The individual and society : or psychology and sociology

Front matter

OTHER WORKS

by

JAMES MARK BALDWIN

Preface

'T'HIS little book has been written under the very exact and exacting limitations of space imposed by the editor of the series.* In the space allowed it is impossible to argue or to demonstrate. Accordingly, I have chosen to illustrate a point of view rather than to establish it. No doubt, to those not already committed to a different view, this may itself be about as good a way to make the point as any other — to show that the main facts to be interpreted serve to illustrate it.

I regret, however, that the limitation in size has made it necessary to omit

*The French Biblioth6que Internationale de Sociologie, Series in 18, edited by R. Worms (Paris, Giard et Briere, for which this book was written by request. The French edition bears the title, “ Psychologie et Sociologie (l’lndividu et la Society).” Besides verbal alterations throughout, I have added one chapter (vi) to the book in the English form.

Preface references to authorities. In my own larger and more reasoned books, of which this is in a sense a sort of popular resume, full citations are made of other and of different theories. With this excuse for the omission, I apologize to those able writers whose works should be mentioned in any treatment of the topics here presented.

The point of view from which I write is, briefly stated, this : Society is looked upon as a mode of organization sui generis; its matter is psychological; its rules of organization are those which characterize the personal development of minds in relation to one another. To this no analogy, drawn from another sphere of fact, biological, chemical, physical, can do any sort of justice: it can be understood only by the knowledge, direct and indirect, of the motives and movements of minds capable of certain modes of intercourse. Sociology itself, dealing with the external and historical aspects of

Preface 9

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social life, must allow and demand the psychological interpretation of its results. Anything short of this deprives social theory of its most fruitful points of view, and, so far as it has practical applications, distorts the social fact and mutilates the social body.

In this matter, a fundamental distinction — overlooked notably by those who explain society in biological terms — should be always held in mind: the distinction, namely, between the evolution of the social group as a whole , under conditions of natural selection and competition with other groups, and the inner development of the social life within the group. It is the latter only that is truly social; the former takes account of the conditions, external and auxiliary, but not intrinsic, under which the inner organization takes place and progresses. The evolution of racial, communal, and civil types is most interesting and important; but the statement of the geo-

Preface graphical, biological, and other conditions under which such differences arise gives no account whatever of the essential social bond, inner and intrinsic, that characterizes each and all of the types alike. This is mental and moral, not physical nor vital. J. M. B.

December , 1910

The material of the book has also served as basis for a course of twenty-five lectures on “Psycho-Sociology,” delivered in the National University of Mexico, October to December, 1910. I wish to acknowledge to the Mexican authorities my appreciation of the honor done me by the invitation to inaugurate the systematic work of the new university.

CHAPTER I The Individual and the Group

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TT is clear, even from the most superficial examination of the facts and movements of social life, that two different points of view and two somewhat different interests are present in it. The rights, duties, liberties of the individual may have emphasis, on the one hand, and the requirements, laws, conventions of society as an organized body may be invoked, on the other hand. These two contrasted, if not actually opposed, interests confront the social theorist no less than the man of affairs, and the contrast inevitably suggests itself as point

of departure for discussion.

In fact, the contrast takes form in the distinction between the problems of the psychologist and sociologist respectively. However we may refine the distinction and confuse the issue by debating the exact dividing line, it still remains true that psychology deals with the individual, and sociology deals with the group.

This does not mean, of course, that their respective domains are separate; not at all. The individual mind, as dealt with by the psychologist, is not a cell closed to influences from the group; far from it. The psychologist reports the individual as in substance a microcosm reflecting the group life in miniature. And it is equally true that the group as dealt with by the sociologist has no existence except by the compliance and co-operation of the individuals. So we should expect the two sciences to draw constantly upon each other. The psychologist finds certain movements taking place in the individual mind which indicate social conditions of life and habit, and social requirements of adaptation and concession; he must then appeal to the sociologist to inform him of the modes of organization existing in the group to which the individual response is made. On the other hand, the sociologist is at every turn dependent upon the psychologist to inform him of the movements of the individual mind which incorporate themselves in social institutions.

j_n It is not my intention to discuss the more refined aspects of the relation of the two sciences; such discussions are already interminable and for the most part fruitless. I wish, on the contrary, simply to designate the two points of view as characterizing the two branches of knowledge respectively; and on this general basis to show the present state of knowledge in regard to the great topics common to both. We will see that, apart from refinements, the distinction can be very well maintained; but that most of the interests represented in individual and social life are common and liable to both interpretations alternatively. It is, to my mind, the most remarkable outcome of modern social theory — the recognition of the fact that the individual’s normal growth lands him in essential solidarity with his fellows, while on the other hand the exercise of his social duties and privileges advances his highest and purest individuality. The movements are one, although the sciences, from their necessary difference in point of view, must treat them as if they were two.

