ^ratien.

410 COMMUNITY bk. m.

it is 40 per cent. The selective birth-rate is not improved
by the selection, but worsened, worsened in proportion
to the activity of the selective agent. Prince Kropotkin
has observed that "those who survive a famine, or a
severe epidemic of cholera, or small-pox, or diphtheria,
such as we see them in uncivilised countries, are neither
the strongest, nor the healthiest, nor the most intelligent.
No progress could be based on those survivals — ^the less
so as all survivors usually come out of the ordeal with
an impaired health, like . . . the garrison of a fortress
which has been compelled to live for a few months on
half rations, and comes out of its experience with a
broken health, and subsequently shows a quite abnormal
mortality." ^ The more our knowledge extends the more
evidence have we that the general standard of ill-health
is highest in the classes where the death-rate is highest,
and therefore a high death-rate cannot be regarded com-
placently as working for the welfare of the race.* For
it is due to evil conditions which continuously do injury
to the successive generations.

In all these cases the selective agency is in some measure
the cause or even the essence of the degeneracy which it
also in some measure eliminates. This truth is either
ignored or denied by those who rely on these agencies of
selection. But the evidence is clear. Consider the
crucial instance, the selective action revealed in infant
mortality. "It cannot be too distinctly recognised,"

^ Mtaual Aid (2nd e<L), p. 73.

* The introduction of a National Insurance Act has been the means
of providing more exact evidence of this fact. Here is an illustration.
*' One panel doctor with a large East End practice has had throu^
his surgery within the year 81 per cent, of all the people on his list.
Another in South London has haid 88 per cent. He deolarea emphatic-
ally, and doctors in other towns and in other parte of London bear the
same testimony, that what these people are suffering from is essentially
want of nourisfajnent, want of warm clothing, want of decent housing,
and want of r o ot i n short, extreme poverty.** (From the report on
the working of the Insurance Act issued by The New StaUmnan, 1914.)

cH. vu. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 411

says Sir George Newman, '' that a high infant mortality-
rate almost necessarily denotes a prevalence of those
causes and conditions which in the long run determine a
degeneration of race." ^ The two exhaustive reports *
prepared by Dr. Newsholme, the Medical Officer of the
Local Government, confirm this statement, showing in
particular that, all over the country, the infant-mortality-
rate and the death-rate at subsequent ages go together.

It follows, as a general principle, that social conditions
which are bad for '' the individual," i.e. for the members
of the present generation, are bad also for the race. It
is those who are most immersed in the whirl of the struggle
against misery and poverty whose health — ^to say nothing
of other qualifications of life — is most endangered and
enfeebled. It is those who strive most for life whose
own lives suffer the most. It follows also, on the positive
side, that the development of society is, and must always
be, bound up with the development of the principle of
rational or purposive selection, as distinct from the
principle of " natural selection."

Merely to state this fact is to raise a cloud of prejudices.
Those who believe in the undiminished operation of
'* natural selection " among men are sometimes least
ready to admit the operation of rational selection. Others
discover imder the expressions '' selective birth-rate " and
'' rational selection " the methods of the cattle-breeder,
with perhaps a despotic State as master of the stud.
But such ideas are grotesque distortions of the principle
we have stated. The operation of State-control is neces-
sarily most limited, and can only prevent the repro-
duction of those who reveal so deep-rooted and fatal a

^Infant MorkMy, Preface. This work, and Dr. Newsholme's
reports, should be studied by everyone who is interested in this funda-
mental question.

* Local OovemmwU Board, 1910, Ckl. 6263, and 1913, Ckl. 6909.

412 COMMUNITY HK.m.

defect that it taints the source of life, and gravely en-
dangers, in the interdependence of men, the integrity of the
lives of those around them, as well as of the possible off-
spring of themselves. The conditions which fall under this
condemnation are chiefly syphilis and certain forms of
insanity ; and all who know the social effects of these
realise the absolute necessity of positive measures in
respect of them.^ An extension of that knowledge would
open the eyes of the whole world to the necessity of
control. It is significant that in recent times that know-
ledge has in fact been growing.' There will doubtless
some day result a directer activity, social and not merely
political, to overcome the evils thus revealed.

For the operation of social selection is an infinitely
wider and more continuous process than the direct
activity of any State. All social activity, being pur-
posive, is selective, and thus social selection increases in
intensity as society grows. It operates most directly in
the form of sexual selection. Now this becomes more
direct and intimate with the growth of personality,

^ It is BometimeB said that, sinoe many men of genius have revealed
symptoms of insanity and come of stocks tainted with insanity, these
measures would diminish the uprising of genius. This objection has
been answered by Mr. Havelock Ellis, who well protests against the
reckless methods of those alienists who regard as insanity all divergence
from the mean. Adopting, as a means of determining genius, an objec-
tive and impersonal scheme of selection on the basis of the Dictitmary
of NoiUoTud Biography, he finds that : — ** In not one per cent, can
definite insanity be traced among the parents of British men and women
of genius. No doubt this result is below the truth ; the insanity of the
parents must sometimes have escaped the biographer's notice. But
even if we double the percentage to escape this source of error the
proportion still remains insignificant.'* He concludes : — " There is no
need to minimise the fact that a certain small proportion of men of
genius have displayed highly morbid characters, nor to deny that in a
large proportion of cases a slightly morbid strain may, with care, be
detected in the ancestry of genius. But the influence of eugenic con-
siderations can properly be brought to bear only in the case of grossly
degenerated stocks. Here, so far as our knowledge extends, ihe parentage
of genius nearly always escapes. The destruction of genius, and ita
creation, alike elude the eugenist.'* {ConUmparary Review, Oct., 1913.)

> One might instance, as in most significant contrast to ihe eariier
attitude towards this subject, M. Brieuz' play, Lee Avariie.

CH. vu. SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 413

and it depends in great measure upon the standards
and ideals developed within a community. Thus the
ideals of each generation determine — ^not the ideal
alone, but — ^the very life and character of all that
succeed.

The selective forces operative within society are ex-
ceedingly complex and diversified, and the attempt even
to enumerate them would carry us far. But this much
is obvious, that these are not outer forces merely active
upon men, but forces revealing and springing from their
actual natures. They are purpose-determined forces, and
are themselves rational in so far as human purposes are
rational. The development of community means, there-
fore, the increase of rational selection.

