The point, already noted, that the progress of society depends on leaders who will serve with unselfish devotion, is only another emphasis upon love as an indispensable element of the social consciousness. And the social goal--equality, brotherhood, liberty, when these terms are given any adequate ethical content--is absolutely unthinkable in any really vital sense without love. Any attempted definition of love, moreover, resolves at once into what we mean by the social consciousness. If we define love as the giving of self, this is exactly what, with growing clearness and insistence, the social consciousness demands. If with Herrmann we call love, "joy in personal life"--joy, that is, in the revelation of personal life, this can only come in that trustful, reverent, self-surrendering association to which the social consciousness exhorts. If with Edwards we call love, willing the highest and completest good of all, we reach the same result. Or if with Christ in the Beatitudes, or with Paul in the thirteenth of I Corinthians, we study the characteristics of love, we shall hardly doubt that a complete social consciousness must have these marks of love. These elements, then, make up the social consciousness: the sense of like-mindedness, of mutual influence, of the value and sacredness of the person, of obligation, and of love; and all these, with their implied demands, only point to what a person must be if he is to be fully personal. With this definition in mind, we may now ask, whether the analogy of the organism can adequately express the social consciousness. [1] Cf. Giddings, _Elements of Sociology_, pp. 6, 10, 65, 66, 77. [2] Cf. Giddings, _Op. cit._, p. 324. [3] See _The New World_, Sept., 1898, p. 516. [4] Cf. Lotze, _The Microcosmus_, Vol. II, p. 211. [5] See King, _Reconstruction in Theology_, Chap. IX, pp, 169 ff. [6] See Giddings, _Op. cit._, pp. 302, 320-322. [7] Cf. Giddings, _Op. cit._, pp. 65, 66. [8] Cf. Giddings, _Op. cit._, p. 241. [9] See King, _Reconstruction in Theology_, pp. 92-96. [10] Cf. Drummond, _The Ascent of Man_, pp. 272 ff. [11] Cf. John Fiske, _The Destiny of Man_, p. 74; Drummond, _Op. cit._, p. 279 ff. CHAPTER II _THE INADEQUACY OF THE ANALOGY OF THE ORGANISM AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS_[12] I. THE VALUE OF THE ANALOGY The analogy of the organism has played so large a part in the history of thought, especially in the consideration of ethical and social questions, that it is well worth while to ask exactly how far this analogy is adequate, although the danger of the abuse of the analogy is probably somewhat less than formerly.