The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of HistoryPartridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Philosophy
The Psychology of Nations: A Contribution to the Philosophy of History
Partridge, G. E. (George Everett)
Education; History -- Philosophy; War
It is the idea of society cooerdinated by intelligence and by common
interests and moods that we must always hold before us. Trotter says
that civilization has never brought a well-cooerdinated society, and
that a gregarious unit consciously directed would be a new type of
biological organism. If this be so, the time seems peculiarly ripe to
make advance toward this better social solidarity. Both the promise
and the need seem greatest in the great English speaking countries
now. There is waiting, we may truly think, a larger sphere of life for
all democratic countries. If it be conscious direction alone that can
bring about the change, education has a long and a hard task before
it, to make the democratic peoples capable of such conscious
direction. This must come in part by the development of the idea of
leadership, and by the production of all the conditions that make
leadership possible. In part it must come by the clear perception of
definite tasks to be performed by nations and by all organizations
within nations--tasks which have all grown out of the relations
existing within society. In part it means cultivating intelligent
appreciation of social values, and developing in every possible way
all the social powers.
What we appear to need most in our social education just now is a
conception of what the individual is and what the social life is in
terms of the desires and the functions they embody. These are the raw
materials with which we work. We should then treat all our social
problems in a somewhat different way from that in which they are
mainly dealt with now. We should try especially to make harmony in
society not by maneuvering so that we might have peace and good
feeling for their own sakes, but by coordinating the functions which
are expressed in the life of the individual and in all social
relations. That is precisely what is not being done now, in our
present stage of society, either in the life of the individual, or in
the wider life of society. People live without deep continuity in
their lives, and we are not conscious enough of the ideal
relationships individuals should have with one another, in order to
make the social life productive. In a word we do not sufficiently take
account of the purposes to be achieved, but are too conscious of
states of feeling. We do not yet appear to see all the possibilities
contained in the social life, what voluntary unions are necessary, and
what kind of community life must be developed before we can have a
really democratic order.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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