life to that form of control which exists; on the contrary, it is due to the absence of all such rational reflection and a lack of the very conception of a possible criticism.

In practical affairs the savage moves inertly within the circle of taboos which his religion has formulated for him, prescribing the whole routine of his daily life. He neither seeks to improve nor varies from the order which it imposes; for any infraction involves him and the group in potential disaster. Crime and its expiation are tribal affairs, for the conception of the individual as a moral subject has not yet been formed. Philosophy, of course, is lacking if individual reflection be non-existent, the sole metaphysical conceptions which the savage possesses being found in the myths which successive generations repeat. That whole system of attitudes upon which the consciousness of individual existence rests is thus practically lacking in the lowest forms of human culture. In that status, if anywhere, life may be described in terms of communal existence, and the idea of an isolable individual experience be neglected.

Thus at the one end of the scale is a form of human life in which the communal element is at its maximum and the individual element negligible, and at the other a form in which individual consciousness and its system of ideals is never lost to sight, even when action is directed to communal ends as such. The continuity of ideal consciousness in the individual is the most distinctive trait in the highest forms of human society.

Must we therefore say that social evolution has tended to loosen the bonds which unite the individual to his fellows, either by the disintegration of those alliances which social existence involves, or by destroying the conception of society as the logical basis upon which such individual life rests? Clearly not; neither theoretically nor practically has the progress of civilization tended to disintegration. Every differentiation in the internal structure of society has brought its members into close functional relations with one another, and every advance in critical reflection has made more clear the essentially social basis of individual activity. These two elements, instead of being opposed and contrastable, are correlative and mutually supplementary. The internal manifoldness of indi

vidual experience reflects the complexity of reality as it exists for the society to which the individual belongs.

The system of objects with which anyone concerns himself is not created by him; it is a social product which is enriched generation by generation and constitutes the spiritual inheritance of each individual born to the culture in question. To each such individual it affords a system of specific stimulations, which both provokes and directs his psychical activity at every moment. The richness or inner complexity of individual experience can thus never be logically separated from the objective form of human society in which the life is cast.

In practical relations the same integrity between individual and society is found, and the successive stages of a social evolution present an increasing range in the points of contact and a growing interdependence among its members. Such development has had this single result, that in differentiating individuals and classes it has rendered each man the more helpless and dependent the more it has refined and improved his contribution to the sum of human activities. Specialization means imperfection socially as well as biologically, if by perfection we mean the capacity to perform all those elementary functions necessary to the continuance of the life of the individual. In a specialized society each person lives by virtue of the whole system of contributions made in common by the members of that society, each element of which is necessary to the maintenance of the individual life in question.

In this process of evolution every advance serves to render clearer the essential relations of individual and society, as well as to define the instrumental significance of organization. Final worth is to be found only in the values of personal experience. The reality to be considered is always the lives of individual men. Forms of association and social order at large are but means of making these lives more worth living. Since ultimate value is to be found in the individual consciousness alone each phase of social differentiation and control is to be judged by its effect upon the persons subjected to its influence. Whether the institution be economic or political, whether it primarily affect individual or communal life, whether it have or lack an obvious physical basis,

its justification must be sought in the service rendered to those who live under it.

It is the mark of a barbaric culture to attribute an absolute worth to the forms of social organization or their products. The separation of human institutions from the life of a people is the beginning of decadence and slavery when it appears among those who have already transcended the stage of barbarism. That this holds of economic life and the system of materials connected with it will perhaps not be questioned. It is not so readily recognized that truth and morality, loyalty and obedience have no meaning apart from the service they render to human life; and that it is their high functional value alone which has given them the authoritative position they hold in human estimation.

The relation between individual and society may therefore be stated by saying that social organization and social service form the logical basis of individual welfare. The prosperity of each citizen rests upon a well-organized communal life; and in order that each may thus prosper it is essential that everyone fulfil the requirements which mutual assistance and a common existence impose, whether such requirement touch the productive specialty for which the individual has been technically prepared, or the system of regulations which is made necessary by a life in common contact. That common life, therefore, must be made complex and intense as well as unitary and dominant if the ideal conditions of personal development are to be secured. If there is to be a rich and stimulating individual existence it must be sustained by a manifold social culture. The maintenance of continuity in human institutions is simply our means of conserving individual contributions to this culture and thus enriching the system of ideal stimulations for each succeeding generation. Society therefore realizes its logical end, not by the suppression of individuality, but by the fullest possible fostering of its development.

When the equilibrium of these two components is disturbed, collision results; and while it is merely a question of circumstances whether, in any given case, individuality shall be sacrificed or the state destroyed, the issue, in either event, is immediate disaster. In periods of stress human societies have again and again

been so obsessed by the need to preserve their corporate existence at all hazards that individual variations have been suppressed and the very roots of progress torn up. Public discussion, the foundation of every free state, has been prohibited, heretics have been persecuted, classes denied their political rights, and acts of conformity or of exclusion passed, lest individual criticism or initiative should subvert public order and undermine the foundations of social existence.

But those very institutions in defense of which such reactionary measures were taken owed not only their specific forms but their existence itself to the ideal striving of men like those later proscribed. The saints whom we canonize were rebels when they lived. All such measures looking to uniformity are counsels of despair. Inner differentiation is the measure of a society's evolution. That human group or institution, therefore, is highest in the scale which combines the greatest range of free individualities in an essential community, which avails itself of the contribution of every social class and interest, of all faiths and philosophies, and of each sex and age and individual gift in the solution of its theoretical problems or the realization of its practical undertakings. Society and the individual are poles of a common field, and we attempt intellectual suicide as well as invite disaster in the sphere of conduct when we sunder them.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DRINK

JOSEPH HENRY CROOKER

Secretary of the Unitarian Temperance Society

The attentive reader of Homer is keenly impressed with the deep religiousness of the author and the people whom he describes. He represents gods and men as intimately associated in a common life. The divine beings watch the earth inhabitants with great solicitude, keeping near them to bless or to punish. What we call natural phenomena, plastic to the touch of celestial wills, were constantly shaped to foster or injure the life of man. The gods had favorites whom they protected, while there were others whom they chastised.

On the other hand, all human beings felt the immediate presence of the gods. They could say with a conviction seldom found today: In them we live, move, and have our being. The consciousness of divine protection and guidance, with impending punishment of disobedience, was clear and constant. In it were found the sanctions of morality, the sources of heroism, the springs of daily conduct.

This ancient belief in the close association of gods and men in a common life found, however, expression in many actions which seem to us both irrational and irreligious. Of these, the most foreign to modern ideas was the elaborate system of sacrifice. Slaughtered animals were burned with painstaking ceremonials upon innumerable altars, which were regarded as the most sacred meeting places between man and his god. Then the divine presence was most immediate and awful. Oaths there uttered and contracts there made were supremely binding, having the invisible but powerful deity as witness, who would act as avenger in case of neglect.

These offerings were far more than mere presents to win the favor of a heavenly being, as the subject by gifts seeks to secure the friendship of an earthly despot. Nor were they prompted