PART VII—INTELLIGENT PROCESS XXIX. INTELLIGENCE IN SOCIAL FUNCTION 351 XXX. THE DIVERSIFICATION AND CONFLICT OF IDEAS 363 XXXI. PUBLIC OPINION AS PROCESS 378 XXXII. RATIONAL CONTROL THROUGH STANDARDS 382 XXXIII. SOCIAL SCIENCE 395 XXXIV. THE TENTATIVE CHARACTER OF PROGRESS 405 XXXV. ART AND SOCIAL IDEALISM 410 INDEX 425 _PART I_ THE ORGANIC VIEW OF THE PROCESS OF HUMAN LIFE CHAPTER I THE TENTATIVE METHOD ADAPTIVE GROWTH—PERSONAL AND IMPERSONAL FORMS—IMPERSONAL FORMS ARE ALIVE—INTERMEDIATE FORMS—THE TENTATIVE PROCESS—ILLUSTRATIONS OF TENTATIVE GROWTH—ORGANIC TENDENCY—THE KINDLING OF MIND We see around us in the world of men an onward movement of life. There seems to be a vital impulse, of unknown origin, that tends to work ahead in innumerable directions and manners, each continuous with something of the same sort in the past. The whole thing appears to be a kind of growth, and we might add that it is an _adaptive_ growth, meaning by this that the forms of life we see—men, associations of men, traditions, institutions, conventions, theories, ideals—are not separate or independent, but that the growth of each takes place in contact and interaction with that of others. Thus any one phase of the movement may be regarded as a series of adaptations to other phases. That the growth of persons is adaptive is apparent to every one. Each of us has energy and character, but not for an hour do these develop except by communication and adjustment with the persons and conditions about us. And the case is not different with a social group, or with the ideas which live in the common medium of communicative thought. Human life is thus all one growing whole, unified by ceaseless currents of interaction, but at the same time differentiated into those diverse forms of energy which we see as men, factions, tendencies, doctrines, and institutions. The most evident distinction among these growing forms is that between the personal and the impersonal. A man is a personal form of life; a fashion or a myth is impersonal. This seems obvious enough, but there are cases in which the line is not so plain, and it may be well to consider more precisely what we mean by “personal” in this connection, or rather in just what sense a form of human life can be impersonal.