tion in the phenomenon. ITS PHENOMENA ARE INDIVIDUAL MEN AND WOMEN. It lives, is actualized in individuals, and individuals bear the same relation to it, that our actions do to us as individual men and women. God lives by creating, and creates an infinite variety of kinds or genera, which in relation to him are creatures, but in relation to their phenomena, creators. These kinds, genera, ideas, also live by creating, and create under them innumerable sorts and individuals; which again in relation to them are creatures, but in relation to their own acts or products, causes or creators. Thus through all the infinity of the universe there is a never-failing correspondence. Each Kind, each Sort, each Individual in turn becomes a creator, and, in its sphere and degree, represents and reflects the Infinite Creator, -God. According to this view, we have not only a two-fold BEING, but a two-fold LIFE. When I say I or me, I necessarily designate a two-fold being. There is, as says Fichte, though in a sense somewhat different, a two-fold I or Me. The first is my being as man, my being in the generic sense; the second is my being as Peter, James or John. To each of these there is a corresponding life, the life which humanity lives in me, and the life which I live in my phenomena. In the first sense my being is one and identical with that of all men. In this sense, as Humanity, there is but ONE MAN, because one and the same nature with its essential and indissoluble unity is in all men. In this first sense, too, the life which humanity lives in me, is one and identical with the life it lives in all men. There is, then, for all men, as man, only one and the same Life. This unity of being, or rather unity of nature and of life, is what we mean by the unity of the race. It is no doubt a transcendental unity, a unity which, like all true unity, inhabits eternity, and is therefore Ideal, not Actual; but, nevertheless, a real unity. It is on this unity that society rests for its basis; and it is from this unity that society derives its power and its right to found the State, to institute civil government, and to demand and even enforce the obedience of its members. Humanity has the inalienable right to live, to all that is necessary for the free, full, and continuous manifestation of itself in the life of individual men and women. In other words, humanity has, by virtue of the fact that it is an entity, a being, the right in itself to live and grow, and to all that is essential to its life and growth. Society, which is the outward expression of this ideal unity, has the same right. This right is the foundation and the limit of its authority. On this same unity of the race rest all the moral, religious, and social virtues. The individual approaches, God, only by sinking back, as it were, into the unity of the race; for he can, so to speak, touch God only on that side of his being on which he is one with all men. Hence, Jesus, in praying that men might come to God, prayed that they might be led back to unity," that they may all be one." Love, generosity, kindness, all imply this unity, a common nature, and have a tendency to lead us back to it. All which tends to unite men in the bonds of a common faith, a common love, a common hope, a common pursuit, comes from the same source. being one by the unity of their nature, must needs have a natural tendency to unite, to live in common, to be one in all the phenomena of life. Here is the basis of the COMMUNITY, which is but a special form of general society, and therefore only the outward expression of the internal unity of humanity or human-kind. Men But humanity lives only in its manifestations. Its manifestations are individual men and women. It lives, then, only in individual men and women. Here is a fact of the greatest importance. Abstract all individuals, and ! humanity is but a mere virtuality; it is not a living humanity, and therefore as good as no humanity at all. Without humanity, no individuals; without individuals, no actual life of humanity. Humanity in this last case would remain latent, a mere possibility, never becoming, nor able to become, an actuality. It would be dead, or a King Do-Nothing, (Roi Fainéant). The provision for the free development of the race in individual life, and therefore for the maintenance of the individual, becomes, then, as essential for the maintenance of the race itself, as for that of the individual. In fact, the two must be regarded as correlatives. One is, and never can be, without the other, any more than there can be a creation without a creator, or a creator without a creation. Here is the necessity of INDIVIDUALITY, making the individual as old as the community, and in a degree the condition and limit of the community. If, then, the individual on the one hand is subordinate to society, and must yield to its authority, the community on the other hand, as the condition of its own life, must preserve in all his integrity the Individual. According to the analogy affirmed, each individual man or woman is to the race what one of our actions is to one of us as an individual. A man is a thought, a volition, a sentiment, a deed of humanity. The individual in each diverse or separate thought, volition, sentiment, or act, manifests a distinct or diverse phase of his own being or nature. Take any individual, and in order to arrive at what he has demonstrated himself to be, you must make yourself acquainted with what he has done, only understand by his doing, what are called his