Part 12

“Not one is dissatisfied; not one is demented with the mania for owning things.

“Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived a thousand years ago.

“Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.”

—WHITMAN.

This reversionary tendency is strong in us all, the easy backsliding to the physical freedom and independence of the hunter and fisher. The immediate stimulus, the immediate action, the supply of one’s own needs by one’s own efforts,—this is a delight to almost all of us; and some are constantly straggling and dropping behind the procession, to revert to the wood life of primitive man and his pre-primitive forbears, to “turn and live with the animals.” Current literature is full of this social reversion to-day, this “call of the wild,” this tempting invitation to give it all up and go back to the beginning.

It is so much harder to pour your life’s energies a life long into the Social pool, and perhaps get very little out—and then not what you want. What deep inevitable gain has been at work for which relentless nature has slowly driven us up the path of Social Evolution—a steeper, bloodier, more agonising road than any other creature has had to tread?

The gain is this (and observe that it is precisely of the same nature as that which has driven the contented annelid up to all the excitement, difficulties, and perils of the higher mammalian): the Social Organism manifests a wider range of consciousness and activity than any other life-form. The human animal, alone, is but a beast; and has but the narrow egoistic range of consciousness and activity. As part of Society the human animal becomes the organ of a consciousness and an activity so vast that in its limitless expansion we have been able to conceive of Life, Death, and Immortality, of Time and Eternity, of Humanity, of Liberty, Justice, and Love. What we call the human soul is developed in the social relation. It is Human indeed, i. e., Social. It is Ours.

In the organic division of labour of a physical body, the life processes are so developed that more exertion can be made and more sensation received, than in the same amount of living matter in lower forms. A hand, taken separately, would have a certain contractile power; but as connected with the arm it has far more, as connected with the general nervous system more yet.

In that transmission of energy which seems to be the business of the universe an increasing complexity of mechanism is evidently called for because it has been produced and maintained. Society is the most complex mechanism of all. It can receive, store, and discharge more energy than could its constituents in equal number, but unorganised.

The social consciousness is the widest and most sensitive receiver and transmitter so far produced. “We look before and after, and pine for what is not.” This is a social quality. As man grouped and grew together came that development of race memory which gives to family, to nation, to Humanity itself, its dignity and power. It is “Our” past, “Our” present, “Our” future. The life of Humanity is one, and it is that life which we as individuals feel; which makes us able to suffer more, enjoy more, and do more than any other kind of living thing.

In failing to recognise the real nature of society and put ourselves in right relation to it, we have largely checked the flow of social energy and perverted the social instincts and social processes; therefore, to our morbid egos, social relation often seems to bring us more pain than pleasure. We admit that we cannot live out of it—the sufferings of the hermit are greater than those of the misplaced social constituent; but we live in it blindly, in cramped and distorted positions, rendering our social service under the crushing pressure of the egoistic concept, and getting but a faint and occasional sense of the potent joy of true social relation.

The transcendent happiness possible to Humanity, to all humanity, by virtue of its humanness, is a thing of which we practically know nothing. Consider the range of sensation in an individual animal. This is most strictly limited to his physical activities and such psychic impressions and expressions as pertain to his narrow field of being. The female animal has the joy of the maternal function, that great first step beyond the Ego-consciousness; a pleasure and a pride partly physical and partly psychic, but limited forever to the individual young. The male animal sometimes shares a fraction of this parental feeling. In certain creatures which live in groups or herds there seems to be a very vivid common consciousness on some lines, as shown by the instantaneous nervous transmission in a stampede; and in the highly socialised bee and ant there appears as highly developed a collective sensorium. But, though collective, it is on a low plane; the impressions it receives and the expressions resultant all pertain to the physical wants of the individual constituents, however elaborately these wants are met.

With us, in our social relation, there is an enlargement of the sensorium past any measurement we can yet make. The size of our sensations increases as more and more individuals are tuned to respond to the same stimulus. There is room in what we call “the human heart” for a passionate exaltation of feeling that finds no parallel below us. This immense influx of stimulus prompts us, yes, forces us, to a commensurate expression; and if this expression be true, it puts in concrete form the intense feeling and then continually transmits it to as many people as are sensitive to that form of expression.

Take an illustration on a very early and simple plane. A happy, primeval squaw, not hungry, not cold, not afraid, and feeling in her already growing social consciousness both the pleasant memory of these conditions and the pleasant assurance of more, has more stimulus coming in than her body can sit quiet under. No human being can ever be as stationarily contented as a ruminating cow, his income of sensation is too great. That small, perfect circle of life of the individual beast,—hunger, effort, gratification, rest,—is changed to an endless upreaching spiral in our social relation.

It is not only that our hunger is greater because one can hunger for all; because no human being can be really satisfied till all are satisfied; but that our stimulus is greater, and calls for endless discharge. So our happy squaw is moved to transmit her press of feeling; she must discharge it in action; and she does so in some decoration of her jar or basket. This decoration is an embodied joy, and, being fixed in visible form, it then transmits that joy to as many as behold it. It is a little fountain of social energy.

