Saturday, September 30, 2017

Wonder and Empowerment

Plato and Aristotle agree that philosophizing begins with Wonder, and, probably, that it ends with Knowledge.  Where they disagree is about what happens in between--Dialectics vs. Analysis, respectively.  Thus, whether they conceive Contemplation as Wonder or as Knowledge, they implicitly agree that it cannot be a self-contained experience, contrary to how Aristotle presents it.  Furthermore, each demonstrates that Wonder is the beginning of something else--Communication, i. e. written, in the case of Plato, oral, in the case of Aristotle.  Thus, Wonder also ends in the learning of another.  Hence, it is also a social act, even if it begins with a private moment.  Thus, even if instantaneous Enlightenment occurs at some phase of the process, Wonder is fundamentally an initial moment of Empowerment, as Plato and Aristotle show, even as they might articulate otherwise.

Friday, September 29, 2017

Henosis and Wonder

Plotinus presents a qualification of the shared assertion of Plato and Aristotle that Philosophy begins in Wonder--it begins in Wonder about specifically Henosis.  But, it is perhaps not until Nietzsche, under the influence of Schopenhauer, systematically contrasts Henosis and Wonder, distinguishing the Dionysian principle of the former from the Apollinian principle of the latter.  However, he stops short of considering the possibility of an interaction of the two, and hence of the possibility that Henosis is more than a self-contained event.  Rather, as is plainly evident, its larger context is comprised of, first, a transition from a condition of separation to a condition of primal unity, and then a re-separation.  He does briefly more comprehensively consider the rhythm of these transitions, but focuses, instead, like Schopenhauer, on the eventual separation exclusively, the result of which is a fixed dualism of the Dionysian and the Apollinian, and, hence, of the abstraction of Wonder from Henosis, thereby undermining a possible internal critique of the effete Intellectualism of some Philosophy, sometimes formulated as the priority of Theory over Praxis.  That critique could be grounded in the interpretation of Wonder as a secondary Henotic moment, and, accordingly, of Cognition, in general, as essentially Volitional.  Regardless, he preserves the non-Cognitive character of his Henosis, avoiding even an interpretation of it as consisting in an anti-Intellectual Intuition, e. g. Bergson's interpretation.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Henosis, Empowerment, Enlightenment

One prominent Ancient Monadist, properly Monist, unlike Leibniz, is Plotinus, whose system is probably best known for the Emanation that is his characterization of the Monad's creativity of the Universe.  Now, within this Universe, the peak experience of a created being is Henosis--its fusion with the Monad--an experience that Plotinus reportedly attributes to both Plato and Aristotle, as well.  But, Henosis is not to be confused with the retrospective interpretation it, e. g. in Plotinus' case, the moment of a created being's awareness of its own divine creativity, retrospectively reduced to a mere Intuition.  Likewise, Plato does not thereby do Good when encountering the Form of the Good, but merely knows it, while Aristotle's Active Mind is most fulfilled when merely contemplating eternal principles.  In Modernity, too, the unity of a Spinozist Mode with its creative deity is Intuition, as is Bergson's experience of Creative Energy.  In other words, Plotinus epitomizes the long-standing philosophical tendency of reducing Henosis from a moment of Empowerment, to that of Enlightenment, i. e. from a dynamic moment with consequences, to a self-contained static one.

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Monad, Dyad, Circle, Ellipse

It is unclear if Leibniz is aware of the historical precedent of his use of the term Monad.  That is Pythagoras', and it is the name of his diety, the simple and original entity from which all else follows, including the Dyad, his term for Matter.  So, Leibniz' use is perhaps doubly ironic--the existence in his system of a plurality of Monads is contrary both to what the term connotes, as well as to the Monism of his ancient predecessor.  Now, the Pythagoreans represent the Monad as a point within a circle.  So, the irony in their case is that these pioneers of Geometry seem unaware that a Circle is a special case of an Ellipse, and, specifically, of a figure with two foci.  In other words, the image of an Ellipse with two foci could represent the Dyad, which therefore precedes the Monad.  Indeed, the reduction of an Ellipse to a Circle could represent one of the most ancient of philosophical endeavors--the attempt by a complex entity to posit the prior existence of a simple entity from which it is derived.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

