,,the ,,public ,,and ,,its ,,problems ,,by ,,john ,,dewey ,,alan ,,swallow ,,denver ,,copyright1 #aibg1 ,,by ,,henry ,,holt ,,and ,,company ,copyright renewed1 #aied1 by ,mrs4 ,john ,dewey ,,printed ,,in ,,the ,,united ,,states ,,of ,,america ,,prefatory ,,note ,this volume is the result of lectures delivered during the month of ,january1 nineteen hundred and twenty-six1 upon the ,larwill ,foundation of ,kenyon ,college1 ,ohio4 ,in acknowledging the many courtesies received1 ,i wish to express also my appreciation of the toleration shown by the authorities of the ,college to delay in publication4 ,the intervening period has permitted a full revision and expansion of the lectures as originally delivered4 ,this fact will account for an occasional reference to books published in the interval4 ,j4 ,d4 ,,contents ,,chapter ,,page ,i4 ,,search ,,for ,,the ,,public #c ,divergence of facts and theoretical interpretations concerning the nature of the state1 #c4 ,practical import of theories1 #e4 ,theories in terms of causal origin1 #i4 ,theory in terms of perceived consequences1 #ab4 ,distinction of private and public substituted for that of individual and social1 #ac4 ,the influence of association1 #bb4 ,plurality of associations1 #bf4 ,criterion of the public1 #bg4 ,function of the state1 #bh4 ,the state as an experimental problem1 #cb4 ,summary1 #cd4 ,,ii4 ,,discovery ,,of ,,the ,,state #cg ,public and state1 #ch4 ,geographical extent1 #ci4 ,multiplicity of states1 #dc4 ,spread of consequences1 #dg4 ,law is not command1 #ec4 ,law and reasonableness1 #ee4 ,the public and long-established habits of action1 #eg4 ,fear of the new1 #ei4 ,irreparable consequences1 #fb4 ,variation of state-functions according to circumstances of time and place1 #fe4 ,state and government1 #ff4 ,state and society1 #fi4 ,the pluralistic theory1 #gc4 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,democratic ,,state #ge ,private and representative rles of officials1 #gf4 ,selection of rulers by irrelevant methods1 #gh4 ,the problem of control of officials1 #hb4 ,meanings of democracy1 #hc4 ,fallacy as to origin of democratic government1 #hd4 ,influence of non-political factors1 #he4 ,the origin of 8individualism10 #hf4 ,influence of the new industry2 the theory of 8natural0 economic laws1 #ij4 ,james ,mill's philosophy of democratic government1 #ic4 ,criticism of 8individualism10 #ie4 ,criticism of antithesis of natural and artificial1 #ajb4 ,wants and aims as functions of social life1 #ajd4 ,persistence of pre-industrial institutions1 #ajh4 ,final problem1 #aji4 ,,iv4 ,,eclipse ,,of ,,the ,,public #aaj ,local origin of ,american democratic government1 #aaa4 ,national unification due to technological factors1 #aad4 ,submergence of the public1 #aaf4 ,disparity of inherited ideas and machinery with actual conditions1 #aag4 ,illustrations of resulting failures1 #aai4 ,problem of discovering the public1 #abb4 ,democracy versus the expert1 #abc4 ,explanation of eclipse of public1 #abf4 ,illustrated by the ,world ,war1 #abg4 ,application of criteria of the public1 #abi4 ,failure of traditional principles1 #aca4 ,political apathy accounted for1 #acd4 ,need of experts1 #ace4 ,rivals of political interest1 #ach4 ,ideals and instrumentalities1 #ada4 ,v4 ,,search ,,for ,,the ,,great ,,community #adc ,democracy as idea and as governmental behavior1 #adc4 ,problem of the ,great ,community1 #adg4 ,meaning of the democratic ideal1 #adh4 ,democracy and community life1 #adi4 ,community and associated activity1 #aea4 ,communication and the community1 #aeb4 ,intellectual conditions of the ,great ,community1 #aee4 ,habit and intelligence1 #aeh4 ,science and knowledge1 #afc4 ,limitations upon social inquiry1 #aff4 ,isolation of social inquiry1 #aga4 ,pure and applied science1 #agb4 ,communication and public opinion1 #agc4 ,limitations of distribution of knowledge1 #agf4 ,communication as art1 #ahc4 ,,vi4 ,,the ,,problem ,,of ,,method #ahe ,antithesis between individual and social as obstruction to method1 #ahf4 ,meaning of individual1 #ahe4 ,where opposition lies1 #aia4 ,meaning of absolutistic logic1 #aid4 ,illustration from doctrine of 8evolution10 #aif4 ,from psychology1 #aig4 ,difference of human and physical science1 #aii4 ,experimental inquiry as alternative1 #bjb4 ,method1 and government by experts1 #bjc4 ,democracy and education by discussion1 #bjf4 ,the level of intelligence1 #baj4 ,the necessity of local community life1 #baa4 ,problem of restoration1 #bac4 ,tendencies making for restablishment1 #bae4 ,connection of this problem with the problem of political intelligence1 #bag4 ,,index #bba ,,the ,,public ,,and ,,its ,,problems ,,chapter ,i ,,search ,,for ,,the ,,public ,if one wishes to realize the distance which may lie between 8facts0 and the meaning of facts1 let one go to the field of social discussion4 ,many persons seem to suppose that facts carry their meaning along with themselves on their face4 ,accumulate enough of them1 and their interpretation stares out at you4 ,the development of physical science is thought to confirm the idea4 ,but the power of physical facts to coerce belief does not reside in the bare phenomena4 ,it proceeds from method1 from the technique of research and calculation4 ,no one is ever forced by just the collection of facts to accept a particular theory of their meaning1 so long as one retains intact some other doctrine by which he can marshal them4 ,only when the facts are allowed free play for the suggestion of new points of view is any significant conversion of conviction as to meaning possible4 ,take away from physical science its laboratory apparatus and its mathematical technique1 and the human imagination might run wild in its theories of interpretation even if we suppose the brute facts to remain the same4 ,in any event1 social philosophy exhibits an immense gap between facts and doctrines4 ,compare1 for example1 the facts of politics with the theories which are extant regarding the nature of the state4 ,if inquirers confine themselves to observed phenomena1 the behavior of kings1 presidents1 legislators1 judges1 sheriffs1 assessors and all other public officials1 surely a reasonable consensus is not difficult to attain4 ,contrast with this agreement the differences which exist as to the basis1 nature1 functions and justification of the state1 and note the seemingly hopeless disagreement4 ,if one asks not for an enumeration of facts1 but for a definition of the state1 one is plunged into controversy1 into a medley of contradictory clamors4 ,according to one tradition1 which claims to derive from ,aristotle1 the state is associated and harmonized life lifted to its highest potency2 the state is at once the keystone of the social arch and is the arch in its wholeness4 ,according to another view1 it is just one of many social institutions1 having a narrow but important function1 that of arbiter in the conflict of other social units4 ,every group springs out of and realizes a positive human interest2 the church1 religious values2 guilds1 unions and corporations material economic interests1 and so on4 ,the state1 however1 has no concern of its own2 its purpose is formal1 like that of the leader of the orchestra who plays no instrument and makes no music1 but who serves to keep other players who do produce music in unison with one another4 ,still a third view has it that the state is organized oppression1 at once a social excrescence1 a parasite and a tyrant4 ,a fourth is that it is an instrument more or less clumsy for keeping individuals from quarreling too much with one another4 ,confusion grows when we enter subdivisions of these different views and the grounds offered for them4 ,in one philosophy1 the state is the apex and completion of human association1 and manifests the highest realization of all distinctively human capacities4 ,the view had a certain pertinency when it was first formulated4 ,it developed in an antique city-state1 where to be fully a free man and to be a citizen participating in the drama1 the sports1 the religion and the government of the community were equivalent affairs4 ,but the view persists and is applied to the state of to-day4 ,another view cordinates the state with the church 7or as a variant view slightly subordinates it to the latter7 as the secular arm of ,deity maintaining outward order and decorum among men4 ,a modern theory idealizes the state and its activities by borrowing the conceptions of reason and will1 magnifying them till the state appears as the objectified manifestation of a will and reason which far transcend the desires and purposes which can be found among individuals or assemblages of individuals4 ,we are not concerned1 however1 with writing either a cyclopedia or history of political doctrines4 ,so we pause with these arbitrary illustrations of the proposition that little common ground has been discovered between the factual phenomena of political behavior and the interpretation of the meaning of these phenomena4 ,one way out of the impasse is to consign the whole matter of meaning and interpretation to political philosophy as distinguished from political science4 ,then it can be pointed out that futile speculation is a companion of all philosophy4 ,the moral is to drop all doctrines of this kind overboard1 and stick to facts verifiably ascertained4 ,the remedy urged is simple and attractive4 ,but it is not possible to employ it4 ,political facts are not outside human desire and judgment4 ,change men's estimate of the value of existing political agencies and forms1 and the latter change more or less4 ,the different theories which mark political philosophy do not grow up externally to the facts which they aim to interpret2 they are amplifications of selected factors among those facts4 ,modifiable and altering human habits sustain and generate political phenomena4 ,these habits are not wholly informed by reasoned purpose and deliberate choice--far from it--but they are more or less amenable to them4 ,bodies of men are constantly engaged in attacking and trying to change some political habits1 while other bodies of men are actively supporting and justifying them4 ,it is mere pretense1 then1 to suppose that we can stick by the de facto1 and not raise at some points the question of de jure3 the question of by what right1 the question of legitimacy4 ,and such a question has a way of growing until it has become a question as to the nature of the state itself4 ,the alternatives before us are not factually limited science on one hand and uncontrolled speculation on the other4 ,the choice is between blind1 unreasoned attack and defense on the one hand1 and discriminating criticism employing intelligent method and a conscious criterion on the other4 ,the prestige of the mathematical and physical sciences is great1 and properly so4 ,but the difference between facts which are what they are independent of human desire and endeavor and facts which are to some extent what they are because of human interest and purpose1 and which alter with alteration in the latter1 cannot be got rid of by any methodology4 ,the more sincerely we appeal to facts1 the greater is the importance of the distinction between facts which condition human activity and facts which are conditioned by human activity4 ,in the degree which we ignore this difference1 social science becomes pseudo-science4 ,jeffersonian and ,hamiltonian political ideas are not merely theories dwelling in the human mind remote from facts of ,american political behavior4 ,they are expressions of chosen phases and factors among those facts1 but they are also something more3 namely1 forces which have shaped those facts and which are still contending to shape them in the future this way and that4 ,there is more than a speculative difference between a theory of the state which regards it as an instrument in protecting individuals in the rights they already have1 and one which conceives its function to be the effecting of a more equitable distribution of rights among individuals4 ,for the theories are held and applied by legislators in congress and by judges on the bench and make a difference in the subsequent facts themselves4 ,i make no doubt that the practical influence of the political philosophies of ,aristotle1 the ,stoics1 ,st4 ,thomas1 ,locke1 ,rousseau1 ,kant and ,hegel has often been exaggerated in comparison with the influence of circumstances4 ,but a due measure of efficacy cannot be denied them on the ground which is sometimes proffered2 it cannot be denied on the ground that ideas are without potency4 ,for ideas belong to human beings who have bodies1 and there is no separation between the structures and processes of the part of the body that entertains the ideas and the part that performs acts4 ,brain and muscles work together1 and the brains of men are much more important data for social science than are their muscular system and their sense organs4 ,it is not our intention to engage in a discussion of political philosophies4 ,the concept of the state1 like most concepts which are introduced by 8,the10 is both too rigid and too tied up with controversies to be of ready use4 ,it is a concept which can be approached by a flank movement more easily than by a frontal attack4 ,the moment we utter the words 8,the ,state0 a score of intellectual ghosts rise to obscure our vision4 ,without our intention and without our notice1 the notion of 8,the ,state0 draws us imperceptibly into a consideration of the logical relationship of various ideas to one another1 and away from facts of human activity4 ,it is better1 if possible1 to start from the latter and see if we are not led thereby into an idea of something which will turn out to implicate the marks and signs which characterize political behavior4 ,there is nothing novel in this method of approach4 ,but very much depends upon what we select from which to start and very much depends upon whether we select our point of departure in order to tell at the terminus what the state ought to be or what it is4 ,if we are too concerned with the former1 there is a likelihood that we shall unwittingly have doctored the facts selected in order to come out at a predetermined point4 ,the phase of human action we should not start with is that to which direct causative power is attributed4 ,we should not look for state-forming forces4 ,if we do1 we are likely to get involved in mythology4 ,to explain the origin of the state by saying that man is a political animal is to travel in a verbal circle4 ,it is like attributing religion to a religious instinct1 the family to marital and parental affection1 and language to a natural endowment which impels men to speech4 ,such theories merely reduplicate in a so-called causal force the effects to be accounted for4 ,they are of a piece with the notorious potency of opium to put men to sleep because of its dormitive power4 ,the warning is not directed against a man of straw4 ,the attempt to derive the state1 or any other social institution1 from strictly 8psychological0 data is in point4 ,appeal to a gregarious instinct to account for social arrangements is the outstanding example of the lazy fallacy4 ,men do not run together and join in a larger mass as do drops of quicksilver1 and if they did the result would not be a state nor any mode of human association4 ,the instincts1 whether named gregariousness1 or sympathy1 or the sense of mutual dependence1 or domination on one side and abasement and subjection on the other1 at best account for everything in general and nothing in particular4 ,and at worst1 the alleged instinct and natural endowment appealed to as a causal force themselves represent physiological tendencies which have previously been shaped into habits of action and expectation by means of the very social conditions they are supposed to explain4 ,men who have lived in herds develop attachment to the horde to which they have become used2 children who have perforce lived in dependence grow into habits of dependence and subjection4 ,the inferiority complex is socially acquired1 and the 8instinct0 of display and mastery is but its other face4 ,there are structural organs which physiologically manifest themselves in vocalizations as the organs of a bird induce song4 ,but the barking of dogs and the song of birds are enough to prove that these native tendencies do not generate language4 ,in order to be converted into language1 native vocalization requires transformation by extrinsic conditions1 both organic and extra-organic or environmental3 formation1 be it noted1 not just stimulation4 ,the cry of a baby can doubtless be described in purely organic terms1 but the wail becomes a noun or verb only by its consequences in the responsive behavior of others4 ,this responsive behavior takes the form of nurture and care1 themselves dependent upon tradition1 custom and social patterns4 ,why not postulate an 8instinct0 of infanticide as well as one of guidance and instruction8 ,or an 8instinct0 of exposing girls and taking care of boys8 ,we may1 however1 take the argument in a less mythological form than is found in the current appeal to social instincts of one sort or another4 ,the activities of animals1 like those of minerals and plants1 are correlated with their structure4 ,quadrupeds run1 worms crawl1 fish swim1 birds fly4 ,they are made that way2 it is 8the nature of the beast40 ,we do not gain anything by inserting instincts to run1 creep1 swim and fly between the structure and the act4 ,but the strictly organic conditions which lead men to join1 assemble1 foregather1 combine1 are just those which lead other animals to unite in swarms and packs and herds4 ,in describing what is common in human and other animal junctions and consolidations we fail to touch what is distinctively human in human associations4 ,these structural conditions and acts may be sine qua nons of human societies2 but so are the attractions and repulsions which are exhibited in inanimate things4 ,physics and chemistry as well as zology may inform us of some of the conditions without which human beings would not associate4 ,but they do not furnish us with the sufficient conditions of community life and of the forms which it takes4 ,we must in any case start from acts which are performed1 not from hypothetical causes for those acts1 and consider their consequences4 ,we must also introduce intelligence1 or the observation of consequences as consequences1 that is1 in connection with the acts from which they proceed4 ,since we must introduce it1 it is better to do so knowingly than it is to smuggle it in in a way which deceives not only the customs officer--the reader--but ourselves as well4 ,we take then our point of departure from the objective fact that human acts have consequences upon others1 that some of these consequences are perceived1 and that their perception leads to subsequent effort to control action so as to secure some consequences and avoid others4 ,following this clew1 we are led to remark that the consequences are of two kinds1 those which affect the persons directly engaged in a transaction1 and those which affect others beyond those immediately concerned4 ,in this distinction we find the germ of the distinction between the private and the public4 ,when indirect consequences are recognized and there is effort to regulate them1 something having the traits of a state comes into existence4 ,when the consequences of an action are confined1 or are thought to be confined1 mainly to the persons directly engaged in it1 the transaction is a private one4 ,when ,a and ,b carry on a conversation together the action is a trans-action3 both are concerned in it2 its results pass1 as it were1 across from one to the other4 ,one or other or both may be helped or harmed thereby4 ,but1 presumably1 the consequences of advantage and injury do not extend beyond ,a and ,b2 the activity lies between them2 it is private4 ,yet if it is found that the consequences of conversation extend beyond the two directly concerned1 that they affect the welfare of many others1 the act acquires a public capacity1 whether the conversation be carried on by a king and his prime minister or by ,cataline and a fellow conspirator or by merchants planning to monopolize a market4 ,the distinction between private and public is thus in no sense equivalent to the distinction between individual and social1 even if we suppose that the latter distinction has a definite meaning4 ,many private acts are social2 their consequences contribute to the welfare of the community or affect its status and prospects4 ,in the broad sense any transaction deliberately carried on between two or more persons is social in quality4 ,it is a form of associated behavior and its consequences may influence further associations4 ,a man may serve others1 even in the community at large1 in carrying on a private business4 ,to some extent it is true1 as ,adam ,smith asserted1 that our breakfast table is better supplied by the convergent outcome of activities of farmers1 grocers and butchers carrying on private affairs with a view to private profit than it would be if we were served on a basis of philanthropy or public spirit4 ,communities have been supplied with works of art1 with scientific discoveries1 because of the personal delight found by private persons in engaging in these activities4 ,there are private philanthropists who act so that needy persons or the community as a whole profit by the endowment of libraries1 hospitals and educational institutions4 ,in short1 private acts may be socially valuable both by indirect consequences and by direct intention4 ,there is therefore no necessary connection between the private character of an act and its non-social or anti-social character4 ,the public1 moreover1 cannot be identified with the socially useful4 ,one of the most regular activities of the politically organized community has been waging war4 ,even the most bellicose of militarists will hardly contend that all wars have been socially helpful1 or deny that some have been so destructive of social values that it would have been infinitely better if they had not been waged4 ,the argument for the non-equivalence of the public and the social1 in any praiseworthy sense of social1 does not rest upon the case of war alone4 ,there is no one1 ,i suppose1 so enamored of political action as to hold that it has never been short-sighted1 foolish and harmful4 ,there are even those who hold that the presumption is always that social loss will result from agents of the public doing anything which could be done by persons in their private capacity4 ,there are many more who protest that some special public activity1 whether prohibition1 a protective tariff or the expanded meaning given the ,monroe ,doctrine1 is baleful to society4 ,indeed every serious political dispute turns upon the question whether a given political act is socially beneficial or harmful4 ,just as behavior is not anti-social or non-social because privately undertaken1 it is not necessarily socially valuable because carried on in the name of the public by public agents4 ,the argument has not carried us far1 but at least it has warned us against identifying the community and its interests with the state or the politically organized community4 ,and the differentiation may dispose us to look with more favor upon the proposition already advanced3 namely1 that the line between private and public is to be drawn on the basis of the extent and scope of the consequences of acts which are so important as to need control1 whether by inhibition or by promotion4 ,we distinguish private and public buildings1 private and public schools1 private paths and public highways1 private assets and public funds1 private persons and public officials4 ,it is our thesis that in this distinction we find the key to the nature and office of the state4 ,it is not without significance that etymologically 8private0 is defined in opposition to 8official10 a private person being one deprived of public position4 ,the public consists of all those who are affected by the indirect consequences of transactions to such an extent that it is deemed necessary to have those consequences systematically cared for4 ,officials are those who look out for and take care of the interests thus affected4 ,since those who are indirectly affected are not direct participants in the transactions in question1 it is necessary that certain persons be set apart to represent them1 and see to it that their interests are conserved and protected4 ,the buildings1 property1 funds1 and other physical resources involved in the performance of this office are res publica1 the common-wealth4 ,the public as far as organized by means of officials and material agencies to care for the extensive and enduring indirect consequences of transactions between persons is the ,populus4 ,it is a commonplace that legal agencies for protecting the persons and properties of members of a community1 and for redressing wrongs which they suffer1 did not always exist4 ,legal institutions derive from an earlier period when the right of self-help obtained4 ,if a person was harmed1 it was strictly up to him what he should do to get even4 ,injuring another and exacting a penalty for an injury received were private transactions4 ,they were the affairs of those directly concerned and nobody else's direct business4 ,but the injured party obtained readily the help of friends and relatives1 and the aggressor did likewise4 ,hence consequences of the quarrel did not remain confined to those immediately concerned4 ,feuds ensued1 and the blood-quarrel might implicate large numbers and endure for generations4 ,the recognition of this extensive and lasting embroilment and the harm wrought by it to whole families brought a public into existence4 ,the transaction ceased to concern only the immediate parties to it4 ,those indirectly affected formed a public which took steps to conserve its interests by instituting composition and other means of pacification to localize the trouble4 ,the facts are simple and familiar4 ,but they seem to present in embryonic form the traits that define a state1 its agencies and officers4 ,the instance illustrates what was meant when it said that it is fallacy to try to determine the nature of the state in terms of direct causal factors4 ,its essential point has to do with the enduring and extensive consequences of behavior1 which like all behavior proceeds in ultimate analysis through individual human beings4 ,recognition of evil consequences brought about a common interest which required for its maintenance certain measures and rules1 together with the selection of certain persons as their guardians1 interpreters1 and1 if need be1 their executors4 ,if the account given is at all in the right direction1 it explains the gap already mentioned between the facts of political action and theories of the state4 ,men have looked in the wrong place4 ,they have sought for the key to the nature of the state in the field of agencies1 in that of doers of deeds1 or in some will or purpose back of the deeds4 ,they have sought to explain the state in terms of authorship4 ,ultimately all deliberate choices proceed from somebody in particular2 acts are performed by somebody1 and all arrangements and plans are made by somebody in the most concrete sense of 8somebody40 ,some ,john ,doe and ,richard ,roe figure in every transaction4 ,we shall not1 then1 find the public if we look for it on the side of originators of voluntary actions4 ,some ,john ,smith and his congeners decide whether or not to grow wheat and how much1 where and how to invest money1 what roads to build and travel1 whether to wage war and if so how1 what laws to pass and which to obey and disobey4 ,the actual alternative to deliberate acts of individuals is not action by the public2 it is routine1 impulsive and other unreflected acts also performed by individuals4 ,individual human beings may lose their identity in a mob or in a political convention or in a joint-stock corporation or at the polls4 ,but this does not mean that some mysterious collective agency is making decisions1 but that some few persons who know what they are about are taking advantage of massed force to conduct the mob their way1 boss a political machine1 and manage the affairs of corporate business4 ,when the public or state is involved in making social arrangements like passing laws1 enforcing a contract1 conferring a franchise1 it still acts through concrete persons4 ,the persons are now officers1 representatives of a public and shared interest4 ,the difference is an important one4 ,but it is not a difference between single human beings and a collective impersonal will4 ,it is between persons in their private and in their official or representative character4 ,the quality presented is not authorship but authority1 the authority of recognized consequences to control the behavior which generates and averts extensive and enduring results of weal and woe4 ,officials are indeed public agents1 but agents in the sense of factors doing the business of others in securing and obviating consequences that concern them4 ,when we look in the wrong place we naturally do not find what we are looking for4 ,the worst of it is1 however1 that looking in the wrong place1 to causal forces instead of consequences1 the outcome of the looking becomes arbitrary4 ,there is no check on it4 8,interpretation0 runs wild4 ,hence the variety of conflicting theories and the lack of consensus of opinion4 ,one might argue a priori that the continual conflict of theories about the state is itself proof that the problem has been wrongly posed4 ,for1 as we have previously remarked1 the main facts of political action1 while the phenomena vary immensely with diversity of time and place1 are not hidden even when they are complex4 ,they are facts of human behavior accessible to human observation4 ,existence of a multitude of contradictory theories of the state1 which is so baffling from the standpoint of the theories themselves1 is readily explicable the moment we see that all the theories1 in spite of their divergence from one another1 spring from a root of shared error3 the taking of causal agency instead of consequences as the heart of the problem4 ,given this attitude and postulate1 some men at some time will find the causal agency in a metaphysical nisus attributed to nature2 and the state will then be explained in terms of an 8essence0 of man realizing itself in an end of perfected ,society4 ,others1 influenced by other preconceptions and other desires1 will find the required author in the will of ,god reproducing through the medium of fallen humanity such an image of divine order and justice as the corrupt material allows4 ,others seek for it in the meeting of the wills of individuals who come together and by contract or mutual pledging of loyalties bring a state into existence4 ,still others find it in an autonomous and transcendent will embodied in all men as a universal within their particular beings1 a will which by its own inner nature commands the establishment of external conditions in which it is possible for will to express outwardly its freedom4 ,others find it in the fact that mind or reason is either an attribute of reality or is reality itself1 while they condole that difference and plurality of minds1 individuality1 is an illusion attributable to sense1 or is merely an appearance in contrast with the monistic reality of reason4 ,when various opinions all spring from a common and shared error1 one is as good as another1 and the accidents of education1 temperament1 class interest and the dominant circumstances of the age decide which is adopted4 ,reason comes into play only to find justification for the opinion which has been adopted1 instead of to analyze human behavior with respect to its consequences and to frame polities accordingly4 ,it is an old story that natural philosophy steadily progressed only after an intellectual revolution4 ,this consisted in abandoning the search for causes and forces and turning to the analysis of what is going on and how it goes on4 ,political philosophy has still in large measure to take to heart this lesson4 ,the failure to note that the problem is that of perceiving in a discriminating and thorough way the consequences of human action 7including negligence and inaction7 and of instituting measures and means of caring for these consequences is not confined to production of conflicting and irreconcilable theories of the state4 ,the failure has also had the effect of perverting the views of those who1 up to a certain point1 perceived the truth4 ,we have asserted that all deliberate choices and plans are finally the work of single human beings4 ,thoroughly false conclusions have been drawn from this observation4 ,by thinking still in terms of causal forces1 the conclusion has been drawn from this fact that the state1 the public1 is a fiction1 a mask for private desires for power and position4 ,not only the state but society itself has been pulverized into an aggregate of unrelated wants and wills4 ,as a logical consequence1 the state is conceived either as sheer oppression born of arbitrary power and sustained in fraud1 or as a pooling of the forces of single men into a massive force which single persons are unable to resist1 the pooling being a measure of desperation since its sole alternative is the conflict of all with all which generates a life that is helpless and brutish4 ,thus the state appears either a monster to be destroyed or as a ,leviathan to be cherished4 ,in short1 under the influence of the prime fallacy that the problem of the state concerns causal forces1 individualism1 as an ism1 as a philosophy1 has been generated4 ,while the doctrine is false1 it sets out from a fact4 ,wants1 choices and purposes have their locus in single beings2 behavior which manifests desire1 intent and resolution proceeds from them in their singularity4 ,but only intellectual laziness leads us to conclude that since the form of thought and decision is individual1 their content1 their subject-matter1 is also something purely personal4 ,even if 8consciousness0 were the wholly private matter that the individualistic tradition in philosophy and psychology supposes it to be1 it would still be true that consciousness is of objects1 not of itself4 ,association in the sense of connection and combination is a 8law0 of everything known to exist4 ,singular things act1 but they act together4 ,nothing has been discovered which acts in entire isolation4 ,the action of everything is along with the action of other things4 ,the 8along with0 is of such a kind that the behavior of each is modified by its connection with others4 ,there are trees which can grow only in a forest4 ,seeds of many plants can successfully germinate and develop only under conditions furnished by the presence of other plants4 ,reproduction of kind is dependent upon the activities of insects which bring about fertilization4 ,the life-history of an animal cell is conditioned upon connection with what other cells are doing4 ,electrons1 atoms and molecules exemplify the omnipresence of conjoint behavior4 ,there is no mystery about the fact of association1 of an interconnected action which affects the activity of singular elements4 ,there is no sense in asking how individuals come to be associated4 ,they exist and operate in association4 ,if there is any mystery about the matter1 it is the mystery that the universe is the kind of universe it is4 ,such a mystery could not be explained without going outside the universe4 ,and if one should go to an outside source to account for it1 some logician1 without an excessive draft upon his ingenuity1 would rise to remark that the outsider would have to be connected with the universe in order to account for anything in it4 ,we should still be just where we started1 with the fact of connection as a fact to be accepted4 ,there is1 however1 an intelligible question about human association3--,not the question how individuals or singular beings come to be connected1 but how they come to be connected in just those ways which give human communities traits so different from those which mark assemblies of electrons1 unions of trees in forests1 swarms of insects1 herds of sheep1 and constellations of stars4 ,when we consider the difference we at once come upon the fact that the consequences of conjoint action take on a new value when they are observed4 ,for notice of the effects of connected action forces men to reflect upon the connection itself2 it makes it an object of attention and interest4 ,each acts1 in so far as the connection is known1 in view of the connection4 ,individuals still do the thinking1 desiring and purposing1 but what they think of is the consequences of their behavior upon that of others and that of others upon themselves4 ,each human being is born an infant4 ,he is immature1 helpless1 dependent upon the activities of others4 ,that many of these dependent beings survive is proof that others in some measure look out for them1 take care of them4 ,mature and better equipped beings are aware of the consequences of their acts upon those of the young4 ,they not only act conjointly with them1 but they act in that especial kind of association which manifests interest in the consequences of their conduct upon the life and growth of the young4 ,continued physiological existence of the young is only one phase of interest in the consequences of association4 ,adults are equally concerned to act so that the immature learn to think1 feel1 desire and habitually conduct themselves in certain ways4 ,not the least of the consequences which are striven for is that the young shall themselves learn to judge1 purpose and choose from the standpoint of associated behavior and its consequences4 ,in fact1 only too often this interest takes the form of endeavoring to make the young believe and plan just as adults do4 ,this instance alone is enough to show that while singular beings in their singularity think1 want and decide1 what they think and strive for1 the content of their beliefs and intentions is a subject-matter provided by association4 ,thus man is not merely de facto associated1 but he becomes a social animal in the make-up of his ideas1 sentiments and deliberate behavior4 ,what he believes1 hopes for and aims at is the outcome of association and intercourse4 ,the only thing which imports obscurity and mystery into the influence of association upon what individual persons want and act for is the effort to discover alleged1 special1 original1 society-making causal forces1 whether instincts1 fiats of will1 personal1 or an immanent1 universal1 practical reason1 or an indwelling1 metaphysical1 social essence and nature4 ,these things do not explain1 for they are more mysterious than are the facts they are evoked to account for4 ,the planets in a constellation would form a community if they were aware of the connections of the activities of each with those of the others and could use this knowledge to direct behavior4 ,we have made a digression from consideration of the state to the wider topic of society4 ,however1 the excursion enables us to distinguish the state from other forms of social life4 ,there is an old tradition which regards the state and completely organized society as the same thing4 ,the state is said to be the complete and inclusive realization of all social institutions4 ,whatever values result from any and every social arrangement are gathered together and asserted to be the work of the state4 ,the counterpart of this method is that philosophical anarchism which assembles all the evils that result from all forms of human grouping and attributes them en masse to the state1 whose elimination would then bring in a millennium of voluntary fraternal organization4 ,that the state should be to some a deity and to others a devil is another evidence of the defects of the premises from which discussion sets out4 ,one theory is as indiscriminate as the other4 ,there is1 however1 a definite criterion by which to demarcate the organized public from other modes of community life4 ,friendships1 for example1 are non-political forms of association4 ,they are characterized by an intimate and subtle sense of the fruits of intercourse4 ,they contribute to experience some of its most precious values4 ,only the exigencies of a preconceived theory would confuse with the state that texture of friendships and attachments which is the chief bond in any community1 or would insist that the former depends upon the latter for existence4 ,men group themselves also for scientific inquiry1 for religious worship1 for artistic production and enjoyment1 for sport1 for giving and receiving instruction1 for industrial and commercial undertakings4 ,in each case some combined or conjoint action1 which has grown up out of 8natural10 that is1 biological1 conditions and from local contiguity1 results in producing distinctive consequences--that is1 consequences which differ in kind from those of isolated behavior4 ,when these consequences are intellectually and emotionally appreciated1 a shared interest is generated and the nature of the interconnected behavior is thereby transformed4 ,each form of association has its own peculiar quality and value1 and no person in his senses confuses one with another4 ,the characteristic of the public as a state springs from the fact that all modes of associated behavior may have extensive and enduring consequences which involve others beyond those directly engaged in them4 ,when these consequences are in turn realized in thought and sentiment1 recognition of them reacts to remake the conditions out of which they arose4 ,consequences have to be taken care of1 looked out for4 ,this supervision and regulation cannot be effected by the primary groupings themselves4 ,for the essence of the consequences which call a public into being is the fact that they expand beyond those directly engaged in producing them4 ,consequently special agencies and measures must be formed if they are to be attended to2 or else some existing group must take on new functions4 ,the obvious external mark of the organization of a public or of a state is thus the existence of officials4 ,government is not the state1 for that