_THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE GROUP. THE ETHNIC MIND_
The ethnic character becomes more fixed with advancing culture, and its
component parts—that is, the individuals who compose it—more uniform.
This has not been understood by one of the latest writers on the
subject, Professor Vierkandt, who maintains that in savage groups there
is a much greater sameness between the individuals who compose them.
Superficially, this is true on account of the limited range of their
activity; but in proportion to that range the individuals differ more
widely, because they are so much more subjected to external influences
and emotional attacks. Dr. Krejči is more correct in his opinion that
the sum of the differences between cultured individuals and peoples is
less than that between the uncultured. This obviously flows from the
fact that cultivated minds are governed by reason and knowledge, whose
prescriptions are everywhere the same; while illiterate minds are
victims of ignorance and passion. All who learn that twice two are four
act on the knowledge of it; but the Brazilian Indian, who has no word in
his language for numerals above two, may disregard it.
Some have maintained that the promptings of the group-mind as felt by
the individual belong in the unconscious or involuntary part of his
nature, and partake of the character of mechanical necessity.
There is indeed this tendency, but it is not by any means a necessary
character of the collective mind, as an example easily shows. I may
adopt a prevailing custom or belief merely through imitation, which is a
mechanical procedure; or I may adopt it, being led to examine it from
its prevalence and to approve it from my examination,—and this is a
voluntary action.
In this we see the contrast of cultured and uncultured group-minds. The
latter demand assent merely from their unanimity, the former wish it
only from enlightenment; the latter ask faith, the former knowledge; the
latter command obedience, the former urge investigation.
Plato has a dialogue on the problem of “The One and the Many”; and the
abstract subtleties he brings forward are almost paralleled by the
concrete facts which we encounter in an endeavour to state the mutual
relations of the Individual and the Group.
This science of ours, ethnic psychology, has, in one sense, nothing to
do with the individual. It does not start from his mind or thoughts but
from the mind of the group; its laws are those of the group only, and in
nowise true of the individual; it omits wide tracts of activities which
belong to the individual and embraces others in which he has no share;
to the extent that it does study him, it is solely in his relation to
others, and not in the least for himself.
On the other hand, as the group is a generic concept only, it has no
objective existence. It lives only in the individuals which compose it;
and only by studying them singly can we reach any fact or principle
which is true of them in the aggregate.
Yet it is almost as correct to maintain that the group is that which
alone of the two is real. The closer we study the individual, the more
do his alleged individualities cease, as such, and disappear in the
general laws by virtue of which society exists; the less baggage does he
prove to have which is really his own; the more do all his thoughts,
traits, and features turn out to be those of others; so that, at last,
he melts into the mass, and there is nothing left which he has a right
to claim as his personal property. His pretended personal mind is the
reflex of the group-minds around him, as his body is in every fibre and
cell the repetition of his species and race. As an American writer
strongly puts it: “Morally I am as much a part of society as physically
I am a part of the world’s fauna.”
But let no one deduce from this that the group is merely the sum total
of the individuals which compose it, the net balance of their thoughts
and lives. Nothing would be more erroneous. I have already said that
laws and processes belong to the group which are foreign to the
individual. We may go further, and prove that these processes, the
spirit of the group, are quite different from those of any single member
of it. To use the expression of Wundt: “The resultant arising from
united psychological processes includes contents which are not present
in the components.”
In numerous respects, indeed, the individual and the group stand in
opposition to each other. The qualities of the former are incoherent,
disorderly, irregular; while those of the latter are fixed, stable,
computable.
Let us contemplate further this relation of the individual to the group,
for upon its correct apprehension must the whole fabric of ethnic
psychology, as a science, rest.
In every healthy individual there is a feeling that his thoughts and
actions are vain unless they are somehow directed towards his fellow
human beings; yet there is a further feeling that these fellow creatures
are but a means for the developing and perfecting of himself. He desires
to be intimately associated with the group, but not to be absorbed and
lost in it. His unconscious goal is individuality, but not isolation;
and he feels that the most complete and sane individuality can be
obtained only by association with others of his kind. For that reason,
he submits his will to the collective will, his consciousness to the
collective consciousness. He accepts from the group the ideas,
conclusions, and opinions common to it, and the motives of volition,
such as customs and rules of conduct, which it collectively sanctions.
These ideas and motives are strictly the property of the group, not of
its separate members. Such a prevailing unity of thought and sentiment
does not rest on unanimity of opinion; it does not necessarily exclude
any amount of individuality, and is consistent with the utmost freedom
of the personal mind. Its basis is a similarity of form and direction of
the psychical activities, guiding and modifying them in such a way that
a general colour and tendency can be recognised.
