The Individual and Society
or Psychology and Sociology
CHAPTER I
The Individual and the Group
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IT is clear, even from the most superficial examination of the facts and movements of social life, that two different points of view and two somewhat different interests are present in it. The rights, duties, liberties of the individual may have emphasis, on the one hand, and the requirements, laws, conventions of society as an organized body may be invoked, on the other hand. These two contrasted, if not actually opposed, interests confront the social theorist no less than the man of affairs, and the contrast inevitably suggests itself as point of departure for discussion.
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In fact, the contrast takes form in the distinction between the problems of the psychologist and sociologist respectively. However we may refine the distinction and confuse the issue by debating the exact dividing line, it still remains true that psychology deals with the individual, and sociology deals with the group.
This does not mean, of course, that their respective domains are separate; not at all. The individual mind, as dealt with by the psychologist, is not a cell closed to influences from the group; far from it. The psychologist reports the individual as in substance a microcosm reflecting the group life in miniature. And it is equally true that the group as dealt with by the sociologist has no existence except by the compliance and co-operation of the individuals. So we should expect the two sciences to draw constantly upon each other. The psychologist finds certain movements taking place in the individual mind which indicate social
(15) conditions of life and habit, and social requirements of adaptation and concession; he must then appeal to the sociologist to inform him of the modes of organization existing in the group to which the individual response is made. On the other hand, the sociologist is at every turn dependent upon the psychologist to inform him of the movements of the individual mind which incorporate themselves in social institutions.
It is not my intention to discuss the more refined aspects of the relation of the two sciences; such discussions are already interminable and for the most part fruitless. I wish, on the contrary, simply to designate the two points of view as characterizing the two branches of knowledge respectively; and on this general basis to show the present state of knowledge in regard to the great topics common to both. We will see that, apart from refinements, the distinction can be very
(16) well maintained; but that most of the interests represented in individual and social life are common and liable to both interpretations alternatively. It is, to my mind, the most remarkable outcome of modern social theory — the recognition of the fact that the individual's normal growth lands him in essential solidarity with his fellows, while on the other hand the exercise of his social duties and privileges advances his highest and purest individuality. The movements are one, although the sciences, from their necessary difference in point of view, must treat them as if they were two.
We will notice the main topics of current theory, therefore, in the following pages, under the two rubrics, "psychological" and "sociological"; at the same time that the results will show their essential concurrence in result for what may be called the philosophy of society, and also for the theory of history, since history is simply the record of the events
(17) of human life, as shown by the operation of the individual and social forces acting together.
I will first sketch the origin and extent of the contrast between the individual and society, and then show, in a series of short chapters, how the motives of the individual mind, appearing in its competitions, limitations, solidarities, training, loyalties, inventiveness, etc., and working together, issue in a type of collective or social organization, by which their force is conserved and made always available for humanity. Personal individualism shows itself in social competition; personal sympathy and morality in social solidarity; personal imitativeness and training in pedagogical institutions; personal loyalty in civic institutions; personal inventiveness in social progress. The motive in each case preserves its essential character, although tempered and transformed in the social movement as a whole.
Let us, then, at the outset, set forth
(18) the leading principles involved in the actual relation of individual and group.
II
The individual comes into the world with the impulse of the history of the race behind him. He has few perfect instincts, such as many of the animals show. He is, on the contrary, plastic and educable. But his development is nevertheless to be a compromise between the two tendencies which throughout all his life represent individualism and collectivism. He has distinctly egoistic and individualistic impulses, but with them he has also positive predispositions to social life. These two germinal tendencies are to receive their more perfect adjustment, or at least a working relation, in his education and training in the habits and usages of the social group.
It is not necessary to dwell upon the more individualistic factor in his heredity;
(19) it is summed up in the word "appetite." He has a mass of tendencies which are necessary to the preservation and advancement of his vegetative and animal life. These are of necessity direct, strong, and self-seeking.
But over against these we find certain positive impulses which are of a quasi-social or gregarious sort, ready soon after birth to develop the other side of his nature. Bashfulness, shame, jealousy, are some of the more fundamental tendencies rooted in the organic structure of the human babe,[1] which seem to reveal ancestral conditions of collective life and habit.
