THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL UNITY 213
itself assuming that plants are not conscious. It has no real end end in consciousness until it is brought within the cir- cuit of some individual's consciousness. Adopting Mackenzie's 8 criterion of the organic the having of an end involved in its own nature it is necessary to deny to the plant the name of organism. The plant in and of itself is not strictly organic. It may be considered as organic in that it is an organic part of a larger whole which includes some conscious individual. In this respect, however, it does not differ from the pebble or the machine. They, too, may be brought into the circuit of a whole of consciousness.
By what right, then, may the plant be regarded as organic in some sense in which the pebble and the machine are not organic ? This can be answered better after noticing a certain characteristic of the unity of consciousness. In our own inner experience we are conscious, not only of means and ends, but of a certain circuitous process in which the ends become means and the means ends. Each part of the conscious process serves as a means to keep up all the other partial processes, and. in turn, is an end for which all other partial processes are means. We are not able to discover any final end outside of this interaction. The summum bonum is a situation in which each partial process contributes adequately to the going on of all the other parts. Now, it is not merely the fact that each partial process does act as both means and end, the
1 " A mechanical system is a collection of parts externally related ; it changes by the alteration of its parts ; and it has reference to an end which is outside of itself. A chemical system is a compound of parts which are absorbed in the whole ; it does not change except by dissolution ; and it has no end to which it refers. In an organism, on the other hand, the relations of the parts are intrinsic ; changes take place by an internal adaptation ; and its end forms an essential element in its own nature. We are thus led, by contrasting an organism with a mechanical and with a chemical unity, to see some of the most essential points in the conception of organism itself. We see, in short, that an organism is a real whole, in a sense in which no other kind of unity is so. It is in seipso lotus, teres, atque rotundus. All its parts belong to it : they cannot be altered, so to speak, without its own consent ; and the end which it seeks is also its own. It is a little universe in itself. At the same time, it is a universe, and not a unit ; it has parts, and it does grow, and it has an end. We may define it, therefore, as a whole whose parts arc intrinsically related to it, which develops from within, and has reference to an end that is involved in its own nature." Introduction to Social Philosophy, ad ed., p. 164.
