The vital impulse breaks up into its component tendencies, as the sky-rocket breaks from the shock of the explosion and the resistance of the atmosphere. Such a theory in the end means absolute atomism. For us creative evolution means creative synthesisgifts which the universe contributes under certain conditions, over and above the finite parts which our selective interest has separated out. Souls are contributed by the creative energy of the universe in accordance with the complexity of the conditions, physiological and social. To the reality of these social souls we must now address ourselves.

PROOFS OF SOCIAL MINDS

In social compounds as in physical, we must proceed pragmatically. We must ask: What difference does it make that we figure in various social situations? Can we take men as the same in their separate capacity and in their social capacity? Is the social group but a collection of individuals with their individual traits? Or must we recognize a new unity, with its own unique properties? Our intuition somehow indicates that there is a difference between mere individuals, or mere aggregates of individuals, and the way we feel and act when swayed by a common interest. It makes a fundamental difference to us and to the spectator that we are parts of the social situation.

In the pragmatic testing of this social intuition, I propose two methods of approach-the psychological analysis of the conditions and characteristics of the social situation, on the one hand, and the practical evaluation of these situations, on the other. Let us first glance briefly at the psychological side.

In order to have a social situation, there must, in the first place, be the consciousness of another person or persons. Mere continuity with natural energies-the sky, the sea, the landscapeis not, for our practical and finite purposes at any rate, a social situation. We cannot agree that all situations are social, however much their significance for us is interwoven with our social experiThe other person, however, need not be bodily present. The other mind may be present in a poem, a book of science, a symphony, or a report flashed across the wires. We often become more absorbed in a book than we do in most conversations. In the

ence.

second place, there must be the consciousness of a common object or impulse. People may be conscious of each other's presence only in order to dodge each other, like so many automata, on the busy avenue. But let an accident happen on the street-the runningover of a child by an automobile-and we have a common object attracting our attention. Even so, however, if I am too busy, trying to catch a train, to stop with the others, I am no part of the social situation. It takes time for the human continuity to be felt, and there must be abandon to the interest or suggestion. Even bodily space-proximity and time-proximity may be dispensed with if there is the sustained abandon to a common interest. In a great international catastrophe, such as the shipwreck of the "Titanic," largely separated portions of humanity become a genuine and intense part of a social mind.

Mere intersubjective continuity is not sufficient to constitute a social mind. For this more than an intuitive sense of presence of other minds is required. The sense of presence may be negative as well as positive. It may mean a stimulus to fight or flight instead of to co-operation. In order to have a social mind there must be a sense of reciprocal or sympathetic response to the situation. On the lower levels this means the abandon to a common impulse, on the higher levels it means the leading of a common purpose. Without this consciousness of a common conative direction, the social continuum, as the particular stream of consciousness, fails to be an individual.

It would seem that social minds must be real if they possess characteristics analogous to those of particular minds. One of the most important of these characteristics is fusion. Social situations present a case similar to the fusion of elementary states within the particular mind; and while the greater complexity makes analysis more difficult, the laws of fusion seem to be the same: Take, for example, the clang in music. This we all recognize as one unique individual; and it is only with practice that we learn to discriminate some of the tonal qualities within the whole. In these fusions we have to take into account the quality of the components, the intensity of the components, and the number of the components. This we must do also in social fusion. But in each

case, while we can discriminate complexity within the fusion, the whole is one unique individual; and the qualities which we discriminate within the situation owe their character in part to the fusion. While we can identify them, they are not a mere repetition of the qualities in their separateness. The social fusion seems as much a new unity as the individual state of consciousness. We must be pragmatic. If the facts indicate such social fusion, we must acknowledge it. We may not understand the how of it--the spatial and other metaphysical conditions of this continuity. But we must remember that we have the same problem in regard to physical interaction. Spatial continuity has not been proved for any energetic interaction. Atoms or electrons are not absolutely contiguous. An absolutely continuous and fluid ether is indistinguishable from empty space. A rigid ether is only another name for a dynamic field. Somehow, in the situation of sympathetic abandon, fruitful as love's embrace, there is created a new soul-an interindividual mind, which, once it is born, is more than, or at any rate different from, the factors which are its antecedents and which blend into it.