If it is asked, on what ultimate psychical concept the differences of
collective or group-minds are based in a last analysis, I am inclined to
answer with Wilhelm von Humboldt, that it is on the currently accepted
relation of the material to the immaterial world. The solution adopted
for this insoluble problem is the hidden spring of motive in the minds
of all.
The actual existence of the group-mind can no more be denied than the
constant inter-relation between it and the individual mind. It takes
nothing from its reality that it exists only in individual wills. To
deny it on that account, as Wundt admirably says, is as illogical as to
deny the existence of a building because the single stones of which it
is composed may be removed. Indeed, it might claim higher reality than
the individual mind in that its will is more potent and can attain
greater results by collective action.
Of course, there is no metaphysical “substance” or mythological “being”
behind the collective mind. That were a nonsensical notion. Nor is it in
any sense a voluntary invention, created by contract for utilitarian
ends. That were a gross misconception. It is the actual agreement and
interaction of individuals resulting in mental modes, tendencies, and
powers not belonging to any one member, and moving under laws developed
by the requirements of this independent existence. It is like an
orchestra which can produce harmonies by the blending of the strains of
numerous instruments impossible to any one of them.
The sense or self-recognition of individual life as apart from group
life varies widely. In the totemic bonds of savage life, in the guilds
of higher grades, in the “society centres” of modern life, the
individual consciously and willingly renounces nearly the whole of
himself in favour of the circle which he enters.
When he attempts the opposite extreme, and prides himself on his
insulation, his egotism, and antagonism to others, he usually deceives
himself. No matter how selfishly he pursues his aims, it is ever in
obedience to the influence of the group. From it he takes his thoughts
and the language in which to express them, his economic values are those
recognised by it, its ideals are his, he will strive in vain to escape
the iron bands of the social order about him. Unknown to himself, he
abides the slave of others.
The group has another advantage over him which he can in no wise
diminish or avoid. He will die, but it will live. He, with his petty
strivings and personal ambitions, will soon sink into the dateless
night, but the social order of which he was a part will survive in other
and younger generations, moving forward to its destiny under compulsive
forces of which he has not even an inkling, crushing his blind
opposition under resistless wheels.
Not by antagonism to the group does the individual gain his highest
personal aims, his fullest reality as an individual, but by devoting
himself to the best interests of the group, learning what they really
are, and furthering them by a study of the means adapted to their growth
and fruition. This is “altruism,” the living for others, in its highest
sense, the aim not primarily the individual, but the group and its
welfare.
This is the more needful because the group, as a psychical unit, is
_never creative_. It is receptive, active, executive, but for its
creative inspirations it depends upon the individual. What is called
“originality,” the stimuli and momenta of development, arise primarily
from the single mind.
But it is equally true that the work of the group must precede the work
of the individual, and prepare for it, if it is to be successful.
Otherwise, the seed will be sown on barren ground.
In every historic event the group is the only active agent; through it
the individual can bring to bear his limited powers over an indefinitely
vast area, and with indefinitely multiplied force. History is a record
of the sentiments and actions of groups; yet so little has this been
understood, so obscured has this been by the potency of personality,
that until recently it has been little more than an account of
individuals. Without the aid of the group, what would have become of the
most famous heroes of the past?
I would sum up these reflections on the relations of the individual and
the group by the practical deduction that to understand the individual
we must study him in relation to the group, and to understand the group
we must study it, primarily in the individuals of which it is composed,
in both their physical and mental life; and secondly, in those
principles and processes which it, as an entirely psychical product,
presents peculiar to itself.
The group is _not_ a “natural” product in the objective sense in which
that word is employed in the term “natural sciences.” It is a purely
mental creation, though none the less real. It must be examined and
investigated by other methods, therefore, than those customary in the
biologic sciences.
Instead of studying external phenomena for their own sake, we must
regard all such as valuable only as they indicate psychic changes, and
as they can be translated into mental correlates. The study is,
therefore, from within, and qualitative rather than quantitative, in
this respect contrasting with experimental psychology and also with
history.
When we examine in detail the interaction of the individual and the
group we may classify the processes which take place somewhat as
follows:
The individual receives from the group the symbols for complex and
general ideas—that is, the words of language; he is also taught many
complex purposeful motions, such as are needed in social and cultured
life; he is supplied with artificial objects for his use, as tools,
clothing, shelter, etc.; and he is constantly subjected to a certain
amount of physical force from those around him—in other words, is “made
to do” a variety of acts. The group may consciously strive to modify
him, as in public education, religious instruction, and the like; or it
may act merely negatively in opposing any developments antagonistic to
its own character. The individual may work for or against the group, or
for himself only; but in either case has to reckon with the group for
what he obtains from it.