We may here point out some forms of social selection
still operative among men which are the reverse of rational,
and which therefore are incompatible with any complete
development of community. (1) In so far as those other-
wise less fit are preferred in marriage because of their
economic advantages, and those otherwise more fit are
prevented from marriage because of their economic dis-
ability, there is operative an evil process of social selection.
(2) Likewise, in so far as social conditions of any kind
favour the celibacy of the vigorous in mind or body,
there is operative an evil process of social selection. This
was the crime of which Galton so eloquently accused the
Roman Church.^ It is probable also that the segregation
of military conscripts into barracks for two or three
years, not only enforcing a temporary celibacy, but de-
laying the period at which they can attain an economic
position such as would justify marriage, as well as creating
habits opposed to married life, works in the same direction.'

^ Hereditary Oeniua, in the chapter entitled " Influences that Affect
the Natural Ability of Nations.**

* See Forel, The Sexual QuesHon, pp. 336 tL

414 COMMUNITY bk. m.

(3) The institution of war is an evil selective agency, for
it always destroys a portion of the youth and strength
of warring nations. It was pointed out by Darwin him-
self that the more '' civilised " war becomes the more it
proves a maleficent selective agent, passing over the
weaklings and choosing for its victims the healthy and
vigorous. If war, as some still blindly assert, were
beneficent in its selective work. Central Europe, after
the terrible ordeal of the Thirty Years' War, would have
emerged stronger in will and fibre. In fact it emerged
crushed, broken, and wretched, in parts so stricken that
they required centuries to regain their previous vigour.
The evil selective influence of war has been recently
pointed out in a convincing way by the American biologist,
Professor Jordan.^ How disastrous its effect was on the
civilisations of Greece and Rome, the remarkable work
of the historian. Otto Seeck, reveals.*

These are but some definitely evil forms of social
selection. But social selection is ubiquitous within
society, though constantly changing its form as society
changes. It works good in so far as human purposes
are both good and enlightened, evil in so far as human
purposes are evil or, more commonly, determined by
ignorance of the means to good.

§ 6. Oonclusion.

It appears that after all one of the chief resvMs of
selection has been the evolution of intelligence. It would
be unfortunate if '' natural selection," which is said to
have evolved the brain, should then forbid us the use
of it ! Already the mind of man, though it casts only
a small circle of light, infinitely small in contrast to the

^ In various works, of which The Human HarveH is the most notable.

* Oeachichie de Uniergangs der arUiken WeU, Vol. I., Bk, II., c. 3
(3rd ed., 1910).

OH. TO SOCIALISATION AND ENVIRONMENT 415

darkness which rings it round, has found, if it has the
strength to follow, the way of its own welfare. In truth,
if mankind were only willing to accept the aid of that
one most obvious and indisputable law, that like tends
to beget like — they could ensure for ever — or till that
inconceivable time when physical conditions can no longer
be controlled to the service of life— health of body and
of mind to the successive generations of their race. Men
have never tried to cure many of the social evils which
they call incurable. They are incurable only if they
cannot tuiU to cure them.

The enemy is not civilisation and not culture. We
have not been thrust out of Nature's Eden because we
have " become as gods, knowing good and evil." It is
not civilisation that we must blame for our evils, but
what remains uncivilised in our civilisation, not culture,
but what remains uncultivated within our culture. It
is the evil social conditions, perhaps above all the evil
economic conditions, which we have — ^not positively
willed or made, but failed to destroy, the evil social con-
ditions which have been the unwilled accompaniments
of our willing, the unpurposed effects of our purposes,
and whose abolition demands not less but more willing,
not poorer but fuller purpose, not a surrender to nature
but a completer dominion over her.

Men reply, " Tou improve at your peril. Look at
the cultivated animal or plant, it is no longer able to
face natural conditions, it is an alien in its world." But
there is a difference. The animal or plant has been
bred in a particular direction by a creative purpose out-
side its own. When that is removed, it is no longer
sustained by any inner force. But social man has bred
himself. His development is the revelation of creative
purpose within humanity, it is the manifestation of his
own nature. And you cannot remove that creative pur-

4 1 COMMUNITY bk. m. ch. vu

pose without removing humanity. Furthermore, the con-
trary argument presumes that "nature" is only a few
centuries or millenia behind us, whereas it is unknown
aeons back. Or rather, this state of nature never did
exist for man. Because life and environment are cor-
relative, the '' state of nature " never was the environ-
ment of man ; where it existed, man did not yet
exist.

It seems a legitimate inference that man is right in
going forward tmflinchingly to the further development
of mutual service and protection, is right in his persistent
battle against disease and pestilence and every organic
evil. Doubtless there is peril in going forward, but there
is peril also in standing still, and in standing still there
is no reward, no further conquest, but only the final
certainty of all standing still — defeat. Our instincts have
led us into the great adventure, our reason must carry
us on. There is no return.

And the adventure is at any rate worth whUe. We
are not tethered animals living the unthinking, instinctive,
self-adjusted, merely animal life. Untethered, we may
lose our way — ^the animal cannot, having none to lose —
but the risk is insignificant beside the prospect of gaining
the ever farther horizons, lands of the promise of ever
higher fulfilments.

To-day we can never solve to-morrow's problems, we
cannot even know how to-morrow's problems will appear.
Therefore it is wise for the social philosopher to take
no thought for the morrow, in the sense of seeking the
solution of difficulties which are still to come. For the
morrow will have its own better and better-placed thinkers
to answer its own questions.

CHAPTER VIII

SYNTHESIS

Wb have now aeon the unity that- u nHArliAQ ^11 the fomiR
6t o^nmm;q^t\l ^ftYflloprnfinl^ It is t.hf> "Tiity which life,
if we seek deeply enough, always revealfl . As in each
life, so in the continuity of life through successive genera-
tions, all the characters of development reveal a single
principle. All growth of personalitv in the members of.
cpmm unity involves,, a correspondent^cha nge in the ir
relations to on e another, i n the social structur e, i n the
custom s, institutions, and associations of com munity
The development of persons and the development of
interpersonal relations thus form a single field of study,
though we may centre our interests on one or other aspect.
In this work our interest has been centred on the inter-
personal or social aspect, but we must start from the
unity of both aspects in order to understand it. This
was revealed in our first law, which gave the clue to the
whole development. Soci<»-l ]ftftti"n ^pf\ inHivirlnfl^ Kflation
develop pari pew w^^ The unity of these two factors is
revealed in every life as well as in the whole they con-
stitute, for that imity is personality. This must be the
basis of any account of communal development. The
actual development of personality attained in and through
community by its members is ihe measure of the importance
these aUach to personality both in themselves and in iheir
feUow-men. By aid of this clue we can bring all the

418 COMMUNITY bk. ra. ch. vm.

other aspects of communal development, the growth of
communal economy, the growth of environmental control,
under a single law.

