The Group Mind

A SKETCH OF THE PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE
PSYCHOLOGY WITH SOME ATTEMPT TO APPLY
THEM TO THE INTERPRETATION OF
NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER

BY

WILLIAM M^cDOUGALL, F.R.S

LATE FELLOW OF ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,
FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE AND WILDE
READER IN MENTAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

“Une nation est une âme, un principe spirituel. Deux choses qui, à
vrai dire, n’en font qu’une constituent cette âme, ce principe spirituel.
L’une est dans le passé, l’autre dans le présent. L’une est la possession
en commun d’un riche legs de souvenirs; l’autre est le consentement
actuel, le désir de vivre ensemble, la volonté de continuer à faire valoir
l’héritage qu’on a reçu indivis.”

Ernest Renan.

Cambridge

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1920

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TO

Professor L. T. HOBHOUSE

in admiration of his work in philosophy, psychology, and sociology, and in the hope that he may discern in this book some traces of the spirit by which his own writings have been inspired.

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[Pg vii]

Preface

In this book I have sketched the principles of the mental life of
groups and have made a rough attempt to apply these principles
to the understanding of the life of nations. I have had the substance
of the book in the form of lecture notes for some years, but have
long hesitated to publish it. I have been held back, partly by my
sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the subject and the inadequacy
of my own preparation for dealing with it, partly because
I wished to build upon a firm foundation of generally accepted
principles of human nature.

Some fifteen years ago I projected a complete treatise on Social
Psychology which would have comprised the substance of the present
volume. I was prevented from carrying out the ambitious scheme,
partly by the difficulty of finding a publisher, partly by my increasing
sense of the lack of any generally accepted or acceptable account of
the constitution of human nature. I found it necessary to attempt
to provide such a foundation, and in 1908 published my Introduction
to Social Psychology. That book has enjoyed a certain popular
success. But it was more novel, more revolutionary, than I had
supposed when writing it; and my hope that it would rapidly be
accepted by my colleagues as in the main a true account of the
fundamentals of human nature has not been realised.

All this part of psychology labours under the great difficulty that
the worker in it cannot, like other men of science, publish his conclusions
as discoveries which will necessarily be accepted by any
persons competent to judge. He can only state his conclusions and
his reasonings and hope that they may gradually gain the general
approval of his colleagues. For to the obscure questions of fact with
which he deals it is in the nature of things impossible to return
answers supported by indisputable experimental proofs. In this
field the evidence of an author’s approximation towards truth can
consist only in his success in gradually persuading competent opinion
of the value of his views. My sketch of the fundamentals of human
nature can hardly claim even that degree of success which would be
constituted by an active criticism and discussion of it in competent
quarters. Yet there are not wanting indications that opinion is
[Pg viii]
turning slowly towards the acceptance of some such doctrine as I
then outlined. Especially the development of psycho-pathology,
stimulated so greatly by the esoteric dogmas of the Freudian school,
points in this direction. The only test and verification to which any
scheme of human nature can be submitted is the application of it
to practice in the elucidation of the concrete phenomena of human
life and in the control and direction of conduct, especially in the two
great fields of medicine and education. And I have been much
encouraged by finding that some workers in both of these fields have
found my scheme of use in their practice and have even, in some
few cases, given it a cordial general approval. But group psychology
is itself one of the fields in which such testing and verification must
be sought. And I have decided to delay no longer in attempting
to bring my scheme to this test. I am also impelled to venture
on what may appear to be premature publication by the fact that
five of the best years of my life have been wholly given up to military
service and the practical problems of psycho-therapy, and by the
reflection that the years of a man’s life are numbered and that, even
though I should delay yet another fifteen years, I might find that I
had made but little progress towards securing the firm foundation
I desired.

It may seem to some minds astonishing that I should now admit
that the substance of this book was committed to writing before
the Great War; for that war is supposed by some to have revolutionised
all our ideas of human nature and of national life. But the
war has given me little reason to add to or to change what I had
written. This may be either because I am too old to learn, or
because what I had written was in the main true; and I am naturally
disposed to accept the second explanation.

I wish to make it clear to any would-be reader of this volume
that it is a sequel to my Introduction to Social Psychology, that it
builds upon that book and assumes that the reader is acquainted
with it. That former volume has been criticised as an attempted
outline of Social Psychology. One critic remarks that it may be good
psychology, but it is very little social; another wittily says “Mr
McDougall, while giving a full account of the genesis of instincts
that act in society, hardly shows how they issue into society. He
seems to do a great deal of packing in preparation for a journey on
which he never starts.” The last sentence exactly describes the
book. I found myself, like so many of my predecessors and contemporaries,
about to start on a voyage of exploration of societies
[Pg ix]
with an empty trunk, or at least with one very inadequately supplied
with the things essential for successful travelling. I decided to avoid
the usual practice of starting without impedimenta and of picking
up or inventing bits of make-shift equipment as each emergency
arose; I would pack my trunk carefully before starting. And now
although my fellow travellers have not entirely approved my outfit,
I have launched out to put it to the test; and I cannot hope that
my readers will follow me if they have not at their command a
similar outfit—namely, a similar view of the constitution of human
nature.

I would gratefully confess that the resolve to go forward without
a further long period of preparation has been made possible for me
largely by the encouragement I have had from the recently published
work of Dr James Drever, Instinct in Man. For the author of that
work has carefully studied the most fundamental part of my Social
Psychology, in the light of his wide knowledge of the cognate literature,
and has found it to be in the main acceptable.