includes the public as well as the rulers charged with special duties and powers4 ,the public1 however1 is organized in and through those officers who act in behalf of its interests4 ,thus the state represents an important although distinctive and restricted social interest4 ,from this point of view there is nothing extraordinary in the preminence of the claims of the organized public over other interests when once they are called into play1 nor in its total indifference and irrelevancy to friendships1 associations for science1 art and religion under most circumstances4 ,if the consequences of a friendship threaten the public1 then it is treated as a conspiracy2 usually it is not the state's business or concern4 ,men join each other in partnership as a matter of course to do a piece of work more profitably or for mutual defense4 ,let its operations exceed a certain limit1 and others not participating in it find their security or prosperity menaced by it1 and suddenly the gears of the state are in mesh4 ,thus it happens that the state1 instead of being all absorbing and inclusive1 is under some circumstances the most idle and empty of social arrangements4 ,nevertheless1 the temptation to generalize from these instances and conclude that the state generically is of no significance is at once challenged by the fact that when a family connection1 a church1 a trade union1 a business corporation1 or an educational institution conducts itself so as to affect large numbers outside of itself1 those who are affected form a public which endeavors to act through suitable structures1 and thus to organize itself for oversight and regulation4 ,i know of no better way in which to apprehend the absurdity of the claims which are sometimes made in behalf of society politically organized than to call to mind the influence upon community life of ,socrates1 ,buddha1 ,jesus1 ,aristotle1 ,confucius1 ,homer1 ,vergil1 ,dante1 ,st4 ,thomas1 ,shakespeare1 ,copernicus1 ,galileo1 ,newton1 ,boyle1 ,locke1 ,rousseau and countless others1 and then to ask ourselves if we conceive these men to be officers of the state4 ,any method which so broadens the scope of the state as to lead to such conclusion merely makes the state a name for the totality of all kinds of associations4 ,the moment we have taken the word as loosely as that1 it is at once necessary to distinguish1 within it1 the state in its usual political and legal sense4 ,on the other hand1 if one is tempted to eliminate or disregard the state1 one may think of ,pericles1 ,alexander1 ,julius and ,augustus ,csar1 ,elizabeth1 ,cromwell1 ,richelieu1 ,napoleon1 ,bismarck and hundreds of names of that kind4 ,one dimly feels that they must have had a private life1 but how insignificant it bulks in comparison with their action as representatives of a state6 ,this conception of statehood does not imply any belief as to the propriety or reasonableness of any particular political act1 measure or system4 ,observations of consequences are at least as subject to error and illusion as is perception of natural objects4 ,judgments about what to undertake so as to regulate them1 and how to do it1 are as fallible as other plans4 ,mistakes pile up and consolidate themselves into laws and methods of administration which are more harmful than the consequences which they were originally intended to control4 ,and as all political history shows1 the power and prestige which attend command of official position render rule something to be grasped and exploited for its own sake4 ,power to govern is distributed by the accident of birth or by the possession of qualities which enable a person to obtain office1 but which are quite irrelevant to the performance of its representative functions4 ,but the need which calls forth the organization of the public by means of rulers and agencies of government persists and to some extent is incarnated in political fact4 ,such progress as political history records depends upon some luminous emergence of the idea from the mass of irrelevancies which obscure and clutter it4 ,then some reconstruction occurs which provides the function with organs more apt for its fulfillment4 ,progress is not steady and continuous4 ,retrogression is as periodic as advance4 ,industry and inventions in technology1 for example1 create means which alter the modes of associated behavior and which radically change the quantity1 character and place of impact of their indirect consequences4 ,these changes are extrinsic to political forms which1 once established1 persist of their own momentum4 ,the new public which is generated remains long inchoate1 unorganized1 because it cannot use inherited political agencies4 ,the latter1 if elaborate and well institutionalized1 obstruct the organization of the new public4 ,they prevent that development of new forms of the state which might grow up rapidly were social life more fluid1 less precipitated into set political and legal molds4 ,to form itself1 the public has to break existing political forms4 ,this is hard to do because these forms are themselves the regular means of instituting change4 ,the public which generated political forms is passing away1 but the power and lust of possession remains in the hands of the officers and agencies which the dying public instituted4 ,this is why the change of the form of states is so often effected only by revolution4 ,the creation of adequately flexible and responsive political and legal machinery has so far been beyond the wit of man4 ,an epoch in which the needs of a newly forming public are counteracted by established forms of the state is one in which there is increasing disparagement and disregard of the state4 ,general apathy1 neglect and contempt find expression in resort to various short-cuts of direct action4 ,and direct action is taken by many other interests than those which employ 8direct action0 as a slogan1 often most energetically by intrenched class-interests which profess the greatest reverence for the established 8law and order0 of the existing state4 ,by its very nature1 a state is ever something to be scrutinized1 investigated1 searched for4 ,almost as soon as its form is stabilized1 it needs to be re-made4 ,thus the problem of discovering the state is not a problem for theoretical inquirers engaged solely in surveying institutions which already exist4 ,it is a practical problem of human beings living in association with one another1 of mankind generically4 ,it is a complex problem4 ,it demands power to perceive and recognize the consequences of the behavior of individuals joined in groups and to trace them to their source and origin4 ,it involves selection of persons to serve as representatives of the interests created by these perceived consequences and to define the functions which they shall possess and employ4 ,it requires institution of a government such that those having the renown and power which goes with the exercise of these functions shall employ them for the public and not turn them to their own private benefit4 ,it is no cause for wonder1 then1 that states have been many1 not only in number but in type and kind4 ,for there have been countless forms of joint activity with correspondingly diverse consequences4 ,power to detect consequences has varied especially with the instrumentalities of knowledge at hand4 ,rulers have been selected on all kinds of different grounds4 ,their functions have varied and so have their will and zeal to represent common interests4 ,only the exigencies of a rigid philosophy can lead us to suppose that there is some one form or idea of ,the ,state which these protean historic states have realized in various degrees of perfection4 ,the only statement which can be made is a purely formal one3 the state is the organization of the public effected through officials for the protection of the interests shared by its members4 ,but what the public may be1 what the officials are1 how adequately they perform their function1 are things we have to go to history to discover4 ,nevertheless1 our conception gives a criterion for determining how good a particular state is3 namely1 the degree of organization of the public which is attained1 and the degree in which its officers are so constituted as to perform their function of caring for public interests4 ,but there is no a priori rule which can be laid down and by which when it is followed a good state will be brought into existence4 ,in no two ages or places is there the same public4 ,conditions make the consequences of associated action and the knowledge of them different4 ,in addition the means by which a public can determine the government to serve its interests vary4 ,only formally can we say what the best state would be4 ,in concrete fact1 in actual and concrete organization and structure1 there is no form of state which can be said to be the best3 not at least till history is ended1 and one can survey all its varied forms4 ,the formation of states must be an experimental process4 ,the trial process may go on with diverse degrees of blindness and accident1 and at the cost of unregulated procedures of cut and try1 of fumbling and groping1 without insight into what men are after or clear knowledge of a good state even when it is achieved4 ,or it may proceed more intelligently1 because guided by knowledge of the conditions which must be fulfilled4 ,but it is still experimental4 ,and since conditions of action and of inquiry and knowledge are always changing1 the experiment must always be retried2 the ,state must always be rediscovered4 ,except1 once more1 in formal statement of conditions to be met1 we have no idea what history may still bring forth4 ,it is not the business of political philosophy and science to determine what the state in general should or must be4 ,what they may do is to aid in creation of methods such that experimentation may go on less blindly1 less at the mercy of accident1 more intelligently1 so that men may learn from their errors and profit by their successes4 ,the belief in political fixity1 of the sanctity of some form of state consecrated by the efforts of our fathers and hallowed by tradition1 is one of the stumbling-blocks in the way of orderly and directed change2 it is an invitation to revolt and revolution4 ,as the argument has moved to and fro1 it will conduce to clearness to summarize its steps4 ,conjoint1 combined1 associated action is a universal trait of the behavior of things4 ,such action has results4 ,some of the results of human collective action are perceived1 that is1 they are noted in such ways that they are taken account of4 ,then there arise purposes1 plans1 measures and means1 to secure consequences which are liked and eliminate those which are found obnoxious4 ,thus perception generates a common interest2 that is1 those affected by the consequences are perforce concerned in conduct of all those who along with themselves share in bringing about the results4 ,sometimes the consequences are confined to those who directly share in the transaction which produces them4 ,in other cases they extend far beyond those immediately engaged in producing them4 ,thus two kinds of interests and of measures of regulation of acts in view of consequences are generated4 ,in the first1 interest and control are limited to those directly engaged2 in the second1 they extend to those who do not directly share in the performance of acts4 ,if1 then1 the interest constituted by their being affected by the actions in question is to have any practical influence1 control over the actions which produce them must occur by some indirect means4 ,so far the statements1 it is submitted1 set forth matters of actual and ascertainable fact4 ,now follows the hypothesis4 ,those indirectly and seriously affected for good or for evil form a group distinctive enough to require recognition and a name4 ,the name selected is ,the ,public4 ,this public is organized and made effective by means of representatives who as guardians of custom1 as legislators1 as executives1 judges1 etc41 care for its especial interests by methods intended to regulate the conjoint actions of individuals and groups4 ,then and in so far1 association adds to itself political organization1 and something which may be government comes into being3 the public is a political state4 ,the direct confirmation of the hypothesis is found in the statement of the series of observable and verifiable matters of fact4 ,these constitute conditions which are sufficient to account1 so it is held1 for the characteristic phenomena of political life1 or state activity4 ,if they do1 it is superfluous to seek for other explanation4 ,in conclusion1 two qualifications should be added4 ,the account just given is meant to be generic2 it is consequently schematic1 and omits many differential conditions1 some of which receive attention in subsequent chapters4 ,the other point is that in the negative part of the argument1 the attack upon theories which would explain the state by means of special causal forces and agencies1 there is no denial of causal relations or connections among phenomena themselves4 ,that is obviously assumed at every point4 ,there can be no consequences and measures to regulate the mode and quality of their occurrence without the causal nexus4 ,what is denied is an appeal to special forces outside the series of observable connected phenomena4 ,such causal powers are no different in kind to the occult forces from which physical science had to emancipate itself4 ,at best1 they are but phases of the related phenomena themselves which are then employed to account for the facts4 ,what is needed to direct and make fruitful social inquiry is a method which proceeds on the basis of the interrelations of observable acts and their results4 ,such is the gist of the method we propose to follow4 ,,chapter ,,ii ,,discovery ,,of ,,the ,,state ,if we look in the wrong place for the public we shall never locate the state4 ,if we do not ask what are the conditions which promote and obstruct the organization of the public into a social group with definite functions1 we shall never grasp the problem involved in the development and transformation of states4 ,if we do not perceive that this organization is equivalent to the equipment of the public with official representatives to care for the interests of the public1 we shall miss the clew to the nature of government4 ,these are conclusions reached or suggested by the discussion of the last hour4 ,the wrong place to look1 as we saw1 is in the realm of alleged causal agency1 of authorship1 of forces which are supposed to produce a state by an intrinsic vis genetrix4 ,the state is not created as a direct result of organic contacts as offspring are conceived in the womb1 nor by direct conscious intent as a machine is invented1 nor by some brooding indwelling spirit1 whether a personal deity or a metaphysical absolute will4 ,when we seek for the origin of states in such sources as these1 a realistic regard for facts compels us to conclude in the end that we find nothing but singular persons1 you1 they1 me4 ,we shall then be driven1 unless we have recourse to mysticism1 to decide that the public is born in a myth and is sustained by superstition4 ,there are many answers to the question3 ,what is the public8 ,unfortunately many of them are only restatements of the question4 ,thus we are told that the public is the community as a whole1 and a-community-as-a-whole is supposed to be a self-evident and self-explanatory phenomenon4 ,but a community as a whole involves not merely a variety of associative ties which hold persons together in diverse ways1 but an organization of all elements by an integrated principle4 ,and this is precisely what we are in search of4 ,why should there be anything of the nature of an all-inclusive and regulative unity8 ,if we postulate such a thing1 surely the institution which alone would answer to it is humanity1 not the affairs which history exhibits as states4 ,the notion of an inherent universality in the associative force at once breaks against the obvious fact of a plurality of states1 each localized1 with its boundaries1 limitations1 its indifference and even hostility to other states4 ,the best that metaphysical monistic philosophies of politics can do with this fact is to ignore it4 ,or1 as in the case of ,hegel and his followers1 a mythical philosophy of history is constructed to eke out the deficiencies of a mythical doctrine of statehood4 ,the universal spirit seizes upon one temporal and local nation after another as the vehicle for its objectification of reason and will4 ,such considerations as these reinforce our proposition that the perception of consequences which are projected in important ways beyond the persons and associations directly concerned in them is the source of a public2 and that its organization into a state is effected by establishing special agencies to care for and regulate these consequences4 ,but they also suggest that actual states exhibit traits which perform the function that has been stated and which serve as marks of anything to be called a state4 ,discussion of these traits will define the nature of the public and the problem of its political organization1 and will also operate to test our theory4 ,we can hardly select a better trait to serve as a mark and sign of the nature of a state than a point just mentioned1 temporal and geographical localization4 ,there are associations which are too narrow and restricted in scope to give rise to a public1 just as there are associations too isolated from one another to fall within the same public4 ,part of the problem of discovery of a public capable of organization into a state is that of drawing lines between the too close and intimate and the too remote and disconnected4 ,immediate contiguity1 face to face relationships1 have consequences which generate a community of interests1 a sharing of values1 too direct and vital to occasion a need for political organization4 ,connections within a family are familiar2 they are matters of immediate acquaintance and concern4 ,the so-called blood-tie which has played such a part in demarcation of social units is largely imputed on the basis of sharing immediately in the results of conjoint behavior4 ,what one does in the household affects others directly and the consequences are appreciated at once and in an intimate way4 ,as we say1 they 8come home40 ,special organization to care for them is a superfluity4 ,only when the tie has extended to a union of families in a clan and of clans in a tribe do consequences become so indirect that special measures are called for4 ,the neighborhood is constituted largely on the same pattern of association that is exemplified in the family4 ,custom and measures improvised to meet special emergencies as they arise suffice for its regulation4 ,consider the village in ,wiltshire so beautifully described by ,hudson3 8,each house has its center of human life with life of bird and beast1 and the centers were in touch with one another1 connected like a row of children linked together by their hands2 all together forming one organism1 instinct with one life1 moved by one mind1 like a many-colored serpent lying at rest1 extended at full length upon the ground4 ,i imagined the case of a cottager at one end of the village occupied in chopping up a tough piece of wood or stump and accidentally letting fall his heavy sharp axe on to his foot1 inflicting a grievous wound4 ,the tidings of the accident would fly from mouth to mouth to the other extremity of the village1 a mile distant2 not only would each villager quickly know of it1 but have at the same time a vivid mental image of his fellow villager at the moment of his misadventure1 the sharp glittering axe falling on to his foot1 the red blood flowing from the wound2 and he would at the same time feel the wound in his own foot and the shock to his system4 ,in like manner all thoughts and feelings would pass freely from one to another1 though not necessarily communicated by speech2 and all would be participants in virtue of that sympathy and solidarity uniting the members of a small isolated community4 ,no one would be capable of a thought or emotion which would seem strange to the others4 ,the temper1 the mood1 the outlook of the individual and the village1 would be the same40#a ,with such a condition of intimacy1 the state is an impertinence4 ,for long periods of human history1 especially in the ,orient1 the state is hardly more than a shadow thrown upon the family and neighborhood by remote personages1 swollen to gigantic form by religious beliefs4 ,it rules but it does not regulate2 for its rule is confined to receipt of tribute and ceremonial deference4 ,duties are within the family2 property is possessed by the family4 ,personal loyalties to elders take the place of political obedience4 ,the relationships of husband and wife1 parent and children1 older and younger children1 friend and friend1 are the bonds from which authority proceeds4 ,politics is not a branch of morals2 it is submerged in morals4 ,all virtues are summed up in filial piety4 ,wrongdoing is culpable because it reflects upon one's ancestry and kin4 ,officials are known but only to be shunned4 ,to submit a dispute to them is a disgrace4 ,the measure of value of the remote and theocratic state lies in what it does not do4 ,its perfection is found in its identification with the processes of nature1 in virtue of which the seasons travel their constant round1 so that fields under the beneficent rule of sun and rain produce their harvest1 and the neighborhood prospers in peace4 ,the intimate and familiar propinquity group is not a social unity within an inclusive whole4 ,it is1 for almost all purposes1 society itself4 ,at the other limit there are social groups so separated by rivers1 seas and mountains1 by strange languages and gods1 that what one of them does--save in war--has no appreciable consequences for another4 ,there is therefore no common interest1 no public1 and no need nor possibility of an inclusive state4 ,the plurality of states is such a universal and notorious phenomenon that it is taken for granted4 ,it does not seem to require explanation4 ,but it sets up1 as we have noted1 a test difficult for some theories to meet4 ,except upon the basis of a freakish limitation in the common will and reason which is alleged to be the foundation of the state1 the difficulty is insuperable4 ,it is peculiar1 to say the least1 that universal reason should be unable to cross a mountain range and objective will be balked by a river current4 ,the difficulty is not so great for many other theories4 ,but only the theory which makes recognition of consequences the critical factor can find in the fact of many states a corroborating trait4 ,whatever is a barrier to the spread of the consequences of associated behavior by that very fact operates to set up political boundaries4 ,the explanation is as commonplace as is the thing to be explained4 ,somewhere between associations that are narrow1 close and intimate and those which are so remote as to have only infrequent and casual contact lies1 then1 the province of a state4 ,we do not find and should not expect to find sharp and fast demarcations4 ,villages and neighborhoods shade imperceptibly into a political public4 ,different states may pass through federations and alliances into a larger whole which has some of the marks of statehood4 ,this condition1 which we should anticipate in virtue of the theory1 is confirmed by historical facts4 ,the wavering and shifting line of distinction between a state and other forms of social union is1 again1 an obstacle in the way of theories of the state which imply as their concrete counterpart something as sharply marked off as is the concept4 ,on the basis of empirical consequences1 it is just the sort of thing which should occur4 ,there are empires due to conquest where political rule exists only in forced levies of taxes and soldiers1 and in which1 though the word state may be used1 the characteristic signs of a public are notable for their absence4 ,there are political communities like the city-states of ancient ,greece in which the fiction of common descent is a vital factor1 in which household gods and worship are replaced by community divinities1 shrines1 and cults3 states in which much of the intimacy of the vivid and prompt personal touch of the family endures1 while there has been added the transforming inspiration of a varied1 freer1 fuller life1 whose issues are so momentous that in comparison the life of the neighborhood is parochial and that of the household dull4 ,multiplicity and constant transformation in the forms which the state assumes are as comprehensible upon the hypothesis proposed as is the numerical diversity of independent states4 ,the consequences of conjoint behavior differ in kind and in range with changes in 8material culture10 especially those involved in exchange of raw materials1 finished products and above all in technology1 in tools1 weapons and utensils4 ,these in turn are immediately affected by inventions in means of transit1 transportation and intercommunication4 ,a people that lives by tending flocks of sheep and cattle adapts itself to very different conditions than those of a people which ranges freely1 mounted on horses4 ,one form of nomadism is usually peaceful2 the other warlike4 ,roughly speaking1 tools and implements determine occupations1 and occupations determine the consequences of associated activity4 ,in determining consequences1 they institute publics with different interests1 which exact different types of political behavior to care for them4 ,in spite of the fact that diversity of political forms rather than uniformity is the rule1 belief in the state as an archetypal entity persists in political philosophy and science4 ,much dialectical ingenuity has been expended in construction of an essence or intrinsic nature in virtue of which any particular association is entitled to have applied to it the concept of statehood4 ,equal ingenuity has been expended in explaining away all divergencies from this morphological type1 and 7the favored device7 in ranking states in a hierarchical order of value as they approach the defining essence4 ,the idea that there is a model pattern which makes a state a good or true state has affected practice as well as theory4 ,it1 more than anything else1 is responsible for the effort to form constitutions offhand and impose them ready-made on peoples4 ,unfortunately1 when the falsity of this view was perceived1 it was replaced by the idea that states 8grow0 or develop instead of being made4 ,this 8growth0 did not mean simply that states alter4 ,growth signified an evolution through regular stages to a predetermined end because of some intrinsic nisus or principle4 ,this theory discouraged recourse to the only method by which alterations of political forms might be directed3 namely1 the use of intelligence to judge consequences4 ,equally with the theory which it displaced1 it presumed the existence of a single standard form which defines the state as the essential and true article4 ,after a false analogy with physical science1 it was asserted that only the assumption of such a uniformity of process renders a 8scientific0 treatment of society possible4 ,incidentally1 the theory flattered the conceit of those nations which1 being politically 8advanced10 assumed that they were so near the apex of evolution as to wear the crown of statehood4 ,the hypothesis presented makes possible a consistently empirical or historical treatment of the changes in political forms and arrangements1 free from any overriding conceptual domination such as is inevitable when a 8true0 state is postulated1 whether that be thought of as deliberately made or as evolving by its own inner law4 ,intrusions from non-political internal occurrences1 industrial and technological1 and from external events1 borrowings1 travel1 migrations1 explorations1 wars1 modify the consequences of prexisting associations to such an extent that new agencies and functions are necessitated4 ,political forms are also subject to alterations of a more indirect sort4 ,developments of better methods of thinking bring about observation of consequences which were concealed from a vision which used coarser intellectual tools4 ,quickened intellectual insight also makes possible invention of new political devices4 ,science has not indeed played a large rle4 ,but intuitions of statesmen and of political theorists have occasionally penetrated into the operations of social forces in such a way that a new turn has been given to legislation and to administration4 ,there is a margin of toleration in the body politic as well as in an organic body4 ,measures not in any sense inevitable are accommodated to after they have once been taken2 and a further diversity is thereby introduced in political manners4 ,in short1 the hypothesis which holds that publics are constituted by recognition of extensive and enduring indirect consequences of acts accounts for the relativity of states1 while the theories which define them in terms of specific causal authorship imply an absoluteness which is contradicted by facts4 ,the attempt to find by the 8comparative method0 structures which are common to antique and modern1 to occidental and oriental states1 has involved a great waste of industry4 ,the only constant is the function of caring for and regulating the interests which accrue as the result of the complex indirect expansion and radiation of conjoint behavior4 ,we conclude1 then1 that temporal and local diversification is a prime mark of political organization1 and one which1 when it is analyzed1 supplies a confirming test of our theory4 ,a second mark and evidence is found in an otherwise inexplicable fact that the quantitative scope of results of conjoint behavior generates a public with need for organization4 ,as we already noted1 what are now crimes subject to public cognizance and adjudication were once private ebullitions1 having the status now possessed by an insult proffered by one to another4 ,an interesting phase of the transition from the relatively private to the public1 at least from a limited public to a larger one1 is seen in the development in ,england of the ,king's ,peace4 ,justice until the twelfth century was administered mainly by feudal and shire courts1 courts of hundreds1 etc4 ,any lord who had a sufficient number of subjects and tenants decided controversies and imposed penalties4 ,the court and justice of the king was but one among many1 and primarily concerned with royalty's tenants1 servants1 properties and dignities4 ,the monarchs wished1 however1 to increase their revenues and expand their power and prestige4 ,various devices were invented and fictions set up by means of which the jurisdiction of kingly courts was extended4 ,the method was to allege that various offenses1 formerly attended to by local courts1 were infractions of the king's peace4 ,the centralizing movement went on till the king's justice had a monopoly4 ,the instance is significant4 ,a measure instigated by desire to increase the power and profit of the royal dynasty became an impersonal public function by bare extension4 ,the same sort of thing has repeatedly occurred when personal prerogatives have passed into normal political processes4 ,something of the same sort is manifested in contemporary life when modes of private business become 8affected with a public interest0 because of quantitative expansion4 ,a converse instance is presented in transfer from public to private domain of religious rites and beliefs4 ,as long as the prevailing mentality thought that the consequences of piety and irreligion affected the entire community1 religion was of necessity a public affair4 ,scrupulous adherence to the customary cult was of the highest political import4 ,gods were tribal ancestors or founders of the community4 ,they granted communal prosperity when they were duly acknowledged and were the authors of famine1 pestilence and defeat in war if their interests were not zealously attended to4 ,naturally when religious acts had such extended consequences1 temples were public buildings1 like the agora and forum2 rites were civic functions and priests public officials4 ,long after theocracy vanished1 theurgy was a political institution4 ,even when disbelief was rife1 few there were who would run the risk of neglecting the ceremonials4 ,the revolution by which piety and worship were relegated to the private sphere is often attributed to the rise of personal conscience and assertion of its rights4 ,but this rise is just the thing to be accounted for4 ,the supposition that it was there all the time in a submerged condition and finally dared to show itself reverses the order of events4 ,social changes1 both intellectual and in the internal composition and external relations of peoples1 took place so that men no longer connected attitudes of reverence or disrespect to the gods with the weal and woe of the community4 ,faith and unbelief still had serious consequences1 but these were now thought to be confined to the temporal and eternal happiness of the persons directly concerned4 ,given the other belief1 and persecution and intolerance are as justifiable as is organized hostility to any crime2 impiety is the most dangerous of all threats to public peace and well-being4 ,but social changes gradually effected as one of the new functions of the life of the community the rights of private conscience and creed4 ,in general1 behavior in intellectual matters has moved from the public to the private realm4 ,this radical change was1 of course1 urged and justified on the ground of intrinsic and sacred private right4 ,but1 as in the special case of religious beliefs1 it is strange1 if this reason be accepted1 that mankind lived so long in total unawareness of the existence of the right4 ,in fact1 the idea of a purely private area of consciousness1 where whatever goes on has no external consequences1 was in the first instance a product of institutional change1 political and ecclesiastic1 although1 like other beliefs1 once it was established it had political results4 ,the observation that the interests of the community are better cared for when there is permitted a large measure of personal judgment and choice in the formation of intellectual conclusions1 is an observation which could hardly have been made until social mobility and heterogeneity had brought about initiation and invention in technological matters and industry1 and until secular pursuits had become formidable rivals to church and state4 ,even yet1 however1 toleration in matters of judgment and belief is largely a negative matter4 ,we agree to leave one another alone 7within limits7 more from recognition of evil consequences which have resulted from the opposite course rather than from any profound belief in its positive social beneficence4 ,as long as the latter consequence is not widely perceived1 the so-called natural right to private judgment will remain a somewhat precarious rationalization of the moderate amount of toleration which has come into being4 ,such phenomena as the ,ku ,klux and legislative activity to regulate science show that the belief in liberty of thought is still superficial4 ,if ,i make an appointment with a dentist or doctor1 the transaction is primarily between us4 ,it is my health which is affected and his pocket-book1 skill and reputation4 ,but exercise of the professions has consequences so widespread that the examination and licensing of persons who practice them becomes a public matter4 ,john ,smith buys or sells real estate4 ,the transaction is effected by himself and some other person4 ,land1 however1 is of prime importance to society1 and the private transaction is hedged about with legal regulations2 evidence of transfer and ownership has to be recorded with a public official in forms publicly prescribed4 ,the choice of a mate and the act of sexual union are intimately personal4 ,but the act is the condition of bearing of offspring who are the means of the perpetuation of the community4 ,the public interest is manifested in formalities which are necessary to make a union legal and for its legal termination4 ,consequences1 in a word1 affect large numbers beyond those immediately concerned in the transaction4 ,it is often thought that in a socialistic state the formation and dissolution of marriages would cease to have a public phase4 ,it is possible4 ,but it is also possible that such a state would be even more alive than is the community at present to the consequences of the union of man and woman not only upon children but upon its own well-being and stability4 ,in that case certain regulations would be relaxed1 but there might be imposed stringent rules as to health1 economic capacity and psychologic compatibility as preconditions of wedlock4 ,no one can take into account all the consequences of the acts he performs4 ,it is a matter of necessity for him1 as a rule1 to limit his attention and foresight to matters which1 as we say1 are distinctively his own business4 ,any one who looked too far abroad with regard to the outcome of what he is proposing to do would1 if there were no general rules in existence1 soon be lost in a hopelessly complicated muddle of considerations4 ,the man of most generous outlook has to draw the line somewhere1 and he is forced to draw it in whatever concerns those closely associated with himself4 ,in the absence of some objective regulation1 effects upon them are all he can be sure of in any reasonable degree4 ,much of what is called selfishness is but the outcome of limitation of observation and imagination4 ,hence when consequences concern a large number1 a number so mediately involved that a person cannot readily prefigure how they are to be affected1 that number is constituted a public which intervenes4 ,it is not merely that the combined observations of a number cover more ground than those of a single person4 ,it is rather that the public itself1 being unable to forecast and estimate all consequences1 establishes certain dikes and channels so that actions are confined within prescribed limits1 and insofar have moderately predictable consequences4 ,the regulations and laws of the state are therefore misconceived when they are viewed as commands4 ,the 8command0 theory of common and statute law is in reality a dialectical consequence of the theories1 previously criticized1 which define the state in terms of an antecedent causation1 specifically of that theory which takes 8will0 to be the causal force which generates the state4 ,if a will is the origin of the state1 then state-action expresses itself in injunctions and prohibitions imposed by its will upon the wills of subjects4 ,sooner or later1 however1 the question arises as to the justification of the will which issues commands4 ,why should the will of the rulers have more authority than that of others8 ,why should the latter submit8 ,the logical conclusion is that the ground of obedience lies ultimately in superior force4 ,but this conclusion is an obvious invitation to trial of forces to see where superior force lies4 ,in fact the idea of authority is abolished1 and that of force substituted4 ,the next dialectical conclusion is that the will in question is something over and above any private will or any collection of such wills3 is some overruling 8general will40 ,this conclusion was drawn by ,rousseau1 and under the influence of ,german metaphysics was erected into a dogma of a mystic and transcendent absolute will1 which in turn was not another name for force only because it was identified with absolute reason4 ,the alternative to one or other of these conclusions is surrender of the causal authorship theory and the adoption of that of widely distributed consequences1 which1 when they are perceived1 create a common interest and the need of special agencies to care for it4 ,rules of law are in fact the institution of conditions under which persons make their arrangements with one another4 ,they are structures which canalize action2 they are active forces only as are banks which confine the flow of a stream1 and are commands only in the sense in which the banks command the current4 ,if individuals had no stated conditions under which they come to agreement with one another1 any agreement would either terminate in a twilight zone of vagueness or would have to cover such an enormous amount of detail as to be unwieldy and unworkable4 ,each agreement1 moreover1 might vary so from every other that nothing could be inferred from one arrangement as to the probable consequences of any other4 ,legal rules state certain conditions which when met make an agreement a contract4 ,the terms of the agreement are thereby canalized within manageable limits1 and it is possible to generalize and predict from one to another4 ,only the exigencies of a theory lead one to hold that there is a command that an agreement be made in such and such a form4#b ,what happens is that certain conditions are set such that if a person conform to them1 he can count on certain consequences1 while if he fails to do so he cannot forecast consequences4 ,he takes a chance and runs the risk of having the whole transaction invalidated to his loss4 ,there is no reason to interpret even the 8prohibitions0 of criminal law in any other way4 ,conditions are stated in reference to consequences which may be incurred if they are infringed or transgressed4 ,we can similarly state the undesirable results which will happen if a stream breaks through its banks2 if the stream were capable of foreseeing these consequences and directing its behavior by the foresight1 we might metaphorically construe the banks as issuing a prohibition4 ,this account explains both the large arbitrary and contingent element in laws and their plausible identification with reason1 dissimilar as are the two considerations4 ,there are many transactions in which the thing of chief importance is that consequences be determinate in some fashion rather than that they be determined by some inherent principle to be just such and such4 ,in other words1 within limits it is indifferent what results are fixed by the conditions settled upon2 what is