Moreover in society every individual may be a complete expression of the whole in a way impossible for the parts of a physical organism.[26] When each part is itself potentially the whole, when the whole can live completely in every member, then we have a true society, and we must view it as a rushing of life—onrush, outrush, inrush—as a mobile, elastic, incalculable, Protean energy seeking fitting form for itself. This ideal society is the divine goal towards which life is an infinite progress. Such conception of society must be visibly before us to the exclusion of all other theories when we ask ourselves later what the vote means in the true democracy.[27] ----- Footnote 24: I speak of it as later because the biological analogy was different from the organism of mediæval doctrine. Footnote 25: See ch. XXX, “Political Pluralism and Functionalism.” Footnote 26: See p. 66. Footnote 27: See ch. XXI. I have been told that the distinction between the organic and the psychic theory of society is merely academic. But no one should frame amendments on the initiative and referendum without this distinction; no one without it can judge wisely the various schemes now being proposed for occupational representation—something every one of us will have soon to do. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XI THE SELF-AND-OTHERS ILLUSION -------------- IT is now evident that self and others are merely different points of view of one and the same experience, two aspects of one thought. Neither of these partial aspects can hold us, we seek always that which includes self and others. To recognize the community principle in everything we do should be our aim, never to work with individuals as individuals. If I go to have a talk with a mother about her daughter, I cannot appeal to the mother, the daughter, or my own wishes, only to that higher creation which we three make when we come together. In that way only will spiritual power be generated. Every decision of the future is to be based not on my needs or yours, nor on a compromise between them or an addition of them, but on the recognition of the community between us. The community may be my household and I, my employees and I, but it is only the dictate of the whole which can be binding on the whole. This principle we can take as a searchlight to turn on all our life.