The title and much of the substance of the present volume might
lead a hasty reader to suppose that I am influenced by, or even in
sympathy with, the political philosophy associated with German
‘idealism.’ I would, therefore, take this opportunity both to prevent
any such erroneous inference and to indicate my attitude towards
that system of thought in plainer language than it seemed possible to
use before the war. I have argued that we may properly speak of
a group mind, and that each of the most developed nations of the
present time may be regarded as in process of developing a group
mind. This must lay me open to the suspicion of favouring the
political philosophy which makes of the state a super-individual and
semi-divine person before whom all men must bow down, renouncing
their claims to freedom of judgment and action; the political philosophy
in short of German ‘idealism,’ which derives in the main
from Hegel, which has been so ably represented in this country by
Dr Bosanquet, which has exerted so great an influence at Oxford,
and which in my opinion is as detrimental to honest and clear
thinking as it has proved to be destructive of political morality in
its native country. I am relieved of the necessity of attempting to
justify these severe strictures by the recent publication of The
Metaphysical Theory of the State by Prof. L. T. Hobhouse. In that
volume Prof. Hobhouse has subjected the political philosophy of
German ‘idealism,’ and especially Dr Bosanquet’s presentation of it,
to a criticism which, as it seems to me, should suffice to expose the
[Pg x]
hollowness of its claims to all men for all time; and I cannot better
define my own attitude towards it than by expressing the completeness
of my sympathy with the searching criticism of Mr Hobhouse’s
essay. In my youth I was misled into supposing that the Germans
were the possessors of a peculiar wisdom; and I have spent a large
part of my life in discovering, in one field of science after another,
that I was mistaken. I can always read the works of some German
philosophers, especially those of Hermann Lotze, with admiration
and profit; but I have no longer any desire to contend with the great
systems of ‘idealism,’ and I think it a cruel waste that the best
years of the lives of many young men should be spent struggling
with the obscure phrases in which Kant sought to express his profound
and subtle thought. My first scientific effort was to find
evidence in support of a new hypothesis of muscular contraction;
and, in working through the various German theories, I was dismayed
by their lack of clear mechanical conceptions. My next
venture was in the physiology of vision, a branch of science which
had become almost exclusively German. Starting with a prepossession
in favour of one of the dominant German theories, I soon
reached the conclusion that the two German leaders in this field,
Helmholtz and Hering, with their hosts of disciples, had, in spite
of much admirable detailed work, added little of value and much
confusion to the theory of vision left us by a great Englishman,—namely,
Thomas Young; and in a long series of papers I endeavoured
to restate and supplement Young’s theory. Advancing into the field
of physiological psychology, I attacked the ponderous volumes of
Wundt with enthusiasm; only to find that his physiology of the
nervous system was a tissue of unacceptable hypotheses and that
he failed to connect it in any profitable manner with his questionable
psychology. And, finding even less satisfaction in such works
as Ziehen’s Physiologische Psychologie, with its crude materialism
and associationism, or in the dogmatic speculations of Verworn, I
published my own small attempt to bring psychology into fruitful
relations with the physiology of the nervous system. This brought
me up against the great problem of the relations between mind and
body; and, having found that, in this sphere, German ‘idealism’ was
pragmatically indistinguishable from thorough-going materialism,
and that those Germans who claimed to reconcile the two did not
really rise much above the level of Ernst Haeckel’s wild flounderings,
I published my History and Defense of Animism. And in this field,
though I found much to admire in the writings of Lotze, I derived
[Pg xi]
most encouragement and stimulus from Prof. Bergson. In working
at the foundations of human nature, I found little help in German
psychology, and more in French books, especially in those of Prof.
Ribot. In psycho-pathology I seemed to find that the claims of
the German and Austrian schools were far outweighed by those of
the French writers, especially of Prof. Janet. So now, in attacking
the problems of the mental life of societies, I have found little help
from German psychology or sociology, from the elaborations of
Wundt’s Völkerpsychologie or the ponderosities of Schäffle, and still
less from the ‘idealist’ philosophy of politics. In this field also it
is French authors from whom I have learnt most and with whom
I find myself most in sympathy, especially MM. Fouillée, Boutmy,
Tarde, and Demolins; though I would not be thought to hold in
low esteem the works of many English and American authors,
notably those of Buckle, Bagehot, Maine, Lecky, Lowell, and of
many others, to some of which I have made reference in the chapters
of this book.

I have striven to make this a strictly scientific work, rather than
a philosophical one; that is to say, I have tried to ascertain and state
the facts and principles of social life as it is and has been, without
expressing my opinion as to what it should be. But, in order further
to guard myself against the implications attached by German
‘idealism’ to the notion of a collective mind, I wish to state that
politically my sympathies are with individualism and internationalism,
although I have, I think, fully recognised the great and necessary
part played in human life by the Group Spirit and by that special
form of it which we now call ‘Nationalism.’

I know well that those of my readers whose sympathies are
with Collectivism, Syndicalism, or Socialism in any of its various
forms will detect in this book the cloven foot of individualism and
leanings towards the aristocratic principle. I know also that many
others will reproach me with giving countenance to communistic
and ultra-democratic tendencies. I would, therefore, point out
explicitly at the outset that, if this book affords justification for any
normative doctrine or ideal, it is for one which would aim at a synthesis
of the principles of individualism and communism, of aristocracy
and democracy, of self-realization and of service to the
community. I can best express this ideal in the wise words of
Mr F. H. Bradley, which I extract from his famous essay on ‘My
Station and its Duties.’ “The individual’s consciousness of himself
is inseparable from the knowing himself as an organ of the whole;
[Pg xii]
… for his nature now is not distinct from his ‘artificial self.’ He
is related to the living moral system not as to a foreign body; his
relation to it is ‘too inward even for faith,’ since faith implies a
certain separation. It is no other-world that he can not see but
must trust to; he feels himself in it, and it in him; … the belief in
this real moral organism is the one solution of ethical problems. It
breaks down the antithesis of despotism and individualism; it denies
them, while it preserves the truth of both. The truth of individualism
is saved, because, unless we have intense life and self-consciousness
in the members of the state, the whole state is ossified. The truth of
despotism is saved, because, unless the member realizes the whole
by and in himself, he fails to reach his own individuality. Considered
in the main, the best communities are those which have the
best men for their members, and the best men are the members of
the best communities…. The two problems of the best man and
best state are two sides, two distinguishable aspects of the one
problem, how to realize in human nature the perfect unity of homogeneity
and specification; and when we see that each of these
without the other is unreal, then we see that (speaking in general)
the welfare of the state and the welfare of its individuals are questions
which it is mistaken and ruinous to separate. Personal morality
and political and social institutions can not exist apart, and (in
general) the better the one the better the other. The community is
moral, because it realizes personal morality; personal morality is
moral, because and in so far as it realizes the moral whole.”

Since correcting the proofs of this volume I have become acquainted
with two recent books whose teaching is so closely in
harmony with my own that I wish to direct my readers’ attention
to them. One is Sir Martin Conway’s The Crowd in Peace and War,
which contains many valuable illustrations of group life. The other
is Miss M. P. Follett’s The New State; Group Organization the Solution
of Popular Government, which expounds the principles and advantages
of collective deliberation with vigour and insight.

I am under much obligation to the general editor of this series,
Prof. G. Dawes Hicks. He has read the proofs of my book, and has
helped me greatly with many suggestions; but he has, of course, no
responsibility for the views expressed in it.

W. M^cD.

Oxford,
March 1920.

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[Pg xiii]