A society, from its inception, multiplies the range and depth of sensation, and commensurately, the working expression of its members. From age to age, as this great common fund increases, is the power to feel and the power to do increased. More and more people thrill to a common impression; the rising wave of force prompts to ever greater expression, reaching more and more people.

Thus, in a normal society, the individual life increases in sensation, in power, and in joy in an ascending line that as yet suggests no limit. In pain and degradation also, the pessimist will protest. Of course, as an accompanying possibility. But not as an essential condition. Such as exists is merely owing to our wholly unnecessary and mistaken action. The pain is a transient and needless thing; the immense joy is in the real nature of society.

The young human creature, as he begins to grow from the individual animal period into social life, feels this intense current of force, the vast and varied desires, the vaster energies; but he does not know what it is, nor do his teachers. Ego-bound systems have cradled and nurtured him, an egoistic family, an egoistic economy, an egoistic religion cut off every avenue of growth; and the stimulus of the whole world throbs and beats in vain, forced finally into some dog-trot routine, wherein he thinks to “earn his own living,” to “support his own family,” to “save his own soul.”

The tremendous thirst for happiness which the young human being feels is perfectly natural. Young individual animals show no signs of such disproportionate desires. The tremendous ambitions of young people are equally natural. Human life is in them the multiplied and accumulated life of all humanity for all time, and all it needs for the same peace and poise which is the portion of “the lower animals” is free expression.

The nature of Society is no mystery. Our relation to it is no mystery. It is simple, orderly, healthy, and in its largest manifestations either peacefully unconscious or sublimely happy. Every person who has by blessed chance found his right place in social service, who has the range of contact with his kind which he needs, and the range of activity which he needs, may be as calmly happy as any browsing cow, as ecstatically happy as any soaring lark.

What does any creature need for right growth?—nourishment, rest, exercise. Society needs these too. We, in social relation as social beings, need the social nourishment, rest, and exercise. Social nourishment comes through contact with the world’s supplies, permanent and current. We need to “stock up” in our common heritage of information, of beauty and use and power. Whatever we need which lower animals do not need is social nourishment. The desire to know of the healthy young mind, the desire to travel, the desire to see people, these are forms of our undying hunger for that which belongs to us as human beings. When all of us, from our youth up, are put in easy connection with the unlimited supplies of Society, we shall all be socially nourished. Observe that these things are not consumed while they nourish, but remain continually refreshing as many as can partake of them. Every member of Society should have free access to all social products: art, music, literature, facilities of travel, and education; and would so absorb his preferred nourishment as unerringly as do the cells of the body from the whirling profusion offered by the blood.

Social rest is another imperative need of human beings, in proportion to their humanness. The more highly specialised and intense the service of the individual the more he needs to break off the connection and rest; rest from being social; go back and be animal awhile; find in pure ease and relaxation, in irrelative physical exercise, and in the beautiful family relation (one of the safest and loveliest life-forms sheltered by society), that complete rest which will enable him to return to his social relation with renewed vigour.

Vacations of all sorts—the country home, the hunting trip—tell of this need, and the nervous collapse of highly socialised types when denied it is a common occurrence. Simple and primitive trades, if not excessive in hours of labour, are far less exhausting. Breathing goes on continuously, digesting with regular frequency, but thinking has to rest. A healthy social life will allow for the natural periods of rest for all its members.

Social exercise is but the use of our best and highest faculties to the largest end. A Gladstone confined to directing envelopes would not be exercising his social faculties to their full extent. Napoleon as a chauffeur might have killed quite a number of people, but would not have been really satisfied. Exercise is life’s first law, and full exercise is required for full development.

This is where in our imperfect degree of socialisation we suffer most, for lack of this full use of our social powers, especially women. We are frequently overworked as individuals while underworked socially, another condition accounting for morbid, nervous states. A man with capacity for managing a high-grade department store would lack exercise to a most injurious degree if he were kept as a country grocer’s clerk, though he might ruin his eyes with bookkeeping and his back with lifting barrels. The full use of our largest faculties in the largest relation—that is social exercise.

Another thing which prevents us from recognising the nature of Society is our almost unavoidable mental limitation to the perception of the stage of development represented by the animal organism.

“If Society is an organism,” we say, “where are its feet and hands, its eyes, nose, and mouth? Where is its skin? Where does it begin and leave off?” And not seeing any large beast stuffed with persons like the Trojan horse, or some vast man-filled man like the wicker-built sacrificial cage of the Druids, we deny the existence of the alleged organism.

Organic life is not limited to existing forms. As it has developed so far, it has been in the line of increasing freedom and fluency of relation. The constituent cells of vegetable matter are held together less rigidly than in the pre-organic mineral formation. In animal matter the relation is more fluent yet. And in social matter, so to speak, it is yet more free and movable. Yet, if you look down upon the earth as one with some vast microscope studying the life of mould, or monads, you will find that the human particles are connected inexorably. Remember that even in minerals—if you can see largely enough—the atoms whirl alone. They are held in relation by laws of attraction and repulsion, and that relation is close enough to form to our senses a solid body.