16 SOCIAL SCIENTIST define him in terms of a set of constants is nearly an insult. For he can become more than what he is.1 This is what makes Hegel's way of posing the question suggestive, despite its abstraction. It brings out its internal dialectical structure, its historical and necessaiily relative quality. Every society creates man after its own image, to suit its own special needs. It is a dual image, for it serves a dual purpose—a combination of an ideal and a reflection; of what man was and what he ought to be. The implicit image of man that an age builds up gives us a privileged glimpse into the centre of its culture, the inner recesses of its consciousness. This is the point on which the mind of the society is most prepared, and also the least. Here it tries to sell its favourite illusions, and also gives itself away. Other theorists had also occasionally noted this structure before Hegel. But they put this to different use. Hobbes, for instance, had suggested a simple procedure consisting of two moments. The advantage with social theory, thought Hobbes, was that men could "see" inside themselves as into other men. Since all men were machines similary constructed, finding out the structure of instincts should not be difficult. He assumed naively that this would provide a psychological basis for political theory as^ secure [as the axioms of geometry.3 Ironically, his theory drew critical fire at the point where he had least expected it. Leviathan had the curious distinction of irritating all sides.3 Everybody was suspicious of his formulations. Hobbes had not thought of one question: why the characteristics of human nature excited so much of debate, why it appeared different to men of different periods. He did not wonder why men had appeared as conclusively collective to others as they appeared individualistic to him. Medievalists and Cartesians beleieved in the existence of a single immutable human nature. Ideological battles were fought on this concept. Feudals argued that men were by nature collectivists, others that they were eternally bourgeois. Only by the middle of the 19th century such eternalist ideas were discarded. Major concepts of man show a paradoxical quality. These are subtle but ubiquitously effective. Often they provide organizing principles of whole cultures. The way a society creates its dominant human image is reflected in all domains of thinking. In subtle forms it permeates its culture. A society, a movement, a theory expresses its implicit concept of man through all modes of expression, through its articulation and its silence. It is manifested in it? social codes, foriral laws, informal behaviour systems, its high