Contents

Preface
PART I. GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY
		PAGES
Chapter I. Introduction. The Province of Collective Psychology
	The need for a more concrete psychology—the conception of the group mind—objections to the conception examined—the conception not a new one but familiar in political philosophy and law—the essential problem	1-20
Chapter II. The Mental Life of the Crowd
	The crowd presents the phenomena of collective life in crude and simple forms—the formation of the psychological crowd—its peculiarities—spread and intensification of emotions—how that takes place—the notion of ‘collective consciousness’ provisionally rejected—the submergence of personality in the crowd—the low intelligence of crowds—suggestibility—lack of individual responsibility	21-47
Chapter III. The Highly Organised Group
	The principal conditions of organisation—the army as the type—how its organisation raises the soldier to a higher plane of collective life—the nature of collective will illustrated—influence of leaders	48-61
Chapter IV. The Group Spirit
	The self-consciousness of the group—the group idea and the group sentiment—the group consciousness in primitive life—views of Cornford and Lévy Bruhl examined—‘collective representations’—the peculiar merit of the group spirit—multiple group consciousness—the hierarchy of groups—interaction of groups	62-87
Chapter V. Peculiarities of Groups of Various Types
	Rudimentary groups—natural and artificial groups—purposive, traditional and mixed groups	88-95
[Pg xiv]PART II. THE NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER
Chapter VI. What Is a Nation?
	Difficulty of defining nationhood—Prof. Ramsay Muir’s definition not adequate—mental organisation, resting on tradition, the most essential condition—lack of clear conceptions has given currency to many obscure notions—the study of nationhood essentially the work of group psychology	96-105
Chapter VII. The Mind of a Nation
	National character defined—conditions essential to its formation—homogeneity a prime condition—the influence of racial qualities on national character—the durability of racial qualities—acquired mental homogeneity as illustrated by the American nation—the influence upon it of geographical conditions	106-130
Chapter VIII. Freedom of Communication as a Condition of National Life
	Large nations impossible in the ancient world—the tendency of nations to grow larger with increase of means of communication	131-134
Chapter IX. The Part of Leaders in National Life
	Nations owe their existence to influence of leaders—men of genius—men of talent—their rôle in national life	135-141
Chapter X. Other Conditions of National Life
	A common purpose—war the unifier—national responsibilities—continuity of national life—organisation of the national mind analogous to that of the individual mind—national self-consciousness—types of organisation	142-154
Chapter XI. The Will of the Nation
	Rousseau’s doctrine of the general will—Prof. Bosanquet’s view inadequate—the national mind has both organic unity and the unity of self-consciousness—increase of national self-consciousness the leading fact of recent world history—self-consciousness of nations developed by rivalry and intercourse between them	155-168
[Pg xv]Chapter XII. Ideas in National Life
	The idea of the nation is constitutive—ideas work as forces in national life only in virtue of sentiments grown up about their objects—the notions of society as an organism and as founded on contract synthesised in the conception of the nation as a contractual organism—the value of nationality examined—ideas of conquest—of ancestor worship—of liberty and equality—of progress—of solidarity	169-186
Chapter XIII. Nations of the Higher Type
	National deliberation—the influence on it of organisation and of traditions—certain advantages of the representative system—public opinion arises from an informal organisation—the problem of the high level of public opinion—its solution to be found in the influence of leaders	187-199
PART III. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONAL MIND AND CHARACTER
Chapter XIV. Factors of National Development
	Civilisation does not imply improvement of racial qualities—it abolishes selection by the physical environment—it consists in improved intellectual and moral traditions and is dependent on favourable social organisation	200-207
Chapter XV. The Race-making Period
	Differentiation of races from a common stock—human evolution differs from that of the animals in becoming group evolution—physical environment supplanted by social environment and organisation—the direct effects of climate on the body—on the mind	208-219
Chapter XVI. The Race-making Period (continued)
	Physical environment determines racial adaptation directly by selection—indirectly by determining occupations and social organisation—the protective spirit in France—the spirit of independence in England—attempts of Buckle, Boutmy and Sir H. Maine to account for these not successful	220-232
Chapter XVII. The Race-making Period (continued)
	The influence of occupations—the leading principle of the school of Le Play—the development of the spirit of protection in the people of Gaul—the development of the spirit of independence in the ancestors of the English—the crossing of races—its bad and its good results	233-245
[Pg xvi]Chapter XVIII. Racial Changes during the Historic Period
	Race substitution—the population of Greece—internal selection—its effects in Spain—various forms of social selection—mostly negative or injurious to national stock—economic selection and the social ladder—the innate moral disposition—the question of its improvement	246-269
Chapter XIX. The Progress of Nations in their Youth
	The rarity of progress—the conditions enabling progress—group selection—in what has progress consisted?—views of Buckle and Kidd—conquest and domination an early condition of progress—variability of crossed races—influence of physical environment—western civilisation and social organisation	270-286
Chapter XX. The Progress of Nations in their Maturity
	Liberty and social organisation—caste makes for rigidity—the growth of toleration—imaginative sympathy increases with increasing freedom of intercourse, bringing strife and understanding—the group spirit as the main agent of further progress	287-301
Index		302-304

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[Pg 1]

Chapter I

Introduction

The Province of Collective Psychology

To define exactly the relations of the several special sciences is a
task which can never be completely achieved so long as these sciences
continue to grow and change. It is a peculiarly difficult task in
respect of the biological sciences, because we have not yet reached
general agreement as to the fundamental conceptions which these
sciences should employ. To illustrate this difficulty I need only
refer to a recent symposium of the Aristotelian Society in which a
number of distinguished philosophers and biologists discussed the
question “Are physical, biological and psychological categories irreducible?”
The discussion revealed extreme differences of opinion,
and failed to bring the disputants nearer to a common view. The
difficulty is still greater in respect of the human sciences—anthropology,
psychology, ethics, politics, economics, sociology, and the
rest; and it is not to be hoped that any general agreement on this
difficult question will be reached in the near future. Yet it seems
worth while that each writer who aspires to break new ground in
any part of this field of inquiry should endeavour to make clear to
himself and others his conception of the relations of that part to the
rest of the field. It is, then, in no dogmatic spirit, or with any belief in
the finality of the position assigned to my topic, that I venture the
following definition of the province of psychology with which this
book is concerned.

I have chosen the title, “The Group Mind,” after some hesitation
in favour of the alternative, “Collective Psychology.” The latter has
the advantage that it has already been used by several continental
authors, more especially French and Italian psychologists. But the
title I have chosen is, I think, more distinctively English in quality
and denotes more clearly the topic that I desire to discuss.

An alternative and not inappropriate title would have been “An
Outline of Social Psychology”; but two reasons prevented the
adoption of this. First, my Introduction to Social Psychology has
become generally known by the abbreviated title Social Psychology.
[Pg 2]
This was an unforeseen result and unfortunate designation; for, as I
have explained in the Preface to the present volume, that other work
was designed merely as a propaedeutic; it aimed merely at clearing
the ground and laying the foundations for Social Psychology, while
leaving the topic itself for subsequent treatment. Secondly, I conceive
Group Psychology to be a part only, though a very large part,
of the total field of Social Psychology; for, while the former has to
deal only with the life of groups, the latter has also to describe and
account for the influence of the group on the growth and activities
of the individual. This is the most concrete part of psychology and
naturally comes last in the order of development of the science;
for, like other sciences, psychology began with the most abstract
notions, the forms of activity of mind in general, and, by the aid of
the abstract conceptions achieved by the earlier workers, progresses
to the consideration of more concrete problems, the problems presented
by actual living persons in all their inexhaustible richness
and complexity.

Until the later decades of the nineteenth century, psychology
continued to concern itself almost exclusively with the mind of
man conceived in an abstract fashion, not as the mind of any
particular individual, but as the mind of a representative individual
considered in abstraction from his social settings as something given
to our contemplation fully formed and complete.

Two important changes of modern thought have shown the necessity
of a more concrete treatment of psychological problems. The
first has been the coming into prominence of the problems of genesis
which, although not originated by Darwin, received so great an impetus
from his work. The second has been the increasing realisation of the
need for a more synthetic treatment of all fields of science, the realisation
that analysis alone carries us ever farther away from concrete
problems and leads only to a system of abstract conceptions which
are very remote from reality, however useful they may prove in the
physical sciences. The biological and the human sciences especially
have been profoundly affected by these two changes of modern
thought. As Theodore Merz has so well shown in the fourth volume
of his monumental work[1], the need has been increasingly felt of the
vue d’ensemble, of the synthetic mode of regarding organisms, men,
and institutions, not as single things, self-contained and complete in
themselves, but as merely nodes or meeting points of all the forces
of the world acting and reacting in unlimited time and space.

