Note 10 — Chapter II · A RELATIVE CONCEPT OF CONSCIOUSNESS—AN ANALYSIS OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN ITS ETHNIC ORIGIN

Newton observed the universe from the point of view of his fixed position upon the earth. Einstein observes the universe from the point of view of all possible positions within the universe. Likewise our present-day systems of psychology regard the conditions of life from the position of observation that is one’s individual point of view toward them. In the conception here advanced these conditions, on the contrary, are regarded from points of view that are socially relative to and inclusive of all possible positions of observation.

The reader will recall that the conceptions of the physicists first led them to a theory of special relativity through their calculations of uniform motion, while their deductions came only later to embrace data pertaining to difform motion, or to motion that is not uniform, as contained under the conception of general relativity. With regard to the theory of relativity in the subjective sphere, it was upon noting the habitual deflections from a predictable organic constant, observable in the erratic reactions of the neurotic personality, that the conception of relativity in the sphere of consciousness first occurred to me. It was only subsequently that the relativity of consciousness as applied to the uniform reactions characteristic of the collective social mind came to shape itself into the organismic conception of relativity here outlined as the underlying principle of consciousness.

While representing in no sense a detailed correlation between them, there is nevertheless a certain analogy, not only in the manner of inception of the objective and subjective theories with respect to the observation first of difform or abnormal deviation, and later of discrepancies of normal or uniform reactions; but there is also this further concomitance between the two aspects of the principle. The Newtonian hypothesis takes account of motion or reaction in the planetary system only in the large, while the theory of Einstein is adequate in contemplating the motion of planets both in the large and in the small. Conversely, our present Freudian theory of the unconscious takes care of the reactions of the personality in the small or in an individual or particular sense, while the theory of the relativity of consciousness regards personality not only individually or particularly (whether regarded singly or in its collective social expression) but also societally or in the sense of consciousness in its universal or organismic meaning.