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 224 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Tarde's. He makes imitation the sole method of that process, although the two passages to which we have just referred argue directly, it seems to us, against so doing. If there is any validity at all, however, in Professor Baldwin's criticisms of Tarde's sociology, one is certainly justified in rejecting as unsatisfactory a definition of the social mind purely in terms of imitation and suggestion. If the positions taken in criticising the above theories are sound, it is evident that the social mind must be correlated with the societary life-process. The social mind is the psychical process which mediates the new adjustments in the group life- process. It is a social process, because it mediates the adjust- ments of a functional unity which is made up of individuals. The " social mind " is, in brief, 51 convenient term for the socio- psychical process. Just as in the most recent individual psy- chology the term "mind" has come to mean, not an entity, but a process, so in social psychology the term "social mind " must mean, not a societary "soul," but a societary process. In both cases the term expresses the unity of the process — the fact that the many visible psychic processes are aspects of but a single unified process. But the individual mind, as we have already pointed out, is highly unified, not only functionally, but struc- turally ; while the unity expressed by the term "social mind" is only a low order of functional unity. This distinction is impor- tant ; but while it may render the term "social mind" in a cer- tain sense inappropriate, it does not make the fact expressed by the term any the less real. The social mind, then, is an expres- sion of the fact that society is an organic functional unity. The unity of socio-psychical processes which it implies corresponds to the unity of organic processes within the social group. Without the organic unity of society there could be no social mind in any intelligible sense of the term ; for a basis for unity of development in the socio-psychical process would be entirely lacking. Moreover, the unity of the socio-psychical process is secured far more through habit and instinct than through sug- gestion and imitation. Indeed, the latter are but special forms of the former. Now, habit and instinct manifestly presuppose physiological organization, physiological continuity and unity. In