The Philosophical Theory of the State

by Bernard Bosanquet

[1] I owe this comparison to a lecture by Prof. S. Alexander.

(iii.) The social whole, regarded from a corresponding point of view, would be a whole consisting of psychical dispositions and their activities, answering to one another in determinate ways. It would therefore be of the nature of a continuous or self-identical being, pervading a system of differences and realised only in them. It differs from a machine, or from what is called an “organism” pure and simple, by the presence of the whole in every part, not merely for the inference of the observer, but, in some degree, for the part itself, through the action of consciousness. But it would be a mistake, we should observe at this point, to identify the presence of {176} the whole for the part by means of consciousness, with the consciousness of the part that the whole is present to it. The latter is a speculative idea, the former is a fact which embodies this idea for the observing theorist, but not necessarily or usually for the working consciousness itself. In the shape of our minds and their adjustment to our work, of which we are unconscious, there is an irreducible analogy between human society and the lower organisms. The consciousness which guides our lives is a consciousness of something, but not as a rule a consciousness of the place of that something in the whole of life. We live in our objects, but we do not know how or how far our objects identify us with the whole to which we ultimately belong.

It is plain that the social whole can, in practice, only be complete in a plurality of individuals. We know that in the development of human nature, which we take as the ultimate standard of life, no one individual can cover the whole ground. As in the natural world in space and time, so, in the world of human beings which on one side belongs to it, differentiation implies dispersion into a plurality of centres. The same man, according to what seems to be the limit of physical and psychical possibility, could not be both Plato and Aristotle, nor both Greek and Jew, not even both Spartan and Athenian, not to say both man and woman. We are on less secure ground when we say that he could not, effectively and as a rule, be both statesman and shoemaker, or soldier and clergyman. It is plain that in some cases capacities may be united which in other cases are found apart. {177} The same man may be a good architect and a good workman, or again, the architect and the workman may be different persons, though suited to work together. We may reply, of course, that whatever abilities lie within one personality, effective work demands the division of labour. This is true, but is obviously a matter of degree. The man who does only one thing does not always do it best, and it is not easy to say what “one thing” means.

The point of these suggestions is to make it clear that, while plurality of human beings is necessary to enable society to cover the ground, as it were, which human nature is capable of covering, yet actual individuals are not ultimate or equal embodiments of the true particulars of the social universal. We thus see once more that the given individual is only in making, and that his reality may lie largely outside him. His will is not a whole, but implies and rests upon a whole, which is therefore the true nature of his will. We also gain some light on the unity of the social mind. For it seems plain that one actual human being may cover the ground, which, in other instances, it takes many men to occupy. And in some such examples—not, or not obviously, in those where a high intensity of genius is the essential quality—there seems little reason to distinguish the correlation of dispositions within the one person from the correlation of the same dispositions if dispersed among different persons. If I am my own gardener, or my own critic, or my own doctor, does the relation of the answering dispositions within my being differ absolutely and altogether from what {178} takes place when gardener and master, critic and author, patient and doctor, are different persons? My instructions to my gardener are conveyed in language, it will be said, while I know my own wishes directly. And this is not the place to press the problem home either psychologically or metaphysically. But, just to induce reflection, it may be asked whether my instructions to myself are not as a rule conveyed and remembered in language. If we consider my unity with myself at different times as the limiting case, [1] we shall find it very hard to establish a difference of principle between the unity of what we call one mind and that of all the “minds” which enter into a single social experience.

[1] Cp. p. 110 above.

In any case, we have said enough to suggest that Society prima facie exists in the correlated dispositions by which a plurality of individual minds meets the need for covering the ground open to human nature, by division of labour in the fullest sense. But we have further pointed out that the true particularisation of the human universal does not necessarily coincide with the distinction between different persons, and that the correlation of differences and the identity which they constitute remain much the same whether they chance to fall within a single human being, or to be dispersed over several. The stress seems, therefore, to lie on the attainment of the true particularisation which does justice to the maximum of human capacity, rather than on the mere relations which arise between the members of a de facto plurality. Not that the presence of human nature in any {179} individual does not constitute a claim that it shall be perfected in him, but that its perfecting must be judged by a criticism addressed to determining real capacities, and not by the accidental standard of a given plurality. We shall pursue these ideas further in the following chapter.

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CHAPTER VIII.

NATURE OF THE END OF THE STATE AND CONSEQUENT LIMIT OF STATE ACTION.

1. According to the course of thought which we have been pursuing, the distinction between the individual on the one hand, and the social or political whole on the other, is not relevant to the question where the “end” of man in Society is to be sought. For the conceptions of Society and the Individual are correlative conceptions through and through; at whatever level, therefore, we take the one, we are bound to construe the other as at the same level; so that, to distinguish the one element from the other as superior from inferior, or as means from end, becomes a contradiction in terms. If we begin by drawing boundaries round the individual, the boundaries which we draw reproduce themselves in society conceived as a total of such individuals, and the question of means and end, as we saw in Bentham’s case, [1] takes the form whether “each” is the means to the welfare of “all,” or “all” to the welfare of “each”; the distinction thus becoming purely verbal. While, if we set no limit to individuality, except the limit of the nature {181} which makes it contributory to the social universal, then we find that the advancements of the universal and of its differences vary together, and are indeed one and the same thing. It is idle to think of dissociating them as means and end.