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 A Guide for
Ruben
De Lisi
Gigliotti
"This book could not come at a better time given the leadership challenges facing

Leaders
society such as COVID-19 and issues of equity and social justice. It is a resource that all
academic leaders need-and will thoroughly enjoy."
-Gail T. Fairhurst, Distinguished University Research Professor, University of Cincinnati
•
"This book is unique in providing both frameworks and vital information needed for
successful leadership in higher education. I recommend it to all of our department Ill
•
chairs and use it in our leadership development program. This an essential resource for

1 her
aspiring and current academic leaders."
-Eliza K. Pavalko, Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs, and
Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology, Indiana University Bloomington

"There is an urgent need for leadership in higher education to confront the complexity
of interdependent issues with the relevance and criticality of higher learning. This book
offers leadership concepts and competencies for leader development and organizational

Education
effectiveness with the greater purpose of impacting higher education for a better society."
-Cynthia Cherrey, President and CEO, International Leadership Association

D uring a time of unprecedented challenges facing higher education, the need for
effective leadership-for informal and formal leaders across the organization-has
never been more imperative.

SECOND EDITION
The concepts and tools in this book are equally valuable for faculty and staff leaders,
whether in formal leadership roles; such as deans, chairs, or directors of institutes,
committees, or task forces; or those who perform informal leadership functions within
their departments, disciplines, or institutions. It is intended as a professional guide, a
textbook in graduate courses, or as a resource in leadership training and development
programs. Each chapter concludes with a series of case studies and guiding questions.

Brent D. Ruben is a distinguished professor in communication; Richard De Lisi is an

emeritus university professor of developmental psychology, and a Senior Fellow at the
Rutgers Center for Organizational Leadership; and Ralph A. Gigliotti is director of the CONCEPTS, COMPETENCIES, AND TOOLS
Center for Organizational Leadership-all at Rutgers University.

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FOREWORD BY JONATHAN SCOTT HOLLOWAY
 Advance Praise for
A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education, Second Edition

“The second edition of this recognized text in higher education leadership

development provides a timely update for leaders who must be prepared
for a dynamic landscape of issues, accelerating social and cultural changes,
and the impact of global and local crises. The aftermath of the COVID-19
­pandemic will continue to challenge colleges and universities in new and
unforeseen ways and leaders need to maintain and develop their skills to
navigate these uncharted waters. This is a text we use in our own leader-
ship development curriculum and highly recommend it to colleagues.”
—Brian Strom, Chancellor, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences, Rutgers
University

“After an award-winning first edition, Brent Ruben, Richard De Lisi, and

Ralph Gigliotti are back with a second edition of A Guide for Leaders in Higher
Education. This book could not come at a better time given the leadership chal-
lenges facing society like COVID-19 and issues of equity and social justice.
The authors not only address higher education’s role in meeting these chal-
lenges, but they expand their treatment of the book’s core concepts and tools.
As a result, they bridge theory and practice and underscore the communica-
tive foundation of academic leadership in sophisticated fashion. The continu-
ing importance of their work cannot be underestimated. It is a resource that
all academic leaders need—and will thoroughly enjoy.”—Gail T. Fairhurst,
Distinguished University Research Professor, University of Cincinnati

“This book is unique in providing both frameworks and vital information

needed for successful leadership in higher education. I recommend it to all
of our department chairs and use it in our leadership development program.
Coverage of essential topics such as the changing landscape of higher educa-
tion, perspectives on leadership, and communication strategies for academic
leaders makes this an essential resource for aspiring and current academic
leaders.”—Eliza K. Pavalko, Vice Provost for Faculty and Academic Affairs,
Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology, Indiana University

“There is an urgent need for leadership in higher education to confront the

complexity of interdependent issues with the relevance and criticality of
higher learning. This book offers leadership concepts and competencies for
leader development and organizational effectiveness with the greater pur-
pose of impacting higher education for a better society.”—Cynthia Cherrey,
President and CEO, International Leadership Association

Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 1 12-08-2021 11:43:06

 “Academic leadership is one of the few professions with absolutely no formal
training. Leaders in higher education come to their position without lead-
ership training, without prior executive experience; without a clear under-
standing of their roles; and without understanding the cost to their academic
and personal lives. With only 3% of universities and colleges providing pro-
fessional development for its academic leaders, the time of amateur adminis-
tration is over. Too much is at stake in this time of change to let leadership be
left to chance. A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education, 2e is a ‘must read and
centerpiece’ for current and prospective academic leaders—and university
professional development programs.”—Walt Gmelch, Dean Emeritus and
Professor of Leadership Studies, University of San Francisco

Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 2 12-08-2021 11:43:06

 A G U I D E F O R L E A D E R S I N H I G H E R E D U C AT I O N

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Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 2 12-08-2021 11:43:10
 A GUIDE FOR LEADERS IN
HIGHER EDUCATION
Concepts, Competencies, and Tools

Brent D. Ruben, Richard De Lisi, and

Ralph A. Gigliotti
Foreword by Jonathan Scott Holloway

STERLING, VIRGINIA

Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 3 12-08-2021 11:43:10

 COPYRIGHT © 2021 BY STYLUS PUBLISHING, LLC
Published by Stylus Publishing, LLC.
22883 Quicksilver Drive
Sterling, Virginia 20166-2019

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, recording, and
information storage and retrieval, without permission in writing from
the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ruben, Brent D., author. | De Lisi, Richard, author. | Gigliotti,
Ralph A., author.
Title: A guide for leaders in higher education : concepts, competencies,
and tools / Brent D. Ruben, Richard De Lisi, and Ralph A. Gigliotti
; foreword by Jonathan Scott Holloway.
Description: Second Edition. | Sterling, Virginia : Stylus Publishing,
LLC, [2021] | First edition: 2017. | Includes bibliographical
references and index. | Summary: “Taking into account the imperative
issues of diversity, inclusion, and belonging, and the context of
institutional mission and culture, this book centers on developing
capacities for designing and implementing plans, strategies, and
structures; connecting and engaging with colleagues and students;
and communicating and collaborating with external constituencies in
order to shape decisions and policies”-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021036915 (print) | LCCN 2021036916 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781642672442 (Cloth) | ISBN 9781642672459 (Paperback)
| ISBN 9781642672466 (Library Networkable e-Edition) | ISBN
9781642672473 (Consumer e-Edition)
Subjects: LCSH: Education, Higher--Administration. | Educational
leadership.
Classification: LCC LB2341 .R727 2021 (print) | LCC LB2341
(ebook) | DDC 378.1/01--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021036915
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021036916

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-64267-244-2 (cloth)

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-64267-245-9 (paperback)
13-digit ISBN: 978-1-64267-246-6 (library networkable e-edition)
13-digit ISBN: 978-1-64267-247-3 (consumer e-edition)

Printed in the United States of America

All first editions printed on acid-free paper

that meets the American National Standards Institute
Z39-48 Standard.

