Bosanquet maintains that the national will is unconscious of its ends; but that the life of a nation does express a general will, in virtue of the fact that the individuals, who will private and less general ends than the ends of the nation, live in a system of relations that constitutes them an organism; and that it is in virtue of this organic system of relations that the individual volitions work out to an unforeseen unpurposed resultant, which he calls the end willed by the general will. He makes of this organic unity the essential difference between a mere crowd and a society or nation—defining an organism or organic unity as a system of parts the capacities and functions of each of which are determined by the general nature and principle of the whole group. That is an excellent definition of an organism; and we have recognised fully the importance of organisation in national life, consisting in specialisation of the parts such that each part is adapted to perform some one function that subserves the life of the whole, while itself dependent upon the proper functioning of all other parts. We may admit too that, in proportion as this specialisation of functions is carried further, organic unity is promoted because the life of the whole becomes more intimately dependent on the life of each part, and each part more intimately and completely dependent on the life of the whole. But unity of this sort is characteristic of all animal bodies; and, though the mind has this kind of organic unity, it acquires, in proportion as self-consciousness develops, over and above this kind of unity, a unity of an altogether new and unique kind; a unity which consists in the whole (or the self) being present to consciousness, whether clearly or obscurely, during almost every moment of thought, and pervading and playing some part in the determination of the course of thought and action. Now, the national mind also has both the lower and the higher kinds of unity. In both cases—that is, in the development both of the individual and of the national mind—a certain degree of organic unity must be achieved, before self-consciousness can develop and begin to play its part; but in both cases, when once it has begun to operate, self-consciousness goes on greatly to increase the organic unity, to increase the specialisation of functions and the systematic interdependence of the parts.