Monad and Dyad

Leibniz' Monad is the Soul of a Body, the Unity of a Multiplicity, the experiences of which are a succession of Perceptions, each itself a Unity of a Multiplicity, driven by Appetition.  Now, a problem with this model is signified in the formulation 'the Monad is the Soul of a Body', since it suggests a separation of Monad from Body.  Furthermore, since Experience is constituted by Perceptions, the model is subject to the challenge raised by Descartes, and amplified by Phenomenalists--the supposition that the Body even exists is ungrounded, and, hence, is problematic.  But, that challenge abstracts from another dimension of Experience--Motility, the product of Volition, constituted by setting in motion multiple corporeal parts, e. g. each of the legs.  In other words, the Monad is a Formal Principle that abstracts from its complementary Material Principle, i. e. the Monad is half a Dyad.

Monday, September 25, 2017

Active Mind and Practical Syllogism

Aristotle' contrast of Active Mind vs. Passive Mind is that of created particulars vs. received particulars, or, in other words, Knowledge from Deduction vs. Knowledge from observation, e. g. that Socrates is mortal as a conclusion from the proposition that all men are mortal vs. watching him die.  So, Mind is Active only to the extent that there exists at least one non-empirical Major Premise.  And, for such to exist, it can only be discovered in Reflection, i. e. in the self-contemplation of Mind, perhaps aka 'Intuition', a term that he occasionally uses.  Now, he recognizes that a Syllogism can be either Theoretical or Practical, though he does not seem to go so far as Spinoza or Kant in recognizing the existence of Practical Particular propositions derived purely from Reflection.  Accordingly, his concept of Active Mind has a lesser extent than do theirs.  Likewise, he cannot recognize that Active Mind is fundamentally Practical, as is Reflection, from which passive Contemplation is abstracted.

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Particulation and Re-formation

The process, attributed by Aristotle to Active Mind, of creating a particular can be called Particulation.  It can also be called Materialization, since a Class is the Form of its Particulars, though that term is laden with other connotations.  And, since the addition of a new member varies the given Class, the process is a variety of Diversification, as well.  So, for example, by Particulation in 1959, the United States created the State of Alaska.  But, at the same time, Alaska has its own Particulars, i. e. its inhabitants.  Furthermore, the addition of a new side to a rectangle can be accompanied by a re-formation, resulting in a pentagon.  These familiar examples illustrate that the Formal Principle and the Material Principle are complementary processes, in contrast with the many uses of 'material' and 'matter' throughout history that connote them as antithetical to some corresponding term, e. g. to Spirit, to Mind, etc.

Saturday, September 23, 2017

Mind and Binarity

The binarity of Mind is evident in the sensory-motor duality of the brain, i. e. is the end-point of the reception of information, and the origin of motility, from which follow the pairs of Cognition-Volition, and Theory-Practice.  Furthermore, Motility is itself constituted by a coordinated multiplicity of motions, even simple walking, and, hence, combines the Material Principle, i. e. multiple particular impulses, and the Formal Principle, that unites them in a pattern.  However, what has complicated the study of these twofold phenomena is a commitment to reductionism that forces the suppression or subordination of one of the principles, usually the Material one, e. g. the subordination of Practice to Theory, the effort to attribute causal efficacy to mere Contemplation, etc.  But, the abandonment of often strained Monism, implicit or explicit, leaves the binary character of Mind easier to recognize.

Friday, September 22, 2017

Mind, Formal Principle, Material Principle

Aristotle likens Mind as the Form of Forms, to the hand as the tool of tools.  But a tool is not just ready-to-hand, to borrow from Heidegger; the hand builds it.  Likewise, as Spinoza observes, Mind creates its intellectual tools.  Thus, the relation of Mind to its Forms is twofold: it is their model, and it produces them.  In other words, Mind is both their Formal Principle and their Material Principle, a binarity that is difficult to conceive clearly without the introduction of the latter.

Thursday, September 21, 2017

Society, Growth, Material Principle

Insofar as a Whole is a Whole of its Parts, it is co-extensive with them.  Accordingly, it is unclear how it is, as Aristotle asserts, "prior" to them.  But, one case in which that priority is clear is when a Whole generates a new Part, e. g. the birth of a new member of a family, of a village, of a society, etc.  In other words, that priority entails the possibility of the growth of a Whole.  Now, as has been previously discussed, the process that produces particulars is the Material Principle.  Thus, the Material Principle is ingredient in the growth of a society.

