But man does not live alone; he is not an isolated individual, but a member of society.  There is not a little truth in the saying that the individual, like the atom, is an abstraction.  Yes, the atom apart from the universe is as much an abstraction as the universe apart from the atom.  And if the individual maintains his existence by the instinct of self-preservation, society owes its being and maintenance to the individual’s instinct of perpetuation.  And from this instinct, or rather from society, springs reason.

Reason, that which we call reason, reflex and reflective knowledge, the distinguishing mark of man, is a social product.

It owes its origin, perhaps, to language.  We think articulately—­i.e., reflectively—­thanks to articulate language, and this language arose out of the need of communicating our thought to our neighbours.  To think is to talk with oneself, and each one of us talks with himself, thanks to our having had to talk with one another.  In everyday life it frequently happens that we hit upon an idea that we were seeking and succeed in giving it form—­that is to say, we obtain the idea, drawing it forth from the mist of dim perceptions which it represents, thanks to the efforts which we make to present it to others.  Thought is inward language, and the inward language originates in the outward.  Hence it results that reason is social and common.  A fact pregnant with consequences, as we shall have occasion to see.

Now if there is a reality which, in so far as we have knowledge of it, is the creation of the instinct of personal preservation and of the senses at the service of this instinct, must there not be another reality, not less real than the former, the creation, in so far as we have knowledge of it, of the instinct of perpetuation, the instinct of the species, and of the senses at the service of this instinct?  The instinct of preservation, hunger, is the foundation of the human individual; the instinct of perpetuation, love, in its most rudimentary and physiological form, is the foundation of human society.  And just as man knows that which he needs to know in order that he may preserve his existence, so society, or man in so far as he is a social being, knows that which he needs to know in order that he may perpetuate himself in society.

There is a world, the sensible world, that is the child of hunger, and there is another world, the ideal world, that is the child of love.  And just as there are senses employed in the service of the knowledge of the sensible world, so there are also senses, at present for the most part dormant, for social consciousness has scarcely awakened, employed in the service of the knowledge of the ideal world.  And why must we deny objective reality to the creations of love, of the instinct of perpetuation, since we allow it to the creations of hunger or the instinct of preservation?  For if it be said that the former creations are only the creations of our imagination, without objective value, may it not equally be said of the latter that they are only the creations of our senses?  Who can assert that there is not an invisible and intangible world, perceived by the inward sense that lives in the service of the instinct of perpetuation?