Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/831

 PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 8ll

a group psychology, but also the possibility of applying the same fundamental principles of interpretation in it as in indi- vidual psychology. But the real warrant for transferring the principles and categories of a functional psychology of the indi- vidual to the interpretation of society must be found in the facts of societary life itself. The question which must be asked, accordingly, is : Are there real processes in the group which correspond to those denoted in the individual by the categories coordination, adaptation, habit, etc. ? Is there anything, for example, in group-life answering to the coordination in individ- ual life? If so, does it occupy the same central position in the life of the group as in that of the individual ? "

In group-life, as in the life of the individual organism, we cannot get back of the group doing something. If we go back of that point, we get merely an aggregation of individuals, of which we predicate no group-life. We may explain biologically how the aggregation was primitively formed, but we do not think of the aggregation as a unity until group-action appears. The group-act is the sign of group-life throughout the scale of living organisms, whether among human beings or among the lowest forms. Forms merely dwelling in proximity can hardly be said to have a common group-life until they become functionally related to each other as parts of a functioning whole. In a psy- chological interpretation of group-life, then, we must begin with the group acting together in some particular way ; for it is this '

■ The equivocal meaning of many sociological terms is a great hindrance to clear- ness in sociological discussion. Many terms, for example, have both subjective and objective meanings. An attempt has been made in this series of papers, however, to use terms with approximate consistency. Thus, the word "social," ordinarily used in any one of half a dozen different subjective senses, has been used mainly in an object- ive sense, implying simply "necessary interdependence of forms among lliemselves in the life-process." It is true that this definition, suggested by Professor George H. Mead, widens the meaning of the term very greatly ; but the widening is necessary to the proper understanding of the phenomena to which the term is applied. The word "society " has been used. in a sense corresponding with that of "social," though often with human cultural or national groups in mind; while the word "group " has been used in a somewhat looser sense, though always implying some measure of " interdependence of forms among themselves." Where it has seemed desirable to use a colorless term, meaning simply "of society," in order especially to exclude the narrower meanings of the word "social," the word "societary" has often been employed.