Commonness

“ We are concrete, not abstract; and our vital identity one with another is concrete too. It may be and might not be. We choose whether it shall be or not. And, happily, we choose that it shall be, up to a point, far more often and more steadily than we choose that it shall not. Hence the existence of a human community in common knowledge and reason and common will—up to a point. ”

“ But we also find it socially convenient to view the common objects of our human and social knowledge as independent both of my fellow and myself, even while we still view these objects as the same for both of us, and for all other actual and possible human observers. ”

“ Everywhere, indeed, in all the life that surrounds us—in the social and moral judgments on which the fabric of society has reared itself, in the personal judgments on which so much depends in friendship and antipathies—everywhere, in conduct, in emotion, in art, in language, and in law, we see man's common belief in will written, broad, and plain, and clear. ”

“ I do not want to refer to the awful story except in so far as it is a concrete illustration of what I wish to write about—the power of thought examined with common sense in its relation to the happiness of each individual, and the responsibility of its employment by each individual for the benefit of the community—not from the desire to use this opportunity to circulate propaganda for any of the new ethical teachings, but simply from a common-sense point of view to see what good we can get out of a belief that is, I suppose, common to them all. ”

“ It is, to illustrate, physical, mental, and spiritual, or more elaborately, it is athletic, industrial, political, intellectual, moral, æsthetic, 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 radical, sympathetic and selfish. But whatever the mode of analysis or division or dichotomy, the unity of experience embraces all the elements, aspects, or relations that are discovered. ”

“ But all our common life is somehow the outcome of our separate individual lives—of your life and mine. Therefore how important it is in the common interest that each of us should look above all things to his own life and its character, for this will determine his contribution to the life of his society. ”

“ Are men on the whole sane, or hysterical, or possibly paranoiac, in their attitude toward real and possible social conditions? Are the postulates of our social introspection valid or invalid? Have we learned all that can be known about the antecedents of present conditions, about the standards by which these conditions should be judged, about the type of future conditions toward which it is rational to aim, about the means at the disposal of man for the creation of a different social order? ”

“ But, on the other hand, there are certain things we feel to be too strange and absurd to be believed; and that feeling we come to especially, when we have endeavored to cultivate our Common-Sense in the manner which I described to you in my last lecture. The higher our common-sense—that is, the general resultant of the whole character and discipline of our minds—the more valuable is the direct judgment that we form by the use of it. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ This world would appear to such an insight as a Social Order. For the categories of the World of Appreciation, as we shall later more fully see, when we come to the study of our human Social consciousness, are the categories of the Self in Social form and expression. But as I discriminate the world, taking account now of ɑ and now of b, my discrimination, determined as it is by the interest of ray individual development, does not seize upon the facts in the order in which they are actually determined by the Will whose expression is the world. ”

“ Carried far enough, this principle, which makes one's neighbor a second self, will bring to light in us the common soul, the common life that has tacitly worked in all human intercourse from the beginning. ”

“ And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, entering into active life, going into society, travelling, gaining acquaintance with the various classes of the community, coming into contact with the principles and modes of thought of various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims, habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of worship,—gaining experience how various yet how alike men are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how confident in their opinions ”

“ Poems and speeches learned in childhood will generally remain with us throughout life.
109.Radicalism of thought and action can generally be traced to the segregation of the people into small groups where the individual is alone in his thinking. Association and cooperation tend to break up individualism. Where men and women come together in thought and consideration, there is always developed a tendency toward moderation. Our present day complex society demands that every individual yield something for the good of the whole community. ”

“ The world is indeed there in the background. But it is there as embodiment of Life, and not merely as the object of discrimination. It is a world with which we stand in Social Relations. Its life cooperates with ours. ”

“ Hence even the common people, in the ordinary language of daily conversation, denominate whatever is connected with mutual good will, humane; so that the word humanity no longer describes man's nature, merely in a physical sense; but signifies humane manners, or a behaviour, worthy the nature of man, acting his proper part in civil society. ”

“ If he goes not, he remains in the common life, with the common conscience, with the common virtue, with the common faith, or with the common doubt; and it is well. For the inward peace it is evidently the best. If he ascends to that peak, he is caught. ”

“ Then why talk about the common people?”
“Because the difference between people isn’t in their class, but in themselves. Only from the middle classes one gets ideas, and from the common people—life itself, warmth. You feel their hates and loves.” ”

“ The phrase Common Sense, when used in the higher philosophy, is to be entirely dissociated from its more vague and popular meanings, in which it expresses natural prudence, or acquired skill in the management of common affairs and in the intercourse of society. ”

“ Present-day conceptions of what is natural and appropriate in relationships—among human beings themselves, between human beings and nature, between the individual and society, and between the members of society and its institutions—reflect levels of understanding arrived at by the human race during earlier and less mature stages in its development. ”

“ When social relations, applicable to mental or worldly pleasures, are alone involved, there are no longer distinctions of classes, or contests; differences of situation and opinion cease to exist; we have no thought but to enjoy and contribute in common our mutual possessions, [110] pretensions, and recommendations. ”