We will notice the main topics of current theory, therefore, in the following pages, under the two rubrics, “psychological” and “sociological”; at the same time that the results will show their essential concurrence in result for what may be called the philosophy of society, and also for the theory of history, since history is simply the record of the events of human life, as shown by the operation of the individual and social forces acting together.

I will first sketch the origin and extent of the contrast between the individual and society, and then show, in a series of short chapters, how the motives of the individual mind, appearing in its competitions, limitations, solidarities, training, loyalties, inventiveness, etc., and working together, issue in a type of collective or social organization, by which their force is conserved and made always available for humanity. Personal individualism shows itself in social competition; personal sympathy and morality in social solidarity; personal imitativeness and training in pedagogical institutions; personal loyalty in civic institutions; personal inventiveness in social progress. The motive in each case preserves its essential character, although tempered and transformed in the social movement as a whole.

Let us, then, at the outset, set forth the leading principles involved in the actual relation of individual and group.

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The individual comes into the world with the impulse of the history of the race behind him. He has few perfect instincts, such as many of the animals show. He is, on the contrary, plastic and educable. But his development is nevertheless to be a compromise between the two tendencies which throughout all his life represent individualism and collectivism. He has distinctly egoistic and individualistic impulses, but with them he has also positive predispositions to social life. These two germinal tendencies are to receive their more perfect adjustment, or at least a working relation, in his education and training in the habits and usages of the social group.

It is not necessary to dwell upon the more individualistic factor in his heredity ;

it is summed up in the word appetite.” He has a mass of tendencies which are necessary to the preservation and advancement of his vegetative and animal life. These are of necessity direct, strong, and self-seeking.

But over against these we find certain positive impulses which are of a quasi-social or gregarious sort, ready soon after birth to develop the other side of his nature. Bashfulness, shame, jealousy, are some of the more fundamental tendencies rooted in the organic structure of the human babe,* which seem to reveal ancestral conditions of collective life and habit.

*As to the origin of these tendencies, I accept the selectionist, or Darwinian, rather than the Lamarckian point of view. A modification of Darwinism, known as “Organic Selection,” is presented in my book, “Darwin and the Humanities ” (Baltimore and London, 1909), and in the earlier work, “Development and Evolution.” Cf. also Delage and Goldsmith, “Theories de Involution (Paris, 1909), Chap. xvii. This theory holds that individual or collective habits of life, while not physically inherited, nevertheless serve to screen and preserve congenital variations that are coincident in direction with themselves, and thus the process of selection gives the same result that direct inheritance of acquired characters would be expected to give.

With these go, in a more positive sense, certain great motives of action which, natural as they are and quasi-instinctive, become the tools of “socialization according to nature ” very early in the individual’s personal history. Play and imitation , twin brothers in the scheme of the child’s hereditary impulses, come to assume, each alone and both together, a very extraordinary role.

By play the young animal and the child alike come into the most fruitful social relations with one another. The meaning of the varied situations of life is learned in play, under conditions free from the storm and stress of actual serious life; and thus the functions playfully exercised are developed. The great activities of later utility in the struggles of life, and in the varied social conditions of existence, are thus made ready. In play we find one of the great meeting places of the forces of individualism and collectivism.

Imitation is another great socializing function. The child naturally falls to imitating, and when once this has begun he is a veritable copying machine, turning out acts, opinions, decisions, which are based with more or less correctness upon models found in his social environment.

By imitation he gets the “feel” of things that others do, and so learns to value the safe and sane; by imitation, he tries on the varied ways of doing things, and so learns his own capacities and limitations; by imitation he actually acquires the stored up riches of the social movements of history ; by imitation he learns to use the tools of culture, speech, writing, manual skill, so that through the independent use of these tools he may become a more competent and fruitful individual; finally, it is by imitation in the way of varied and effortful trial that he succeeds in being original and inventive. Of this last result, more later on; here let us note simply that imitation in its social role is not mere imitation, mere copying , slavish adherence to the prevalent and easy ways of doing things; that would be a superficial way of looking at this most extraordinary set of functions. Imitation to the intelligent and earnest imitator is never slavish, never mere repetition; it is, on the contrary, a means to further ends, a method of absorbing what is present in others and of making it over in forms peculiar to one’s own temper and valuable to one’s own genius.

