The Unfinished Programme of Democracy. Richard Roberts
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social integration which is implied in a self-consistent sociology. The current conceptions of the state and the nation must undergo some revision if they are to be made congruous with a fruitful social polity. The nation represents a stage in the social education of the race, in that discipline whereby the caveman grows into a citizenship of the world; and in no sense can the nation be ethically regarded as constituting an adequate end for the individual, except as the nation in its turn is consciously seeking its own end in the service of the whole.
It is true that men have in the past generally regarded the glory and the power of their particular group as an end which has the right to command their absolute devotion, and have believed that to suffer death in such a cause is the highest conceivable self-realisation. This does indeed represent a much higher ethical plane than that on which a man fights only for his own hand or the tiny circle of his blood kindred. But the fact that this loyalty to his group has had the power to evoke the highest possible sacrifice, does not prove that the glory and the power of the group provides a full and valid end for him as a man. In his character as German or Englishman, it may appear to provide him with an end to which he may properly submit himself without reserve; but it is questionable whether he can do so without some sacrifice of his possibilities and obligations as a man. The propaganda of Germanism produced very efficient and docile Germans; but the records of the war leave us little room to doubt that the process has had a mischievous effect upon their manhood. From the standpoint of an expanding society polity, education should produce individuals who are human before they are national. There is no system of national education which achieves this result; but the ultimate logic of the prevailing educational tradition as we see it in the German conduct of the war should provoke serious misgivings and minister to a change of heart in those persons who direct the policies of public education.
(c) It is worth observing in this connection that even in Germany the Germanic propaganda had to trick itself out in a pseudo-universal jargon. It had to say large-sounding things about a Kultur-mission to the world in order to validate itself in the eyes of the German people. The claim implied in the Kultur-mission as it was commonly expounded is so preposterous as to be self-refuting to a normal mind; but this systematic diffusion of the idea proves that man has reached a point where the power and wealth of a particular group is no longer able by itself to evoke an effectual response in the individuals who compose the group. The fact is that civilised mankind is slowly learning to think in universal terms. Its social grasp is already faintly embracing the whole world.
This circumstance tends to simplify the sociologist’s task very materially. While the application of the polity which he evolves will require to take account of the peculiar traditions and institutions of different groups, he will be free to work out his polity in terms which are independent of the present exclusive and conflicting aims of the groups which compose the world of man. He will state the ultimate problems of society in Germany in the same terms as he will state those in America; for he will necessarily be dealing with the one factor which is common to both. There cannot be a distinctive social science in Germany and another in America, differing from one another in essentials and both at the same time being true. There will be endless variety in the methods by which social principles are applied by different groups; for we cannot write off the past of a people and the institutions in which its history is embodied. Yet there can be no true sociology in England or in Germany unless its postulates are equally valid in America. In other words these postulates must be drawn from a disinterested study of personality. They will not concern themselves with the welfare of a particular group, in whatever terms that welfare may be defined. But they will be concerned with the good of the world of groups because they are derived from the one fact which is common to and underlies them all, and which, despite conflicting aims still binds human groups together in a permanent unity, namely, personality.
IV
The aims of our social polity must, therefore, be defined congruously with the nature of personality; and the corresponding social processes must validate themselves by bringing to those whom they affect, the sense of movement towards a real and recognisable personal good. It does not require that all the individuals composing a society should organise their common life with the conscious and deliberate aim of personal self-realisation; but it is certain that the processes of a genuine social integration will be accompanied by a certain growing emotional satisfaction in the persons concerned. It is generally assumed that this emotional satisfaction is to be described as happiness; but it is probably something deeper and more organic than the state which this word connotes. Professor Dewey says that “to find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key of happiness.”[9] This is, of course, true so far as it goes; but it is symptomatic of the inadequate analysis which this point generally receives. Obviously there are possibilities of self-realisation and personal satisfaction far beyond the attainment which Professor Dewey indicates in this sentence. We might, perhaps, find a better definition of the emotional state which we should require our process of social development to produce, in the New Testament use of the word joy. There the word is clearly associated with an emotional state consequent upon a sense of accomplishment or discovery. The golfer experiences it for a passing moment after a completely successful drive from the tee. The artist knows it more durably as he puts the finishing touch to what he believes to be his masterpiece. Gibbon had it (not without a large tincture of self-admiration) on the memorable evening on which he finished the “Decline and Fall.” It is the condition which is described by the word “fruition;”[10] the inward reaction evoked by the sense of arrival, of fulfilment, and of course—derivatively—of being surely on the way. It comes to a man when he knows he is on the road to personal completeness.
9. Democracy and Education, p. 360.
10. This word is so frequently mishandled that it is perhaps necessary to point out that it does not mean bearing fruit. It is derived from the Latin word fruor, I enjoy; and it describes an inward state.
Illustrative of the New Testament use of the word joy, the following passages may be cited: John ii. 30, “This my joy is made full” (spoken by John Baptist on hearing that Jesus was launched on the full tide of His ministry.) John xvi. 21, “… when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born unto the world.” Matt. xiii. 14, “In his joy, he goeth and selleth all that he hath” (the merchant man who has found the pearl of great price). Luke xv. 9, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”
It is upon the question of what constitutes personal completeness that we have to reach some kind of conclusion if our sociological thinking is to be fruitful and if we are to have the proper tests to apply to our social programmes. Obviously the society we want to produce is one which will provide the conditions under which every man may rise to the full stature of his manhood. But what is the full-grown man? Apparently the only person in the modern world who has possessed a definite and vivid conception of the full-grown man is Nietzsche. But Nietzsche’s doctrine is ruled out by our democratic hypothesis. He has told us that mankind falls into two broad classes of master and slave, and though he recognises a considerable hierarchy of social grades, he sees, nevertheless, at the one end the ruling class, and at the other “the class of man who thrives best when he is looked after and closely observed, the man who is happy to serve not because he must, but because he is what he is, the man uncorrupted by political and religious lies concerning liberty, equality and fraternity, who is half conscious of the abyss which separates him from his superiors, and who is happiest when he is performing those acts which are not beyond his limitations.”[11] Obviously the only kind of society possible on the Nietzschean terms is an armed peace between supermen and “slave morality” for the rest. The will to power soon or late issues in anarchy. The strength of the position of Nietzsche lies in the theoretic justification it provides for the native human bias which leads to the quest of personal ascendency, and the