[Pg 3]

Psychology was, then, until recent years the science of the
abstract individual mind. Each worker aimed at rendering by the
aid of introspection an analytic description of the stream of his own
consciousness, a consistent classification of the elements or features
that he seemed to discover therein, and some general laws or rules
of the order of succession and conjunction of these features; postulating
in addition some one or more explanatory principles or active
agencies such as ‘the will’ or the desire of pleasure, the aversion
from pain, or ‘the association of ideas,’ to enable him to account
for the flow of the distinguishable elements of consciousness. The
psychology achieved by these studies, necessary and valuable as
they were, was of little help to men who were struggling with the
concrete problems of human life and was therefore largely ignored
by them. But, as I have pointed out in the Introduction to my
Social Psychology, those who approached these problems were
generally stimulated to do so by their interest in questions of right
and wrong, in questions of norms and standards of conduct, the
urgency of which demanded immediate answers for the practical
guidance of human life in all its spheres of activity, for the shaping
of laws, institutions, governments, and associations of every kind;
or, as frequently perhaps, for the justification and defence of standards
of conduct, modes of belief, and forms of institution, which
men had learnt to esteem as supremely good.

Thus the political science of Hobbes was the expression of his
attempt to justify the monarchy established by the Tudors and endangered
by the failings of the Stuart kings; while that of Locke
was equally the outcome of his desire to justify the revolution of
1668. Hobbes felt it worth while to preface his magnum opus
on political philosophy with a fanciful sketch of human nature and
of primitive society; yet, as Mr Gooch remarks, “neither Hobbes
nor his contemporaries knew anything of the actual life of primitive
communities[2].” And it may be added that they knew as little of
the foundations of human nature. Again, the social doctrines of
Rousseau, with all their false psychology, were formulated in order
to stir men to revolt against the conditions of social life then prevalent
in Europe. In a similar way, in the development of all that
body of social doctrine that went under the name of Utilitarianism
and which culminated in the political science and economy of the
Manchester School, every step was prompted by the desire to find
[Pg 4]theoretical guidance or justification for rules governing human
activity. And, if we go back to the Politics of Aristotle, we find the
normative or regulative aim still more prominent.

Thus, in all the human sciences, we see that the search for what
is has been inextricably confused with and hampered by the effort
to show what ought to be; and the further back we go in their
history, the more does the normative point of view predominate.
They all begin in the effort to describe what ought to be; and
incidentally give some more or less fallacious or fantastic account
of what is, merely in order to support the normative doctrines. And,
as we trace their history forward towards the present time, we find
the positive element coming more and more to the front, until it
tends to preponderate over and even completely to supplant the
normative aim. Thus even in Ethics there is now perceptible in
some quarters a tendency to repudiate the normative standpoint.
All the social sciences have, then, begun their work at what, from
the strictly logical point of view, was the wrong end; instead of first
securing a basis of positive science and then building up the normative
doctrines upon that basis, they have advanced by repeatedly
going backwards towards what should have been their foundations.
Now the most important part of the positive basis of the social
sciences is psychology; we find accordingly the social sciences at
first ignoring psychology and then gradually working back to it;
they became gradually more psychological and, in proportion as
they did so, they became more valuable. Modern writers on these
topics fall into two classes; those who have attempted to work upon
a psychological foundation, and those who have ignored or denied
the need of any such basis. The earlier efforts of the former kind,
among which we may reckon those of Adam Smith, Bentham, and
the Mills, although they greatly influenced legislation and practice
in general, have nevertheless brought the psychological method into
some disrepute, because they reasoned from psychological principles
which were unduly simplified and in fact misleading, notably the
famous principle of psychological hedonism on which they so greatly
relied. Their psychology was, in brief, too abstract; it had not
achieved the necessary concreteness, which only the introduction of
the genetic standpoint and the vue d’ensemble could give it. Other
writers on the social sciences were content to ignore the achievements
of psychology; but, since they dealt with the activities of human
beings and the products of those activities, such as laws, institutions
and customs, they could hardly avoid all reference to the human
[Pg 5]
mind and its processes; they then relied upon the crude unanalysed
psychological conceptions of popular speech; often they went further
and, aspiring to explain the phenomena they described, made vast
assumptions about the constitution and working of the human mind.
Thus, for example, Renan, when he sought to explain some feature
of the history of a nation or society, was in the habit, like many
others, of ascribing it to some peculiar instinct which he postulated
for this particular purpose, such as a political or a religious instinct
or an instinct of subordination or of organisation. Comte made
egoism and altruism the two master forces of the mind. Sir Henry
Maine asserted that “satisfaction and impatience are the two great
sources of political conduct,” and, after asserting that “no force
acting on mankind has been less carefully examined than Party, and
yet none better deserves examination,” he was content to conclude
that “Party is probably nothing more than a survival and a consequence
of the primitive combativeness of mankind[3].” More recently
Prof. Giddings has discovered the principal force underlying all
human associations in Consciousness of Kind. Butler and the
intuitive moralists postulated ‘conscience’ or moral sense as
something innately present in the souls of men; while the creators
of the classical school of political economy were for the most part
content to assume that man is a purely rational being who always
intelligently pursues his own best interest, a false premise from
which they deduced some conclusions that have not withstood the
test of time. Similar vague assumptions may be found in almost
every work on the social sciences,—all illustrating the need for a
psychology more concrete than the older individual psychology, as
a basis for these sciences, a positive science, not of some hypothetical
Robinson Crusoe, but of the mental life of men as it
actually unfolds itself in the families, tribes, nations, societies of all
sorts, that make up the human world.

The general growth of interest in genetic problems, stimulated
so greatly by the work of Darwin, turned the attention of psychologists
to the problem of the genesis of the developed human mind,—the
problem of its evolution in the race and its development in the
individual. Then it at once became apparent that both these processes
are essentially social; that they involve, and at every step are
determined by, interactions between the individual and his social
environment; that, while the growth of the individual mind is
[Pg 6]
moulded by the mental forces of the society in which it grows up,
those forces are in turn the products of the interplay of the minds
composing the society; that, therefore, we can only understand the
life of individuals and the life of societies, if we consider them
always in relation to one another. It was realised that each man is
an individual only in an incomplete sense; that he is but a unit in
a vast system of vital and spiritual forces which, expressing themselves
in the form of human societies, are working towards ends which
no man can foresee; a unit whose chief function it is to transmit
these forces unimpaired, which can change or add to them only in
infinitesimal degree, and which, therefore, has but little significance
and cannot be accounted for when considered in abstraction from
that system. It became clear that the play of this system of forces
at any moment of history is predominantly determined by conditions
which are themselves the products of an immensely long course of
evolution, conditions which have been produced by the mental
activities of countless generations and which are but very little
modified by the members of society living at any one time; so that,
as has been said, society consists of the dead as well as of the living,
and the part of the living in determining its life is but insignificant
as compared with the part of the dead.

