Chapter 8 THE PERSONAL AND THE SOCIAL, THE VITAL AND THE FORMAL IN EXPERIENCE.

Contrasts such as those in the title of the present chapter, the personal and the social, the vital and the formal, or instrumental, are always dangerous to clear thinking, and yet in spite of the danger no thinking can avoid them.

They can be only relatively true; the terms in which they are couched cannot fail, sooner or later, from one standpoint or another, to make an exchange of the very things to which they apply, since opposition, as must be remembered, is always a most effective mixer, and therefore they can only punctuate the naturally chiaroscuro character that belongs to all articulate thinking. Nevertheless, used with self-control, they are distinctly serviceable.

In our recent dismission of the value of the essential defects of experience, and particularly when we came to associate social character with the habit of contradiction, a contrast of the personal and the social was very plainly implied, and some special attention to this contrast, I feel sure, will help us to comprehend more fully what was said at the time, and will be of great advantage also to our general purpose. It was said that society was nothing alien, or additional, to the nature of the individual, that a basis for society lay in the very nature of experience, that so long as man was divided against himself and the labour of life and reality was necessarily a divided labour, the case both for society and for personal interest in society was clear and conclusive; but this was not fully to define the parts that are played by the individual person and the social group in the development and maintenance of human life. Some, for example, would fear more for the safety of the individual or the person than for that of society; and just in recognition of their fear, we honest doubters, who are now also at least potential believers, must look to our defences.

Long ago Plato drew an analogy of the soul or self, of the human individual, to society, and so, too, Aristotle, though not to society, but much more broadly to all nature, and the one analogy or the other has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual inspiration, for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware, at least one of the implications of the idea has never been fully stated or appraised, and this is much to be wondered at, since there is involved a strong case for both the personal and the social in the maintenance of experience.[1]

Plato found reason, will, and sensuous nature in the individual and analogously a thinking or law-making class, an official or military class, and an industrial or appetitive class in society; and Aristotle, in very much the same way, found the parts of the individual soul analogous to the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms of nature, and either of these analogies is simple enough and reasonable enough to be formally understood, if not at once wholly appreciated, with its mere statement. Still, in order to be sure of appreciation, in order especially to get the reflected light on the relation between individual and society, we must look to the facts and conditions which are presented very closely.

To begin with, such an analogy, dealing as it does with the relation of a part to the whole, has and should have, for a reason not hard to find, the freedom of the city of logic. Other than logical approval of it might be cited. Biology and sociology and psychology might be called in to give testimony. And out of the past, the more recent past at least as known to the historian of philosophy, Leibnitz with his lex analogi?, or for that matter with the general import of his monadology, might be appealed to. But without tarrying for assistance from these quarters, highly respectable though they are, I make a simple, yet perhaps timely and-with apologies for so much emotion-soul-satisfying reference to the logic in the case, for after all biology and sociology and psychology are always under the restraints of logic, as well as alliterated with it; nor does the evidence of logic depend on mere technical acquaintance with given sets of facts. Thus, in these enlightened days, to say nothing of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can the true part of anything ever dare not to have an analogy, even a "part-for-part" or "one-to-one" correspondence to the whole in which it is comprised? And-this being, as in due time will appear, quite as important-how can a whole, be it society or nature or anything else, ever have parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts within its parts? In fact, given any divided whole, and the division, however far it may be carried, will always involve at least these three typical factors: (1) The individual as the part still undivided, though at the same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same differential operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the group-part or class, which for the convenience of the adjective form may be known also as the faction, and which was so important to Plato in his analogy of the individual to a class-divided society; and (3) the all-inclusive whole. And among these factors in all possible ways-that is, even between individual and individual, or individual and group or group and group, as well as between either individual or group and whole-an analogy in terms of all the various elements of the original differential operation will persist. Such, almost truistically, though also perhaps somewhat subtly for ordinary purposes, is the logical condition of division or differentiation. Difference, like its limit opposition, is thus a great mixer, and division can be no mere separation or isolation of parts. The saying comes to my mind from somewhere, that though division may reveal distinct vertebr?, the vertebra always conceal a spinal cord.

