Human Nature and the Social Order

CHAPTER I

SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL PAGE Are Aspects of the Same Thing—The Fallacy of Setting Them in Opposition—Various Forms of this Fallacy 1

CHAPTER II

SUGGESTION AND CHOICE

The Meaning of these Terms and their Relation to Each Other—Individual and Social Aspects of Will or Choice—Suggestion and Choice in Children—The Scope of Suggestion Commonly Underestimated—Practical Limitations upon Deliberate Choice—Illustrations of the Action of the Milieu—The Greater or Less Activity of Choice Reflects the General State of Society—Suggestibility 14

CHAPTER III

SOCIABILITY AND PERSONAL IDEAS

The Sociability of Children—Imaginary Conversation and its Significance—The Nature of the Impulse to Communicate—There is no Separation between Real and Imaginary Persons—Nor between Thought and Intercourse—The Study and Interpretation of Expression by Children—The Symbol or Sensuous Nucleus of Personal Ideas—Personal Physiognomy in Art and Literature—In the Idea of Social Groups—Sentiment in Personal Ideas—The Personal Idea is the Immediate Social Reality—Society must be Studied in the Imagination—The Possible Reality of Incorporeal Persons—The Material Notion of Personality Contrasted with the Notion Based on a Study of Personal Ideas—Self and Other in Personal Ideas—Personal Opposition—Further Illustration and Defence of the View of Persons and of Society Here Set Forth 45

CHAPTER IV

SYMPATHY OR COMMUNION AS AN ASPECT OF SOCIETY

The Meaning of Sympathy as here Used—Its Relation to Thought, Sentiment, and Social Experience—The Range of Sympathy is a Measure of Personality; e.g., as Regards Power, Goodness or Badness, Sanity or Insanity—A Man's Sympathies Reflect the Social Order—Specialization and Breadth—Sympathy Reflects Social Process in the Mingling of Likeness with Difference—Also in that it is a Process of Selection Guided by Feeling—The Meaning of Love in Social Discussion—Love in Relation to Self—The Study of Sympathy Reveals the Vital Unity of Human Life 102

CHAPTER V

THE SOCIAL SELF—1. THE MEANING OF "I"

The "Empirical Self"—"I" as a State of Feeling—Does Not Ordinarily Refer to the Body—As a Sense of Power or Causation—As a Sense of Speciality or Differentiation in a General Life—The Reflected or Looking-glass "I"—"I" is Rooted in the Past and Varies with Social Conditions—Its Relation to Habit—To Disinterested Love—How Children Learn the Meaning of "I"—The Speculative or Metaphysical "I" in Children—The Looking-glass "I" in Children—The Same in Adolescence—"I" in Relation to Sex—Simplicity and Affectation—Social Self-feeling Universal 136

CHAPTER VI

THE SOCIAL SELF—2. VARIOUS PHASES OF "I"

Egotism and Selfishness—The Use of "I" in Literature and Conversation—Intense Self-feeling Necessary to Productivity—Other Phases of the Social Self—Pride versus Vanity—Self-respect, Honor, Self-reverence—Humility—Maladies of the Social Self—Withdrawal—Self-transformation—Phases of the Self Caused by Incongruity between the Person and his Surroundings 179

CHAPTER VII

HOSTILITY

Simple or Animal Anger—Social Anger—The Function of Hostility—The Doctrine of Non-resistance—Control and Transformation of Hostility by Reason—Hostility as Pleasure or Pain—The Importance of Accepted Social Standards—Fear 232

CHAPTER VIII

EMULATION

Conformity—Non-conformity—The Two Viewed as Complementary Phases of Life—Rivalry—Hero-worship 262

CHAPTER IX

LEADERSHIP OR PERSONAL ASCENDENCY

Leadership Defines and Organizes Vague Tendency—Power as Based upon the Mental State of the Person Subject to It—The Mental Traits of a Leader: Significance and Breadth—Why the Fame and Power of a Man often Transcend his Real Character—Ascendency of Belief and Hope—Mystery—Good Faith and Imposture—Does the Leader really Lead? 283

CHAPTER X

THE SOCIAL ASPECT OF CONSCIENCE

The Right as the Rational—Significance of this View—The Right as the Onward—The Right as Habit—Right is not the Social as against the Individual—It is, in a Sense, the Social as against the Sensual—The Right as a Synthesis of Personal Influences—Personal Authority—Confession, Prayer, Publicity—Truth—Dependence of Right upon Imagination—Conscience Reflects a Social Group—Ideal Persons as Factors in Conscience 326