Instead of taking as our illustration a specific type of elementary state, we might have taken the individual mind as such, which may be considered as a fusion of various fields, bound up with different neural substrates. In the various pathological cases of divided selves we see what happens when there is functional or organic disconnectedness of centers. The continuum of the individual mind offers the same problems as we find in intersubjective continuity. It is just as great a mystery that part-minds within the individual organism can fuse into one as that these individuals. can become part-minds within the larger social situation. In each case the part-minds must overflow, and ride over, intervening processes. In each case the part-mind must be more than itself in order to function within a common unity. The fact that the fusion is more constant and intense within the individual mind is a matter of degree, not of difference in kind. What the pathological cases bring out is that normally the so-called individual self is in reality a colony of selves, an integration of systems of tendencies, fusing more or less into a common field and to a greater or less extent dominated by a common purpose.

If we now take account of the individual components of the fusion, we find in social fusions as in those of the particular consciousness that the quality of the components makes a difference. You get a different result in a French fusion from what you get in an Anglo-Saxon fusion; in a feminine fusion from a masculine fusion, given a similar situation. A ladies' tea-party is different from a men's smoker, though each may discuss the same subject. Race and sex seem to furnish different overtones, even as different clangs bring a different character to the compound musical result. Different individuals too bring a different quality to the combined result. This is true particularly in deliberative groups, where the individual give-and-take is more prominent in the situation.

Further, we must take account of the intensity of the factors in the fusion. In the simple musical clang, the fundamental by its greater intensity gives the key to the new individual unity. In the case of social fusions, too, there is generally some one element that furnishes the character to the whole; some volitional factor by its strength of affirmation, its faith in the issue, counts for more than the other confluent factors and gives the key to the whole. This dominant factor we call the leader of the situation. When his will overshadows the other factors, when he attracts a large number to himself and sways them for a sustained period, when he furnishes the enthusiasm which makes the others willing to follow blindly for weal or woe and to the extent of any personal sacrifice, we may call the leader a superman. It is not the quality of the will that makes the superman, but the intensity of his affirmation. The superman, like Napoleon, has often been madly selfish. He may employ widely different means: he may use striking metaphors; he may argue; he may dogmatically repeat; he may simply hurl his emotional weight against the future. In any case it is his dominant will that wins. Whatever means he uses-bullying or argument or sympathetic suggestion-he somehow possesses the mystic power of making solvent the other wills in the situation.

The social fusion, however, like the compound clang may be too complex for this single dominance. In a deliberative assembly, such as our Continental Congress or Constitutional Assembly, a group of minds may combine on the basis of abstract principles to mold the whole into unity with themselves.

In social, as in tonal fusion, the number of components must be taken into account. A certain social fusion of an intimate kind takes place when two sympathetic souls meet in friendship or love. Such a fusion is impossible with additional individual factors, however congenial otherwise. Three make a different crowd. On the other hand, when the appeal is to certain fundamental instincts, such as pugnacity, anger, emulation, or pity, and where the overtones of human nature, instead of fusing, are inhibited, the release becomes only more effective, the abandon and fusion greater, the volume of feeling larger for the larger number that participates. The city baseball crowd, grown enthusiastic over its side or indignant at the umpire, all the more completely forgets itself for the immensity of the number that touch elbows; the solemnity and suggestion of the religious occasion only gathers impetus and devotion from the number of those similarly bent. The fundamental tendency here, so strong and so invariant in quality, more than grows by addition of separate wills. The latent energy of each is released by the presence of the other in increasing ratio with the confluence of the tendencies in the common sea of interest. The fundamental is not a limited quantity in such cases, as it is in music. The result is more than the fusion of a vast number of identical or similar pre-existent tones.

Finally, in order to understand the social fusion we must take account of the dominant interest, the ruling passion or set of the group. Leader and led alike are part of this passion. It may be the illusion of military power and glory as in the Napoleonic age; it may be a religious passion as in the case of the Crusades; it may be a sense of outraged justice as in the case of the Declaration of Independence. But in any case the leader as well as the led are held in the dynamic circuit of one field of interest. They are swayed by the same fundamental emotion, tapped by the same situation. If the crowd is the victim of an illusion, so is the leader and with far greater abandon. It is the fact that he liberates this fundamental sentiment, that he voices the passion or rationality of the group, that makes him a leader. The strongest individual affirmation, even with divine inspiration, is dashed aside for the time being, when it runs counter to this dominant tendency.