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With these go, in a more positive sense, certain great motives of action which, natural as they are and quasi-instinctive, become the tools of "socialization according to nature " very early in the individual's personal history. Play and imitation, twin brothers in the scheme of the child's hereditary impulses, come to assume, each alone and both together, a very extraordinary role.
By play the young animal and the child alike come into the most fruitful social relations with one another. The meaning of the varied situations of life is learned in play, under conditions free from the storm and stress of actual serious life; and thus the functions playfully exercised are developed. The great activities of later utility in the struggles of life, and in the varied social conditions of existence, are thus made ready. In play we find one of the great meeting places of the forces of individualism and collectivism. — Imitation is another great socializing
(21) function. The child naturally falls to imitating, and when once this has begun he is a veritable copying machine, turning out acts, opinions, decisions, which are based with more or less correctness upon models found in his social environment.
By imitation he gets the "feel" of things that others do, and so learns to value the safe and sane; by imitation, he tries on the varied ways of doing things, and so learns his own capacities and limitations; by imitation he actually acquires the stored up riches of the social movements of history; by imitation he learns to use the tools of culture, speech, writing, manual skill, so that through the independent use of these tools he may become a more competent and fruitful individual; finally, it is by imitation in the way of varied and effortful trial that he succeeds in being original and inventive. Of this last result, more later on; here let us note simply that
(22) imitation in its social role is not mere imitation, mere copying, slavish adherence to the prevalent and easy ways of doing things; that would be a superficial way of looking at this most extraordinary set of functions. Imitation to the intelligent and earnest imitator is never slavish, never mere repetition; it is, on the contrary, a means to further ends, a method of absorbing what is present in others and of making it over in forms peculiar to one's own temper and valuable to one's own genius.
Armed with these impulses, the weapons of competition as well as of co-operation, the young hero of the nursery begins his personal development, as a centre of considerate and purposeful action. The nucleus of personality, to the outsider, is the bodily self; it is a sort of social unit; but to the individual himself, the distinction between persons as minds and persons as mere bodily presences soon springs up and takes on greater and
(23) greater significance. For this is not an inborn distinction. The sense of self is not a ready-made and perfect gift; it is a slow growth, the stages of which show in a most interesting way the interaction of the individualistic and social factors.
It begins, probably, when the child notes the capricious and seemingly lawless actions of persons, in contrast with the more regular and mechanical actions of things, such as the swinging of the pendulum, the opening and closing of the door, the rolling of the ball upon the floor. Persons do the most unexpected, the most inconsistent things. And it is these things that attract attention and call out the impulse to imitate. The child imitates the acts of persons.
Thus he is admitted to the inside of the other's mind, as it were, and discovers that bodies are not, as minds are, centres of feeling, will, and knowledge. He makes very quickly the discovery
(24) that his own personality is likewise two-sided; that he, too, is a mind on the inside, and that that which others see of him on the outside is not the mind, but merely the physical person. He goes through a series of distinguishable processes of interpretation, all worked out in detail by the psychologist,[2] which are of momentous significance for the evolution of personality.
Put very briefly and untechnically, these processes are in outline as follows: The mind of others is at first to the child the source of capricious and mysterious actions and events. It is located simply in the physical person of others it is then "projective"— simply "projected" into the other person, nurse, mother, or whoever it be.
But this sort of presence is then taken over into himself, by imitation, and illus-
(25) -trated in those more intimate experiences which are peculiar to his own mental life — pains, efforts, emotional crises, etc. These become the means by which he interprets the "projective" characteristics of others. Their inner life is understood in terms of his own. The whole set of events, having personal, and not merely physical or bodily significance, becomes "subjective"; it is peculiar to the "subject," which is now for the first time differentiated with some clearness from things.
This is followed again by a return movement. The subjective experiences —say a series of violent efforts, or a violent pain — are in analogous circumstances read into others also. When the emotional expression warrants it, or when cries or gestures indicate it, the subjective is made over to other persons; it is "ejected" into the individuals of the immediate entourage.