important is that the consequences be certain enough to be predictable4 ,the rule of the road is typical of a large number of rules4 ,so is the fixing of sunset or of a specified hour as the exact time when the felonious entering of the premises of another takes on a more serious quality4 ,on the other hand1 rules of law are reasonable so that 8reason0 is appealed to by some as their fount and origin on the ground pointed out by ,hume4#c ,men are naturally shortsighted1 and the shortsightedness is increased and perverted by the influence of appetite and passion4 8,the law0 formulates remote and long-run consequences4 ,it then operates as a condensed available check on the naturally overweening influence of immediate desire and interest over decision4 ,it is a means of doing for a person what otherwise only his own foresight1 if thoroughly reasonable1 could do4 ,for a rule of law1 although it may be laid down because of a special act as its occasion1 is formulated in view of an indefinite variety of other possible acts4 ,it is necessarily a generalization2 for it is generic as to the predictable consequences of a class of facts4 ,if the incidents of a particular occasion exercise undue influence upon the content of a rule of law1 it will soon be overruled1 either explicitly or by neglect4 ,upon this theory1 the law as 8embodied reason0 means a formulated generalization of means and procedures in behavior which are adapted to secure what is wanted4 ,reason expresses a function1 not a causal origin4 ,law is reasonable as a man is sensible who selects and arranges conditions adapted to produce the ends he regards as desirable4 ,a recent writer1 who regards 8reason0 as that which generates laws1 says1 8,a debt does not in reason cease to be a debt because time has passed1 but the law sets up a limitation4 ,a trespass does not cease in reason to be a trespass because it is indefinitely repeated1 yet the law shows a tendency to admit an unresisted trespass in time to the status of right4 ,time1 distance and chance are indifferent to pure reason2 but they play their part in the legal order40#d ,but if reasonableness is a matter of adaptation of means to consequences1 time and distance are things to be given great weight2 for they effect both consequences and the ability to foresee them and to act upon them4 ,indeed1 we might select statutes of limitation as excellent examples of the kind of rationality the law contains4 ,only if reason is looked upon as 8pure10 that is as a matter of formal logic1 do the instances cited manifest limitation of reason4 ,a third mark of the public organized as a state1 a mark which also provides a test of our hypothesis1 is that it is concerned with modes of behavior which are old and hence well established1 engrained4 ,invention is a peculiarly personal act1 even when a number of persons combine to make something new4 ,a novel idea is the kind of thing that has to occur to somebody in the singular sense4 ,a new project is something to be undertaken and set agoing by private initiative4 ,the newer an idea or plan1 the more it deviates from what is already recognized and established in practice4 ,by the nature of the case an innovation is a departure from the customary4 ,hence the resistance it is likely to encounter4 ,we1 to be sure1 live in an era of discoveries and inventions4 ,speaking generically1 innovation itself has become a custom4 ,imagination is wonted to it2 it is expected4 ,when novelties take the form of mechanical appliances1 we incline to welcome them4 ,but this is far from always having been the case4 ,the rule has been to look with suspicion and greet with hostility the appearance of anything new1 even a tool or utensil4 ,for an innovation is a departure1 and one which brings in its train some incalculable disturbance of the behavior to which we have grown used and which seems 8natural40 ,as a recent writer has clearly shown1 inventions have made their way insidiously2 and because of some immediate convenience4 ,if their effects1 their long-run consequences1 in altering habits of behavior had been foreseen1 it is safe to say that most of them would have been destroyed as wicked1 just as many of them were retarded in adoption because they were felt to be sacrilegious4#e ,in any case1 we cannot think of their invention being the work of the state4#f ,the organized community is still hesitant with reference to new ideas of a non-technical and non-technological nature4 ,they are felt to be disturbing to social behavior2 and rightly so1 as far as old and established behavior is concerned4 ,most persons object to having their habits unsettled1 their habits of belief no less than habits of overt action4 ,a new idea is an unsettling of received beliefs2 otherwise1 it would not be a new idea4 ,this is only to say that the production of new ideas is peculiarly a private performance4 ,about the most we can ask of the state1 judging from states which have so far existed1 is that it put up with their production by private individuals without undue meddling4 ,a state which will organize to manufacture and disseminate new ideas and new ways of thinking may come into existence some time1 but such a state is a matter of faith1 not sight4 ,when it comes it will arrive because the beneficial consequences of new ideas have become an article of common faith and repute4 ,it may1 indeed1 be said that even now the state provides those conditions of security which are necessary if private persons are to engage effectually in discovery and invention4 ,but this service is a by-product2 it is foreign to the grounds on which the conditions in question are maintained by the public4 ,and it must be offset by noting the extent to which the state of affairs upon which the public heart is most set is unfavorable to thinking in other than technical lines4 ,in any case1 it is absurd to expect the public1 because it is called in no matter how eulogistic a sense the state1 to rise above the intellectual level of its average constituents4 ,when1 however1 a mode of behavior has become old and familiar1 and when an instrumentality has come into use as a matter of course1 provided it is a prerequisite of other customary pursuits1 it tends to come within the scope of the state4 ,an individual may make his own track in a forest2 but highways are usually public concerns4 ,without roads which one is free to use at will1 men might almost as well be castaways on a desert island4 ,means of transit and communication affect not only those who utilize them but all who are dependent in any way upon what is transported1 whether as producers or consumers4 ,the increase of easy and rapid intercommunication means that production takes place more and more for distant markets and it puts a premium upon mass-production4 ,thus it becomes a disputed question whether railroads as well as highways should not be administered by public officials1 and in any case some measure of official regulation is instituted1 as they become settled bases of social life4 ,the tendency to put what is old and established in uniform lines under the regulation of the state has psychological support4 ,habits economize intellectual as well as muscular energy4 ,they relieve the mind from thought of means1 thus freeing thought to deal with new conditions and purposes4 ,moreover1 interference with a well-established habit is followed by uneasiness and antipathy4 ,the efficiency of liberation from attention to whatever is regularly recurrent is renforced by an emotional tendency to get rid of bother4 ,hence there is a general disposition to turn over activities which have become highly standardized and uniform to representatives of the public4 ,it is possible that the time will come when not only railways will have become routine in their operation and management1 but also existing modes of machine production1 so that business men instead of opposing public ownership will clamor for it in order that they may devote their energies to affairs which involve more novelty1 variation and opportunities for risk and gain4 ,they might conceivably1 even under a rgime of continued private property in general1 no more wish to be bothered with routinized operations than they would want to take over the care of public streets4 ,even now the question of the public's taking charge of the machinery of the manufacture of goods is less a matter of wholesale 8individualism0 versus 8socialism0 than it is of the ratio of the experimental and novel in their management to the habitual and matter-of-course2 of that which is taken for granted as a condition of other things to that which is significant in its own operation4 ,a fourth mark of the public is indicated by the idea that children and other dependents 7such as the insane1 the permanently helpless7 are peculiarly its wards4 ,when the parties involved in any transaction are unequal in status1 the relationship is likely to be one-sided1 and the interests of one party to suffer4 ,if the consequences appear serious1 especially if they seem to be irretrievable1 the public brings to bear a weight that will equalize conditions4 ,legislatures are more ready to regulate the hours of labor of children than of adults1 of women than of men4 ,in general1 labor legislation is justified against the charge that it violates liberty of contract on the ground that the economic resources of the parties to the arrangement are so disparate that the conditions of a genuine contract are absent2 action by the state is introduced to form a level on which bargaining takes place4 ,labor unions often object1 however1 to such 8paternalistic0 legislation on the ground that voluntary combinations to ensure collective bargaining is better for those concerned than action taken without the active participation of laborers4 ,the general objection that paternalism tends to keep those affected by it permanently in the status of children1 without an impetus to help themselves1 rests on the same basis4 ,the difference here is nevertheless not as to the principle that inequality of status may call for public intervention1 but as to the best means of securing and maintaining equality4 ,there has been a steady tendency for the education of children to be regarded as properly a state charge in spite of the fact that children are primarily the care of a family4 ,but the period in which education is possible to an effective degree is that of childhood2 if this time is not taken advantage of the consequences are irreparable4 ,the neglect can rarely be made up later4 ,in the degree1 then1 that a certain measure of instruction and training is deemed to have significant consequences for the social body1 rules are laid down affecting the action of parents in relation to their children1 and those who are not parents are taxed--,herbert ,spencer to the contrary notwithstanding--to maintain schools4 ,again1 the consequences of neglect of safeguards in industries involving machines which are dangerous and those presenting unhygienic conditions1 are so serious and irretrievable that the modern public has intervened to maintain conditions conducive to safety and health4 ,movements which aim at insurance against illness and old-age under governmental auspices illustrate the same principle4 ,while public regulation of a minimum wage is still a disputed matter1 the argument in behalf of it appeals to the criterion stated4 ,the argument in effect is that a living wage is a matter of such serious indirect consequences to society that it cannot be safely left to the parties directly concerned1 owing to the fact that immediate need may incapacitate one party to the transaction from effective bargaining4 ,in what has been said there is no attempt to lay down criteria to be applied in a predetermined way to ensure just such and such results4 ,we are not concerned to predict the special forms which state action will take in the future4 ,we have simply been engaged in pointing out the marks by which public action as distinct from private is characterized4 ,transactions between singular persons and groups bring a public into being when their indirect consequences--their effects beyond those immediately engaged in them--are of importance4 ,vagueness is not eliminated from the idea of importance4 ,but at least we have pointed out some of the factors which go to make up importance3 namely1 the far-reaching character of consequences1 whether in space or time2 their settled1 uniform and recurrent nature1 and their irreparableness4 ,each one of these matters involves questions of degree4 ,there is no sharp and clear line which draws itself1 pointing out beyond peradventure1 like the line left by a receding high tide1 just where a public comes into existence which has interests so significant that they must be looked after and administered by special agencies1 or governmental officers4 ,hence there is often room for dispute4 ,the line of demarcation between actions left to private initiative and management and those regulated by the state has to be discovered experimentally4 ,as we shall see later1 there are assignable reasons why it will be drawn very differently at different times and places4 ,the very fact that the public depends upon consequences of acts and the perception of consequences1 while its organization into a state depends upon the ability to invent and employ special instrumentalities1 shows how and why publics and political institutions differ widely from epoch to epoch and from place to place4 ,to suppose that an a priori conception of the intrinsic nature and limits of the individual on one side and the state on the other will yield good results once for all is absurd4 ,if1 however1 the state has a definite nature1 as it should have if it were formed by fixed causal agencies1 or if individuals have a nature fixed once for all apart from conditions of association1 a final and wholesale partitioning of the realms of personal and state activity is the logical conclusion4 ,the failure of such a theory to reach practical solutions is1 therefore1 a further confirmation of the theory which emphasizes the consequences of activity as the essential affair4 ,in conclusion1 we shall make explicit what has been implied regarding the relation to one another of public1 government and state4#g ,there have been two extreme views about this point4 ,on one hand1 the state has been identified with government4 ,on the other hand1 the state1 having a necessary existence of its own1 per se1 is said then to proceed to form and employ certain agencies forming government1 much as a man hires servants and assigns them duties4 ,the latter view is appropriate when the causal agency theory is relied upon4 ,some force1 whether a general will or the singular wills of assembled individuals1 calls the state into being4 ,then the latter as a secondary operation chooses certain persons through whom to act4 ,such a theory helps those who entertain it to retain the idea of the inherent sanctity of the state4 ,concrete political evils such as history exhibits in abundance can be laid at the door of fallible and corrupt governments1 while the state keeps its honor unbesmirched4 ,the identification of the state with government has the advantage of keeping the mind's eye upon concrete and observable facts2 but it involves an unaccountable separation between rulers and people4 ,if a government exists by itself and on its own account1 why should there be government8 ,why should there persist the habits of loyalty and obedience which permit it to rule8 ,the hypothesis which has been advanced frees us from the perplexities which cluster about both of these two notions4 ,the lasting1 extensive and serious consequences of associated activity bring into existence a public4 ,in itself it is unorganized and formless4 ,by means of officials and their special powers it becomes a state4 ,a public articulated and operating through representative officers is the state2 there is no state without a government1 but also there is none without the public4 ,the officers are still singular beings1 but they exercise new and special powers4 ,these may be turned to their private account4 ,then government is corrupt and arbitrary4 ,quite apart from deliberate graft1 from using unusual powers for private glorification and profit1 density of mind and pomposity of behavior1 adherence to class-interest and its prejudices1 are strengthened by position4 8,power is poison0 was the remark of one of the best1 shrewdest and most experienced observers of ,washington politicians4 ,on the other hand1 occupancy of office may enlarge a man's views and stimulate his social interest so that he exhibits as a statesman traits foreign to his private life4 ,but since the public forms a state only by and through officials and their acts1 and since holding official position does not work a miracle of transubstantiation1 there is nothing perplexing nor even discouraging in the spectacle of the stupidities and errors of political behavior4 ,the facts which give rise to the spectacle should1 however1 protect us from the illusion of expecting extraordinary change to follow from a mere change in political agencies and methods4 ,such a change sometimes occurs1 but when it does1 it is because the social conditions1 in generating a new public1 have prepared the way for it2 the state sets a formal seal upon forces already in operation by giving them a defined channel through which to act4 ,conceptions of 8,the ,state0 as something per se1 something intrinsically manifesting a general will and reason1 lend themselves to illusions4 ,they make such a sharp distinction between the state and a government that1 from the standpoint of the theories1 a government may be corrupt and injurious and yet ,the ,state by the same idea retain its inherent dignity and nobility4 ,officials may be mean1 obstinate1 proud and stupid and yet the nature of the state which they serve remain essentially unimpaired4 ,since1 however1 a public is organized into a state through its government1 the state is as its officials are4 ,only through constant watchfulness and criticism of public officials by citizens can a state be maintained in integrity and usefulness4 ,the discussion also returns with some added illumination to the problem of the relation of state and society4 ,the problem of the relation of individuals to associations--sometimes posed as the relation of the individual to society--is a meaningless one4 ,we might as well make a problem out of the relation of the letters of an alphabet to the alphabet4 ,an alphabet is letters1 and 8society0 is individuals in their connections with one another4 ,the mode of combination of letters with one another is obviously a matter of importance2 letters form words and sentences when combined1 and have no point nor sense except in some combination4 ,i would not say that the latter statement applies literally to individuals1 but it cannot be gainsaid that singular human beings exist and behave in constant and varied association with one another4 ,these modes of conjoint action and their consequences profoundly affect not only the outer habits of singular persons1 but their dispositions in emotion1 desire1 planning and valuing4 8,society10 however1 is either an abstract or a collective noun4 ,in the concrete1 there are societies1 associations1 groups of an immense number of kinds1 having different ties and instituting different interests4 ,they may be gangs1 criminal bands2 clubs for sport1 sociability and eating2 scientific and professional organizations2 political parties and unions within them2 families2 religious denominations1 business partnerships and corporations2 and so on in an endless list4 ,the associations may be local1 nationwide and trans-national4 ,since there is no one thing which may be called society1 except their indefinite overlapping1 there is no unqualified eulogistic connotation adhering to the term 8society40 ,some societies are in the main to be approved2 some to be condemned1 on account of their consequences upon the character and conduct of those engaged in them and because of their remoter consequences upon others4 ,all of them1 like all things human1 are mixed in quality2 8society0 is something to be approached and judged critically and discriminatingly4 8,socialization0 of some sort--that is1 the reflex modification of wants1 beliefs and work because of share in a united action--is inevitable4 ,but it is as marked in the formation of frivolous1 dissipated1 fanatical1 narrow-minded and criminal persons as in that of competent inquirers1 learned scholars1 creative artists and good neighbors4 ,confining our notice to the results which are desirable1 it appears that there is no reason for assigning all the values which are generated and maintained by means of human associations to the work of states4 ,yet the same unbridled generalizing and fixating tendency of the mind which leads to a monistic fixation of society has extended beyond the hypostatizing of 8society0 and produced a magnified idealization of ,the ,state4 ,all values which result from any kind of association are habitually imputed by one school of social philosophers to the state4 ,naturally the result is to place the state beyond criticism4 ,revolt against the state is then thought to be the one unforgivable social sin4 ,sometimes the deification proceeds from a special need of the time1 as in the cases of ,spinoza and ,hegel4 ,sometimes it springs from a prior belief in universal will and reason and a consequent need of finding some empirical phenomena which may be identified with the externalization of this absolute spirit4 ,then this is employed1 by circular logic1 as evidence for the existence of such a spirit4 ,the net import of our discussion is that a state is a distinctive and secondary form of association1 having a specifiable work to do and specified organs of operation4 ,it is quite true that most states1 after they have been brought into being1 react upon the primary groupings4 ,when a state is a good state1 when the officers of the public genuinely serve the public interests1 this reflex effect is of great importance4 ,it renders the desirable associations solider and more coherent2 indirectly it clarifies their aims and purges their activities4 ,it places a discount upon injurious groupings and renders their tenure of life precarious4 ,in performing these services1 it gives the individual members of valued associations greater liberty and security3 it relieves them of hampering conditions which if they had to cope with personally would absorb their energies in mere negative struggle against evils4 ,it enables individual members to count with reasonable certainty upon what others will do1 and thus facilitates mutually helpful coperations4 ,it creates respect for others and for one's self4 ,a measure of the goodness of a state is the degree in which it relieves individuals from the waste of negative struggle and needless conflict and confers upon him positive assurance and renforcement in what he undertakes4 ,this is a great service1 and there is no call to be niggardly in acknowledging the transformations of group and personal action which states have historically effected4 ,but this recognition cannot be legitimately converted into the monopolistic absorption of all associations into ,the ,state1 nor of all social values into political value4 ,the all-inclusive nature of the state signifies only that officers of the public 7including1 of course1 law-makers7 may act so as to fix conditions under which any form of association operates2 its comprehensive character refers only to the impact of its behavior4 ,a war like an earthquake may 8include0 in its consequences all elements in a given territory1 but the inclusion is by way of effects1 not by inherent nature or right4 ,a beneficent law1 like a condition of general economic prosperity1 may favorably affect all interests in a particular region1 but it cannot be called a whole of which the elements influenced are parts4 ,nor can the liberating and confirming results of public action be construed to yield a wholesale idealization of states in contrast with other associations4 ,for state activity is often injurious to the latter4 ,one of the chief occupations of states has been the waging of war and the suppression of dissentient minorities4 ,moreover1 their action1 even when benign1 presupposes values due to non-political forms of living together which are but extended and renforced by the public through its agents4 ,the hypothesis which we have supported has obvious points of contact with what is known as the pluralistic conception of the state4 ,it presents also a marked point of difference4 ,our doctrine of plural forms is a statement of a fact3 that there exist a plurality of social groupings1 good1 bad and indifferent4 ,it is not a doctrine which prescribes inherent limits to state action4 ,it does not intimate that the function of the state is limited to settling conflicts among other groups1 as if each one of them had a fixed scope of action of its own4 ,were that true1 the state would be only an umpire to avert and remedy trespasses of one group upon another4 ,our hypothesis is neutral as to any general1 sweeping implications as to how far state activity may extend4 ,it does not indicate any particular polity of public action4 ,at times1 the consequences of the conjoint behavior of some persons may be such that a large public interest is generated which can be fulfilled only by laying down conditions which involve a large measure of reconstruction within that group4 ,there is no more an inherent sanctity in a church1 trade-union1 business corporation1 or family institution than there is in the state4 ,their value is also to be measured by their consequences4 ,the consequences vary with concrete conditions2 hence at one time and place a large measure of state activity may be indicated and at another time a policy of quiescence and laissez-faire4 ,just as publics and states vary with conditions of time and place1 so do the concrete functions which should be carried on by states4 ,there is no antecedent universal proposition which can be laid down because of which the functions of a state should be limited or should be expanded4 ,their scope is something to be critically and experimentally determined4 ,,chapter ,,iii ,,the ,,democratic ,,state ,singular persons are the foci of action1 mental and moral1 as well as overt4 ,they are subject to all kinds of social influences which determine what they can think of1 plan and choose4 ,the conflicting streams of social influence come to a single and conclusive issue only in personal consciousness and deed4 ,when a public is generated1 the same law holds4 ,it arrives at decisions1 makes terms and executes resolves only through the medium of individuals4 ,they are officers2 they represent a ,public1 but the ,public acts only through them4 ,we say in a country like our own that legislators and executives are elected by the public4 ,the phrase might appear to indicate that the ,public acts4 ,but1 after all1 individual men and women exercise the franchise2 the public is here a collective name for a multitude of persons each voting as an anonymous unit4 ,as a citizen-voter each one of these persons is1 however1 an officer of the public4 ,he expresses his will as a representative of the public interest as much so as does a senator or sheriff4 ,his vote may express his hope to profit in private purse by the election of some man or the ratification of some proposed law4 ,he may fail1 in other words1 in effort to represent the interest entrusted to him4 ,but in this respect he does not differ from those explicitly designated public officials who have also been known to betray the interest committed to them instead of faithfully representing it4 ,in other words1 every officer of the public1 whether he represents it as a voter or as a stated official1 has a dual capacity4 ,from this fact the most serious problem of government arises4 ,we commonly speak of some governments as representative in contrast with others which are not4 ,by our hypothesis all governments are representative in that they purport to stand for the interests which a public has in the behavior of individuals and groups4 ,there is1 however1 no contradiction here4 ,those concerned in government are still human beings4 ,they retain their share of the ordinary traits of human nature4 ,they still have private interests to serve and interests of special groups1 those of the family1 clique or class to which they belong4 ,rarely can a person sink himself in his political function2 the best which most men attain to is the domination by the public weal of their other desires4 ,what is meant by 8representative0 government is that the public is definitely organized with the intent to secure this dominance4 ,the dual capacity of every officer of the public leads to conflict in individuals between their genuinely political aims and acts and those which they possess in their non-political rles4 ,when the public adopts special measures to see to it that the conflict is minimized and that the representative function overrides the private one1 political institutions are termed representative4 ,it may be said that not until recently have publics been conscious that they were publics1 so that it is absurd to speak of their organizing themselves to protect and secure their interests4 ,hence states are a recent development4 ,the facts are1 indeed1 fatally against attribution of any long history to states provided we use a hard and fast conceptual definition of states4 ,but our definition is founded on the exercise of a function1 not on any inherent essence or structural nature4 ,hence it is more or less a verbal matter just what countries and peoples are called states4 ,what is of importance is that the facts which significantly differentiate various forms from one another be recognized4 ,the objection just urged points to a fact of great significance1 whether the word 8state0 be used or not4 ,it indicates that for long stretches of time the public rle of rulers has been incidental to other ends for which they have used their powers4 ,there has been a machinery of government1 but it has been employed for purposes which in the strict sense are non-political1 the deliberate advancement of dynastic interests4 ,thus we come upon the primary problem of the public3 to achieve such recognition of itself as will give it weight in the selection of official representatives and in the definition of their responsibilities and rights4 ,consideration of this problem leads us1 as we shall see1 into the discussion of the democratic state4 ,taking history as a whole1 the selection of rulers and equipment of them with powers has been a matter of political accident4 ,persons have been selected as judges1 executives and administrators for reasons independent of capacity to serve public interests4 ,some of the ,greek states of antiquity and the examination system of ,china stand out for the very reason that they are exceptions to this statement4 ,history shows that1 in the main1 persons have ruled because of some prerogative and conspicuous place which was independent of their definitively public rle4 ,if we introduce the idea of the public at all1 we are bound to say that it was assumed without question that certain persons were fit to be rulers because of traits independent of political considerations4 ,thus in many societies the male elders exercised such rule as obtained in virtue of the mere fact that they were old men4 ,gerontocracy is a familiar and widespread fact4 ,doubtless there was a presumption that age was a sign of knowledge of group traditions and of matured experience1 but it can hardly be said that this presumption was consciously the influential factor in giving old men a monopoly of rule4 ,rather they had it ipso facto1 because they had it4 ,a principle of inertia1 of least resistance and least action1 operated4 ,those who were already conspicuous in some respect1 were it only for long gray beards1 had political powers conferred upon them4 ,success in military achievement is an irrelevant factor which has controlled the selection of men to rule4 ,whether or no 8camps are the true mothers of cities10 whether or no ,herbert ,spencer was right in declaring that government originated in chieftainship for war purposes1 there is no doubt that1 in most communities1 the ability of a man to win battles has seemed to mark him out as a predestined manager of the civil affairs of a community4 ,there is no need to argue that the two positions demand different gifts1 and that achievement in one is no proof of fitness for the other4 ,the fact remains4 ,nor do we have to look at ancient states for evidence of its effective operation4 ,states nominally democratic show the same tendency to assume that a winning general has some quasi-divine appointment to political office4 ,reason would teach that oftentimes even the politicians who are most successful in instigating the willingness of the civilian population to support a war are by that very fact incapacitated for the offices of making a just and enduring peace4 ,but the treaty of ,versailles is there to show how difficult it is to make a shift of personnel even when conditions radically alter so that there is need for men of a changed outlook and interests4 ,to those who have1 it shall be given4 ,it is human nature to think along the easiest lines1 and this induces men when they want conspicuous leaders in the civil function to fasten upon those who are already conspicuous1 no matter what the reason4 ,aside from old men and warriors1 medicine men and priests have had a ready-made1 predestined vocation to rule4 ,where the community welfare is precarious and dependent upon the favor of supernatural beings1 those skilled in the arts by which the wrath and jealousy of the gods are averted and their favor procured1 have the marks of superior capacity to administer states4 ,success in living to an old age1 in battle and in occult arts1 have1 however1 been most signalized in the initiation of political rgimes4 ,what has counted most in the long run is the dynastic factor4 ,beati possidentes4 ,the family from which a ruler has been taken occupies in virtue of that fact a conspicuous position and superior power4 ,preminence in status is readily taken for excellence4 ,divine favor ex officio attends a family in which rule has been exercised for enough generations so that the memory of original exploits has grown dim or become legendary4 ,the emoluments1 pomp and power which go with rule are not thought to need justification4 ,they not only embellish and dignify it1 but are regarded as symbols of intrinsic worthiness to possess it4 ,custom consolidates what accident may have originated2 established power has a way of legitimizing itself4 ,alliances with other potent families within and without the country1 possession of large landed estates1 a retinue of courtiers and access to revenues of the state1 with a multitude of other things irrelevant to the public interest1 establish a dynastic position at the same time that they divert the genuine political function to private ends4 ,an additional complication is introduced because the glory1 wealth and power of rulers constitutes in itself an invitation to seize and exploit office4 ,the causes which operate to induce men to strive for any shining object operate with increased appeal in the case of governmental power4 ,the centralization and scope of functions which are needed in order to serve the interests of the public become1 in other words1 seductions to draw state officials into subserving private ends4 ,all history shows how difficult it is for human beings to bear effectually in mind the objects for the nominal sake of which they are clothed with power and pomp2 it shows the ease with which they employ their panoply to advance private and class interests4 ,were actual dishonesty the only1 or even chief1 foe1 the problem would be much simpler4 ,the ease of routine1 the difficulty of ascertaining public needs1 the intensity of the glare which attends the seat of the mighty1 desire for immediate and visible results1 play the larger part4 ,one often hears it said by socialists justly impatient with the present economic rgime that 8industry should be taken out of private hands40 ,one recognizes what they intend3 that it should cease to be regulated by desire for private profit and should function for the benefit of producers and consumers1 instead of being sidetracked to the advantage of financiers and stockholders4 ,but one wonders whether those who so readily utter this saying have asked themselves into whose hands industry is to pass8 ,into those of the public8 ,but1 alas1 the public has no hands except those of individual human beings4 ,the essential problem is that of transforming the action of such hands so that it will be animated by regard for social ends4 ,there is no magic by which this result can be accomplished4 ,the same causes which have led men to utilize concentrated political power to serve private purposes will continue to act to induce men to employ concentrated economic power in behalf of non-public aims4 ,this fact does not imply the problem is insoluble4 ,but it indicates where the problem resides1 whatever guise it assumes4 ,since officers of the public have a dual make-up and capacity1 what conditions and what technique are necessary in order that insight1 loyalty and energy may be enlisted on the side of the public and political rle8 ,these commonplace considerations have been adduced as a background for discussion of the problems and prospects of democratic government4 ,democracy is a word of many meanings4 ,some of them are of such a broad social and moral import as to be irrelevant to our immediate theme4 ,but one of the meanings is distinctly political1 for it denotes a mode of government1 a specified practice in selecting officials and regulating their conduct as officials4 ,this is not the most inspiring of the different meanings of democracy2 it is comparatively special in character4 ,but it contains about all that is relevant to political democracy4 ,now the theories and practices regarding the selection and behavior of public officials which constitute political democracy have been worked out against the historical background just alluded to4 ,they represent an effort in the first place to counteract the forces that have so largely determined the possession of rule by accidental and irrelevant factors1 and in the second place an effort to counteract the tendency to employ political power to serve private instead of public ends4 ,to discuss democratic government at large apart from its historic background is to miss its point and to throw away all means for an intelligent criticism of it4 ,in taking the distinctively historical point of view we do not derogate from the important and even superior claims of democracy as an ethical and social ideal4 ,we limit the topic for discussion in such a way as to avoid 8the great bad10 the mixing of things which need to be kept distinct4 ,viewed as a historical tendency exhibited in a chain of movements which have affected the forms of government over almost the entire globe during the last century and a half1 democracy is a complex affair4 ,there is a current legend to the effect that the movement originated in a single clear-cut idea1 and has proceeded by a single unbroken impetus to unfold itself to a predestined end1 whether triumphantly glorious or fatally catastrophic4 ,the myth is perhaps rarely held in so simple and unmixed a form4 ,but something approaching it is found whenever men either praise or damn democratic government absolutely1 that is1 without comparing it with alternative polities4 ,even the least accidental1 the most deliberately planned1 political forms do not embody some absolute and unquestioned good4 ,they represent a choice1 amid a complex of contending forces1 of that particular possibility which appears to promise the most good with the least attendant evil4 ,such a statement1 moreover1 immensely oversimplifies4 ,political forms do not originate in a once for all way4 ,the greatest change1 once it is accomplished1 is simply the outcome of a vast series of adaptations and responsive accommodations1 each to its own particular situation4 ,looking back1 it is possible to make out a trend of more or less steady change in a single direction4 ,but it is1 we repeat1 mere mythology to attribute such unity of result as exists 7which is always easy to exaggerate7 to single force or principle4 ,political democracy has emerged as a kind of net consequence of a vast multitude of responsive adjustments to a vast number of situations1 no two of which were alike1 but which tended to converge to a common outcome4 ,the democratic convergence1 moreover1 was not the result of distinctively political forces and agencies4 ,much less is democracy the product of democracy1 of some inherent nisus1 or immanent idea4 ,the temperate generalization to the effect that the unity of the democratic movement is found in effort to remedy evils experienced in consequence of prior political institutions realizes that it proceeded step by step1 and that each step was taken without foreknowledge of any ultimate result1 and1 for the most part1 under the immediate influence of a number of differing impulses and slogans4 ,it is even more important to realize that the conditions out of which the efforts at remedy grew and which it made possible for them to succeed were primarily non-political in nature4 ,for the evils were of long standing1 and any account of the movement must raise two questions3 ,why were efforts at improvement not made earlier1 and1 when they were made1 why did they take just the form which they did take8 ,the answers to both questions will be found in distinctive religious1 scientific and economic changes which finally took effect in the political field1 being themselves primarily non-political and innocent of democratic intent4 ,large questions and far-ranging ideas and ideals arose during the course of the movement4 ,but theories of the nature of the individual and his rights1 of freedom and authority1 progress and