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.t 
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 difficulty 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: (1) 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) wherethere 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 ztself, though not conscious of itself 
asa 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. 
