Page:Philosophical Review Volume 4.djvu/18

2 separated from the other parts. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of thee," since the eye, when severed from the other members of the body, ceases to subserve its natural purpose. A singularly well-marked notion of society is obtained when individuals are regarded as members of a social organism, and are hence seen to realize their true being only through the intimate union of each with all the rest.

But this clearly marked notion is hardly an achievement of modern thought. Readers of Plato are familiar with his comparison of the citizens of his ideal state to the parts of a statue. "Now if some one came up to us," says the Platonic Socrates, "while we were painting statues, and blamed us for not putting the most beautiful colors on the most beautiful parts of the body, saying that the eyes, being the most beautiful part, should be not black but purple, we should think it a sufficient defense to reply, 'Pray, sir, do not suppose that we ought to make the eye so beautiful as not to look like an eye, ... but observe whether, by giving to every part what properly belongs to it, we make the whole beautiful.'" Only, it must be said of Plato that he compares the parts of a statue to classes of citizens, not to individuals; and that a part of a statue is not quite the same as a member of an organism. Aristotle, also, has a strong sense of the incompleteness of the individual disjoined from his fellows. In a well-thumbed sentence he maintains that man is a political animal, an animal, that is to say, distinguished from all other animals by virtue of its being his nature to live in a state. Indeed, in Aristotle's view the social side of our being is more natural, i.e., a higher expression of our true being, than breathing or sleep; and it is more absurd to become a hermit than to commit suicide. Yet even he can only in a general way be said to regard society as an organism. St. Paul, too, spoke of the early believers as members one of another, and said that when one member suffers the other members suffer with it. In the new Christian church the separation of its members into prophets, ministers, exhorters, etc., odd as the classification now seems, rests upon