Armed with these impulses, the weapons of competition as well as of co-operation, the young hero of the nursery begins his personal development, as a centre of considerate and purposeful action. The nucleus of personality, to the outsider, is the bodily self ; it is a sort of social unit; but to the individual himself, the distinction between persons as minds and persons as mere bodily presences soon springs up and takes on greater and i

greater significance. For this is not an inborn distinction. The sense of self is not a ready-made and perfect gift; it is a slow growth, the stages of which show in a most interesting way the interaction of the individualistic and social factors.

It begins, probably, when the child notes the capricious and seemingly lawless actions of persons, in contrast with the more regular and mechanical actions of things, such as the swinging of the pendulum, the opening and closing of the door, the rolling of the ball upon the floor. Persons do the most unexpected, the most inconsistent things. And it is these things that attract attention and call out the impulse to imitate. The child imitates the acts of persons.

Thus he is admitted to the inside of the other’s mind, as it were, and discovers that bodies are not, as minds are, centres of feeling, will, and knowledge. He makes very quickly the discovery that his own personality is likewise twosided; that he, too, is a mind on the inside, and that that which others see of him on the outside is not the mind, but merely the physical person. He goes through a series of distinguishable processes of interpretation, all worked out in detail by the psychologist,* which are of momentous significance for the evolution of personality.

Put very briefly and untechnically, these processes are in outline as follows:

The mind of others is at first to the child the source of capricious and mysterious actions and events. It is located simply in the physical person of others: it is then “projective” — simply “projected” into the other person, nurse, mother, or whoever it be.

But this sort of presence is then taken over into himself , by imitation, and illus-

*See the writer’s “Social and Ethical Interpretations,” 4th ed., 1906, for a detailed account of these processes of personal growth. Cf. also McDougall, “Introduction to Social Psychology” (London, 1909).

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trated in those more intimate experiences which are peculiar to his own mental life — pains, efforts, emotional crises, etc. These become the means by which he interprets the “projective” characteristics of others. Their inner life is understood in terms of his own. The whole set of events, having personal, and not merely physical or bodily significance, becomes “subjective”; it is peculiar to the “subject,” which is now for the first time differentiated with some clearness from things.

This is followed again by a return movement. The subjective experiences — say a series of violent efforts, or a violent pain — are in analogous circumstances read into others also. When the emotional expression warrants it, or when cries or gestures indicate it, the subjective is made over to other persons; it is “ejected” into the individuals of the immediate entourage .

O ther persons are thought of then in just the same terms as the private self; and the private self in the same terms as other persons; it is impossible to distinguish them, so far as the meaning in subjective terms is concerned. The thought of self is of a larger self which includes personalities in general; and the different persons, in all that which is not singular or characteristic of each, are fundamentally the same.

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The significance of this for social theory is evident. It is impossible for any one to begin life as an individualist in the sense of radically separating himself from his social fellows. The social bond is established and rooted in the very growth of self-consciousness. Each individual’s apprehension of his own personal self and its interests involves the recognition of others and their interests; and his pursuit of one type of purposes, generous or selfish, is in so far the pursuit of the other also.

This accounts for the very radical and fundamental character of some of the social emotions : sympathy, remorse,

jealousy, mortification, etc., in presence of others or in view of their opinions. The individual finds the bond which binds him to his fellows too strong for light or “cavalierly” treatment. The movement by which he seeks to retire into the citadel of his private interest, and to ignore the personal rights, views, and judgments of others, involves the dwelling upon his own self and its interests; but this stirs up the equivalences and identities by which his self-consciousness involves the thought of others. He thus only sharpens, instead of dulling, his susceptibility to their presence and attitude.

The significance of this, however, for psychology resides in the fact that it shows the true basis of social relationships;

they are rooted in the normal psychic processes of individual growth. We may then consider as answered the question as to how the individual is able to be social. He does not have to consider the question at all, nor do we, for he is simply social by the same right that he is personal. He grows in personality and individuality by growing also in sociality. He does not have two lives, two sets of interests, two selves; one personal and the other social. He has but one self, which is personal and social in one, by right of the essential and normal movement of his growth.

This has consequences of the first importance throughout our study. It becomes the presupposition of our answers to questions of the relation of the one individual to others, considered from the psychic point of view; that is, from the point of view of the persons themselves. The social relation is in all cases intrinsic to the life , interests , and purposes of the individual; he feels and apprehends the vitality of social relations in all the situations of his life.

