Cohesion

“ Here, it may be said, we have an item of absolute truth within the texture of a science. And if the chief aim of science is the discovery and establishment of 'Laws of Nature', what are these but typical examples of the inseparable, reciprocal cohesion of two different elements, each of which finds its inevitable complement in the other? The 'Law', or the 'immediate' necessary cohesion, is discovered indeed and established by a process of mediation. But, once established, it can be lifted in thought clear of any context, and is thus apprehended as a self-contained item of absolute truth. ”

“ THE attraction of cohesion is one of the mightiest and most active forces in nature. It went towards the formation out of molecules of the terrestrial globe, it acts in the accumulation of large fortunes in the hands of millionaires, and it draws together great masses of human beings to one spot. Even when the heat of summer and the dispersion of schools scatter them to the north and south, east and west, out of cities, they draw together and coagulate in knots. But why one of these centres of concentration should be Vals and not Aubenas is to me a puzzle. ”

“ The friendship and sympathy that knit heart to heart are a force like the attraction of cohesion, by which the sandy particles became the solid rock. If this law of attraction or cohesion were taken away, the material worlds and suns would dissolve in an instant into thin invisible vapor. ”

“ The cohesion, which is a condition of effective nationality, is endangered by such a contradiction, and as long as it exists the different elements composing American society will be pulling apart rather than together. ”

“ What through the coercion of mere circumstances—what through the entreaties of wife and children, co-operating with such circumstances—or sometimes through weakness of nature, or through relenting of compunction—it is not to be doubted that, as the cohesion of party begins rapidly to relax under approaching ruin, there will be confessions in abundance. ”

“ The unity of the ego, in a psychological sense, is, therefore, the cohesion, during a given time, of a certain number of clear states of consciousness, accompanied by others less clear, and by a multitude of physiological states which, without being accompanied by consciousness like the others, yet operate as much as, and even more than, the former. ”

“ Different bodies possess different powers of cohesion, e.g., the cohesion of chalk is far less than that of flint embedded in it; even the same body possesses different powers of cohesion in different directions, e.g., it is easier to split wood in the direction of the fibres than perpendicular to them. If by our old principle of continuity we change the words ‘bodies’ into ‘States’ or ‘individuals,’ we shall see that the same laws hold good in social science as in natural philosophy. ”

“ Small aggregates only can hold together while the cohesion is feeble, and successively larger aggregates become possible only as the greater strains implied are met by that greater cohesion which results from an adapted human nature, and a resulting development of social organization. ”

“ While the extent to which social integration can in each case be carried depends in part on these conditions, it also depends in part upon the degree of likeness among the units. At first, while the nature is so little molded to social life that cohesion is small, aggregation is largely dependent on ties of blood, implying great degrees of likeness. ”

“ Effective association began to demand, that is, a new adjustment among the individual and class interests, traditions, and convictions which constituted the substance of any particular state; and such an adjustment could be secured only by an adequate machinery of consultation and discussion. Cohesion could no longer be imposed upon a people, because they no longer had any sufficient reason to submit to the discipline of such an imposition. ”

“ There is no one in the world who does not exercise some influence for good or for evil upon his fellows.
The force of cohesion is manifest in society as in nature, that force, I mean, [79] which resists the separation of a body’s particles. ”

“ Abolish the gaoler and the hangman and your criminal law becomes empty words. Moreover, the congeniality of this statement to the individualist point of view is obvious. Consider men as a multitude of independent units, and the problem occurs, How can they be bound into wholes? What must be the principle of cohesion? Obviously some motive must be supplied which will operate upon all men alike. ”

“ Coöperation, when it is free and spontaneous and on a basis of congeniality, is the foundation of all social life and progress, but forced cohesion can do little good. The average family is about as well mated as any similar group would be, picked out at random from society. ”

“ Recognizing the fact that if we are fully to understand the higher forms of the family we must trace them up from those lowest forms accompanying the lowest social state, we saw how, in a small separated group of persons old and young, held together by some kinship, there was, under the circumstances of pastoral life, an establishing of male descent, an increasing of cohesion, of subordination, of coöperation, industrial and defensive ”

“ FOUR is the number of struggle and of strength exerted. COHESION, as we said, leads to STRENGTH.
—x—In this life the Enumerator learns HOW to gain strength by making his plans hang together around one idea, in other words by exerting the Principle of COHESION, the binding together. The Enumerator knows that no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself, therefore the real strength of any plan is in working WITH those who will effect that plan. To bind together by the bonds of love and of mutual interest, which is the strongest COHESION.
CANCER SUB-LUMA--Sign No. ”

“ As social integration advances, the increasing aggregates exercise increasing restraints over their units—a truth which is the obverse of the one just set forth, that the maintenance of its integrity by a larger aggregate implies greater cohesion. ”

“ We note a prevalent tendency to divide into distinct and separate groups. As a body, it no sooner lost the force of cohesion and union induced by the progress and rush of conquest, than it immediately began to be scattered and disintegrated. ”

“ That exploded with a loud noise when it was lighted, but this will burn quite noiselessly—it is called hydrogen; and the other we call oxygen—that gas which so beautifully brightens up all combustion, but does not burn of itself. So now we see that water consists of two kinds of particles attracting each other in a very different manner to the attraction of gravitation or cohesion; and this new attraction we call chemical affinity, or the force of chemical action between different bodies. ”