order1 liberty and law1 of the common good and a general will1 of democracy itself1 did not produce the movement4 ,they reflected it in thought2 after they emerged1 they entered into subsequent strivings and had practical effect4 ,we have insisted that the development of political democracy represents the convergence of a great number of social movements1 no one of which owed either its origin or its impetus to inspiration of democratic ideals or to planning for the eventual outcome4 ,this fact makes irrelevant both pans and condemnations based upon conceptual interpretations of democracy1 which1 whether true or false1 good or bad1 are reflections of facts in thought1 not their causal authors4 ,in any case1 the complexity of the historic events which have operated is such as to preclude any thought of rehearsing them in these pages1 even if ,i had a knowledge and competency which are lacking4 ,two general and obvious considerations need1 however1 to be mentioned4 ,born in revolt against established forms of government and the state1 the events which finally culminated in democratic political forms were deeply tinged by fear of government1 and were actuated by a desire to reduce it to a minimum so as to limit the evil it could do4 ,since established political forms were tied up with other institutions1 especially ecclesiastical1 and with a solid body of tradition and inherited belief1 the revolt also extended to the latter4 ,thus it happened that the intellectual terms in which the movement expressed itself had a negative import even when they seemed to be positive4 ,freedom presented itself as an end in itself1 though it signified in fact liberation from oppression and tradition4 ,since it was necessary1 upon the intellectual side1 to find justification for the movements of revolt1 and since established authority was upon the side of institutional life1 the natural recourse was appeal to some inalienable sacred authority resident in the protesting individuals4 ,thus 8individualism0 was born1 a theory which endowed singular persons in isolation from any associations1 except those which they deliberately formed for their own ends1 with native or natural rights4 ,the revolt against old and limiting associations was converted1 intellectually1 into the doctrine of independence of any and all associations4 ,thus the practical movement for the limitation of the powers of government became associated1 as in the influential philosophy of ,john ,locke1 with the doctrine that the ground and justification of the restriction was prior non-political rights inherent in the very structure of the individual4 ,from these tenets1 it was a short step to the conclusion that the sole end of government was the protection of individuals in the rights which were theirs by nature4 ,the ,american revolution was a rebellion against an established government1 and it naturally borrowed and expanded these ideas as the ideological interpretation of the effort to obtain independence of the colonies4 ,it is now easy for the imagination to conceive circumstances under which revolts against prior governmental forms would have found its theoretical formulation in an assertion of the rights of groups1 of other associations than those of a political nature4 ,there was no logic which rendered necessary the appeal to the individual as an independent and isolated being4 ,in abstract logic1 it would have sufficed to assert that some primary groupings had claims which the state could not legitimately encroach upon4 ,in that case1 the celebrated modern antithesis of the ,individual and ,social1 and the problem of their reconciliation1 would not have arisen4 ,the problem would have taken the form of defining the relationship which non-political groups bear to political union4 ,but1 as we have already remarked1 the obnoxious state was closely bound up in fact and in tradition with other associations1 ecclesiastic 7and through its influence with the family71 and economic1 such as gilds and corporations1 and1 by means of the church-state1 even with unions for scientific inquiry and with educational institutions4 ,the easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual1 to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice1 and guaranteed his own private ends4 ,nothing better exhibits the scope of the movement than the fact that philosophic theories of knowledge made the same appeal to the self1 or ego1 in the form of personal consciousness identified with mind itself1 that political theory made to the natural individual1 as the court of ultimate resort4 ,the schools of ,locke and ,descartes1 however much they were opposed in other respects1 agreed in this1 differing only as to whether the sentient or rational nature of the individual was the fundamental thing4 ,from philosophy the idea crept into psychology1 which became an introspective and introverted account of isolated and ultimate private consciousness4 ,henceforth moral and political individualism could appeal to 8scientific0 warrant for its tenets and employ a vocabulary made current by psychology3--although in fact the psychology appealed to as its scientific foundation was its own offspring4 ,the 8individualistic0 movement finds a classic expression in the great documents of the ,french ,revolution1 which at one stroke did away with all forms of association1 leaving1 in theory1 the bare individual face to face with the state4 ,it would hardly have reached this point1 however1 if it had not been for a second factor1 which must be noted4 ,a new scientific movement had been made possible by the invention and use of new mechanical appliances--the lens is typical--which focused attention upon tools like the lever and pendulum1 which1 although they had long been in use1 had not formed points of departure for scientific theory4 ,this new development in inquiry brought1 as ,bacon foretold1 great economic changes in its wake4 ,it more than paid its debt to tools by leading to the invention of machines4 ,the use of machinery in production and commerce was followed by the creation of new powerful social conditions1 personal opportunities and wants4 ,their adequate manifestation was limited by established political and legal practices4 ,the legal regulations so affected every phase of life which was interested in taking advantage of the new economic agencies as to hamper and oppress the free play of manufacture and exchange4 ,the established custom of states1 expressed intellectually in the theory of mercantilism against which ,adam ,smith wrote his account of 8,the 7,true7 ,wealth of ,nations10 prevented the expansion of trade between nations1 a restriction which reacted to limit domestic industry4 ,internally1 there was a network of restrictions inherited from feudalism4 ,the prices of labor and staples were not framed in the market by higgling but were set by justices of the peace4 ,the development of industry was hampered by laws regulating choice of a calling1 apprenticeship1 migration of workers from place to place1--and so on4 ,thus fear of government and desire to limit its operations1 because they were hostile to the development of the new agencies of production and distribution of services and commodities1 received powerful renforcement4 ,the economic movement was perhaps the more influential because it operated1 not in the name of the individual and his inherent rights1 but in the name of ,nature4 ,economic 8laws10 that of labor springing from natural wants and leading to the creation of wealth1 of present abstinence in behalf of future enjoyment leading to creation of capital effective in piling up still more wealth1 the free play of competitive exchange1 designated the law of supply and demand1 were 8natural0 laws4 ,they were set in opposition to political laws as artificial1 man-made affairs4 ,the inherited tradition which remained least questioned was a conception of ,nature which made ,nature something to conjure with4 ,the older metaphysical conception of ,natural ,law was1 however1 changed into an economic conception2 laws of nature1 implanted in human nature1 regulated the production and exchange of goods and services1 and in such a way that when they were kept free from artificial1 that is political1 meddling1 they resulted in the maximum possible social prosperity and progress4 ,popular opinion is little troubled by questions of logical consistency4 ,the economic theory of laissez-faire1 based upon belief in beneficent natural laws which brought about harmony of personal profit and social benefit1 was readily fused with the doctrine of natural rights4 ,they both had the same practical import1 and what is logic between friends8 ,thus the protest of the utilitarian school1 which sponsored the economic theory of natural law in economics1 against natural right theories had no effect in preventing the popular amalgam of the two sides4 ,the utilitarian economic theory was such an important factor in developing the theory1 as distinct from the practice1 of democratic government that it is worth while to expound it in outline4 ,each person naturally seeks the betterment of his own lot4 ,this can be attained only by industry4 ,each person is naturally the best judge of his own interests1 and1 if left free from the influence of artificially imposed restrictions1 will express his judgment in his choice of work and exchange of services and goods4 ,thus1 barring accident1 he will contribute to his own happiness in the measure of his energy in work1 his shrewdness in exchange and his self-denying thrift4 ,wealth and security are the natural rewards of economic virtues4 ,at the same time1 the industry1 commercial zeal1 and ability of individuals contribute to the social good4 ,under the invisible hand of a beneficent providence which has framed natural laws1 work1 capital and trade operate harmoniously to the advantage and advance of men collectively and individually4 ,the foe to be dreaded is interference of government4 ,political regulation is needed only because individuals accidentally and purposely--since the possession of property by the industrious and able is a temptation to the idle and shiftless--encroach upon one another's activities and properties4 ,this encroachment is the essence of injustice1 and the function of government is to secure justice--which signifies chiefly the protection of property and of the contracts which attend commercial exchange4 ,without the existence of the state men might appropriate one another's property4 ,this appropriation is not only unfair to the laborious individual1 but by making property insecure discourages the forthputting of energy at all and thus weakens or destroys the spring of social progress4 ,on the other hand1 this doctrine of the function of the state operates automatically as a limit imposed to governmental activities4 ,the state is itself just only when it acts to secure justice--in the sense just defined4 ,the political problem thus conceived is essentially a problem of discovering and instating a technique which will confine the operations of government as far as may be to its legitimate business of protecting economic interests1 of which the interest a man has in the integrity of his own life and body is a part4 ,rulers share the ordinary cupidity to possess property with a minimum of personal effort4 ,left to themselves they take advantage of the power with which their official position endows them to levy arbitrarily on the wealth of others4 ,if they protect the industry and property of private citizens against the invasions of other private citizens1 it is only that they may have more resources upon which to draw for their own ends4 ,the essential problem of government thus reduces itself to this3 ,what arrangements will prevent rulers from advancing their own interests at the expense of the ruled8 ,or1 in positive terms1 by what political means shall the interests of the governors be identified with those of the governed8 ,the answer was given1 notably by ,james ,mill1 in a classic formulation of the nature of political democracy4 ,its significant features were popular election of officials1 short terms of office and frequent elections4 ,if public officials were dependent upon citizens for official position and its rewards1 their personal interests would coincide with those of people at large--at least of industrious and property-owning persons4 ,officials chosen by popular vote would find their election to office dependent upon presenting evidence of their zeal and skill in protecting the interests of the populace4 ,short terms and frequent elections would ensure their being held to regular account2 the polling-booth would constitute their day of judgment4 ,the fear of it would operate as a constant check4 ,of course in this account ,i have oversimplified what was already an oversimplification4 ,the dissertation of ,james ,mill was written before the passage of the ,reform ,bill of #ahcb4 ,taken pragmatically1 it was an argument for the extension of the suffrage1 then largely in the hands of hereditary landowners1 to manufacturers and merchants4 ,james ,mill had nothing but dread of pure democracies4 ,he opposed the extension of the franchise to women4#h ,he was interested in the new 8middle-class0 forming under the influence of the application of steam to manufacture and trade4 ,his attitude is well expressed in his conviction that even if the suffrage were extended downwards1 the middle-class 8which gives to science1 art and legislation itself its most distinguished ornaments1 and which is the chief source of all that is refined and exalted in human nature1 is that portion of the community of which the influence would ultimately decide40 ,in spite1 however1 of oversimplification1 and of its special historic motivation1 the doctrine claimed to rest upon universal psychological truth2 it affords a fair picture of the principles which were supposed to justify the movement toward democratic government4 ,it is unnecessary to indulge in extensive criticism4 ,the differences between the conditions postulated by the theory and those which have actually obtained with the development of democratic governments speak for themselves4 ,the discrepancy is a sufficient criticism4 ,this disparity itself shows1 however1 that what has happened sprang from no theory but was inherent in what was going on not only without respect to theories but without regard to politics3 because1 generally speaking1 of the use of steam applied to mechanical inventions4 ,it would be a great mistake1 however1 to regard the idea of the isolated individual possessed of inherent rights 8by nature0 apart from association1 and the idea of economic laws as natural1 in comparison with which political laws being artificial are injurious 7save when carefully subordinated71 as idle and impotent4 ,the ideas were something more than flies on the turning wheels4 ,they did not originate the movement toward popular government1 but they did profoundly influence the forms which it assumed4 ,or perhaps it would be truer to say that persistent older conditions1 to which the theories were more faithful than to the state of affairs they professed to report1 were so renforced by the professed philosophy of the democratic state1 as to exercise a great influence4 ,the result was a skew1 a deflection and distortion1 in democratic forms4 ,putting the 8individualistic0 matter in a gross statement1 which has to be corrected by later qualifications1 we may say that 8the individual10 about which the new philosophy centered itself1 was in process of complete submergence in fact at the very time in which he was being elevated on high in theory4 ,as to the alleged subordination of political affairs to natural forces and laws1 we may say that actual economic conditions were thoroughly artificial1 in the sense in which the theory condemned the artificial4 ,they supplied the man-made instrumentalities by which the new governmental agencies were grasped and used to suit the desires of the new class of business men4 ,both of these statements are formal as well as sweeping4 ,to acquire intelligible meaning they must be developed in some detail4 ,graham ,wallas prefixed to the first chapter of his book entitled 8,the ,great ,society0 the following words of ,woodrow ,wilson1 taken from ,the ,new ,freedom3 8,yesterday and ever since history began1 men were related to one another as individuals4444 ,to-day1 the everyday relationships of men are largely with great impersonal concerns1 with organizations1 not with other individuals4 ,now this is nothing short of a new social age1 a new age of human relationships1 a new stage-setting for the drama of life40 ,if we accept these words as containing even a moderate degree of truth1 they indicate the enormous ineptitude of the individualistic philosophy to meet the needs and direct the factors of the new age4 ,they suggest what is meant by saying the theory of an individual possessed of desires and claims and endued with foresight and prudence and love of bettering himself was framed at just the time when the individual was counting for less in the direction of social affairs1 at a time when mechanical forces and vast impersonal organizations were determining the frame of things4 ,the statement that 8yesterday and even since history began1 men were related to one another as individuals0 is not true4 ,men have always been associated together in living1 and association in conjoint behavior has affected their relations to one another as individuals4 ,it is enough to recall how largely human relations have been permeated by patterns derived directly and indirectly from the family2 even the state was a dynastic affair4 ,but none the less the contrast which ,mr4 ,wilson had in mind is a fact4 ,the earlier associations were mostly of the type well termed by ,cooley#i 8face-to-face40 ,those which were important1 which really counted in forming emotional and intellectual dispositions1 were local and contiguous and consequently visible4 ,human beings1 if they shared in them at all1 shared directly and in a way of which they were aware in both their affections and their beliefs4 ,the state1 even when it despotically interfered1 was remote1 an agency alien to daily life4 ,otherwise it entered men's lives through custom and common law4 ,no matter how widespread their operation might be1 it was not their breadth and inclusiveness which counted but their immediate local presence4 ,the church was indeed both a universal and an intimate affair4 ,but it entered into the life of most human beings not through its universality1 as far as their thoughts and habits were concerned1 but through an immediate ministration of rites and sacraments4 ,the new technology applied in production and commerce resulted in a social revolution4 ,the local communities without intent or forecast found their affairs conditioned by remote and invisible organizations4 ,the scope of the latter's activities was so vast and their impact upon face-to-face associations so pervasive and unremitting that it is no exaggeration to speak of 8a new age of human relations40 ,the ,great ,society created by steam and electricity may be a society1 but it is no community4 ,the invasion of the community by the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life4 ,in these ways of aggregate activity the community1 in its strict sense1 is not a conscious partner1 and over them it has no direct control4 ,they were1 however1 the chief factors in bringing into being national and territorial states4 ,the need of some control over them was the chief agency in making the government of these states democratic or popular in the current sense of these words4 ,why1 then1 was a movement1 which involved so much submerging of personal action in the overflowing consequences of remote and inaccessible collective actions1 reflected in a philosophy of individualism8 ,a complete answer is out of the question4 ,two considerations are1 however1 obvious and significant4 ,the new conditions involved a release of human potentialities previously dormant4 ,while their impact was unsettling to the community1 it was liberating with respect to single persons1 while its oppressive phase was hidden in the impenetrable mists of the future4 ,speaking with greater correctness1 the oppressive phase affected primarily the elements of the community which were also depressed in the older and semi-feudal conditions4 ,since they did not count for much anyway1 being traditionally the drawers of water and hewers of wood1 having emerged only in a legal sense from serfdom1 the effect of new economic conditions upon the laboring masses went largely unnoted4 ,day laborers were still in effect1 as openly in the classic philosophy1 underlying conditions of community life rather than members of it4 ,only gradually did the effect upon them become apparent2 by that time they had attained enough power--were sufficiently important factors in the new economic rgime--to obtain political emancipation1 and thus figure in the forms of the democratic state4 ,meanwhile the liberating effect was markedly conspicuous with respect to the members of the 8middle-class10 the manufacturing and mercantile class4 ,it would be short-sighted to limit the release of powers to opportunities to procure wealth and enjoy its fruits1 although the creation of material wants and ability to satisfy them are not to be lightly passed over4 ,initiative1 inventiveness1 foresight and planning were also stimulated and confirmed4 ,this manifestation of new powers was on a sufficiently large scale to strike and absorb attention4 ,the result was formulated as the discovery of the individual4 ,the customary is taken for granted2 it operates subconsciously4 ,breach of wont and use is focal2 it forms 8consciousness40 ,the necessary and persistent modes of association went unnoticed4 ,the new ones1 which were voluntarily undertaken1 occupied thought exclusively4 ,they monopolized the observed horizon4 8,individualism0 was a doctrine which stated what was focal in thought and purpose4 ,the other consideration is akin4 ,in the release of new powers singular persons were emancipated from a mass of old habits1 regulations and institutions4 ,we have already noted how the methods of production and exchange made possible by the new technology were hampered by the rules and customs of the prior rgime4 ,the latter were then felt to be intolerably restrictive and oppressive4 ,since they hampered the free play of initiative and commercial activity1 they were artificial and enslaving4 ,the struggle for emancipation from their influence was identified with the liberty of the individual as such2 in the intensity of the struggle1 associations and institutions were condemned wholesale as foes of freedom save as they were products of personal agreement and voluntary choice4 ,that many forms of association remained practically untouched was easily overlooked1 just because they were matters of course4 ,indeed1 any attempt to touch them1 notably the established form of family association and the legal institution of property1 were looked upon as subversive1 as license1 not liberty1 in the sanctified phrase4 ,the identification of democratic forms of government with this individualism was easy4 ,the right of suffrage represented for the mass a release of hitherto dormant capacity and also1 in appearance at least1 a power to shape social relations on the basis of individual volition4 ,popular franchise and majority rule afforded the imagination a picture of individuals in their untrammeled individual sovereignty making the state4 ,to adherents and opponents alike it presented the spectacle of a pulverizing of established associations into the desires and intentions of atomic individuals4 ,the forces1 springing from combination and institutional organization which controlled below the surface the acts which formally issued from individuals1 went unnoted4 ,it is the essence of ordinary thought to grasp the external scene and hold it as reality4 ,the familiar eulogies of the spectacle of 8free men0 going to the polls to determine by their personal volitions the political forms under which they should live is a specimen of this tendency to take whatever is readily seen as the full reality of a situation4 ,in physical matters natural science has successfully challenged this attitude4 ,in human matters it remains in almost full force4 ,the opponents of popular government were no more prescient than its supporters1 although they showed more logical sense in following the assumed individualistic premise to its conclusion3 the disintegration of society4 ,carlyle's savage attacks upon the notion of a society held together only by a 8cash-nexus0 are well known4 ,its inevitable terminus to him was 8anarchy plus a constable40 ,he did not see that the new industrial rgime was forging social bonds as rigid as those which were disappearing and much more extensive--whether desirable ties or not is another matter4 ,macaulay1 the intellectualist of the ,whigs1 asserted that the extension of suffrage to the masses would surely result in arousing the predatory impulses of the propertyless masses who would use their new political power to despoil the middle as well as upper class4 ,he added that while there was no longer danger that the civilized portions of humanity would be overthrown by the savage and barbarous portions1 it was possible that in the bosom of civilization would be engendered the malady which would destroy it4 ,incidentally we have trenched upon the other doctrine1 the idea that there is something inherently 8natural0 and amenable to 8natural law0 in the working of economic forces1 in contrast with the man-made artificiality of political institutions4 ,the idea of a natural individual in his isolation possessed of full-fledged wants1 of energies to be expended according to his own volition1 and of a ready-made faculty of foresight and prudent calculation is as much a fiction in psychology as the doctrine of the individual in possession of antecedent political rights is one in politics4 ,the liberalist school made much of desires1 but to them desire was a conscious matter deliberately directed upon a known goal of pleasures4 ,desire and pleasure were both open and above-board affairs4 ,the mind was seen as if always in the bright sunlight1 having no hidden recesses1 no unexplorable nooks1 nothing underground4 ,its operations were like the moves in a fair game of chess4 ,they are in the open2 the players have nothing up their sleeves2 the changes of position take place by express intent and in plain sight2 they take place according to rules all of which are known in advance4 ,calculation and skill1 or dullness and inaptitude1 determine the result4 ,mind was 8consciousness10 and the latter was a clear1 transparent1 self-revealing medium in which wants1 efforts and purposes were exposed without distortion4 ,to-day it is generally admitted that conduct proceeds from conditions which are largely out of focal attention1 and which can be discovered and brought to light only by inquiries more exacting than those which teach us the concealed relationships involved in gross physical phenomena4 ,what is not so generally acknowledged is that the underlying and generative conditions of concrete behavior are social as well as organic3 much more social than organic as far as the manifestation of differential wants1 purposes and methods of operation is concerned4 ,to those who appreciate this fact1 it is evident that the desires1 aims and standards of satisfaction which the dogma of 8natural0 economic processes and laws assumes are themselves socially conditioned phenomena4 ,they are reflections into the singular human being of customs and institutions2 they are not natural1 that is1 8native10 organic propensities4 ,they mirror a state of civilization4 ,even more true1 if possible1 is it that the form in which work is done1 industry carried on1 is the outcome of accumulated culture1 not an original possession of persons in their own structure4 ,there is little that can be called industry and still less that constitutes a store of wealth until tools exist1 and tools are the results of slow processes of transmission4 ,the development of tools into machines1 the characteristic of the industrial age1 was made possible only by taking advantage of science socially accumulated and transmitted4 ,the technique of employing tools and machines was equally something which had to be learned2 it was no natural endowment but something acquired by observing others1 by instruction and communication4 ,these sentences are a poor and pallid way of conveying the outstanding fact4 ,there are organic or native needs1 of course1 as for food1 protection and mates4 ,there are innate structures which facilitate them in securing the external objects through which they are met4 ,but the only kind of industry they are capable of giving rise to is a precarious livelihood obtained by gathering such edible plants and animals as chance might throw in the way3 the lowest type of savagery just emerging from a brute condition4 ,nor1 strictly speaking1 could they effect even this meager result4 ,for because of the phenomenon of helpless infancy even such a primitive rgime depends upon the assistance of associated action1 including that most valuable form of assistance3 learning from others4 ,what would even savage industry be without the use of fire1 of weapons1 of woven articles1 all of which involve communication and tradition8 ,the industrial rgime which the authors of 8natural0 economy contemplated presupposed wants1 tools1 materials1 purposes1 techniques and abilities in a thousand ways dependent upon associated behavior4 ,thus in the sense in which the authors of the doctrine employed the word 8artificial10 these things were intensely and cumulatively artificial4 ,what they were really after was a changed direction of custom and institutions4 ,the outcome of the acts of those who were engaged in forwarding the new industry and commerce was a new set of customs and institutions4 ,the latter were as much extensive and enduring conjoint modes of life as were those which they displaced2 more so in their sweep and force4 ,the bearing of this fact upon political theory and practice is evident4 ,not only were the wants and intentions which actually operated functions of associated life1 but they re-determined the forms and temper of this life4 ,athenians did not buy ,sunday newspapers1 make investments in stocks and bonds1 nor want motor cars4 ,nor do we to-day want for the most part beautiful bodies and beauty of architectural surroundings4 ,we are mostly satisfied with the result of cosmetics and with ugly slums1 and oftentimes with equally ugly palaces4 ,we do not 8naturally0 or organically need them1 but we want them4 ,if we do not demand them directly we demand them none the less effectively4 ,for they are necessary consequences of the things upon which we have set our hearts4 ,in other words1 a community wants 7in the only intelligible sense of wanting1 effective demand7 either education or ignorance1 lovely or squalid surroundings1 railway trains or ox-carts1 stocks and bonds1 pecuniary profit or constructive arts1 according as associated activity presents these things to them habitually1 esteems them1 and supplies the means of attaining them4 ,but that is only half the tale4 ,associated behavior directed toward objects which fulfill wants not only produces those objects1 but brings customs and institutions into being4 ,the indirect and unthought-of consequences are usually more important than the direct4 ,the fallacy of supposing that the new industrial rgime would produce just and for the most part only the consequences consciously forecast and aimed at was the counterpart of the fallacy that the wants and efforts characteristic of it were functions of 8natural0 human beings4 ,they arose out of institutionalized action and they resulted in institutionalized action4 ,the disparity between the results of the industrial revolution and the conscious intentions of those engaged in it is a remarkable case of the extent to which indirect consequences of conjoint activity outweigh1 beyond the possibility of reckoning1 the results directly contemplated4 ,its outcome was the development of those extensive and invisible bonds1 those 8great impersonal concerns1 organizations10 which now pervasively affect the thinking1 willing and doing of everybody1 and which have ushered in the 8new era of human relationships40 ,equally undreamed of was the effect of the massive organizations and complicated interactions upon the state4 ,instead of the independent1 self-moved individuals contemplated by the theory1 we have standardized interchangeable units4 ,persons are joined together1 not because they have voluntarily chosen to be united in these forms1 but because vast currents are running which bring men together4 ,green and red lines1 marking out political boundaries1 are on the maps and affect legislation and jurisdiction of courts1 but railways1 mails and telegraph-wires disregard them4 ,the consequences of the latter influence more profoundly those living within the legal local units than do boundary lines4 ,the forms of associated action characteristic of the present economic order are so massive and extensive that they determine the most significant constituents of the public and the residence of power4 ,inevitably they reach out to grasp the agencies of government2 they are controlling factors in legislation and administration4 ,not chiefly because of deliberate and planned self-interest1 large as may be its rle1 but because they are the most potent and best organized of social forces4 ,in a word1 the new forms of combined action due to the modern economic rgime control present politics1 much as dynastic interests controlled those of two centuries ago4 ,they affect thinking and desire more than did the interests which formerly moved the state4 ,we have spoken as if the displacement of old legal and political institutions was all but complete4 ,that is a gross exaggeration4 ,some of the most fundamental of traditions and habits have hardly been affected at all4 ,it is enough to mention the institution of property4 ,the navet with which the philosophy of 8natural0 economics ignored the effect upon industry and commerce of the legal status of property1 the way in which it identified wealth and property in the legal form in which the latter had existed1 is almost incredible to-day4 ,but the simple fact is that technological industry has not operated with any great degree of freedom4 ,it has been confined and deflected at every point2 it has never taken its own course4 ,the engineer has worked in subordination to the business manager whose primary concern is not with wealth but with the interests of property as worked out in the feudal and semi-feudal period4 ,thus the one point in which the philosophers of 8,individualism0 predicted truly was that in which they did not predict at all1 but in which they merely clarified and simplified established wont and use3 when1 that is1 they asserted that the main business of government is to make property interests secure4 ,a large part of the indictments which are now drawn against technological industry are chargeable to the unchanged persistence of a legal institution inherited from the pre-industrial age4 ,it is confusing1 however1 to identify in a wholesale way this issue with the question of private property4 ,it is conceivable that private property may function socially4 ,it does so even now to a considerable degree4 ,otherwise it could not be supported for a day4 ,the extent of its social utility is what blinds us to the numerous and great social disutilities that attend its present working1 or at least reconcile us to its continuation4 ,the real issue or at least the issue to be first settled concerns the conditions under which the institution of private property legally and politically functions4 ,we thus reach our conclusion4 ,the same forces which have brought about the forms of democratic government1 general suffrage1 executives and legislators chosen by majority vote1 have also brought about conditions which halt the social and humane ideals that demand the utilization of government as the genuine instrumentality of an inclusive and fraternally associated public4 8,the new age of human relationships0 has no political agencies worthy of it4 ,the democratic public is still largely inchoate and unorganized4 ,,chapter ,,iv ,,the ,,eclipse ,,of ,,the ,,public ,optimism about democracy is to-day under a cloud4 ,we are familiar with denunciation and criticism which1 however1 often reveal their emotional source in their peevish and undiscriminating tone4 ,many of them suffer from the same error into which earlier laudations fell4 ,they assume that democracy is the product of an idea1 of a single and consistent intent4 ,carlyle was no admirer of democracy1 but in a lucid moment he said3 8,invent the printing press and democracy is inevitable40 ,add to this3 ,invent the railway1 the telegraph1 mass manufacture and concentration of population in urban centers1 and some form of democratic government is1 humanly speaking1 inevitable4 ,political democracy as it exists to-day calls for adverse criticism in abundance4 ,but the criticism is only an exhibition of querulousness and spleen or of a superiority complex1 unless it takes cognizance of the conditions out of which popular government has issued4 ,all intelligent political criticism is comparative4 ,it deals not with all-or-none situations1 but with practical alternatives2 an absolutistic indiscriminate attitude1 whether in praise or blame1 testifies to the heat of feeling rather than the light of thought4 ,american democratic polity was developed out of genuine community life1 that is1 association in local and small centers where industry was mainly agricultural and where production was carried on mainly with hand tools4 ,it took form when ,english political habits and legal institutions worked under pioneer conditions4 ,the forms of association were stable1 even though their units were mobile and migratory4 ,pioneer conditions put a high premium upon personal work1 skill1 ingenuity1 initiative and adaptability1 and upon neighborly sociability4 ,the township or some not much larger area was the political unit1 the town meeting the political medium1 and roads1 schools1 the peace of the community1 were the political objectives4 ,the state was a sum of such units1 and the national state a federation--unless perchance a confederation--of states4 ,the imagination of the founders did not travel far beyond what could be accomplished and understood in a congeries of self-governing communities4 ,the machinery provided for the selection of the chief executive of the federal union is illustrative evidence4 ,the electoral college assumed that citizens would choose men locally known for their high standing2 and that these men when chosen would gather together for consultation to name some one known to them for his probity and public spirit and knowledge4 ,the rapidity with which the scheme fell into disuse is evidence of the transitoriness of the state of affairs that was predicated4 ,but at the outset there was no dream of the time when the very names of the presidential electors would be unknown to the mass of the voters1 when they would plump for a 8ticket0 arranged in a more or less private caucus1 and when the electoral college would be an impersonal registering machine1 such that it would be treachery to employ the personal judgment which was originally contemplated as the essence of the affair4 ,the local conditions under which our institutions took shape is well indicated by our system1 apparently so systemless1 of public education4 ,any one who has tried to explain it to a ,european will understand what is meant4 ,one is asked1 say1 what method of administration is followed1 what is the course of study and what the authorized methods of teaching4 ,the ,american member to the dialogue replies that in this state1 or more likely county1 or town1 or even some section of a town called a district1 matters stand thus and thus2 somewhere else1 so and so4 ,the participant from this side is perhaps thought by the foreigner to be engaged in concealing his ignorance2 and it would certainly take a veritable cyclopedic knowledge to state the matter in its entirety4 ,the impossibility of making any moderately generalized reply renders it almost indispensable to resort to a historical account in order to be intelligible4 ,a little colony1 the members of which are probably mostly known to one another in advance1 settle in what is almost1 or quite1 a wilderness4 ,from belief in its benefits and by tradition1 chiefly religious1 they wish their children to know at least how to read1 write and figure4 ,families can only rarely provide a tutor2 the neighbors over a certain area1 in ,new ,england an area smaller even than the township1 combine in a 8school district40 ,they get a schoolhouse built1 perhaps by their own labor1 and hire a teacher by means of a committee1 and the teacher is paid from the taxes4 ,custom determines the limited course of study1 and tradition the methods of the teacher1 modified by whatever personal insight and skill he may bring to bear4 ,the wilderness is gradually subdued2 a network of highways1 then of railways1 unite the previously scattered communities4 ,large cities grow up2 studies grow more numerous and methods more carefully scrutinized4 ,the larger unit1 the state1 but not the federal state1 provides schools for training teachers and their qualifications are more carefully looked into and tested4 ,but subject to certain quite general conditions imposed by the state-legislature1 but not the national state1 local maintenance and control remain the rule4 ,the community pattern is more complicated1 but is not destroyed4 ,the instance seems richly instructive as to the state of affairs under which our borrowed1 ,english1 political institutions were reshaped and forwarded4 ,we have inherited1 in short1 local town-meeting practices and ideas4 ,but we live and act and have our being in a continental national state4 ,we are held together