MECHANICAL EQUILIBRIA DISTURBED BY CONSCIOUSNESS 221 



For in every society there is an hierarchy of individual desires 

 corresponding to the constitution of the social hierarchy, and 

 derived from it. The aspirations of the bricklayer are different 

 from those of the hereditary nobleman. We give these instances 

 only as an example of what we mean. The hierarchy of ideals 

 and aspirations is in reality far more complicated, and falls into 

 numerous subdivisions within each social class. And in every 

 society the nature of these desires, and consequently the con- 

 ception of their satisfaction, differ sensibly. The working-man 

 in Russia or Roumania, or in Eastern Europe generally, is 

 satisfied with a minimum which would seem absurd to a working- 

 man of Great Britain ; and even in industrial countries so alike 

 as England and France the standard of life of the middle and 

 working classes is not identical. And yet human nature is 

 essentially the same everywhere ; the difference in the physio- 

 logical constitution of the Roumanian and the Englishman is 

 utterly insignificant when compared with the difference in the 

 aspirations and ideals of the two. Thus, in spite of the essential 

 identity of human nature everywhere, whether in China or 

 Persia, Germany or England, the standard of life and the ideo- 

 logical Streben of each society are markedly different. 



We must necessarily draw the conclusion that the organic 

 constitution of the individual is in itself incapable of limiting 

 the psychological aspirations of the individual ; for the latter 

 are not under that strict control of the constitution which we 

 see illustrated in the case of the physical desires. The physical 

 appetites of the body are mechanical in their nature, and find 

 their natural equilibrium in the mechanical laws of life itself. 

 The psychological aspirations of the mind are brought into being 

 by consciousness ; they are not mechanical, but conscious in their 

 nature ; and the mechanical equilibrium realised by those forms 

 of life which have not yet arrived at the consciousness of their 

 own consciousness is disturbed by the emergence of this new 

 phenomenon. 