Any psychology that recognises these facts and attempts to
display the reciprocal influences of the individual and the society
in which he plays his part may be called Social Psychology. Collective
or Group Psychology is, then, a part of this larger field. It has to
study the mental life of societies of all kinds; and such understanding
of the group life as it can achieve has then to be used by Social
Psychology in rendering more concrete and complete our understanding
of the individual life.

Group Psychology itself consists properly of two parts, that
which is concerned to discover the most general principles of group
life, and that which applies these principles to the study of particular
kinds and examples of group life. The former is logically prior to
the second; though in practice it is hardly possible to keep them
wholly apart. The present volume is concerned chiefly with the
former branch. Only when the general principles of group life
have been applied to the understanding of particular societies, of
nations and the manifold system of groups within the nation, will
it be possible for Social Psychology to return upon the individual
life and give of it an adequate account in all its concrete fulness.

The nature of Group Psychology may be illustrated by reference
[Pg 7]
to Herbert Spencer’s conception of sociology. Spencer pointed out
that, if you set out to build a stable pile of solid bodies of a certain
shape, the kind of structure resulting is determined by the shapes
and properties of these units, that for example, if the units are
spheres, there are only very few stable forms which the pile can
assume. The same is true, he said, of such physical processes as
crystallisation; the form and properties of the whole or aggregate
are determined by the properties of the units. He maintained with
less plausibility that the same holds good of animal and vegetable
forms and of the elements of which they are composed. And he went
on to argue that, in like manner, the structure and properties of
a society are determined by the properties of the units, the individual
human beings, of which it is composed.

This last proposition is true in a very partial sense only. For
the aggregate which is a society has, in virtue of its past history,
positive qualities which it does not derive from the units which
compose it at any one time; and in virtue of these qualities it acts
upon its units in a manner very different from that in which the
units as such interact with one another. Further, each unit, when it
becomes a member of a group, displays properties or modes of
reaction which it does not display, which remain latent or potential
only, so long as it remains outside that group. It is possible,
therefore, to discover these potentialities of the units only by
studying them as elements in the life of the whole. That is to
say, the aggregate which is a society has a certain individuality,
is a true whole which in great measure determines the nature and
the modes of activity of its parts; it is an organic whole. The society
has a mental life which is not the mere sum of the mental lives of
its units existing as independent units; and a complete knowledge
of the units, if and in so far as they could be known as isolated units,
would not enable us to deduce the nature of the life of the whole,
in the way that is implied by Spencer’s analogies.

Since, then, the social aggregate has a collective mental life,
which is not merely the sum of the mental lives of its units, it may
be contended that a society not only enjoys a collective mental
life but also has a collective mind or, as some prefer to say, a
collective soul.

The tasks of Group Psychology are, then, to examine the conception
of the collective or group mind, in order to determine whether
and in what sense this is a valid conception; to display the general
principles of collective mental life which are incapable of being
[Pg 8]
deduced from the laws of the mental life of isolated individuals;
to distinguish the principal types of collective mental life or group
mind; to describe the peculiarities of those types and as far as
possible to account for them. More shortly, Group Psychology has,
first, to establish the general principles of group life (this is general
collective psychology); secondly, it has to apply these principles in
the endeavour to understand particular examples of group life.
Group Psychology, thus conceived, meets at the outset a difficulty
which stands in the way of every attempt of psychology to
leave the narrow field of highly abstract individual psychology. It
finds the ground already staked out and occupied by the representatives
of another science, who are inclined to resent its intrusion
as an encroachment on their rights. The science which claims to
have occupied the field of Group Psychology is Sociology; and it is
of some importance that the claims of these sciences should be
reconciled, so that they may live and work harmoniously together.
I have no desire to claim for Group Psychology the whole province
of Sociology. As I conceive it, that province is much wider than
that of Group Psychology. Sociology is essentially a science which
has to take a comprehensive and synthetic view of the life of mankind,
and has to accept and make use of the conclusions of many
other more special sciences, of which psychology, and especially
Group Psychology, is for it perhaps the most important. But other
special sciences have very important if less intimate contributions
to make to it. Thus, if it be true that great civilisations have decayed
owing to changes of climate of their habitats, or owing to the introduction
of such diseases as malaria into them, then Climatology and
Epidemiology have their contributions to make to Sociology. If
peculiarities of diet or the crossing of racial stocks may profoundly
affect the vigour of peoples, Physiology must have its say. General
biology and the science of Genetics are bringing to light much that
must be incorporated in Sociology. Economics, although needing
to be treated far more psychologically than it commonly has been,
has its special contribution to make. These are only a few illustrations
of the fact that the field of Sociology is very much wider and
more general than that of Group Psychology, however important to
it the conclusions of the narrower science may be.

In this book it will be maintained that the conception of a group
mind is useful and therefore valid; and, since this notion has already
excited some opposition and criticism and is one that requires very
careful definition, some attempt to define and justify it may usefully
[Pg 9]
be made at the outset; though the completer justification is the
substance of the whole book. Some writers have assumed the reality
of what is called the ‘collective consciousness’ of a society, meaning
thereby a unitary consciousness of the society over and above that of
the individuals comprised within it. This conception is examined in
Chapter II and provisionally rejected. But it is maintained that a
society, when it enjoys a long life and becomes highly organised,
acquires a structure and qualities which are largely independent of
the qualities of the individuals who enter into its composition and
take part for a brief time in its life. It becomes an organised system
of forces which has a life of its own, tendencies of its own, a power
of moulding all its component individuals, and a power of perpetuating
itself as a self-identical system, subject only to slow and
gradual change.

In an earlier work, in which I have sketched in outline the program
of psychology[4], I wrote: “When the student of behaviour
has learnt from the various departments of psychology … all that
they can teach him of the structure, genesis, and modes of operation
of the individual mind, a large field still awaits his exploration. If
we put aside as unproven such speculations as that touched on at
the end of the foregoing chapter (the view of James that the human
mind can enter into an actual union or communion with the divine
mind) and refuse to admit any modes of communication or influence
between minds other than through the normal channels of sense-perception
and bodily movement, we must nevertheless recognise
the existence in a certain sense of over-individual or collective minds.
We may fairly define a mind as an organised system of mental or
purposive forces; and, in the sense so defined, every highly organised
human society may properly be said to possess a collective mind.
For the collective actions which constitute the history of any such
society are conditioned by an organisation which can only be
described in terms of mind, and which yet is not comprised within
the mind of any individual; the society is rather constituted by the
system of relations obtaining between the individual minds which
are its units of composition. Under any given circumstances the
actions of the society are, or may be, very different from the mere
sum of the actions with which its several members would react
to the situation in the absence of the system of relations which
render them a society; or, in other words, the thinking and acting
[Pg 10]
of each man, in so far as he thinks and acts as a member of a
society, are very different from his thinking and acting as an isolated
individual.”

