130 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



to the nature of the whole society in which it develops. It has reference to 

 an end which is involved in its own nature; for the end of society is to pre- 

 serve the life and to secure the highest life of its individual members, — this 

 highest life, moreover, consisting not in the attainment of anything external 

 either to the individuals or to their society but to the perfect realization of 

 their own rational nature, which can be attained only in a perfect social life. 1 



This interpretation of the organic nature of society can be 

 understood only in the light of his philosophical presuppositions 

 developed in the first three chapters of his Social Philosophy 

 which are essentially Hegelian. The chief diffi culty is that it is 

 vague and devoid of specific content. 



II. Meanings of Self. — In his analysis of the different mean- 

 ings of self, objects are considered to have selfhood under the 

 following conditions, arranged in a progressive series: (i) When 

 there is some kind of unity and identity, though given it by an 

 apperceiving mind, as when we speak of a river that empties 

 itself into the sea. A house, book, work of art has this kind of 

 selfhood; (2) where there is not only this kind of apperceived unity 

 but where the object must be so regarded in order to be under- 

 stood as in the case of a vegetable organism; (3) where the object 

 has some degree of self-consciousness mediated, however vaguely, 

 through sensations of pleasure or pain, as in the case of an animal: 

 " Such a being is a unity for itself, though not conscious of itself 

 as a unity "; (4) where the object is conscious of itself as a unity, 

 reflecting on its own life and recognizing itself as one throughout 

 all its changes; and finally, (5) where the object is conscious of 

 itself as a unity and part of a unitary world, as in the case of man 

 at least potentially: " He is aware of his individual life not as a 

 microcosm in a chaos, but as a microcosm in a macrocosm, to the 

 objective unity of which his individual life as well as everything 

 else is referred." 2 



Mackenzie does not enter into the question current now among 

 social psychologists as to the meaning of self as applied to the 

 social organism, and his whole discussion leaves us in doubt as to 

 what his position would be, for while he emphasizes the individual 

 as the sociological unit, society existing only for the well-being of 



1 Introduction to Social Philosophy, p. 238. 2 Ibid., pp. 161 f. 



