Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/471

 THE PROVINCE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 455

broken up and reformed rapidly, and the mind transformed, in no biological sense, but only in the sense that the attention and the content of the mind are made correspondent with the world as it is at present. Social psychology must co-operate with psychology and anthropology in determining the principles underlying men- tal growth in the race and in the individual before the science of education can make any sure progress.

The view of the province of social psychology here presented has at least the merit of suggesting a field of operations not occu- pied by other sciences. It is not claimed that the materials used are entirely new, nor that the problems arising here may not arise in connection with other sciences also. But, after all, there is but one reality, and a new science never represented anything more than a new direction of the attention. The legitimacy of viewing the same materials from different standpoints can hardly be ques- tioned when we consider that the human brain is studied by psy- chology, anthropology, physiology, anatomy, pathology, and embryology, and that experience has shown this differentiation of attention in the study of the brain to be precisely the method yielding the best results. It is, indeed, the scientific procedure corresponding with the division of labor in the industrial pursuits and in the professions; and the differentiation of a social psy- chology from the sciences of psychology, sociology, anthropology, ethnology, folk-lore, and history, with a class of specialists giving their attention to the extension of psychology to the region of social phenomena, will yield, we may hope, results supplementary to those secured by these sciences, and of importance to the study of life and society.

W. I. THOMAS.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.