Note 170 — Chapter V · REVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL METAPHYSICAL HYPOTHESES WHICH WILL REPLACE DOGMA—Concluded. Idealism, Materialism, Monism. (continued 2)

Association or grouping is the general law of organic and inorganic existence. Society, properly so called, is only a particular case, is only the most complex instance, of this universal law.... A consciousness is rather a We than an I. It is capable of union with other consciousnesses and of forming, in conjunction with them, a more comprehensive and more durable consciousness, from which it receives and to which it communicates thought, as a star both borrows and communicates motion in the system to which it belongs. (Espinas, Des Sociétés animales, 128. See also M. Fouillée, La Science sociale contemporaine, l. iii.)