“ There is real order in the universe: In the physical universe do we not experience a real subordination of effects to causes, a real adaptation of means to ends? And in the moral universe is not this still more apparent? The domestic society, the family, is not merely an aggregate of individuals any one of whom we may designate indiscriminately husband or wife, father or mother, brother or sister. These relations of order are real; they are obviously not the product of our thought, not produced by it, but only discovered, apprehended by it. ”

“ Or, again, is each person's own conscious experience of himself as one being, of his own unity, and of his distinctness from other persons, a sufficient index that the distinction between person and person is a real distinction?—or are we to take it that because his feeling of his individual unity through sense consciousness must be interpreted by the thought-concepts of “one”—“individual”—“person”—“distinct” from “others,” these concepts do not truly express what is really given him to interpret? ”

“ Hence order has been defined as unity in variety: unitas in varietate; variety being the material cause, and unity the formal cause, of order. But we can apprehend unity in a variety of things only on condition that they are arranged, i.e. that they show forth clearly to the mind a set of mutual relations which can be easily grasped. Why is it that things mutually related to one another in one way make up what we declare to be a chaotic jumble, while if related in another way we declare them to be orderly? ”

“ Impossibile est quod unius rei non sit unum esse;261 that by this one existence the concrete, composite essence of the substance, as affected and determined by its accidents, is actualized. They contend that if each of the principles, whether substantial or accidental, of a concrete individual being had its own existence, their union, no matter how intimate, could not form a natural unitary being, an individual, but only an aggregate of such beings. ”

“ Substance, whether as the foundation of attributes, or as genus and species, implies the predication of co-inherence, which is one mode of Co-existence. Quantity is predicated as equality (or inequality) a mode of Likeness; and the other mode of Likeness is involved in the predication of Quality. Relation, indeed, is the abstract of all predication, and ought not to appear in a list along with special forms of itself. 'Where' is position, or Co-existence in space; and 'When' is position in time, or Succession. Action and Passion are the most interesting aspect of Causation. ”

“ The division or distinction of an object of thought from whatever is not itself is what constitutes the notion of otherness.134
It is manifest that being and unity are really identical, that when we think of being we think of what is really undivided in itself, that once we introduce dividedness into the object of our concept we are no longer thinking of being but of beings, i.e. of a multitude or plurality each member of which is a being and one. For being, as an object of thought, is either simple or composite. ”

“ But when life is diverse, thought is so likewise, and the mind must achieve the higher synthesis, or suffer that sense of division which is its peculiar pain. In short, the question of suggestion and choice is only another view of the question of uniformity and complexity in social relations.
Will, or choice, like all phases of mental life, may be looked at either in a particular or a general aspect; and we have, accordingly, individual will or social will, depending upon our point of view, as to whether we regard the activity singly or in a mass. ”

“ Here as everywhere in the study of society we must learn to see mankind in psychical wholes, rather than in artificial separation. We must see and feel the communal life of family and local groups as immediate facts, not as combinations of something else. And perhaps we shall do this best by recalling our own experience and extending it through sympathetic observation. What, in our life, is the family and the fellowship; what do we know of the we-feeling? Thought of this kind may help us to get a concrete perception of that primary group-nature of which everything social is the outgrowth. ”

“ In other words, certain distinctions are held by some to be real even though this test of separability does not apply. For instance, it is commonly held that not merely in man but in all corporeal individuals the formative and the determinable principle of the nature or substance, the forma substantialis and the materia prima, are really distinct, although it is admitted that, apart from the case of the human soul, neither can actually exist except in union with the other. ”

“ Our view of the matter renders it necessary that the thoughts which are united in this necessity should be brought into connection in our minds. In this unity the mediation with an Other will thus itself partake of independence, and this, as a reference to self, will have the mediation with an Other within itself. ”

“ The external conditions which society has inherited from the past are but the manifestation of inherited internal conditions in the human beings who compose it; the internal conditions and the external are related to each other as the organism and its medium, and development can take place only by the gradual consentaneous development of both. As a necessary preliminary to a purely rational society, you must obtain purely rational men, free from the sweet and bitter prejudices of hereditary affection and antipathy ”

“ Modern philosophers not uncommonly conceive the union of substance and accidents as being necessarily a mere mechanical union or aggregation, and oppose it to “organic” unity which they regard as a real unity involving the richness of an energetic, “living” multiplicity. ”

“ For as long as there is substantial unity, continuity, or identity of the subsisting individual substance, so long is there unity, continuity, or identity of its subsistence, or of its personality if it be a rational substance. The subsistence of a complete individual inorganic substance is changed as soon as the individual undergoes substantial change: we have them no longer the same subsisting individual being. ”

“ But in actual life it is oftener the latter that is prominent in our relations with our fellow-men. We—the category of co-operation—is at least as fundamental in all human thought and language as I and thou, the categories of mutual exclusion. That you and I are mutually complementary factors in a wider whole of common interests, is at least as early a discovery of mankind as that our private interests and standpoints collide. ”

“ But it is not proved that the union of “two substances complete in every respect” cannot result in the constitution of a being that is really and genuinely one—“unum per se ens”—in the case in which the union is a personal union. The hypostatic union of the human nature of Christ with the Divine Person is primarily a personal union whereby the former nature subsists by and in the Divine Personality. It has the effect of constituting the united terms “one subsisting being,” and therefore has supereminently, if not formally, the effect of a “substantial union”. ”