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 102 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

carried over into the modern science. Social psychology, though not disclaiming or ashamed of its origin, must claim a process of growth ; as a conception, at least, it has been constantly increas- ing in clearness and definiteness with the development of the general science of which it forms a branch. In the meanwhile, there has grown up also from the Vdlkerpsyclwlogie of Lazarus and Steinthal a science which studies the socio-psychical phenom- ena of primitive and savage peoples. This is modern folk- psychology. It may be roughly conceived as being related to social psychology in general as child-psychology is to individ- ual psychology. At any rate, it seeks to find among the so-called nature peoples the simplest beginnings of the complex socio- psychological phenomena of modern societies.

The field of social psychology may be thus marked off with sufficient clearness from other fields of psychological investiga- tion ; but the question, some may say, remains whether there is any portion or aspect of reality which corresponds to the terri- tory assigned to the science ; whether or not social pyschology is anything more than an imaginary, fictitious science without a basis of facts. Hitherto in our discussion it has been assumed that the psychical life of society is such an evident aspect of reality as to be hardly needful of any special process of proof ; and such we hold it to be. But the question is, of course, a legitimate one, and demands formal consideration. Is there, then, a collective psychical life, in which the psychical life of the individual is but a constitutive element ? Or is the psychical life of society but a figment of the speculative imagination of sociolo- gists ; a name for the mere sum total of individual psychical phenomena, not itself an organized unity ? In answer to such questions the older social psychologists have rightly pointed to such phenomena as public opinion, the Zeitgeist, national ideals, customs, and institutions, language, tradition, and mythologies. They have shown that these are organic growths, and in no sense mere summations or averages of the psychical expressions of individuals. They are, that is, products of a common life which is organically unified, though constituted of individual elements. Without group-life, without a general life-process which includes