Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1887

Marginal pencil notation on page 55 of Charles Hartshorne, Reality as Social Process (Boston; Beacon Press, 1953)

Original is missing.

/Hartshorne: “It is tempting to reply that unity or integration is a matter of degree, and that instead of saying there is no group mind we should say there is indeed a group mind, but it is not a highly unified one. This temptation should be resisted. For though there are all degrees of integration of groups, it does not follow that there are all degrees of integration of whole minds belonging to groups. The reason is, in brief, that half a mind, or a half-unified mind, would be worse than no mind at all, and that there is reason to posit a threshold for selfhood or psychic individuality below which there is, not an imperfect or dilute self, but no self at all.”(Emphasis by Heath)/

Right!  Not in-divid-ual if divisible. The mind’s functioning depends on the organic unity.