§ 21. DEVELOPMENT OF MENTAL COMMUNITIES.



1. Just as the psychical development of the child is the resultant of his interaction with his environment, so matured consciousness stands continually in relation to the mental community in which it has a receptive and an active part. Among most animals such a community is entirely wanting. Animal marriage, animal states, and flocks, are only incomplete forerunners of mental communities, and they are generally limited to the attainment of certain single ends. The more lasting forms, that is, animal marriage and the falsely named animal states (p. 318), are really sexual communities; the more transient forms such as flocks, for example flocks of migratory birds, are communities for protection. In all these cases it is certain instincts which have grown more and more fixed through transmission, that hold the individuals together. The community, therefore, shows the same constancy as do instincts, and such a community is very little modified by the influences of individuals.

While animal communities are, thus, mere enlargements of the individual existence, aiming at certain physical vital ends, human, development seeks, from the first, so to unite the individual with his mental environment that the whole community is capable of serving at once the satisfaction of the physical needs of life and the pursuit of the most various mental ends, while permitting at the same time great variations in these ends. As a result, the forms of human society are exceedingly variable. The more fully developed forms, however, enter into a continuous train of historical development which extends the mental ties connecting individuals further and further beyond the bounds of immediate spatial and temporal proximity. The final result of this development is the formation of the notion of humanity as a great general mental community which is divided up according to the special conditions of life into single concrete communities, peoples, states, civilized societies of various kinds, races, and families. The mental community to which the individual belongs is, therefore, not merely a single union, it is rather a changing group of mental unions which are all interlaced in the most manifold ways and which become more and more numerous as development progresses.

2. The problem of tracing these developments in their concrete forms or even in their general interconnection, belongs to the history of civilization and to general history, not to psychology. Yet, we must give some account here of the general psychical conditions of community life and the psychical processes arising from these conditions, which processes distinguish social from individual life.

The condition which is a prime necessity for the development of every mental community at its beginning, and a continually operative factor in its further development, is the function of speech. This is what makes the development of mental communities from individual existences psycho- logically possible. In its origin speech comes from the expressive movements of the individual, but as a result of its development it becomes the indispensable form for all common mental content. These common contents, or the mental processes which belong to the whole community, may be divided into two classes, which are merely interrelated components of social life, not distinct processes, any more than the processes of ideation and volition are distinct in individual experience. The first of these classes of common contents is the class of the common ideas. In this class we find especially the common feelings and emotions of fear and hope — these are the mythological ideas. The second class consists of the common motives of volition, which correspond to the common ideas and their attending feelings and emotions — these are the laws of custom.

A. SPEECH.



3. We obtain no information in regard to the general development of speech from the individual development of the child, because in the case of the child the larger part of the process depends on those about him rather than on the child himself (p. 330 sq.). Yet, the fact that the child learns to speak at all, shows that he has psychical and physical traits favorable to the reception of language when it is communicated. In fact, it may be assumed that these traits would, even if there were no communications from without, lead to the development of some kind of expressive movements accompanied by sounds, which sounds would form an incomplete language. This supposition is justified by the observation of the deaf and dumb, especially deaf and dumb children who have grown up without any systematic education. In spite of this lack of education, an energetic mental intercourse may take place between them. In such cases, however, since the deaf and dumb can perceive only visual signs, the intercourse must depend on the development of a natural gesture language made up of a combination of significant expressive movements. Feelings are in general expressed by mimetic movements, ideas by pantomimetic movements, either by pointing at the object with the finger or by drawing some kind of picture of the idea in the air, that is, by means of indicative or representative gestures (p. 191). There may even be a combination of such signs with each other, thus leading to a kind of sentence structure by means of which wishes and questions are expressed, things are described, and occurrences narrated. This natural gesture language can never go any further, however, than the communication of concrete sensible ideas and their interconnections. Signs for abstract concepts are entirely wanting.

