Page:Philosophical Review Volume 24.djvu/248

232. When the horde was constituted into a tribe, various social activities of a brutal nature appeared. The pains inflicted by barbarous rites repressed the merely biological elements and stimulated the conscious ones in the primitive nature.

The factor which changed the horde into the rudimentary society, so that the compulsions of religion could begin their work, was the conquest of others so as to enslave them. This is the ultimate cause of psychical superiority, and it involves at the same time the germs of political, economic and juridical organization. Wars and the economic activities of the tribe, supplemented later by religion, were the agencies that by their pains and interdictions developed man's conscious life, for consciousness is the state of convalescence from pain. The complicating results of war, industry, and religion, with their throbs of pain and succeeding quiet, produce the mind. Self-consciousness arises from the opposition of others to the individual. Thus the human personality is explained as a product of collective life. Attention and the train of ideas are explainable as results of conscious states impressed by social agencies. Both attention and so-called 'association' are results of the mechanical operation of strong and weak states. Variety and wide social relatonsrelations [sic] are essential to higher life. Personality will be complete when the life of humanity permeates every individual in a universal society. On the physiological side, the brain is the record of man's social life, but the mental acquisitions of the race are not transmitted by physiological heredity. They have to be 'inscribed' on each generation by education. Yet there is a strict parallelism between physiological and mental phenomena in the brain. The reflexes of the brain are kept active directly by excitations from the organism, and indirectly by social influences, such as war and industry.

There is no doubt that we depend upon the senses to furnish us information which is the basis of judgment, as for instance, in measuring. But since sensation is individual, how can it give us information that is acknowledged to be identical for all men? We find that sense can give us no information unless we put a question to nature. The ideas that enable us to put questions, it will be found, are derived from intercourse with our fellows. They enable us to give a judgment valid for all, because they are concerted questions. Truth is thus primarily a concept of intercourse, which is later extended to individual investigations. With the concepts and ideas acquired by intercourse, the mind is able to assimilate the new impressions and instances that arise in the course of experience. Since sensations are always individual, we may also inquire into the reasons for our belief in external independent reality. We find a compelled concurrence as regards certain of the information furnished by the senses. This concurrence is recognized only through intercourse, which thus gives us our most elementary knowledge. The reasoning is evidently from sense, as effect, to external reality, as cause. Causation is not invariable