TEE ORGANIC CONCEPT OF SOCIETY 13 1 



individuals, 1 he holds that the individual apart from society is an 

 abstraction. 2 He does, however, emphasize the psychical unity 

 of society, considering persons or groups who are unassimilated 

 as instruments of a civilization of which they do not partake. 3 



III. Social Goals. — In discussing possible ends to which the 

 world-order is tending he holds that it must be considered in terms 

 of the well-being of individuals and discusses various ways of 

 interpreting individual well-being as in terms of knowing, feeling, 

 willing, in some combination of these, or finally as a realization of 

 our conscious nature as a whole. 4 His conclusion is that the end 

 is in the fulfilment of certain wants of our nature rather than in 

 the pleasure which ensues upon their satisfaction. 5 This brings 

 his teaching into harmony with the doctrine of adaptation, for our 

 real needs are such as make for largeness and fullness of life and 

 this depends upon our being adapted to our environment and 

 especially upon our mastery of our environment, as our author 

 holds. 6 



Mackenzie divides these wants or needs into three classes: (1) 

 vegetable, (2) those arising from our organic or animal sensations, 

 and (3) those due to reason. 7 He shows that the end cannot be 

 merely either (1) or (2) or both combined, so must be (3), and this 

 requires that we view our world as issuing from intelligence of 

 which our own and that of our fellow-men are parts, and that we 

 make ourselves at home in this world. 8 He concludes as follows: — 



1 Introduction to Social Philosophy, pp. 66, 159. 



2 Ibid., pp. 120, 180; cf. pp. 131, 136. 



3 Ibid., p. 156. 4 Ibid., chs. IV and V. 6 Ibid., p. 228. 



6 " Men were first exploited by men; then they were exploited by things; the 

 problem now is to combine men together that they may exploit things," ibid., p. 

 107. 



7 Ibid., p. 228. 



8 " We must not only be able to bring our world into a certain intelligible order, 

 but we must also be able to see it issuing out of an intelligible order. Such an 

 intelligible world would exist for us if the world of our experience were not merely 

 presented to our intelligence, but arose from our intelligence, i. e., if we created 

 our world as well as perceived it, and such a world would equally exist for us if 

 we saw it as issuing from the unity of some other intelligence than our own. It 

 would then appear not merely as a collection of facts which is reduced to system, 

 but as a collection which flows from a system, and which is consequently intelligible 

 from beginning to end. . . . Now such an intelligible world is presented to us 