CHAPTER XI

PERSONAL DEGENERACY

Is a Phase of the Question of Right and Wrong—Relation to the Idea of Development—Justification and Meaning of the Phrase "Personal Degeneracy"—Hereditary and Social Factors in Personal Degeneracy—Degeneracy as a Mental Trait—Conscience in Degeneracy—Crime, Insanity, and Responsibility—General Aims in the Treatment of Degeneracy 372

CHAPTER XII

FREEDOM

The Meaning of Freedom—Freedom and Discipline—Freedom as a Phase of the Social Order—Freedom Involves Incidental Strain and Degeneracy 392

INDEX 405

HUMAN NATURE AND THE SOCIAL ORDER

CHAPTER I SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL

ARE ASPECTS OF THE SAME THING—THE FALLACY OF SETTING THEM IN OPPOSITION—VARIOUS FORMS OF THIS FALLACY.

"Society and the Individual" is really the subject of this whole book, and not merely of Chapter One. It is my general aim to set forth, from various points of view, what the individual is, considered as a member of a social whole; while the special purpose of this chapter is only to offer a preliminary statement of the matter, as I conceive it, afterward to be unfolded at some length and variously illustrated.

A separate individual is an abstraction unknown to experience, and so likewise is society when regarded as something apart from individuals. The real thing is Human Life, which may be considered either in an individual aspect or in a social, that is to say a general, aspect; but is always, as a matter of fact, both individual and general. In other words, "society" and "individuals" do not denote separable phenomena, but are simply collective and distributive aspects of the same thing, the relation between them being like that between other expressions one of which denotes a group as a whole and the other the members of the group, such as the army and the soldiers, the class and the students, and so on. This holds true of any social aggregate, great or small; of a family, a city, a nation, a race; of mankind as a whole: no matter how extensive, complex, or enduring a group may be, no good reason can be given for regarding it as essentially different in this respect from the smallest, simplest, or most transient.

So far, then, as there is any difference between the two, it is rather in our point of view than in the object we are looking at: when we speak of society, or use any other collective term, we fix our minds upon some general view of the people concerned, while when we speak of individuals we disregard the general aspect and think of them as if they were separate. Thus "the Cabinet" may consist of President Lincoln, Secretary Stanton, Secretary Seward, and so on; but when I say "the Cabinet" I do not suggest the same idea as when I enumerate these gentlemen separately. Society, or any complex group, may, to ordinary observation, be a very different thing from all of its members viewed one by one—as a man who beheld General Grant's army from Missionary Ridge would have seen something other than he would by approaching every soldier in it. In the same way a picture is made up of so many square inches of painted canvas; but if you should look at these one at a time, covering the others, until you had seen them all, you would still not have seen the picture. There may, in all such cases, be a system or organization in the whole that is not apparent in the parts. In this sense, and in no other, is there a difference between society and the individuals of which it is composed; a difference not residing in the facts themselves but existing to the observer on account of the limits of his perception. A complete view of society would also be a complete view of all the individuals, and vice versa; there would be no difference between them.

And just as there is no society or group that is not a collective view of persons, so there is no individual who may not be regarded as a particular view of social groups. He has no separate existence; through both the hereditary and the social factors in his life a man is bound into the whole of which he is a member, and to consider him apart from it is quite as artificial as to consider society apart from individuals.

If this is true there is, of course, a fallacy in that not uncommon manner of speaking which sets the social and the individual over against each other as separate and antagonistic. The word "social" appears to be used in at least three fairly distinct senses, but in none of these does it mean something that can properly be regarded as opposite to individual or personal.

In its largest sense it denotes that which pertains to the collective aspect of humanity, to society in its widest and vaguest meaning. In this sense the individual and all his attributes are social, since they are all connected with the general life in one way or another, and are part of a collective development.

Again, social may mean what pertains to immediate intercourse, to the life of conversation and face-to-face sympathy—sociable in short. This is something quite different, but no more antithetical to individual than the other; it is in these relations that individuality most obviously exists and expresses itself.

In a third sense the word means conducive to the collective welfare, and thus becomes nearly equivalent to moral, as when we say that crime or sensuality is unsocial or anti-social; but here again it cannot properly be made the antithesis of individual—since wrong is surely no more individual than right—but must be contrasted with immoral, brutal, selfish, or some other word with an ethical implication.