This passage has been cited by the author of a notable work on
Sociology[5], and made by him the text of a polemic against the conception
of the group mind. He writes: “This passage contains two
arguments in favour of the hypothesis of super-individual ‘collective’
minds, neither of which can stand examination. The ‘definition’ of
a mind as ‘an organised system of mental or purposive forces’ is
totally inadequate. When we speak of the mind of an individual we
mean something more than this. The mind of each of us has a unity
other than that of such a system.” But I doubt whether Mr Maciver
could explain exactly what kind of unity it is that he postulates.
Is it the unity of soul substance? I have myself contended at some
length that this is a necessary postulate or hypothesis[6], but I do not
suppose that Maciver accepts or intends to refer to this conception.
Is it the unity of consciousness or of self-consciousness? Then the
answer is that this unity is by no means a general and established
function of the individual mind; modern studies of the disintegration
of personality have shown this to be a questionable assumption,
undermined by the many facts of normal and abnormal psychology
best resumed under Dr Morton Prince’s term ‘co-consciousness.’

The individual mind is a system of purposive forces, but the
system is by no means always a harmonious system; it is but too
apt to be the scene of fierce conflicts which sometimes (in the graver
psychoneuroses) result in the rupture and disintegration of the
system. I do not know how otherwise we are to describe the individual
mind than as a system of mental forces; and, until Maciver
succeeds in showing in what other sense he conceives it to have
“a unity other than that of such a system,” his objection cannot be
seriously entertained. He asks, of the alleged collective mind:
“Does the system so created think and will and feel and act[7]?”
My answer, as set out in the following pages, is that it does all of
these things. He asks further: “If a number of minds construct by
their interactivity an organisation ‘which can only be described in
terms of mind,’ must we ascribe to the construction the very nature
of the forces which constructed it?” To this I reply—my point is
that the individual minds which enter into the structure of the group
mind at any moment of its life do not construct it; rather, as they
[Pg 11]
come to reflective self-consciousness, they find themselves already
members of the system, moulded by it, sharing in its activities,
influenced by it at every moment in every thought and feeling and
action in ways which they can neither fully understand nor escape
from, struggle as they may to free themselves from its infinitely
subtle and multitudinous forces. And this system, as Maciver himself
forcibly insists in another connection, does not consist of relations
that exist external to and independently of the things related,
namely the minds of individuals; it consists of the same stuff as
the individual minds, its threads and parts lie within these minds;
but the parts in the several individual minds reciprocally imply
and complement one another and together make up the system
which consists wholly of them; and therefore, as I wrote, they can
“only be described in terms of mind.” Any society is literally a more
or less organised mental system; the stuff of which it consists is
mental stuff; the forces that operate within it are mental forces.
Maciver argues further: “Social organisations occur of every kind
and every degree of universality. If England has a collective mind,
why not Birmingham and why not each of its wards? If a nation
has a collective mind, so also have a church and a trade union. And
we shall have collective minds that are parts of greater collective
minds, and collective minds that intersect other collective minds.”
By this my withers are quite unwrung. What degree of organisation
is necessary before a society can properly be said to enjoy collective
mental life or have a group mind is a question of degree; and the
exponent of the group mind is under no obligation to return a precise
answer to this question. My contention is that the most highly
organised groups display collective mental life in a way which justifies
the conception of the group mind, and that we shall be helped to
understand collective life in these most complex and difficult forms
by studying it in the simpler less elaborated groups where the conception
of a group mind is less clearly applicable. As regards the
overlapping and intersection of groups and the consequent difficulty
of assigning the limits of groups whose unity is implied by the term
group mind, I would point out that this difficulty arises only in
connexion with the lower forms of group life and that a parallel
difficulty is presented by the lower forms of animal life. Is Maciver
acquainted with the organisation of a sponge, or of the so-called
coral ‘insect,’ or with that of the Portuguese man-o’-war? Would
he deny the unity of a human being, or refuse to acknowledge his
possession of a mind, because in these lower organisms the limits of
[Pg 12]
the unit are hard or impossible to assign? Maciver goes on: “The
second argument is an obvious fallacy. If each man thinks and acts
differently as a member of a crowd or association and as an individual
standing out of any such immediate relation to his fellows, it is still
each who thinks and acts; the new determinations are determinations
still of individual minds as they are influenced by aggregation….
But this is merely an extreme instance of the obvious fact that every
mind is influenced by every kind of environment. To posit a super-individual
mind because individual minds are altered by their
relations to one another (as indeed they are altered by their relations
to physical conditions) is surely gratuitous[8].” To this I reply—the
environment which influences the individual in his life as a
member of an organised group is neither the sum of his fellow
members as individuals, nor is it something that has other than a
mental existence. It is the organised group as such, which exists
only or chiefly in the persons of those composing it, but which does
not exist in the mind of any one of them, and which operates upon
each so powerfully just because it is something indefinitely greater,
more powerful, more comprehensive than the mere sum of those
individuals. Maciver feels that “it is important to clear out of the
way this misleading doctrine of super-individual minds corresponding
to social or communal organisations and activities,” and therefore
goes on to say that “there is no more a great ‘collective’ mind
beyond the individual minds in society than there is a great ‘collective’
tree beyond all the individual trees in nature. A collection
of trees is a wood, and that we can study as a unity; so an aggregation
of men is a society, a much more determinate unity; but a collection
of trees is not a collective tree, and neither is a collection of persons
or minds a collective person or mind. We can speak of qualities of
tree in abstraction from any particular tree, and we can speak of
qualities of mind as such, or of some particular kind of mind in
relation to some type of situation. Yet in so doing we are simply
considering the characteristic of like elements of individual minds,
as we might consider the characteristic or like elements discoverable
in individual trees and kinds of trees. To conceive because of these
identities, a ‘collective’ mind as existing beside those of individuals
or a collective tree beside the variant examples is to run against the
wall of the Idea theory.” Now, I am not proposing to commit
myself to this last-named theory. It is not because minds have
much in common with one another that I speak of the collective
[Pg 13]
mind, but because the group as such is more than the sum of the
individuals, has its own life proceeding according to laws of group
life, which are not the laws of individual life, and because its peculiar
group life reacts upon and profoundly modifies the lives of the
individuals. I would not call a forest a collective tree; but I would
maintain that in certain respects a forest, a wood, or a copse, has
in a rudimentary way a collective life. Thus the forest remains the
same forest though, after a hundred or a thousand years, all its
constituent trees may be different individuals; and again the forest
as a whole may and does modify the life of each tree, as by attracting
moisture, protecting from violent and cold winds, harbouring various
plants and animals which affect the trees, and so on.