While the _unity_ of the ethnic mind is fostered by a conscious effort
to promote common interests, modes of expression, ambitions, and aims,
its energy is in direct proportion to the cultivation of the sense of
individuality among its members, for from the latter alone are born the
impulses to progress. The fatal error of many communities has been to
bend every effort to secure the former, while they neglected or actually
endeavoured to suppress the latter.
I have been using the word “group” in a loose way. The time has now come
to distinguish it from various other terms familiar to ethnology, such
as tribe, folk, nation, people, stock, and race.
“Group” is the best English equivalent for the Greek _ethnos_, which
word, by its derivation, means a number of people united together by
habits and usages in common.
This at once places the group above the mere temporary aggregations,
such as the crowd or the mob. The ethnic group is formed by the thoughts
and aims of the lives of its members, not by their ephemeral emotions
and actions.
Compared with nation, stock, or race, it is a generic term; for by
“nation” we understand all united in the acceptance of one form of
government; by “stock,” those speaking dialects or tongues derived from
one primitive language (linguistic stocks); and by “race,” those
connected by identity of physical traits. The “tribe” is merely the
primitive form of the nation, while in English “folk” has a current
application to certain classes in society and not to the whole of it.
The correlative of the ethnic group, or, in these pages, “the group,” in
German is _Volk_ and in French, _le peuple_.
How these ethnic groups are formed, under what complex conditions their
differences arise, what influences are the most potent in their creation
and preservation, will be considered in detail hereafter. At present it
is sufficient to mention certain general principles, applicable to the
formation of all ethnic groups.
First, it must be borne in mind that mere similarity and geographical
contiguity are not enough to constitute an _ethnos_. The Fuegian hordes
live under the same sky, speak closely related dialects and are
physically alike; but no one would pretend that there is any unity among
them. Their roving bands never meet but to fight and their only social
occupation is mutual destruction. Nor would there be any true unity in a
society however peaceful where each family isolates itself to the utmost
from its neighbours and seeks to limit all its efforts and sympathies to
its own members. Such a society might become high in numbers and
extended in area; but it would have no true unity. It might even develop
considerable results in thoughts, study, and invention; but they would
remain sterile to the general weal, and contribute little or nothing to
the progress of the race. Such was the condition of parts of Europe in
the feudal ages.
The ethnic life is a mental life, and this consists not in the sameness
brought about by the environment, nor even in ideas and acquirements,
but in movement, comparison, and association of ideas.
The unity not merely of present traits but of future aims, not merely of
ideas but of ideals, is the true unity which constitutes the ethnic
mind. This is the foundation fact which must be constantly present to
the student, if his researches in ethnic psychology are to be
profitable.
In this it differs from racial psychology, for while doubtless each race
has mental advantages and deficiencies which are its own and which
largely decide the destiny of its members, these are not united in
pursuit of one end. There is no unity of will and purpose.
Each individual partakes of this racial psychology as he does of many
other mental unions, such as his church and his political party; but
that which has pre-eminence in history and psychology is not these, but
that closer and paramount union to which he is bound by a common speech,
ideas, motives, and hopes.
We must not forget, however, that under whatever connotation we
understand the group, it is still composed of individuals; and the
relations which these bear to it require careful consideration.
The unity of a group can never be complete. The infinite variations of
its individual members prevent this. And here comes in an interesting
law which has lately been defined by an American scientist. He has shown
that precisely that trait or those traits which are the most
distinguishing characteristics of a group vary the widest in the
individuals of that group.
Let us take, for instance, a given community remarkable for the average
height of its members. We shall find wider variations in this dimension
among them than among a community less conspicuous in this measurement.
This appears to hold equally good for the statistics of longevity, of
health and disease, and other physical traits. There is little doubt it
is also of general application to mental qualities. The contradictory
estimates of national character largely depend upon it. Not the bias of
the observers but their ignorance of the operation of this law will
often explain such discrepancies.
What method should we follow to avoid such an error? In other words,
what formula can we devise to correct individual variation and arrive at
a true average for the group?