To show the unity of communal development is to
show also the line of communal development, the direction
of a road that stretches, who knows, to a yet undreamed-of
distance. Commimity has advanced along that road, not
in any steady progress, but in spite of halts, wanderings,
and retreats. As it has advanced, the meaning of its
march has become, though stUl dim, yet clearer. Blind
impulses are superseded by conscious forces, whereupon it
appears that much that was blind in its operation — blind
to us whom it impelled — ^was yet not meaningless, but
continuous with what now reveals itself as our own con-
scious purpose. If that purpose grows still clearer, the
movement of community will become more straight-
forward, towards an age for which the records of this
present time will be a memory of '^ old unhappy far-off
things."

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A.

A CRITICISM OF THE NEO-HEGELIAN IDENTIFICATION

OF "SOCIETY" AND "STATE"

{Extract from an article eontributed to " The Philosophical

Review'* of January 1911)

It is a noteworthy fact that most of the serious attempts,
during the last century and a half, to reach a comprehensive
political principle, have owed their inspiration to Hellenic
ideas. This is as true for Rousseau, '' citizen of Geneva,"
whose abstract love of '' nature " transmuted itself into a
very concrete affection for a city-state, as for certain writers
of our own day, and especially Professor Bosanquet, with
his ideal of '' Christian Hellenism," ^ itself inspired by the
Hellenic thought of Hegel. This Hellenism has indeed
taught us so much that it may seem ungrateful to accuse
it of misleading us. Yet the conditions of our modem life
are in some respects very different from those of Hellenic
society. In particular, with^l the small circles of the Greek
world certain distinctions lay concealed which in the wider
reach of the modem community are or should be manifest.
An application to modem life of a purely Hellenic theory
is on that account dangerous, and seems to the writer to
have in fact misled many of those theorists who, from Rousseau
onwards, have adopted it — ^who have found in Hellenism the
key to the modem State.

Within the small circle of the Greek city, the distinction
of State and community lay concealed. It might be in-
teresting to trace the rise of this distinction in the political
consciousness of later ages,^ but here it must suffice to say

\ Essays and Addresses, p. 48.

* Ritchie (Principles of State'InUrJerence, p. 157) quotes an early
instance, vis., St. Thomas Aquinas {De regimine prindpwn) translates
the voTuTuc^ t^v of Aristotle by animal socials et poUticum.

422 COMMUNITY app. a

thatjthe distinction is an essential one, and that its validity
is shown by the incoherence of the logic which obscures or
denies it. In particular, the theory of the general will is, in
the hands of most of its interpreters, a virtual denial of this
necessary distinction, and I propose before going further to
examine briefly the forms of this doctrine held respectively
by Rousseau, Hegel, and Professor Bosanquet, and to show
that in every case they are vitiated by a too narrow HelloAism.
1. The General Will, said Rousseau, is the true sovereign
and ultimate authority in a State, and, in its obvious sense
this is the accepted doctrine of all democratic States, whose
machinery is so constructed that, in one way or another, the
ultimate decision lies with the mass of voters, the '' people."
Politically, then, the '* general will " is and must remain
sovereign. So far Rousseau is justified. But Rousseau, not
content with the necessary political sovereignty of the people,
went on to show not that such a sovereignty was a moral
thing, but that it was identical with a moral sovereignty.
The general will, Rousseau explained, cannot err. The right-
ful sovereign must act rightfully. Now, that the sovereign
" can do no wrong " is a logical and obvious legal position.
Legality cannot transcend law ; morality can, and it is just
the necessary moral righteousness, not the l^gal rightness, of
the sovereign that Rousseau was concerned to uphold. For
him the political organisation was in no way made distinct
from the complex and indeterminate social structure, and
therefore the bonds of State were just the bonds that keep
a society together, the moral sanctions of society. Thence
arose the refinements of theory by which Rousseau vainly
tries to maintrfiin the identification. First, the general will
is distinguished from the '' will of all " — not, in truth, a dis-
tinction between two kinds of political willing — and then it
is asserted that the former always wills the good, though it
may be unenlightened. The legal formula asserts the legal
rightness of the sovereign's action and leaves its moral right-
ness open, but the dictum of Rousseau asserts its moral
rightness and thus m€kkes the political sovereign an anomalous
'' person " liable, it may be, to intellectual error but in every
other respect infallible—a ''person'" absolutely good but
somewhat short*sighted. It is the danger of modern Hell^iism

AFP, A "SOCIETY" AND STATE" 423

to confound the actual with the ideal, and in this strange
conception of inerrant will united to fallible judgment we
have a good instance of that confusion. Here already we
find Rousseau losing hold of the political principle, seeting a
political sovereign which no State can ever recognise because
no State can ever find it.

Rousseau identified the common will with the good will,
but without going into the difficult places of psychology we
may say that, although it may be to the geners^ interest or
good that the general will should be fulfilled, the general
will is not therefore the will for the general good. And the
practical difficulty is no less than the psychological. A will
which cannot be determined by any positive standard can
never be a legislative authority or source of positive law.
Will is liable to persuasion, and the persuading will is there-
fore sovereign over the persuaded. So the will of the people
may be the will of a single individual, does sometimes mean
the will of two or three. To analyse the complex of influences
moral and social determining a given act of will, a specific
act of legislation, is difficult in the extreme ; to isolate among
these determinants an original or sovereign will is impossible.
For all practical purposes we must find a definite sovereign,
a political sovereign ; we must ask not whether it is Pericles
persuading the demos or Aspasia persuading Pericles, but
what will it is that wills the decree, that actually commands
or consents.

The whole attempt to identify the principle of democracy
— as any other political principle — ^with that of morality is
fore-doomed to failure, and ends in setting on the political
throne a crowned abstraction. For a will that is not realised,
that is no man's will, is meaningless. What profit is it that
this " general will " does not err — ^if it does nothing at aU ?
Even if on any occasion the '' general will " as understood
by Rousseau came into being, it would simply be an interest-
ing social fact, a coincidence ; for political purposes it would
be identical with a 9na;on<^-will. In every case, therefore,
the majority-will — ^which extended far enough becomes the
" wiU of all " — ^must be the political principle, and to deter-
mine political obligation in terms of any other is worse than
useless.

424 COMMUNITY app. a

It is his consistent attempt to identify the political with
the social order that leads Rousseau into the vagaries of his
political logic. Why cannot the people be represented or
act through deputy ? Logically there seems to be no reason
why the general will should not will legislation by its repre-
sentative. But Rousseau is thinking of the whole complex
of ideals and interests and aims animating a society — and
that cannot be represented. Why, again, does the Ctmtrai
Social ^ afPord us that strangest of all spectacles, the apostle
of freedom prescribing '' dogmas of civil religion," declaring
that " if anyone, after publicly acknowledging those dogmas,
acts like an unbeliever of them, he should be punished with
death " ? Again the answer is that Rousseau has utterly
failed to distinguish the sanctions of all social order from
the proper bonds of the political organisation.