But I will cite an eloquent passage from a recent work on sociology
in support of my view. “The bonds of society are in the members
of society, and not outside them. It is the memories, traditions, and
beliefs of each which make up the social memories, traditions and
beliefs. Society like the kingdom of God is within us. Within us,
within each of us, and yet greater than the thoughts and understandings
of any of us. For the social thoughts and feelings and
willings of each, the socialised mind of each, with the complex scheme
of his relation to the social world, is no mere reproduction of the
social thoughts and feelings and willings of the rest. Unity and
difference here too weave their eternal web, the greater social scheme
which none of us who are part of it can ever see in its entirety, but
whose infinite subtlety and harmony we may more and more comprehend
and admire. As a community grows in civilisation and
culture, its traditions are no longer clear and definite ways of thinking,
its usages are no longer uniform, its spirit is no longer to be summed
up in a few phrases. But the spirit and tradition of a people become
no less real in becoming more complex. Each member no longer
embodies the whole tradition, but it is because each embodies some
part of a greater tradition to which the freely-working individuality
of each contributes. In this sense the spirit of a people, though
existing only in the individual members, more and more surpasses
the measure of any individual mind. Again, the social tradition is
expressed through institutions and records more permanent than the
short-lived members of community. These institutions and records
are as it were stored social values (just as, in particular, books may
be called stored social knowledge), in themselves nothing, no part of
the social mind, but the instruments of the communication of traditions
from member to member, as also from the dead past to the
[Pg 14]
living present. In this way too, with the increase of these stored
values, of which members realise parts but none the whole, the spirit
of a people more and more surpasses the measure of any individual
mind. It is these social forces within and without, working in the
minds of individuals whose own social inheritance is an essential
part of their individuality, stored in the institutions which they
maintain from the past or establish in the present, that mould the
communal spirit of the successive generations. In this sense too
a community may be called greater than its members who exist at
any one time, since the community itself marches out of the past
into the present, and its members at any time are part of a great
succession, themselves first moulded by communal forces before they
become, so moulded, the active determinants of its future moulding.”
An admirable statement! “The greater social scheme which none
of us can see in its entirety”—“the spirit of a people” which “more
and more surpasses the measure of any individual mind”—“the
communal spirit of the successive generations”—“the community”
which is “greater than its members who exist at any one time”;
all these are alternative designations of that organised system of
mental forces which exists over and above, though not independently
of, the individuals in each of whom some fragment of it is embodied
and which is the group mind. And the writer of this statement is
Mr R. M. Maciver; the passage occurs in the section of his book
designed to “clear out of the way this misleading doctrine of super-individual
minds.” In the same section he goes on to say that
“every association, every organised group, may and does have rights
and obligations which are not the rights and obligations of any or
all of its members taken distributively but only of the association
acting as an organised unity…. As a unity the association may
become a ‘juristic person,’ a ‘corporation,’ and from the legal standpoint
the character of unity so conceived is very important…. The
‘juristic person’ is a real unity, and therefore more than a persona
ficta, but the reality it possesses is of a totally different order of
being from that of the persons who establish it.” But, perversely as
it seems to me, Maciver adds “the unity of which we are thinking
is not mechanic or organic or even psychic.” I cannot but think
that, in thus denying the organic and psychic nature of this unity,
Maciver is under the influence of that unfortunate and still prevalent
way of thinking of the psychic as identical with the conscious which
has given endless trouble in psychology; because it has prompted
the hopeless attempt, constantly renewed, to describe the structure
[Pg 15]
and organisation of the mind in terms of conscious stuff, ignoring
the all-important distinction between mental activity, which is
sometimes, though perhaps not always, consciousness, and mental
structure which is not. The structure and organisation of the spirit
of the community is in every respect as purely mental or psychic
as is the structure and organisation of the individual mind.

Maciver very properly goes on to bring his conclusions to the
pragmatic test, the test of practical results. He writes: “These false
analogies … are the sources of that most misleading antithesis which
we draw between the individual and society, as though society were
somehow other than its individuals…. Analyse these misleading
analogies, and in the revelation of their falsity there is revealed also
the falsity of this essential opposition of individual and society.
Properly understood, the interests of ‘the individual’ are the interests
of society[9].” But is it true that the interests of the individual are
identical with the interests of society? Obviously not. We have
only to think of the condemned criminal; of the mentally defective
to whom every enlightened society should deny the right of procreation;
of the young soldier who sacrifices his health, his limbs, his
eyesight, or his life, and perhaps the welfare of his loved ones, in
serving his country. It is true that the progress of society is essentially
an approximation towards an ideal state in which this identification
would be completed; but that is an ideal which can never be absolutely
realised. Nor is it even true that the interests of society are
identical with the interests of the majority of its members existing
at any one time. It is, I think, highly probable that, if any great
modern nation should unanimously and wholeheartedly embark upon
a thorough-going scheme of state-socialism, the interests of the vast
majority of individuals would be greatly promoted; they would be
enabled to live more prosperously and comfortably with greater
leisure and opportunity for the higher forms of activity. It is, however,
equally probable that the higher interests of the nation would
be gravely endangered, that it would enter upon a period of increasing
stagnation and diminishing vitality and, after a few generations had
passed away, would have slipped far down the slope which has led
all great societies of the past to destruction.

The question may be considered in relation to the German nation.
As will be pointed out in a later chapter, the structure of that nation
was, before the Great War, a menace to European civilisation. If
the Germans had succeeded in their aims and had conquered Europe
[Pg 16]
or the world, their individual interests would have been vastly promoted;
they would have enjoyed immense material prosperity and
a proud consciousness of having been chosen by God to rule the rest
of mankind for their good. And this would have confirmed the nation
in all its vices and would have finally crushed out of it all its potentialities
for developing into a well-organised nation of the higher
type, fitted to play an honourable part in the future evolution of
mankind. The same truth appears if we consider the problem of
the responsibility of the German nation for the War. So long as that
people might retain its former organisation, which, I repeat, rendered
it a menace to the civilisation and culture of the whole world, its
antagonists could only treat it as a criminal and an outlaw to be
repressed at all costs and punished and kept down with the utmost
severity. But, if it should achieve a new organisation, one which
will give preponderance to the better and saner elements and traditions
still preserved within it, then, although it will consist of the
same individuals in the main, it will have become a new or at least
a transformed nation, one with which the other nations could enter
into normal relations of amity or at least of mutual toleration, one
which could be admitted to a place in the greater society which the
League of Nations is to become. In other words, the same population
would in virtue of a changed organisation, have become a different
nation.