This work has already been done for us. Diligent students of vital
statistics have as good as demonstrated that when a given characteristic
of a group can be expressed in numbers and these projected by the
graphic method, the resultant curve obtained will be one of those called
by mathematicians binomial. Subtracting from the whole number one-tenth
for aberrant forms or abnormal cases (the distribution of error), of the
remainder, one-half will represent the mean, and one-fourth each will
represent the plus and minus extremes. For example, suppose in a given
community numbering one thousand adults the average height is 5 feet 6
inches; in it, one hundred persons (one-tenth) will be either abnormally
tall or short; of the remainder, 450 will attain just about the total
average height; while 225 will be above and 225 below it.
We can fearlessly adopt this method of reasoning in ethnic psychology.
When we speak of mental traits or ideas common to the group, we mean
that they may be held as expressed by scarcely half of that group; that
in the remainder of the group they may be much more positively adopted
or more or less rejected; but inasmuch as such numerous exceptions
largely annul each other’s force, the general tendency and action of the
group will be guided by the average rather than by either extreme.
The justice of this method is further supported by another general
psychical law of groups. This is, that they attract in the direct ratio
of their mass; the more numerous a party is, the more adherents will it
obtain. Hence, although in the above example the mean, 450, is less than
half of the whole number, yet it is much greater than either of the
other three sub-groups, 100, 225, 225, and exerts therefore double the
attractive power of the latter. That is, in a question of opinion, it
will receive twice as many adherents as either of the latter. Hence the
value of majorities as expressing the will of a community.
The principle of psychical action on which the above is based is one
very familiar to students of psychology. It is that termed “collective
suggestion.” This is the overmastering tendency to imitate the examples
of others, to act in accordance with the ideas and feelings which we
witness in those around us. When such ideas and sentiments are constant,
and conspicuously displayed, they overcome resistance and the individual
mind is attracted to that of the group with like irresistible magnetism
as in fairy lore drew the ship of the mariners to the loadstone rocks of
Avalon.
From these considerations it will be understood that the group may be
regarded mathematically as a “constant,” the resultant of a number of
“variables,” the individuals of whom it is constituted.
Many writers of late years have spoken of the social unit, the group or
the nation, as an “organism.” Some have further defined it as a
“super-organism” or a “physio-psychic organism.”
Such expressions are well enough as figures of speech. They serve to
accentuate the interdependence of parts and the potentiality of change
and development in the ethnic mind. But the simile becomes illusory and
deceptive when it is set up as a principle from which to deduce
conclusions. The group is no more an organism than is any other
psychical concept, that of the “genus Homo” for example.
A vital characteristic of the ethnic group is the degree of its
_centralisation_. This is, in truth, a coefficient of its powers.
Numbers may be said to increase thus by addition, but centralisation by
multiplication. The centralisation, however, must be real; not simply a
single point of action, but also a convergence of forces to that point.
The French nation is popularly supposed to be centralised in Paris; but
in fact the provinces are usually ignorant of national action there
until after it has occurred. It is through modern methods of rapid
transmission of intelligence that national groups can act with so much
greater force than in earlier days.
The _permanence_ of the ethnic group has been a matter much discussed by
philosophers. Led on by a supposed analogy to the individual, governed
by the notion that the social unit is an “organism” and subject to the
same laws as physical organisms, supported, as they imagined, by the
teachings of history, writers of merit have claimed that the _ethnos_
has a birth, an adolescence, a period of maturity, and old age and
death, as has the individual.
Even such an acute thinker as Quetelet was so enamoured of this theory
that he worked out the “natural longevity” of a nation, discovering it
to be about ten times the greatest longevity of its individual members!
The doctrines of ethnic psychology, as I understand them, do not
sanction such an opinion. The analogy of the group to an organism is
purely fictitious; the historic causes of the decay of nations are not
the same and are not allied to those which bring about mortality in the
individual.
There is no such thing as a natural death of a Society. It may be
crushed by external force, but if it perishes from within, it has
deliberately poisoned itself, has fallen a victim to preventable
disease.
There is one catholicon, one elixir of life, which will preserve any
society from decay, and confer upon it the blessing of eternal youth, if
it is constantly remembered and administered.
That catholicon is to cherish and cultivate assiduously the one
distinction which, I have pointed out, lifts the human group above the
communities of the ants, the bees, and the beavers; that is, that the
chief aim of the community shall ever be to give each individual in it
the best opportunity for the full development of his faculties.
If the history of the gradual decline and fall of any nation be
investigated, it will be seen that the end has come through the
violation of this, the one peculiar principle of _human_ association.
Hemmed in by castes, classes, or institutions, the human souls have
atrophied, degenerated, grown decrepit and impotent, incapable of
resisting the natural forces around them.
