I might compare the social synthesis to crystals growing out of a fluid
matrix. It is where the growing order of the crystals has as yet not
spread that the old resource to destruction and violent personal or
associated acts remains.
But this metaphor of crystals is a very inadequate one, because crystals
have no will in themselves; nor do crystals, having failed to grow in
some particular form, presently modify that form more or less and try
again. I see the organizing of forces, not simply law and police which
are indeed paid mercenaries from the region of violence, but legislation
and literature, teaching and tradition, organized religion, getting
themselves and the social structure together, year after year and age
after age, halting, failing, breaking up in order to try again. And it
seems to me that the amount of lawlessness and crime, the amount of
waste and futility, the amount of war and war possibility and war danger
in the world are just the measure of the present inadequacy of the
world's system of collective organization to the purpose before them.
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