It has been necessary to consider the similarity theory, I have said, because it has eaten its way into all our thought.[[14]] Many people to-day seem to think that progress depends upon a number of people all speaking loudly together. The other day a woman said to me that she didn’t like the Survey because it has on one page a letter from a conservative New York banker and on another some radical proposal for the reconstruction of society; she said she preferred a paper which took one idea and hammered away on that. This is poor psychology. It is the same reasoning which makes people think that certain kindred souls should come together, and then by a certain intensified thinking and living together some noble product will emerge for the benefit of the world. Such association is based on a wrong principle. However various the reasons given for the non-success of such experiments as Brook Farm, certain religious associations, and certain artistic and literary groups who have tried to live together, the truth is that most of them have died simply of non-nutrition. The bond created had not within it the variety which the human soul needs for its nourishment.
Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, nor absorbed.[[15]] Anarchy means unorganized, unrelated difference; coördinated, unified difference belongs to our ideal of a perfect social order. We don’t want to avoid our adversary but to “agree with him quickly”; we must, however, learn the technique of agreeing. As long as we think of difference as that which divides us, we shall dislike it; when we think of it as that which unites us, we shall cherish it. Instead of shutting out what is different, we should welcome it because it is different and through its difference will make a richer content of life. The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it.
Heterogeneity, not homogeneity, I repeat, makes unity. Indeed as we go from groups of the lower types to groups of the higher types, we go from those with many resemblances to those with more and more striking differences. The higher the degree of social organization the more it is based on a very wide diversity among its members. The people who think that London is the most civilized spot in the world give as evidence that it is the only city in which you can eat a bun on a street corner without being noticed. In London, in other words, difference is expected of us. In Boston you cannot eat a bun on the street corner, at least not without unpleasant consequences.
Give your difference, welcome my difference, unify all difference in the larger whole—such is the law of growth. The unifying of difference is the eternal process of life—the creative synthesis, the highest act of creation, the at-onement. The implications of this conception when we come to define democracy are profound.
And throughout our participation in the group process we must be ever on our guard that we do not confuse differences and antagonisms, that diversity does not arouse hostility. Suppose a friend says something with which I do not agree. It may be that instantly I feel antagonistic, feel as if we were on opposite sides, and my emotions are at once tinged with some of the enmity which being on opposite sides usually brings. Our relations become slightly strained, we change the subject as soon as possible, etc. But suppose we were really civilized beings, then we should think: “How interesting this is, this idea has evidently a larger content than I realized; if my friend and I can unify this material, we shall separate with a larger idea than either of us had before.” If my friend and I are always trying to find the things upon which we agree, what is the use of our meeting? Because the consciousness of agreement makes us happy? It is a shallow happiness, only felt by people too superficial or too shut-up or too vain to feel that richer joy which comes from having taken part in an act of creation—created a new thought by the uniting of differences. A friendship based on likenesses and agreements alone is a superficial matter enough. The deep and lasting friendship is one capable of recognizing and dealing with all the fundamental differences that must exist between any two individuals, one capable therefore of such an enrichment of our personalities that together we shall mount to new heights of understanding and endeavor. Some one ought to write an essay on the dangers to the soul of congeniality. Pleasant little glows of feeling can never be fanned into the fire which becomes the driving force of progress.
In trying to explain the social process I may have seemed to over emphasize difference as difference. Difference as difference is non-existent. There is only difference which carries within itself the power of unifying. It is this latent power which we must forever and ever call forth. Difference in itself is not a vital force, but what accompanies it is—the unifying spirit.
Throughout my description of the group process I have taken committee-meetings, conferences etc. for illustration, but really the object of every associating with others, of every conversation with friends, in fact, should be to try to bring out a bigger thought than any one alone could contribute. How different our dinner parties would be if we could do this. And I mean without too labored an effort, but merely by recognizing certain elementary rules of the game. Creation is always possible when people meet; this is the wonderful interest of life. But it depends upon us so to manage our meetings that there shall be some result, not just a frittering away of energy, unguided because not understood. All our private life is to be public life. This does not mean that we cannot sit with a friend by our fireside; it does mean that, private and gay as that hour may be, at the same time that very intimacy and lightness must in its way be serving the common cause, not in any fanciful sense, but because there is always the consciousness of my most private concerns as tributary to the larger life of men. But words are misleading: I do not mean that we are always to be thinking about it—it must be such an abiding sense that we never think of it.
Thus the new psychology teaches us that the core of the group process is creating. The essential value of the new psychology is that it carries enfolded within it the obligation upon every man to live the New Life. In no other system of thought has the Command been so clear, so insistent, so compelling. Every individual is necessary to the whole. On the other hand, every member participates in that power of a whole which is so much greater than the addition of its separate forces. The increased strength which comes to me when I work with others is not a numerical thing, is not because I feel that ten of us have ten times the strength of one. It is because all together we have struck out a new power in the universe. Ten of us may have ten, or a hundred, or a thousand times the strength of one—or rather you cannot measure it mathematically at all.
The law of the group is not arbitrary but intrinsic. Nothing is more practical for our daily lives than an understanding of this. The group-spirit is the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night—it is our infallible guide—it is the Spirit of democracy. It has all our love and all our devotion, but this comes only when we have to some extent identified ourselves with It, or rather perhaps identified It with all our common, every-day lives. We can never dominate another or be dominated by another; the group-spirit is always our master.