54 CREATIVE INVOLUTION 



understanding. No mere interaction will constitute a 

 social relation. Nor yet an interaction of otherwise self- 

 conscious agents. Not merely must each agent know 

 himself, he must know the other. Not merely must his 

 behaviour produce an effect upon them, he must produce 

 this effect consciously. Nor is it sufficient that he con- 

 sciously acts upon them; he must have their conscious 

 response ; and they, again, must know from him that their 

 response is received. Unless there be on both sides a 

 perfect consciousness of self and of other, and of the re- 

 lations of self and other in a word, a perfect mutual 

 understanding there will be, so far, no completely 

 social relation. A social relation is a self-conscious re- 

 lation. 



" All this follows, as you will see, directly from the 

 conception of the conscious individual. A relation of 

 ideas is itself an idea, never a mere relation, but an 

 idea of relation. This is the only relation that ideas can 

 be conceived to have. It is admittedly absurd to say 

 that one idea lies north or south of another ; it should be 

 equally absurd to say that one is later than another. 

 For ideas as such are related, not temporally, but logi- 

 cally, as expression of one inclusive conscious meaning. 

 Apart from this idea of relation the different chapters of 

 a book, for example, are related only as so many facts of 

 paper and ink. So of any group of men. The fact of 

 spatial congregation expresses truly enough the relation 

 of their physical bodies, but except as they are aware of 

 themselves as a group they have, as ideas, or minds, or 

 persons, no relation whatever. On the other hand, it is 

 by virtue of this idea of relation that each of the in- 

 dividuals knows himself as himself and no one else. For, 

 as already noted, an idea can know itself, can have a 

 meaning of its own, only by contact with other ideas. 



