The Will to Doubt

the social, the vital and the formal, or instrumental, are always dangerous

e of the very things to which they apply, since opposition, as must be remembered, is always a most effective mixer, and therefore they can only punct

also to our general purpose. It was said that society was nothing alien, or additional, to the nature of the individual, that a basis for society lay in the very nature of experience, that so long as man was divided against himself and the labour of life and reality was necessarily a divided labour, the case both for society and for personal interest in society was clear and conclusive; b

ogy or the other has had a good deal of fascination, not to say intellectual inspiration, for thinking men ever since. Yet, so far as I am aware, at least one of the implications of the ide

und the parts of the individual soul analogous to the vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms of nature, and either of these analogies is simple enough and reasonable enough to be formally understood, if not at once wholly appreciated,

ic depend on mere technical acquaintance with given sets of facts. Thus, in these enlightened days, to say nothing of Plato's time or Aristotle's, how can the true part of anything ever dare not to have an analogy, even a "part-for-part" or "one-to-one" correspondence to the whole in which it is comprised? And-this being, as in due time will appear, quite as important-how can a whole, be it society or nature or anything else, ever have parts without having also, actually or potentially, parts within its parts? In fact, given any divided whole, and the division, however far it may be carried, will always involve at least these three typical factors: (1) The individual as the part still undivided, though at the same time necessarily inwardly alive with the self-same differential operation to which it has owed its origin; (2) the group-part or class, which for the convenience

nsequence the faction is, not indeed absolutely, but characteristically special or particularistic. Perhaps because of its intermediate position between the individual, which is the whole implicitly and potentially, and the completely inclusive environment, which is the whole actually and definitely or explicitly, it is, so to speak, significantly only one among many, instead of being, as in the case of each of the extremes, many in one. It conspicuously appropriates a particular character, and while not excluding any of the other characters which are incident to its own special production, it includes these on the whole only in a negative way, in the way in which opposition includes what opposes it or action the reaction it always implies or in general any different thing the thing or things from which it is different. The extremes, however, as was said, are each "many in one," though in different ways. The individual, being still only potentially divided and being, as it were, the latest residence of the primary operation, is always in some measure directly and positively active with all the different f

e manifold states and activities, stages and events, however different, however seemingly contradictory, in human life. A real unity, as we know, being denied local habitation and a name, is necessarily a thoroughly differential unity; and human nature is analyzable in an indefinite number of ways. It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, intellectual, moral, ?sthetic, and religious, and in its social life has developed institutions answering to these different phases of itself. It is, again, lawful and lawless, old and young, conservative and rad

ach and all of these without the restraints of such visible forms or rites as now and again may become instrumental to their expression. Hence the familiar idea of the universality, which is identical with the indeterminate character, of any side of human nature; of the political side, for example, or the religious or the physiological, of the lawful or of the lawless. Not any particular political status, nor any particular religion, nor any particular body is universal, but the political or the religious or the phy

he person in his peculiar character is general or all-inclusive with reference to the unity of experience, the factional life is special, particular, or partial; it is one-sided and outwardly exclusive. Sociologically as well as logically factional differences are, as has been suggested, wider and sharper than individual or personal differences. Per

hus, logically and sociologically factional differences are not merely wider and deeper; just because more definitely set, they also imply higher development. Factional life may be special, but through the strength that union gives and the power and efficiency that spring from repetition and imitation, it attains a high degree of skill and insight. Again, factional life, like that of corporations, lacks soul; it tends to become formal and mechanical and in the sense that this indicates it is static. Hence its instrumental character. Between individual and class there is a difference ver

y involve some unavoidable abstraction, and so some limitation of the view; nevertheless the view is as real and significant at least as the conditions upon which it rests. Even though persons may be differentiated from each other in an indefinite number of ways, no two being personal, materially, in the same way, no two having the same factional restraints, still the relation of whole to part, subject only to the distinctions of development and of dynamic or static character, remains significantly the typical relation of the person to the class. The person may be only a part of the class, as parts are merely counted, but in interest and possibility, in the fullest reach of his vitality, the person is larger than the class. And, if this be the typical relation, then not only is the story of the person seen to be inseparable from that of the class, but also t

of its development to all sides of the nature that is within him. Out of the depth and breadth of his personal character, bounded only by the unity of experience, he must ever react against the narrowness and the factional ritual, and taking this ritual-or special professional techniq

and the whole. No two parts, it is true, can be literal, prosaic reproductions of each other, but metaphors of each other all parts are bound to be, and any part and the whole must also have this relation of the metaphor, so that any acquired, more or less highly developed power of thought or action, however special and however technical, may and must have meaning throughout the whole life of the person or of humanity. Accordingly, with the acquired

bably their undertaking has been inspired by the extravagant views sometimes entertained, as when money-getting is supposed to educate people to an appreciation of music and art, or a ready memory for one class of things to imply the same facility in acquiring a memory of another class of things, or skill in the use of tools to make a good dentist, or physical self-control or intellectual sincerity to ensure moral truthfulness. Whereas, if it could be remembered that no special training could ever be literally applicable beyond the par

e developed side of life flashes its message, more spiritual than literal, to another side or the other side of life, plainly can require nothing unnatural. It exacts only that all the different elements of our nature and experience, whether as personally or as factionally manifested, shall be forever true to their origin. The apparent obstacles to translation certainly cannot be obstacles on the ground of the analogies of the va

tion and repetition, but personality through invention under guidance of the flashing analogies. Invention, too, the application of special development beyond the sphere of its origin, is only the psychological term for what sociologically is leadership. In the theory and in the practice of art, morals, religion, politics, science, and all the other special sides of experience, the factional and the personal are ever to be distinguished in this way-the one imitative, the other inventive. Witness the familiar antitheses between the typical and the vital in art-expression, the formally ideal and the rea

place and moreover takes a part that just because of his essential superiority to the definite and formal is of the greatest moment to our conclusions as to the nature of all positive experience. All positive, formal experience we found defective even to the extent of paradox or contradiction, but personality, characteristically, must be superior to this defect. Personality must bridge all the divisions of experience, all the gaps in society, all the chasms of history. It must be, though perhaps one may not safely use the word, the very incarnation

me." Personally the soldiers in opposite camps exchange many courtesies, but factionally, professionally, they meet with rifle and sword on the battlefield. The father punishing his offending child says: "This hurts me more than you." And, in general, personally there are no divisions of life-all are all things to

doubt as close to each other, as inseparable, as whole and part, as person and class, and with this conclusion we seem to have won for the doubter the right to say confidently: "My doubts cannot destroy me; I am; even in me there dwells

nd adaptation, were published some time ago. See an article, "The Personal and the Factional in S

p. Iv.,