Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/164

 I $2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

tions. Psychologists like Wundt, James, and Baldwin were irresistibly drawn over into the new field. The phenomena of group opinion, feeling, and conduct began to be studied in earnest. Tarde announced his process of imitation, opposition, and invention; Giddings contributed "consciousness of kind" and outlined the " integration of the social mind ; " Simmel based group-unity on common symbols, obedience, loyalty, and consciousness of group-honor ; * 7 Hauriou suggested the analysis into (i) grouping and the feeling of grouping, (2) individuality and the feeling of individuality, and (3) conciliation; 28 Baldwin offered his " dialectic " of personal and social growth ; and Ross published a keenly analytic study of social control. Moreover, Boris-Sidis, Le Bon, Ross, Tarde, and Sighele made important contributions to the morbid psychology of the group, as displayed in mental epidemics and mob violence.

However various and conflicting these different theories may seem at first glance, they are actually in most cases complemen- tary, and together they afford an admirable working theory. The role of suggestion is recognized as fundamentally important ; the subordination of reflection to feeling, the persistence of custom and habit, the predominance of unconscious forces, the function of leadership, the control by group ideals, the modification of these ideals in adjustment to the changing conditions which the group confronts, the devices by which the group cozens its mem- bers into conformity all these aspects have been combined into a psychology of group organization and activity which demands nothing less than a renovation of the assumptions of all the social sciences. The " consent of the governed " theory, the theory of value, the ideas of property, sovereignty, inalienable rights, free- will, must all reckon with social psychology. Indeed, there are those who go so far as to say that sociology as a science will turn out to be nothing else than this psychology of association.

This psychical nature of the group suggests another funda- mental problem that of the individual and society. Of Comte it has been said that he regarded the individual as an abstraction

" SIMMEL, loc. cit., March, 1898, p. 66.

"HAURIOU, La science sociale traditioncllc (Paris, 1896), pp. 7 f.