Though the ethnic mind does not run the same life-course as the
individual body, yet it resembles this in its ceaseless change. It is
forever altering both its contents, its purposes, and the intensity with
which it pursues them.
Psychologists have classified these activities under three general
expressions which we may call laws. They are, first, the law of
Continuity; second, the law of Diversity of Purpose; and third, the law
of Contrast.
The law of Continuity means that in the ethnic mental life there is a
regulated course of growth or development; that each phase or condition
is the logical result of previous phases or conditions.
The second law emphasises that the rate of growth depends chiefly on the
diversity of aims which exists in the community. As they are multiplied,
growth is the more rapid. This is analogous to that law of organic forms
by which evolution is in proportion to variation.
The third law, that of Contrast, applies to the ethnic mind the curious
fact in mental life that a prolonged devotion to one idea leads to a
reaction in which the opposite of that idea becomes dominant. This is
even more conspicuous in the history of progressive nations than in that
of individuals. Upon this depends that periodicity in the lives of
peoples which has so often been remarked by historians.
The above mentioned facts and laws demonstrate that there is a true
unity of existence in the ethnic mind; that it has its own traits,
forms, and processes of growth and decay, quite apart from those of the
individual mind; that it is not to be studied by the methods of
experimental psychology, but by methods drawn from the observation of
its own modes of being; and that it is this abstraction, if you please,
which is the prime factor in the fate of the group over which it rules.
But I must return again to the definition of the Group. It must not be
said that I leave any obscurity in the connotation of that prominent
word.
There may be—there always are—many forms of groups in the same
community, and these by no means cover each other coterminously. Take
many an American village, for example. There are the religious groups,
Protestant and Catholic; the political parties, Republicans and
Democrats, not at all of the same individuals as the former; and there
may be the linguistic groups, German and American, different again from
both the former; and the racial groups, whites and negroes.
Something similar to this is found on a large scale in every people,
every nation; and the serious problem presents itself,—how are we, from
these heterogeneous elements, to reach anything which we can properly
call the common sentiment, the general mind of the mass?
The example I have chosen of the American village is an extreme one. In
a primitive, isolated tribe of Indians, in a remote mountain village, or
a rarely visited island, the task would be vastly easier. But the
principle in all cases is the same.
By eliminating particular after particular, as the logicians say, we
finally reach a general, a consensus of opinion and aspiration on a
variety of topics, with which the full number required by the
mathematical method already stated will agree. These common sentiments
will represent the active influence of that community, and very
accurately measure its value in development.
Being an American village, we can without doubt predict that it will be
of one mind that making money should be the chief aim of active
exertion; that respect for the law of the land should be cultivated; and
that performing recognised duties to one’s family should be taught as
indispensable.
One must not take it for granted, however, that such like salient
features are necessarily the ones which govern and measure the powers
and actions of the group. Such an error is very common. The chief trait
of the Scot is popularly supposed to be his stinginess; but the solid
and lasting character of that people prove that they have souls above
lucre. The English are pre-eminently mercantile, and Napoleon called
them a nation of shopkeepers, but he discovered his mistake at Waterloo;
the apostle called the Cretans “liars and slow bellies,” but Crete was
the source of Greek law, and when the apostle elsewhere quoted a Gentile
poet’s concept of God as his own, that poet was a Cretan.
How, then, it will be asked, are we to distinguish the most vital from
the most prominent traits of the ethnic mind, since they are not always,
even not often, the same?
The answer to that question is the main object of the second part of the
present volume. Suffice it, therefore, here to say that all ethnic
traits must be weighed and measured by the contributions they make to
the cultural history of mankind, to the realisation in daily life of
those ideas which are the formative elements in civilisation.
Reverting once more to the definition of the group as portrayed in the
ethnic mind, its traits are further brought into relief by the
comparison of group with group.
The individuals are here dropped from sight, and the elements and
processes of two or more ethnic minds are placed in contrast. They are
compared in the manner in which they have conceived and carried out
notions common to the species—let us say religion, or law, or social
relations, or practical inventions. When the comparison is extended to
all the cultural elements and the results tabulated, we reach fixed and
accurate data for appraising ethnic mental ability, whether racial,
tribal, or national.
There is nothing delusive or fanciful in such comparisons. The results
are obtained by recognised scientific methods, and are controlled by
well-known mathematical laws. They establish the claims of ethnic
psychology to a place among the exact sciences, and show that it has a
field of its own not yet included in the domain of any of its
neighbours.