Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/481

 PRESENT PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 465

provinces, sections, and nations. But the emergence of an indi- viduality in interpenetrating socio-economic classes will not be understood until certain neglected factors are brought into consid- eration. How is the attitude of a man toward the rest of his class affected by the fact that socio-economic classes are in a hierarchy, and individuals are constantly escaping from one class into a higher? Does not the secret hope of rising prompt many a man to identify himself in imagination with the class he hopes to belong to rather than the class he actually belongs to? Are not the con- flicts that, in view of their clear oppositions of interest, one would expect to break out between commoners and nobles, between peasants and bourgeoisie, between workingmen and employers, frequently averted because the natural leaders and molders of opinion among the workingmen hope to become capitalists, the peasants expect to see their sons in the professions, the rich com- moners trust to work themselves or their families into the peer- age ? If this surmise be correct, the decomposition of the national society into hostile classes need not ensue when the decline of national antagonism leaves in high relief the acute differentiation of the population in respect to possessions and economic interests. It may be that, besides the breaking-up of population into a social spectrum, there is needed the further condition that the ascent from the red toward the violet end of this social spectrum shall be too difficult and rare to tempt the elite of a lower grade to renounce its present class interest in favor of a higher class it hopes at last to enter.

With the growth of the social mind in extent and compre- hension one cannot help wondering what will be the fate of per- sonal individuality. Will there be more room for spontaneity and choice, or is the individual doomed to shrivel as social aggre- gates enlarge and the mass of transmitted culture becomes huger and more integrated? As that cockle-shell, the individual soul, leaving the tranquil pool of tribal life, passes first into the shel- tered lake of some city community, then into the perilous sea of national life, and at last emerges upon the immense ocean of humanity's life, does it enjoy an ever-widening scope for free movement and self-direction, or does it, too frail to navigate the