V

This may all seem very strange, but, fundamentally, it is much less strange than the view which hitherto has been commonly accepted among scientists and philosophers, and from which the universal sociological point of view should logically deliver us. It is truly surprising to see men of science, so stubborn in repeating at every turn that nothing is created, admit implicitly as though self-evident that relations between distinct beings can of themselves become new beings numerically added to the former. Nonetheless, this is admitted, perhaps unsuspectingly, whenever, having set aside the monadic hypothesis, one tries by means of any other hypothesis, and in particular by the play of atoms, to account for the advent of two crucial beings, namely that of a new living individual, and that of a new ego. Unless we refuse the name of being to these two realities which are the prototypes of any concept of being, we are forced to admit that, as soon as a determinate number of mechanical elements enter into a certain kind of mechanical relation, a new living thing which previously did not exist suddenly exists and is added to their number; more strictly, we should admit that, as soon as a given number of living elements find themselves drawn together in the desired fashion within a skull, something as real as, if not more real than these elements is created in their midst, simply in virtue of this drawing together, as if a number could be increased by the disposition and rearrangement of its units. The ordinary concept of the relation of conditions to outcome, which is so much abused by the natural and social sciences, conceals this almost mythological absurdity which I have described, but nonetheless still harbours it at its very root. Once embarked on this course, there is no reason to stop: every harmonious, profound and intimate relation between natural elements becomes the creator of a new and superior element, which in turn assists in the creation of another yet higher element; at every step of the scale of phenomenal complexity, from the atom to the ego, via a series of increasingly complex molecules, then the cell or the Haeckelian plastidule,³⁸ then the organ and finally the organism, there will appear as many newly created beings as newly apparent unities and, up to the ego, one will proceed invincibly on the path of this error and encounter no obstacle, since it is impossible for us to know intimately the true nature of the elementary relations which arise in systems of external elements of which we do not form a part. But a serious pitfall appears when we arrive at human societies; here we are at home, we are the true elements of these coherent systems of persons which we call cities or states, regiments or congregations. We know everything that goes on in them. Now, however intimate, profound, and harmonious a given social group may be, we will never see springing forth ex abrupto from among its members, to their surprise, a collective ego which is real and not only metaphorical, a marvellous outcome of which these individuals would be the conditions. Doubtless there is always one member who represents and personifies the whole group, or else a small number of them (like the ministers of a State) who, each in a different respect, individualize it no less entirely in themselves. But this leader or leaders are always also members of the group, born from their father and mother and not collectively from their subjects or their subordinates. Why, then, should the agreement of unconscious brain cells have the gift of daily awakening from nothingness a consciousness in an embryonic brain, when the agreement of human consciousnesses could never achieve this in a society?

Notes

38. [Trans. Note: The plastidule, in Haeckel's theory, is the basic molecule of protoplasm from which cellular organisms are built up.] ↩