by non-political bonds1 and the political forms are stretched and legal institutions patched in an ad hoc and improvised manner to do the work they have to do4 ,political structures fix the channels in which non-political1 industrialized currents flow4 ,railways1 travel and transportation1 commerce1 the mails1 telegraph and telephone1 newspapers1 create enough similarity of ideas and sentiments to keep the thing going as a whole1 for they create interaction and interdependence4 ,the unprecedented thing is that states1 as distinguished from military empires1 can exist over such a wide area4 ,the notion of maintaining a unified state1 even nominally self-governing1 over a country as extended as the ,united ,states and consisting of a large and racially diversified population would once have seemed the wildest of fancies4 ,it was assumed that such a state could be found only in territories hardly larger than a city-state and with a homogeneous population4 ,it seemed almost self-evident to ,plato--as to ,rousseau later--that a genuine state could hardly be larger than the number of persons capable of personal acquaintance with one another4 ,our modern state-unity is due to the consequences of technology employed so as to facilitate the rapid and easy circulation of opinions and information1 and so as to generate constant and intricate interaction far beyond the limits of face-to-face communities4 ,political and legal forms have only piece-meal and haltingly1 with great lag1 accommodated themselves to the industrial transformation4 ,the elimination of distance1 at the base of which are physical agencies1 has called into being the new form of political association4 ,the wonder of the performance is the greater because of the odds against which it has been achieved4 ,the stream of immigrants which has poured in is so large and heterogeneous that under conditions which formerly obtained it would have disrupted any semblance of unity as surely as the migratory invasion of alien hordes once upset the social equilibrium of the ,european continent4 ,no deliberately adopted measures could have accomplished what has actually happened4 ,mechanical forces have operated1 and it is no cause for surprise if the effect is more mechanical than vital4 ,the reception of new elements of population in large number from heterogeneous peoples1 often hostile to one another at home1 and the welding them into even an outward show of unity is an extraordinary feat4 ,in many respects1 the consolidation has occurred so rapidly and ruthlessly that much of value has been lost which different peoples might have contributed4 ,the creation of political unity has also promoted social and intellectual uniformity1 a standardization favorable to mediocrity4 ,opinion has been regimented as well as outward behavior4 ,the temper and flavor of the pioneer have evaporated with extraordinary rapidity2 their precipitate1 as is often noted1 is apparent only in the wild-west romance and the movie4 ,what ,bagehot called the cake of custom formed with increasing acceleration1 and the cake is too often flat and soggy4 ,mass production is not confined to the factory4 ,the resulting political integration has confounded the expectations of earlier critics of popular government as much as it must surprise its early backers if they are gazing from on high upon the present scene4 ,the critics predicted disintegration1 instability4 ,they foresaw the new society falling apart1 dissolving into mutually repellent animated grains of sand4 ,they1 too1 took seriously the theory of 8,individualism0 as the basis of democratic government4 ,a stratification of society into immemorial classes within which each person performed his stated duties according to his fixed position seemed to them the only warrant of stability4 ,they had no faith that human beings released from the pressure of this system could hold together in any unity4 ,hence they prophesied a flux of governmental rgimes1 as individuals formed factions1 seized power1 and then lost it as some newly improvised faction proved stronger4 ,had the facts conformed to the theory of ,individualism1 they would doubtless have been right4 ,but1 like the authors of the theory1 they ignored the technological forces making for consolidation4 ,in spite of attained integration1 or rather perhaps because of its nature1 the ,public seems to be lost2 it is certainly bewildered4#aj ,the government1 officials and their activities1 are plainly with us4 ,legislatures make laws with luxurious abandon2 subordinate officials engage in a losing struggle to enforce some of them2 judges on the bench deal as best they can with the steadily mounting pile of disputes that come before them4 ,but where is the public which these officials are supposed to represent8 ,how much more is it than geographical names and official titles8 ,the ,united ,states1 the state of ,ohio or ,new ,york1 the county of this and the city of that8 ,is the public much more than what a cynical diplomat once called ,italy3 a geographical expression8 ,just as philosophers once imputed a substance to qualities and traits in order that the latter might have something in which to inhere and thereby gain a conceptual solidity and consistency which they lacked on their face1 so perhaps our political 8common-sense0 philosophy imputes a public only to support and substantiate the behavior of officials4 ,how can the latter be public officers1 we despairingly ask1 unless there is a public8 ,if a public exists1 it is surely as uncertain about its own whereabouts as philosophers since ,hume have been about the residence and make-up of the self4 ,the number of voters who take advantage of their majestic right is steadily decreasing in proportion to those who might use it4 ,the ratio of actual to eligible voters is now about one-half4 ,in spite of somewhat frantic appeal and organized effort1 the endeavor to bring voters to a sense of their privileges and duties has so far been noted for failure4 ,a few preach the impotence of all politics2 the many nonchalantly practice abstinence and indulge in indirect action4 ,skepticism regarding the efficacy of voting is openly expressed1 not only in the theories of intellectuals1 but in the words of lowbrow masses3 8,what difference does it make whether ,i vote or not8 ,things go on just the same anyway4 ,my vote never changed anything40 ,those somewhat more reflective add3 8,it is nothing but a fight between the ins and the outs4 ,the only difference made by an election is as to who get the jobs1 draw the salaries and shake down the plum tree40 ,those still more inclined to generalization assert that the whole apparatus of political activities is a kind of protective coloration to conceal the fact that big business rules the governmental roost in any case4 ,business is the order of the day1 and the attempt to stop or deflect its course is as futile as ,mrs4 ,partington essaying to sweep back the tides with a broom4 ,most of those who hold these opinions would profess to be shocked if the doctrine of economic determinism were argumentatively expounded to them1 but they act upon a virtual belief in it4 ,nor is acceptance of the doctrine limited to radical socialists4 ,it is implicit in the attitude of men of big business and financial interests1 who revile the former as destructive 8,bolshevists40 ,for it is their firm belief that 8prosperity0--a word which has taken on religious color--is the great need of the country1 that they are its authors and guardians1 and hence by right the determiners of polity4 ,their denunciations of the 8materialism0 of socialists is based simply upon the fact that the latter want a different distribution of material force and well-being than that which satisfies those now in control4 ,the unfitness of whatever public exists1 with respect to the government which is nominally its organ1 is made manifest in the extra-legal agencies which have grown up4 ,intermediary groups are closest to the political conduct of affairs4 ,it is interesting to compare the ,english literature of the eighteenth century regarding factions with the status actually occupied by parties4 ,factionalism was decried by all thinkers as the chief enemy to political stability4 ,their voice of condemnation is rechoed in the writing of early nineteenth-century ,american writers on politics4 ,extensive and consolidated factions under the name of parties are now not only a matter of course1 but popular imagination can conceive of no other way by which officials may be selected and governmental affairs carried on4 ,the centralizing movement has reached a point where even a third party can lead only a spasmodic and precarious existence4 ,instead of individuals who in the privacy of their consciousness make choices which are carried into effect by personal volition1 there are citizens who have the blessed opportunity to vote for a ticket of men mostly unknown to them1 and which is made up for them by an under-cover machine in a caucus whose operations constitute a kind of political predestination4 ,there are those who speak as if ability to choose between two tickets were a high exercise of individual freedom4 ,but it is hardly the kind of liberty contemplated by the authors of the individualistic doctrine4 8,nature abhors a vacuum40 ,when the public is as uncertain and obscure as it is to-day1 and hence as remote from government1 bosses with their political machines fill the void between government and the public4 ,who pulls the strings which move the bosses and generates power to run the machines is a matter of surmise rather than of record1 save for an occasional overt scandal4 ,quite aside1 however1 from the allegation that 8,big ,business0 plays the tune and pulls the strings to which bosses dance1 it is true that parties are not creators of policies to any large extent at the present time4 ,for parties yield in piece-meal accommodation to social currents1 irrespective of professed principles4 ,as these lines are written a weekly periodical remarks3 8,since the end of the ,civil ,war practically all the more important measures which have been embodied in federal legislation have been reached without a national election which turned upon the issue and which divided the two major parties40 ,reform of civil service1 regulation of railways1 popular election of senators1 national income tax1 suffrage for women1 and prohibition are supported to substantiate the statement4 ,hence its other remark appears justified3 8,american party politics seem at times to be a device for preventing issues which may excite popular feeling and involve bitter controversies from being put up to the ,american people40 ,a negatively corroborating fact is seen in the fate of the ,child ,labor amendment4 ,the need of giving to ,congress power to regulate child labor1 denied it by decisions of the ,supreme ,court1 had been asserted in the platforms of all political parties2 the idea was endorsed by the last three of the presidents belonging to the party in power4 ,yet so far1 the proposed amendment to the constitution has not begun to secure the needed support4 ,political parties may rule1 but they do not govern4 ,the public is so confused and eclipsed that it cannot even use the organs through which it is supposed to mediate political action and polity4 ,the same lesson is taught by the breakdown of the theory of the responsibility of elected representatives to the electorate1 to say nothing of their alleged liability to be called before the bar of the private judgment of individuals4 ,it is at least suggestive that the terms of the theory are best met in legislation of the 8pork-barrel0 type4 ,there a representative may be called to account for failure to meet local desire1 or be rewarded for pertinacity and success in fulfilling its wishes4 ,but only rarely is the theory borne out in important matters1 although occasionally it works4 ,but the instances are so infrequent that any skilled political observer could enumerate them by name4 ,the reason for the lack of personal liability to the electorate is evident4 ,the latter is composed of rather amorphous groups4 ,their political ideas and beliefs are mostly in abeyance between elections4 ,even in times of political excitement1 artificially accelerated1 their opinions are moved collectively by the current of the group rather than by independent personal judgment4 ,as a rule1 what decides the fate of a person who comes up for election is neither his political excellence nor his political defects4 ,the current runs for or against the party in power and the individual candidate sinks or swims as runs the current4 ,at times there is a general consensus of sentiment1 a definite trend in favor of 8progressive legislation0 or a desire for a 8return to normalcy40 ,but even then only exceptional candidates get by on any basis of personal responsibility to the electorate4 ,the 8tidal wave0 swamps some2 the 8landslide0 carries others into office4 ,at other times1 habit1 party funds1 the skill of managers of the machine1 the portrait of a candidate with his firm jaw1 his lovely wife and children1 and a multitude of other irrelevancies1 determine the issue4 ,these scattered comments are not made in the belief that they convey any novel truth4 ,such things are familiar2 they are the common-places of the political scene4 ,they could be extended indefinitely by any careful observer of the scene4 ,the significant thing is that familiarity has bred indifference if not contempt4 ,indifference is the evidence of current apathy1 and apathy is testimony to the fact that the public is so bewildered that it cannot find itself4 ,the remarks are not made with a view to drawing a conclusion4 ,they are offered with a view to outlining a problem3 ,what is the public8 ,if there is a public1 what are the obstacles in the way of its recognizing and articulating itself8 ,is the public a myth8 ,or does it come into being only in periods of marked social transition when crucial alternative issues stand out1 such as that between throwing one's lot in with the conservation of established institutions or with forwarding new tendencies8 ,in a reaction against dynastic rule which has come to be felt as despotically oppressive8 ,in a transfer of social power from agrarian classes to industrial8 ,is not the problem at the present time that of securing experts to manage administrative matters1 other than the framing of policies8 ,it may be urged that the present confusion and apathy are due to the fact that the real energy of society is now directed in all non-political matters by trained specialists who manage things1 while politics are carried on with a machinery and ideas formed in the past to deal with quite another sort of situation4 ,there is no particular public concerned in finding expert school instructors1 competent doctors1 or business managers4 ,nothing called a public intervenes to instruct physicians in the practice of the healing art or merchants in the art of salesmanship4 ,the conduct of these callings and others characteristic of our time are decided by science and pseudo-science4 ,the important governmental affairs at present1 it may be argued1 are also technically complicated matters to be conducted properly by experts4 ,and if at present people are not educated to the recognition of the importance of finding experts and of entrusting administration to them1 it may plausibly be asserted that the prime obstruction lies in the superstitious belief that there is a public concerned to determine the formation and execution of general social policies4 ,perhaps the apathy of the electorate is due to the irrelevant artificiality of the issues with which it is attempted to work up factitious excitement4 ,perhaps this artificiality is in turn mainly due to the survival of political beliefs and machinery from a period when science and technology were so immature as not to permit of a definite technique for handling definite social situations and meeting specific social needs4 ,the attempt to decide by law that the legends of a primitive ,hebrew people regarding the genesis of man are more authoritative than the results of scientific inquiry might be cited as a typical example of the sort of thing which is bound to happen when the accepted doctrine is that a public organized for political purposes1 rather than experts guided by specialized inquiry1 is the final umpire and arbiter of issues4 ,the questions of most concern at present may be said to be matters like sanitation1 public health1 healthful and adequate housing1 transportation1 planning of cities1 regulation and distribution of immigrants1 selection and management of personnel1 right methods of instruction and preparation of competent teachers1 scientific adjustment of taxation1 efficient management of funds1 and so on4 ,these are technical matters1 as much so as the construction of an efficient engine for purposes of traction or locomotion4 ,like it they are to be settled by inquiry into facts2 and as the inquiry can be carried on only by those especially equipped1 so the results of inquiry can be utilized only by trained technicians4 ,what has counting heads1 decision by majority and the whole apparatus of traditional government to do with such things8 ,given such considerations1 and the public and its organization for political ends is not only a ghost1 but a ghost which walks and talks1 and obscures1 confuses and misleads governmental action in a disastrous way4 ,personally ,i am far from thinking that such considerations1 pertinent as they are to administrative activities1 cover the entire political field4 ,they ignore forces which have to be composed and resolved before technical and specialized action can come into play4 ,but they aid in giving definiteness and point to a fundamental question3 ,what1 after all1 is the public under present conditions8 ,what are the reasons for its eclipse8 ,what hinders it from finding and identifying itself8 ,by what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities8 ,what has happened to the ,public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope8 ,previous discussion has brought to light some conditions out of which the public is generated4 ,it has also set forth some of the causes through which a 8new age of human relationships0 has been brought into being4 ,these two arguments form the premises which1 when they are related to each other1 will provide our answer to the questions just raised4 ,indirect1 extensive1 enduring and serious consequences of conjoint and interacting behavior call a public into existence having a common interest in controlling these consequences4 ,but the machine age has so enormously expanded1 multiplied1 intensified and complicated the scope of the indirect consequences1 have formed such immense and consolidated unions in action1 on an impersonal rather than a community basis1 that the resultant public cannot identify and distinguish itself4 ,and this discovery is obviously an antecedent condition of any effective organization on its part4 ,such is our thesis regarding the eclipse which the public idea and interest have undergone4 ,there are too many publics and too much of public concern for our existing resources to cope with4 ,the problem of a democratically organized public is primarily and essentially an intellectual problem1 in a degree to which the political affairs of prior ages offer no parallel4 ,our concern at this time is to state how it is that the machine age in developing the ,great ,society has invaded and partially disintegrated the small communities of former times without generating a ,great ,community4 ,the facts are familiar enough2 our especial affair is to point out their connections with the difficulties under which the organization of a democratic public is laboring4 ,for the very familiarity with the phenomena conceals their significance and blinds us to their relation to immediate political problems4 ,the scope of the ,great ,war furnishes an urgent as well as convenient starting point for the discussion4 ,the extent of that war is unparalleled1 because the conditions involved in it are so new4 ,the dynastic conflicts of the seventeenth century are called by the same name3 we have only one word1 8war40 ,the sameness of the word too easily conceals from us the difference in significance4 ,we think of all wars as much the same thing1 only the last one was horrible beyond others4 ,colonies were drawn in3 self-governing ones entered voluntarily2 possessions were levied upon for troops2 alliances were formed with remote countries in spite of diversities of race and culture1 as in the cases of ,great ,britain and ,japan1 ,germany and ,turkey4 ,literally every continent upon the globe was involved4 ,indirect effects were as broad as direct4 ,not merely soldiers1 but finance1 industry and opinion were mobilized and consolidated4 ,neutrality was a precarious affair4 ,there was a critical epoch in the history of the world when the ,roman ,empire assembled in itself the lands and peoples of the ,mediterranean basin4 ,the ,world ,war stands out as an indubitable proof that what then happened for a region has now happened for the world1 only there is now no comprehensive political organization to include the various divided yet interdependent countries4 ,any one who even partially visualizes the scene has a convincing reminder of the meaning of the ,great ,society3 that it exists1 and that it is not integrated4 ,extensive1 enduring1 intricate and serious indirect consequences of the conjoint activity of a comparatively few persons traverse the globe4 ,the similes of the stone cast into the pool1 ninepins in a row1 the spark which kindles a vast conflagration1 are pale in comparison with the reality4 ,the spread of the war seemed like the movement of an uncontrolled natural catastrophe4 ,the consolidation of peoples in enclosed1 nominally independent1 national states has its counterpart in the fact that their acts affect groups and individuals in other states all over the world4 ,the connections and ties which transferred energies set in motion in one spot to all parts of the earth were not tangible and visible2 they do not stand out as do politically bounded states4 ,but the war is there to show that they are as real1 and to prove that they are not organized and regulated4 ,it suggests that existing political and legal forms and arrangements are incompetent to deal with the situation4 ,for the latter is the joint product of the existing constitution of the political state and the working of non-political forces not adjusted to political forms4 ,we cannot expect the causes of a disease to combine effectually to cure the disease they create4 ,the need is that the non-political forces organize themselves to transform existing political structures3 that the divided and troubled publics integrate4 ,in general1 the non-political forces are the expressions of a technological age injected into an inherited political scheme which operates to deflect and distort their normal operation4 ,the industrial and commercial relations that created the situation of which the war is a manifestation are as evident in small things as great4 ,they were exhibited1 not only in the struggle for raw materials1 for distant markets1 and in staggering national debts1 but in local and unimportant phenomena4 ,travelers finding themselves away from home could not get their letters of credit cashed even in countries not then at war4 ,stock-markets closed on one hand1 and profiteers piled up their millions on the other4 ,one instance may be cited from domestic affairs4 ,the plight of the farmer since the war has created a domestic political issue4 ,a great demand was generated for food and other agricultural products2 prices rose4 ,in addition to this economic stimulus1 farmers were objects of constant political exhortation to increase their crops4 ,inflation and temporary prosperity followed4 ,the end of active warfare came4 ,impoverished countries could not buy and pay for foodstuffs up to even a pre-war level4 ,taxes were enormously increased4 ,currencies were depreciated2 the world's gold supply centered here4 ,the stimulus of war and of national extravagance piled up the inventories of factories and merchants4 ,wages and the prices of agricultural implements increased4 ,when deflation came it found a restricted market1 increased costs of production1 and farmers burdened with mortgages lightly assumed during the period of frenzied expansion4 ,this instance is not cited because it is peculiarly important in comparison with other consequences which have happened1 especially in ,europe4 ,it is relatively insignificant by contrast with them1 and in contrast with the arousal of nationalistic sentiments which has everywhere taken place since the war in so-called backward countries4 ,but it shows the ramifying consequences of our intricate and interdependent economic relations1 and it shows how little prevision and regulation exist4 ,the farming population could hardly have acted with knowledge of the consequences of the fundamental relations in which they were implicated4 ,they could make a momentary and improvised response to them1 but they could not manage their affairs in controlled adaptation to the course of events4 ,they present themselves as hapless subjects of overwhelming operations with which they were hardly acquainted and over which they had no more control than over the vicissitudes of climate4 ,the illustration cannot be objected to on the ground that it rests upon the abnormal situation of war4 ,the war itself was a normal manifestation of the underlying unintegrated state of society4 ,the local face-to-face community has been invaded by forces so vast1 so remote in initiation1 so far-reaching in scope and so complexly indirect in operation1 that they are1 from the standpoint of the members of local social units1 unknown4 ,man1 as has been often remarked1 has difficulty in getting on either with or without his fellows1 even in neighborhoods4 ,he is not more successful in getting on with them when they act at a great distance in ways invisible to him4 ,an inchoate public is capable of organization only when indirect consequences are perceived1 and when it is possible to project agencies which order their occurrence4 ,at present1 many consequences are felt rather than perceived2 they are suffered1 but they cannot be said to be known1 for they are not1 by those who experience them1 referred to their origins4 ,it goes1 then1 without saying that agencies are not established which canalize the streams of social action and thereby regulate them4 ,hence the publics are amorphous and unarticulated4 ,there was a time when a man might entertain a few general political principles and apply them with some confidence4 ,a citizen believed in states' rights or in a centralized federal government2 in free trade or protection4 ,it did not involve much mental strain to imagine that by throwing in his lot with one party or another he could so express his views that his belief would count in government4 ,for the average voter to-day the tariff question is a complicated medley of infinite detail1 schedules of rates specific and ad valorem on countless things1 many of which he does not recognize by name1 and with respect to which he can form no judgment4 ,probably not one voter in a thousand even reads the scores of pages in which the rates of toll are enumerated and he would not be much wiser if he did4 ,the average man gives it up as a bad job4 ,at election time1 appeal to some time-worn slogan may galvanize him into a temporary notion that he has convictions on an important subject1 but except for manufacturers and dealers who have some interest at stake in this or that schedule1 belief lacks the qualities which attach to beliefs about matters of personal concern4 ,industry is too complex and intricate4 ,again the voter may by personal predilection or inherited belief incline towards magnifying the scope of local governments and inveigh against the evils of centralization4 ,but he is vehemently sure of social evils attending the liquor traffic4 ,he finds that the prohibitory law of his locality1 township1 county or state1 is largely nullified by the importation of liquor from outside1 made easy by modern means of transportation4 ,so he becomes an advocate of a national amendment giving the central government power to regulate the manufacture and sale of intoxicating drinks4 ,this brings in its train a necessary extension of federal officials and powers4 ,thus to-day1 the south1 the traditional home of the states' rights doctrine1 is the chief supporter of national prohibition and ,volstead ,act4 ,it would not be possible to say how many voters have thought of the relation between their professed general principle and their special position on the liquor question3 probably not many4 ,on the other hand1 life-long ,hamiltonians1 proclaimers of the dangers of particularistic local autonomy1 are opposed to prohibition4 ,hence they play a tune ad hoc on the ,jeffersonian flute4 ,gibes at inconsistency are1 however1 as irrelevant as they are easy4 ,the social situation has been so changed by the factors of an industrial age that traditional general principles have little practical meaning4 ,they persist as emotional cries rather than as reasoned ideas4 ,the same criss-crossing occurs with reference to regulation of railways4 ,the opponent of a strong federal government finds1 being a farmer or shipper1 that rates are too high2 he also finds that railways pay little attention to state boundaries1 that lines once local are parts of vast systems and that state legislation and administration are ineffectual for his purpose4 ,he calls for national regulation4 ,some partisan of the powers of the central government1 on the other hand1 being an investor in stocks and bonds1 finds that his income is likely to be unfavorably affected by federal action and he promptly protests against the vexatious tendency to appeal to national aid1 which has now become in his eyes a foolish paternalism4 ,the developments of industry and commerce have so complicated affairs that a clear-cut1 generally applicable1 standard of judgment becomes practically impossible4 ,the forest cannot be seen for the trees nor the trees for the forest4 ,a striking example of the shift of the actual tenor of doctrines--that is1 of their consequences in application--is presented in the history of the doctrine of ,individualism1 interpreted to signify a minimum of governmental 8interference0 with industry and trade4 ,at the outset1 it was held by 8progressives10 by those who were protesting against the inherited rgime of rules of law and administration4 ,vested interests1 on the contrary1 were mainly in favor of the old status4 ,to-day the industrial-property rgime being established1 the doctrine is the intellectual bulwark of the standpatter and reactionary4 ,he it is that now wants to be let alone1 and who utters the war-cry of liberty for private industry1 thrift1 contract and their pecuniary fruit4 ,in the ,united ,states the name 8liberal10 as a party designation1 is still employed to designate a progressive in political matters4 ,in most other countries1 the 8liberal0 party is that which represents established and vested commercial and financial interests in protest against governmental regulation4 ,the irony of history is nowhere more evident than in the reversal of the practical meaning of the term 8liberalism0 in spite of a literal continuity of theory4 ,political apathy1 which is a natural product of the discrepancies between actual practices and traditional machinery1 ensues from inability to identify one's self with definite issues4 ,these are hard to find and locate in the vast complexities of current life4 ,when traditional war-cries have lost their import in practical policies which are consonant with them1 they are readily dismissed as bunk4 ,only habit and tradition1 rather than reasoned conviction1 together with a vague faith in doing one's civic duty1 send to the polls a considerable percentage of the fifty per cent4 who still vote4 ,and of them it is a common remark that a large number vote against something or somebody rather than for anything or anybody1 except when powerful agencies create a scare4 ,the old principles do not fit contemporary life as it is lived1 however well they may have expressed the vital interests of the times in which they arose4 ,thousands feel their hollowness even if they cannot make their feeling articulate4 ,the confusion which has resulted from the size and ramifications of social activities has rendered men skeptical of the efficiency of political action4 ,who is sufficient unto these things8 ,men feel that they are caught in the sweep of forces too vast to understand or master4 ,thought is brought to a standstill and action paralyzed4 ,even the specialist finds it difficult to trace the chain of 8cause and effect02 and even he operates only after the event1 looking backward1 while meantime social activities have moved on to effect a new state of affairs4 ,similar considerations account for depreciation of the machinery of democratic political action in contrast with a rising appreciation of the need of expert administrators4 ,for example1 one of the by-products of the war was the investment of the government at ,muscle ,shoals for the manufacture of nitrogen1 a chemical product of great importance to the farmer1 as well as to armies in the field4 ,the disposition and utilization of the plant have become matters of political dispute4 ,the questions involved1 questions of science1 agriculture1 industry and finance1 are highly technical4 ,how many voters are competent to measure all the factors involved in arriving at a decision8 ,and if they were competent after studying it1 how many have the time to devote to it8 ,it is true that this matter does not come before the electorate directly1 but the technical difficulty of the problem is reflected in the confused paralysis of the legislators whose business it is to deal with it4 ,the confused situation is further complicated by the invention of other and cheaper methods of producing nitrates4 ,again1 the rapid development of hydro-electric and super-power is a matter of public concern4 ,in the long run1 few questions exceed it in importance4 ,aside from business corporations which have a direct interest in it and some engineers1 how many citizens have the data or the ability to secure and estimate the facts involved in its settlement8 ,one further illustration3 ,two things which intimately concern a local public are street-railway transportation and the marketing of food products4 ,but the history of municipal politics shows in most cases a flare-up of intense interest followed by a period of indifference4 ,results come home to the masses of the people4 ,but the very size1 heterogeneity and nobility of urban populations1 the vast capital required1 the technical character of the engineering problems involved1 soon tire the attention of the average voter4 ,i think the three instances are fairly typical4 ,the ramification of the issues before the public is so wide and intricate1 the technical matters involved are so specialized1 the details are so many and so shifting1 that the public cannot for any length of time identify and hold itself4 ,it is not that there is no public1 no large body of persons having a common interest in the consequences of social transactions4 ,there is too much public1 a public too diffused and scattered and too intricate in composition4 ,and there are too many publics1 for conjoint actions which have indirect1 serious and enduring consequences are multitudinous beyond comparison1 and each one of them crosses the others and generates its own group of persons especially affected with little to hold these different publics together in an integrated whole4 ,the picture is not complete without taking into account the many competitors with effective political interest4 ,political concerns have1 of course1 always had strong rivals4 ,persons have always been1 for the most part1 taken up with their more immediate work and play4 ,the power of 8bread and the circus0 to divert attention from public matters is an old story4 ,but now the industrial conditions which have enlarged1 complicated and multiplied public interests have also multiplied and intensified formidable rivals to them4 ,in countries where political life has been most successfully conducted in the past1 there was a class specially set aside1 as it were1 who made political affairs their special business4 ,aristotle could not conceive a body of citizens competent to carry on politics consisting of others than those who had leisure1 that is1 of those who were relieved from all other preoccupations1 especially that of making a livelihood4 ,political life1 till recent times1 bore out his belief4 ,those who took an active part in politics were 8gentlemen10 persons who had had property and money long enough1 and enough of it1 so that its further pursuit was vulgar and beneath their station4 ,to-day1 so great and powerful is the sweep of the industrial current1 the person of leisure is usually an idle person4 ,persons have their own business to attend to1 and 8business0 has its own precise and specialized meaning4 ,politics thus tends to become just another 8business03 the especial concern of bosses and the managers of the machine4 ,the increase in the number1 variety and cheapness of amusements represents a powerful diversion from political concern4 ,the members of an inchoate public have too many ways of enjoyment1 as well as of work1 to give much thought to organization into an effective public4 ,man is a consuming and sportive animal as well as a political one4 ,what is significant is that access to means of amusement has been rendered easy and cheap beyond anything known in the past4 ,the present era of 8prosperity0 may not be enduring4 ,but the movie1 radio1 cheap reading matter and motor car with all they stand for have come to stay4 ,that they did not originate in deliberate desire to divert attention from political interests does not lessen their effectiveness in that direction4 ,the political elements in the constitution of the human being1 those having to do with citizenship1 are crowded to one side4 ,in most circles it is hard work to sustain conversation on a political theme2 and once initiated1 it is quickly dismissed with a yawn4 ,let there be introduced the topic of the mechanism and accomplishment of various makes of motor cars or the respective merits of actresses1 and the dialogue goes on at a lively pace4 ,the thing to be remembered is that this cheapened and multiplied access to amusement is the product of the machine age1 intensified by the business tradition which causes provision of means for an enjoyable passing of time to be one of the most profitable of occupations4 ,one phase of the workings of a technological age1 with its unprecedented command of natural energies1 while it is implied in what has been said1 needs explicit attention4 ,the older publics1 in being local communities1 largely homogeneous with one another1 were also1 as the phrase goes1 static4 ,they changed1 of course1 but barring war1 catastrophe and great migrations1 the modifications were gradual4 ,they proceeded slowly and were largely unperceived by those undergoing them4 ,the newer forces have created mobile and fluctuating associational forms4 ,the common complaints of the disintegration of family life may be placed in evidence4 ,the movement from rural to urban assemblies is also the result and proof of this mobility4 ,nothing stays long put1 not even the associations by which business and industry are carried on4 ,the mania for motion and speed is a symptom of the restless instability of social life1 and it operates to intensify the causes from which it springs4 ,steel replaces wood and masonry for buildings2 ferro-concrete modifies steel1 and some invention may work a further revolution4 ,muscle ,shoals was acquired to produce nitrogen1 and new methods have already made antiquated the supposed need of great accumulation of water power4 ,any selected illustration suffers because of the heterogeneous mass of cases to select from4 ,how can a public be organized1 we may ask1 when literally it does not stay in place8 ,only deep issues or those which can be made to appear such can find a common denominator among all the shifting and unstable relationships4 ,attachment is a very different function of life from affection4 ,affections will continue as long as the heart beats4 ,but attachment requires something more than organic causes4 ,the very things which stimulate and intensify affections may undermine attachments4 ,for these are bred in tranquil stability2 they are nourished in constant relationships4 ,acceleration of mobility disturbs them at their root4 ,and without abiding attachments associations are too shifting and shaken to permit a public readily to locate and identify itself4 ,the new era of human relationships in which we live is one marked by mass production for remote markets1 by cable and telephone1 by cheap printing1 by railway and steam navigation4 ,only geographically did ,columbus discover a new world4 ,the actual new world has been generated in the last hundred years4 ,steam and electricity have done more to alter the conditions under which men associate together than all the agencies which affected human relationships before our time4 ,there are those who lay the blame for all the evils of our lives on steam1 electricity and machinery4 ,it is always convenient to have a devil as well as a savior to bear the responsibilities of humanity4 ,in reality1 the trouble springs rather from the ideas and absence of ideas in connection with which technological factors operate4 ,mental and moral beliefs and ideals change more slowly than outward conditions4 ,if the ideals associated with the higher life of our cultural past have been impaired1 the fault is primarily with them4 ,ideals and standards formed without regard to the means by which they are to be achieved and incarnated in flesh are bound to be thin and wavering4 ,since the aims1 desires and purposes created by a