Page:Philosophical Review Volume 7.djvu/412



Professor Baldwin's book is extraordinarily ample in the range of ground covered and extremely full of incidental observation and reflection in each particular point. The impossibility of adequate notice of all features, as well as the intrinsic importance of the concepts of the individual and society in relation to each other, compel me accordingly to confine attention to the latter point. In order to be as succinct as possible, as well as to give the reader command of what seems to me the keys to both the strong and the weak points of Mr. Baldwin's discussion, I will reverse the ordinary procedure, and commence by stating what I have found to be the chief difficulty in his position, and the general character of the confusion which seems to me to be bound up in his statement of it.

In an examination of the sort attempted by Professor Baldwin, there are two possible points of view. One examines the individual from the standpoint of psychical process and determines how far this process is social in its genesis and function. The point of interest here is in the quality of the process as psychical; in itself as psychical it is individual; indeed, it is the individual as conscious. The social aspect of the question is found in determining whether the significance, the import of this process, judged with reference to the conditions which initiate it and the results which it effects, is social or not. This seems to me the most natural interpretation (as well as the most legitimate and fruitful point of view intrinsically) of Mr. Baldwin's statement that his method "inquires into the psychological development of the human individual in the earlier stages of his growth for light upon his social nature, and also upon the social organization in which he bears a part" (p. 2).

The other point of view would examine, not into the process, but into the content of the individual's experience, and would endeavor to discover what elements in this content he has in common with other individuals, what factors seem to be characteristically his own, and what the import of these two groups of contents may be. There is no doubt of the importance of this latter inquiry, but it seems to me a