In the first place it seems clear that it is improper to speak of the opinions of aggregates of men, as we comprehend them, as a 'social consciousness' as our extreme sociologists are wont to do. If such a social consciousness exists, our thoughts are elements of it, in very much the same sense that our sensations are elements in our individual consciousnesses. As our individual sensations do not, and as no mere massing of such sensations could, make our consciousnesses what they are; so the mere massing, so to speak, of the thoughts of men can not make a social consciousness. If it exist, it must be something beyond our ken; something that we, as parts of it, can no more expect to grasp than we could expect our sensations to grasp the nature of our consciousness as a whole.
If there be a social consciousness of sufficiently high grade corresponding in general form to our individual consciousness, it may know our thoughts, much as we appreciate the existence of our own sensations and their elementary qualities; and it may have means of expression that are effective for other consciousnesses of its own order; but we as elements of this wider consciousness can surely not be able to grasp even dimly the intimate nature of that higher consciousness which, if it exist, must be determined by the pulse of thought of many interrelated individual consciousnesses. What sociologists are often tempted to speak of as the 'social consciousness' should therefore properly be spoken of merely as the related consciousnesses of the individuals composing social groups.
In all that has preceded this we have given our attention solely to the study of animal and vegetable life, and have left entirely unconsidered the possibility of the existence of anything of a psychic nature in correspondence with inorganic matter.
But, if we allow ourselves to consider such a view as that presented above, we are led further to surmise, as many thinkers have already done, that not merely such transfers of energy as occur in protoplasmic matter may involve correspondent psychic effects, but that all transfers of energy, whether in living or non-living bodies, may involve correspondent psychic effects, even though they be of a nature which we can but little comprehend.
This view which Paulsen[1] refers back to Plato and Aristotle, and traces in the thought of Spinoza and Leibnitz, Schelling and Schopenhauer and Lotze, and which was so clearly stated by Fechner, is in line with the ever-diminishing distinction between organic and nonorganic bodies with which the scientist is making us so familiar. It is a view which has been considered by the large body of conservative thinkers in the past as exceedingly imaginative, and not one to
- ↑ 'Einleitung in die Philosophic' p. 97.