machine age do not connect with tradition1 there are two sets of rival ideals1 and those which have actual instrumentalities at their disposal have the advantage4 ,because the two are rivals and because the older ones retain their glamor and sentimental prestige in literature and religion1 the newer ones are perforce harsh and narrow4 ,for the older symbols of ideal life still engage thought and command loyalty4 ,conditions have changed1 but every aspect of life1 from religion and education to property and trade1 shows that nothing approaching a transformation has taken place in ideas and ideals4 ,symbols control sentiment and thought1 and the new age has no symbols consonant with its activities4 ,intellectual instrumentalities for the formation of an organized public are more inadequate than its overt means4 ,the ties which hold men together in action are numerous1 tough and subtle4 ,but they are invisible and intangible4 ,we have the physical tools of communication as never before4 ,the thoughts and aspirations congruous with them are not communicated1 and hence are not common4 ,without such communication the public will remain shadowy and formless1 seeking spasmodically for itself1 but seizing and holding its shadow rather than its substance4 ,till the ,great ,society is converted into a ,great ,community1 the ,public will remain in eclipse4 ,communication can alone create a great community4 ,our ,babel is not one of tongues but of the signs and symbols without which shared experience is impossible4 ,,chapter ,v ,,search ,,for ,,the ,,great ,,community ,we have had occasion to refer in passing to the distinction between democracy as a social idea and political democracy as a system of government4 ,the two are1 of course1 connected4 ,the idea remains barren and empty save as it is incarnated in human relationships4 ,yet in discussion they must be distinguished4 ,the idea of democracy is a wider and fuller idea than can be exemplified in the state even at its best4 ,to be realized it must affect all modes of human association1 the family1 the school1 industry1 religion4 ,and even as far as political arrangements are concerned1 governmental institutions are but a mechanism for securing to an idea channels of effective operation4 ,it will hardly do to say that criticisms of the political machinery leave the believer in the idea untouched4 ,for1 as far as they are justified--and no candid believer can deny that many of them are only too well grounded--they arouse him to bestir himself in order that the idea may find a more adequate machinery through which to work4 ,what the faithful insist upon1 however1 is that the idea and its external organs and structures are not to be identified4 ,we object to the common supposition of the foes of existing democratic government that the accusations against it touch the social and moral aspirations and ideas which underlie the political forms4 ,the old saying that the cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy is not apt if it means that the evils may be remedied by introducing more machinery of the same kind as that which already exists1 or by refining and perfecting that machinery4 ,but the phrase may also indicate the need of returning to the idea itself1 of clarifying and deepening our apprehension of it1 and of employing our sense of its meaning to criticize and re-make its political manifestations4 ,confining ourselves1 for the moment1 to political democracy1 we must1 in any case1 renew our protest against the assumption that the idea has itself produced the governmental practices which obtain in democratic states3 ,general suffrage1 elected representatives1 majority rule1 and so on4 ,the idea has influenced the concrete political movement1 but it has not caused it4 ,the transition from family and dynastic government supported by the loyalties of tradition to popular government was the outcome primarily of technological discoveries and inventions working a change in the customs by which men had been bound together4 ,it was not due to the doctrines of doctrinaires4 ,the forms to which we are accustomed in democratic governments represent the cumulative effect of a multitude of events1 unpremeditated as far as political effects were concerned and having unpredictable consequences4 ,there is no sanctity in universal suffrage1 frequent elections1 majority rule1 congressional and cabinet government4 ,these things are devices evolved in the direction in which the current was moving1 each wave of which involved at the time of its impulsion a minimum of departure from antecedent custom and law4 ,the devices served a purpose2 but the purpose was rather that of meeting existing needs which had become too intense to be ignored1 than that of forwarding the democratic idea4 ,in spite of all defects1 they served their own purpose well4 ,looking back1 with the aid which ex post facto experience can give1 it would be hard for the wisest to devise schemes which1 under the circumstances1 would have met the needs better4 ,in this retrospective glance1 it is possible1 however1 to see how the doctrinal formulations which accompanied them were inadequate1 one-sided and positively erroneous4 ,in fact they were hardly more than political war-cries adopted to help in carrying on some immediate agitation or in justifying some particular practical polity struggling for recognition1 even though they were asserted to be absolute truths of human nature or of morals4 ,the doctrines served a particular local pragmatic need4 ,but often their very adaptation to immediate circumstances unfitted them1 pragmatically1 to meet more enduring and more extensive needs4 ,they lived to cumber the political ground1 obstructing progress1 all the more so because they were uttered and held not as hypotheses with which to direct social experimentation but as final truths1 dogmas4 ,no wonder they call urgently for revision and displacement4 ,nevertheless the current has set steadily in one direction3 toward democratic forms4 ,that government exists to serve its community1 and that this purpose cannot be achieved unless the community itself shares in selecting its governors and determining their policies1 are a deposit of fact left1 as far as we can see1 permanently in the wake of doctrines and forms1 however transitory the latter4 ,they are not the whole of the democratic idea1 but they express it in its political phase4 ,belief in this political aspect is not a mystic faith as if in some overruling providence that cares for children1 drunkards and others unable to help themselves4 ,it marks a well-attested conclusion from historic facts4 ,we have every reason to think that whatever changes may take place in existing democratic machinery1 they will be of a sort to make the interest of the public a more supreme guide and criterion of governmental activity1 and to enable the public to form and manifest its purposes still more authoritatively4 ,in this sense the cure for the ailments of democracy is more democracy4 ,the prime difficulty1 as we have seen1 is that of discovering the means by which a scattered1 mobile and manifold public may so recognize itself as to define and express its interests4 ,this discovery is necessarily precedent to any fundamental change in the machinery4 ,we are not concerned therefore to set forth counsels as to advisable improvements in the political forms of democracy4 ,many have been suggested4 ,it is no derogation of their relative worth to say that consideration of these changes is not at present an affair of primary importance4 ,the problem lies deeper2 it is in the first instance an intellectual problem3 the search for conditions under which the ,great ,society may become the ,great ,community4 ,when these conditions are brought into being they will make their own forms4 ,until they have come about1 it is somewhat futile to consider what political machinery will suit them4 ,in a search for the conditions under which the inchoate public now extant may function democratically1 we may proceed from a statement of the nature of the democratic idea in its generic social sense4#aa ,from the standpoint of the individual1 it consists in having a responsible share according to capacity in forming and directing the activities of the groups to which one belongs and in participating according to need in the values which the groups sustain4 ,from the standpoint of the groups1 it demands liberation of the potentialities of members of a group in harmony with the interests and goods which are common4 ,since every individual is a member of many groups1 this specification cannot be fulfilled except when different groups interact flexibly and fully in connection with other groups4 ,a member of a robber band may express his powers in a way consonant with belonging to that group and be directed by the interest common to its members4 ,but he does so only at the cost of repression of those of his potentialities which can be realized only through membership in other groups4 ,the robber band cannot interact flexibly with other groups2 it can act only through isolating itself4 ,it must prevent the operation of all interests save those which circumscribe it in its separateness4 ,but a good citizen finds his conduct as a member of a political group enriching and enriched by his participation in family life1 industry1 scientific and artistic associations4 ,there is a free give-and-take3 fullness of integrated personality is therefore possible of achievement1 since the pulls and responses of different groups renforce one another and their values accord4 ,regarded as an idea1 democracy is not an alternative to other principles of associated life4 ,it is the idea of community life itself4 ,it is an ideal in the only intelligible sense of an ideal3 namely1 the tendency and movement of some thing which exists carried to its final limit1 viewed as completed1 perfected4 ,since things do not attain such fulfillment but are in actuality distracted and interfered with1 democracy in this sense is not a fact and never will be4 ,but neither in this sense is there or has there ever been anything which is a community in its full measure1 a community unalloyed by alien elements4 ,the idea or ideal of a community presents1 however1 actual phases of associated life as they are freed from restrictive and disturbing elements1 and are contemplated as having attained their limit of development4 ,wherever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by all singular persons who take part in it1 and where the realization of the good is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good shared by all1 there is in so far a community4 ,the clear consciousness of a communal life1 in all its implications1 constitutes the idea of democracy4 ,only when we start from a community as a fact1 grasp the fact in thought so as to clarify and enhance its constituent elements1 can we reach an idea of democracy which is not utopian4 ,the conceptions and shibboleths which are traditionally associated with the idea of democracy take on a veridical and directive meaning only when they are construed as marks and traits of an association which realizes the defining characteristics of a community4 ,fraternity1 liberty and equality isolated from communal life are hopeless abstractions4 ,their separate assertion leads to mushy sentimentalism or else to extravagant and fanatical violence which in the end defeats its own aims4 ,equality then becomes a creed of mechanical identity which is false to facts and impossible of realization4 ,effort to attain it is divisive of the vital bonds which hold men together2 as far as it puts forth issue1 the outcome is a mediocrity in which good is common only in the sense of being average and vulgar4 ,liberty is then thought of as independence of social ties1 and ends in dissolution and anarchy4 ,it is more difficult to sever the idea of brotherhood from that of a community1 and hence it is either practically ignored in the movements which identify democracy with ,individualism1 or else it is a sentimentally appended tag4 ,in its just connection with communal experience1 fraternity is another name for the consciously appreciated goods which accrue from an association in which all share1 and which give direction to the conduct of each4 ,liberty is that secure release and fulfillment of personal potentialities which take place only in rich and manifold association with others3 the power to be an individualized self making a distinctive contribution and enjoying in its own way the fruits of association4 ,equality denotes the unhampered share which each individual member of the community has in the consequences of associated action4 ,it is equitable because it is measured only by need and capacity to utilize1 not by extraneous factors which deprive one in order that another may take and have4 ,a baby in the family is equal with others1 not because of some antecedent and structural quality which is the same as that of others1 but in so far as his needs for care and development are attended to without being sacrificed to the superior strength1 possessions and matured abilities of others4 ,equality does not signify that kind of mathematical or physical equivalence in virtue of which any one element may be substituted for another4 ,it denotes effective regard for whatever is distinctive and unique in each1 irrespective of physical and psychological inequalities4 ,it is not a natural possession but is a fruit of the community when its action is directed by its character as a community4 ,associated or joint activity is a condition of the creation of a community4 ,but association itself is physical and organic1 while communal life is moral1 that is emotionally1 intellectually1 consciously sustained4 ,human beings combine in behavior as directly and unconsciously as do atoms1 stellar masses and cells2 as directly and unknowingly as they divide and repel4 ,they do so in virtue of their own structure1 as man and woman unite1 as the baby seeks the breast and the breast is there to supply its need4 ,they do so from external circumstances1 pressure from without1 as atoms combine or separate in presence of an electric charge1 or as sheep huddle together from the cold4 ,associated activity needs no explanation2 things are made that way4 ,but no amount of aggregated collective action of itself constitutes a community4 ,for beings who observe and think1 and whose ideas are absorbed by impulses and become sentiments and interests1 8we0 is as inevitable as 8,i40 ,but 8we0 and 8our0 exist only when the consequences of combined action are perceived and become an object of desire and effort1 just as 8,i0 and 8mine0 appear on the scene only when a distinctive share in mutual action is consciously asserted or claimed4 ,human associations may be ever so organic in origin and firm in operation1 but they develop into societies in a human sense only as their consequences1 being known1 are esteemed and sought for4 ,even if 8society0 were as much an organism as some writers have held1 it would not on that account be society4 ,interactions1 transactions1 occur de facto and the results of interdependence follow4 ,but participation in activities and sharing in results are additive concerns4 ,they demand communication as a prerequisite4 ,combined activity happens among human beings2 but when nothing else happens it passes as inevitably into some other mode of interconnected activity as does the interplay of iron and the oxygen of water4 ,what takes place is wholly describable in terms of energy1 or1 as we say in the case of human interactions1 of force4 ,only when there exist signs or symbols of activities and of their outcome can the flux be viewed as from without1 be arrested for consideration and esteem1 and be regulated4 ,lightning strikes and rives a tree or rock1 and the resulting fragments take up and continue the process of interaction1 and so on and on4 ,but when phases of the process are represented by signs1 a new medium is interposed4 ,as symbols are related to one another1 the important relations of a course of events are recorded and are preserved as meanings4 ,recollection and foresight are possible2 the new medium facilitates calculation1 planning1 and a new kind of action which intervenes in what happens to direct its course in the interest of what is foreseen and desired4 ,symbols in turn depend upon and promote communication4 ,the results of conjoint experience are considered and transmitted4 ,events cannot be passed from one to another1 but meanings may be shared by means of signs4 ,wants and impulses are then attached to common meanings4 ,they are thereby transformed into desires and purposes1 which1 since they implicate a common or mutually understood meaning1 present new ties1 converting a conjoint activity into a community of interest and endeavor4 ,thus there is generated what1 metaphorically1 may be termed a general will and social consciousness3 desire and choice on the part of individuals in behalf of activities that1 by means of symbols1 are communicable and shared by all concerned4 ,a community thus presents an order of energies transmuted into one of meanings which are appreciated and mutually referred by each to every other on the part of those engaged in combined action4 8,force0 is not eliminated but is transformed in use and direction by ideas and sentiments made possible by means of symbols4 ,the work of conversion of the physical and organic phase of associated behavior into a community of action saturated and regulated by mutual interest in shared meanings1 consequences which are translated into ideas and desired objects by means of symbols1 does not occur all at once nor completely4 ,at any given time1 it sets a problem rather than marks a settled achievement4 ,we are born organic beings associated with others1 but we are not born members of a community4 ,the young have to be brought within the traditions1 outlook and interests which characterize a community by means of education3 by unremitting instruction and by learning in connection with the phenomena of overt association4 ,everything which is distinctively human is learned1 not native1 even though it could not be learned without native structures which mark man off from other animals4 ,to learn in a human way and to human effect is not just to acquire added skill through refinement of original capacities4 ,to learn to be human is to develop through the give-and-take of communication an effective sense of being an individually distinctive member of a community2 one who understands and appreciates its beliefs1 desires and methods1 and who contributes to a further conversion of organic powers into human resources and values4 ,but this translation is never finished4 ,the old ,adam1 the unregenerate element in human nature1 persists4 ,it shows itself wherever the method obtains of attaining results by use of force instead of by the method of communication and enlightenment4 ,it manifests itself more subtly1 pervasively and effectually when knowledge and the instrumentalities of skill which are the product of communal life are employed in the service of wants and impulses which have not themselves been modified by reference to a shared interest4 ,to the doctrine of 8natural0 economy which held that commercial exchange would bring about such an interdependence that harmony would automatically result1 ,rousseau gave an adequate answer in advance4 ,he pointed out that interdependence provides just the situation which makes it possible and worth while for the stronger and abler to exploit others for their own ends1 to keep others in a state of subjection where they can be utilized as animated tools4 ,the remedy he suggested1 a return to a condition of independence based on isolation1 was hardly seriously meant4 ,but its desperateness is evidence of the urgency of the problem4 ,its negative character was equivalent to surrender of any hope of solution4 ,by contrast it indicates the nature of the only possible solution3 the perfecting of the means and ways of communication of meanings so that genuinely shared interest in the consequences of interdependent activities may inform desire and effort and thereby direct action4 ,this is the meaning of the statement that the problem is a moral one dependent upon intelligence and education4 ,we have in our prior account sufficiently emphasized the rle of technological and industrial factors in creating the ,great ,society4 ,what was said may even have seemed to imply acceptance of the deterministic version of an economic interpretation of history and institutions4 ,it is silly and futile to ignore and deny economic facts4 ,they do not cease to operate because we refuse to note them1 or because we smear them over with sentimental idealizations4 ,as we have also noted1 they generate as their result overt and external conditions of action and these are known with various degrees of adequacy4 ,what actually happens in consequence of industrial forces is dependent upon the presence or absence of perception and communication of consequences1 upon foresight and its effect upon desire and endeavor4 ,economic agencies produce one result when they are left to work themselves out on the merely physical level1 or on that level modified only as the knowledge1 skill and technique which the community has accumulated are transmitted to its members unequally and by chance4 ,they have a different outcome in the degree in which knowledge of consequences is equitably distributed1 and action is animated by an informed and lively sense of a shared interest4 ,the doctrine of economic interpretation as usually stated ignores the transformation which meanings may effect2 it passes over the new medium which communication may interpose between industry and its eventual consequences4 ,it is obsessed by the illusion which vitiated the 8natural economy03 an illusion due to failure to note the difference made in action by perception and publication of its consequences1 actual and possible4 ,it thinks in terms of antecedents1 not of the eventual2 of origins1 not fruits4 ,we have returned1 through this apparent excursion1 to the question in which our earlier discussion culminated3 ,what are the conditions under which it is possible for the ,great ,society to approach more closely and vitally the status of a ,great ,community1 and thus take form in genuinely democratic societies and state8 ,what are the conditions under which we may reasonably picture the ,public emerging from its eclipse8 ,the study will be an intellectual or hypothetical one4 ,there will be no attempt to state how the required conditions might come into existence1 nor to prophesy that they will occur4 ,the object of the analysis will be to show that unless ascertained specifications are realized1 the ,community cannot be organized as a democratically effective ,public4 ,it is not claimed that the conditions which will be noted will suffice1 but only that at least they are indispensable4 ,in other words1 we shall endeavor to frame a hypothesis regarding the democratic state to stand in contrast with the earlier doctrine which has been nullified by the course of events4 ,two essential constituents in that older theory1 as will be recalled1 were the notions that each individual is of himself equipped with the intelligence needed1 under the operation of self-interest1 to engage in political affairs2 and that general suffrage1 frequent elections of officials and majority rule are sufficient to ensure the responsibility of elected rulers to the desires and interests of the public4 ,as we shall see1 the second conception is logically bound up with the first and stands or falls with it4 ,at the basis of the scheme lies what ,lippmann has well called the idea of the 8omni-competent0 individual3 competent to frame policies1 to judge their results2 competent to know in all situations demanding political action what is for his own good1 and competent to enforce his idea of good and the will to effect it against contrary forces4 ,subsequent history has proved that the assumption involved illusion4 ,had it not been for the misleading influence of a false psychology1 the illusion might have been detected in advance4 ,but current philosophy held that ideas and knowledge were functions of a mind or consciousness which originated in individuals by means of isolated contact with objects4 ,but in fact1 knowledge is a function of association and communication2 it depends upon tradition1 upon tools and methods socially transmitted1 developed and sanctioned4 ,faculties of effectual observation1 reflection and desire are habits acquired under the influence of the culture and institutions of society1 not ready-made inherent powers4 ,the fact that man acts from crudely intelligized emotion and from habit rather than from rational consideration1 is now so familiar that it is not easy to appreciate that the other idea was taken seriously as the basis of economic and political philosophy4 ,the measure of truth which it contains was derived from observation of a relatively small group of shrewd business men who regulated their enterprises by calculation and accounting1 and of citizens of small and stable local communities who were so intimately acquainted with the persons and affairs of their locality that they could pass competent judgment upon the bearing of proposed measures upon their own concerns4 ,habit is the mainspring of human action1 and habits are formed for the most part under the influence of the customs of a group4 ,the organic structure of man entails the formation of habit1 for1 whether we wish it or not1 whether we are aware of it or not1 every act effects a modification of attitude and set which directs future behavior4 ,the dependence of habit-forming upon those habits of a group which constitute customs and institutions is a natural consequence of the helplessness of infancy4 ,the social consequences of habit have been stated once for all by ,james3 8,habit is the enormous fly-wheel of society1 its most precious conservative influence4 ,it alone is what keeps us within the bounds of ordinance1 and saves the children of fortune from the uprisings of the poor4 ,it alone prevents the hardest and most repulsive walks of life from being deserted by those brought up to tread therein4 ,it keeps the fisherman and the deck-hand at sea through the winter2 it holds the miner in his darkness1 and nails the country-man to his log cabin and his lonely farm through all the months of snow2 it protects us from invasion by the natives of the desert and the frozen zone4 ,it dooms us all to fight out the battle of life upon the lines of our nurture or our early choice1 and to make the best of a pursuit that disagrees1 because there is no other for which we are fitted and it is too late to begin again4 ,it keeps different social strata from mixing40 ,the influence of habit is decisive because all distinctively human action has to be learned1 and the very heart1 blood and sinews of learning is creation of habitudes4 ,habits bind us to orderly and established ways of action because they generate ease1 skill and interest in things to which we have grown used and because they instigate fear to walk in different ways1 and because they leave us incapacitated for the trial of them4 ,habit does not preclude the use of thought1 but it determines the channels within which it operates4 ,thinking is secreted in the interstices of habits4 ,the sailor1 miner1 fisherman and farmer think1 but their thoughts fall within the framework of accustomed occupations and relationships4 ,we dream beyond the limits of use and wont1 but only rarely does revery become a source of acts which break bounds2 so rarely that we name those in whom it happens demonic geniuses and marvel at the spectacle4 ,thinking itself becomes habitual along certain lines2 a specialized occupation4 ,scientific men1 philosophers1 literary persons1 are not men and women who have so broken the bonds of habits that pure reason and emotion undefiled by use and wont speak through them4 ,they are persons of a specialized infrequent habit4 ,hence the idea that men are moved by an intelligent and calculated regard for their own good is pure mythology4 ,even if the principle of self-love actuated behavior1 it would still be true that the objects in which men find their love manifested1 the objects which they take as constituting their peculiar interests1 are set by habits reflecting social customs4 ,these facts explain why the social doctrinaires of the new industrial movement had so little prescience of what was to follow in consequence of it4 ,these facts explain why the more things changed1 the more they were the same2 they account1 that is1 for the fact that instead of the sweeping revolution which was expected to result from democratic political machinery1 there was in the main but a transfer of vested power from one class to another4 ,a few men1 whether or not they were good judges of their own true interest and good1 were competent judges of the conduct of business for pecuniary profit1 and of how the new governmental machinery could be made to serve their ends4 ,it would have taken a new race of human beings to escape1 in the use made of political forms1 from the influence of deeply engrained habits1 of old institutions and customary social status1 with their inwrought limitations of expectation1 desire and demand4 ,and such a race1 unless of disembodied angelic constitution1 would simply have taken up the task where human beings assumed it upon emergence from the condition of anthropoid apes4 ,in spite of sudden and catastrophic revolutions1 the essential continuity of history is doubly guaranteed4 ,not only are personal desire and belief functions of habit and custom1 but the objective conditions which provide the resources and tools of action1 together with its limitations1 obstructions and traps1 are precipitates of the past1 perpetuating1 willy-nilly1 its hold and power4 ,the creation of a tabula rasa in order to permit the creation of a new order is so impossible as to set at naught both the hope of buoyant revolutionaries and the timidity of scared conservatives4 ,nevertheless1 changes take place and are cumulative in character4 ,observation of them in the light of their recognized consequences arouses reflection1 discovery1 invention1 experimentation4 ,when a certain state of accumulated knowledge1 of techniques and instrumentalities is attained1 the process of change is so accelerated1 that1 as to-day1 it appears externally to be the dominant trait4 ,but there is a marked lag in any corresponding change of ideas and desires4 ,habits of opinion are the toughest of all habits2 when they have become second nature1 and are supposedly thrown out of the door1 they creep in again as stealthily and surely as does first nature4 ,and as they are modified1 the alteration first shows itself negatively1 in the disintegration of old beliefs1 to be replaced by floating1 volatile and accidentally snatched up opinions4 ,of course there has been an enormous increase in the amount of knowledge possessed by mankind1 but it does not equal1 probably1 the increase in the amount of errors and half-truths which have got into circulation4 ,in social and human matters1 especially1 the development of a critical sense and methods of discriminating judgment has not kept pace with the growth of careless reports and of motives for positive misrepresentation4 ,what is more important1 however1 is that so much of knowledge is not knowledge in the ordinary sense of the word1 but is 8science40 ,the quotation marks are not used disrespectfully1 but to suggest the technical character of scientific material4 ,the layman takes certain conclusions which get into circulation to be science4 ,but the scientific inquirer knows that they constitute science only in connection with the methods by which they are reached4 ,even when true1 they are not science in virtue of their correctness1 but by reason of the apparatus which is employed in reaching them4 ,this apparatus is so highly specialized that it requires more labor to acquire ability to use and understand it than to get skill in any other instrumentalities possessed by man4 ,science1 in other words1 is a highly specialized language1 more difficult to learn than any natural language4 ,it is an artificial language1 not in the sense of being factitious1 but in that of being a work of intricate art1 devoted to a particular purpose and not capable of being acquired nor understood in the way in which the mother tongue is learned4 ,it is1 indeed1 conceivable that sometime methods of instruction will be devised which will enable laymen to read and hear scientific material with comprehension1 even when they do not themselves use the apparatus which is science4 ,the latter may then become for large numbers what students of language call a passive1 if not an active1 vocabulary4 ,but that time is in the future4 ,for most men1 save the scientific workers1 science is a mystery in the hands of initiates1 who have become adepts in virtue of following ritualistic ceremonies from which the profane herd is excluded4 ,they are fortunate who get as far as a sympathetic appreciation of the methods which give pattern to the complicated apparatus3 methods of analytic1 experimental observation1 mathematical formulation and deduction1 constant and elaborate check and test4 ,for most persons1 the reality of the apparatus is found only in its embodiments in practical affairs1 in mechanical devices and in techniques which touch life as it is lived4 ,for them1 electricity is known by means of the telephones1 bells and lights they use1 by the generators and magnetos in the automobiles they drive1 by the trolley cars in which they ride4 ,the physiology and biology they are acquainted with is that they have learned in taking precautions against germs and from the physicians they depend upon for health4 ,the science of what might be supposed to be closest to them1 of human nature1 was for them an esoteric mystery until it was applied in advertising1 salesmanship and personnel selection and management1 and until1 through psychiatry1 it spilled over into life and popular consciousness1 through its bearings upon 8nerves10 the morbidities and common forms of crankiness which make it difficult for persons to get along with one another and with themselves4 ,even now1 popular psychology is a mass of cant1 of slush and of superstition worthy of the most flourishing days of the medicine man4 ,meanwhile the technological application of the complex apparatus which is science has revolutionized the conditions under which associated life goes on4 ,this may be known as a fact which is stated in a proposition and assented to4 ,but it is not known in the sense that men understand it4 ,they do not know it as they know some machine which they operate1 or as they know electric light and steam locomotives4 ,they do not understand how the change has gone on nor how it affects their conduct4 ,not understanding its 8how10 they cannot use and control its manifestations4 ,they undergo the consequences1 they are affected by them4 ,they cannot manage them1 though some are fortunate enough--what is commonly called good fortune--to be able to exploit some phase of the process for their own personal profit4 ,but even the most shrewd and successful man does not in any analytic and systematic way--in a way worthy to compare with the knowledge which he has won in lesser affairs by means of the stress of experience--know the system within which he operates4 ,skill and ability work within a framework which we have not created and do not comprehend4 ,some occupy strategic positions which give them advance information of forces that affect the market2 and by training and an innate turn that way they have acquired a special technique which enables them to use the vast impersonal tide to turn their own wheels4 ,they can dam the current here and release it there4 ,the current itself is as much beyond them as was ever the river by the side of which some ingenious mechanic1 employing a knowledge which was transmitted to him1 erected his saw-mill to make boards of trees which he had not grown4 ,that within limits those successful in affairs have knowledge and skill is not to be doubted4 ,but such knowledge goes relatively but little further than that of the competent skilled operator who manages a machine4 ,it suffices to employ the conditions which are before him4 ,skill enables him to turn the flux of events this way or that in his own neighborhood4 ,it gives him no control of the flux4 ,why should the public and its officers1 even if the latter are termed statesmen1 be wiser and more effective8 ,the prime condition of a democratically organized public is a kind of knowledge and insight which does not yet exist4 ,in its absence1 it would be the height of absurdity to try to tell what it would be like if it existed4 ,but some of the conditions which must be fulfilled if it is to exist can be indicated4 ,we can borrow that much from the spirit and method of science even if we are ignorant of it as a specialized apparatus4 ,an obvious requirement is freedom of social inquiry and of distribution of its conclusions4 ,the notion that men may be free in their thought even when they are not in its expression and dissemination has been sedulously propagated4 ,it had its origin in the idea of a mind complete in itself1 apart from action and from objects4 ,such a consciousness presents in fact the spectacle of mind deprived of its normal functioning1 because it is baffled by the actualities in connection with which alone it is truly mind1 and is driven back into secluded and impotent revery4 ,there can be no public without full publicity in respect to all consequences which concern it4 ,whatever obstructs and restricts publicity1 limits and distorts public opinion and checks and distorts thinking on social affairs4 ,without freedom of expression1 not even methods of social inquiry can be developed4 ,for tools can be evolved and perfected only in operation2 in application to observing1 reporting and organizing actual subject-matter2 and this application cannot occur save through free and systematic communication4 ,the early history of physical knowledge1 of ,greek conceptions of natural phenomena1 proves how inept become the conceptions of the best endowed minds when those ideas are elaborated apart from the closest contact with the events which they purport to state and explain4 ,the ruling ideas and methods of the human sciences are in much the same condition to-day4 ,they are also evolved on the basis of past gross observations1 remote from constant use in regulation of the material of new observations4 ,the belief that thought and its communication are now free simply because legal restrictions which once obtained have been done away with is absurd4 ,its currency perpetuates the infantile state of social knowledge4 ,for it blurs recognition of our central need to possess conceptions which are used as tools of directed inquiry and which are tested1 rectified and caused to grow in actual use4 ,no man and no mind was ever emancipated merely by being left alone4 ,removal of formal limitations is but a negative condition2 positive freedom is not a state but an act which involves methods and instrumentalities for control of conditions4 ,experience shows that sometimes the sense of external oppression1 as by censorship1 acts as a challenge and arouses intellectual energy and excites courage4 ,but a belief in intellectual freedom where it does not exist contributes only to complacency in virtual enslavement1 to sloppiness1 superficiality and recourse to sensations as a substitute for ideas3 marked traits of our present estate with respect to social knowledge4 ,on one hand1 thinking deprived of its normal course takes refuge in academic specialism1 comparable in its way to what is called scholasticism4 ,on the other hand1 the physical agencies of publicity which exist in such abundance are utilized in ways which constitute a large part of the present meaning of publicity3 advertising1 propaganda1 invasion of private life1 the 8featuring0 of passing incidents in a way which violates all the moving logic of continuity1 and which leaves us with those isolated intrusions and shocks which are the essence of 8sensations40 ,it would be a mistake to identify the conditions which limit free communication and circulation of facts and ideas1 and which thereby arrest and pervert social thought or inquiry1 merely with overt forces which are obstructive4 ,it is true that those who have ability to manipulate social relations for their own advantage have to be reckoned with4 ,they have an uncanny instinct for detecting whatever intellectual tendencies even remotely threaten to encroach upon their control4 ,they have developed an extraordinary facility in enlisting upon their side the inertia1 prejudices and emotional partisanship of the masses by use of a technique which impedes free inquiry and expression4 ,we seem to be approaching a state of government by hired promoters of opinion called publicity agents4 ,but the more serious enemy is deeply concealed in hidden entrenchments4 ,emotional habituations and intellectual habitudes on the part of the mass of men create the conditions of which the exploiters of sentiment and opinion only take advantage4 ,men have got used to an experimental method in physical and technical matters4 ,they are still afraid of it in human concerns4 ,the fear is the more efficacious because like all deep-lying fears it is covered up and disguised by all kinds of rationalizations4 ,one of its commonest forms is a truly religious idealization of1 and reverence for1 established institutions2 for example in our own politics1 the ,constitution1 the ,supreme ,court1 private property1 free contract and so on4 ,the words 8sacred0 and 8sanctity0 come readily to our lips when such things come under discussion4 ,they testify to the religious aureole which protects the institutions4 ,if 8holy0 means that which is not to be approached nor touched1 save with ceremonial precautions and by specially anointed officials1 then such things are holy in contemporary political