writ large, or, as we have said, our mind reinforced by capacities which are of its own nature, but which supplement its defects. And this being so, the less complete must clearly submit to find itself in the more complete, and be carried along with it so far as the latter is able to advance. It is very important to note, however, that our mind at its best is very different from our mind at its average; and it has understood and approved, when at its best, a great deal which in its average moments comes upon it as force or custom from the outside. Thus, there is no abrupt division between our conscious mind and the social system of suggestion, custom, and force, which supports and extends and amends it. The two are related much as the focus of consciousness is related to the sub-conscious and automatic habits by which daily life is rendered possible. It is no more conceivable that social life should go on without force and authoritative custom, because the end of social life is reflected in the varying intelligence of individuals, than that individual life should go on without sub-consciousness and automatism, because it is ultimately relative to the ends which appear as ideas in the shifting focus of the mind. The inherent limitations of State action will be dealt with in a later chapter. We have thus far been attempting to make clear what is meant by the identification of the State with the Real Will of the Individual in which he wills his own nature as a rational being; in which identification we find the only true account of political obligation. [1] Not “of our individuality.” Individuality is not, in principle, a limitation which makes us unequal to our part in the whole. {155} CHAPTER VII PSYCHOLOGICAL ILLUSTRATION OF THE IDEA OF A REAL OR GENERAL WILL. 1. The object of the present chapter is to assist the reader in bringing together the conception of the State or the Community on the one hand, and that of an actual personal will, existing in an individual mind, on the other. [1] We have seen that Self-Government can only be explained if the centre of gravity of the self is thrown outside what we are continually tempted to reckon as our individuality, and, if we recognise as our real being, and therefore as imperative upon us, a self and a good which are but slightly represented in our explicit consciousness, at its ordinary level. We have seen that all sound theory and all good practice are founded on the insight or on the faith [2] that the common self or moral person of society is more real than the apparent individual; and we have followed Rousseau’s clue in criticising as defective and contradictory the actual will of {156} given persons, and in looking for its interpretation and completion in law and institutions as the embodiment of the social spirit. [1] Cf. ch. ii., p. 43.