Symbols in turn depend upon and promote communication. The results
of conjoint experience are considered and transmitted. Events cannot
be passed from one to another, but meanings may be shared by means
of signs. Wants and impulses are then attached to common meanings.
They are thereby transformed into desires and purposes, which, since
they implicate a common or mutually understood meaning, present new
ties, converting a conjoint activity into a community of interest
and endeavor. Thus there is generated what, metaphorically, may be
termed a general will and social consciousness: desire and choice on
the part of individuals in behalf of activities that, by means of
symbols, are communicable and shared by all concerned. A community thus
presents an order of energies transmuted into one of meanings which are
appreciated and mutually referred by each to every other on the part
of those engaged in combined action. “Force” is not eliminated but is
transformed in use and direction by ideas and sentiments made possible
by means of symbols.
The work of conversion of the physical and organic phase of associated
behavior into a community of action saturated and regulated by mutual
interest in shared meanings, consequences which are translated into
ideas and desired objects by means of symbols, does not occur all at
once nor completely. At any given time, it sets a problem rather than
marks a settled achievement. We are born organic beings associated
with others, but we are not born members of a community. The young
have to be brought within the traditions, outlook and interests
which characterize a community by means of education: by unremitting
instruction and by learning in connection with the phenomena of overt
association. Everything which is distinctively human is learned, not
native, even though it could not be learned without native structures
which mark man off from other animals. To learn in a human way and to
human effect is not just to acquire added skill through refinement of
original capacities.
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