The nature of Society is no mystery. Our relation to it is no mystery. It is simple, orderly, healthy, and in its largest manifestations either peacefully unconscious or sublimely happy. Every person who has by blessed chance found his right place in social service, who has the range of contact with his kind which he needs, and the range of activity which he needs, may be as calmly happy as any browsing cow, as ecstatically happy as any soaring lark.
What does any creature need for right growth?—nourishment, rest, exercise. Society needs these too. We, in social relation as social beings, need the social nourishment, rest, and exercise. Social nourishment comes through contact with the world’s supplies, permanent and current. We need to “stock up” in our common heritage of information, of beauty and use and power. Whatever we need which lower animals do not need is social nourishment. The desire to know of the healthy young mind, the desire to travel, the desire to see people, these are forms of our undying hunger for that which belongs to us as human beings. When all of us, from our youth up, are put in easy connection with the unlimited supplies of Society, we shall all be socially nourished. Observe that these things are not consumed while they nourish, but remain continually refreshing as many as can partake of them. Every member of Society should have free access to all social products: art, music, literature, facilities of travel, and education; and would so absorb his preferred nourishment as unerringly as do the cells of the body from the whirling profusion offered by the blood.
Social rest is another imperative need of human beings, in proportion to their humanness. The more highly specialised and intense the service of the individual the more he needs to break off the connection and rest; rest from being social; go back and be animal awhile; find in pure ease and relaxation, in irrelative physical exercise, and in the beautiful family relation (one of the safest and loveliest life-forms sheltered by society), that complete rest which will enable him to return to his social relation with renewed vigour.
Vacations of all sorts—the country home, the hunting trip—tell of this need, and the nervous collapse of highly socialised types when denied it is a common occurrence. Simple and primitive trades, if not excessive in hours of labour, are far less exhausting. Breathing goes on continuously, digesting with regular frequency, but thinking has to rest. A healthy social life will allow for the natural periods of rest for all its members.
Social exercise is but the use of our best and highest faculties to the largest end. A Gladstone confined to directing envelopes would not be exercising his social faculties to their full extent. Napoleon as a chauffeur might have killed quite a number of people, but would not have been really satisfied. Exercise is life’s first law, and full exercise is required for full development.
This is where in our imperfect degree of socialisation we suffer most, for lack of this full use of our social powers, especially women. We are frequently overworked as individuals while underworked socially, another condition accounting for morbid, nervous states. A man with capacity for managing a high-grade department store would lack exercise to a most injurious degree if he were kept as a country grocer’s clerk, though he might ruin his eyes with bookkeeping and his back with lifting barrels. The full use of our largest faculties in the largest relation—that is social exercise.
Another thing which prevents us from recognising the nature of Society is our almost unavoidable mental limitation to the perception of the stage of development represented by the animal organism.
“If Society is an organism,” we say, “where are its feet and hands, its eyes, nose, and mouth? Where is its skin? Where does it begin and leave off?” And not seeing any large beast stuffed with persons like the Trojan horse, or some vast man-filled man like the wicker-built sacrificial cage of the Druids, we deny the existence of the alleged organism.
Organic life is not limited to existing forms. As it has developed so far, it has been in the line of increasing freedom and fluency of relation. The constituent cells of vegetable matter are held together less rigidly than in the pre-organic mineral formation. In animal matter the relation is more fluent yet. And in social matter, so to speak, it is yet more free and movable. Yet, if you look down upon the earth as one with some vast microscope studying the life of mould, or monads, you will find that the human particles are connected inexorably. Remember that even in minerals—if you can see largely enough—the atoms whirl alone. They are held in relation by laws of attraction and repulsion, and that relation is close enough to form to our senses a solid body.
Human beings are not webbed together like frogs’ eggs, but they are held together in definite relation by laws of attraction and repulsion, like the constituents of any other material body. The stuff that Society is made of is thickest in great cities, and as it develops these dense and throbbing social ganglia grow and grow. In wide, rural areas the stuff is thin—very thin. But watch the lines of connection form and grow, ever thicker and faster as the Society progresses. The trail, the path, the road, the railroad, the telegraph wire, the trolley car; from monthly journeys to remote post-offices to the daily rural delivery; thus Society is held together. Save for the wilful hermit losing himself in the wilderness, every man has his lines of connection with the others; the psychic connection, such as “family ties,” “the bonds of affection,” and physical connection in the path from his doorstep to the Capital city.