Analogy, however, although thus universal, although applicable, as said, in all of the possible ways, must itself share in, must be quite under the spell of, the differentiation; it must have as many various forms as it has expressions. In every expression the relation must indeed be one of analogy, but it can never be of the same order or degree. That of the individual to the group or faction must be qualitatively distinct from all others, say from that of the individual either to another individual or to the all-inclusive whole. Nor can the much used and frequently abused distinction between small and large writings, as when history is taken as a large writing of personal biography or a social institution of some special phase of personal character, adequately represent the differentiation here in mind. Consider how various, internally and externally, are all the terms among which the analogies obtain. Thus, as of direct interest here, factional differences are bound to be sharper or wider, they are inevitably more deeply set and more openly exclusive of each other than individual differences, and in consequence the faction is, not indeed absolutely, but characteristically special or particularistic. Perhaps because of its intermediate position between the individual, which is the whole implicitly and potentially, and the completely inclusive environment, which is the whole actually and definitely or explicitly, it is, so to speak, significantly only one among many, instead of being, as in the case of each of the extremes, many in one. It conspicuously appropriates a particular character, and while not excluding any of the other characters which are incident to its own special production, it includes these on the whole only in a negative way, in the way in which opposition includes what opposes it or action the reaction it always implies or in general any different thing the thing or things from which it is different. The extremes, however, as was said, are each "many in one," though in different ways. The individual, being still only potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest residence of the primary operation, is always in some measure directly and positively active with all the different factors of the operation, and this in spite of the restraints of any particular class-affiliation, and the whole, though macro-cosmic with respect to the microcosmic individual, is at the same time qualitatively distinct, as distinct at least as the explicit from the implicit, the actual from the potential. Whatever a merely formal logic might say, a real logic requires that at most microcosm and macrocosm are only metaphors of each other. Even their difference of size would be quite enough to differentiate them at least as sharply as the difference of size differentiated imperial Rome from her prototype the Greek City-State. Can the whole and the part be one or many or many in one, can they be real or alive or conscious, can they be material, can they be personal, can they be anything whatsoever in qualitatively the same way? Men have often seemed to think so, but without any good reason. The faction, then, the individual and the whole, are qualitatively different expressions of the elements of the operation that has made them; and their relations, always dependent on analogy, must be various accordingly.

But now, to leave these questions of logic and to turn directly to the case for both personality and society, no idea can be more immediately useful to us than that of what is often styled the unity of experience. Of course this unity, as it is real, must meet just those tests of reality, or of a real unity, that we have already remarked, but within the limits of a definition the unity of experience is neither more nor less than the totality of human relations. It is the experience-whole comprising all the phases of human nature; in other words, all the actual or possible relations of man to nature in general, or all the manifold states and activities, stages and events, however different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity, as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, intellectual, moral, ?sthetic, and religious, and in its social life has developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and radical, sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, aspects, or relations that are discovered. In a word, even in the language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual person.

And the person as the real individual, as the part that is still undivided, and that is therefore in itself quick with the differential operation, is thus the living, integral exponent of the unity of experience. He is, above all, its unformed or untethered vitality. In him every phase or part of what is possible in human nature moves with some power. He is religious, political, industrial; or spiritual, intellectual, and physical; or good and bad, conservative and radical, all in one; and characteristically he is each and all of these without the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the physiological is universal-as universal, to repeat, as it is indeterminate. Not any particular lawfulness or lawlessness, but the lawful or the lawless is universal. Personally, just to sum up what has been said, all individuals are all things in one, and this idea, as it is understood, should correct that erroneous treatment of individualism, whether as a movement in the life of society or even as an incident of the scientific method of induction, to which reference was made in the discussion of the rise of science.[2]

But the story of personality cannot be told by itself. Whatever the person may be characteristically, he is never that alone, and before any estimate of all that he is or of all that enters into his life can be attained, attention must be turned to society, the other horn of our present interest, and particularly to the social class or faction. If the person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special, particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive. Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal differences. Personally all men are free, socially approachable, liberal in thought and act; not so factionally. Judged from its classes society is even a hot-bed of specialism, its classes always tending to become castes, and of hostility, its differences inducing open conflict. An illustration of this we have already seen in the rise of the profession of science.

Whence, to emphasize at once a most important conclusion, the typical relation of the person to the class is not, as so often said or implied, that of the particular to the general; instead it is that of the general to the particular, of the whole to the part, and significantly that of the vital to the instrumental. Yet, to say no more than this would be a serious mistake, for at least in two ways this statement must be modified. Doubtless the required modifications are directly consequent upon the nature and origin of the relation, but nevertheless they need to be carefully observed. Thus, logically and sociologically factional differences are not merely wider and deeper; just because more definitely set, they also imply higher development. Factional life may be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power and efficiency that spring from repetition and imitation, it attains a high degree of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of corporations, lacks soul; it tends to become formal and mechanical and in the sense that this indicates it is static. Hence its instrumental character. Between individual and class there is a difference very like that between impulse and habit, or organic life and mere physical process, or function and structure, or say human nature in terms of its life-principle, of its distinctly dynamic character, and in terms of its establishments or institutions. Accordingly the relation of the person to the class is indeed that of the whole to the part, but of the whole in a state that is formally undeveloped to the part more or less highly developed, and of the whole as a living, functional activity, the differential operation of the unity of experience, to the part as an institution or instrument.

