[1] Steinthal, in James’ Psychology, II., 108.
[2] See Mr. Stout on “Proportional Systems,” Analytic Psychology, ii. 167.
There is one more essential point. A mind has its dominant nature, but is no single system equally organised throughout. It is rather a construction of such systems, which may be in all degrees of alliance, indifference, and opposition to one another. Each of such systems, or groups of ideas and experiences, has its own dominant scheme, and its own tendency in controlling thought or action. And, as a general rule, in proportion as one system is active, all the others are quiescent; in proportion as we are intent or engaged upon one train of thought or one pursuit, we are not alive to suggestions belonging to any other. Every system, or group of this kind, is called in psychology an “Appercipient mass,” because it is a set of ideas, bound together by a common rule or scheme, which dictates the point of view from which perception will take place, so far as the system in question is active. And without some “apperception,” some point of view in the mind which enables the {166} newcomer to be classed, there cannot be perception at all. The eye only sees what it brings with it the power of seeing. Hence some of the most striking instances of apperception are drawn from elementary cases in which a really remote system is active in default of a better, just because the action of some system is necessary and the nearest responds. A child calls an orange “a ball”; a Polynesian calls a horse “a pig.” These are the nearest “heads” or rules of apperception under which the new perception can be brought. Every scientific idea we apply, every set of relations in which we stand, and every pursuit with which the mind is familiar, is a case of such an appercipient mass, or rule or scheme of attention. And we know by common experience how entirely quiescent is one such factor of the mind while we are absorbed in the activity of another; how utterly, for example, we disregard the botanical character of wild flowers when we are clearing them out of the garden as weeds, and how wholly we neglect the question whether they are “flowers” or “weeds” when we are occupied in studying their botanical character. And in the action of every appercipient mass, in as far as it determines thought by the general nature of a systematic whole, rather than through the isolated attraction exercised by unit upon unit, we have an example of organisation as opposed to association; or, if we like, of systematic connection or association between whole and part, as opposed to the same principle operating casually and superficially between unit and unit.
The scheme or systematic connection, it must be added, may work unconsciously. Not all ideas {167} which control our thought and action are explicit ideas in abstract form; and perhaps the general nature and limits of a man’s mind are something of which he can never be reflectively conscious, though he is aware of what he takes to be his leading ideas. It is well known that principles which are not presented to reflection may be intellectually operative, and embodied in a train of results. Thus our appercipient masses may have very different degrees of explicit system. But their action is always systematic—the nature of the whole modifying what it comes in contact with, and being modified by it.
With this conception of psychical systems before us, let us cast one more glance at the organisation of society and the State. We refused to take a crowd as a true type of society, and we looked to the example of an army for the leading features of organisation as opposed to casual “association.” The characteristic of an army on which we insisted was the determination of every unit in it, not by the movements and impulses of his immediate neighbours, but by the scheme or idea of the whole. Now, on looking closer, we see that society as such is a vast tissue of systems of this type, each of them a relatively, though not absolutely, closed and self-complete organisation. There are wheels within wheels, systems within systems, groups within groups. But, speaking generally, the business and pleasure of society is carried on by persons arranged in groups, which exhibit the characteristic of organisation that the capacity of every person is determined by the general nature and principle of the group considered as a whole, and not by his relations to the units who happen to be next him. {168} Such groups, for example, are the trades and professions. Their structure may be very different. In some the workshop is again a subordinate self-organised group. In others the professional man works alone, and to all appearances goes his own way. It is common to all of them, however, that they form groupings of members, within each of which groupings all members are determined in a certain way by the common nature of the group. Within his trade or profession, a man acts, as it is said, in a definite “capacity.” He regards himself and is regarded from a definite point of view, and all other points of view tend to be neglected while and in so far as he is acting in the capacity corresponding to his membership of a certain group. [1]
[1] The group to which he belongs, as bound together by differences, is often rather that of his clients or customers than of his colleagues in his vocation. But there is generally a differentiation within the vocation-group also.
Prima facie, there may be, as with systems which compose the mind, all degrees of alliance, indifference, or opposition between these groupings of persons; and the same person, belonging to many different groups, may find his diverse “capacities” apparently at variance with one another. A conscientious Trade Unionist may find his capacity as a member of the Union, interpreted as binding him to do his utmost for the amelioration of working class conditions in general, apparently at variance with his capacity as the head of a family bound to provide immediately for those whom he has brought into the world. Or a judge or magistrate, obliged to {169} enforce what he conceives to be a bad law, may find his official capacity apparently at variance with his duty as a conscientious citizen. It is plain that unless, on the whole, a working harmony were maintained between the different groups which form society, life could not go on. And it is for this reason that the State, as the widest grouping whose members are effectively united by a common experience, is necessarily the one community which has absolute power to ensure, by force, if need be, at least sufficient adjustment of the claims of all other groupings to make life possible. Assuming, indeed, that all the groupings are organs of a single pervading life, we find it incredible that there should ultimately be irreconcilable opposition between them. That they should contradict one another is not more nor less possible than that human nature should be at variance with itself.
Thus, we have seen that the mind, and society or the State, are identical in the characteristic of being organisations, each composed of a system of organisations, every superior and subordinate grouping having its own nature and principle which determines its members as such, and every one, consequently, tending to impose upon its members a peculiar capacity or point of view, which, in so far as a given system is active, tends to put all other systems out of sight. The connection between these systems is of very different kinds, and very unequal in degree; but in as far as the mind and the community are actual working wholes, it is to be presumed that in each there is an ultimate or pervading adjustment which hinders {170} contradiction from proceeding to destructive extremes. And neither the mind nor the community, as working organisations, can be accounted for on the principle of mere association.
(2) After pointing out the analogy between the organised structure of minds and the organised structure of society, we now go on to show that minds and society are really the same fabric regarded from different points of view. The explanation may be divided into three parts.
(i.) Every social group is the external aspect of a set of corresponding mental systems in individual minds.