4. The primitive development of articulate language can hardly be thought of except after the analogy of the rise of this natural gesture language. The only difference is that in this case the ability to hear, results in the addition of a third form of movements to the mimetic and pantomimetic movements. This third form consists in the articulatory movements, and since such articulatory movements are much more easily perceived, and capable of incomparably more various modifications, it must of necessity follow that they soon exceed the others in importance. But just as gestures owe their intelligibility to the immediate relation which exists between the character of the movement and its meaning, so here also we must presuppose a like relation between the original articulatory movement and its meaning. Then, too, it is not improbable that articulation was at first aided by accompanying mimetic and pantomimetic movements. Evidence in support of this view is to be found in the unrestrained use of such gestures by savages, and in the important part which gestures play in the child's learning to speak. The development of articulate language is, accordingly, in all probability to be thought of as a process of differentiation, in which the articulatory movements have gradually gained the permanent ascendency over a number of different variable expressive movements which originally attended them. The articulation movements have, then, dispensed with these auxiliary movements as they themselves gained a sufficient degree of fixity. Psychologically the process may be divided into two acts. The first consists in the expressive movements of the individual member of the community. These are impulsive volitional acts, among which the movements of the vocal organs gain the ascendency over the others in the effort of the individual to communicate with his fellows. The second consists in the subsequent associations between sound and idea, which associations gradually become more fixed, and spread from the localities where they originated through wider circles of society.

5. From the first there are other physical and psychical conditions which take part in the formation of language and produce continual and unceasing modifications in its components. Such modifications may be divided into two classes, namely, modifications of sound and modifications of meaning.

Modifications of sound have their physiological cause in the gradual changes which take place in the physical structure of the vocal organs. These changes seem to come partly through the influence of the general changes Which the transition from a savage to a civilized condition produces in the whole psycho-physical organization, and partly from the special conditions which result from increased practice in the execution of articulatory movements. Many phenomena go to show that the gradually increasing rapidity of articulation is one of the facts of practice which is of especially great influence. Then, too, words which are in any way analogous, act upon one another through direct psychological associations, especially association between verbal ideas which are in any way related, either through sound or through likenesses in both sound and conceptual content (so-called analogous word constructions).

As the change in sound modifies the outer form of words, so the change in meaning modifies the inner content. The original association between a word and the idea it expresses is modified by the substitution of another, different idea. This process of substitution may be several times repeated with the same word. The change in the meaning of words depends, therefore, on a gradual modification of the associative and apperceptive conditions which determine the ideational complications which shall arise in the fixation-point of consciousness when a word is heard or spoken. It may, accordingly, be briefly defined as a shifting of the ideational component of the complications connected with articulate sounds (p. 258). It is due at times to association, at times to apperception.

These changes in the sound and meaning of words operate together in bringing about the gradual disappearance of the originally necessary relation between sound and meaning, so that a word finally comes to be looked upon as a mere external sign of the idea. This process is so complete that even those verbal forms in which this relation seems to be still retained, that is, in the case of onomatopoetic words, we must recognize the forms themselves as for the most part relatively late products of a secondary assimilative process, which process seeks to reestablish the originally present, but now lost, affinity between sound and meaning.

Another important consequence of this combined action of changes in sound and meaning, is to be found in the fact that many words gradually lose entirely their original concrete sensible significance, and become signs of general concepts and means for the expression of the apperceptive relating and comparing functions and their products. In this way abstract thinking is developed. Such abstract thinking would be impossible without the change in meaning of words upon which it is based, and it is, therefore, a product of the psychical and psycho-physical interactions on which the progressive development of language depends.

6. Just as the components of language, or words, are undergoing a continual modification in sound and meaning, so in the same way, though generally more slowly, changes are going on in the combinations of words into larger wholes, that is, in sentences. No language can be thought of without some syntactic order of its words. Sentences and Words are, therefore, equally essential forms of thought. Indeed, the sentence is the earlier of the two, for the thought appears at first as a single whole and is later broken up into its components (p. 298). In the more incomplete stages of language the words of a sentence are, accordingly, only very uncertainly distinguished from each other. There is no universal rule even for the order of words, any more than there is for the relation of sound to meaning. The order which logic favors with a view to the relations of reciprocal logical dependence between concepts, has no psychological universality; it appears, in fact, to be a fairly late product of development, due in part to arbitrary convention, and approached only by the prose forms of some modern languages which are syntactically nearly fixed. The original principle followed in apperceptive combination of words is obviously this, the order of the words corresponds to the succession of ideas. As a result those parts of speech which arouse the feelings and attract the attention most intensely are placed first. Following this principle, certain regularities in the order of words are developed in any given community. In fact, such a regularity is to be observed even in the natural gesture language of the deaf and dumb. Still, it is easy to understand that the most various modifications in this respect may appear under special circumstances. In general, however, the habits of association lead more and more to the fixing of particular syntactic forms, so that gradually a certain regularity begins to assert itself through associative attraction exerted by the forms most commonly employed.

Apart from the general laws presented in the discussion of apperceptive combinations, and there shown to arise from the general psychical functions of relating and comparing (p. 286), the detailed discussion of the characteristics of syntactic combinations and their gradual changes, must be left, in spite of their psychological importance, to social psychology, because such syntactic combinations depend so much on the specific dispositions and conditions of civilization in a given community.

