The commercialism of our time offers a modern instance. Nobody, I suppose, has intended it: it has come upon us through the mechanical inventions, the opening of new countries and other conditions which have stimulated industry and commerce, these in turn imposing themselves upon the minds and habits of men at the expense of other interests. An epoch, like an individual, has its somewhat special functions, and a mind somewhat subdued to what it works in. Such a development as that of the Italian painting of the Renaissance, or of a particular school, like the Venetian, is a real organism, fascinating to study in the interactions and sequences of its activity, waxing and waning under the spur of immediate influences without thought of the living whole which history now discovers.
A city is a different sort of organism whose development is, for the most part, equally unconscious. A frontier settlement, we will say, is fortunately situated with reference to the growth of the country, its water-power, its port facilities, or something of the sort making it a functional point. The settlers may or may not perceive and co-operate with this advantage, but in any case the town grows; trade and manufactures increase, railroads seek it, immigration pours in, street-railways are laid, the different elements segregate in different localities, and we presently have a complex, co-ordinated structure and life which, however faulty from the point of view of the civic reformer, is a real organism, full of individuality and interest. Think of Chicago or New Orleans, not to speak of the riper development of London, Venice, or Rome. Here are social organisms with only gleams of general consciousness, growing by tentative selection and synthesis. The case is much the same with nations, with the Roman Empire, Spain, and Britain.
Any one who follows the large movements of history must perceive, I think, that he is dealing mainly with unconscious systems and processes. At a given time there is a social situation that is also a mental situation, an intricate organization of thought. The growth of this involves problems which the mind of the time is bound to work out, but which it can know or meet only as details. Thus the history of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages presents itself to the student as the progressive struggle, interaction, and organization not only of specifically Christian ideas and traditions, but of all the ideas and traditions of the time working upon each other in this central institution. Whatever beliefs men came to were the outcome of the whole previous history of thought. Vast forces were contending and combining in an organic movement which we can even now but dimly understand, and which the men involved in it could no more see than a fish can see the course of the river.
Feeling has an organic social growth which is, perhaps, still less likely than that of thought to be conscious. The human mind is capable of innumerable types and degrees of sentiment, and the question what type shall be developed or how far it shall be carried depends upon social incitement. If certain ways of feeling become traditional and are fostered by customs, symbols, and the cult of examples, they may rise to a high level in many individuals. In this way sentiment, even passion, may have an institutional character. Of this too the various phases of mediæval Christianity afford examples. Its emotions were slowly evolved out of Roman, oriental, and barbarian, as well as Christian, sources.
It is notable that not only may the growth of a movement be unintended by the persons involved in it, but it may even be opposed to their wills. The oncoming of a commercial panic, with the growing apprehension and mistrust which almost every one would arrest if he could, is a familiar example. The mental or nervous epidemics which sometimes run through orphan asylums and similar institutions are of somewhat the same nature. They propagate themselves by their power to stimulate a certain kind of nerve action and live in the human organism without its consent.
Indeed, are not all kinds of social degeneration—vice, crime, misery, sensualism, pessimism—organic growths which we do not intend or desire, and which are usually combated by at least a part of those afflicted?
There has been much discussion regarding the use of such words as “organic,” “organization,” and “organism” with reference to society, the last appearing specially objectionable to some persons, who feel that it suggests a closer resemblance to animal or plant life than does in fact exist. On the other hand, “organism” seems in many cases a fitter word than “organization,” which is usually understood to imply conscious purpose. It matters little, however, what term we use if only we have a clear perception of the facts we are trying to describe. Let us, then, consider shortly what we mean by such expressions.
If we take society to include the whole of human life, this may truly be said to be organic, in the sense that influences may be and are transmitted from one part to any other part, so that all parts are bound together into an interdependent whole. We are all one life, and its various phases—Asia, Europe, and America; democracy, militarism, and socialism; state, church, and commerce; cities, villages, and families; and so on to the particular persons, Tom, Dick, and Harry—may all be regarded, without the slightest strain upon the facts, as organs of this whole, growing and functioning under particular conditions, according to the adaptive process already discussed. The total life being unified by interaction, each phase of it must be and is, in some degree, an expression of the whole system. My thought and action, for example, is by no means uninfluenced by what is going on in Russia, and may truly be said to be a special expression of the general thought of the time.
But within this great whole, and part of it, are innumerable special systems of interaction, more or less distinct, more or less enduring, more or less conscious and intelligent. Nations, institutions, doctrines, parties, persons, are examples; but the whole number of systems, especially of those that are transient or indefinite, is beyond calculation. Every time I exchange glances with a man on the street a little process of special interaction and growth is set up, which may cease when we part or may be indefinitely continued in our thought. The more distinct and permanent wholes, like nations, institutions, and ruling ideas, attract peculiar study, but the less conspicuous forms are equally vital in their way. As to persons, they interest us more than all the rest, mainly because our consciousness has a bias in their favor. That is, having for its main function the guidance of persons, it is more vivid and choosing with reference to the personal phase of life than to any other. We know life primarily as persons, and extend our knowledge to other forms with some difficulty.
Another notable thing about this strange complex is the overlapping and interpenetration of the various forms, so that each part of the whole belongs to more than one organic system—somewhat as in one of those picture-puzzles where the same lines form part of several faces, which you must discover if you can. Thus one’s own personality is one organic system; the persons he knows are others, and from one point of view all human life is made up of such personal systems, which, however, will be found on close inspection not to be separate but to interpenetrate one another. I mean that each personality includes ideas and feelings reflected from others. From another point of view the whole thing breaks up into groups rather than persons—into families, communities, parties, races, states. Each has a history and life of its own, and they also overlap one another. A third standpoint shows us the same whole as a complex of thoughts or thought-systems, whose locus, certainly, is the human mind, but which have a life and growth of their own that cannot be understood except by studying them as distinct phenomena. All are equally real and all are aspects of a common whole.