As all the power in the vine and its branches to make grapes is expended
in the rounding and sweetening of each grape, so all the power in the
social whole to make men will be reproduced in each man. All the justice
in the race will regulate each man’s will, all the thought in the race
will replenish each man’s mind, and all the love in the race will feed
each man’s heart. Nothing less than this social whole, in which are
bound together in one organic body the lives, the welfare, and the hopes
of all, is the correlate of the social nature of man. Toward such a
world-wide organism, each living in the whole and the whole living in
each, his social nature reaches out and is never at home until it is
found. Such universal brotherhood would be impossible without power in
all its manifold forms. This serves the social body as bread serves the
individual body. Power, as the servant of the social body, waits on each
man through his relations with the social whole. A city builds gas works
and finds it possible to let down the price in proportion to the number
of those who use it. A railroad company can lower the rate on passengers
and freight in proportion to the number of men who travel and the volume
of freight transported. The price of a newspaper goes up or down as the
number of subscribers increases or diminishes. Mr. Edison expects to get
electricity from the disturbed conditions of the air, without the use of
fuel. This will make the conditions of life easier by one-half; and then,
as the number of people increases who avail themselves of the uses of
power, the conditions of living will still be easier. Not only will the
unity which comes through social organization lower the rate of insurance
and the price of the necessities of life, but this increased force of
the social whole will tend to the moral health of the people in the same
degree. Health in one part of the body will be brought to bear to correct
disease in another part. The conscience of the whole will be turned into
the degraded sections of our great cities, and the sympathy and love of
all will be called out to reclaim them. Starvation in one part of the
globe will be met by the over-supply of bread in another. Oppression
and tyranny in one nation will be opposed by the sense of fairness and
overcome by the love of freedom in all the rest. As climatic conditions
are made friendly to life by the circulation of oceanic and atmospheric
currents, so moral health will be preserved by the circulation of the
currents of conscience and justice.
IX.
The emphasis is to be kept on the social rather than the individual side
of human nature; not that personality may be lost, but that it may be
gained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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