On the side of sociology, too, this truth is of no less importance. Every social situation is constituted by the thinking and acting of certain individuals, in varying degrees and sorts of co-operation or opposition constituting the social relationship. The mere outside view, the telling-off of the physical acts, the number of cases, the circumstantial conditions of social action — all this is artificial, unless we realize that the situation is social not in virtue of these external relations, but solely in virtue of the understanding of the place and function — the desire, the opinion, the purpose — of all the actors by each. The essential thing to make a situation social is a normal self, a thought or feeling of personality, in the actors, by which they are able to combine, discuss, compete, with certain recognized “rules of the game.” A situation which is psychic in character and scope is essential. Without it no society could arise.

This is seen negatively in aggregations of persons in conditions in which normal conscious relations are not established: among the insane, among merely gregarious animals ruled by instinct, among persons who understand not a word of one another’s language, or among those who have no interests in common. Society simply does not exist and cannot be constituted in such conditions. The essential bond is lacking, the mental bond , the common thought, and the common apprehension of personality.

It is clear, therefore, that we may in anticipation expect certain sorts of sociological theory and doctrine to fail: theories which do not recognize, or which actually deny the dependence of all social life upon mental factors. Such theories, for example, as those which make geographical distinctions essential; or those which make force or constraint fundamental; or those which interpret social processes and changes in terms of biological or physiological functions or organizations. All these have their force, since all these sorts of influence do in more or less subordinate ways influence the form, the direction of movement, and the differentiation of types in the social body. But as soon as any dne of these theories substitutes its favorite fact or its selected set of forces — chemical, mechanical, physical, biological — for the psychic relations by which people having minds come into co-operation in a social situation, and by which the development of such situations is secured, so soon the theory in question commits suicide. It is no longer a theory of society, but a theory of one or more of those sets of forces by which the social movement is externally conditioned or affected.*

*1 have elsewhere suggested the use of the term “Socionomic” in application to those conditions and forces which condition and limit are truly “social” while not

This general position will be illustrated fully as we proceed. Its bearings are stated in some detail in the discussion of our first topic, “ Social Solidarity.” In that connection the biological theory of society will naturally come up for criticism.

being themselves intrinsic or essential to it: “Social and

Ethical Interpretations,” 1st ed., Introduction, also 4th ed.. Introduction 2, and Section 313a, Chapter xi.

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CHAPTER II Social Solidarity and Community*

WE find a certain difficulty in discussing such a topic as solidarity, arising from the generality of the term.

Considered as a sociological concept, solidarity is an affair of the mutual relations of a more permanent sort, subsisting in a group of individuals; as a psychological concept, it connotes the significance of these relations as understood by the individuals themselves, or at least as reflected into their minds more or less consciously. Both of these aspects of solidarity will concern us; and this con-

*Parts of this chapter (i-iii) repeat the article on “The Basis of Social Solidarity,” a paper read at the Berne Meeting, 1909, of the Institut International de Sociologie, and published in the Annals de I’lnstitut International de Sociologie, 1910, Vol. XII, and in English in the “American Journal of Sociology,” 1910, pp. 817ff.

sideration leads us to recognize a certain distinction covered by the terms “solidarity” and “community.” The term solidarity has sprung up in studies of the more objective or sociological sort, and it is generally confined to such discussions; it has little currency in psychology. On the other hand, the term “community” is used in psychology and logic for the commonness or coincidence, for different individuals, of what is in the mind of more than one of them. We speak of community of interests, community or common force of knowledge* or opinion, the community or coincidence of feeling in a group. I shall adopt this usage, confining the term solidarity more strictly to the objective or external manifestations of the relations subsisting in a group or society, and employing the term community for the sense of

*The common force or “community” of knowledge is treated in detail in the work “Thought and Things,” Vol. I, Chap, vii, and Vol. II, Chaps, ii and ix this mutuality and commonness of knowledge and action, in the minds of the individuals concerned.

With so much explanation of the terms to be employed, we may at once pass on to the consideration of solidarity and the community which is in each instance correlative to it.

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A great body of studies in psychology and sociology has shown that there is a progressive development in actual social association and organization, as advance is made in the scale of animal life. This development has proceeded parri passu with the evolution of mind. We find, indeed, three sorts of groups, related generically to one another, but so distinct from one another that we have to consider them as relatively distinguishable in their type. I shall name them, first, for convenience of designation, and then proceed to characterize them with reference to the natural bonds of solidarity which they respectively show.