life4 ,as supernatural matters have progressively been left high and dry upon a secluded beach1 the actuality of religious taboos has more and more gathered about secular institutions1 especially those connected with the nationalistic state4#ab ,psychiatrists have discovered that one of the commonest causes of mental disturbance is an underlying fear of which the subject is not aware1 but which leads to withdrawal from reality and to unwillingness to think things through4 ,there is a social pathology which works powerfully against effective inquiry into social institutions and conditions4 ,it manifests itself in a thousand ways2 in querulousness1 in impotent drifting1 in uneasy snatching at distractions1 in idealization of the long established1 in a facile optimism assumed as a cloak1 in riotous glorification of things 8as they are10 in intimidation of all dissenters--ways which depress and dissipate thought all the more effectually because they operate with subtle and unconscious pervasiveness4 ,the backwardness of social knowledge is marked in its division into independent and insulated branches of learning4 ,anthropology1 history1 sociology1 morals1 economics1 political science1 go their own ways without constant and systematized fruitful interaction4 ,only in appearance is there a similar division in physical knowledge4 ,there is continuous cross-fertilization between astronomy1 physics1 chemistry and the biological sciences4 ,discoveries and improved methods are so recorded and organized that constant exchange and intercommunication take place4 ,the isolation of the humane subjects from one another is connected with their aloofness from physical knowledge4 ,the mind still draws a sharp separation between the world in which man lives and the life of man in and by that world1 a cleft reflected in the separation of man himself into a body and a mind1 which1 it is currently supposed1 can be known and dealt with apart4 ,that for the past three centuries energy should have gone chiefly into physical inquiry1 beginning with the things most remote from man such as heavenly bodies1 was to have been expected4 ,the history of the physical sciences reveals a certain order in which they developed4 ,mathematical tools had to be employed before a new astronomy could be constructed4 ,physics advanced when ideas worked out in connection with the solar system were used to describe happenings on the earth4 ,chemistry waited on the advance of physics2 the sciences of living things required the material and methods of physics and chemistry in order to make headway4 ,human psychology ceased to be chiefly speculative opinion only when biological and physiological conclusions were available4 ,all this is natural and seemingly inevitable4 ,things which had the most outlying and indirect connection with human interests had to be mastered in some degree before inquiries could competently converge upon man himself4 ,nevertheless the course of development has left us of this age in a plight4 ,when we say that a subject of science is technically specialized1 or that it is highly 8abstract10 what we practically mean is that it is not conceived in terms of its bearing upon human life4 ,all merely physical knowledge is technical1 couched in a technical vocabulary communicable only to the few4 ,even physical knowledge which does affect human conduct1 which does modify what we do and undergo1 is also technical and remote in the degree in which its bearings are not understood and used4 ,the sunlight1 rain1 air and soil have always entered in visible ways into human experience2 atoms and molecules and cells and most other things with which the sciences are occupied affect us1 but not visibly4 ,because they enter life and modify experience in imperceptible ways1 and their consequences are not realized1 speech about them is technical2 communication is by means of peculiar symbols4 ,one would think1 then1 that a fundamental and ever-operating aim would be to translate knowledge of the subject-matter of physical conditions into terms which are generally understood1 into signs denoting human consequences of services and disservices rendered4 ,for ultimately all consequences which enter human life depend upon physical conditions2 they can be understood and mastered only as the latter are taken into account4 ,one would think1 then1 that any state of affairs which tends to render the things of the environment unknown and incommunicable by human beings in terms of their own activities and sufferings would be deplored as a disaster2 that it would be felt to be intolerable1 and to be put up with only as far as it is1 at any given time1 inevitable4 ,but the facts are to the contrary4 ,matter and the material are words which in the minds of many convey a note of disparagement4 ,they are taken to be foes of whatever is of ideal value in life1 instead of as conditions of its manifestation and sustained being4 ,in consequence of this division1 they do become in fact enemies1 for whatever is consistently kept apart from human values depresses thought and renders values sparse and precarious in fact4 ,there are even some who regard the materialism and dominance of commercialism of modern life as fruits of undue devotion to physical science1 not seeing that the split between man and nature1 artificially made by a tradition which originated before there was understanding of the physical conditions that are the medium of human activities1 is the benumbing factor4 ,the most influential form of the divorce is separation between pure and applied science4 ,since 8application0 signifies recognized bearing upon human experience and well-being1 honor of what is 8pure0 and contempt for what is 8applied0 has for its outcome a science which is remote and technical1 communicable only to specialists1 and a conduct of human affairs which is haphazard1 biased1 unfair in distribution of values4 ,what is applied and employed as the alternative to knowledge in regulation of society is ignorance1 prejudice1 class-interest and accident4 ,science is converted into knowledge in its honorable and emphatic sense only in application4 ,otherwise it is truncated1 blind1 distorted4 ,when it is then applied1 it is in ways which explain the unfavorable sense so often attached to 8application0 and the 8utilitarian03 namely1 use for pecuniary ends to the profit of a few4 ,at present1 the application of physical science is rather to human concerns than in them4 ,that is1 it is external1 made in the interests of its consequences for a possessing and acquisitive class4 ,application in life would signify that science was absorbed and distributed2 that it was the instrumentality of that common understanding and thorough communication which is the precondition of the existence of a genuine and effective public4 ,the use of science to regulate industry and trade has gone on steadily4 ,the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was the precursor of the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth4 ,in consequence1 man has suffered the impact of an enormously enlarged control of physical energies without any corresponding ability to control himself and his own affairs4 ,knowledge divided against itself1 a science to whose incompleteness is added an artificial split1 has played its part in generating enslavement of men1 women and children in factories in which they are animated machines to tend inanimate machines4 ,it has maintained sordid slums1 flurried and discontented careers1 grinding poverty and luxurious wealth1 brutal exploitation of nature and man in times of peace and high explosives and noxious gases in times of war4 ,man1 a child in understanding of himself1 has placed in his hands physical tools of incalculable power4 ,he plays with them like a child1 and whether they work harm or good is largely a matter of accident4 ,the instrumentality becomes a master and works fatally as if possessed of a will of its own--not because it has a will but because man has not4 ,the glorification of 8pure0 science under such conditions is a rationalization of an escape2 it marks a construction of an asylum of refuge1 a shirking of responsibility4 ,the true purity of knowledge exists not when it is uncontaminated by contact with use and service4 ,it is wholly a moral matter1 an affair of honesty1 impartiality and generous breadth of intent in search and communication4 ,the adulteration of knowledge is due not to its use1 but to vested bias and prejudice1 to one-sidedness of outlook1 to vanity1 to conceit of possession and authority1 to contempt or disregard of human concern in its use4 ,humanity is not1 as was once thought1 the end for which all things were formed2 it is but a slight and feeble thing1 perhaps an episodic one1 in the vast stretch of the universe4 ,but for man1 man is the center of interest and the measure of importance4 ,the magnifying of the physical realm at the cost of man is but an abdication and a flight4 ,to make physical science a rival of human interests is bad enough1 for it forms a diversion of energy which can ill be afforded4 ,but the evil does not stop there4 ,the ultimate harm is that the understanding by man of his own affairs and his ability to direct them are sapped at their root when knowledge of nature is disconnected from its human function4 ,it has been implied throughout that knowledge is communication as well as understanding4 ,i well remember the saying of a man1 uneducated from the standpoint of the schools1 in speaking of certain matters3 8,sometime they will be found out and not only found out1 but they will be known40 ,the schools may suppose that a thing is known when it is found out4 ,my old friend was aware that a thing is fully known only when it is published1 shared1 socially accessible4 ,record and communication are indispensable to knowledge4 ,knowledge cooped up in a private consciousness is a myth1 and knowledge of social phenomena is peculiarly dependent upon dissemination1 for only by distribution can such knowledge be either obtained or tested4 ,a fact of community life which is not spread abroad so as to be a common possession is a contradiction in terms4 ,dissemination is something other than scattering at large4 ,seeds are sown1 not by virtue of being thrown out at random1 but by being so distributed as to take root and have a chance of growth4 ,communication of the results of social inquiry is the same thing as the formation of public opinion4 ,this marks one of the first ideas framed in the growth of political democracy as it will be one of the last to be fulfilled4 ,for public opinion is judgment which is formed and entertained by those who constitute the public and is about public affairs4 ,each of the two phases imposes for its realization conditions hard to meet4 ,opinions and beliefs concerning the public presuppose effective and organized inquiry4 ,unless there are methods for detecting the energies which are at work and tracing them through an intricate network of interactions to their consequences1 what passes as public opinion will be 8opinion0 in its derogatory sense rather than truly public1 no matter how widespread the opinion is4 ,the number who share error as to fact and who partake of a false belief measures power for harm4 ,opinion casually formed and formed under the direction of those who have something at stake in having a lie believed can be public opinion only in name4 ,calling it by this name1 acceptance of the name as a kind of warrant1 magnifies its capacity to lead action estray4 ,the more who share it1 the more injurious its influence4 ,public opinion1 even if it happens to be correct1 is intermittent when it is not the product of methods of investigation and reporting constantly at work4 ,it appears only in crises4 ,hence its 8rightness0 concerns only an immediate emergency4 ,its lack of continuity makes it wrong from the standpoint of the course of events4 ,it is as if a physician were able to deal for the moment with an emergency in disease but could not adapt his treatment of it to the underlying conditions which brought it about4 ,he may then 8cure0 the disease--that is1 cause its present alarming symptoms to subside--but he does not modify its causes2 his treatment may even affect them for the worse4 ,only continuous inquiry1 continuous in the sense of being connected as well as persistent1 can provide the material of enduring opinion about public matters4 ,there is a sense in which 8opinion0 rather than knowledge1 even under the most favorable circumstances1 is the proper term to use--namely1 in the sense of judgment1 estimate4 ,for in its strict sense1 knowledge can refer only to what has happened and been done4 ,what is still to be done involves a forecast of a future still contingent1 and cannot escape the liability to error in judgment involved in all anticipation of probabilities4 ,there may well be honest divergence as to policies to be pursued1 even when plans spring from knowledge of the same facts4 ,but genuinely public policy cannot be generated unless it be informed by knowledge1 and this knowledge does not exist except when there is systematic1 thorough1 and well-equipped search and record4 ,moreover1 inquiry must be as nearly contemporaneous as possible2 otherwise it is only of antiquarian interest4 ,knowledge of history is evidently necessary for connectedness of knowledge4 ,but history which is not brought down close to the actual scene of events leaves a gap and exercises influence upon the formation of judgments about the public interest only by guess-work about intervening events4 ,here1 only too conspicuously1 is a limitation of the existing social sciences4 ,their material comes too late1 too far after the event1 to enter effectively into the formation of public opinion about the immediate public concern and what is to be done about it4 ,a glance at the situation shows that the physical and external means of collecting information in regard to what is happening in the world have far outrun the intellectual phase of inquiry and organization of its results4 ,telegraph1 telephone1 and now the radio1 cheap and quick mails1 the printing press1 capable of swift reduplication of material at low cost1 have attained a remarkable development4 ,but when we ask what sort of material is recorded and how it is organized1 when we ask about the intellectual form in which the material is presented1 the tale to be told is very different4 8,news0 signifies something which has just happened1 and which is new just because it deviates from the old and regular4 ,but its meaning depends upon relation to what it imports1 to what its social consequences are4 ,this import cannot be determined unless the new is placed in relation to the old1 to what has happened and been integrated into the course of events4 ,without cordination and consecutiveness1 events are not events1 but mere occurrences1 intrusions2 an event implies that out of which a happening proceeds4 ,hence even if we discount the influence of private interests in procuring suppression1 secrecy and misrepresentation1 we have here an explanation of the triviality and 8sensational0 quality of so much of what passes as news4 ,the catastrophic1 namely1 crime1 accident1 family rows1 personal clashes and conflicts1 are the most obvious forms of breaches of continuity2 they supply the element of shock which is the strictest meaning of sensation2 they are the new par excellence1 even though only the date of the newspaper could inform us whether they happened last year or this1 so completely are they isolated from their connections4 ,so accustomed are we to this method of collecting1 recording and presenting social changes1 that it may well sound ridiculous to say that a genuine social science would manifest its reality in the daily press1 while learned books and articles supply and polish tools of inquiry4 ,but the inquiry which alone can furnish knowledge as a precondition of public judgments must be contemporary and quotidian4 ,even if social sciences as a specialized apparatus of inquiry were more advanced than they are1 they would be comparatively impotent in the office of directing opinion on matters of concern to the public as long as they are remote from application in the daily and unremitting assembly and interpretation of 8news40 ,on the other hand1 the tools of social inquiry will be clumsy as long as they are forged in places and under conditions remote from contemporary events4 ,what has been said about the formation of ideas and judgments concerning the public apply as well to the distribution of the knowledge which makes it an effective possession of the members of the public4 ,any separation between the two sides of the problem is artificial4 ,the discussion of propaganda and propagandism would alone1 however1 demand a volume1 and could be written only by one much more experienced than the present writer4 ,propaganda can accordingly only be mentioned1 with the remark that the present situation is one unprecedented in history4 ,the political forms of democracy and quasi-democratic habits of thought on social matters have compelled a certain amount of public discussion and at least the simulation of general consultation in arriving at political decisions4 ,representative government must at least seem to be founded on public interests as they are revealed to public belief4 ,the days are past when government can be carried on without any pretense of ascertaining the wishes of the governed4 ,in theory1 their assent must be secured4 ,under the older forms1 there was no need to muddy the sources of opinion on political matters4 ,no current of energy flowed from them4 ,to-day the judgments popularly formed on political matters are so important1 in spite of all factors to the contrary1 that there is an enormous premium upon all methods which affect their formation4 ,the smoothest road to control of political conduct is by control of opinion4 ,as long as interests of pecuniary profit are powerful1 and a public has not located and identified itself1 those who have this interest will have an unresisted motive for tampering with the springs of political action in all that affects them4 ,just as in the conduct of industry and exchange generally the technological factor is obscured1 deflected and defeated by 8business10 so specifically in the management of publicity4 ,the gathering and sale of subject-matter having a public import is part of the existing pecuniary system4 ,just as industry conducted by engineers on a factual technological basis would be a very different thing from what it actually is1 so the assembling and reporting of news would be a very different thing if the genuine interests of reporters were permitted to work freely4 ,one aspect of the matter concerns particularly the side of dissemination4 ,it is often said1 and with a great appearance of truth1 that the freeing and perfecting of inquiry would not have any especial effect4 ,for1 it is argued1 the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation4 ,unless these are read1 they cannot seriously affect the thought and action of members of the public2 they remain in secluded library alcoves1 and are studied and understood only by a few intellectuals4 ,the objection is well taken save as the potency of art is taken into account4 ,a technical high-brow presentation would appeal only to those technically high-brow2 it would not be news to the masses4 ,presentation is fundamentally important1 and presentation is a question of art4 ,a newspaper which was only a daily edition of a quarterly journal of sociology or political science would undoubtedly possess a limited circulation and a narrow influence4 ,even at that1 however1 the mere existence and accessibility of such material would have some regulative effect4 ,but we can look much further than that4 ,the material would have such an enormous and widespread human bearing that its bare existence would be an irresistible invitation to a presentation of it which would have a direct popular appeal4 ,the freeing of the artist in literary presentation1 in other words1 is as much a precondition of the desirable creation of adequate opinion on public matters as is the freeing of social inquiry4 ,men's conscious life of opinion and judgment often proceeds on a superficial and trivial plane4 ,but their lives reach a deeper level4 ,the function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness4 ,common things1 a flower1 a gleam of moonlight1 the song of a bird1 not things rare and remote1 are means with which the deeper levels of life are touched so that they spring up as desire and thought4 ,this process is art4 ,poetry1 the drama1 the novel1 are proofs that the problem of presentation is not insoluble4 ,artists have always been the real purveyors of news1 for it is not the outward happening in itself which is new1 but the kindling by it of emotion1 perception and appreciation4 ,we have but touched lightly and in passing upon the conditions which must be fulfilled if the ,great ,society is to become a ,great ,community2 a society in which the ever-expanding and intricately ramifying consequences of associated activities shall be known in the full sense of that word1 so that an organized1 articulate ,public comes into being4 ,the highest and most difficult kind of inquiry and a subtle1 delicate1 vivid and responsive art of communication must take possession of the physical machinery of transmission and circulation and breathe life into it4 ,when the machine age has thus perfected its machinery it will be a means of life and not its despotic master4 ,democracy will come into its own1 for democracy is a name for a life of free and enriching communion4 ,it had its seer in ,walt ,whitman4 ,it will have its consummation when free social inquiry is indissolubly wedded to the art of full and moving communication4 ,,chapter ,,vi ,,the ,,problem ,,of ,,method ,perhaps to most1 probably to many1 the conclusions which have been stated as to the conditions upon which depends the emergence of the ,public from its eclipse will seem close to denial of the possibility of realizing the idea of a democratic public4 ,one might indeed point for what it is worth to the enormous obstacles with which the rise of a science of physical things was confronted a few short centuries ago1 as evidence that hope need not be wholly desperate nor faith wholly blind4 ,but we are not concerned with prophecy but with analysis4 ,it is enough for present purposes if the problem has been clarified3--if we have seen that the outstanding problem of the ,public is discovery and identification of itself1 and if we have succeeded1 in however groping a manner1 in apprehending the conditions upon which the resolution of the problem depends4 ,we shall conclude with suggesting some implications and corollaries as to method1 not1 indeed1 as to the method of resolution1 but1 once more1 the intellectual antecedents of such a method4 ,the preliminary to fruitful discussion of social matters is that certain obstacles shall be overcome1 obstacles residing in our present conceptions of the method of social inquiry4 ,one of the obstructions in the path is the seemingly engrained notion that the first and the last problem which must be solved is the relation of the individual and the social3--or that the outstanding question is to determine the relative merits of individualism and collective or of some compromise between them4 ,in fact1 both words1 individual and social1 are hopelessly ambiguous1 and the ambiguity will never cease as long as we think in terms of an antithesis4 ,in its approximate sense1 anything is individual which moves and acts as a unitary thing4 ,for common sense1 a certain spatial separateness is the mark of this individuality4 ,a thing is one when it stands1 lies or moves as a unit independently of other things1 whether it be a stone1 tree1 molecule or drop of water1 or a human being4 ,but even vulgar common sense at once introduces certain qualifications4 ,the tree stands only when rooted in the soil2 it lives or dies in the mode of its connections with sunlight1 air and water4 ,then too the tree is a collection of interacting parts2 is the tree more a single whole than its cells8 ,a stone moves1 apparently alone4 ,but it is moved by something else and the course of its flight is dependent not only upon initial propulsion but upon wind and gravity4 ,a hammer falls1 and what was one stone becomes a heap of dusty particles4 ,a chemist operates with one of the grains of dust1 and forthwith it disappears in molecules1 atoms and electrons--and then8 ,have we now reached a lonely1 but not lonesome1 individual8 ,or does1 perhaps1 an electron depend for its single and unitary mode of action upon its connections1 as much as the stone with which we started8 ,is its action also a function of some more inclusive and interacting scene8 ,from another point of view1 we have to qualify our approximate notion of an individual as being that which acts and moves as a unitary thing4 ,we have to consider not only its connections and ties1 but the consequences with respect to which it acts and moves4 ,we are compelled to say that for some purposes1 for some results1 the tree is the individual1 for others the cell1 and for a third1 the forest or the landscape4 ,is a book or a leaf or a folio or a paragraph1 or a printer's em the individual8 ,is the binding or the contained thought that which gives individual unity to a book8 ,or are all of these things definers of an individual according to the consequences which are relevant in a particular situation8 ,unless we betake ourselves to the stock resort of common sense1 dismissing all questions as useless quibbles1 it seems as if we could not determine an individual without reference to differences made as well as to antecedent and contemporary connections4 ,if so1 an individual1 whatever else it is or is not1 is not just the spatially isolated thing our imagination inclines to take it to be4 ,such a discussion does not proceed upon a particularly high nor an especially deep level4 ,but it may at least render us wary of any definition of an individual which operates in terms of separateness4 ,a distinctive way of behaving in conjunction and connection with other distinctive ways of acting1 not a self-enclosed way of acting1 independent of everything else1 is that toward which we are pointed4 ,any human being is in one respect an association1 consisting of a multitude of cells each living its own life4 ,and as the activity of each cell is conditioned and directed by those with which it interacts1 so the human being whom we fasten upon as individual par excellence is moved and regulated by his associations with others2 what he does and what the consequences of his behavior are1 what his experience consists of1 cannot even be described1 much less accounted for1 in isolation4 ,but while associated behavior is1 as we have already noted1 a universal law1 the fact of association does not of itself make a society4 ,this demands1 as we have also seen1 perception of the consequences of a joint activity and of the distinctive share of each element in producing it4 ,such perception creates a common interest2 that is concern on the part of each in the joint action and in the contribution of each of its members to it4 ,then there exists something truly social and not merely associative4 ,but it is absurd to suppose that a society does away with the traits of its own constituents so that it can be set over against them4 ,it can only be set over against the traits which they and their like present in some other combination4 ,a molecule of oxygen in water may act in certain respects differently than it would in some other chemical union4 ,but as a constituent of water it acts as water does as long as water is water4 ,the only intelligible distinction which can be drawn is between the behaviors of oxygen in its different relations1 and between those of water in its relations to various conditions1 not between that of water and the oxygen which is conjoined with hydrogen in water4 ,a single man when he is joined in marriage is different in that connection to what he was as single or to what he is in some other union1 as a member1 say1 of a club4 ,he has new powers and immunities1 new responsibilities4 ,he can be contrasted with himself as he behaves in other connections4 ,he may be compared and contrasted with his wife in their distinctive rles within the union4 ,but as a member of the union he cannot be treated as antithetical to the union in which he belongs4 ,as a member of the union1 his traits and acts are evidently those which he possesses in virtue of it1 while those of the integrated association are what they are in virtue of his status in the union4 ,the only reason we fail to see this1 or are confused by the statement of it1 is because we pass so easily from the man in one connection to the man in some other connection1 to the man not as husband but as business man1 scientific investigator1 church-member or citizen1 in which connections his acts and their consequences are obviously different to those due to union in wedlock4 ,a good example of the fact and of the current confusion as to its interpretation is found in the case of associations known as limited liability joint-stock companies4 ,a corporation as such is an integrated collective mode of action having powers1 rights1 duties and immunities different from those of its singular members in their other connections4 ,its different constituents have also diverse statuses--for example1 the owners of stock from the officers and directors in certain matters4 ,if we do not bear the facts steadily in mind1 it is easy--as frequently happens--to create an artificial problem4 ,since the corporation can do things which its individual members1 in their many relationships outside of their connections in the corporation1 cannot do1 the problem is raised as to the relation of the corporate collective union to that of individuals as such4 ,it is forgotten that as members of the corporation the individuals themselves are different1 have different characteristics1 rights and duties1 than they would possess if they were not its members and different from those which they possess in other forms of conjoint behavior4 ,but what the individuals may do legitimately as members of the corporation in their respective corporate rles1 the corporation does1 and vice versa4 ,a collective unity may be taken either distributively or collectively1 but when taken collectively it is the union of its distributive constituents1 and when taken distributively1 it is a distribution of and within the collectivity4 ,it makes nonsense to set up an antithesis between the distributive phase and the collective4 ,an individual cannot be opposed to the association of which he is an integral part nor can the association be set against its integrated members4 ,but groups may be opposed to one another1 and individuals may be opposed to one another2 and an individual as a member of different groups may be divided within himself1 and in a true sense have conflicting selves1 or be a relatively disintegrated individual4 ,a man may be one thing as a church member and another thing as a member of the business community4 ,the difference may be carried as if in water-tight compartments1 or it may become such a division as to entail internal conflict4 ,in these facts we have the ground of the common antithesis set up between society and the individual4 ,then 8society0 becomes an unreal abstraction and 8the individual0 an equally unreal one4 ,because an individual can be disassociated from this1 that and the other grouping1 since he need not be married1 or be a church-member or a voter1 or belong to a club or scientific organization1 there grows up in the mind an image of a residual individual who is not a member of any association at all4 ,from this premise1 and from this only1 there develops the unreal question of how individuals come to be united in societies and groups3 the individual and the social are now opposed to each other1 and there is the problem of 8reconciling0 them4 ,meanwhile1 the genuine problem is that of adjusting groups and individuals to one another4 ,the unreal problem becomes particularly acute1 as we have already noted in another connection1 in times of rapid social change1 as when a newly forming industrial grouping with its special needs and energies finds itself in conflict with old established political institutions and their demands4 ,then it is likely to be forgotten that the actual problem is one of reconstruction of the ways and forms in which men unite in associated activity4 ,the scene presents itself as the struggle of the individual as such to liberate himself from society as such and to claim his inherent or 8natural0 self-possessed and self-sufficing rights4 ,when the new mode of economic association has grown strong and exercises an overweening and oppressive power over other groupings1 the old fallacy persists4 ,the problem is now conceived as that of bringing individuals as such under the control of society as a collectivity4 ,it should still be put as a problem of readjusting social relationships2 or1 from the distributive side1 as that of securing a more equable liberation of the powers of all individual members of all groupings4 ,thus our excursion has brought us back to the theme of method1 in the interest of which the excursion was taken4 ,one reason for the comparative sterility of discussion of social matters is because so much intellectual energy has gone into the supposititious problem of the relations of individualism and collectivism at large1 wholesale1 and because the image of the antithesis infects so many specific questions4 ,thereby thought is diverted from the only fruitful questions1 those of investigation into factual subject-matter1 and becomes a discussion of concepts4 ,the 8problem0 of the relation of the concept of authority to that of freedom1 of personal rights to social obligations1 with only a subsumptive illustrative reference to empirical facts1 has been substituted for inquiry into the consequences of some particular distribution1 under given conditions1 of specific freedoms and authorities1 and for inquiry into what altered distribution would yield more desirable consequences4 ,as we saw in our early consideration of the theme of the public1 the question of what transactions should be left as far as possible to voluntary initiative and agreement and what should come under the regulation of the public is a question of time1 place and concrete conditions that can be known only by careful observation and reflective investigation4 ,for it concerns consequences2 and the nature of consequences and the ability to perceive and act upon them varies with the industrial and intellectual agencies which operate4 ,a solution1 or distributive adjustment1 needed at one time is totally unfitted to another situation4 ,that social 8evolution0 has been either from collectivism to individualism or the reverse is sheer superstition4 ,it has consisted in a continuous re-distribution of social integrations on the one hand and of capacities and energies of individuals on the other4 ,individuals find themselves cramped and depressed by absorption of their potentialities in some mode of association which has been institutionalized and become dominant4 ,they may think they are clamoring for a purely personal liberty1 but what they are doing is to bring into being a greater liberty to share in other associations1 so that more of their individual potentialities will be released and their personal experience enriched4 ,life has been impoverished1 not by a predominance of 8society0 in general over individuality1 but by a domination of one form of association1 the family1 clan1 church1 economic institutions1 over other actual and possible forms4 ,on the other hand1 the problem of exercising 8social control0 over individuals is in its reality that of regulating the doings and results of some individuals in order that a larger number of individuals may have a fuller and deeper experience4 ,since both ends can be intelligently attained only by knowledge of actual conditions in their modes of operation and their consequences1 it may be confidently asserted that the chief enemy of a social thinking which would count in public affairs is the sterile and impotent1 because totally irrelevant1 channels in which so much intellectual energy has been expended4 ,the second point with respect to method is closely related4 ,political theories have shared in the absolutistic character of philosophy generally4 ,by this is meant something much more than philosophies of the ,absolute4 ,even professedly empirical philosophies have assumed a certain finality and foreverness in their theories which may be expressed by saying that they have been non-historical in character4 ,they have isolated their subject-matter from its connections1 and any isolated subject-matter becomes unqualified in the degree of its disconnection4 ,in social theory dealing with human nature1 a certain fixed and standardized 8individual0 has been postulated1 from whose assumed traits social phenomena could be deduced4 ,thus ,mill says in his discussion of the logic of the moral and social sciences3 8,the laws of the phenomena of society are1 and can be1 nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings united together in the social state4 ,men1 however1 in a state of society are still men2 their actions and passions are obedient to the laws of individual human nature40#ac ,obviously what is ignored in such a statement is that 8the actions and passions0 of individual men are in the concrete what they are1 their beliefs and purposes included1 because of the social medium in which they live2 that they are influenced throughout by contemporary and transmitted culture1 whether in conformity or protest4 ,what is generic and the same everywhere is at best the organic structure of man1 his biological make-up4 ,while it is evidently important to take this into account1 it is also evident that none of the distinctive features of human association can be deduced from it4 ,thus1 in spite of ,mill's horror of the metaphysical absolute1 his leading social conceptions were1 logically1 absolutistic4 ,certain social laws1 normative and regulative1 at all periods and under all circumstances of proper social life were assumed to exist4 ,the doctrine of evolution modified this idea of method only superficially4 ,for 8evolution0 was itself often understood non-historically4 ,that is1 it was assumed that there is a predestined course of fixed stages through which social development must proceed4 ,under the influence of concepts borrowed from the physical science of the time1 it was taken for granted that the very possibility of a social science stood or fell with the determination of fixed uniformities4 ,now every such logic is fatal to free experimental social inquiry4 ,investigation into empirical facts was undertaken1 of course1 but its results had to fit into certain ready-made and second-hand rubrics4 ,when even physical facts and laws are perceived and used1 social change takes place4 ,the phenomena and laws are not altered1 but invention based upon them modifies the human situation4 ,for there is at once an effort to regulate their impact in life4 ,the discovery of malaria does not alter its existential causation1 intellectually viewed1 but it does finally alter the facts from which the production of malaria arises1 through draining and oiling swamps1 etc41 and by taking other measures of precaution4 ,if the laws of economic cycles of expansion and depression were understood1 means would at once be searched for to mitigate if not to do away with the swing4 ,when men have an idea of how social agencies work and their consequences are wrought1 they at once strive to secure consequences as far as desirable and to avert them if undesirable4 ,these are facts of the most ordinary observation4 ,but it is not often noted how fatal they are to the identification of social with physical uniformities4 8,laws0 of social life1 when it is genuinely human1 are like laws of engineering4 ,if you want certain results1 certain means must be found and employed4 ,the key to the situation is a clear conception of consequences wanted1 and of the technique for reaching them1 together with1 of course1 the state of desires and aversions which causes some consequences to be wanted rather than others4 ,all of these things are functions of the prevalent culture of the period4 ,while the backwardness of social knowledge and art is of course connected with retarded knowledge of human nature1 or psychology1 it is also absurd to suppose that an adequate psychological science would flower in a control of human activities similar to the control which physical science has procured of physical energies4 ,for increased knowledge of human nature would directly and in unpredictable ways modify the workings of human nature1 and lead to the need of new methods of regulation1 and so on without end4 ,it is a matter of analysis rather than of prophecy to say that the primary and chief effect of a better psychology would be found in education4 ,the growth and diseases of grains and hogs are now recognized as proper subjects of governmental subsidy and attention4 ,instrumental agencies for a similar investigation of the conditions which make for the physical and moral hygiene of the young are in a state of infancy4 ,we spend large sums of money for school buildings and their physical equipment4 ,but systematic expenditure of public funds for scientific inquiry into the conditions which affect the mental and moral development of children is just beginning1 and demands for a large increase in this direction are looked upon askance4 ,again1 it is reported that there are more beds in hospitals and asylums for cases of mental disturbance and retardation than for all diseases combined4 ,the public pays generously to take care of the results of bad conditions4 ,but there is no comparable attention and willingness to expend funds to investigate the causes of these troubles4 ,the reason for these anomalies is evident enough4 ,there is no conviction that