2. Hegel * finds fault with Rousseau because, while rightly
adhering to the principle of will, he '' conceived of it only
in the determinate form of the individual will and regarded
the universal will not as the absolutely reasonable wiU (an
undfur aich Vemiinfiige des Willens) but only as the common
will that proceeds out of the individual will as conscious."
This is to accuse the author of a political treatise because he
has not written a work on metaphysics when the writer has
in fact merely mixed up the two. After all, is there not a
common will, and is not this common will the basis of any
State or organisation ? Behind the definite institution, the
work of conscious will, the philosopher may look for a ration-
ality or universality which that conscious will yet has not
for itself. It is at least permissible to search. But no fact
is explained away by the greater rationality of another fact,
and for the State, for any organisation, the fact of will is just
the fact of '' common will, proceeding out of the individual
will as conscious." The will on which State-institutions are
based must be a conscious will, the will of the citizens, or
they would never come to be. State-institutions are not
built like the hexagons of a beehive, by an instinct of uncon-
scious co-operation. And though, in the construction of any
institution, we may build wiser than we know, the plan of

^ Contrat Social, Bk. IV., c. 8.

' Orundlinien der PhUoaophie dea Rechta, { 268.

APP. A " SOCIETY '' AND '* STATE " 425

the building and the co-operation of the builders must be
consciously resolved upon.

To H^gel as to Rousseau there was ever present the tendency
to interpret the State in terms of Hellenism, and that in spite
of his being credited with discovering the distinction of State
and society. In reality his account of that distinction is
neither clear nor sati^actory. The society which he dis-
tinguishes from the State — ^what he calls biirgerlidie OeseU-
achafi — seems to hang strangely between actuality and ideality.
It is a community resting on the *' particularity " of desires,
on economic need, and yet in discussing this economic com-
munity, which is " different " from the State, Hegel treats of
law and police, essentially State-institutions. On the other
hand, the economic system is not the only social grouping,
though a primary one, which can be distinguished from the
State organisation ; we might equally distinguish, e.g., the
institutions through which arts and sciences develop, the
educational system, ecclesiastical institutions, charitable insti-
tutions, and so on, terms which cover a kaleidoscopic variety
of constantly re-forming elements.^ But the State cannot be
regarded as absorbing within itself the free and living inter-
play of all these social forces ; for one thing they are many
of them not bounded by the limits of any State ; and there-
fore it is absurd to say, tout court, that the State is " developed
spirit," '' the world the spirit has made for itself," and so
forth.

3. The foregoing argumept bears directly on the miscon-
ception of the '' general will," and I propose next to consider
the more or less Hegelian account of that doctrine set forth
in Professor Bosanquet's book, TAe Philoaophical Theory of
the State. In no modem work are the inconsistencies and
contradictions of applied Hellenism more apparent.

Professor Bosanquet's general position is as follows : Liberty
is the condition of our '' being ourselves " or willing ourselves,
and this liberty is identified with the life of the State. '' It
is such a ' real ' or rational will that thinkers after Bousseau

^ HegeFs incidental treatment of these parts of the social system is
bewildering. What is to be made of such a statement as the following :
** Inasmuch as consciousness (Wiasen) has its seat in the State, science
{WisMtuchafi) too has it there, and not in the church " 7 (f 270.)

426 COMMUNITY aff. a

have identified with the State. In this theory they are follow-
ing the principles of Plato and Aristotle, no less than the
indications which Rousseau furnished by his theory of the
general will in connection with the work of the legislator.
The State, when thus regarded, is to the general life of the
individual much as we saw the family to be with regard to
certain of his impulses. The idea is that in it, or by its help,
we find at once discipline and expansion, the transfiguration
of partial impulses, and something to do and to care for,
such as the nature of a human self demands." He adds two
considerations '^ to make this conception less paradoxical to
the English mind." " (a) The State, as thus conceived, is
not merely the political fabric. The term State accents indeed
the political aspect of the whole, and is opposed to the notion
of an anarchical society. But it includes the entire hierarchy
of institutions by which life is determined, from the family
to the trade, and from the trade to the Church and the Uni-
versity. It includes all of them, not as the mere collection
of the growths of the country, but as the structure which
gives life and meaning to the political whole, while receiving
from it mutual adjustment, and therefore expansion and a
more liberal air. The State, it might be said, is thus con-
ceived as the operative criticism of all institutions — ^the modi-
fication and adjustment by which they are capable of plajnng
a rational part in the object of human will. ... (6) The
State, as the operative criticism of all institutions, is neces-
sarily force ; and in the last resort, it is the only recognised
and justified force."^

The first and greatest confusion into which Professor
Bosanquet falls is that he uses the term State in two quite
different senses. We find him, on the one hand, defining
the State as a " working conception of hfe " (p. 155), or
even, after Plato, as " the individual writ large " (p. 158) —
and it is clear that here he means by State the unity of all
the social forces at work in a community of human beings ;
on the other hand, when he comes to talk of State-action,
it is at once obvious that he is now using " State " in its
proper significance of ''political society," with its definite
form, its definite and limited type of action. Hence we are

^ The Philosophieal Theory of the SUUe (let ed.), pp. 149-152.

App. A *' SOCIETY " AND " STATE " 427

told that the means of the State are not in pari materia with
the end (p. 191), and are left with the anomalous conclusion
that the ''real will," the ''rational will." the wiU that
wills itself," can never will any positive action whatever, much
less " itself," can only " hinder hindrances " (p. 195). Hin-
drances to what ?

The same confusion underlies Professor Bosanquet's dis-
tinction of " real " and " actual " will, by means of which
he attempts to solve the problem of political obligation. The
distinction intended is itself a true and suggestive one, though
wrongly expressed. It rests on the primary distinction of
" good " and " seeming good." People will what, if they
knew the case fully and truly, they would no longer will.
They will the seeming good because it seems the good. It
is an obvious fact enough, but I may set down as an illus-
tration an instance mentioned by Balzac in the novel Cousin
Pons, "The mortaUty in French hospitals," he declares,
" caused by women who take food privately to their husbands
has been so great that physicians have now resolved to enforce
a rigid personal search of the patients on the days when
their relatives come to see them." Now Professor Bosanquet's
distinction' of " real " and " actual " rather obscures the
psychological relations here involved, and suggests a false
antithesis of " real " and " actual " will. The opposition is
not between two wills, a " real " and an " actual," but within
the single act of willing, between the actual consequence of the
object willed, i.e., the giving of food, and the end it was meant
to serve, the restoration to health of the husbands. There is
but one object willed, the giving of food. We cannot say even
that the health of the husbands was " willed," still less the
death of those husbands. A motive or end is not an act of will,
" real " or otherwise. Would Professor Bosanquet say that
these women " really " willed the recovery of their husbands,
but " actually " willed the giving of food ? ^

It has to be remembered that Professor Bosanquet intro-
duces this distinction of " real " and " actual " will in order

^ It looks as if Professor Bosanquet's distinction rested on such an
opposition as this : They " really " will the recovery of their husbands,
they " actually " catue their death — ^not an opposition in terms of wiU
at all.

