Note 118 — Chapter IX

Op. cit., pp. 445-46. (The reference is given to Professor Davenport's book for the convenience of the reader. The original article appears in the Journal of Political Economy for March, 1906.) "Some linguistic uses connected with collective nouns will offer a point of departure. When thought of merely as indicating an aggregate, a unit, the collective noun takes a singular verb; if regarded as a collection of units, it takes the plural verb....

"Now, in many cases, though the act or the situation asserted is really one of each individual by himself, there is no occasion for insisting upon this; no ambiguity or inaccuracy or misapprehension is involved in saying that 'the battalion is eating its dinner'; it is a shorthand fashion of speech, but it is perfectly intelligible; it is common enough to think of a battalion as a unit, and the act of dining is a simple one in which all join, and in which all comport themselves in pretty much the same way; from the point of view adopted, the interest proceeded upon, the purpose in hand, no importance attaches to the fundamental separateness of the activities, and to their entire lack either of psychical unity or of purposive coöperation; they are simply similar—roughly simultaneous—and are thought of in block. True, one man eats rapidly and another slowly, some little and others much, and a few sick ones not at all; but the expression serves, and implies its own limitations of accuracy.... But when it comes to asserting that the army is brushing its teeth, or has stubbed its toe, or has a stomach ache, there is obvious difficulty. These things are not done jointly, coöperatively, by aggregates, and will not bear thinking over into this form.

"And so we may speak of public opinion, the preference, or habit, or custom, or convention, of society; and no harm need come of it, despite the fact that some men neither think nor choose in the manner implied, but have their own peculiar judgments or choices or wishes, and yet are members of society, entitled to be included in any exact formulation; every one knows that the thought really runs upon majorities of ''most everybodies'; that is, no harm need come of it, if only there were not people to take the notion of a 'social mind' seriously, and to import into cases calling for accurate analysis, and to accept as sober fact, a mere figure of speech, or at best a loose analogy drawn from biological science. For to the biologist and the sociologist it is to be charged—or credited—that the society-as-an-organism formula has found its way into economic thought. And thus hereby a doctrine long since abandoned in economic reasonings is in the way of reappearing; for have we not need of normals and averages? Else our doctrine in getting accurate and actual will get difficult also. And so, by the aid of the sociologist, through the magic of the society-as-an-organism incantation, a resurrection miracle has lately been worked; we salute the average man."

Whether any serious advocate of the organic conception of society will recognize in this caricature the doctrine which he maintains may well be doubted. Certainly it would never occur to us to construct an organism by averaging its organs! Nor do we try to get a social mind by adding a sum of similar physical activities, or even similar mental activities. An organism is a functional unity of different and complementary parts.