(ii.) Every individual mind, in so far as it thinks and acts in definite schemes or contexts, is a structure of appercipient systems or organised dispositions. Now, we do not suggest at present that all appercipient systems can be represented as social groups, though there are few, if any, such systems which do not involve some relations with persons connected in time and space. But it is clear, from the explanations of the last section, that every social group or institution involves a system of appercipient systems, by which the minds that take part in it are kept in correspondence. Every individual mind, then, so far as it takes part in social groupings or institutions, is a structure of appercipient systems, answering, each to each, to the different capacities in which it enters into each grouping respectively. We have already remarked on the way in which the distinction between different “capacities” answers to the psychological tendency for the activity of one appercipient system to obstruct the activity of all others. It is hardly necessary to point out that, partly for this reason, though the mind must be an actual structure of systems, it is very far from being a rational system of systems. The fact that, when one system is active, all others, as a rule, are inert, conceals the contradictions which { 174} underlie the entire fabric, and protects them from criticism and correction.
But though the mind is thus implicitly self-contradictory in various degrees, this does not alter the fact that its general nature is to be a unity of organised ideas answering to the actual set of parts which the individual plays in the world of space and time. Thus each individual mind, if we consider it as a whole, is an expression or reflection of society as a whole from a point of view which is distinctive and unique. Every social factor or relation, to which it in any way corresponds, or in which it in any way plays its part, is represented in some feature of its appercipient organism. And probably, just as, in any man’s idea of London, there is hardly any factor of London life which does not at least colour the background, so, in every individual impression of the social whole, there is no social feature that does not, in one way or another, contribute to the total effect. In the dispositions of every mind the entire social structure is reflected in a unique form, and it is on this reflection in every mind, and on the uniqueness of the form in which it is reflected, that the working of the social whole, by means of differences which play into one another, depends. If, so to speak, we lay a mind on the dissecting table, we find it to consist for the most part of a fabric of organised dispositions, each disposition corresponding to a unique point of view or special angle [1] from which it plays a part in some human function. About the precise relation of a human function to the fact that, as a { 175} rule, it connects together a plurality of human beings, we shall have more to say in the following chapter. It is enough for the present that whatever does connect a plurality of human beings depends on the operation of appercipient systems in their minds, and therefore every individual mind is, as Plato has told us, so far as it goes, for good or evil, the true effective reality of the social whole. And it is easy to see when we consider the working of organised apperception, how it is possible actually to will more or less of our own volitional system. There is first the contrast between appercipient systems which are at any time active and those which are not active, and then there is the contrast between our actual volitional nature at its actual fullest, and the demands implied by the nature of the whole, from which it is inseparable. These demands are always appearing more or less in every act of willing our own will.