References. Steinthal, Einleitung in die Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, vol. I, 1871. Lazarus, Leben der Seele, vol. 2, 1878. Paul, Prinzipien der Sprachengeschichte, 3rd ed., 1898. Wundt, Völkerpsychologie, vol. I, (Die Sprache) 1900, 2nd ed., 1904. Delbrück, Grundfragen der Sprachforschung, 1901. Wundt, Sprachgeschichte und Sprachpsychologie, 1901. H. Oertel, Lectures on the Study of Language, 1901. 0. Dittrich, Grundzüge der Sprachpsychologie, vol. I, 1902.



B. MYTHS.



7. The fundamental function which in its various forms of activity gives rise to all mythological ideas, is a characteristic kind of apperception belonging to all naive consciousness and suitably designated by the name personifying apperception. It consists in the complete determination of the apperceived objects through the nature of the perceiving subject. The subject not only finds his own sensations, emotions, and voluntary movements reproduced in the objects, but even his momentary affective state is in each case especially influential in determining his view of the phenomena perceived, and in arousing ideas of the relations of these phenomena to his own existence. As a necessary result of such a view the personal attributes which the subject finds in himself are attributed to the object. The inner attributes, of feeling, emotion, etc., are never omitted. The outer attributes of voluntary action and other expressions like those of men, are generally assigned to objects only when there are actually perceived movements. Thus, the savage may believe that stones, plants, and works of art have an inner capacity for sensations and feelings and for the resulting effects of these processes, but he usually assumes immediate action only in the case of moving objects, such as clouds, heavenly bodies, winds, etc. In all these cases the personification is favored by associative assimilations which readily reach the intensity of illusions of fancy (p. 306).

8. Myth-making, or personifying, apperception is not to be regarded as a special form or even as a distinct sub-form of apperception. It is nothing but the natural inceptive stage of apperception in general. The child shows obvious traces of it, partly in the activities of his imagination in play (p. 333), partly in the fact that strong emotions, especially fear and fright, easily arouse illusions of fancy with an affective character analogous to that of the emotion. In the case of children, however, the manifestations of a tendency to form myths are early checked and soon entirely suppressed through the influences of environment and education. With savages and partly civilized peoples it is different. There the surrounding influences present a whole mass of mythological ideas to the individual consciousness. These, too, originated in the minds of individuals, and have gradually become fixed in some particular community, and through language have been transmitted from generation to generation and become gradually modified in the transition from savage to civilized conditions.

9. The direction in which these modifications take place, is determined in general by the fact that the momentary affective state of the subject is the chief influence in settling the character of the myth-making apperception. In order to gain some notion of the way in which the affective state of the subject has changed from the first beginnings of mental development to the present, we must appeal to the history of the development of mythological ideas, for other evidences are entirely wanting. It appears that in all cases the earliest mythological ideas referred to the personal fate in the immediate future, and were determined, by the emotions aroused by the death of comrades and by the memory of these comrades, and were also determined in a high degree by the memories of dreams. This is the source of so-called "animism", that is, all those forms of belief in which both the spirits of the dead and certain demons connected with certain objects, places or practical occupations (demons of the woods and fields, of agriculture and navigation) are thought of as taking the parts of rulers of fortune and as bringing either weal or woe into human life. "Fetishism" is a branch of animism, in which the attribute of ability to control fate is carried over to certain objects in the environment, such as plants, stones, works of art, especially objects which arouse the feelings on account of their striking character or on account of some accidental outer circumstance. The phenomena of animism and fetishism are not only the earliest, but also the most lasting productions of myth-making apperception. They continue, even after all others are suppressed, in the various forms of superstitions among civilized peoples, such as belief in ghosts, enchantments, charms, etc.

