Veteran
What
History?
The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Carnbridge January-March 196r
by
Edward Hallett Carr
Fellow of Trinity College
Vintage Books
ADivision of Rondom House
New York
I
36 I soclETY AND TrrE
TNDTVTDUAL
37
CHAPTER II
SOCIETY AND THF INDIVIDUAL
Tnn question, which comes first-society or the indi vidual-is like tle question about the hen and the egg. Whether you treat it as a logical or as a historical question, you can make no statement about it, one way or the other, which does not have to be conected by an opposite, and equally one-sided, statement. Society and the individual are inseparable; they are necessary and complementary to each other, not opposrtes. "No man is an island, entire of itself," in Donne's famous words; "every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."' That is an aspect of the truth. On the other hand, take the dictum of |. S. Mill, the classical individualist: "Men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance." " Of course not. But the fallacy is to suppose that they existed, or had any kind of substance, before being "brought together." As soon as we are born, the world gets to work on us and transforms us from merely biological into social units. Every human being at every stage of history or pre-history is born into a society and from his earliest years is moulded by that society. The language which he speaks is not an individual inheritancq but
socal acquisition from the group in which he grows :p. Both language and environment help to determine :he character of his thought; his earliest ideas corne to :isl from others. As has been well said, the individual apart from society would be both speechless and mindress. The lasting fascination of the Robinson Crusoe nlth is due to its attempt to irnagine an individual ndependent of society. The attempt breaks down. R"obinson is not an abstract individual, but an Englishnan from
History?
The George Macaulay Trevelyan Lectures Delivered at the University of Carnbridge January-March 196r
by
Edward Hallett Carr
Fellow of Trinity College
Vintage Books
ADivision of Rondom House
New York
I
36 I soclETY AND TrrE
TNDTVTDUAL
37
CHAPTER II
SOCIETY AND THF INDIVIDUAL
Tnn question, which comes first-society or the indi vidual-is like tle question about the hen and the egg. Whether you treat it as a logical or as a historical question, you can make no statement about it, one way or the other, which does not have to be conected by an opposite, and equally one-sided, statement. Society and the individual are inseparable; they are necessary and complementary to each other, not opposrtes. "No man is an island, entire of itself," in Donne's famous words; "every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."' That is an aspect of the truth. On the other hand, take the dictum of |. S. Mill, the classical individualist: "Men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance." " Of course not. But the fallacy is to suppose that they existed, or had any kind of substance, before being "brought together." As soon as we are born, the world gets to work on us and transforms us from merely biological into social units. Every human being at every stage of history or pre-history is born into a society and from his earliest years is moulded by that society. The language which he speaks is not an individual inheritancq but
socal acquisition from the group in which he grows :p. Both language and environment help to determine :he character of his thought; his earliest ideas corne to :isl from others. As has been well said, the individual apart from society would be both speechless and mindress. The lasting fascination of the Robinson Crusoe nlth is due to its attempt to irnagine an individual ndependent of society. The attempt breaks down. R"obinson is not an abstract individual, but an Englishnan from