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Material Cause and Material Principle

To avoid confusion with Aristotle's very different long-established concept of the same name, what has been called here "Material Cause" will instead be termed 'Material Principle'.  Correspondingly, the inverse process will be termed the 'Formal Principle', though it has more in common with Aristotle's Formal Cause that the Material Principle has with his Material Cause.  This use of 'Matter' might be historically eccentric, but it accurately reflects the Unity-Multiplicity connotation of the traditional Form-Matter contrast.  It also avails Aristotle a systematic grounding of his attribution of the production of particulars to Active Mind.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Active Mind and Material Causality

According to Aristotle, in On the Soul, III, 5, Active Mind is "a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes" all the particulars in a class.  However, there is no obvious way that this productive process exemplifies one of his four Causes.  Nevertheless, since 1. the production of particulars is the inverse of their unification; 2. unification is effected by Formal Causality; and 3. the multiplicity corresponding to a Form is its Matter, this productive cause should be characterized as Material Causality.  In other words, Material Causality, properly considered, is defined as the production of multiplicity, rather the mere presence of inert stuff, which is how it is conceived in the Physics.  Thus, Matter is the product of Material Causality, not merely a given inert existent.  The implications of this gap-filling revision at the heart of the origin of Intellectual History are far-reaching.

Monday, September 18, 2017

Logic, Holism, Atomism

Aristotle's Logic is Holistic.  It is presented in a work called Organon, the first section of which is called the Categories, the fundamental topic of which is the formal relations between Genus and Species, which, according to his Holism, are related as Whole to Part.  Accordingly, that relation is reflected in his subsequent study of Deduction, in the third section, called Prior Analytics, in the formulation Universal to Particular, i. e. 'particular' connotes a Part.  In contrast, Modern Logic is Atomistic, the fundamental contrast of which is Universal and Individual, with the latter independent of the former, as is expressed in the formulation 'there is an x such that . . .', which, in the case of the predicate 'is a human', signifies a relation other than one in which a Whole is prior to a Part.  So, even if Modern Logic is commonly taught as an ideologically neutral tool, its fundamental components are inherently prejudicial.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

Holism and Soul

In On the Soul, Aristotle presents his concept of the human Soul.  In the Nichomachean Ethics, he begins his study of its Happiness, and completes it in the Politics, according to which that Happiness consists in being a Part of a Whole.  However, he also posits that a Whole is prior to its Parts.  If so, then the Soul of the Whole must be present in that of the Part.  Now, the likely candidate in the individual Soul is Mind.  However, by attributing that dimension a capacity for self-contained Contemplation, he isolates it from the greater Whole.  Consequently, his concept of the Polis may be Holistic, but that of the Soul of a Citizen is Atomistic.

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Friendship and Reflection

In Aristotle's concept of Friendship, one treats a Friend as "another Self".  However, he does not consider the possibility of the converse relation--treating oneself as a Friend, probably because his concept of the Psyche as individualized excludes any alterior components.  In contrast, in some more recent concepts of the Psyche, e. g. Freud's and Mead's, internalization of alterity is inherently part of structure.  So, more significantly than that those ground the possibility of treating oneself as a Friend, they ground the possibility of any internal self-relation, i. e. of Reflection.  Accordingly undermined are Aristotle's two cardinal concepts of Reflection--human Contemplation, which, as presupposing the existence of others, is not self-sufficient, and Thought-Thinking-Itself, which is impossible in a monotheistic deity, i. e. one without any other.

Friday, September 15, 2017

Polis, Voluntary, Friendship

Many hold, and it is unclear if Aristotle is among them, that membership in the best Polis is voluntary.  But, at least one member of a family, a child, is involved involuntarily, and any association motivated by Economic necessity is also at least partly involuntary.  Instead, within Aristotle's system, the prototype of that concept of the best Polis is his one example of a voluntary community--Friendship, the political significance  he vaguely alludes to in the Nichomachean Ethics, but does not seem to explicitly formulate.