internal acts as well as his external. The omission of a single one of his acts, the slightest even, would detract somewhat from the completeness and entireness of your knowledge of his character. Furthermore, if the individual had been prevented from performing any one of those acts, his actual character would have been different from what it is. The individual, then, must be free to manifest himself according to what he is in himself, or he can never actualize himself. So of humanity. Individuals are its acts, its deeds, its actualizations. Each individual is an actualization of a distinct All, phase of humanity. No one individual represents humanity in all its integrity. For if any one individual did so represent humanity, humanity would not only be all represented, and then nothing more for the race to do; but there would be, to speak strictly, but one man in existence. The innumerable multitude of individuals would be only the multiplication of one by one an indefinite number of times, which gives as its product only one. They would be only the one man so many times repeated. But this repetition, though extended to infinity, would add nothing. We should have all the humanity with only one of the number that we have with the whole. except one, could be killed off without any loss to humanity. But this is not true. No one man can suffer, but all humanity suffers with him. The whole is wounded in any one of the parts. Nature produces no duplicates. No one man repeats another; or, if so, it is at least with variations. Every man is distinct, and under some aspect diverse from every other man. No two can ever be found that are exactly alike in their features, or in their mental or moral qualities. Each represents the same nature, but that same nature under a diverse aspect, and in this fact consists each one's individuality, the difference between one man or one woman and another. Hinder humanity, then, from pushing itself out in any given individual, or cut off its opportunity of actualizing itself in any given individual, and you hinder it from manifesting, actualizing, a given phase of its being, which is to hinder to that extent the life of humanity, and to reduce it to a dead humanity; which, again, so far forth as dead, is as no humanity at all. It is, then, since all have their life in the life of humanity, to strike thus far with death the whole and each.* Assuming as sufficiently established In this fact, that humanity is one, but manifesting a distinct phase of its essence in each separate individual, consists the authority of the race, and in the same fact consists also the legitimacy of popular forms of government. The whole is wiser than any one of the parts, for the whole is never all and entire in any one of the parts. Each individual represents humanity, but humanity from a particular point of view, and one individual from his own point of view represents it as justly as another. But as no one represents it from all possible or all actual points of view, no one is ever to be taken as the representative of the whole. Hence, again, the suffrages of all individuals combined into one whole, will give us a fuller representation of humanity, and therefore of truth, than we can get from any one man, however eminent. The assent of the race, of the great mass of individuals in all ages and nations, what we have said, we have arrived at two fundamental facts, which must be the principles of all our schemes of human melioration and progress. These two facts, expressed in abstract terms, that is, in metaphysical terms, are UNITY and DIVERSITY; in philosophical terms, IDEAL and ACTUAL; in terms of practical life, COMMUNITY and INDIVIDUALITY. Individuality has its origin and support in Community, and Community its life, its actual existence in Individuality. These are the two great fundamental facts that we are always to keep in view, of which we are never to lose sight for a moment. If we lose sight of Community, and fix our eyes only on the individual, we shall lose sight of all that makes man man, that distinguishes the human race from any other race, or an individual man from an individual dog, ox, pine, or oak. When this is done, we cease to treat man as a man, to make any provision for his peculiarly human wants. We legislate for him no longer as man, but as not-man, as an animal, a vegetable, or a piece of mechanism. We lose sight, then, of all that is human, see nothing in man to love or reverence above the beasts that perish. This is no idle theorizing. Men, and distinguished men too, have in their theories gone to the full extent here implied. The theories of Rousseau, Godwin, and Robert Owen stop very little short of it; and Lamétrie, in the last century, actually treated of man under the head of Man-Plant (l'Homme-Plante), and becomes, then, in matters of life, moral accumulating with the progress of time. in philosophy. even of Man-Machine ('Homme-Machine). No doubt the Human will always assert itself in spite of our theorizing, and these very individuals were by no means wanting in humane feelings; but if our theories lead to a denial of the Human in man, in all our efforts to actualize our theories, or to reduce them to practice, we shall war against it, and therefore repress it, hinder its free and full manifestation, to the extent of our ability. On the other hand, if we lose sight of the fact that it is only in and through individuals that the Human manifests itself, that humanity becomes a living being; if we fix our eyes solely