It is at times forced upon our attention with unmistakable emphasis that the forms of social and political organization are under voluntary control. Momentous changes may be made deliberately, and with full consciousness of their significance. Among the more progressive nations in our day the duty of introducing innovations appears to be generally recognized: constitutions are amended; the status of social classes is made the object of legislation; even the domain of the family is invaded, as in legislation touching marriage and divorce. Men appear to feel themselves free to will deliberately the end that shall be served by the mechanism of the state, and to adapt that mechanism to the attainment of the end chosen.
64. THE SOCIAL WILL AND IDEAL ENDS.—The social will, like the wall of the individual, may manifest itself in decisions which it is obviously impossible to carry out to a completely successful issue. A community has a power of control over its members, but that control has its limits. Even a man's actions cannot be completely controlled by the community of which he is a part. There are always individuals who violate rules, and to whom, as it would seem, no motive can be presented which is adequate to keep them in the rut prescribed by society.
Still less can the social will exercise full control over men's thoughts and feelings. Influenced to some degree they may be. A man may be kept in ignorance, or furnished with information calculated to determine his thought in a given direction. His emotions may be played upon; he may be exhorted, rewarded, punished. But thoughts and feelings are not open to direct inspection; they may be concealed or simulated. Much more readily than actions can they withdraw themselves from control.
Nevertheless, the social will may, and does, ignore all such limitations to its powers. Laws are not passed to regulate the changes of the weather, which palpably fall outside the province of the law; but they are passed to regulate the actions of men, which normally fall within it; that is, which can, to a very significant degree, be influenced by the attitude of the social will. For the same reason laws may even take cognizance of men's thoughts. Of the accidental limitations of its power of control within the general sphere in which it has a meaning to speak of control, the social will is not compelled to take cognizance. It may set itself to encourage or repress certain types of character and conduct, and take measures to attain the end it has selected. That the measures taken should sometimes prove inadequate does not alter the fact of the choice of an end, nor does it obscure the revelation of the trend of the social will.
Thus, a community may be said to will that its members shall not be guilty of violence; it may will to live at peace with other communities; it may will to conquer and subjugate. Whether, in each case, the will shall be completely realized or not, may not be determined by the mere fact of its willing. Nevertheless, the permanent volitional attitude may be unmistakably present, and may reveal itself in strivings toward the chosen goal. To describe this attitude as no more than wishing is manifestly to do it an injustice.
65. THE PERMANENT SOCIAL WILL.—The social will may be regarded as something permanent. Its existence is not confined to those moments in which collective decisions are being made. The will to be one which constitutes a group of human beings a nation is not at all times actively exercised, but the settled disposition to action looking toward that end may be always present and ready to be called into action. An autocracy remains such when its irresponsible head is making no decisions; and a democracy is not such only while elections are being held or the legislature is sitting. The organization of a society, the whole body of the usages which it accepts and approves, are revelations of the social will. That will does, it is true, give expression to itself in a series of actual decisions more or less conscious and deliberate, but it is far more than any such series of decisions. It is a disposition, rooted in the past and reaching into the future. It is a guarantee of decisions to come, of whose nature we may make some forecast.
The permanent social will constitutes the character of a community. Our study of the will of the individual prepares us for the recognition of the fact that communities may be but dimly aware of their own character, and may be quite unable to give an unbiased account of the ideals which animate them.
CHAPTER XVIII
EXPRESSIONS OF THE SOCIAL WILL
66. CUSTOM.—We have seen above that even the forms of political and social organization may justly be regarded as an expression of the social will. Such forms are the result of past choices, and their acceptance in the present is evidence of present choice.