Thursday, September 14, 2017

Circle and Ellipse

It is unclear whether or not Aristotle is aware that a Circle is a special case of an Ellipse, i. e. is a closed regular plane figure of precisely one focus.  If he were, he might consider that divine, because perfect, motion might be Elliptical, and not merely Circular.  He might also recognize the deficiency of presumably self-sufficient Contemplation--that it lacks the companionship that obtains in more comprehensive enclosed contexts, e. g. Friendship, which is constituted by two foci.

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

Community, Nature, Supernature

According to Aristotle, Humans are "by nature political animals".  Clearly, the principle of the basic community, the family, is Natural--to propagate the species, via reproduction and child-rearing.  Likewise, at least one principle of larger communicaties is the continuation of the species, as is evidenced by their foundation at locations that conduce to the provision of vital necessities, e. g. arable land, access to transportation routes, etc.  So, Nature is a sufficient condition of community-formation, leaving uncertain whether or not it is also a necessary condition of it.  In other words, uncertain is whether there is a Supernatural principle of community-formation, e. g. notably, of the Psychopolis and Theopolis of Medieval Theology, i. e. the assemblage of immaterial eternal Souls that have been liberated from the cursed Human species.  Not very much is known about this 'City of God',  but even if such entities exist, why they might engage in a process--communing--the known principle of which, according to Aristotle, is animalistic, remains unclear.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

State, History, Cosmopolity

Aristotle asserts that the State is by nature "the end" of all earlier forms of society, citing the village as an example.  Now, if the Whole is prior to the Part, Man is by nature a political animal, and "the state is a creation of nature", the only State that is truly the End of all others is a Cosmopolity.  But, since he does not arrive at that conclusion, he gives no consideration to the inter-State relations that would by necessity constitute the Means to that End.  Instead, it is not until Kant, followed by Hegel and Marx, takes up the topic two millennia later, that those relations are characterized.  However, none of the three is, like Aristotle, a Holist, so their concepts of the development are fundamentally Hobbesian, i. e. the essential motor of which is conflict.  In contrast, a more benign, Holistic, concept might recognize the role played in the gradual development of the eventual Cosmopolity by Communication, Transportation, and Trade.  No doubt war, sometimes terrible, has dissolved boundaries between incomplete Polities.  But, to make it the exclusive principle of History expresses a saturnine view of Human nature that might reflect, in contrast with Aristotle's Ancient Mediterranean orientation, the influences of darker Christian Theology and/or starker Northern European climate.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Deity, Simplicity, Complexity

Generally well-recognized is that Evolution disproves Aristotle's thesis that Species are fixed.  But, it also constitutes a more fundamental repudiation of Aristotelianism. For, in attributing Simplicity to his deity, he, at the same time, deifies Simplicity.  Accordingly, that the Telos of the universe is that deity, is equivalent to the principle that Simplicity is the highest value.  Thus, Darwin's discovery of a transition from less complex organisms to more complex organisms, e. g. via the emergence of a more versatile thumb, at minimum, inverts the Aristotelian conatus, and, thus, the Aristotelian value system, even if that conatus is not conceived as Teleological.  Now, because Evolution is an indefinite process, the theories that espouse it offer no concept of a maximum entity.  But Aristotle does--his deity is the periphery of the Cosmos, which it therefore encompasses.  However, he abstracts the circumference from the rest of the circle, thereby reducing the entity that occupies it to Simplicity.  That abstraction, because arbitrary, exposes his prejudice for Simplicity, the real deity of his system.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Polis, Communication, Transportation

As has been previously discussed, the concept of a Polis can vary with the available Means of Production.  Another way that Technology can variably influence the concept is via Means of Communication and Transportation.  For, manageability of size of a Polis, a topic of interest to Aristotle is influenced by how quickly word and members can travel within it.  Accordingly, another feature of a Polis treated by Aristotle, and others, is Foreign Policy.  For, as has become more and more apparent, thanks to the speed and scope of current Means of Communication and Transportation, a Cosmopolis is now possible, if not imminent.  But, if so, all the members of the Species will be citizens of the same Polis, in which case Foreign Policy becomes a thing of the past.  So, Size and Foreign Policy, two more components of a Political Philosophy, are variable and contingent.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Property and Contingency

