Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/211

No. 2. influence which has transformed animal into human society is that function of imagination which may be called ejective consciousness, the ability not merely to feel for others, or to feel as we think others feel, but to feel with accurate insight as others really do feel. The transformation occurs on a far deeper level than that of the adaptation of means to ends, or even that of the construction of general principles through the power of abstraction.

Dr. McIver's book is a philosophical refreshment. It is a long refreshment, but a refreshment nevertheless. To be sure, there are elements which a sociologist would doubtless like to have seen added to the feast and which would not have been without benefit to the philosopher: a more evident hospitality to inductive researches in social organization and experiment, particularly to that most significant type of modern social research, the social survey; a more constant sense of the phylogenetic aspects of social life; a keener feeling for the more recent developments in normal and abnormal psychology; a greater attention to economic influences. One has the feeling that Dr. Mclver is a penetrating thinker who is unfortunately too exclusively a thinker. He has in him, in other words, a shade too much of the speculative bias of the neo-Hegelians whom he abominates, but with whom, apparently, he has lived overlong. But a feast is a feast; and in these days when meatless meals are rather the rule than otherwise in sociological ventures, so rich a diet is to be received with thankful acclaim.

Dr. McIver is strong where his strength will be most appreciated by the schools of philosophy and political science that are coming increasingly into favor. He disposes effectively of the long-regnant Hegelian view that the State is the limit of community and that all other associations are but elements of the State. Such a view, he shows, is contradicted not only by the whole evolution of the modern state, but by the obvious fact of associations of interests that overleap state boundaries. 'Community,' in short, is the larger order; the State is but a peculiarly authoritative association within it. "Community, therefore, and not the State, is the 'world the Spirit has made for itself.' 'The Spirit' does not isolate itself in States, as Hegel's account assumes. The growth of civilization means the growth of