Although Maciver, in making his attack upon the conception of
the group mind, has done me the honour to choose me as its exponent,
I do not stand alone in maintaining it. I am a little shy of citing
in its support the philosophers of the school of German ‘idealism,’
because, as I have indicated in the Preface, I have little sympathy
with that school. Yet, though one may disapprove of the methods
and of most of the conclusions of a school of thought, one may still
adduce in support of one’s opinion such of its principles as seem to
be well founded. I may, then, remind the reader that the conception
of the State as a super-individual, a superhuman quasi-divine personality,
is the central conception of the political philosophy of
German ‘idealism.’ That conception has, no doubt, played a
considerable part in bringing upon Europe its present disaster.
It was an instance of one of those philosophical ideas which
claim to be the product of pure reason, yet in reality are
adopted for the purpose of justifying and furthering some already
existing interest or institution. In this case the institution in question
was the Prussian state and those, Hegel and the rest, who set up
[Pg 17]
this doctrine were servants of that state. They made of their doctrine
an instrument for the suppression of individuality which greatly aided
in producing the servile condition of the German people. Yet the
distortions and exaggerations of the political philosophy of German
‘idealism’ should not prejudice us against the germ of truth which
it contains; and the more enlightened British disciples of this school,
from T.H. Green onwards, have sought with much success to winnow
the grain from the chaff of the doctrine; and I cannot adduce better
support for the conception of the group mind than the sentences in
which a recent English writer, a sympathetic student of German
‘idealism,’ sums up the results of this winnowing process[10]. Discussing
the deficiencies of the individualist philosophy of the English
utilitarian school, he writes: “Not a modification of the old Benthamite
premises, but a new philosophy was needed; and that
philosophy was provided by the idealist school, of which Green is
the greatest representative. That school drew its inspiration immediately
from Kant and Hegel, and ultimately from the old Greek
philosophy of the city-state. The vital relation between the life of
the individual and the life of the community, which alone gives the
individual worth and significance, because it alone gives him the
power of full moral development; the dependence of the individual,
for all his rights and for all his liberty, on his membership of the
community; the correlative duty of the community to guarantee to
the individual all his rights (in other words, all the conditions
necessary for his, and therefore for its own, full moral development)—these
were the premisses of the new philosophy. That philosophy
could satisfy the new needs of social progress, because it refused to
worship a supposed individual liberty which was proving destructive
of the real liberty of the vast majority, and preferred to emphasise
the moral well-being and betterment of the whole community, and
to conceive of each of its members as attaining his own well-being
and betterment in and through the community. Herein lay, or
seemed to lie, a revolution of ideas. Instead of starting from a
central individual, to whom the social system is supposed to be
adjusted, the idealist starts from a central social system, in which
the individual must find his appointed orbit of duty. But after all
the revolution is only a restoration; and what is restored is simply
the Republic of Plato[11].” The same writer reminds us that “both
[Pg 18]
Plato and Hegel thus imply the idea of a moral organism”; and he
adds, “It is this conception of a moral organism which Bradley
urges. It is implied in daily experience, and it is the only explanation
of that experience. ‘In fact, what we call an individual man is what
he is because of and by virtue of community, and communities are
not mere names, but something real.’ Already at birth the child is
what he is in virtue of communities: he has something of the family
character, something of the national character, something of the
civilised character which comes from human society. As he grows,
the community in which he lives pours itself into his being in the
language he learns and the social atmosphere he breathes, so that
the content of his being implies in its every fibre relations of community.
He is what he is by including in his essence the relations
of the social State…. And regarding the State as a system, in which
many spheres (the family, for instance) are subordinated to one
sphere, and all the particular actions of individuals are subordinated
to their various spheres, we may call it a moral organism, a systematic
whole informed by a common purpose or function. As such
it has an outer side—a body of institutions; it has an inner side—a
soul or spirit which sustains that body. And since it is a moral
organism—since, that is to say, its parts are themselves conscious
moral agents—that spirit resides in those parts and lives in their
consciousness. In such an organism—and this is where it differs
from an animal organism, and why we have to use the word moral—the
parts are conscious: they know themselves in their position as
parts of the whole, and they therefore know the whole of which they
are parts. So far as they have such knowledge, and a will based
upon it, so far is the moral organism self-conscious and self-willing….
Thus, on the one hand, we must recognise that the State lives;
that there is a nation’s soul, self-conscious in its citizens; and that
to each citizen this living soul assigns his field of accomplishment[12].”
On a later page of the same book we read—“All the institutions of
a country, so far as they are effective, are not only products of
thought and creations of mind: they are thought, and they are mind.
Otherwise we have a building without a tenant, and a body without
a mind. An Oxford college is not a group of buildings, though
common speech gives that name to such a group: it is a group of
men. But it is not a group of men in the sense of a group of bodies
in propinquity: it is a group of men in the sense of a group of minds.
That group of minds, in virtue of the common substance of an
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uniting idea, is itself a group-mind. There is no group-mind existing
apart from the minds of the members of the group; the group-mind
only exists in the minds of its members. But nevertheless it exists.
There is a college mind, just as there is a Trade Union mind, or even
a ‘public mind’ of the whole community; and we are all conscious
of such a mind as something that exists in and along with the separate
minds of the members, and over and above any sum of those minds
created by mere addition[13].”

The political philosophers of the idealist school have not stood
alone in recognising the reality of the group mind. Some of the
lawyers, notably Maitland, have arrived at a very similar doctrine;
and I cannot better summarise their conclusions than Barker has
done in the following passage in the book from which I have already
cited so freely. “The new doctrine,” he writes, “runs somewhat as
follows. No permanent group, permanently organised for a durable
object, can be regarded as a mere sum of persons, whose union, to
have any rights or duties, must receive a legal confirmation. Permanent
groups are themselves persons, group-persons, with a
group-will of their own and a permanent character of their own;
and they have become group-persons of themselves, without any
creative act of the State. In a word, group-persons are real persons;
and just because they are so, and possess such attributes of persons
as will and character, they cannot have been made by the State[14].”

I am not alone, then, in postulating the reality of the group mind.
And I am glad to be able to cite evidence of this, because I know
well that very many readers may at first find themselves repelled by
this notion of a group mind, and that some of them will incline to
regard it as the fantastic fad of an academic crank.

I would say at once that the crucial point of difference between
my own view of the group mind and that of the German ‘idealist’
school (at least in its more extreme representatives) is that I
repudiate, provisionally at least, as an unverifiable hypothesis the
conception of a collective or super-individual consciousness, somehow
comprising the consciousness of the individuals composing the group.
I have examined this conception in the following chapter and have
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stated my grounds for rejecting it. The difference of practical conclusions
arising from this difference of theory must obviously be
very great.

Several books dealing with collective psychology have been published
in recent years. Of these perhaps the most notable are
G. le Bon’s Psychology of the Crowd, his Evolution psychologique
des peuples; Sighele’s La foule criminelle; the Psychologie collective
of Dr A. A. Marie; and Alfred Fouillée’s La Science sociale contemporaine.
It is noteworthy that, with the exception of the last,
all these books deal only with crowds or groups of low organisation;
and their authors, like almost all others who have touched on this
subject, are concerned chiefly to point out how participation in the
group life degrades the individual, how the group feels and thinks
and acts on a much lower plane than the average plane of the
individuals who compose it.

On the other hand, many writers have insisted on the fact that
it is only by participation in the life of society that any man can
realise his higher potentialities; that society has ideals and aims and
traditions loftier than any principles of conduct the individual can
form for himself unaided; and that only by the further evolution of
organised society can mankind be raised to higher levels; just as in
the past it has been only through the development of organised
society that the life of man has ceased to deserve the epithets ‘nasty,
brutish and short’ which Hobbes applied to it.

We seem then to stand before a paradox. Participation in group
life degrades the individual, assimilating his mental processes to
those of the crowd, whose brutality, inconstancy, and unreasoning
impulsiveness have been the theme of many writers; yet only by
participation in group life does man become fully man, only so does
he rise above the level of the savage.

The resolution of this paradox is the essential theme of this book.
It examines and fully recognises the mental and moral defects of
the crowd and its degrading effects upon all those who are caught
up in it and carried away by the contagion of its reckless spirit. It
then goes on to show how organisation of the group may, and
generally does in large measure, counteract these degrading tendencies;
and how the better kinds of organisation render group life
the great ennobling influence by aid of which alone man rises a little
above the animals and may even aspire to fellowship with the angels.

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