Leviathan Endowed with Consciousness

Leviathan Endowed with Consciousness names the Martian public mind, a collective intelligence that governs through unity and uniformity but cannot match the private mind in intellectual freedom. Formed in a military crisis, it retains the instincts of command long after its original emergency has passed; on Earth, the need for disciplined cooperation collides with the need to question the assumptions that Martian society takes for granted.

The Collective Mind as Leviathan

The Martian super-individual is compared to the fictitious corporate personality of the state once called “Leviathan.” The comparison becomes literal in the phrase “Leviathan endowed with consciousness”: the public mind is not merely a metaphor for collective identity but a shared consciousness that obsesses every Martian. Its disposition lies somewhere between that of a field-marshal and the God of the ancient Hebrews, combining military authority with the force of an encompassing power.

This shared consciousness favors whatever can be readily assimilated and accords with tradition. Its dominance therefore does not make it intellectually superior to the individuals who compose it. The public mind can preserve and organize what is already collectively acceptable, but its attachment to inherited assumptions leaves it culturally and intellectually behind its own members.

Military Origins and the Limits of Progress

The public mind arose in a crisis that required severe military coordination. Although it subsequently made substantial intellectual progress, its character remained fundamentally military. The crisis established unity as a governing priority, and the Martians continued to prize that unity above the independent movement of their individual spirits.

That priority produces a division in how progress begins. Intellectual advances originate with private individuals, then reach the public consciousness only after intercourse with pioneers has privately influenced a wider mass. The public mind itself initiates change chiefly in social, military, and economic organization—the domains in which coordination is its strength. Its capacity to organize society can thus keep pace with its individuals even while its intellectual and cultural outlook lags behind them.

Earth as a Test of Unity

The Martians’ undertaking on Earth makes this division a source of acute conflict. The enterprise is social and military in character, demanding strict coordination and unified action; the novelty of the environment, however, calls for the full resources of untrammelled private consciousness. The demands cannot be cleanly separated: the same minds required to conform to collective action must also respond independently to a world that challenges their settled ideas.

Earth confronts the Martians with circumstances that make nonsense of fundamental assumptions. In their brightest moments of private consciousness, they sometimes recognize that failure. The encounter therefore tests more than the public mind’s organizational ability: it reveals the spiritual cost of a system that prizes uniformity, suppressing the very independent insight needed to meet what the collective consciousness cannot assimilate.