652 THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF INDIVIDUALITY 



psychical-social individuality, a separation between individuality and environ- 

 ment, especially the social environment, becomes impossible. Hence the 

 second circuit has been refined into a modified, a third circuit, which leads 

 from the social as well as the natural environment to the nervous system, to 

 thoughts and suggestions, and back again to the social and natural environ- 

 ment. 



In this third circuit thoughts and suggestions have been profoundly modi- 

 fied, not only by the natural but also by the social environment, and, more- 

 over, they have become the more important and powerful, because they did not 

 live an isolated, separate existence, but were connected with systems of tradi- 

 tions, myths, philosophy and science. All of these latter formed one whole, a 

 system acting as a huge social thought-reservoir, which became more and 

 more independent of the individual. However, the individual not only received 

 from this thought-reservoir, thoughts and suggestions determining his actions 

 and orientation to world and life, but conversely, he contributed to it his own 

 thoughts, suggestions and emotional reactions, as manifested in the various 

 forms of art, in science and philosophy and the conventions of social life. In- 

 tensified satisfactions were felt in the creation of concepts concerning the 

 universe and in victories won in the social and natural struggle, and these 

 concepts entered into the social thought-reservoir and thus became the posses- 

 sion of all, freed from the index of the individuality which had contributed 

 to their creation and which was able to create because it had previously 

 received important constituents from this common source. 



At the same time this social thought-reservoir has become the source of 

 much suffering because of its mode of origin, reflecting as it does our imper- 

 fect manner of thinking. Reality, the totality of our environment in its inter- 

 action with our body and thoughts, is too vast and too complex for us ; it is 

 more than we can manipulate. We can concentrate at one time only on certain 

 features of it ; necessarily we abstract and, subsequently, parts which diverse 

 abstractions have in common are synthesized by us into a new concept. Thus 

 generalization follows abstraction. Some of these procedures are carried out 

 in a relatively satisfactory manner, such as the abstractions and generaliza- 

 tions in mathematics and science ; and also the more simple abstractions used 

 in ordinary life, sensations such as hot, cold, red, blue; or comparisons of 

 quantities of weighable substances : "much," "little," these all are fairly satis- 

 factory abstractions, serviceable and more or less in harmony with reality. 

 But there are many inadequate or false and arbitrary abstractions and gen- 

 eralizations. They occur especially in all those realms of life where our emo- 

 tions are affected, and where the social struggle enters. This is true especially 

 of many moral, political and social concepts, such as those expressing ap- 

 proval or condemnation, those of fashions and rituals ; the fact that they are 

 often purely arbitrary, and not representative of real and significant things 

 and processes is not usually recognized. And some of these concepts not only 

 represent inadequate abstractions and generalizations, but also injurious ones ; 

 this applies in particular to many social concepts which serve as instruments 

 in the social struggle for material and distinctive psychical goods. All these 

 ideas enter the psychical-social reservoir ; here they remain, as it were, frozen 