the sciences of human nature are far enough advanced to make public support of such activities worth while4 ,a marked development of psychology and kindred subjects would change this situation4 ,and we have been speaking only of antecedent conditions of education4 ,to complete the picture we have to realize the difference which would be made in the methods of parents and teachers were there an adequate and generally shared knowledge of human nature4 ,but such an educational development1 though intrinsically precious to the last degree1 would not entail a control of human energies comparable to that which already obtains of physical energies4 ,to imagine that it would is simply to reduce human beings to the plane of inanimate things mechanically manipulated from without2 it makes human education something like the training of fleas1 dogs and horses4 ,what stands in the way is not anything called 8free-will10 but the fact that such a change in educational methods would release new potentialities1 capable of all kinds of permutations and combinations1 which would then modify social phenomena1 while this modification would in its turn affect human nature and its educative transformation in a continuous and endless procession4 ,the assimilation of human science to physical science represents1 in other words1 only another form of absolutistic logic1 a kind of physical absolutism4 ,we are doubtless but at the beginning of the possibilities of control of the physical conditions of mental and moral life4 ,physiological chemistry1 increased knowledge of the nervous system1 of the processes and functions of glandular secretions1 may in time enable us to deal with phenomena of emotional and intellectual disturbance before which mankind has been helpless4 ,but control of these conditions will not determine the uses to which human beings will put their normalized potentialities4 ,if any one supposes that it will1 let him consider the applications of such remedial or preventive measures to a man in a state of savage culture and one in a modern community4 ,each1 as long as the conditions of the social medium remained substantially unaltered1 will still have his experience and the direction of his restored energies affected by the objects and instrumentalities of the human environment1 and by what men at the time currently prize and hold dear4 ,the warrior and merchant would be better warriors and merchants1 more efficient1 but warriors and merchants still4 ,these considerations suggest a brief discussion of the effect of the present absolutistic logic upon the method and aims of education1 not just in the sense of schooling but with respect to all the ways in which communities attempt to shape the disposition and beliefs of their members4 ,even when the processes of education do not aim at the unchanged perpetuation of existing institutions1 it is assumed that there must be a mental picture of some desired end1 personal and social1 which is to be attained1 and that this conception of a fixed determinate end ought to control educative processes4 ,reformers share this conviction with conservatives4 ,the disciples of ,lenin and ,mussolini vie with the captains of capitalistic society in endeavoring to bring about a formation of dispositions and ideas which will conduce to a preconceived goal4 ,if there is a difference1 it is that the former proceed more consciously4 ,an experimental social method would probably manifest itself first of all in surrender of this notion4 ,every care would be taken to surround the young with the physical and social conditions which best conduce1 as far as freed knowledge extends1 to release of personal potentialities4 ,the habits thus formed would have entrusted to them the meeting of future social requirements and the development of the future state of society4 ,then and then only would all social agencies that are available operate as resources in behalf of a bettered community life4 ,what we have termed the absolutistic logic ends1 as far as method in social matters is concerned1 in a substitution of discussion of concepts and their logical relations to one another for inquiry4 ,whatever form it assumes1 it results in strengthening the reign of dogma4 ,their contents may vary1 but dogma persists4 ,at the outset we noted in discussion of the state the influence of methods which look for causal forces4 ,long ago1 physical science abandoned this method and took up that of detection of correlation of events4 ,our language and our thinking is still saturated with the idea of laws which phenomena 8obey40 ,but in his actual procedures1 the scientific inquirer into physical events treats a law simply as a stable correlation of changes in what happens1 a statement of the way in which one phenomenon1 or some aspect or phase of it1 varies when some other specified phenomenon varies4 8,causation0 is an affair of historical sequence1 of the order in which a series of changes takes place4 ,to know cause and effect is to know1 in the abstract1 the formula of correlation in change1 and1 in the concrete1 a certain historical career of sequential events4 ,the appeal to causal forces at large not only misleads inquiry into social facts1 but it affects equally seriously the formation of purposes and policies4 ,the person who holds the doctrine of 8individualism0 or 8collectivism0 has his program determined for him in advance4 ,it is not with him a matter of finding out the particular thing which needs to be done and the best way1 under the circumstances1 of doing it4 ,it is an affair of applying a hard and fast doctrine which follows logically from his preconception of the nature of ultimate causes4 ,he is exempt from the responsibility of discovering the concrete correlation of changes1 from the need of tracing particular sequences or histories of events through their complicated careers4 ,he knows in advance the sort of thing which must be done1 just as in ancient physical philosophy the thinker knew in advance what must happen1 so that all he had to do was to supply a logical framework of definitions and classifications4 ,when we say that thinking and beliefs should be experimental1 not absolutistic1 we have then in mind a certain logic of method1 not1 primarily1 the carrying on of experimentation like that of laboratories4 ,such a logic involves the following factors3 ,first1 that those concepts1 general principles1 theories and dialectical developments which are indispensable to any systematic knowledge be shaped and tested as tools of inquiry4 ,secondly1 that policies and proposals for social action be treated as working hypotheses1 not as programs to be rigidly adhered to and executed4 ,they will be experimental in the sense that they will be entertained subject to constant and well-equipped observation of the consequences they entail when acted upon1 and subject to ready and flexible revision in the light of observed consequences4 ,the social sciences1 if these two stipulations are fulfilled1 will then be an apparatus for conducting investigation1 and for recording and interpreting 7organizing7 its results4 ,the apparatus will no longer be taken to be itself knowledge1 but will be seen to be intellectual means of making discoveries of phenomena having social import and understanding their meaning4 ,differences of opinion in the sense of differences of judgment as to the course which it is best to follow1 the policy which it is best to try out1 will still exist4 ,but opinion in the sense of beliefs formed and held in the absence of evidence will be reduced in quantity and importance4 ,no longer will views generated in view of special situations be frozen into absolute standards and masquerade as eternal truths4 ,this phase of the discussion may be concluded by consideration of the relation of experts to a democratic public4 ,a negative phase of the earlier argument for political democracy has largely lost its force4 ,for it was based upon hostility to dynastic and oligarchic aristocracies1 and these have largely been bereft of power4 ,the oligarchy which now dominates is that of an economic class4 ,it claims to rule1 not in virtue of birth and hereditary status1 but in virtue of ability in management and of the burden of social responsibilities which it carries1 in virtue of the position which superior abilities have conferred upon it4 ,at all events1 it is a shifting1 unstable oligarchy1 rapidly changing its constituents1 who are more or less at the mercy of accidents they cannot control and of technological inventions4 ,consequently1 the shoe is now on the other foot4 ,it is argued that the check upon the oppressive power of this particular oligarchy lies in an intellectual aristocracy1 not in appeal to an ignorant1 fickle mass whose interests are superficial and trivial1 and whose judgments are saved from incredible levity only when weighted down by heavy prejudice4 ,it may be argued that the democratic movement was essentially transitional4 ,it marked the passage from feudal institutions to industrialism1 and was coincident with the transfer of power from landed proprietors1 allied to churchly authorities1 to captains of industry1 under conditions which involved an emancipation of the masses from legal limitations which had previously hemmed them in4 ,but1 so it is contended in effect1 it is absurd to convert this legal liberation into a dogma which alleges that release from old oppressions confers upon those emancipated the intellectual and moral qualities which fit them for sharing in regulation of affairs of state4 ,the essential fallacy of the democratic creed1 it is urged1 is the notion that a historic movement which effected an important and desirable release from restrictions is either a source or a proof of capacity in those thus emancipated to rule1 when in fact there is no factor common in the two things4 ,the obvious alternative is rule by those intellectually qualified1 by expert intellectuals4 ,this revival of the ,platonic notion that philosophers should be kings is the more taking because the idea of experts is substituted for that of philosophers1 since philosophy has become something of a joke1 while the image of the specialist1 the expert in operation1 is rendered familiar and congenial by the rise of the physical sciences and by the conduct of industry4 ,a cynic might indeed say that the notion is a pipe-dream1 a revery entertained by the intellectual class in compensation for an impotence consequent upon the divorce of theory and practice1 upon the remoteness of specialized science from the affairs of life3 the gulf being bridged not by the intellectuals but by inventors and engineers hired by captains of industry4 ,one approaches the truth more nearly when one says that the argument proves too much for its own cause4 ,if the masses are as intellectually irredeemable as its premise implies1 they at all events have both too many desires and too much power to permit rule by experts to obtain4 ,the very ignorance1 bias1 frivolity1 jealousy1 instability1 which are alleged to incapacitate them from share in political affairs1 unfit them still more for passive submission to rule by intellectuals4 ,rule by an economic class may be disguised from the masses2 rule by experts could not be covered up4 ,it could be made to work only if the intellectuals became the willing tools of big economic interests4 ,otherwise they would have to ally themselves with the masses1 and that implies1 once more1 a share in government by the latter4 ,a more serious objection is that expertness is most readily attained in specialized technical matters1 matters of administration and execution which postulate that general policies are already satisfactorily framed4 ,it is assumed that the policies of the experts are in the main both wise and benevolent1 that is1 framed to conserve the genuine interests of society4 ,the final obstacle in the way of any aristocratic rule is that in the absence of an articulate voice on the part of the masses1 the best do not and cannot remain the best1 the wise cease to be wise4 ,it is impossible for high-brows to secure a monopoly of such knowledge as must be used for the regulation of common affairs4 ,in the degree in which they become a specialized class1 they are shut off from knowledge of the needs which they are supposed to serve4 ,the strongest point to be made in behalf of even such rudimentary political forms as democracy has already attained1 popular voting1 majority rule and so on1 is that to some extent they involve a consultation and discussion which uncover social needs and troubles4 ,this fact is the great asset on the side of the political ledger4 ,de ,tocqueville wrote it down almost a century ago in his survey of the prospects of democracy in the ,united ,states4 ,accusing a democracy of a tendency to prefer mediocrity in its elected rulers1 and admitting its exposure to gusts of passion and its openness to folly1 he pointed out in effect that popular government is educative as other modes of political regulation are not4 ,it forces a recognition that there are common interests1 even though the recognition of what they are is confused2 and the need it enforces of discussion and publicity brings about some clarification of what they are4 ,the man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches1 even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied4 ,popular government has at least created public spirit even if its success in informing that spirit has not been great4 ,a class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to become a class with private interests and private knowledge1 which in social matters is not knowledge at all4 ,the ballot is1 as often said1 a substitute for bullets4 ,but what is more significant is that counting of heads compels prior recourse to methods of discussion1 consultation and persuasion1 while the essence of appeal to force is to cut short resort to such methods4 ,majority rule1 just as majority rule1 is as foolish as its critics charge it with being4 ,but it never is merely majority rule4 ,as a practical politician1 ,samuel ,j4 ,tilden1 said a long time ago3 8,the means by which a majority comes to be a majority is the more important thing03 antecedent debates1 modification of views to meet the opinions of minorities1 the relative satisfaction given the latter by the fact that it has had a chance and that next time it may be successful in becoming a majority4 ,think of the meaning of the 8problem of minorities0 in certain ,european states1 and compare it with the status of minorities in countries having popular government4 ,it is true that all valuable as well as new ideas begin with minorities1 perhaps a minority of one4 ,the important consideration is that opportunity be given that idea to spread and to become the possession of the multitude4 ,no government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interests of the few4 ,and the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs4 ,the world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses4 ,the essential need1 in other words1 is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate1 discussion and persuasion4 ,that is the problem of the public4 ,we have asserted that this improvement depends essentially upon freeing and perfecting the processes of inquiry and of dissemination of their conclusions4 ,inquiry1 indeed1 is a work which devolves upon experts4 ,but their expertness is not shown in framing and executing policies1 but in discovering and making known the facts upon which the former depend4 ,they are technical experts in the sense that scientific investigators and artists manifest expertise4 ,it is not necessary that the many should have the knowledge and skill to carry on the needed investigations2 what is required is that they have the ability to judge of the bearing of the knowledge supplied by others upon common concerns4 ,it is easy to exaggerate the amount of intelligence and ability demanded to render such judgments fitted for their purpose4 ,in the first place1 we are likely to form our estimate on the basis of present conditions4 ,but indubitably one great trouble at present is that the data for good judgment are lacking2 and no innate faculty of mind can make up for the absence of facts4 ,until secrecy1 prejudice1 bias1 misrepresentation1 and propaganda as well as sheer ignorance are replaced by inquiry and publicity1 we have no way of telling how apt for judgment of social policies the existing intelligence of the masses may be4 ,it would certainly go much further than at present4 ,in the second place1 effective intelligence is not an original1 innate endowment4 ,no matter what are the differences in native intelligence 7allowing for the moment that intelligence can be native71 the actuality of mind is dependent upon the education which social conditions effect4 ,just as the specialized mind and knowledge of the past is embodied in implements1 utensils1 devices and technologies which those of a grade of intelligence which could not produce them can now intelligently use1 so it will be when currents of public knowledge blow through social affairs4 ,the level of action fixed by embodied intelligence is always the important thing4 ,in savage culture a superior man will be superior to his fellows1 but his knowledge and judgment will lag in many matters far behind that of an inferiorly endowed person in an advanced civilization4 ,capacities are limited by the objects and tools at hand4 ,they are still more dependent upon the prevailing habits of attention and interest which are set by tradition and institutional customs4 ,meanings run in the channels formed by instrumentalities of which1 in the end1 language1 the vehicle of thought as well as of communication1 is the most important4 ,a mechanic can discourse of ohms and amperes as ,sir ,isaac ,newton could not in his day4 ,many a man who has tinkered with radios can judge of things which ,faraday did not dream of4 ,it is aside from the point to say that if ,newton and ,faraday were now here1 the amateur and mechanic would be infants beside them4 ,the retort only brings out the point3 the difference made by different objects to think of and by different meanings in circulation4 ,a more intelligent state of social affairs1 one more informed with knowledge1 more directed by intelligence1 would not improve original endowments one whit1 but it would raise the level upon which the intelligence of all operates4 ,the height of this level is much more important for judgment of public concerns than are differences in intelligence quotients4 ,as ,santayana has said3 8,could a better system prevail in our lives a better order would establish itself in our thinking4 ,it has not been for want of keen senses1 or personal genius1 or a constant order in the outer world1 that mankind has fallen back repeatedly into barbarism and superstition4 ,it has been for want of good character1 good example1 and good government40 ,the notion that intelligence is a personal endowment or personal attainment is the great conceit of the intellectual class1 as that of the commercial class is that wealth is something which they personally have wrought and possess4 ,a point which concerns us in conclusion passes beyond the field of intellectual method1 and trenches upon the question of practical re-formation of social conditions4 ,in its deepest and richest sense a community must always remain a matter of face-to-face intercourse4 ,this is why the family and neighborhood1 with all their deficiencies1 have always been the chief agencies of nurture1 the means by which dispositions are stably formed and ideas acquired which laid hold on the roots of character4 ,the ,great ,community1 in the sense of free and full intercommunication1 is conceivable4 ,but it can never possess all the qualities which mark a local community4 ,it will do its final work in ordering the relations and enriching the experience of local associations4 ,the invasion and partial destruction of the life of the latter by outside uncontrolled agencies is the immediate source of the instability1 disintegration and restlessness which characterize the present epoch4 ,evils which are uncritically and indiscriminately laid at the door of industrialism and democracy might1 with greater intelligence1 be referred to the dislocation and unsettlement of local communities4 ,vital and thorough attachments are bred only in the intimacy of an intercourse which is of necessity restricted in range4 ,is it possible for local communities to be stable without being static1 progressive without being merely mobile8 ,can the vast1 innumerable and intricate currents of trans-local associations be so banked and conducted that they will pour the generous and abundant meanings of which they are potential bearers into the smaller intimate unions of human beings living in immediate contact with one another8 ,is it possible to restore the reality of the lesser communal organizations and to penetrate and saturate their members with a sense of local community life8 ,there is at present1 at least in theory1 a movement away from the principle of territorial organization to that of 8functional10 that is to say1 occupational1 organization4 ,it is true enough that older forms of territorial association do not satisfy present needs4 ,it is true that ties formed by sharing in common work1 whether in what is called industry or what are called professions1 have now a force which formerly they did not possess4 ,but these ties can be counted upon for an enduring and stable organization1 which at the same time is flexible and moving1 only as they grow out of immediate intercourse and attachment4 ,the theory1 as far as it relies upon associations which are remote and indirect1 would if carried into effect soon be confronted by all the troubles and evils of the present situation in a transposed form4 ,there is no substitute for the vitality and depth of close and direct intercourse and attachment4 ,it is said1 and said truly1 that for the world's peace it is necessary that we understand the peoples of foreign lands4 ,how well do we understand1 ,i wonder1 our next door neighbors8 ,it has also been said that if a man love not his fellow man whom he has seen1 he cannot love the ,god whom he has not seen4 ,the chances of regard for distant peoples being effective as long as there is no close neighborhood experience to bring with it insight and understanding of neighbors do not seem better4 ,a man who has not been seen in the daily relations of life may inspire admiration1 emulation1 servile subjection1 fanatical partisanship1 hero worship2 but not love and understanding1 save as they radiate from the attachments of a near-by union4 ,democracy must begin at home1 and its home is the neighborly community4 ,it is outside the scope of our discussion to look into the prospects of the reconstruction of face-to-face communities4 ,but there is something deep within human nature itself which pulls toward settled relationships4 ,inertia and the tendency toward stability belong to emotions and desires as well as to masses and molecules4 ,that happiness which is full of content and peace is found only in enduring ties with others1 which reach to such depths that they go below the surface of conscious experience to form its undisturbed foundation4 ,no one knows how much of the frothy excitement of life1 of mania for motion1 of fretful discontent1 of need for artificial stimulation1 is the expression of frantic search for something to fill the void caused by the loosening of the bonds which hold persons together in immediate community of experience4 ,if there is anything in human psychology to be counted upon1 it may be urged that when man is satiated with restless seeking for the remote which yields no enduring satisfaction1 the human spirit will return to seek calm and order within itself4 ,this1 we repeat1 can be found only in the vital1 steady1 and deep relationships which are present only in an immediate community4 ,the psychological tendency can1 however1 manifest itself only when it is in harmonious conjunction with the objective course of events4 ,analysis finds itself in troubled waters if it attempts to discover whether the tide of events is turning away from dispersion of energies and acceleration of motion4 ,physically and externally1 conditions have made1 of course1 for concentration2 the development of urban1 at the expense of rural1 populations2 the corporate organization of aggregated wealth1 the growth of all sorts of organizations1 are evidence enough4 ,but enormous organization is compatible with demolition of the ties that form local communities and with substitution of impersonal bonds for personal unions1 with a flux which is hostile to stability4 ,the character of our cities1 of organized business and the nature of the comprehensive associations in which individuality is lost1 testify also to this fact4 ,yet there are contrary signs4 8,community0 and community activities are becoming words to conjure with4 ,the local is the ultimate universal1 and as near an absolute as exists4 ,it is easy to point to many signs which indicate that unconscious agencies as well as deliberate planning are making for such an enrichment of the experience of local communities as will conduce to render them genuine centers of the attention1 interest and devotion for their constituent members4 ,the unanswered question is how far these tendencies will restablish the void left by the disintegration of the family1 church and neighborhood4 ,we cannot predict the outcome4 ,but we can assert with confidence that there is nothing intrinsic in the forces which have effected uniform standardization1 mobility and remote invisible relationships that is fatally obstructive to the return movement of their consequences into the local homes of mankind4 ,uniformity and standardization may provide an underlying basis for differentiation and liberation of individual potentialities4 ,they may sink to the plane of unconscious habituations1 taken for granted in the mechanical phases of life1 and deposit a soil from which personal susceptibilities and endowments may richly and stably flower4 ,mobility may in the end supply the means by which the spoils of remote and indirect interaction and interdependence flow back into local life1 keeping it flexible1 preventing the stagnancy which has attended stability in the past1 and furnishing it with the elements of a variegated and many-hued experience4 ,organization may cease to be taken as an end in itself4 ,then it will no longer be mechanical and external1 hampering the free play of artistic gifts1 fettering men and women with chains of conformity1 conducing to abdication of all which does not fit into the automatic movement of organization as a self-sufficing thing4 ,organization as a means to an end would renforce individuality and enable it to be securely itself by enduing it with resources beyond its unaided reach4 ,whatever the future may have in store1 one thing is certain4 ,unless local communal life can be restored1 the public cannot adequately resolve its most urgent problem3 to find and identify itself4 ,but if it be re-established1 it will manifest a fullness1 variety and freedom of possession and enjoyment of meanings and goods unknown in the contiguous associations of the past4 ,for it will be alive and flexible as well as stable1 responsive to the complex and world-wide scene in which it is enmeshed4 ,while local1 it will not be isolated4 ,its larger relationships will provide an exhaustible and flowing fund of meanings upon which to draw1 with assurance that its drafts will be honored4 ,territorial states and political boundaries will persist2 but they will not be barriers which impoverish experience by cutting man off from his fellows2 they will not be hard and fast divisions whereby external separation is converted into inner jealousy1 fear1 suspicion and hostility4 ,competition will continue1 but it will be less rivalry for acquisition of material goods1 and more an emulation of local groups to enrich direct experience with appreciatively enjoyed intellectual and artistic wealth4 ,if the technological age can provide mankind with a firm and general basis of material security1 it will be absorbed in a humane age4 ,it will take its place as an instrumentality of shared and communicated experience4 ,but without passage through a machine age1 mankind's hold upon what is needful as the precondition of a free1 flexible and many-colored life is so precarious and inequitable that competitive scramble for acquisition and frenzied use of the results of acquisition for purposes of excitation and display will be perpetuated4 ,we have said that consideration of this particular condition of the generation of democratic communities and an articulate democratic public carries us beyond the question of intellectual method into that of practical procedure4 ,but the two questions are not disconnected4 ,the problem of securing diffused and seminal intelligence can be solved only in the degree in which local communal life becomes a reality4 ,signs and symbols1 language1 are the means of communication by which a fraternally shared experience is ushered in and sustained4 ,but the wingd words of conversation in immediate intercourse have a vital import lacking in the fixed and frozen words of written speech4 ,systematic and continuous inquiry into all the conditions which affect association and their dissemination in print is a precondition of the creation of a true public4 ,but it and its results are but tools after all4 ,their final actuality is accomplished in face-to-face relationships by means of direct give and take4 ,logic in its fulfillment recurs to the primitive sense of the word3 dialogue4 ,ideas which are not communicated1 shared1 and reborn in expression are but soliloquy1 and soliloquy is but broken and imperfect thought4 ,it1 like the acquisition of material wealth1 marks a diversion of the wealth created by associated endeavor and exchange to private ends4 ,it is more genteel1 and it is called more noble4 ,but there is no difference in kind4 ,in a word1 that expansion and renforcement of personal understanding and judgment by the cumulative and transmitted intellectual wealth of the community which may render nugatory the indictment of democracy drawn on the basis of the ignorance1 bias and levity of the masses1 can be fulfilled only in the relations of personal intercourse in the local community4 ,the connections of the ear with vital and out-going thought and emotion are immensely closer and more varied than those of the eye4 ,vision is a spectator2 hearing is a participator4 ,publication is partial and the public which results is partially informed and formed until the meanings it purveys pass from mouth to mouth4 ,there is no limit to the liberal expansion and confirmation of limited personal intellectual endowment which may proceed from the flow of social intelligence when that circulates by word of mouth from one to another in the communications of the local community4 ,that and that only gives reality to public opinion4 ,we lie1 as ,emerson said1 in the lap of an immense intelligence4 ,but that intelligence is dormant and its communications are broken1 inarticulate and faint until it possesses the local community as its medium4 ,,footnotes #a ,w4 ,h4 ,hudson1 8,a ,traveller in ,little ,things10 pp4 #aaj-aab4 #b ,judges make rules of law4 ,on the 8will0 theory this is an encroachment on the legislative function4 ,not so1 if the judges further define conditions of action4 #c 8,a ,treatise on ,human ,nature10 ,part ,,ii1 sec4 vii4 #d ,hocking1 8,man and the ,state10 p4 #ea4 #e ,ayers1 8,science3 ,the ,false ,messiah10 ,chapter ,,iv1 ,the ,lure of ,machinery4 #f ,the one obvious exception concerns the tools of waging war4 ,with respect to them1 the state has often shown itself as greedy as it has been reluctant and behindhand with reference to other inventions4 #g ,this is a convenient place for making explicit a qualification which has to be understood throughout but which is slighted in the text4 ,the words 8government0 and 8officers0 are taken functionally1 not in terms of some particular structure which is so familiar to us that it leaps to the eyes when these words are used4 ,both words in their functional meaning are much wider in application than what is meant when we speak1 say1 of the government and officers of ,great ,britain or the ,united ,states4 ,in households1 for example1 there have usually been rule and 8heads02 the parents1 for most purposes the father1 have been officers of the family interest4 ,the 8patriarchal family0 presents an emphatic intensification1 on account of comparative isolation of the household from other social forms1 of what exists in lesser degree in almost all families4 ,the same sort of remark applies to the use of the term 8states10 in connection with publics4 ,the text is concerned with modern conditions1 but the hypothesis propounded is meant to hold good generally4 ,so to the patent objection that the state is a very modern institution1 it is replied that while modernity is a property of those structures which go by the name of states1 yet all history1 or almost all1 records the exercise of analogous functions4 ,the argument concerns these functions and the mode of their operation1 no matter what word be used1 though for the sake of brevity the word 8state10 like the words 8government0 and 8officer10 has been freely employed4 #h ,this last position promptly called forth a protest from the head of the utilitarian school1 ,jeremy ,bentham4 #i ,c4 ,h4 ,cooley1 8,social ,organization10 ,ch4 iii1 on 8,primary ,groups40 #aj ,see ,walter ,lippmann's 8,the ,phantom ,public40 ,to this as well as to his 8,public ,opinion10 ,i wish to acknowledge my indebtedness1 not only as to this particular point1 but for ideas involved in my entire discussion even when it reaches conclusions diverging from his4 #aa ,the most adequate discussion of this ideal with which ,i am acquainted is ,t4 ,v4 ,smith's 8,the ,democratic ,way of ,life40 #ab ,the religious character of nationalism has been forcibly brought out by ,carleton ,hayes1 in his 8,essays on ,nationalism10 especially ,chap4 ,,iv4 #ac ,j4 ,s4 ,mill1 ,logic1 ,book ,,vi1 ch4 #g1 sec4 ,i4 ,italics mine4 ,,index ,absolutism1 in method1 #aid-bjb ,amusements1 rivals to political interest1 #aci ,anarchism1 #bf ,aristotle1 #d1 #h1 #ach ,art1 of communication1 #ahb-hd ,association1 a universal fact1 #bb-bc1 #cd1 #aea1 #aha2 distinctive traits of human1 #bd2 revolt against1 #hh1 #ih-ajj2 economic1 #aje-jg2 and democracy1 #adc2 rigid and flexible1 #adh2 distinguished from community1 #aea-ec2 domination of isolated1 #aid2 territorial and functional1 #bab-ac4 ,see ,community1 ,groups1 ,society ,attachment1 a political need1 #adj1 #bad ,ayers1 ,c4 ,e41 #ei n4 ,bentham1 ,j41 #ed n4 ,biological1 and social1 #aa-ab1 #aeb1 #aie ,business1 rival to political interest1 #ach2 political control by1 #ahb4 ,see ,economic ,forces ,carlyle1 ,t41 #ajb1 #aaj ,causal forces1 and state1 #i1 #ag-ba1 #be1 #cf1 #cg1 #dg1 #ec1 #fe1 #ff2 versus the causal order1 #bja-jb ,child ,labor ,amendment1 #aba ,common ,interest1 nature of1 #ag1 #cd-ce4 ,see ,consequences1 ,public ,communication1 a public function1 #fj1 #bjh2 social necessity of1 #aeb1 #bag-ai2 necessary to knowledge1 #agf-gi2 an art1 #ahb-hd4 ,see ,symbols ,community1 #ch2 and society1 #ih1 #aeg2 conditioning wants1 #aje-jf2 and communication1 #aeb-ed2 importance of local1 #baa-ai4 ,see ,great ,society ,comparative ,method1 #dg ,conjoint ,behavior1 see ,association ,conscience1 private1 origin of1 #di-ej ,consequences1 importance of for politics1 #ab-ac1 #ae1 #ag1 #bd-be1 #bg1 #cb1 #ci1 #dc1 #dg1 #fe1 #abf1 #aef1 #aig2 effect of expansion1 #dg-eg2 and rules of law1 #ef2 effect of enduring1 #eg-fb2 effect of irreparable1 #fb-fd2 relation to state and government1 #ff-fi2 to antithesis of individual and social1 #aic ,control1 political1 #ab1 #af2 of human nature1 #aig-ii ,cooley1 ,c4 ,h41 #ig n4 ,corporations1 illustration of relation of individual and social1 #aij ,democracy1 political1 #gg2 significance of1 #hc2 historic genesis1 #hc-hg2 alleged unity1 #hc2 pure1 #id2 and 8individualism01 #hf-if2 inchoate1 #aji2 pessimism about1 #aaj2 ,american1 #aaa-ae2 as a moral idea1 #adc-dd2 machinery of political1 #adc-df2 nature of ideal1 #adg-ea2 and experts1 #bjc-jh2 and local community1 #bab ,descartes1 ,r41 #hh ,de ,tocqueville1 #bj ,direct ,action1 #ca ,dissemination1 and social knowledge1 #agf-gg2 physical means of1 #agi2 and art1 #ahb-hd4 ,see ,communication ,dynastic ,states1 #hi ,economic ,determinism1 #aah-hi1 #aee-ef ,economic ,forces and ,politics1 #hi-ic1 #ih1 #ajj1 #ajc-jg1 #aad1 #aah-bj1 #abi-ca1 #ada-db1 #add1 #aee1 #age1 #ahb ,education1 and social control1 #aig-ii2 and absolutistic method1 #bjj2 and political democracy1 #bjf-jh ,electoral ,college1 #aaa ,emerson1 ,r4 ,w41 #bag ,equality1 nature of1 #adi-ej ,experimental ,method1 in politics1 #aid-bjb2 defined1 #bjc ,experts1 importance of1 #abc-be1 #acf-cg2 and democracy1 #bjc-jd ,factions1 #aai ,facts1 and meanings1 #c2 physical and social1 #f-g1 #aa-ab2 and theories1 #ag ,farmers1 condition of1 #abi-cj ,gerontocracy1 #gh ,government1 and the public1 #bg-bh1 #cb1 #cc1 #cg1 #fe-fi2 as representative1 #gf2 dynastic1 #ha-hb2 fear of1 #hf1 #ij1 #ib2 economic control of1 #ajg2 and opinion1 #aib-ic ,great ,society1 ,the1 #if1 #ih1 #abf1 #abh1 #adb1 #adg1 #aee1 #aeg1 #ahd ,groups1 and the state1 #d1 #bf1 #ga-gc2 local1 #da-db4 ,see ,community ,habit1 political effects1 #fa1 #afi2 and 8individualism10 #aeh-fa ,hayes1 ,c41 #agj n4 ,hegel1 ,g4 ,w4 ,f41 #bh1 #ga ,history1 continuity of1 #afa2 contemporaneous1 #agi ,hocking1 ,w4 ,e41 quoted1 #eg ,hudson1 ,w4 ,h41 quoted1 #dj-da ,hume1 ,d41 #ef ,individual1 antithesis to social1 #ac-ae1 #bc1 #fc1 #hh1 #adg1 #aea1 #ahf-aia2 and acts1 #ah1 #ba2 and officials1 #ah1 #ge1 #hb2 and invention1 #eh2 economic1 #ia2 as fiction1 #ajb1 #aeg-eh2 defined1 #ahf-hh ,individualism1 origin of1 #bb1 #hg-id2 and private property1 #fa2 explanation of1 #ih-ajb2 influence1 #aaf2 economic1 #acd2 and collectivism1 #ahf-aic2 and method1 #aie4 ,see ,psychology ,instincts1 and social theory1 #i-ab ,intelligence1 necessary for social facts1 #ab1 #bd1 #aea-fb1 #ahh2 and democracy1 #bjh-aj2 embodied1 #bjj-ja4 ,see ,consequences1 ,knowledge ,interdependence1 #aee ,james1 ,w41 quoted1 #aei-fj ,justice1 and property1 #ib ,kings's ,peace1 #dh ,knowledge1 political1 #afb-fg2 divided1 #age2 and communication1 #agf-gi1 #bah-ai ,labor ,legislation1 #fb ,laissez-faire1 #ia1 #acd ,law1 not command1 #ec-ed2 nature of1 #ed-eg2 8natural10 #ij1 #ie1 #ajb1 #aee2 social and physical1 #aif-ig ,legal ,institutions1 #af1 #dg ,liberalism1 #acd ,liberty1 made an end in itself1 #hf2 and 8individualism10 #ih-ajj1 #aib-id2 nature of1 #aej2 of thought1 #afh-gj2 and uniformity1 #bae-af ,lippmann1 ,w41 #aaf n1 #aeh ,locke1 ,j41 on natural rights1 #hg ,macaulay1 #ajb ,majorities and ,minorities1 #bjg-jh ,materialism1 #agc-gd ,method1 problem of1 #aib-bjc ,mill1 ,j41 theory of democratic government1 #ic-ie ,mill1 ,j4 ,s41 #aie ,mobility1 social effect1 #adj ,nationalism1 #agj ,news1 #agi-ha ,officers1 agents of public1 #af1 #ag1 #cc1 #ce1 #fg-fh1 #ge2 dual capacity1 #gg1 #hb2 selection of1 #gh-hb ,opinion1 #agg1 #agi ,parties1 #aai-ba ,paternalism1 #fb ,perception1 see ,intelligence1 ,consequences ,pioneer ,conditions1 effect on ,american democracy1 #aaa ,pluralism1 political1 #gc-gd ,populus1 defined1 #af ,private1 defined1 #ae4 ,see ,public4 ,prohibition1 #acb-cc ,propaganda1 #aha-hb ,property1 and government1 #ia-ic4 ,see ,economic ,forces4 ,psychology1 of habit1 #fa1 #aei-fj2 of individualism1 #hh2 of private consciousness1 #ajj1 #aeh2 social effects of science of1 #aig-ii ,public1 and private1 #ab-ag1 #dg-eb2 and political agencies1 #ca1 #ce1 #ch1 #fg2 marks of1 #ci-fd2 ownership1 #fa2 democratic1 #gg2 education1 #aab-ac2 eclipse of1 #aae1 #abb1 #aca1 #acg1 #ahe2 problem of1 #abe1 #ahe1 #bjh1 #baf2 complexity of1 #abf2 as intellectual problem1 #aeb2 and publicity1 #afg-aga1 #bai2 and opinion1 #agg ,railways1 and government1 #acc-cd ,reason1 and the state1 #bj2 and law1 #ee-eg ,religion1 and social institutions1 #da1 #di1 #afi-gj ,rights1 natural1 #hg1 #ie1 #ajb ,rousseau1 ,j4 ,j41 #aee ,rulers1 see ,officers1 ,government ,santayana1 ,g41 quoted1 #baa ,science1 distinction from knowledge1 #afc-fe1 #agb2 social and physical1 #aga1 #agi1 #aii2 and the press1 #aha-hb2 applied1 #agb-gf2 method1 #bja ,smith1 ,adam1 #ac1 #hi ,smith1 ,t4 ,v41 #adg n 8,socialization10 #gj ,society1 human1 #bd-be2 and states1 #bf-bi1 #fi-gd1 #adg-di4 ,see ,association1 ,community1 ,consequences1 ,great ,society1 ,groups1 ,individual1 ,public4 ,spencer1 ,h41 #fc1 #gi ,symbols1 social import of1 #ada-db1 #aeb-ed1 #bah ,tariff1 #aca-cb ,theocracy1 #da1 #di1 #hj ,tilden1 ,s4 ,j41 #bjh ,theories1 political1 #d1 #e1 #h1 #he4 ,see ,causal ,forces1 ,economic ,forces1 ,individualism1 ,mill1 ,j41 ,utilitarianism ,toleration1 #di-ea ,tradition1 revolt against1 #hf ,utilitarianism1 #ia ,wallas1 ,g41 #if ,wants1 individualistic theory of1 #ajb2 socially conditioned1 #ajc-jd ,war1 and selection of rulers1 #gi2 the ,world1 #abg-bh ,whitman1 ,walt1 #ahd ,will1 as cause of state1 #bj1 #ch2 and the command theory of law1 #ec2 and government1 #fh2 general1 #aec ,wilson1 ,woodrow1 quoted1 #if-ig ,workers1 political neglect and emancipation1 #ii-ajj4 ,see ,economic ,forces ,transcriber's ,notes ,new original cover art included with this e,book is granted to the public domain4 ,punctuation1 hyphenation1 and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book2 otherwise they were not changed4 ,simple typographical errors were corrected2 unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious1 and otherwise left unbalanced4 ,the index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references4 ,footnotes1 originally at the bottoms of the pages on which they were referenced1 have been collected1 renumbered1 and placed just before the ,index4 ,some page numbers in the ,table of ,contents are out of sequence1 as they were in the original book4 ,the correct spelling of the name1 8,ayers01 likely is 8,ayres04