428 COMMUNITY app.a

to answer the question of political obligation. *' We have
thus far been attempting to make clear what is meant by the
identification of the State with the real will of the Individual
in which he wills his own nature as a rational being; in
which identification we find the only true account of political
obligation " (p. 158). But this, in fact, does not touch the
real problem. It is only too obvious that an " actual " State
is not the '' real " State of Professor Bosanquet, and the
question of poUtical obligation is : ''On what grounds and
how far is a citizen bound to obey the actual laws of the
State ? " What might be the principle of political obligation
in an ideal State — ^where the question would never arise —
is very different from what must be the principle under
actual political conditions. The will of an actual State, in
respect of any definite act of legislation, is and must be based
on a majority-will. It is not because he finds his '' real '*
will embodied in legislation from which he actually dissents
that the citizen is obedient to the law. A thorough-going
identity of will is in the nature of the case impossible, and
we must look instead for some persistent identity of interest,
giving unity to the fundamental will on which the State,
like any other association, must rest, and ensuring conisent —
but only consent — ^to the secondary acts of will through which
the State fulfils its ends. We ask too much if we expect an
identity of will. In an actual State no individual can have
this ideal, this harmony of his will and the State- will, realised
all the time. Granting the first unity — ^the primary will for
political life resting on the primary good of political life —
we must thereafter be content to rest political obligation on
common good, and at most only indirectly, through that
notion, on common will.

Professor Bosanquet, in fact, refuses to recognise the neces-
sities of the situation. To avoid Bousseau's difficulty that
where a portion of the people must accept the will of another
portion there is no freedom, Professor Bosanquet would
declare that the general will is the rational will and thus
true freedom — a double confusion for, first, the polUieal
principle must be the majority-will, and second, supposing
per ifnpo88^)ile that the majority-will were purely rational,
yet to ideniafy freedom with enforced subjection to reason

APP. A " SOCIETY " AND " STATE " 429

or good, and to call such subjection self -government, is indeed
a *' paradox." Doubtiess a man may be forced to be free —
Rousseau's own dangerous paradox contains a certain truth
— ^but to identify such enforcement with " self-government "
is to strain language and meaning to the breaking point. It
involves an impossible identification of good and will.

On both sides Professor Bosanquet's account fails to answer
the concrete question of political obligation. The conception
of an abstract self willing an abstract good will never be an
explanation of why and when the actual citizen should loyally
identify himself with the positive commands of a very con-
crete government, enforcing measures whose ultimate con-
formity to his own '' true " nature he may not unreasonably
refuse to take for granted.

The basal fallacy of all such views lies, as I have pointed
out, in the identification of State and community, in the
refusal to draw a clear distinction here. *' We have hitherto,"
says Professor Bosanquet, " spoken of the State and Society
as almost convertible terms. And in fact it is part of our
argument that the influences of Society differ only in degree
from the powers of the State, and that the explanation of
both is ultimately the same " (p. 188). This position vitiates
the whole of Professor Bosanquet's account of the State.

Nate. — ^I ought to add that Dr. Bosanquet, in the course
of some private correspondence which has passed between
us, has expressed the view that the distinction between
society and the State is one of importance, and points out
that he has made more of it in the Introduction to the second
edition of The Philaaophiedl Theory of the State, though main-
taining the essential truth of hJB general theory of the State.

APPENDIX B.

THE CX)RRELATION OF LIFE AND ENVIRONMENT
IN THE SPHERE OF HEREDITY.

Whilb it lies within neither the scope nor the competence
of this work to dieouss the biological question referred to in
the text (m. 7. 2), it may be permissible to put forward
some considerations dealing with the philosophical precon-
ceptions imderlying the answer given to it by Weismann
and his followers. To deny the correlation of life and environ-
ment in the sphere of heredity is to maintain, if we believe in
evolution at all, the constant stability and identity of the
germ-plasm throughout all the kinds and stages of organic
life. Can this position be in any sense maintained ?

The whole conception of an absolutely stable germ-plasm
is, as Romanes pointed out in his Examination of Weismanniamy
fall of difficulty. If the germ-plasm is stable and continuous*
then the germ-plasm of the most variant forms of life must,
for all the differences of the expression of life, be somehow
the same, not only derived from, but identical with, that of
some infinitely remote ancestor. The germ-cells of the inccHi
ceivably remote primordial life are seen carrying the " deter
minants " of all the existent variants in genera and species
as well as of the infinitely more numerous variants which
have been and are being lost in the endless '' experimentation '
of nature. If, again, the germ-plasm is stable and continuous
how can it at the same time be so plastic as to admit these
endless variations ? Weismann answers that such questions
involve a misunderstanding. '' I have been asked to explain,
for example, how the adaptations of flowers, fruits, and seeds
in Phanerogams, could have been derived from a combination
of characters acquired by the shapeless primordial ancestors.

APF. B THE SPHERE OP HEREDITY 431

The characiers were not inherited from the primordial beings^
but variability, or the disaimUarity of irhdividuak" ^ But we
must still ask, What then is this variability, this power to
vary ? PotenUalitiea too are real characters, their precise differ-
ence fron^ actnalitiee being that they require a particular
environment as a condition of development. " Only poten-
tiality," " ofdy predisposition," this is a favourite expressicm
with those who belong to the school of Weismann, but all
life is *' only predisposition " until it is made actual in an
environment. To say there is a tendency to variation cannot
be the last WOTd. We must ask, Has the tendency — or the
variation — a cause, or has it not ? Will science here at last,
at the heart of life, abjure its faith and speak of " accident " ?
Weismann tells us in The Oerm-PUum that ''the cause of
hereditary variation must be deeper ihan amphixis " (the inter-
mingling of germ-plasms involved in sexual reproduction),
" it must be due to the direct effect of external influeruxs on (he
biophors and determinants J'* ' But those external influences
— ^the admission of which is in itself most significant — cannot
do more, as Weismann reminded us in his Romanes Lecture,
than merely provide the environmental stimulus for the
development of characters already latent in the germ.

