The following propositions are submitted, partly by way of summary, and partly by way of addition, as embodying the points essential for present purposes as to the nature of society:--
(1) Society is an organism. Organism as here used is a generic term, with the following connotation: (_a_) an organism has different parts, with different functions; (_b_) these parts are interdependent; (_c_) an organism is alive, in the sense in which Spencer defined life, that is, an organism has the power of making appropriate inner adjustments to the external environment; (_d_) an organism has a central theme, not externally imposed, to the working-out of which the different parts contribute; but the organism--or the parts--is not necessarily conscious of this central theme; (_e_) an organism is constantly changing its "matter" without essential change in "form." (In a biological organism the process of metabolism goes on constantly. In a society, men are constantly passing out of society through death, or through lapsing into idiocy, etc., and new elements are constantly entering, not through the biological process of birth, but through the process of becoming "socialized," in the manner described by Baldwin as the "dialectic of personal growth," or by Cooley, in his _Human Nature and the Social Order_.) (_f_) An organism grows, by progressive differentiations and integrations.
(2) There is a mind of society, a psychical organism. The minds of different individuals--themselves differentiated into systems of thoughts and feelings that are often lacking in harmonious adjustment to each other--are in such intimate interrelation that they may be said to constitute one greater mind. The physiological basis of this greater mind--if it be thought necessary to locate it--is the brains and nervous systems of individual men, _plus_ that set of physical symbols (e.g., language, literature, gestures, art, music, etc.) which are set in motion by the nerve activity of one man, and then stimulate nerve activity on the part of another. This unity is primarily a unity of _function_, however.[116]
(3) The fact of individual differences among the minds of men, does not vitiate the conception of a mind of society. It rather proves the _organic_ character of the social mind, by introducing the fact of _differentiation_. The integrating element is found in the points which individual minds have in common.