From all this it appears that the labour involved in the maintenance and development of human life is divided between the person and the social classes in some such way as follows. The class life stands for analysis and special development and establishment; personal life for synthesis and vitality. The factional life of the class is specialistic, and reaps for human nature all the familiar advantages of specialism; the personal life is general or universal, and saves human nature from the disruption and the stagnation to which specialism and its formal establishment always tend. The factional life is mediative and instrumental; the personal life is initiative and purposive. And while so to define the distinction between person and class, or in general to regard their relation as one of whole to part, even with the qualifications that were promptly added, may involve some unavoidable abstraction, and so some limitation of the view; nevertheless the view is as real and significant at least as the conditions upon which it rests. Even though persons may be differentiated from each other in an indefinite number of ways, no two being personal, materially, in the same way, no two having the same factional restraints, still the relation of whole to part, subject only to the distinctions of development and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly the typical relation of the person to the class. The person may be only a part of the class, as parts are merely counted, but in interest and possibility, in the fullest reach of his vitality, the person is larger than the class. And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is the story of the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, but also there is clearly a real place in social life at once for the person and for the class. Factional life lacks completeness and vitality, and personality, the living, integral expression of the unity of experience, supplies these defects. True, a conflict of classes or factions may always be counted on, since the unity of the total life, which of course includes the classes, will prevent their ever being indifferent to each other, and this conflict will make for both completeness and vitality, but negatively, indirectly, always as if from outside. Only through the person can vitality and completeness be secured positively and directly and immediately. Personality, on the other hand, lacks definiteness and practical efficiency, and only the special mechanical life of the class can supply these needs. So in the two together we see a most indispensable co-operation.

The person, furthermore, because of his particular class affiliation, with the attainment in the way of skill and insight which this imparts, is always naturally under constraint not merely to overcome the specialism, but also to apply the special training beyond the immediate sphere of its development to all sides of the nature that is within him. Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and the factional ritual, and taking this ritual-or special professional technique-to be valid mediately rather than immediately, in spirit rather than merely in letter, must ever seek to translate his factional experience, its skill and its insight, to all parts of human life. Only so can he be true both to his special classification and to his personal wholeness.

But an insistent question: Is such translation possible? On the possibility the case for either personality or a class-divided society must finally depend. On the possibility hangs also the worth of this case to the general argument of this book. Logically, there certainly can be but one answer, and that an affirmative one, since analogy, the primal condition of translation, must be universal among the parts of any unity as well as between any part and the whole. No two parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each other, but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, and any part and the whole must also have this relation of the metaphor, so that any acquired, more or less highly developed power of thought or action, however special and however technical, may and must have meaning throughout the whole life of the person or of humanity. Accordingly, with the acquired freedom of any part, the metaphors, relating part to part, may, if not must, flash to the remotest regions of the person's experience-world. The left hand, with its unconsciously developed power, of course usually unexercised, of mirror-writing, affords only a very crude illustration of what this implies, and a very imaginative illustration is in the flashing of the morning light as it reaches height after height of the beholder's outstretched world.

The conclusions of logic in this matter have sometimes been questioned, if not defied. Quite properly, it may be, many people, and particularly many among scientists, have been in the habit of distrusting the leading of mere logic in the solution of their problems. But in this particular matter I think that no scientist has ever succeeded in making out a negative case. A few have tried to do so, have thought themselves for a time successful, and then in the end, though not without some reservation, have gone over to the other side. Probably their undertaking has been inspired by the extravagant views sometimes entertained, as when money-getting is supposed to educate people to an appreciation of music and art, or a ready memory for one class of things to imply the same facility in acquiring a memory of another class of things, or skill in the use of tools to make a good dentist, or physical self-control or intellectual sincerity to ensure moral truthfulness. Whereas, if it could be remembered that no special training could ever be literally applicable beyond the particular sphere of its attainment, the relation of part and part of human nature being only analogous and metaphorical, and that in any scientifically observed case special training, when artificially acquired, or when a result only of a suggested and merely imitated routine, can hardly count as conclusive evidence, the problem would lose much of its interest, and science would be ready even to accept the logical solution. Logically, then, the translation is possible, and scientifically there is no real evidence against its possibility.