As the life differs, so does its response to any stimulus.
Variability cannot be regarded as mere plasticity, or variations
as mere accidents. Our present knowledge of nature, as the
scientist of our day pre-eminent for the fineness of his imagi-
native insight, Henri Fabre, has slaiven to show, makes the
conception of a world in which casual variation (however
rigorously controlled by selection) determines species, an
intolerable burden on the imagination. If a variation is
slight, it can become the differentia of a new variety only
if it persists in growth through many generations, and how
can it so persist unless it expresses a determioate and directed
activity of life ? ' If it is considerable — and we are beginning
to learn how considerable and determinate most variations
are in their first appearance — ^the notion that they are

^ The Gwm-PUum, p. 419. ItaUcs Weismann's.

* The Oerm-PUum, p. 416. Italics Weianann^s.

* Of. Bergson, VBvohOion CruO/riee, Alcan, 4th ed., c. I. p. 95 ff.

432 COMMUNITY afp. b

'' accidental " in the Darwinian sense, like the grouping of shots
round the bull's eye of a target, mere casual divergenoes from
the mean, is contrary to eyery principle of probability.

Is not the deeper truth implicit in the yery expreasion
" biophors," the bearers or containers of life, life which reveals
itself in the creation of new forms 1 Since Weismann con-
cedes so much of reciprocity between environment and life,
why does he seem to stop diort of the admission of its uni-
versality ? The answer to this question reveals what seems
to the present writer a fundamental difficulty in the doctrine
we have been considering — ^it is a materialistic and mechanical
explanation of phenomena which are not merely material and
mechanical.

" Heredity is the transmission of the phyaiccd nature of
the parent to the ofbpring." ^ Is, then, the psychical nature
not transmitted ? Does it count for nothing in the process,
or is its transmission not '' heredity " ? The answer of
Weismann may be found in the further statement that ** all
di£E6rences — even the qualitative ones — are ultimately of a
quatUUcUive nature." * Here is the presupposition of this whole
doctrine. It is because of this presupposition that Weismann
has to maintain at any cost the identity of the germ-jdasm
through all the countless variations of life. If we limit our
explanations to physical or mechanical considerations, we
must assume an indefinite number of potentialities in the
earliest cells, the potentialities of all the vast organic world.
The wonder that a fertilised ovum can contain all the char-
acters of the developing and the mature organism shrinks
into nothingness beside this wonder, that a universe of being
and an eternity of time should be held within a speck of
subtly compounded albumen. Physical nature assumes a
majesty so great that life and mind itself can suffer no in-
dignity in being but a form or manifestation of it — ^but it is
always where life is that this physical wonder is also.

'' The structure of the idioplasm," Weismann says, " must
be far more complex than we can possibly imagine." ' Doubt-
less it is so, but the greatest mjrstery is after all not the
complexity of the original cell but its development, not the

^ Oenn-Plaamf p. 410. Italics mine.

* Ibid,, p. 414. ItaUcfl Weismann^s. * Ibid., p. 108.

App. B THE SPHERE OP HEREDITY 433

straoture but the power. Now this power reveals itself as
life, reveals itself more and more as mind. How then shall
we explain heredity, where mind is, if we deliberately rule
mind out ?

All such methods bring their own nemesis.^ If we refuse
to acknowledge purposive and creative power as determinative
where it is actually revealed, we are driven to assume it where
it is not revealed. As so often, mechanistic interpretation
which denies the immanent creativeness of the life-principle
half-unconsciously assumes a transcendental operation of the
selfsame power. Many instances could be given, but the
following are typical. " I ventured," Weismann sajrs, " some
years ago to suggest that sexual reproduction has come into
force in order to preserve the variability which had existed
since the time of the primordial beings." ' And again, speak-
ing of the regeneration of the lizard's tail after the loss of
the original, he says, " The possibility of such an occurrence
is foreseen by Nature." ^ Doubtless the structure of the
idioplasm is '' far more complex than we can possibly imagine,"
and certainly in seeking to explain it the work of Weismann
is magistral ; but may not his method involve something even
more difficult than he supposes, the attempt to imagine not
merely what is beyond (mr powers of imagination, but the
unimaginable ?

^ On the other hand it is objected that any assumption of " vitalism **
is opposed to the fruitful methods of scientific investigation, substitut-
ing an idle hypothesis for active research. It must be admitted that
certain forms of vitalistic doctrine have led to that unhappy result in a
pre-scientific age, but if the endless correlation of life and environment
be recognised, if it be recognised that even in its inmost penetralia and
most inaccessible origins life is still as always environed, active in and
through the world of mechanical causation, abrogating not one jot or
tittle of the law of the physical world, but revealing only the more its
infinite continmty and complexity, then, although the outlook of
science may be modified by the assumption, the limits of its investigation
seem nowise narrowed.

> Tht Oenn-PUum, p. 439.

"Zfttd., p. 111.

INDEX

((

Acquired oharacterSy" inheri-
tance of, 385 ff., 430 ff.

Aoton, Lord, 321 n.

Adaptation to environment, 386 ff .

Aggregation v. association, 25.

Alcoholism, 409.

America, disappearance of colonial
system in, 290-1.

Ammon, 276 n.

Angell, N., 287 n.

Antigone, 314.

Aristotle {Nie. Eth,), 54-6, 119,
148 n., 320; {Pol), 137, 241,
244.

Association, meaning of, 23 ff.

Associations, kinds and degrees of,
25 ff. ; relation of State to other.
28 ff., 39 ff., 257; rights and
obligations of, 90-2 ; as means
of pm^uing interests, 109 ff. ;
classification of, 115 ; conflict
and harmony within, 121 ff. ;
as organs of community, 128 ff. ;
as based on covenant, 131 ff. ;
structure of, 138 ff. ; and insti-
tutions, 155 ff. ; co-ordination
of, 250 ff .

Aurelius, Marcus, 296.

Austin, 141 n.

Bagehot, W., 161.

Balfour, A. J. (Decadence), 196-7.

Barth, P., 308 n.

Bennett, A., 96.

Bentham, 141 n.

Biometric data, 9.

Birth-rate and death-rate, 336 ff.,

401 ff., 409.
Bosanquet, B. {Philo9ophic€U,

Theory of the 8taU), 107 n.,

421 ff., 425 ff. ; 360.
Burke, E., 319 n.

Caste, 111, oppositions between
castes, 123 ff.

Chamberlain, H. S., 180 n., 383.

Christianity, ethical principle of,
309 ff.

Church, and State, 44, 255 ff. ;
covenant-basis of, 134 ; demar-
cation of within community,
237 ff.

City-community, 258 ff .

Civilisation, and culture, 179-80,
201-2.

