366 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



of a world of self-subsistent separate selves, in which unity 

 disappears into a merely abstract relation. 



In all these cases the root of the trouble is that we are 

 seeking to force a thought derived from abstract reasoning 

 into the shape of concrete images which were not made to 

 fit it. The general considerations derivable from our 

 analysis of the ideal of thought point to a certain concep- 

 tion of the world system, the conception which we call 

 organic, which involves a conditioned purpose, and a 

 development wherein that purpose advances towards reali- 

 sation. If we look to the synthesis of experience we find 

 a corresponding conception slowly building itself up as we 

 compare the successive stages of evolution. There, too, 

 we find evidence of Mind emerging under conditions of 

 which by degrees it becomes master, and in mastering them 

 comes to the fuller realisation of its own capacity. But 

 in tracing this process the wealth of the experience which 

 we bring together forces us to realise the imperfection of 

 the terms in which we seek to render it. The kind of 

 unity, for example, attributable to * Mind ' in this relation 

 could by no possibility, as long as we keep the empirical 

 sources clearly in view, be confused with the mind of a 

 human individual. We are forced to conceive wider and 

 more elastic possibilities of unity, to recognise that there is 

 a connectedness which makes a family, a class, a church, a 

 nation, mankind, unities for certain purposes or in certain 

 relations, that, moreover, such unities may grow and come 

 to dominate the entire life of the component members, that 

 they depend in part on conditions which subsist though 

 none may know them, and in part again on the very fact 

 that they are recognised. Such considerations are but a hint 

 of the complexities of relation implied in such a term as the 

 spirit of a class, or the soul of a people. Such expressions 

 we realise are justified if we have none better, for we have 

 to deal with the unity and refer to it and discuss it. But 

 they are not justified if they are so made a basis for infer- 

 ence that characteristics are attributed to the soul of a 

 people because they are true of the soul of one man. So 

 again we may speak of the Soul of the world, of a spiritual 

 principle working towards self-realisation, as long as we 



