Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/478

 462 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

contribute to the triumph of the corporate self? Upon these and upon other factors, of which we have as yet not even an inkling, depends the degree of socialization. How thick is the darkness that shrouds this process we realize as we stand amazed before the manifestations by the Japanese of a national consciousness of an unprecedented intensity. The systematic reliance upon voluntary immolation is something new in warfare, and no doubt ere long the envious occidental statesmen and war-lords will be inciting social psychologists to ascertain the conditions in Japanese national life that generate a spirit of self-sacrifice so unexampled.

Let no one interpose at this point that the search for specific factors, that is to say, the quest for causal laws, is vain because the human will is not law-abiding. It is precisely in the mass- functions of conscious individuals that regularities declare them- selves and may be formulated. In dealing with the behavior of numbers, the psychologist is not restricted to the humble duties of classification and description, but may with full right aspire to the noble office of discovering causes.

The discriminating of levels in the emergence of a group- individuality will reveal all possible encroachments of the col- lective self upon the personal self, all the possible proportions between corporate feeling and private interest. But can this series of levels be run through by any one group? If so, we could vir- tually plot the life-curve of a group from birth to death, foretell its development from stage to stage until, after it passes its zenith, it is absorbed, or breaks up into other groups, or gradually dis- integrates and allows the erstwhile submerged personal indi- vidualities to reappear. The idea is attractive, but illusory. There are probably a number of lines along which groups evolve. For example, a body of eccentric coreligionists, hated and perse- cuted, may grow more and more intimate, fanatical, and exclusive, until they become " a peculiar people," keeping to themselves and sinking their entire lives in the life of the sect. Active groups, on the other hand, move in the direction of organization. Those who co-operate on behalf of some vital common interest may differentiate organ after organ, to serve as bearers of the common will and centers of co-ordination. Again, the community may