Bulk Purchases
Quantity discounts are available for use in workshops and for
staff development.
Call 1-800-232-0223

Second Edition, 2021

00_Ruben_FM.indd 4 16-09-2021 12:45:03 PM

 We dedicate this book to our families, friends, colleagues,
and students who have contributed to and supported our
work in higher education leadership.

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Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 6 12-08-2021 11:43:11
 CONTENTS

FOREWORD xi
Jonathan Scott Holloway

PREFACE xiii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xix

PART ONE: LEADERSHIP IN HIGHER EDUCATION

A Critical Need in a Complex and Challenging Landscape

1 ACADEMIC LEADERSHIP
Toward An Integrating Framework3

2 LEADERSHIP AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN HIGHER

EDUCATION
A Time of Change18

3 THE HIGHER EDUCATION LANDSCAPE

Navigating the Economic, Organizational, Social, and
Strategic Terrain31

4 COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY MISSIONS AND STAKEHOLDERS

Purposes, Perspectives, Pressures44
Barbara Bender and Susan E. Lawrence

5 THE ROLE OF FORMAL AND INFORMAL LEADERS IN

GOVERNANCE
Locus of Power and Authority65
Susan E. Lawrence and Richard De Lisi

6 CAMPUS CULTURES AND THE LEADER’S ROLE

Building Capacity to Enhance Diversity and Create Inclusive
Campus Communities94
Sangeeta Lamba and Brent D. Ruben

7 THE TRANSITION TO LEADERSHIP

From Pilot to Air Traffic Controller117

vii

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 viii   contents

PART TWO: LEADERSHIP CONCEPTS AND COMPETENCIES

8 WHAT IS LEADERSHIP?
Making Sense of Complexity and Contradiction129

9 THE COMPETENCY APPROACH

Integrating Leadership Knowledge and Skill 151

10 LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION

Principles and Pragmatics165

11 CONFLICT AND DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

A Leadership Competencies Laboratory191
Brent D. Ruben and Christine Goldthwaite

12 LEADERSHIP SELF-ASSESSMENT AND REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

Always a Work in Progress205

PART THREE: APPLIED TOOLS FOR LEADERSHIP AND

ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS

13 THE EXCELLENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION MODEL

An Integrating Framework for Envisioning, Pursuing, and Sustaining
Organizational Excellence223

14 STRATEGIC PLANNING
Translating Aspirations Into Realities245
Sherrie Tromp and Brent D. Ruben

15 ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
A Matrix Approach265

16 OUTCOMES ASSESSMENT
Creating and Implementing Measurement Systems289

17 CRISIS LEADERSHIP
A Values-Centered Approach to Crisis In Higher Education314
Ralph A. Gigliotti and John A. Fortunato

18 LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Formal and Informal Methods341

Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 8 12-08-2021 11:43:11

 contents   ix

19 CONNECTING LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT AND

SUCCESSION PLANNING
The Missing Link in Organizational Advancement?367

20 INTO UNCHARTED WATERS 390

APPENDIX A
A Snapshot View of the American Higher Education Sector405

REFERENCES 413

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES 437

CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES 439

INDEX 441

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Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 10 12-08-2021 11:43:11
 FOREWORD

We live in a challenging age. It is defined by anti-institutional rhetoric, an

aggressive populism that has been mesmerized and fueled by assertions of
“alternate facts,” a racial reckoning on a scale unknown in this nation’s his-
tory, and a global pandemic that has sickened and killed millions while crip-
pling economies, straining health systems, and exposing the frailties and
failings of our social safety network. Serving as a leader during a time of such
turmoil is difficult. Doing that work in a college or university setting is that
much more challenging given the unique characteristics of higher education.
Consider the cognitive dissonances.
It is uplifting to work with some of the most gifted, ambitious, and inter-
esting individuals on the planet. The faculty are wrestling with everything
known and/or imagined in the universe. The students are there to take up as
much of that knowledge as possible while also developing the skills that will
allow them to thrive beyond college. The staff are dedicated, often in unseen
ways, to making sure that this incredibly complex enterprise functions and,
ideally, thrives. If one is paying attention to the work of the university it
is difficult to suppress a sense of hope for a better tomorrow. And yet we
would be remiss if we failed to acknowledge just how complicated this space
also is. Protecting the faculty’s right to research and teach controversial ideas
is critical but doing so also means recognizing that the university could be
quickly destabilized because someone’s ideas travel into socially or politically
uncomfortable spaces. Similarly, creating an environment in which students
can feel supported while also challenged lends itself to heated debates about
who belongs on a campus and on what terms. Put simply, the very things
that make a university so vibrant and exciting also mean that it exists in a
perpetual state of contestation.
The people managing that contested state are chairs, deans, provosts,
chancellors, and presidents. They work hard to create an environment in
which a healthy marketplace of ideas is able to develop. Despite the great
attention to detail that these individuals often bring to the task at hand, the
work is rarely done perfectly. Further, there is a general acknowledgement
that the work can always be done better.
For those who work in higher education these observations will be unsur-
prising. What is harder to process, though, is that despite this awareness,

xi

Ruben et al_A Guide for Leaders in Higher Education.indb 11 12-08-2021 11:43:11

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
an individual initiative with social application.[3] Neither is social
psychology the determination of how far social factors determine the
individual consciousness. Social psychology must concern itself
primarily with the interaction of minds.
Early psychology was based on the study of the individual; early
sociology was based on the study of society. But there is no such
thing as the “individual,” there is no such thing as “society”; there is
only the group and the group-unit—the social individual. Social
psychology must begin with an intensive study of the group, of the
selective processes which go on within it, the differentiated
reactions, the likenesses and unlikenesses, and the spiritual energy
which unites them.
The acceptance and the living of the new psychology will do away
with all the progeny of particularistic psychology: consent of the
governed, majority rule, external leadership, industrial wars, national
wars etc. From the analysis of the group must come an
understanding of collective thought and collective feeling, of the
common will and concerted activity, of the true nature of freedom,
the illusion of self-and-others, the essential unity of men, the real
meaning of patriotism, and the whole secret of progress and of life
as a genuine interpenetration which produces true community.
All thinking men are demanding a new state. The question is—What
form shall that state take? No one of us will be able to give an
answer until we have studied men in association and have
discovered the laws of association. This has not been done yet, but
already we can see that a political science which is not based on a
knowledge of the laws of association gained by a study of the group
will soon seem the crudest kind of quackery. Syndicalism, in reaction
to the so-called “metaphysical” foundation of politics, is based on
“objective rights,” on function, on its conception of modes of
association which shall emphasize the object of the associated and
not the relation of the associated to one another. The new
psychology goes a step further and sees these as one, but how can
any of these things be discussed abstractly? Must we not first study
men in association? Young men in the hum of actual life, practical
politicians, the members of constitutional conventions, labor leaders
—all these must base their work on the principles of group
psychology.
The fundamental reason for the study of group psychology is that no
one can give us democracy, we must learn democracy. To be a
democrat is not to decide on a certain form of human association, it
is to learn how to live with other men. The whole labor movement is
being kept back by people not knowing how to live together much
more than by any deliberate refusal to grant justice. The trouble
with syndicalism is that its success depends on group action and we
know almost nothing of the laws of the group.
I have used group in this book with the meaning of men associating
under the law of interpenetration as opposed to the law of the crowd
—suggestion and imitation. This may be considered an arbitrary
definition, but of course I do not care about the names, I only want
to emphasize the fact that men meet under two different sets of
laws. Social psychology may include both group psychology and
crowd psychology, but of these two group psychology is much the
more important. For a good many years now we have been
dominated by the crowd school, by the school which taught that
people met together are governed by suggestion and imitation, and
less notice has been taken of all the interplay which is the real social
process that we have in a group but not in a crowd. How men
behave in crowds, and the relation of the crowd conception of
politics to democracy, will be considered in later chapters. While I
recognize that men are more often at present under the laws of the
crowd than of the group, I believe that progress depends on the
group, and, therefore, that the group should be the basis of a
progressive social psychology. The group process contains the secret
of collective life, it is the key to democracy, it is the master lesson for
every individual to learn, it is our chief hope for the political, the
social, the international life of the future.[4]
 II

THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE IDEA

LET us begin at once to consider the group process. Perhaps the

most familiar example of the evolving of a group idea is a committee
meeting. The object of a committee meeting is first of all to create a
common idea. I do not go to a committee meeting merely to give
my own ideas. If that were all, I might write my fellow-members a
letter. But neither do I go to learn other people’s ideas. If that were
all, I might ask each to write me a letter. I go to a committee
meeting in order that all together we may create a group idea, an
idea which will be better than any one of our ideas alone, moreover
which will be better than all of our ideas added together. For this
group idea will not be produced by any process of addition, but by
the interpenetration of us all. This subtle psychic process by which
the resulting idea shapes itself is the process we want to study.
Let us imagine that you, I, A, B and C are in conference. Now what
from our observation of groups will take place? Will you say
something, and then I add a little something, and then A, and B, and
C, until we have together built up, brick-wise, an idea, constructed
some plan of action? Never. A has one idea, B another, C’s idea is
something different from either, and so on, but we cannot add all
these ideas to find the group idea. They will not add any more than
apples and chairs will add. But we gradually find that our problem
can be solved, not indeed by mechanical aggregation, but by the
subtle process of the intermingling of all the different ideas of the
group. A says something. Thereupon a thought arises in B’s mind. Is
it B’s idea or A’s? Neither. It is a mingling of the two. We find that A’s
idea, after having been presented to B and returned to A, has
become slightly, or largely, different from what it was originally. In
like manner it is affected by C and so on. But in the same way B’s
idea has been affected by all the others, and not only does A’s idea
feel the modifying influence of each of the others, but A’s ideas are
affected by B’s relation to all the others, and A’s plus B’s are affected
by all the others individually and collectively, and so on and on until
the common idea springs into being.
We find in the end that it is not a question of my idea being
supplemented by yours, but that there has been evolved a
composite idea. But by the time we have reached this point we have
become tremendously civilized people, for we have learned one of
the most important lessons of life: we have learned to do that most
wonderful thing, to say “I” representing a whole instead of “I”
representing one of our separate selves. The course of action
decided upon is what we all together want, and I see that it is better
than what I had wanted alone. It is what I now want. We have all
experienced this at committee meetings or conferences.
We see therefore that we cannot view the content of the collective
mind as a holiday procession, one part after another passing before
our mental eyes; every part is bound up with every other part, every
tendency is conditioned by every other tendency. It is like a game of
tennis. A serves the ball to B. B returns the serve but his play is
influenced as largely by the way the ball has been served to him as
it is by his own method of return. A sends the ball back to B, but his
return is made up of his own play plus the way in which the ball has
been played to him by B plus his own original serve. Thus in the end
does action and reaction become inextricably bound up together.
I have described briefly the group process. Let us consider what is
required of the individual in order that the group idea shall be
produced. First and foremost each is to do his part. But just here we
have to get rid of some rather antiquated notions. The individual is
not to facilitate agreement by courteously (!) waiving his own point
of view. That is just a way of shirking. Nor may I say, “Others are
able to plan this better than I.” Such an attitude is the result either
of laziness or of a misconception. There are probably many present
at the conference who could make wiser plans than I alone, but that
is not the point, we have come together each to give something. I
must not subordinate myself, I must affirm myself and give my full
positive value to that meeting.
And as the psychic coherence of the group can be obtained only by
the full contribution of every member, so we see that a readiness to
compromise must be no part of the individual’s attitude. Just so far
as people think that the basis of working together is compromise or
concession, just so far they do not understand the first principles of
working together. Such people think that when they have reached an
appreciation of the necessity of compromise they have reached a
high plane of social development; they conceive themselves as nobly
willing to sacrifice part of their desire, part of their idea, part of their
will, in order to secure the undoubted benefit of concerted action.
But compromise is still on the same plane as fighting. War will
continue—between capital and labor, between nation and nation—
until we relinquish the ideas of compromise and concession.[5]
But at the same time that we offer fully what we have to give, we
must be eager for what all others have to give. If I ought not to go
to my group feeling that I must give up my own ideas in order to
accept the opinions of others, neither ought I to go to force my
ideas upon others. The “harmony” that comes from the domination
of one man is not the kind we want. At a board of directors’ meeting
once Mr. E. H. Harriman said, “Gentlemen, we must have
coöperation. I insist upon it.” They “coöperated” and all his motions
were put through. At the end of the meeting some one asked Mr.
Harriman to define coöperation. “Oh, that’s simple,” he said, “do as I
say and do it damned quick.”
There are many people who conscientiously go to their group
thinking it their duty to impose their ideas upon others, but the time
is coming soon when we are going to see that we have no more
right to get our own way by persuading people than by bullying or
bribing them. To take our full share in the synthesis is all that is
legitimate.[6]
Thus the majority idea is not the group idea. Suppose I belong to a
committee composed of five: of A, B, C, D and myself. According to
the old theory of my duties as a committee member I might say, “A
agrees with me, if I can get B to agree with me that will make a
majority and I can carry my point.” That is, we five can then present
this idea to the world as our group idea. But this is not a group idea,
although it may be the best substitute we can get for the moment.
To a genuine group idea every man must contribute what is in him
to contribute. Thus even the passing of a unanimous vote by a
group of five does not prove the existence of a group idea if two or
three (or even one) out of indifference or laziness or prejudice, or
shut-upness, or a misconception of their function, have not added
their individual thought to the creation of the group thought. No
member of a group which is to create can be passive. All must be
active and constructively active.