“ This is done by leading, in all respects, the common life, doing all things that are enjoined, but with exactness in the time, place, and manner prescribed. We must do common things not in a common matter, but in a manner more sublime and perfect than that in which they are commonly done. ”

“ Few make up their minds; they are made up for them.
The common opinion which reflects the mind of the great majority, embodies the prevailing idea, the universal sentiment, and directs the common action is called. ”

“ Individualist doctrines celebrate the ‘I’, collective movements the ‘we’. Devoid of the fullness of self-assertion or the positive connotations of friendship, community and political solidarity, ‘you’ can tend to get overlooked. ”

“ The guidance for the conduct of life afforded by such vague phrases as 'the collective wisdom of mankind' leave one on the most superficial examination in a state of great doubt, to say the least of it. ”

“ Facts should explain facts; and the view called ‘individualism’ (because the one reality that it believes in is the ‘individual,’ in the sense of this, that, and the other particular) should hence be the right explanation. What are the facts here to be explained? They are human communities, the family, society, and the state. Individualism has explained them long ago. ”

“ Each individual would thus have the stereotype of his effective social life cast; each social being would have his effective life formulated, if one may so speak, by relation, always by relations, nothing but by relations—to that of all the rest, but in figures, and yet again, in nothing but figures. ”

“ The abstract questions as to equality and identity may be quickly dismissed. The advocates of the "common" principle—those who hold what may be called the humane theory—altogether disclaim any ambition to assert either. ”

“ The social problem—if for simplicity we may speak as though social tasks were one—is how to socialize ourselves to such degree that, without bankrupting all, each may have a secure lien upon a minimum share of nature's endowment for satisfying common human wants. ”

“ And just so far as I fall short of systematic individuality, whether from the poverty of my interests or their mutual incompatibility, the appearance of unity in my life is illusory, and I must be pronounced an unreal appearance. ”

“ This society, composed, as it is, of many varying natures and elements, where each individual must submit to merge his own identity into the universal whole, which makes the word and state, is divided and subdivided into various cliques, and has a pastime for every disposition, grave or gay; and with each division rises up a new set of forms and ceremonies to be observed{4} if you wish to glide down the current of polite life, smoothly and pleasantly. ”

“ What is the value, of present-day knowledge if not to stimulate the conscious group, through the individual perhaps, but the group finally, to better use of its powers and opportunities toward a higher form of social life? ”

“ Laws and opinions of particular groups, group morality, individual morality, even inertia, and a long list of more subtle and often capricious reactions are channels through which social purpose finds expression. ”

“ For how a thing works must depend on its special relations, while the principle, as we have seen, remains perfectly general. Two souls, for example, which live together, may by their identity be drawn into active community. ”

“ It is in the Portico of the Greek sage that that phrase has received its legitimate explanation; it is there we are taught that ‘common-sense’ signifies ‘the sense of the common interest.’ Yes! it is the most beautiful truth in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or divided interest from our race. ”

“ Such are: the degree of knowledge, and of intellectual and moral culture, existing in the community, and in every class of it; the state of industry, of wealth and its distribution; the habitual occupations of the community; their division into classes, and the relations of those classes to one another; the common beliefs which they entertain on all the subjects most important to mankind, and the degree of assurance with which those beliefs are held ”

“ The distinctions between individual and individual, and even the greater distinctions between one group and another, become buried under the overwhelming mass-effect of their difference from ourselves. ”

“ The answer to the first is the need of the One to differentiate itself into the Many, proving its universality and its power to integrate and raise up the good. But, he shows, the answer to the second question is in the conduct of the individual. ”

“ To resume passive good, it receiveth a subdivision of conservative and effective. For let us take a brief review of that which we have said: we have spoken first of the good of society, the intention whereof embraceth the form of human nature, whereof we are members and portions, and not our own proper and individual form; we have spoken of active good, and supposed it as a part of private and particular good. ”

“ But each of the maxims can be taken to the heart and conscience of the individual, to become a principle of each man’s own character and conduct, and then to reappear, retranslated into social action, according to the wisdom of the time or the wisdom of the man or the wisdom of the Church. ”

“ How is the conversion of common sense into philosophy to be brought about? We answer, by accepting completely and faithfully the facts and expressions of common sense as given in their primitive obscurity, and then by construing them without violence, without addition, and without diminution into clearer and more intelligible forms. ”

“ All notions of propriety, decency, chastity, politeness, order, duty, right, rights, discipline, respect, reverence, coöperation, and fellowship, especially all things in regard to which good and ill depend entirely on the point at which the line is drawn, are in the mores. The mores can make things seem right and good to one group or one age which to another seem antagonistic to every instinct of human nature. ”

“ Thus has come to be the matter-of-fact multitude, the simple, the all-knowing, those who act and think and feel “as everybody else does,” as they are taught and trained by the ingenious apparatus of scientific, moral, and social classifications, definitions, simplifications, in a word—the civilized man. ”