Classes, socicd, 109-10 ; opposi-
tions between 123 ff., 236, 272,
368 ; co-ordination of, 269 ff.

" Classificatory system," 241.

Cole, O. D. H., 255 n.

" CoUective mind," 78 ff., 146 ff.

Commerce, and intercommunity,
287

Communal claims, conflictof , 327 ff.

Community, and association,
22 ff., 128 ff. ; meaning of, 22-4,
110, 171; and State, 28 ff.,
130 ff., 213-4 ; as organism,
72 ff.; as "soul," 76 ff.; as
'" greater than the sum of ita
parts," 88 ffl ; as holding a
complex of interests, 110 ; ele-
ments of, 98 ff. ; stnioture of,
128 ff. ; and covenant, 131 ff. ;
and institutions, 156-7, 173 ff. ;
false analogy to individual life,
205 ff. ; non-mortality of, 205
ff. ; co-ordination of, 249 ff. ;
and environment, 373 ff. ; de-
velopment of,«ee under Develop-
ment.

Competition and co-operation, 106,
341 ff., 347 ff., 351 ff., 370-1.

Comte, 55, 93.

Contract, and association, 131 ff.

4S4

INDEX

435

Control, institutionalf 168 ff., 186,

189 fif. ; ethical, 169 ff.
Ck>mejo, M., 276 n.
Covenant, and association, 131 fi.
Custom, and institution, 164 ff. ;

and communal development,

186.

Dante (De monorchia), 297.

Darwin, 394, 414.

De Coulanges (La Citi Antique),
232 n.

De Greef, 184 n., 337 n.

Decadence, communal, 196 ff.

Democracy, 269 ff.

Demolins, £. {La Science Sodale),
376.

Deniker, J., 274 n.

Development, communal, mean*
ing of, 169 fi. ; laws of, 169 fi. ;
criteria of, 178 ff., 184 fi.; as
more than process, 170 ; as
ultimately ethical, 173 ff ;
reality of, 197 ff. ; fundamental
law of, 219 ff. ; as relative to
personality, 186 ff., 231 ff. ; as
relative to communal economy,
334 ff. See aUo under Com-
munity.

Development, organic, 181 ff.

Development, psychical, 183 ff.

Differences, as source of social
relations, 7-8.

Disease, as selective agency, 404 ff .

Division of labour, 369 ff.

Durkheim, E., 76, 89 ; {Division
du Travail Social), 169 n., 226 n.,
231 n., 277 n., 369.

Economy, communal, principle of,

334 ff.
Economic interest, 112.
Economics, and sociology, 60 ff.
Education, social, 160.
Egyptian civilisation, 202.
Ellis, Havelock, 412 n.
Environment, and race, 276-7 ;

and community, 373 fi. ; and

*' acquired characters," 386 ff. ;

as determined by organic beings,

388 ff.
Environmental law, 11 ff.
Ethical autonomy, as source of

unity in the individual life,

300 ff. ; growth of, 306 ff .

Ethical ideal, priority of, 166.

Ethical claims, conflict of, 300 ff .

Ethical purpose, as key to social
development, 173 ff.

Ethics, as philosophy rather than
science, 66 ff. ; and sociology,
66 ff. ; and politics, 320 ff.

Evolution, 9ee under Development.

Family, covenant-basis of, 134 ;
continuity of, 217 ; demarca-
tion of within community,
241 ff.

Federalism, of localities, 262 ff. ;
of nations, 286 ff.

Force, place of in State, 317-8, 326.

Foum^, 29, 76, 96.

Foumidre, 43.

Frazer, J. G., 242 n.

Galton {Hereditary Oenius), 413.
Genius, as relative to society,

306-6.
Gierke {PoUHcal Theories of the

Middle Age), 72 n., 297 n.
Gild, compared with trade-imion,

43, 263.
Gild socialistfl, 46.
Gk)ldmark, J. {Fatigue and Bffi-

denoy), 361 n.
Gomme, G. L., 64, 269 n.
Greece, civilisation of, 202, 211-2 ;

religion of, 239 ; inco-ordina-

tion of, 293 ; development of

ethical sentiment in, 307.
Green, T. H. {Prineiplea of PotiU-

cal Obligation), 137-8, 219 n.
Grote, G., 232 n.
Guyau {Education and Heredity),

191.

Hegel, 302; and the neo-Hegeliaas
on the State, 28 ff., 37, 424 ff.

Helen, story of, 308-9.

Heredity, 383 ff., 430 ff.

mU, D. J., 286 n.

Hirt, Dr., 409.

Hobbes {Leviathan), 36, 72, 234 n.

Hobhouse, L. T., 219 n., 398.

Hoxie, SGientiflc Management,
361 n.

Hume, 192.

Huxley, 388, 396, 401.

Immunity, organic, 407 ff.

436

INDEX

Individual, and social, 3, 69 ff.,223.

IndividualiBation, and socialisa-
tion, 219 fi., 243 ff. ; meaning
of, 220-1 ; process of, 226 £E.

Individualism, meaning of, 222-3.

Individuality, see under Indi-
vidualisation.

Individuation v. Perpetuation,
338-9.

Interdependence, relations of, 8.

Interests, as objects of will, 98 fi. :
meaning of, 99 ff., 106-7 ; kinds
of, 102 ff. ; tike, 103, 109 ; un-
like, 106 ; complementary, 106 ;
parallel, 106 ; conflicting, 106,
341 fi. ; concordant, 106, 342 ff. ;
classification of, 108, 116-6;
organic, 109, 112 fi., 180 ff.;
psychical, 109, 113 ff. ; ultimate
and derivative, 112 ff. ; sexual,
113 ; general and specific, 114 ;
conflict and harmony of within
the individual tife, 118 ff.

Interests, common, 103, 107 ff. ;
oppositions and harmonies of,
116 ff., 178; formation of,
340 ff. ; development of, 366 ff .

International law, relations, 36 ff.,
283 ff.

Institutions, meaning of, 163 ff. ;
services of, 167 ff. ; and social
tife, 162 ff.

James, W., 77.

Jews, exclusivenees of, 292-3.

'* Juristic person," 91 ; State as,

286.
Justice, as harmony of differences,

84-6.

Kant, 74, 106, 186, 192, 313 n.
Kidd, B., 93.

ELropotkin, Prince {Mutual Aid),
410.

Laitinen, 384 n.

Lamarck, 391.

Lankester, E. R., 406, 408.

Land -ownership, transference of,
368.

Lapouge, 276 n.

Laski, H. J., 46.

Law, meaning of, 10-11 ; tabula-
tion of, 11 ; kinds of, 12 ff. ; of
communal development, 169 ff.

