E pluribus unum, sub specie aeternitatis. Unamuno, Life 7.22

Unamuno imagines us as simultaneously individual and social, an association between two different selves that isn't fully reducible to either. The society that includes all matter is Nature, and when we personify this, adding our affection for matter to the matter itself, we see God. We are part of Nature and God, as they are part of us. Being part of something doesn't mean understanding or controlling it, in any total or totally coherent way, but there is some room for us to act as individuals, to express and rationalize what we observe of the unity between ourselves and the world(s) around us.

Y recordando lo que en otra parte de esta obra dijimos, podemos decir que las cosas materiales en cuanto conocidas, brotan al conocimiento desde el hambre, y del hambre brota el universo sensible o material en que las conglobamos, y las cosas ideales brotan del amor y del amor brota Dios, en quien esas cosas ideales conglobamos, como en Conciencia del Universo. Es la conciencia social, hija del amor, del instinto de perpetuación, la que nos lleva a socializarlo todo, a ver en todo sociedad, y nos muestra, por último, cuán de veras es una Sociedad infinita la Naturaleza toda. Y por lo que a mí hace, he sentido que la Naturaleza es sociedad, cientos de veces al pasearme en un bosque y tener el sentimiento de solidaridad con las encinas, que de alguna oscura manera se daban sentido de mi presencia.

La fantasía que es el sentido social, anima lo inanimado y lo antropomorfiza todo; todo lo humaniza, y aun lo humana. Y la labor del hombre es sobrenaturalizar a la Naturaleza, esto es: divinizarla humanizándola, hacerla humana, ayudarla a que se concientice, en fin. La razón, por su parte, mecaniza o materializa.

Y así como se dan unidos y fecundándose mutuamente el individuo—que es, en cierto modo, sociedad— y la sociedad—que es también un individuo— inseparables el uno del otro, y sin que nos quepa decir dónde empieza el uno para acabar el otro, siendo más bien aspectos de una misma esencia, así se dan en uno el espíritu, el elemento social que al relacionarnos con lo demás nos hace conscientes, y la materia o elemento individual e individuante, y se dan en uno fecundándose mutuamente la razón, la inteligencia y la fantasía, y en uno se dan el Universo y Dios.

Recalling what we have already said in another part of this book, we can here observe that material things, insofar as we know them, are known to us because of hunger. Hunger thus is the source of the sensible or material world we assemble from physical things. Ideal things, on the other hand, arise from love, which is also the source of God, into whom we assemble all ideal things, so that his divine persona expresses the Consciousness of the Universe. This is a social consciousness, a daughter of Love, born from an instinct for perpetuation that drives us to socialize all things—to see society in everything. Its final revelation to us is that all Nature amounts to an infinite Society. For my own part, I have often felt that Nature is a society. Hundreds of times I've walked through a forest and had a feeling of solidarity with the holm-oaks, as they gave subtle signals that they were aware of my presence.

Imagination, our social awareness of all that surrounds us, animates what is inanimate and puts everything into human shapes. It humanizes all, including that which is properly human. So the labor of mankind is to render Nature as something supernatural—to divinize her by fashioning her into a human form, helping her to become aware of herself as a conscious and human being. Reason has a subordinate role here, to mechanize or materialize nature, insofar as this is possible.

The individual person is in some sense a society, and every society is also an individual. Individual and society are thus inseparable from one another, creating between themselves a dynamic unity such that we cannot find any clear boundary dividing one from the other, and they are best conceived as different aspects of the same essence. So the communal spirit, the social element that arises as we relate with those around us and so become aware of ourselves, is also unified with whatever matter or element is unique to persons as separate beings. In like manner, reason, intelligence, and imagination form unity from their plurality, as does the Universe, making one whole from all its parts—and God.