Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/166

 154 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The essential idea in " intrinsic " is that each gets its meaning from the other. The individual can be understood only in rela- tion to his group, and the latter has no meaning apart from the persons who compose it. In this view not only society but the individual is an abstraction from a complex unity which includes both. 35 This general thesis has been developed by several social psychologists, notably Baldwin and Cooley. The former explains the growth of personality as a process of give-and-take with the social group. This makes for a uniformity which is prevented from becoming identity because of the inventions or particulariza- tions of individuals. Society grows by the generalizing or imitating of these particularizations. 36 The process as a whole closely corresponds with Tarde's, but the latter's psychological analysis of the social person is far less keen and detailed. This view of the individual as at once a social product and a social factor is a rational and scientific mean between the old individu- alism which made the person almost independent of his group, and the socialistic fatalism which represents the individual as merely the outcome of social forces over which he has no control. 37

The danger that the new social psychology might overempha- size uniforming tendencies and neglect the forces which indi- viduate the members of a group has not been realized. Of late the tendency has been rather to investigate the facts and causes of individual differences. The influence of sex, 88 race, disposition, and occupation has been studied. Patten explains English evo- lution in terms of four types dominant at different periods the clingers, sensualists, stalwarts, and mugwumps. 30 Giddings classifies character into four categories the forceful, convivial,


 * COOLEY, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York, 1902), chap. i.

"BALDWIN, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development (New York, 1897), pp. 7-9, 455-65-

" A clear statement as to the transition from the old to the new theory of the individual may be found in PROFESSOR ORMOND'S article " The Social Individual," Psychological Review, January, 1901.

"THOMAS, "On a Difference in the Metabolism of the Sexes," AMERICAN JOURNAL OP SOCIOLOGY, July, 1807 ; March, 1898.

" PATTEN, The Development of English Thought (New York, 1899),