Aristotle's rejection of Plato's Communalism, in favor of an advocacy of Private Property, is open to three interpretations: 1. An Atomist repudiation of his earlier Holism; 2. An unwitting contradiction; or 3. An advocacy of a diversification within the Whole. In any case, the conflict between the two Ancients seems to anticipate the more recent one regarding Property between Socialism and Capitalism.  However, one significant distinction between the two debates is Modern Industrialization, which, for Marx, is the decisive factor in his promotion of the abolition of Private Property, a factor entirely unknown to Plato and Aristotle.  So, the question of the status of Private Property in the best Polis is a contingent, depending on, among other things, the available Means of Production, and not an eternal, problem, despite its treatment as such in many doctrines.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Organicism and Theopolis

As has been previously discussed, a significant challenge to Social Atomism is the existence of the human Species, since in any association of members of the species, it constitutes what Atomism denies--a concrete Unity of the Multiplicity. So, one variety of the doctrine that seems to overcome that challenge is Theopolis, which, as populated by incorporeal Souls that have been individually saved from the cursed species, therefore transcend it. Now, as is well-known, the existence of such a Polis seems neither provable nor disprovable, but, even so, what is usually attributed to it, including that it is a 'city', are characteristics that do not seem to transcend the corporeal realm.  Rather, it seems to consist in nothing more than many of the corporeal goods without the corporeal ills, but also without some of the corporeal goods, namely those which are properties of what is excluded from this realm--intra-species relations.  So, not only is the existence of a Theopolis questionable, so, too, is whether or not, even in principle, it is a better Polis than the Organicist one.

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Organicism, Atomism, Family

The most prominent challenge to Political Organicism comes from Social Atomism, according to which there is no Social Whole that is greater than the sum of its Parts, and, accordingly, that there is no Highest Good that is greater than the sum of Individual Highest Goods.  But, the plain and familiar counter-example is the most fundamental of societies--the basic family unit constituted by reproduction and child-rearing.  Not only is this Society more than an adventitious association of three individuals, it also demonstrates the existence of a Good that transcends even all three individual Goods--the propagation of the Species.  And, if the Species is the ground of this Society, than it can be the ground of any.  So, not only does Atomism seem to have no adequate objection to Political Organicism, any association of humans that it can conceive presupposes it.

Wednesday, September 6, 2017

Character and System

The primary concern of Modern Political Philosophy is System--the number of Rulers, i. e. one, a few, or all, and the means of becoming a Ruler, i. e. inheritance or election, with a common third possibility, conquest, typically ignored.  Thus, the Moderns jettison a primary concern of the Ancients--Character, which is why Machiavelli is the last of the Ancients rather than the first of the Moderns.  Likewise, Organicist Political Philosophy is closer to the Ancient.  For, its concept of the Ruler--the writ large brain--involves both Character and System.  First, the fundamental principle of Character is that as an Organ in an Organism, it functions in the service of the latter, i. e. its conduct should not be self-serving.  Second, the brain is the focal point of the sensory-motor network.  Thus, likewise, the Ruler must receive and take into account information from everywhere in the Polis, which it must coordinate with motivating all its Members. Failures of each of these are common expressed as "out of touch", and "lack of leadership". So, the writ large sensory-motor network constitutes the most fundamental Political System.  On this model, the variations in the means of communication over history suffices to demonstrate the contingency of System.  Likewise is the ample evidence that Ruler corruption and/or incompetence is not exclusive to any System.

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Polis and Health

Despite asserting that the Whole is prior to the Parts, Aristotle offers no concept of the Highest Good of a Polis qua Whole.  He is certainly aware of Plato's two Holistic Political concepts--Justice and the collectivization of property--but restricts the former to individual citizens, and rejects the latter.  He also has, from the resources of his system, a third alternative--a writ large version of his concept of Organism.  On that basis, the Highest Good of the Polis is Health, consisting in the optimal functioning of each of its interdependent Parts, which entails optimal interdependence.  Health is thus the Highest Good of both the Whole and of its Parts, though a possibility apparently missed by Aristotle. In turn, all other structures are means to that end, and to be evaluated as such.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Political Philosophy, Whole, Parts