Le Play, 267.

Liberty, in Athens and Rome, 234;
nature of, 246, 317.

Likeness, as source of social rela-
tions, 7, 70, 86-6.

Locatities, co-ordination of, 268 ff.

Lomer, 276 n.

MachiaveUi, 199, 321 ff.
Machinery, social service of,

363 ff.
Mackenzie, Leslie, 163, 242.
Maine, 161.

Majority-rule, 139, 142 ff., 423.
Makarewicz, J., 369 n.
Malthus, 394.
Marriage-association, 26-7 ; as

involving contract, 134.
Marshall {Principlee of Economics),

62, 364, 366.
Marxian doctrine of classes, 236,

272, 368.
Maunier; Ren4, 269 n.
McDougall, 62, 66, 76 ff., 330.
Metchnikoff, 408.
MiU, J. S., 40, 219 n.
Mommsen, 234.

Moratity, social will and, 148 ff.
Murdoch {History of Japan),

192 n.
Murray, G., 238-9, 308 n.
Mutation, within species, 378.

Nationality, 110, 143 ; and race,
274 ff. ; and State, 279 ff.

Nations, co-ordination of, 273 ff. ;
as communities, 277 ff. ; rela-
tions between, 283 ff.

" Natural selection," 391 fi.,
398 ff.

Necessity, " outer " and " inner,**
16 ff.

Newman, Sir Q. {Infant MorkUUy),
411.

Newsholmc, Sir A., 403 n., 411.

Nicolas of Cues, 72.

Nietzsche, 68, 96.

Organism, false view of commun-
ity as, 72 ff., 207 ff. ; and en-
vironment, 376 ff., 386 ff. See
also under Development, organic

Peace Treaty, 1919, 142.
Pearson, Karl, 66 n., 406, 406 n.

INDEX

437

Personality, legal v. eesential,
92 n. ; relation to community,
185 £E., 231 ff. ; as involving in-
dividuality and sociality, 221 ff.,
224 ff., 417.

Phillpotts {Kindred and Clan),
242 n.

Plato {Republic), 54-5, 83 ff., 95,
150, 294, 397 ; {Parmenides),
228 ; {Laws), 241 n.

Polis, as both city cmd State, 42-3,
54.

Political, law, 31 ff. ; right and
obligation, 32-3; interest, 112.

Property, right of, 272, 369.

Poverty, cmd property, 369, cmd
health, 409-10.

Psychology, and sociology, 61 ff.

Race, 226 ff. ; and nation, 274 ff.
Ratzenhofer, 101, 277 n., 313 n.
Reaction, communal, 191 ff.
Reid, A., 405 n., 407, 409.
Religion, development of, 237 ff.

and ethics, 309 ff.
Renan, E., 234 n.
Pioneer, life of, 362.
Representation, proportional, 269;
Retrogression, communal, 191 ff.
Ribot, 184 n.
Ridgeway, 276 n.
Ripley, W. Z. {Races of Europe),

276 n.
Robertson, J. M., 192 n., 379.
Rome, rise and decline of, 213-4 ;

problem of co-ordination in,

294-5.
Romcmee, 430.
Ross, E. A., 3-4, 66, 80 n.
Rousseau {Contrat S^octoZ), 107-8 n.,

141 n., 148-9, 422 ff.

St. Paul, 72, 293, 295.
Sohftffle, 72.
Schiller, 80 n.
Schopenhauer, 189, 199.
Selection, '' natural," 391 ff.,

398 ff. ; social, 401 ff. ; evil

forms of, 412-4.
Sex, 113, 125, 216-7, 227.
Shakespeare, 200, 201 n.
Shaw, B., 96.
Simmel {Soziologie), 63 n., 80 n.,

129, 302, 319 n., 351.
Small {Oenerdl Sociology), 302-3.

Social, V, individual, 3, 69 ff., 223 ;
fact, 3 ff., types of, 7 ff. ;
" forces," 99 ff. ; institutions,
7-8; law, 10 ff.; "mind,"
76 ff., 146 ff.; relations, 5 ff.,
70 ff. ; science, 3 ff., 48 ff. ;
statistics, 9.

Socialisation, and individualisa-
tion, 219 ff., 243 ff., 417 ; mean-
ing of, 220 ; process of, 229 ff. ;
and communal economy, 334 ff.;
and environment, 373 ff.

Socialism, meaning of, 222-3.

Society, meaning of, 5, 22 ; con-
fusion of with State, 421 ff.

Sociology, place of, 48 ff. ; rela-
tion to special social sciences,
48 ff. ; cmd ethics, 55 ff. ; and
psychology, 61 ff.

Sovereign, legislative and ulti-
mate, 140-1.

Spencer, H., 40, 72-3, 130, 219 n.,
226 n.

Spinoza, 36, 83.

Stagnation, communal, 188 ff.

State, as association, 23 ff. ; and
conmiunity, 28 ff., 130 ff., 213-4,
231 ff., 413 ff. ; law as criterion
of, 31 ff., 233 ; and other as-
sociations, 31 ff., 39 ff., 235 ff.,
257 ff. ; definition of, 32 ; in-
adequacy of present forms of,
38 ; church and, 44, 255 ff. ; as
based on covenant, 132 ff.,
136 ff. ; and nationality, 279 ff.;
and individual conscience, 320 ff.
Struggle for Ufe," 350 ff., 391 ff.
Superindividual mind," 76 ff.

Tarde, 3, 37.

Taussig, Principles of Economics,

403 n.
Taylor, F. W. {Soieniiflc Manage-

tneni), 361.
Teleologioal law, 19 ff.
Thomson and Geddes {Evolution),

203, 226.
TOnnies, W., 24 n.
Trade-unions, 43, 80 n., 253 n.,

254 n.
Tradition, 86, 318-9.
Tuberculosis, and social control,

398, 406 n.

University, sphere of, 251-2.

438

ViUage-oommuiiity, 2fi9 fi.

INDEX

Wallis {Examination of Society),

88» 187 n.
War, 286-8, 341, 344-5, 349-51.
Ward, L., 108 n., 335.
Wealth, as class determinant, i

124 n., 383. i

Weismann, 384 ff., 430 ff.
Wells, H. G., 70.
Weetermarck, 306 n.
Whitley Report, 237.

Wiedersheim, 182 n.

Wilson, Coimiry Oommnmiiy, 362.

Will, and interest, 98 ff. ; kinds
of, 106 ff. ; common or general,
107, 140, 422 ff. ; fallacies in
respect of, 144 ff., 427, 428.
See also under Interests.

'' Woman*s question," 246-7.

Yahweh, 239.
Zimmem, A. £., 277 n.

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