336 deep freedomit can combine ideas or interpreted perceptions in an indefi nite num-
ber of ways. By the power of negative capability, it can discover or in-
vent more than it can prospectively justify, defying and transgressing
the methods and presuppositions on which it ordinarily relies. We can
see and understand more than our practices and rules countenance.
We then revise them retrospectively, deriving power from defi ance.
Th at a practice of cooperation is not modular means that under it a
specialization of roles is never more than relative. Th e relativity of role
assignments is closely related to the openness of the frontier between
the conception and the execution of par tic u lar tasks. Under a superior
form of cooperation, the understanding of a task is continuously re-
vised in the course of its execution. Th e fl uidity of roles and of the
distinctions among them follows as a corollary of such experimental
revision.
Th e plasticity of the brain— the ability of discrete portions of brain
structure to acquire new function— is a physical characteristic condu-
cive to the non- modular character of the mind as imagination. No in-
stitutional and ideological settlement represents more than a relatively
shallow and temporary fi x on our possibilities of association. No social
role, and no place in a technical division of labor, defi nes a human be-
ing. More generally, we must choose a par tic u lar course of life, under-
going the mutilation that such a choice imposes. However, we are less
than fully human, and we interrupt our ascent to a greater life, if we fail
to resist in deed and in thought the consequences of this inescapable
partiality.
Th at a practice of cooperation is not formulaic means that it can ad-
mit no defi nitive constitution. It must be or ga nized to be eff ective in
the attainment of its immediate practical goals. However, its or ga ni za-
tion must be open to adjustment in the light of experience. Th ere must
be no absolute distinction between the work of cooperation and the
reform of a cooperative regime; the latter must arise, oft en and easily,
from the former.
Th is ideal cannot be honored in practice so long as the cooperative
regime conforms to an established scheme of division and hierarchy in
society. To change the vocabulary, the technical division of labor must
not passively refl ect and reinforce the hierarchies and divisions of the
social division of labor. It must run before them, embodying the fi rst