It is not, however, to be constructively active merely to add a share:
it must be a share which is related to and bound up with every other
share. And it must be given in such a way that it fits in with what
others are giving. Some one said to me the other day, “Don’t you
think Mr. X talks better than anyone else in Boston?” Well the fact is
that Mr. X talks so well that I can never talk with him. Everything he
says has such a ring of finality, is such a rounding up of the whole
question, that it leaves nothing more to be said on the subject. This
is particularly the kind of thing to be avoided in a committee meeting
or conference.
There are many people, moreover, who want to score, to be brilliant,
rather than to find agreement. Others come prepared with what they
are going to say and either this has often been said long before they
get a chance to speak, or, in any case, it allows no give-and-take, so
they contribute nothing; when we really learn the process our ideas
will be struck out by the interplay. To compare notes on what we
have thought separately is not to think together.
I asked a man once to join a committee I was organizing and he
replied that he would be very glad to come and give his advice. I
didn’t want him—and didn’t have him. I asked another man and he
said he would like very much to come and learn but that he couldn’t
contribute anything. I didn’t have him either—I hadn’t a school.
Probably the last man thought he was being modest and, therefore,
estimable. But what I wanted was to get a group of people who
would deliberately work out a thing together. I should have liked
very much to have the man who felt that he had advice to give if he
had had also what we are now learning to call the social attitude,
that is, that of a man willing to take his place in the group, no less
and no more. This definition of social attitude is very different from
our old one—the willingness to give; my friend who wanted to come
and give advice had that, but that is a crude position compared with
the one we are now advocating.
It is clear then that we do not go to our group—trade-union, city
council, college faculty—to be passive and learn, and we do not go
to push through something we have already decided we want. Each
must discover and contribute that which distinguishes him from
others, his difference. The only use for my difference is to join it with
other differences. The unifying of opposites is the eternal process.[7]
We must have an imagination which will leap from the particular to
the universal. Our joy, our satisfaction, must always be in the more
inclusive aspect of our problem.
We can test our group in this way: do we come together to register
the results of individual thought, to compare the results of individual
thought in order to make selections therefrom, or do we come
together to create a common idea? Whenever we have a real group
something new is actually created. We can now see therefore that
the object of group life is not to find the best individual thought, but
the collective thought. A committee meeting isn’t like a prize show
aimed at calling out the best each can possibly produce and then the
prize (the vote) awarded to the best of all these individual opinions.
The object of a conference is not to get at a lot of different ideas, as
is often thought, but just the opposite—to get at one idea. There is
nothing rigid or fixed about thoughts, they are entirely plastic, and
ready to yield themselves completely to their master—the group
spirit.[8]
I have given some of the conditions necessary for collective thinking.
In every governing board—city councils, hospital and library
trustees, the boards of colleges and churches, in business and
industry, in directors’ meetings—no device should be neglected
which will help to produce joint rather than individual thinking. But
no one has yet given us a scientific analysis of the conditions
necessary or how to fulfil them. We do not yet know, for instance,
the best number to bring out the group idea, the number, that is,
which will bring out as many differences as possible and yet form a
whole or group. We cannot guess at it but only get it through
scientific experiments. Much laboratory work has to be done. The
numbers on Boards of Education, on Governors’ Commissions,
should be determined by psychological as well as by political
reasons.
Again it is said that private sessions are undemocratic. If they
contribute to true collective thinking (instead of efforts to dazzle the
gallery), then, in so far, they are democratic, for there is nothing in
the world so democratic as the production of a genuine group will.
Mr. Gladstone must have appreciated the necessity of making
conditions favorable to joint thinking, for I have been told that at
important meetings of the Cabinet he planned beforehand where
each member should sit.
The members of a group are reciprocally conditioning forces none of
which acts as it would act if any one member were different or
absent. You can often see this in a board of directors: if one director
leaves the room, every man becomes slightly different.
When the conditions for collective thinking are more or less fulfilled,
then the expansion of life will begin. Through my group I learn the
secret of wholeness.[9] The inspiration of the group is proportionate
to the degree in which we do actually identify ourselves with the
whole and think that we are doing this, not Mr. A and Mr. B and I,
but we, the united we, the singular not the plural pronoun we. (We
shall have to write a new grammar to meet the needs of the times,
as non-Euclidean geometries are now being published.) Then we
shall no longer have a feeling of individual triumph, but feel only
elation that the group has accomplished something. Much of the evil
of our political and social life comes from the fact that we crave
personal recognition and personal satisfaction; as soon as our
greatest satisfaction is group satisfaction, many of our present
problems will disappear. When one thinks of one’s self as part of a
group, it means keener moral perceptions, greater strength of will,
more enthusiasm and zest in life. We shall enjoy living the social life
when we understand it; the things which we do and achieve
together will give us much greater happiness than the things we do
and achieve by ourselves. It has been asked what, in peace, is going
to take the place of those songs men sing as they march to battle
which at the same time thrill and unite them. The songs which the
hearts of men will sing as they go forward in life with one desire—
the song of the common will, the social will of man.
Men descend to meet? This is not my experience. The laissez-aller
which people allow themselves when alone disappears when they
meet. Then they pull themselves together and give one another of
their best. We see this again and again. Sometimes the ideal of the
group stands quite visibly before us as one which none of us is quite
living up to by himself. We feel it there, an impalpable, substantial
thing in our midst. It raises us to the nth power of action, it fires our
minds and glows in our hearts and fulfils and actuates itself no less,
but rather on this very account, because it has been generated only
by our being together.
 III

THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE IDEA

(CONTINUED)

WHAT then is the essence of the group process by which are evolved
the collective thought and the collective will? It is an acting and
reacting, a single and identical process which brings out differences
and integrates them into a unity. The complex reciprocal action, the
intricate interweavings of the members of the group, is the social
process.
We see now that the process of the many becoming one is not a
metaphysical or mystical idea; psychological analysis shows us how
we can at the same moment be the self and the other, it shows how
we can be forever apart and forever united. It is by the group
process that the transfiguration of the external into the spiritual
takes place, that is, that what seems a series becomes a whole. The
essence of society is difference, related difference. “Give me your
difference” is the cry of society to-day to every man.[10]
But the older sociology made the social mind the consciousness of
likeness. This likeness was accounted for by two theories chiefly: the
imitation theory and the like-response-to-like-stimuli theory. It is
necessary to consider these briefly, for they have been gnawing at
the roots of all our political life.
To say that the social process is that merely of the spread of
similarities is to ignore the real nature of the collective thought, the
collective will. Individual ideas do not become social ideas when
communicated. The difference between them is one of kind. A
collective thought is one evolved by a collective process. The
essential feature of a common thought is not that it is held in
common but that it has been produced in common.
Likewise if every member of a group has the same thought, that is
not a group idea: when all respond simultaneously to the same
stimulus, it cannot be assumed that this is in obedience to a
collective will. When all the men in a street run round the corner to
see a procession, it is not because they are moved by a collective
thought.
Imitation indeed has a place in the collective life, it is one of the
various means of coadaptation between men, but it is only a part
and a part which has been fatally overemphasized.[11] It is one of the
fruits of particularism. “Imitation” has been made the bridge to span
the gap between the individual and society, but we see now that
there is no gap, therefore no bridge is necessary.
The core of the social process is not likeness, but the harmonizing of
difference through interpenetration.[12] But to be more accurate,
similarity and difference can not be opposed in this external way—
they have a vital connection. Similarities and differences make up
the differentiated reactions of the group; that is what constitutes
their importance, not their likeness or unlikeness as such. I react to
a stimulus: that reaction may represent a likeness or an unlikeness.
Society is the unity of these differentiated reactions. In other words
the process is not that merely of accepting or rejecting, it is bound
up in the interknitting. In that continuous coördinating which
constitutes the social process both similarity and difference have a
place. Unity is brought about by the reciprocal adaptings of the
reactions of individuals, and this reciprocal adapting is based on both
agreement and difference.
To push our analysis a little further, we must distinguish between the
given similarity and the achieved similarity. The common at any
moment is always the given: it has come from heredity, biological
influences, suggestion and imitation, and the previous workings of
the law of interpenetration. All the accumulated effect of these is
seen in our habits of thinking, our modes of living. But we cannot
rest in the common. The surge of life sweeps through the given
similarity, the common ground, and breaks it up into a thousand
differences. This tumultuous, irresistible flow of life is our existence:
the unity, the common, is but for an instant, it flows on to new
differings which adjust themselves anew in fuller, more varied, richer
synthesis. The moment when similarity achieves itself as a
composite of working, seething forces, it throws out its myriad new
differings. The torrent flows into a pool, works, ferments, and then
rushes forth until all is again gathered into the new pool of its own
unifying.
This is the process of evolution. Social progress is to be sure
coadapting, but coadapting means always that the fresh unity
becomes the pole of a fresh difference leading to again new unities
which lead to broader and broader fields of activity.
Thus no one of course undertakes to deny the obvious fact that in
order to have a society a certain amount of similarity must exist. In
one sense society rests on likeness: the likeness between men is
deeper than their difference. We could not have an enemy unless
there was much in common between us. With my friend all the aims
that we share unite us. In a given society the members have the
same interests, the same ends, in the main, and seek a common
fulfilment. Differences are always grounded in an underlying
similarity. But all this kind of “similarity” isn’t worth mentioning
because we have it. The very fact that it is common to us all
condemns it from the point of view of progress. Progress does not
depend upon the similarity which we find but upon the similarity
which we achieve.
The new psychology, therefore, gives us individual responsibility as
the central fact of life because it demands that we grow our own
like-mindedness. To-day we are basing all our hopes not on the
given likeness but the created unity. To rest in the given likeness
would be to annihilate social progress. The organization of industry
and the settlement of international relations must come under the
domination of this law. The Allies are fighting to-day with one
impulse, one desire, one aim, but at the peace table many
differences will arise between them. The progress of the whole world
at that moment will depend upon the “similarity” we can create. This
“similarity” will consist of all we now hold in common and also, of
the utmost importance for the continuance of civilization, upon our
ability to unify our differences. If we go to that peace table with the
idea that the new world is to be based on that community of interest
and aim which now animates us, the disillusion will be great, the
result an overwhelming failure.
Let us henceforth, therefore, use the word unifying instead of
similarity to represent the basis of association. And let us clearly
understand that unifying is a process involving the continuous
activity of every man. To await “variation-giving” individuals would
be to make life a mere chance. We cannot wait for new ideas to
appear among us, we must ourselves produce them. This makes
possible the endless creation of new social values. The old like-
minded theory is too fortuitous, too passive and too negative to
attract us; creating is the divine adventure.
Let us imagine a group of people whom we know. If we find the life
of that group consisting chiefly of imitation, we see that it involves
no activity of the real self but crushes and smothers it. Imitation
condemns the human race. Even if up to the present moment
imitation has been a large factor in man’s development, from this
moment on such a smothering of all the forces of life must cease.
If we have, however, among this group “like-response,” that is if
there spring up like thoughts and feelings, we find a more dignified
and worthy life—fellowship claims us with all its joys and its
enlargement of our single self. But there is no progress here. We
give ourselves up to the passive enjoyment of that already existing.
We have found our kindred and it comforts us. How much greater
enhancement comes from that life foreshadowed by the new
psychology where each one is to go forth from his group a richer
being because each one has taken and put into its right membership
all the vital differences of all the others. The like-mindedness which
the new psychology demands is the like-mindedness which is
brought about by the enlargement of each by the inflowing of every
other one. Then I go forth a new creature. But to what do I go
forth? Always to a new group, a new “society.” There is no end to
this process. A new being springs forth from every fresh contact. My
nature opens and opens to thousands of new influences. I feel
countless new births. Such is the glory of our common every-day
life.
Imitation is for the shirkers, like-mindedness for the comfort lovers,
unifying for the creators.
The lesson of the new psychology is then: Never settle down within
the theory you have chosen, the cause you have embraced; know
that another theory, another cause exists, and seek that. The