As to the translation being positively natural or necessary, as well as possible, the suggestion may not be impertinent that whatever is truly possible must be also real; that is to say, certain of realization or rather somehow and somewhere, in some manner and in some degree already in expression. Even the possible can never have been made out of, or sprung up out of, nothing. Moreover, the translation here spoken of, wherein one developed side of life flashes its message, more spiritual than literal, to another side or the other side of life, plainly can require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the different elements of our nature and experience, whether as personally or as factionally manifested, shall be forever true to their origin. The apparent obstacles to translation certainly cannot be obstacles on the ground of the analogies of the various parts being only metaphorical instead of literal, for already in the original differentiation that has made person and faction, that has separated the parts, these have been overcome. The very nature of the person is their overcoming. The unity of experience must persist assertive and inviolable, whatever the divisions of experience. The distinct vertebr? must always contain a spinal cord that has a common origin with them.

And it remains to be said that since the person is thus at once the living integral exponent of the unity of experience and the member of some class or faction, translation is his most characteristic activity. In this translation, too, we see him a leader, or a party to real leadership, by nature. In it lies his true genius. Indeed, this translation is just that which makes the great leader or the great genius, for through it the person is ever showing himself superior to his class and training, and to the formal institutions that have brought him up. Factional life, as we know, develops through imitation and repetition, but personality through invention under guidance of the flashing analogies. Invention, too, the application of special development beyond the sphere of its origin, is only the psychological term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science, and all the other special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are ever to be distinguished in this way-the one imitative, the other inventive. Witness the familiar antitheses between the typical and the vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and the really pleasant in morality, the legal and the sovereign in politics, the orthodox and the spiritually alive in religion, technical skill and originality in science, and so on. These antitheses are all very important to the understanding of human experience, particularly of its history, but they are frequently seriously misapplied. More than anything else they show the personal ever asserting its superiority over the factional; the living whole, over the developed, established part; and always in order that the whole, overcoming the exclusiveness of the part, may translate and appropriate its acquirements.

There is thus a case for personality hidden in that historical analogy of the individual to its group-divided environment, whether society or nature, and there is also an equally strong case for society as something distinct, as something that has its own peculiar work to do. The r?les, too, that belong to personality and society are as distinct and as real, besides being as organic to each other, as in general are whole and part. But the person, at once a corrector of partiality and a leader, a distributor of special development, holds a conspicuous place and moreover takes a part that just because of his essential superiority to the definite and formal is of the greatest moment to our conclusions as to the nature of all positive experience. All positive, formal experience we found defective even to the extent of paradox or contradiction, but personality, characteristically, must be superior to this defect. Personality must bridge all the divisions of experience, all the gaps in society, all the chasms of history. It must be, though perhaps one may not safely use the word, the very incarnation of that spirit of truth, that principle of validity and power for adequacy, which has already come to our notice more than once. Factionally experience is relative, phenomenal, divided against itself; factionally, too, it is at once formal and contradictory; but personally it reaches beyond the forms and contradictions, and is directly in touch with what is true and real. So the contrast between the personal and the social, the vital and the formal, shows itself quite parallel to that between the real and the phenomenal, the true and the paradoxical.

A business man says to a friend: "Personally, as you know perfectly well, I should prefer to do what you ask, but professionally I simply cannot, for you know also that business is business." A preacher declares: "Personally I should just like to speak out clearly and without restraint, but my church will not let me." Personally the soldiers in opposite camps exchange many courtesies, but factionally, professionally, they meet with rifle and sword on the battlefield. The father punishing his offending child says: "This hurts me more than you." And, in general, personally there are no divisions of life-all are all things together, and restraints that separate man and man are lacking; but factionally there is always restraint, and open conflict and inner inconsistency are unavoidable. The person is thus the medium, not of an abstract universality, but concretely, through his factional training and his leadership, of the universal life.

And, finally, the life of the person is gifted with a great faith, for it is in touch with an untethered reality; but, factionally, life is a constant doubting, for it is constantly narrow and it is a constant contending. So are faith and doubt as close to each other, as inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells the power that makes for reality; even in me, in spite of the very defects that the conditions of my social life impose, there lives the spirit of truth. Nay, even the social life itself, when mine as well as social, is also real and true."

[1] This paragraph, and many of the paragraphs that follow it, except for considerable revision and adaptation, were published some time ago. See an article, "The Personal and the Factional in Society," in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, Vol. II, No. 13, 1906.

[2] Chap. Iv., p. 72.

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