Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/237

 PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 223

borrowed his psychology he has committed the fallacy of mis- taking the results of a process for the process itself. Professor Giddings' attempt to fix the content of the term "social mind," then, we cannot accept as satisfactory, for it is not based upon an organic view of the psychical life of society, and, indeed, it makes a social ps3'chology logically impossible.

The other theory of the social mind which we wish to notice is that represented by Tarde, Le Bon, and to some degree by Professor Baldwin. They make the essence of the social mind to consist in the processes of suggestion and imitation. We cannot go into an elaborate criticism of this theory here, but must reserve such for a later article. It is sufficient to point out that this theory is also a diluted form of individualism, making men copying machines of one another, as it were, by leaving out of account the reference of suggestion and imitation to a common life-process. It is true that these writers have pointed out a part of the actual socio-psychical process, but they have mistaken this part for the whole. By disregarding the connection of the processes of suggestion and imitation with the common life-pro- cess, that is, by disregarding the organic aspect of the societary life, they have left the social process quite unconnected with anything else in the universe, making it seem an arbitrary and almost artificial affair ; at the same time they have set the indi- vidual upon his old pedestal as the entity from which all things in society proceed. Professor Baldwin has in part perceived these errors. He has perceived the mechanical character of imita- tion when at its purest, and the lack of a principle of organization in the mere imitative process.' More important still, he has perceived that social suggestion is a development in social life. He says : "Social suggestibility could not be the original form of man's [social] life, for then there would be an absolute gulf between him and the animal world, in which instinctive equip- ment in definite directions is supreme."" But Professor Baldwin does not dwell upon these perceptions, and his theory of the social proofess is in form, at least, almost as individualistic as

^ Social and Ethical Interpretations of Mental Development, p. 479. ■'Ibid., p. 237.