enhancement of life is not for the comfort-lover. As soon as you
succeed—real success means something arising to overthrow your
security.
In all the discussion of “similarity” too much importance has been
put upon analogies from the animal world.[13] We are told, for
instance, and important conclusions are drawn in regard to human
society, that the gregarious instinct of any animal receives
satisfaction only through the presence of animals similar to itself,
and that the closer the similarity the greater the satisfaction. True
certainly for animals, but it is this fact which keeps them mere
animals. As far as the irrational elements of life give way to the
rational, interpenetration becomes the law of association. Man’s
biological inheritance is not his only life. And the progress of man
means that this inheritance shall occupy a less and less important
place relatively.
It has been necessary to consider the similarity theory, I have said,
because it has eaten its way into all our thought.[14] Many people to-
day seem to think that progress depends upon a number of people
all speaking loudly together. The other day a woman said to me that
she didn’t like the Survey because it has on one page a letter from a
conservative New York banker and on another some radical proposal
for the reconstruction of society; she said she preferred a paper
which took one idea and hammered away on that. This is poor
psychology. It is the same reasoning which makes people think that
certain kindred souls should come together, and then by a certain
intensified thinking and living together some noble product will
emerge for the benefit of the world. Such association is based on a
wrong principle. However various the reasons given for the non-
success of such experiments as Brook Farm, certain religious
associations, and certain artistic and literary groups who have tried
to live together, the truth is that most of them have died simply of
non-nutrition. The bond created had not within it the variety which
the human soul needs for its nourishment.
Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through
variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, nor
absorbed.[15] Anarchy means unorganized, unrelated difference;
coördinated, unified difference belongs to our ideal of a perfect
social order. We don’t want to avoid our adversary but to “agree with
him quickly”; we must, however, learn the technique of agreeing. As
long as we think of difference as that which divides us, we shall
dislike it; when we think of it as that which unites us, we shall
cherish it. Instead of shutting out what is different, we should
welcome it because it is different and through its difference will
make a richer content of life. The ignoring of differences is the most
fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every
difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and
enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society
and eventually corrupts it.
Heterogeneity, not homogeneity, I repeat, makes unity. Indeed as
we go from groups of the lower types to groups of the higher types,
we go from those with many resemblances to those with more and
more striking differences. The higher the degree of social
organization the more it is based on a very wide diversity among its
members. The people who think that London is the most civilized
spot in the world give as evidence that it is the only city in which you
can eat a bun on a street corner without being noticed. In London,
in other words, difference is expected of us. In Boston you cannot
eat a bun on the street corner, at least not without unpleasant
consequences.
Give your difference, welcome my difference, unify all difference in
the larger whole—such is the law of growth. The unifying of
difference is the eternal process of life—the creative synthesis, the
highest act of creation, the at-onement. The implications of this
conception when we come to define democracy are profound.
And throughout our participation in the group process we must be
ever on our guard that we do not confuse differences and
antagonisms, that diversity does not arouse hostility. Suppose a
friend says something with which I do not agree. It may be that
instantly I feel antagonistic, feel as if we were on opposite sides, and
my emotions are at once tinged with some of the enmity which
being on opposite sides usually brings. Our relations become slightly
strained, we change the subject as soon as possible, etc. But
suppose we were really civilized beings, then we should think: “How
interesting this is, this idea has evidently a larger content than I
realized; if my friend and I can unify this material, we shall separate
with a larger idea than either of us had before.” If my friend and I
are always trying to find the things upon which we agree, what is
the use of our meeting? Because the consciousness of agreement
makes us happy? It is a shallow happiness, only felt by people too
superficial or too shut-up or too vain to feel that richer joy which
comes from having taken part in an act of creation—created a new
thought by the uniting of differences. A friendship based on
likenesses and agreements alone is a superficial matter enough. The
deep and lasting friendship is one capable of recognizing and dealing
with all the fundamental differences that must exist between any
two individuals, one capable therefore of such an enrichment of our
personalities that together we shall mount to new heights of
understanding and endeavor. Some one ought to write an essay on
the dangers to the soul of congeniality. Pleasant little glows of
feeling can never be fanned into the fire which becomes the driving
force of progress.
In trying to explain the social process I may have seemed to over
emphasize difference as difference. Difference as difference is non-
existent. There is only difference which carries within itself the
power of unifying. It is this latent power which we must forever and
ever call forth. Difference in itself is not a vital force, but what
accompanies it is—the unifying spirit.
Throughout my description of the group process I have taken
committee-meetings, conferences etc. for illustration, but really the
object of every associating with others, of every conversation with
friends, in fact, should be to try to bring out a bigger thought than
any one alone could contribute. How different our dinner parties
would be if we could do this. And I mean without too labored an
effort, but merely by recognizing certain elementary rules of the
game. Creation is always possible when people meet; this is the
wonderful interest of life. But it depends upon us so to manage our
meetings that there shall be some result, not just a frittering away of
energy, unguided because not understood. All our private life is to be
public life. This does not mean that we cannot sit with a friend by
our fireside; it does mean that, private and gay as that hour may be,
at the same time that very intimacy and lightness must in its way be
serving the common cause, not in any fanciful sense, but because
there is always the consciousness of my most private concerns as
tributary to the larger life of men. But words are misleading: I do not
mean that we are always to be thinking about it—it must be such an
abiding sense that we never think of it.
Thus the new psychology teaches us that the core of the group
process is creating. The essential value of the new psychology is that
it carries enfolded within it the obligation upon every man to live the
New Life. In no other system of thought has the Command been so
clear, so insistent, so compelling. Every individual is necessary to the
whole. On the other hand, every member participates in that power
of a whole which is so much greater than the addition of its separate
forces. The increased strength which comes to me when I work with
others is not a numerical thing, is not because I feel that ten of us
have ten times the strength of one. It is because all together we
have struck out a new power in the universe. Ten of us may have
ten, or a hundred, or a thousand times the strength of one—or
rather you cannot measure it mathematically at all.
The law of the group is not arbitrary but intrinsic. Nothing is more
practical for our daily lives than an understanding of this. The group-
spirit is the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night—it is our
infallible guide—it is the Spirit of democracy. It has all our love and
all our devotion, but this comes only when we have to some extent
identified ourselves with It, or rather perhaps identified It with all
our common, every-day lives. We can never dominate another or be
dominated by another; the group-spirit is always our master.
 IV

THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE

FEELING

THE unification of thought, however, is only a part of the social

process. We must consider, besides, the unification of feeling,
affection, emotion, desire, aspiration—all that we are. The relation of
the feelings to the development of the group has yet to be
sufficiently studied. The analysis of the group process is beginning to
show us the origin and nature of the true sympathy. The group
process is a rational process. We can no longer therefore think of
sympathy as “contagion of feeling” based on man’s “inherited
gregarious instinct.” But equally sympathy cannot belong to the next
stage in our development—the particularistic. Particularistic
psychology, which gave us ego and alter, gave us sympathy going
across from one isolated being to another. Now we begin with the
group. We see in the self-unifying of the group process, and all the
myriad unfoldings involved, the central and all-germinating activity of
life. The group creates. In the group, we have seen, is formed the
collective idea, “similarity” is there achieved, sympathy too is born
within the group—it springs forever from interrelation. The emotions
I feel when apart belong to the phantom ego; only from the group
comes the genuine feeling with—the true sympathy, the vital
sympathy, the just and balanced sympathy.
From this new understanding of sympathy as essentially involved in
the group process, as part of the generating activity of the group,
we learn two lessons: that sympathy cannot antedate the group
process, and that it must not be confused with altruism. It had been
thought until recently by many writers that sympathy came before
the social process. Evidences were collected among animals of the
“desire to help” other members of the same species, and the
conclusion drawn that sympathy exists and that the result is “mutual
aid.” But sympathy cannot antedate the activity. We do not however
now say that there is an “instinct” to help and then that sympathy is
the result of the helping; the feeling and the activity are involved
one in the other.
It is asked, Was Bentham right in making the desire for individual
happiness the driving force of society, or was Comte right in saying
that love for our fellow creatures is as “natural” a feeling as self-
interest? Many such questions, which have long perplexed us, will be
answered by a progressive social psychology. The reason we have
found it difficult to answer such questions is because we have
thought of egoistic or altruistic feelings as preëxisting; we have
studied action to see what precedent characteristics it indicated. But
when we begin to see that men possess no characteristics apart
from the unifying process, then it is the process we shall study.
Secondly, we can no longer confuse sympathy and altruism.
Sympathy, born of our union, rises above both egoism and altruism.
We see now that a classification of ego feelings and alter feelings is
not enough, that there are always whole feelings to be accounted
for, that true sympathy is sense of community, consciousness of
oneness. I am touched by a story of want and suffering, I send a
check, denying myself what I have eagerly desired in order to do so,
—is that sympathy? It is the old particularistic sympathy, but it is not
the sympathy which is a group product, which has come from the
actual intermingling of myself with those who are in want and
suffering. It may be that I do more harm than good with my check
because I do not really know what the situation demands. The
sympathy which springs up within the group is a productive
sympathy.
But, objects a friend, if I meet a tramp who has been drinking
whiskey, I can feel only pity for him, I can have no sense of oneness.
Yes, the tramp and I are bound together by a thousand invisible
bonds. He is a part of that society for which I am responsible. I have
not been doing my entire duty; because of that a society has been
built up which makes it possible for that tramp to exist and for
whiskey drinking to be his chief pleasure.
A good illustration of both the errors mentioned—making sympathy
antedate the group process and the confusion of sympathy and
altruism—we see frequently in the discussion of coöperation in the
business world. The question often asked, “Does modern
coöperation depend upon self-interest or upon sympathy?” is entirely
misleading as regards the real nature of sympathy. Suppose six
manufacturers meet to discuss some form of union. There was a
time when we should have been told that if each man were guided
entirely by what would benefit his own plant, trusting the other five
to be equally interested each in his own, thereby the interest of all
would be evolved. Then there came a time when many thinkers
denied this and said, “Coöperation cannot exist without some feeling
of altruism; every one of those manufacturers must go to the
meeting with the feeling that the interests of the other five should
be considered as well as his own; he must be guided as much by
sympathy as by self-interest.” But our new psychology teaches us
that what these men need most is not altruistic feelings, but a
consciousness of themselves as a new unit and a realization of the
needs of that unit. The process of forming this new unit generates
such realization which is sympathy. This true sympathy, therefore, is
not a vague sentiment they bring with them; it springs from their
meeting to be in its turn a vital factor in their meeting. The needs of
that new unit may be so different from that of any one of the
manufacturers alone that altruistic feelings might be wasted! The
new ethics will never preach alter feelings but whole feelings.
Sympathy is a whole feeling; it is a recognition of oneness. Perhaps
the new psychology has no more interesting task than to define for
us that true sympathy which is now being born in a society which is
shedding its particularistic garments and clothing itself in the mantle
of wholeness.
To sum up: sympathy is not pity, it is not benevolence, it is one of
the goals of the future, it cannot be actualized until we can think and
feel together. At present we confuse it with altruism and all the
particularist progeny, but sympathy is always a group product;
benevolence, philanthropy, tenderness, fervor, ardor, pity, may be
possible to me alone, but sympathy is not possible alone. The
particularist stage has been necessary to our development, but we
stand now on the threshold of another age: we see there humanity
consciously generating its own activity, its own purpose and all that
it needs for the accomplishment of that purpose. We must now fit
ourselves to cross that threshold. Our faces have turned to a new
world; to train our footsteps to follow the way is now our task.
This means that we must live the group life. This is the solution of
our problems, national and international. Employers and employed
cannot be exhorted to feel sympathy one for the other; true
sympathy will come only by creating a community or group of
employers and employed. Through the group you find the details,
the filling-out of Kant’s universal law. Kant’s categorical imperative is
general, is empty; it is only a blank check. But through the life of the
group we learn the content of universal law.
 V

THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE WILL

FROM the group process arise social understanding and true

sympathy. At the same moment appears the social will which is the
creative will. Many writers are laying stress on the possibilities of the
collective will; what I wish to emphasize is the necessity of creating
the collective will. Many people talk as if the collective will were lying
round loose to be caught up whenever we like, but the fact is we
must go to our group and see that it is brought into existence.
Moreover, we go to our group to learn the process. We sometimes
hear the advantages of collective planning spoken of as if an act of
Congress or Parliament could substitute collective for individual
planning! But it is only by doing the deed that we shall learn this
doctrine. We learn how to create the common will in our groups, and
we learn here not only the process but its value. When I can see
that agreement with my neighbor for larger ends than either of us is
pursuing alone is of the same essence as capital and labor learning
to think together, as Germany and the Allies evolving a common will,
then I am ready to become a part of the world process. To learn
how to evolve the social will day by day with my neighbors and
fellow-workers is what the world is demanding of me to-day. This is
getting into the inner workshop of democracy.
Until we learn this lesson war cannot stop, no constructive work can
be done. The very essence and substance of democracy is the
creating of the collective will. Without this activity the forms of
democracy are useless, and the aims of democracy are always
unfulfilled. Without this activity both political and industrial
democracy must be a chaotic, stagnating, self-stultifying
assemblage. Many of the solutions offered to-day for our social
problems are vitiated by their mechanical nature, by assuming that if
society were given a new form, the socialistic for instance, what we
desire would follow. But this assumption is not true. The deeper
truth, perhaps the deepest, is that the will to will the common will is
the core, the germinating centre of that large, still larger, ever larger
life which we are coming to call the true democracy.
 VI

THE UNITY OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS

WE have seen that the common idea and the common will are born
together in the social process. One does not lead to the other, each
is involved in the other. But the collective thought and the collective
will are not yet complete, they are hardly an embryo. They carry
indeed within themselves their own momentum, but they complete
themselves only through activity in the world of affairs, of work, of
government. This conception does away with the whole discussion,
into which much ardor has gone, of the priority of thought or action
in the social life. There is no order. The union of thought and will
and activity by which the clearer will is generated, the social process,
is a perfect unity.
We see this in our daily life where we do not finish our thought,
construct our will, and then begin our actualizing. Not only the
actualizing goes on at the same time, but its reactions help us to
shape our thought, to energize our will. We have to digest our social
experience, but we have to have social experience before we can
digest it. We must learn and build and learn again through the
building, or we must build and learn and build again through the
learning.
We sit around the council table not blank pages but made up of all
our past experiences. Then we evolve a so-called common will, then
we take it into the concrete world to see if it will work. In so far as it
does work, it proves itself; in so far as it does not, it generates the
necessary idea to make it “common.” Then again we test and so on
and so on. In our work always new and necessary modifications
arise which again in actualizing themselves, again modify
themselves. This is the process of the generation of the common
will. First it appears as an ideal, secondly it works itself out in the
material sphere of life, thereby generating itself in a new form and
so on forever and ever. All is a-making. This is the process of
creating the absolute or Good Will. To elevate General Welfare into
our divinity makes a golden calf of it, erects it as something external
to ourselves with an absolute nature of its own, whereas it is the
ever new adjusting of ever new relatings to one another. The
common will never finds perfection but is always seeking it. Progress
is an infinite advance towards the infinitely receding goal of infinite
perfection.
How important this principle is will appear later when we apply these
ideas to politics. Democratic ideals will never advance unless we are
given the opportunity of constantly embodying them in action, which
action will react on our ideals. Thought and will go out into the
concrete world in order to generate their own complete form. This
gives us both the principle and the method of democracy. A
democratic community is one in which the common will is being
gradually created by the civic activity of its citizens. The test of
democracy is the fulness with which this is being done. The practical
thought for our political life is that the collective will exists only
through its self-actualizing and self-creating in new and larger and
more perfectly adjusted forms.
Thus the unity of the social process becomes clear to us. We now
gain a conception of “right,” of purpose, of loyalty to that purpose,
not as particularistic ideas but as arising within the process.

