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difference in him at all. And when we have disposed of this absurdity,
all sane theories of the state are still left to choose from.
193. The intrinsic relations of individuals would also, no doubt, be
incompatible with the theory which Professor Mackenzie calls mechani-
cal.  A mechanical or dualistic view, again, he says,  would regard the
individual as partly dependent and partly independent; as to some extent
possessing a life of his own, and yet to some extent dependent on his
social surroundings. 73 It is impossible, certainly, to divide any indi-
vidual into isolated compartments, and if any part of a man s life is
affected by the society of which he is a member, no part of his life can be
wholly unaffected by it. But although the view here rejected may fitly be
called mechanical, it is not the only view which deserves that name. It
answers to the category to which Hegel has given the name of Formal
Mechanism, but there still remains the higher category which he calls
Absolute Mechanism. In Absolute Mechanism, if I interpret the Logic
rightly, we discard the supposition that the internal nature of anything
can be independent of the relations into which it enters with other things.
We see that the two sides are inseparably connected. On the one hand,
the internal nature of anything is meaningless except in connection with
its relations to other things, since it is only in those relations that the
inner nature can manifest itself. On the other hand, relations to other
things are meaningless except in relation to the internal nature of the
thing. A merely passive subject of relations is impossible, as the cat-
egory of Reciprocity has already taught us. If A is mn, because it is
related to BC, this is not a merely external relation. For it must be as-
cribed to the nature of A that BC produces upon it the result mn rather
than the result op.
Now the admission of intrinsic relations that there is nothing what-
ever in A which is independent of its relations to B, C, etc. need not
involve more than the category of Absolute Mechanism. And, in admit-
ting this category, we have by no means reached the idea of organic
unity. No unity, it is clear, can he organic which is a mere means to the
separate ends of its constituent individuals. And there is nothing in the
category of Absolute Mechanism to hinder this from being the case.
156/John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart
Each individual, it is true, is, under this category, determined through-
out by the unity in which he stands with the other individuals of the
same system. But ends, means, and hindrances to ends, all exercise causal
determination over objects. A man is causally determined alike by the
moral ideal which he holds, by the dinner which he eats, and by the
hatreds which he feels. But this need not prevent us from saying that the
first of these is an end, good in itself, the second a means, which has
value only in so far as it enables us to carry out the end, and the third a
hindrance to carrying out the end, and, therefore, positively bad.
Accordingly we find that those theories of society which carry indi-
vidualism furthest are quite consistent with the category of Absolute
Mechanism, and with the admission of intrinsic relations between the
members of society. The hermits of. the early Church regarded society
as detrimental to man s highest interests, and consequently as an evil to
be avoided as far as possible, and to be steadily resisted when unavoid-
able. A hedonist regards society as only justifiable in so far as it pro-
duces, for each of the individuals who compose it, a greater amount of
private happiness than he would otherwise have enjoyed. Both these
positions are quite compatible with the intrinsic relations which we have
been considering. For each of them would have admitted that some soci-
ety was indispensable, and each of them would have admitted that the
whole man was modified by the society of which he formed a part.
194. 1 have endeavoured to prove that the intrinsic relation of the
parts of society gives us no help towards establishing its organic nature,
since the proposition would be equally true of any real system, whether
organic or not. We must now consider the third clause of Professor
Mackenzie s definition of an organism:  its end forms an essential ele-
ment in its own nature.
Here again there seems to me to be a dangerous ambiguity. If this
proposition meant, as it might mean, that the existence of the society as
society was its own end, and also the end of the individuals who com-
pose it, then, indeed, the unity in which it would bind those individuals
would be so close that it might fairly be called organic, or even more
than organic. But when we come to enquire into the precise meaning
which Professor Mackenzie attaches to the phrase, we shall find that, in
one part at least of his work, he gives it a much narrower meaning,
which, however true, gives us no reason to regard it as an organism.
 That the growth of social conditions has reference to an inner end,
he says,  is a point on which we need not here enlarge. That the move-
Studies in Hegelian Cosmology/157
ments of social development are purposeless, no one supposes; and that
the purpose which it subserves lies within itself is equally apparent. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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