But, at any rate, the points of view of sociology, and of social philosophy as above described, will continue to supplement each other. Philosophy gives a significance to sociology; sociology vitalises philosophy. The idea of mind is deepened and extended by the unity and continuity which sociological analysis, throughout all its many-sided sources, vindicates for the principle of growth and order down to the roots and in all the fibres of the world. Every natural resource and condition must be thought of as drawing forth or constituting some new element in the mind which is the universal focus; just as every shape and colour of the trees in the landscape or every note of a melody finds its {52} definite and individual response in the contemplative consciousness. The error lies, not in identifying the mind and the environment, but in first uncritically separating them, and then substituting not merely the one for the other, but wretched fragments of the one for the whole in which alone either can be complete. Philosophy, on the other hand, in treating of society, has to deal with the problems which arise out of the nature of a whole and its parts, the relation of the individual to the universal, and the transformation by which the particular self is lost, to be found again in a more individual, and yet more universal form. In all these respects its view is what might be called teleological; that is to say, it recognises a difference of level or of degree in the completeness and reality of life, and endeavours to point out when and how, and how far by social aid, the human soul attains the most and best that it has in it to become. As long as these two points of view are clearly recognised, it is a matter of the mere personal division of labour whether they are brought to bear by the same thinkers and within the same treatises. {53} CHAPTER III. THE PARADOX OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION: SELF-GOVERNMENT.