Part 11

In this is another side of the proof of our mental collectivity. The poet feels for humanity, the student studies for humanity; the discoverer, inventor, all work for humanity. (This does not refer to the pay they expect, and their attitude toward it, but to the work itself.) All through our history we see the great-brained men who thought for the world, moved by a quenchless impulse to transmit this thought to the others, to pour out into the common stock the product of their brains. This they did because they must—even when loss and injury, ostracism or martyrdom followed. It is the compelling functional necessity of the brain to discharge into other brains, as well as to seek from them its vast and varied stimulus.

In more immediate and commonplace instances we see the same law. The difficulty of “keeping a secret,” i. e., of voluntarily retaining stimulus; the necessity of “relieving one’s mind”—a perfectly fit phrase, as much so as its familiar physiological analogue; the value of the confessional; and, commonest of all, the vivid interest of each human brain in the affairs of the others; all these show the collective nature of that organ.

The most ordinary woman, gossiping with her neighbours, manifests this social necessity for contact and exchange, however low. “Mind your own business!” we cry, and cry in vain. No brain advanced enough to be called human can possibly find full use and exercise in contemplation of one person’s business. It must concern itself in the business of the others, their common business.

The human brain is a social organ. Human thought is a social function.

Approach this fact along lines of evolution. The brain, like all other organs, is called for by conditions and developed by exercise. Simple conditions, simple exertions—low brain. Enlarge and elaborate the conditions—increase the exercises—and the brain develops. Observe here, within human history, how we have developed the brain of the dog by such change of condition and action.

In every form of animal life you find an exact relation between the range of activities of the creature and his degree of brain development. This is necessarily so, as the increase of activities is what produced that degree of development. The simple activities of the clam need no brain, and have none. The complex activities of the fox need a complex brain, and have it. Everywhere this exact proportion is found until you reach the human animal.

There is no relation whatever between the individual human being’s brain and his individual activities. But there is the same inexorable law of development by which alone to account for this highest of all brains, and the same relation is plainly to be seen between the social brain and its social activities. No conceivable activities of one biped, through however many generations, could have developed the brain of the architect, for instance. He has the power to think a church. He cannot build a church—never could—never could have even wanted one!

The growth of many men, for many ages, brought their common needs, their power of common action, and their brain power to co-ordinate it. You need no power of co-ordination to run one individual animal; the need for social activities developed the social brain. The single human animal could have only needed a single shelter; could have so only built a single shelter, and so have only thought a single shelter. The power of one man to think for many men to do, is a distinctly human power, and evolvable only by the common doing.

In our collective relation we have developed a capacity to think, focussed perforce in some individual brain, for the working point of Society is the individual; to think, to the advantage of thousands of people for thousands of years. This organic capacity cannot be accounted for on an individual basis.

The laws of natural evolution work to develop in each organism the powers which it most needs; steadily raising the efficient type. The human animal manifests powers of no earthly use to himself, relatable in no way to his personal needs, inexplicable on any individual hypothesis, but plainly useful to Society, relatable to the Social needs, perfectly explicable by the Social hypothesis.

VI: THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (II) Summary

Social organism a natural life-form. Confusion from arbitrary and superficial distinctions. Social functions not physically hereditary. Village type. Earth-limits. Social life in Individual. Natural law under “imperialism.” Mistakes of social functionaries. Why society was developed. Tendency to revert. Wider consciousness and activity of Society. Social Soul. Race memory. Joy a social quality. Size of social feelings and actions. Early decoration. Fund of power. Social consciousness in young persons. Happiness of right social relation. Social nourishment, rest, exercise. What are limits of social organism. No material really solid. Human connections. Detachment of human individual only temporary. Apparent paradoxes. Ex-man. Smaller human relations. Family, Church, Army, City, Nation. Appearance of world-consciousness. Order of importance of function. Change in relative value. Ethics the physics of social relation. Egoism right for individual. No basis for ethics in individualism. Collectivism of Christianity. Social life immortal.