on the Human, on the unity and identity of human nature in all men; we shall lose sight of all necessity for a diversity of individuals, shall fix our eyes on the Communal alone, and in our social arrangements make no provision for its free and full development in the individual, and therefore none for the life of humanity itself. The individual will be sacrificed to the Community; all free development and growth of the individual will be prohibited, by subjecting the individual in all respects to the supreme authority of the Community; and, therefore, all progress, whether individual or social, will be rendered impossible. It follows, then, that we are always to preserve the two terms, Community and Individuality, order and freedom, permanence and progress. and social, the highest evidence perpetually This is a conclusion of immense importance But, if each man represents humanity, therefore, truth under a distinct aspect, and therefore the whole number of individuals gives a fuller representation than we can get with any one individual, it follows that the more really universal we can make suffrage, in matters of government, the greater is our assurance of the wisdom and justice of the policy the government will adopt. Here is the foundation in human nature of democracy, the only solid basis it has or needs. But admitting this, we see very clearly the superior wisdom of Mr. Calhoun in contending that this universal suffrage is not represented by the simple numerical majority, and therefore that we need some contrivance for collecting and rendering effectual the voice of a larger number than the majority, as near as possible, of the whole people. The contrivance by which this is done is called the Constitution. Hence, while we contend for the legitimacy of Democracy, and readily assent to the proposition that the whole is wiser and juster than the parts, we want the Constitution to render the genuine democracy efficient. The Constitution, or the contrivance for collecting and rendering effectual the voice of as large a proportion of the people as possible, will vary in different countries: and, therefore, we say again, that while the end and principles of government are everywhere the same, its form, or the Constitution, must be adapted to the special circumstances of any given people or community. O. A. B. Hitherto in the world we have had the two terms, but for the most part as two opposing terms, one the antithesis, at least, if not the antagonist of the other. Community without Individuality is TYRANNY, the fruits of which are oppression, degradation, and immobility, the synonym of death. Individuality without Community, is INDIVIDUALISM, the fruits of which are dissolution, isolation, selfishness, disorder, anarchy, confusion, war; which again attains to death on the opposite side. Community without Individuality, may be termed COMMUNISM, and Individuality without the correlative Community, INDIVIDUALISM. What we need, then, is not Communism, nor Individualism, the two forms in which the principle of Evil manifests itself, but Community and Individuality harmonized, or as we may say, atoned. The two rocks on which the Reformer is in danger of being wrecked, are Communism and Individualism. In seeking to steer clear of the one, he is almost sure to strike upon the other; for the passage between them is narrow and difficult, and none but the most able and experienced seaman can make it with success. During the last century the dominant tendency was to individual freedom, which led almost everywhere to Individualism; for it was necessary to resist the pre-existing Communism, or the tyranny and oppressiveness of the old social institutions. The tendency to the Community System, now so striking, is a decided reaction against the Individualism which has of late prevailed. It marks a return towards the common life of the race, a recognition of the great fact that all men have one and the same nature, are one in the unity of humanity, and in the unity of a common life. It is a demand for order, a common faith, a common love, concert of action, mutual assistance; that we may all, as says an old bard, "march as one man" against evil, to the conquest of good. So far it is well, and deserves the encouragement of all men who love their race, who would see and aid the progress of humanity. But, like all reactions, there is danger of its reacting too far, of its becoming exclusive, and splitting on the rock of Communism. The true Reformer studies always to retain the two terms, and his problem is not the subordination of one to the other, but the harmonizing of one with the other, the realization of Community in Individuality, and of Individuality in Community. All the schemes which have hitherto been devised, in the interest of Community, have failed by giving undue prominence to the communal or social element. If we look at the various civil governments which have been instituted, we shall see that nearly all of them have failed to secure the true end of government, because they have attempted too much Community, because they have overlooked the freedom of the Individual, as the condition of the life of the Community. The old Theocracies which, in the progress of society, succeeded to the savage state, though they all served a useful purpose in breaking down and subduing the wild Individualism of the savage, all overlooked the fact that the Communal is to be realized only in the Indiviannihilate the Individual. Under the dual, and did what they could