Page:Gilman human-work 1904.pdf/135

VII

THE SOCIAL SOUL

Some deny the organic concept of society on the ground that we human beings have no common sensorium." But we have. The most conspicuous and distinctive fact in our psychology is precisely that common sensorium. We call it in ordinary speech "the human heart," or "the human spirit,” or “soul,” and quite correctly. It is human, and "human" is "social"; it is the social soul.

The individual feels it, inasmuch as the brain, our medium of sensation, is lodged in an individual head; but what he feels is a common feeling, not a personal one He has of course his purely individual range of sensations, emotions, promptings to action; but these are felt also by any other animal, they are not human."

All our distinctive human feelings are in common, are transmissible, belong to us collectively, not individually. So markedly true is this that we have labelled our most visibly collective feelings "humane." Common feeling is human feeling, and that great sum of higher consciousness we call the soul is the human soul.

Psychological terms are all vague and slippery to handle; but we can clearly observe in any living thing