Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/239

 PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 225

the case of society, therefore, as in that of the individual, there is no psychological organization without biological organization — a truth which has already been pointed out, and which ought hardly to need emphasis in this age of biological science. The social mind, then, is to be conceived as the psychical side of the societary life-process ; and its functioning and development have strict reference to the biological side of that process.

The relation which the social mind bears to individual minds, and, in general, the relation which socio-psychical processes bear to individual psychical processes, may be illustrated by the analogy of the organism. The relation is qualitatively exactly that which obtains between cellular processes and the processes of the organism as a whole. In the same sense in which it is right to speak of general organic processes as over and above cellular processes, it is right to speak of socio-psychical pro- cesses as over and above individual psychical processes. But in both cases it is probably better to speak of the wider process as immanent in the narrower. If from one point of view the activi- ties of the organism appear only as the activities of its cells, from another point of view the activities of the cells appear only as elements in the activity of the organism. The two points of view are evidently the two aspects of a single reality and can- not be opposed to each other. The case is exactly the same with socio-psychical and individual psychical processes. The socio-psychical processes are simply the individual psychical processes under the aspect of the larger functional whole in whose psychical activity they appear as elements. The social mind, then, is immanent in the individual mind, and both are aspects of a single reality.

We are now prepared to examine the meaning of the phrase "social consciousness." In the widest sense of the term, it is evident that all consciousness is, from one point of view, "social consciousness." If what has been said concerning the relation of the social to the individual mind is true, there is no consciousness that is not social consciousness in one of its aspects. However, there is a narrower use of the term which is quite justifiable. At a certain stage of. social and mental development the members