0ther persons are thought, of then in
(26) just the same terms as the private self; and the private self in the same terms as other persons; it is impossible to distinguish them, so far as the meaning in subjective terms is concerned. The thought of self is of a larger self which includes personalities in general; and the different persons, in all that which is not singular or characteristic of each, are fundamentally the same.
III
The significance of this for social theory is evident. It is impossible for any one to begin life as an individualist in the sense of radically separating himself from his social fellows. The social bond is established and rooted in the very growth of self-consciousness. Each individual's apprehension of his own personal self and its interests involves the recognition of others and their interests; and his pursuit of one type of purposes,
(27) generous or selfish, is in so far the pursuit of the other also.
This accounts for the very radical and fundamental character of some of the social emotions: sympathy, remorse, jealousy, mortification, etc., in presence of others or. in view of their opinions. The individual finds the bond which binds him —to his fellows too strong for light or "cavalierly" treatment. The movement by which he seeks to retire into the citadel of his private interest, and to ignore the personal rights, views, and judgments of others, involves the dwelling upon his own self and its interests; but this stirs up the equivalences and identities by which his self-consciousness involves the thought of others. He thus only sharpens, instead of dulling, his susceptibility to their presence and attitude.
The significance of this, however, for psychology resides in the fact that it shows the true basis of social relationships;
(28) they are rooted in the normal psychic processes of individual growth. We may then consider as answered the question as to how the individual is able to be social. He does not have to consider the question at all, nor do we, for he is simply social by the same right that he is personal. He grows in personality and individuality by growing also in sociality. He does not have two lives, two sets of interests, two selves; one personal and the other social. He has but one self, which is personal and social in one, by right of the essential and normal movement of his growth.
This has consequences of the first importance throughout our study. It becomes the presupposition of our answers to questions of the relation of the one individual to others, considered from the psychic point of view; that is, from the point of view of the persons themselves. The social relation is in all cases intrinsic to the life, interests, and purposes of the
(29) individual; he feels and apprehends the vitality of social relations in all the situations of his life.
On the side of sociology, too, this truth is of no less importance. Every social situation is constituted by the thinking and acting of certain individuals, in varying degrees and sorts of co-operation or opposition constituting the social relationship. The mere outside view, the telling-off of the physical acts, the number of cases, the circumstantial conditions of social action — all this is artificial, unless we realize that the situation is social not in virtue of these external relations, but solely in virtue of the understanding of the place and function —the desire, the opinion, the purpose —of all the actors by each. The essential thing to make a situation social is a normal self, a thought or feeling of personality, in the actors, by which they are able to combine, discuss, compete, with certain recognized "rules of the game." A sit-
(30) -uation which is psychic in character and scope is essential. Without it no society could arise.
This is seen negatively in aggregations of persons in conditions in which normal conscious relations are not established among the insane, among merely gregarious animals ruled by instinct, among persons who understand not a word of one another's language, or among those who have no interests in common. Society simply does not exist and cannot be constituted in such conditions. The essential bond is lacking, the mental bond, the common thought, and the common apprehension of personality.
It is clear, therefore, that we may in anticipation expect certain sorts of sociological theory and doctrine to fail: theories which do not recognize, or which actually deny the dependence of all social life upon mental factors. Such theories, for example, as those which make geographical distinctions es-
(31) -sential; or those which make force or constraint fundamental; or those which interpret social processes and changes in terms of biological or physiological functions or organizations. All these have their force, since all these sorts of influence do in more or less subordinate ways influence the form, the direction of movement, and the differentiation of types in the social body. But as soon as any one of these theories substitutes its favorite fact or its selected set of forces — chemical, mechanical, physical, biological — for the psychic relations by which people having minds come into co-operation in a social situation, and by which the development of such situations is secured, so soon the theory in question commits suicide. It is no longer a theory of society, but a theory of one or more of those sets of forces by which the social movement is externally conditioned or affected.[3]
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This general position will be illustrated fully as we proceed. Its bearings are stated in some detail in the discussion of our first topic, " Social Solidarity." In that connection the biological theory of society will naturally come up for criticism.
