ABSTRACT
The developed consciousness of the individual is essentially social. Our knowledge has been gained by co-operation; our tastes are moulded by social intercourse; our actions are directed to social ends. This chapter provides several considerations that help people to escape from the purely egoistic standpoint. Our consciousness of others, however, is not simply the consciousness of a number of particular beings. It is also the consciousness of a group, to which we in some ways belong. Education necessarily plays a considerable part, in the sense in which education means the initiation of the individual into the spirit of his society. The complexity in the structure of society makes it possible to study it in different ways. When we direct our attention to the conscious ends that are involved in its life as a spiritual unity, we are led to those studies that were called by Aristotle Ethics and Politics.