RIGHT

We are evolving now a system of ethics which has three conceptions

in regard to right, conscience and duty which are different from
much of our former ethical teaching: (1) we do not follow right, we
create right, (2) there is no private conscience, (3) my duty is never
to “others” but to the whole.
First, we do not follow right merely, we create right. It is often
thought vaguely that our ideals are all there, shining and splendid,
and we have only to apply them. But the truth is that we have to
create our ideals. No ideal is worth while which does not grow from
our actual life. Some people seem to keep their ideals all carefully
packed away from dust and air, but arranged alphabetically so that
they can get at them quickly in need. But we can never take out a
past ideal for a present need. The ideal which is to be used for our
life must come out from that very life itself. The only way our past
ideals can help us is in moulding the life which produces the present
ideal; we have no further use for them. But we do not discard them:
we have built them into the present—we have used them up as the
cocoon is used up in making the silk. It has been sometimes taught
that given the same situation, the individual must repeat the same
behavior. But the situation is never the same, the individual is never
the same; such a conception has nothing to do with life. We cannot
do our duty in the old sense, that is of following a crystallized ideal,
because our duty is new at every moment.
Moreover, the knowledge of what is due the whole is revealed within
the life of the whole. This is above everything else what a
progressive ethics must teach—not faithfulness to duty merely, but
faithfulness to the life which evolves duty. Indeed “following our
duty” often means mental and moral atrophy. Man cannot live by
tabus; that means stagnation. But as one tabu after another is
disappearing, the call is upon us deliberately to build our own moral
life. Our ethical sense will surely starve on predigested food. It is we
by our acts who progressively construct the moral universe; to follow
some preconceived body of law—that is not for responsible moral
beings. In so far as we obey old standards without interpenetrating
them with the actual world, we are abdicating our creative power.
Further, the group in its distributive aspect is bringing such new
elements into the here and now that life is wholly changed, and the
ethical commands therein involved are different, and therefore the
task of the group is to discover the new formulation which these
new elements demand. The moral law thus gathers to itself all the
richness of science, of art, of all the fulness of our daily living.
The group consciousness of right thus developed becomes our daily
imperative. No mandate from without has power over us. There are
many forms of the fallacy that the governing and the governed can
be two different bodies, and this one of conforming to standards
which we have not created must be recognized as such before we
can have any sound foundation for society. When the ought is not a
mandate from without, it is no longer a prohibition but a self-
expression. As the social consciousness develops, ought will be
swallowed up in will. We are some time truly to see our life as
positive, not negative, as made up of continuous willing, not of
restraints and prohibition. Morality is not the refraining from doing
certain things—it is a constructive force.
So in the education of our young people it is not enough to teach
them their “duty,” somehow there must be created for them to live in
a world of high purpose to which their own psychic energies will
instinctively respond. The craving for self-expression, self-realization,
must see quite naturally for its field of operation the community. This
is the secret of education: when the waters of our life are part of the
sea of human endeavor, duty will be a difficult word for our young
people to understand; it is a glorious consciousness we want, not a
painstaking conscience. It is ourselves soaked with the highest, not a
Puritanical straining to fulfil an external obligation, which will redeem
the world.
Education therefore is not chiefly to teach children a mass of things
which have been true up to the present moment; moreover it is not
to teach them to learn about life as fast as it is made, not even to
interpret life, but above and beyond everything, to create life for
themselves. Hence education should be largely the training in
making choices. The aim of all proper training is not rigid adherence
to a crystallized right (since in ethics, economics or politics there is
no crystallized right), but the power to make a new choice at every
moment. And the greatest lesson of all is to know that every
moment is new. “Man lives in the dawn forever. Life is beginning and
nothing else but beginning. It begins ever-lastingly.”
We must breed through the group process the kind of man who is
not fossilized by habit, but whose eye is intent on the present
situation, the present moment, present values, and can decide on
the forms which will best express them in the actual world.
To sum up this point: morality is never static; it advances as life
advances. You cannot hang your ideals up on pegs and take down
no. 2 for certain emergencies and no. 4 for others. The true test of
our morality is not the rigidity with which we adhere to standard, but
the loyalty we show to the life which constructs standards. The test
of our morality is whether we are living not to follow but to create
ideals, whether we are pouring our life into our visions only to
receive it back with its miraculous enhancement for new uses.
Secondly, I have said that the conception of right as a group
product, as coming from the ceaseless interplay of men, shows us
that there is no such thing as an individual conscience in the sense
in which the term is often used. As we are to obey no ideals dictated
by others or the past, it is equally important that we obey no ideal
set up by our unrelated self. To obey the moral law is to obey the
social ideal. The social ideal is born, grows and shapes itself through
the associated life. The individual cannot alone decide what is right
or wrong. We can have no true moral judgment except as we live
our life with others. It is said, “Every man is subject only to his own
conscience.” But what is my conscience? Has it not been produced
by my time, my country, my associates? To make a conscience by
myself would be as difficult as to try to make a language by myself.
[16]

It is sometimes said, on the other hand, “The individual must yield

his right to judge for himself; let the majority judge.” But the
individual is not for a moment to yield his right to judge for himself;
he can judge better for himself if he joins with others in evolving a
synthesized judgment. Our individual conscience is not absorbed into
a national conscience; our individual conscience must be
incorporated in a national conscience as one of its constituent
members.[17] Those of us who are not wholly in sympathy with the
conscientious objectors do not think that they should yield to the
majority. When we say that their point of view is too particularistic,
we do not mean that they should give up the dictates of their own
conscience to a collective conscience. But we mean that they should
ask themselves whether their conscience is a freak, a purely
personal, conscience, or a properly evolved conscience. That is, have
they tried, not to saturate themselves with our collective ideals, but
to take their part in evolving collective standards by freely giving and
taking. Have they lived the life which makes possible the fullest
interplay of their own ideas with all the forces of their time? Before
they range themselves against society they must ask themselves if
they have taken the opportunities offered them to help form the
ideas which they are opposing. I do not say that there is no social
value in heresy, I only ask the conscientious objectors to ask
themselves whether they are claiming the “individual rights” we have
long outgrown.
What we want is a related conscience, a conscience that is intimately
related to the consciences of other men and to all the spiritual
environment of our time, to all the progressive forces of our age.
The particularistic tendency has had its day in law, in politics, in
international relations and as a guiding tendency in our daily lives.
We have seen that a clearer conception to-day of the unity of the
social process shows us: first, that we are not merely to follow but to
create “right,” secondly, that there is no private conscience, and
third, that my duty is never to “others” but to the whole. We no
longer make a distinction between selfishness and altruism.[18] An
act done for our own benefit may be social and one done for
another may not be. Some twenty or thirty years ago our
“individual” system of ethics began to be widely condemned and we