Pluralism

“ Again, even if we could accept the pluralist account of the facts, the theory which Pluralism puts forward to account for them is in the end unintelligible. What Pluralism does, consciously or unconsciously, is to separate the unity of the world from its multiplicity. The multiplicity is supposed to be grounded in the ultimate nature of the real things themselves, their unity as a system, if they really are a system, to be imposed upon them from without. ”

“ We see that we are dependent on the whole, while seeing that we are one with it in creating it. We are separate that we may belong, that we may greatly produce. Our separateness, our individual initiative, are the very factors which accomplish our true unity with men. We shall see in the chapter on “Political Pluralism” that “irreducible pluralism” and the self-unifying principle are not contradictory.
85 XII
THE CROWD FALLACY MANY people are ready to accept the truth that association is the law of life. ”

“ While much of humanity advances together toward a bright future of political and economic pluralism, some parts of the world remain mired in failed ideologies or racked by cultural, religious, and ethnic divisions. ”

“ The difference between monism and pluralism is perhaps the most pregnant of all the differences in philosophy. Primâ facie the world is a pluralism; as we find it, its unity seems to be that of any collection; and our higher thinking consists chiefly of an effort to redeem it from that first crude form. Postulating more unity than the first experiences yield, we also discover more. ”

“ It is to assume that whatever the socialist postulates as desirable is wanted without limit of qualification,—for socialist read pluralist and the parallel holds good,—it is to imagine that whatever proposal is made by him is to be carried out by uncontrolled monomaniacs, and so to make a picture of the socialist dream which can be presented to the simple-minded person in doubt—'This is socialism'—or pluralism, as the case may be. ”

“ Neither by regressing can it reach a lowest limit or origin, in which all diversity is latent; nor by progressing can it reach a highest limit or goal in which all plurality is transcended. This, the pluralist’s extremity, will doubtless be regarded as the singularist’s opportunity. ”

“ Shall Boston or Washington hold me, my family, my church, my union? With the complexity of interests increasing every day on the outside, inside with the power of the soul to “belong” 318expanding every day (the English and the French flags stir us hardly less than the American now) , with the psychologists talking of pluralism and the political scientists of multiple sovereignty, with all this yet the soul of man seeks unity in obedience to his essential nature. How is this to be obtained? Social evolution is in the hands of those who can solve this problem. ”

“ And, if there can be recognized any such primitive unity, recognition of it will help us to interpret the ultimate diversity. We shall understand better how in each society the several components of the political agency have come to be what we now see them, and how those of one society are related to those of another. ”

“ Our whole pluralistic procedure in using subjects and predicates as we do is fundamentally irrational, an example of the desperation of our finite intellectual estate, infected and undermined as that is by the separatist discursive forms which are our only categories, but which absolute reality must somehow absorb into its unity and overcome. ”

“ Let us consider now the type of nation which from our present point of view is the most interesting, the type which approximates most nearly to a solution of the problem of civilisation, to the reconciliation of individuality with collectivity, to the synthesis of individualist and collectivist ideals; that in which the rights and wills of individuals are not forcibly subordinated to those of the State by the power of a governing class, and in which the deliberative side of the national mind is well developed and effective. ”

“ SIMILAR EXPERIENCES BEGET SIMILAR IDEAS. The average of the experiences of a community, or a class, a nation, or a race begets the central idea of that community, or class, or nation, or race; therefore, in attempting to explain the tendency of any such community, class, nation, or race to gyrate about some central idea, or concertedly move towards some definite goal, we must discover those similarities of experience which furnish the common ground for similarity of thought and unity of action. ”

“ Now, the principles of democracy require that the same courtesy which we accord to our own circle shall be extended to every class and condition; and that distinctions of superiority and subordination shall depend, not on accidents of birth, fortune, or occupation, but solely on those mutual relations which the good of all classes equally require. The distinctions demanded in a democratic state are simply those which result from relations that are common to every class, and are for the benefit of all. ”

“ They are not patriotism and religion. These two words involve a sense of common citizenship, of freedom, of justice, exalted above the narrow sphere of the individual, of the interests of class, of the interests of one's own country. Such are the principles which unite different groups within a land in great interests common to all, just as they unite different peoples [Pg 311] in great vital questions common to all. ”

“ This is what culture gives. Here then we also perceive that with the development of variety and complexity, the element of unity becomes more active and manifest. This view of the progressive unitization of the individual man in a psychological aspect, is very suggestive when taken in connection with the wane of despotism and the growth of liberty, as society and government advance, and it becomes ever less the province of law to govern, and also to regulate. ”

“ The sciences, the literature, the customs, the lessons of experience, the skill, the spirit of every country, exercise an influence upon every other. In this peaceful interchange of the products of the intellect, in this constant passing to and fro of the people of different countries of the civilized world, we find in each land a system of law peculiar to the country itself, and answering to what I believe to be a just description of all laws which regulate the relations of individuals to each other, in being a formulation of the custom of the [Pg 190] civil community. ”

