HENRY JAMES
In the following lectures, the American-born writer and novelist, Henry James (1843–1916), expressed his belief in the transformational power of society. It is through society that man develops identity, manners, and service to the world. Society forces a man to look outside himself and his own interest and focus on serving his fellow man.
The rule or fact in relation to our present social status is undeniable, that an extreme inequality prevails between the public and private element, and that our morality measures accordingly not the reconciliation of these interests, but the degree in which one allows itself to be depressed by the other. In a true fellowship of men, in a society which really deserved its name, the highest morality of course would be to maintain the rigid and undeviating harmony of these two elements. The public conscience in that case would disallow the slightest preponderance to either element, as an instant injury done the other. But our present social adjustment is so imperfect—the public and private interests of mankind are so poorly harmonized in our present society—that a man’s morality is high in the exact ratio of his acquiescence in their disparity, in the exact ratio of his acquiescence in the exaltation of the public element over the private one. What enhances my morality, and my consequent claim upon public esteem, is not my genial humanity, or the relations of undeviating justice I maintain in my intercourse with my neighbors; but my willingness to spend and be spent for the interests of society, my willingness to sustain its existing institutions at whatever damage to my private interests . . .
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Society consequently is the instrument of this unity. It promotes the unity of man’s inward and outward life, by enabling him to resist the despotism of the latter. For you all know that so long as one should recognize only sensual and finite good, only that good which stands in the gratification of his natural appetites, he would be utterly blind to infinite and spiritual good, that good which descends into the human mind from God, and inspires human action with a grace, with a dignity, with a beauty unknown to all lower life. In fact he would be a mere brute, minus the instinct which governs the brute, and keeps him sweet and quasi-orderly in his sphere. Society then, as I said, fits man for the recognition of this inward and infinite good, by enabling him to resist the domination of the outward or sensible sphere. The way it enables him to resist this domination, is by gradually supplying all his natural wants. It finds him in want of external blessing, destitute of the supply of his natural wants, and craving consequently above all things and before all things relief in that direction. Society ensures him such relief. Society, or the fellowship of his kind, enables him to overcome the poverty and inclemency of nature. What he could not do by himself, society enables him to do, namely, to achieve the supply of all his natural wants, and so rise above his original brutality, by finding leisure for the culture of his understanding, the refinement of his manners, and the pursuits of science and art . . .
Such is the sole function of society, to lift man out of the bondage of nature, that he may become freely subject to God. Its office is not to elevate him out of natural bondage into social bondage, but into the freedom of God, into a life which cannot be corrupted, which cannot be defiled, and which shall never pass away.