EVOLUTION 233 



even its selfishness has been constrained to take upon itself 

 a more or less social form. 



Now, we have only to interpret these new conditions, 

 and press them to their ultimate issues, in order to arrive 

 at the important conclusion that the nature of the individual 

 is essentially social. That is to say, a man's relations to 

 his fellows are not addenda to MS personality, but the 

 inmost content and reality of it^ He cannot act as a 

 rational being, nor be a rational being, except by incor- 

 porating them. The difference between individuals in 

 significance and worth comes from the different degrees in 

 which they have been able thus to incorporate in themselves 

 these social relations, and to constitute themselves into foci 

 of the general life. Man grows as an individual, expands 

 and deepens his private personality, by rationally appropri- 

 ating the social medium in which he lives by making its 

 meaning his knowledge, and by converting its higher ten- 

 dencies and possibilities of better things into his personal 

 purpose. If his growth is stunted, it is because his 

 appropriation is incomplete. In the ideal individual the 

 life of his community would receive a new incarnation. 

 So that individual and society are not separable as different 

 elements within a whole. Distinction, friction, antagon- 



' J O 



ism, come only from their imperfection. The one is not 

 the other, only because it is not itself. Society is an 

 external necessity to the individual because he is not 

 sufficiently intelligent to grasp its meaning, or sufficiently 

 good to adopt its ends ; and society, on its part, is a 

 mechanical and most imperfect whole only because its 

 members are only partly rationalized. 



The same truth may be expressed conversely. If the 

 nature of the individual is essentially social, the nature of 