VI THE NATURE OF SOCIETY (II)

The Social Organism is as natural a life-form as fish, flesh, or fowl. It has been naturally evolved, its processes and appearances are as natural as those of any other part of creation. We do not recognise it because of the interference of that ancestral brain; and we are further confused in looking at it by our arbitrary classification, resting on old and false ideas.

As physical geography is confused to a child’s mind by the demarcations and contrasted colours of the map of political geography; so is the natural organic relation of Society confused in our minds by our superficial and artificial “social distinctions.” We have established social distinctions and relations on lines of physical connection, such as birth; whereas physical relationship has no similitude with social relationship; or of political connection, as nation or party; whereas, again, there is no resemblance; or on even more fantastic lines of sex, of caste, of creed, or of the amount of money possessed.

These arbitrary distinctions are no more social and legitimately organic than Indiana is yellow and Ohio blue. Legitimate social relationship is functional. It is that relation in which we serve each other. Its classification is on lines of industrial evolution, together with the gradual development of those later functions of government, education, art, and science which follow the industrial. In the evolution of government the king was a normal functionary; his kingship being his power to act as general chairman of his assemblage of people, and, in very early days, as leader in battle. To make kingship hereditary was an arbitrary classification; social functions not developing in lines of physical heredity. You can no more make “a line of kings” than a line of poets or surgeons. If you do it, arbitrarily, you injure society by inferior service. That was the conspicuous result in the king line.

In pre-social times there was merely the protoplasmic mass of undifferentiated human stock. Arising from this we have first the sporadic growth of villages, resting on their common food activities, and then the appearance of larger groups, and more and more diverse functions, elaborating in mutual dependence.

The natural limits of an organic social relation are the limits of its essential functions. These were once quite narrow—each little community being self-supporting. To-day we are rapidly approaching a social organism limited only by the earth. Our interdependent functions are now international; and natural development on those lines is only prevented by our false classification on unnatural lines, with the resultant endeavour to maintain the self-supporting independence of the smaller unit.

The more highly organised a society, the more range and force have its component individuals. America is in the American. Athens was in the Athenian. Where else? A member of some tiny social unit on a remote island does not carry the same amount of social efficiency as a member of a larger unit. This is the underlying natural law which makes for general human unity, but which finds its misguided and injurious expression in our doctrine of “imperialism.”

The normal line of enlargement is simply an extension of functional exchange, a sharing of the highly specialised activities and advantages of the larger society by the smaller. Every step of this really beneficent process has been accompanied throughout history with the utmost injury to all parties, by conquest and carnage, by insane pride and cruelty; because we did not understand the process in which we were the actors, but governed our conduct from ideals of egoism, localism, and rapacity. This is especially plain in our time, because of the enormous growth of industrial functions, and their inevitable spread around the world.

The process is natural and in itself means increasing benefit to all society; but, being grossly misunderstood by the highly specialised individuals who carry out these processes, the beneficent results are mingled with terrible evils. The social functionary who is evolved to distribute some food, oil, or other necessity to a larger radius of consumers than ever before, takes advantage of his position to sequestrate a larger share for himself than was ever before possible. The “master minds” who are able to manage these giant industries are social products, called for and produced to meet the larger social needs of our times, but they are still governed by economic theories suitable to a South Sea Islander, and so we have that “malfeasance in office,” in social office, which so shamefully blackens the face of nations to-day.

It is a fair inquiry to demand of the organic theory of Society a reason for its development. Why should independent individuals have been led into a combination which inevitably involves some personal loss and injury, and has been made to involve such an enormous amount?

How are we to account for this higher life-form, in the iron economy of nature? Many have seen the visible benefit to individuals which comes of the Social relation. The fact that we help one another is plain enough; but even that sum of benefit does not seem sufficient to justify the social sacrifice; the loss of individual liberty, the life-long labour at one thing; the growing distance between social man and the free, simple, contented individual animal.

“I think I could turn and live with the animals, they are so placid and self-contained.

“I stand and look at them long and long.

“They do not sweat and whine about their condition.

“They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.

“They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.