Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/200

 188 atoms, a new substance that is essentially a unity derived through union. To disregard the promptings and needs of this social part of the personality is to invite intellectual and moral death, whose earliest symptoms are sin and abnormality of all sorts. Just as the complete life of the individual depends upon the union of the soul and body, does the normal life of the personality demand a similar union with other personalities. The failure of theology to emphasize this fact is the outcome of a psychology that has been so much concerned with the deliverances of a single consciousness as to slight evidences of social psychical forces.

In the time of Jesus men recognized more or less distinctly the need of establishing a social unity if right living was to be attained—even when their knowledge had little effect upon social institutions. "Man," says Philo, "is a social animal by nature. Therefore he must live not only by himself, but for parents, brothers, wife, children, relatives and friends, for the members of his deme and of his tribe, for his country, for his race, for all mankind. Nay, he must live for the parts of the whole, and also for the entire world, and much more for the Father and the Creator. If he is, indeed, possessed of reason, he must be sociable, he must love the world and God, that of God he may be beloved."

The corresponding position of Jesus, though not expressed so minutely, is quite as distinct, and is far more fundamental to his philosophy. Men's capacity for union renders attainable the purpose of his teaching and his life. It is deep in the ideal which he sets before mankind.

IV. Nowhere does this conception of the necessity of union more predominate than in those teachings that are the most characteristic of the mind of Jesus and which are the most valuable and resultful of all times—the ideal relations that may exist