to political order, which succeeded to the Theocratic, and best represented by Greece and Rome, the same predomi nance of the Communal over the Individual reappears. The CITY is supreme. The individual man, simply He must add to his quality of man as a man, has no recognized existence. that of citizen, before he has any acknowledged personality. Even the citizen again, though possessing certain rights as well as duties in relation to his fellow citizens, has no rights in relation to the City. Socrates holds that, as a good citizen, he cannot withdraw himself from the punishment of sentenced him. Hence, in Greece and death, to which the City has unjustly Rome we find no individual freedom. If within certain limits we have the rights of the citizen, we have nowhere Greece and Rome, notwithstanding the the rights of the man. Hence, in the greatest extent, and perhaps in its boasts of freedom, slavery exists to most aggravated forms. The Rights of Man, individual Freedom, are recognized for the first time in the history of our race, by Jesus of Nazareth. He accepts none of the previous distinctions. Moses had re cognized freedom for every Jew, but Jesus generalized the Mosaic freedom, and converted it into the freedom of all men, as men. Before him all factitious distinctions vanished, the partition wall between Jew and Gentile was broken down, and all men, rich or poor, bond or free, stood up in the noble freedom of humanity, men and equals. In every individual member of the human family he acknowledged a brother, a joint-heir of a common inheritance, and therefore asserted the freedom of all men. But the Church, as the outward expression and actualization of the doctrines of its Divine and ever blessed Founder, though accepting this doctrine of Individuality to a greater extent than ever dreamed of by any contemporary civil society, has nevertheless only partially realized it. The several Christian kingdoms and republics of Modern History, though an advance on Greece and Rome in their freest days, yet subordinate the man to the citizen, and the citizen to the City, State, or Community. Our Republic is the only State that was ever founded that acknowledged a limit to its own authority in the rights of individuals as men, and even ours does this but timidly, and with so many reserves and qualifications, as to render the acknowledgment all but nugatory. The secret of this universal failure is chiefly in the fact that, in all our attempts to organize the communal element, we have organized it in view of itself, and not in view of the fact, on which I have insisted, that the Community is to be actualized only in the Individuality. In effecting the organization, the mind has been chiefly intent on Community itself, and hence the effort has been to get as much Community as possible. The proceeding has always been grounded on the assumption that Individuality is the destruction of Community, and that Community, therefore, necessarily excludes Individuality. Here has been the error. Look into any government, into any of its parts, to any of its various and complicated machinery, and you shall see that all has been contrived with the single purpose of maintaining itself as government, not as the means of facilitating the free, full, and continuous development and growth of humanity in individual men and women. Look into any of the projects for a Community put forth by the most distinguished Communists, if the establishment at Brook Farm be excepted, and we shall see that the ruling thought is Community for the sake of Community, not Community for the sake of Individuality. We shall be able, in future attempts, to avoid the rock on which all our predecessors have split, only by bearing in mind that the Community must be organized not for itself, but for the actualization of MAN IN MEN. What concerns us is not man as essence, man as human nature, but humanity living, humanity in life, or in its doing, its manifestation. What we want is that the life of humanity should suffer no impediment, let, or hinderance. But as the life of humanity is lived in individuals, and in individuals only,-lived in the life of individuals and in the life of individuals only, the life of the race needs and demands no other conditions than those demanded by the life of the individual. We have then provided for our generic life when we have provided for our individual life, for Community when we have provided truly for Individuality. We cannot reverse this order; for to reverse it would be to merge the Individual in the Community, the Community in the Infinite, from which it proceeded, and to render all as if nothing had been. The Infinite lives in the kind, the kind in the individual, not the individual in the kind, and the kind in the Infinite. To reverse it, to seek the development and growth of the Communal in the Communal, would be therefore to seek life in death, or to live by the destruction of the conditions of life. The BEING of the individual is in the kind, and that of the kind is in God; but the LIFE, regarded as manifestation of being, is in the reverse order. The higher lives in the lower, the primitive in the secondary, unity in diversity. Therefore, the social arrangements must all be so contrived as to realize Community in Individuality. The Individual being the condition of the life of the Communal, must be always viewed, preserved, and provided for, as that condition, and then we may have society without losing individuality, authority without sacrificing freedom, |