The primary aim of a Political Philosophy is to posit the best Polis, from which the best means to that end is derived.  In contrast, Political Theory and Political Science classify and compare various means that have appeared.  Now, Aristotle seems inconsistent in conducting this enterprise.  For, even though he asserts that the Whole is prior to the Parts, in much of what follows, the Whole is a means to the Good of its Parts, e. g. when suggesting that the end of a Constitition is the cultivation of the Virtue in its citizenry.  In other words, he does not seem to define the Highest Good of a Whole qua Whole.  But, the inconsistency stems not from a failure to subordinate the Parts to the Whole; rather, it is from his opposing Whole and Part to begin with.  Instead, a Whole is a Whole of its Parts, so that the Good of the Whole is the Good of its Parts.  On that basis, the best Polis is one constituted by the optimal functioning of all its Parts, with the best system that which is an effective means to that end.  That the actualization of such a Polis is highly unlikely is not equivalent to its impossibility, and its mere possibility has value as a corrective to the pretensions of contingent inferior systems to inherent necessity, e. g. the prominent thesis that a 'state of Nature' is a condition of universal war.

Sunday, September 3, 2017

Holism, Ruler, Ruled

Aristotle's formulation that a Whole is prior to its Parts is misleading in two respects.  First, it suggests that Whole and Parts are independent, whereas a Whole is a Whole of its Parts, and a Part does not exist in isolation from the rest of the Parts.  Second, it superficially entails that in its antithesis, the Parts are prior to the Whole, rather than there being therein only individual entities and their assemblage, i. e. absent a real Whole, the multiplicity are not Parts.  Now, the feature of Political Holism that is most difficult to grasp from the perspective of Political Atomism is that in it, Ruler and Ruled are each Parts, so that each is at the service of the Whole.  The difficulty is a consequence of the denial of the existence of the Whole, leaving the Ruled at the service of the Ruler, i. e. a Hierarchical ordering.  The Modern aversion to Ancient Political doctrine is that of an Atomism that mistakes Medieval Hierarchism for the fundamental concept Ancient Political Philosophy.

Saturday, September 2, 2017

Organicism, Hierarchism, Atomism

In On the Soul,II,1, Aristotle characterizes an Organism as constituted by interdependent Parts.  However, he seems unaware of the profound antithesis to Hierarchism of Organicism--in the former, but not the latter, higher and lower are related as better to worse, but e. g. the brain of an Organism needs the foot just as much as the foot needs the brain.  The conflict is momentous when analogously magnified in the Geocentric writ large Organism , i. e. in the ancient Polis, specifically in the ruler-ruled relation--better-worse vs. interdependence. Now, Aristotle's advocacy of Holism--the priority of Whole over Part--at the outset of the Politics, strongly suggests that the subsequent doctrine is Organicist, but, unfortunately, he neglects any implication of it for Hierarchism.  Consequently, in fateful contrast, the Theological tradition that appropriates Aristotelianism is Hierarchist, and the subsequent Modernity vs. Medieval conflict is that of Egalitarianism vs. Inegalitarianism, with Aristotelianism subsumed under the latter.  Thus completely lost has been that the more fundamental antithesis between Aristotelianism and Modernism is actually that of Organicism vs. Atomism.  On that basis, presumed anti-Modernists, e. g. Strauss, because Atomist, are just as Modernist as the Egalitarianism that they oppose.

Friday, September 1, 2017

Soul, Political Body, Legislation

As has been previously discussed, one potential casualty of an academic disconnect of Philosophy and Political Science is the systemstic relation between the Nichomachean Ethics and the Politics.  Another is between the latter and On the Soul.  For, in the Politics, two paragraphs after the better-known thesis "Man is by nature a political animal" is Aristotle's principle that "the whole is of necessity prior to the part", which is the writ large correlate of a concept of Organism that he presents in On the Soul.  More precisely, Soul is the Form of the manifold parts that constitute a Body, unifying them by animating the Body.  Analogously, therefore, following Plato's example, rulership animates the manifold of the political Body by unifying them via Legislation, which constitutes its Soul.  Thus, lost in the academic disconnect is the scope of Aristotle's systematic ambition, thereby reducing the standard focus in the Politics to his comparison of the various modes of Legislation, which abstracts from the function of the latter as the Soul of the collective Organism.