These modes of “social” or collective life are: (1) the instinctive or gregarious; (2) the spontaneous or plastic; and (3) the reflective or social proper.

1. The Instinctive or Gregarious Group. The characters of this sort of group life are quite clearly expressed by the terms “instinctive” and “gregarious.” The former term suggests its biological character, the latter its social character. In saying there is a form of association that is instinctive, we mean to suggest what is characteristic of instinct as such; this may be explained under certain headings as follows.

(a.) In the first place the endowment involved in this sort of association is, like instinct, physically inherited by individual animals. The tendency to live together and to pursue certain habits of life in common is in fact native. The social instincts are so correlated, as between individuals, that one without the other, or others, is incomplete and ineffective. The family instincts of animals are examples of this; and the maternal, sexual, racial instinctive tendencies in man.

An important corollary is seen in the fact that such habits of life do not have to he acquired. For such activities no training is necessary, no learning from experience. This means that, in such apparently co-operative actions, psychological factors are not primarily or largely involved.

(6.) Again we find that, being thus stereotyped by heredity, such modes of action are fixed and unprogressive; they admit of very little modification and development. When the requisite environmental conditions are present, their working is effective and sufficient; but when the conditions change, and any considerable accommodation or readjustment is called for, the animals so endowed are more or less helpless. They are not able to substitute intelligent action for instinctive reaction.

(c.) Such modes of action, being in the main physically inherited, are in their origin the product of biological laws. They have been reduced in the process of evolution to the condition of nervous functions; they have become part of the creature’s physiological endowment. They illustrate racial habit and selection.*

We may say, then, that such instinctive actions, however psychological their results may appear to be, are in their modus operandi biological reactions. They can be explained only on the biological principles of selection and inheritance.

*That is, they have arisen as other instincts have, by natural selection working upon advantageous variations. For theories of the origin of instinct the reader may consult my work, “Development and Evolution,” and also the little book already referred to, called “Darwin and the Humanities.”

Important works on the subject which have some reference to the social instincts are Lloyd Morgan’s “Habit and Instinct,” and K. Groos’ “The Play of Animals” and “The Play of Man.”

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They are more or less automatic in their performance, and they are subject to the laws of physical heredity. And it is evident that such modes of action, while gregarious in external appearance and result, as involving two or more individuals in a joint action, are not in any true sense social. They appear to show external solidarity, but this does not require any degree of psychic community.

I may cite an instance that falls under my notice as I write. A family of swans on Lake Geneva swim across the lake always in a certain order: one of the parents goes first, the little ones follow next, and the other old one brings up the rear. This is evidently instinctive. The order in which they go is useful for the protection of the young, which are defended by the parents both before and behind. The whole family is involved; the action is not learned from experience; it is probably not capable of much change or improvement. So considered,* it is an affair of selected adaptation. The requisite connections are established in the nervous structure of the creatures and the function lacks special psychological features. Nature shows a wide range of instances similar to this.

If we apply the term solidarity to this mode of association we should characterize it as “ biological,” in distinction from other forms. It is innate , unintelligent, unprogressive , but deep-seated and very uniform in its action.

2. The Spontaneous or Plastic Group. Comparative psychologists find among the animals another form of association also; a group which does not present the features just pointed out as characteristic of that which is purely or largely biological. Animal life is full of collective actions which are due to experience, habits of common or joint

*That is, considered as instinctive. I may be mistaken in so considering this particular case.

behavior which are not inherited , but learned. It is in connection with the theory of such actions that the extreme value, in the economy of the animal’s conduct, of the impulses of play, imitation, rivalry, etc., is to be recognized. By the exercise of such gregarious or quasi-social impulses as these, the young are trained in the habits of life of their kind.

But the operation of learning or “profiting by experience” by means of such impulses, involves psychic processes; it proceeds by “trial and error,” persistent imitation, gradual selection of happy hits in the direction of better accommodation and adjustment. In this they stand out in striking contrast to the instinctive acts already described. Their points of distinction are in the main the following.

(a.) These acquired modes of collective action illustrate social transmission rather than physical heredity. The great body of the animals’ collective activities are re-established in each generation, being transmitted from old to young by processes of imitative absorption. There is, indeed, in the actions handed down in this way, a real continuity from generation to generation, a 44 social heredity,” as it has been called, as effective and compelling as physical heredity. But it is maintained by actual learning, on the part of countless individuals, who are in this sense, and must be, sufficiently 4 4 plastic” to absorb the lessons of the family and group tradition. Each must be plastic in the presence of the group life and its agencies.