“ Decide to-day's questions on the broad principles of justice and [Pg 409] humanity. Leave the ultimate relation of the races to those sovereign powers working through Nature and mankind, which we dimly understand, but with which we best co-operate by doing the right deed here and now."
Some things we say—and think, too,—when we are in debate with our opponents, and some other things we think when we quietly commune with ourselves. Any social ordinance or usage finds its final test when we bring it into the companionship of our highest ideal. ”

“ To apply this interpretation to the relationship between ourselves and our brethren of the Insular regions: They are, according to the universal and common law of nature and of nations, as we and all other human beings are, equally creatures of a common Creator and equal with us. Under that all-pervasive law, they, with us, and all other human beings, are created with the unalienable need of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and therefore with corresponding unalienable rights. ”

“ To accomplish this it should be the special aim of every one possessed of wisdom enough to comprehend a common logical proposition to endeavor to bring about this equality by diffusing the deductions of it, in all possible ways, among both classes. Let the various producing and exchanging classes exist as they do, but let their relations be governed by such rule of law as shall render them equal, both as to caste and to the benefits to be derived from an equal interest in the common cause of the brotherhood of mankind. ”

“ That, if the privileged classes became merged in a Third Estate, national equality and national unity would be the result, is a thesis which may be variously argued either in abstract logic or from the lessons of history. ”

“ Every one who entered this society was obliged, at least so long as he continued to be a member of it, to lay aside all distinctions arising from rank, nation, or religion, in short, every general mark or distinction whatever, and to submit himself to the condition of universal equality. ”

“ But they can only believe it to be so if there exist among them real and strong affinities; if they are not divided by any artificially maintained separation between the mixed races from which they are sprung; if they share a common basis of fundamental moral ideas, such as are most easily implanted by common religious beliefs; if they can glory in a common inheritance of tradition; and their nationality will be all the stronger if to these sources of unity they add a common language and literature and a common body of law. ”

“ The result is an aggregate of parts, differing in many local respects, but acknowledging the authority of the power center and contributing material goods and manpower to its support and defense. The main sociological purpose of each civilization has been to impose central authority and universality upon political, economic and ideological diversity.
Every civilization has been confronted with the advantages of unity over diversity. Every civilization has professed its devotion to unity. ”

“ The group in relation must be the object of our study if that study is to be fruitful for politics. The pluralists have pointed out diversity but no pluralist has yet answered satisfactorily the question to which we must find an answer—What is to be done with this diversity? ”

“ A unitary well-defined territory of well marked and fairly uniform character tends to national unity, not only through making the community a relatively closed one, but also by aiding the imagination to grasp the idea of the nation and offering a common object to the affections and sentiments of the people. ”

“ The representatives of the nation are incessantly employed on a social compact, of which the component powers, separated, but not divided, all contribute, by their reciprocal action, to harmony and unity. ”

“ Then, when the people had obtained possession of the government, reforms would begin: return to the primitive commune, substitution of an equal and free family for the moral and oppressive family; absolute equality, civil, political and economic; individual independence guaranteed, thanks to the possession and the integral product of the instruments of work ”

“ We believe, therefore, in the Holy Alliance of the Peoples as the vastest formula of association possible in our epoch;—in the liberty and equality of the peoples without which no true association can exist; in nationality, which is the conscience of the peoples, and which, by assigning to them their part in the work of association, their function in humanity, constitutes their mission upon earth, that is to say, their individuality, without which neither liberty nor equality is possible ”

“ Such a unity is neither the mere sum of isolated individuals, nor a mere majority ruling by numbers: but the fraternal and organic commonwealth which brings all classes and all rights from their particularistic independence into an ideal identity and indifference109. Here all are not merely equal before the laws: but the law itself is a living and organic unity, self-correcting, subordinating and organising, and no longer merely defining individual privileges and so-called liberties. ”

“ Substance, and everything else considered absolutely, founds the relations of unity and plurality. Action and passion found the relations of causality and dependence. Quality founds the relations of likeness or unlikeness. Quantity founds the relations of equality or inequality. ”

“ National devotion is but a higher aspect of devotion to family. In nature we see that, in the measure in which the individuality of a being is distinct, its superiority and its independence are increased. Differentiation is the law of progress. Why not apply the law to human groups, or nations?
The sum total of the qualities peculiar to the various nations, and the various ways in which they respond to concepts presented to them from without, these constitute the life and the culture of mankind as a whole. ”

“ In the more primitive states of society, where political unity exists only for a single community and no legislative recognition of languages is taken, we may expect each such political unit to show some individuality in speech. ”

“ They are not given except as contained in and as qualifying some whole, and their independence consists merely in our vicious abstraction. Nor when we pass to the relational stage does diversity cease to be the inseparable adjective of unity. For the relations themselves cannot exist except within and as the adjectives of an underlying unity. The whole that is analyzed into relations and terms can fall into the background and be obscured, but it can never be dissipated. ”

“ All were coequal sharers of the common benefits of their governmental system, and they all had a common incentive—to ennoble and dignify the race by ennobling and dignifying themselves individually, but contributing alike to the common stock of blessings. ”

“ Conceive of this printed page as a plane world in which every letter is a person; every word a family; phrases and sentences, larger communities and groups. These "innumerable individualities, distinguished by their variations" must needs seem to themselves as "distant from one another," their very differences of form and arrangement a barrier to any superior unity. ”