10. After consciousness reaches a more advanced stage, personifying apperception begins to deal with the greater natural phenomena which act upon human life both through their changes and through their direct influence, that is, with the clouds, rivers, winds, and greater heavenly bodies. The regularity of certain natural phenomena, such as the alternation of night and day, of winter and summer, the processes in a thunderstorm, etc., gives occasion for the formation of poetical myths, in which a series of interconnected ideas are woven into one united whole. In this way the nature myth arises. The chief difference between nature myths and the earlier forms of belief in spirits and demons consists in the fact that nature myths deal with personal gods. These various gods are given a great variety of characteristics, and are gradually freed from any special connection with definite places, times, or activities. They come to be nothing more nor less than anthropomorphic personalities with superhuman power. They are worshiped as the governors of natural phenomena as well as of human destinies. As the result of this development of more comprehensive ideas of the gods, the demons, and minor deities, gradually sink into the background, or else they are so united with the ideas of the gods themselves that they come to be regarded as attributes of the deities or as special forms in which the gods appear. The process of combination and fusion of these ideas and feelings usually goes a step further than the creation of a number of personal gods. Some single one of these deities, at first in an irregular and doubtful way, and then much more permanently, becomes superior to all the others. Thus a strong monotheistic tendency shows itself from a very early period even in the nature myth, which is essentially polytheistic in character. On the other hand, a tendency in the opposite direction, namely in the direction of breaking up the ideas of the gods into a great number of personalities, may result from a fusion of the ideas of the gods with those of the earlier special deities and demons. In this way there arise certain local deities and tribal deities. These deities can then, because of their personal character, easily be dissociated from the special conditions which gave rise to them, and they then become the subjects for the various forms of hero myths. Traces of historical truth get themselves grafted into these personal myths or hero myths, and thus the tendency to make the deities more and more like men, which tendency showed itself to some extent even in the nature myth, goes even further. The hero myths thus challenge the poetical genius of the individual poet to its highest efforts and these myths become components of popular, and then of literary poetry. At the same time, however, the hero myth undergoes a change in meaning through the fading out of some of the features of the single mythical figures and the appearance of other new features. This change, in turn, makes possible a progressive inner change analogous to the change in verbal ideas, by which the change in the myth is always accompanied. As the process goes on, single poets and thinkers gain an increasing influence.

In this way there comes about finally, a division of the total original content of the myths into science and religion. This division is very materially assisted by philosophy which in its first stages is more than half mythical in its ideas. The original ideas of gods and heroes now give place more and more to ethical ideas of deity. This transition is in part due to the reflex influence of philosophy on religion. As in the case of the nature myth, so even at the later stage of developed ethical religion, there are tendencies to lapse back into the older forms because the old motives for the creation of these early forms still continue. Special deities, demons, and spirits push themselves into the foreground of consciousness, sometimes for longer periods of time, sometimes merely for the passing moment. Such revived beliefs sometimes constitute a sort of secondary addition or supplement to religion itself, sometimes when positively rejected by religion they continue to exist independently in the form of superstitions.

References. Tylor, Researches in the Early History of Mankind. fr. Schultze, Psychologie der Naturvölker, 1900. Wundt, (English trans.) Ethics, Sect. 1, chap. 2. Rohde, Psyche (Beliefs of the Greeks in regard to the Mind and Immortality), 1894, 3rd ed., 1903. Usener, Götternamen, 1896.
 
 

C. CUSTOMS.



11. Customs appear as far back as we can trace them in two groups which may be described by the twofold classification into rules of individual volition, and rules of social conduct. The first govern the conduct of the individual in his occupations and in his relations with other human beings, the second determine the forms of community life in the clan, family, state, or other social group. Both individual and social laws of custom are, therefore, connected with community life. The former relate to the conduct of the individual in the community, the latter relate to the members of the community in their common activities, in the activities which determine the particular character of their life together.

The individual rules of conduct which have become customs are generally connected in their beginnings, which are indeed frequently obscure, with myths, in a way corresponding directly to that in which outer volitional acts are related to inner motives. Wherever we can trace the origin of such customs with any degree of probability, we find that they are remnants or modifications of certain cult forms. Thus, the funeral feasts and burial ceremonies of civilized peoples point to a primitive ancestor-worship. Numerous feasts and ceremonies connected with particular days, with the change of the seasons, with the tillage of the fields, and the gathering of the harvest, all point back to certain demon cults, and nature myths. The custom of greeting, in many of its forms, betrays its direct derivation from the ceremonies of prayer.

In contrast with these demands on individual practice, there are certain necessary demands arising out of the conditions of community life, and out of the particular ways in which the impulses of self preservation and tribal preservation show themselves; and as a result of these necessary demands, there grow up social laws of custom. Thus, it was the surrounding conditions under which a primitive people lived which determined the method of making clothing and dwellings, the mode of preparing food, and the particular forms of subdividing the community. Even the changes which have taken place in all these respects as the people have slowly passed from a savage to a civilized state, have all taken place in response to the requirements of practical advantage. Especially notable illustrations of this are to be found in the earliest kinds of community life and in the wider and narrower social units that have grown out of these early forms. Thus, the tribe in which men everywhere lived at first, was divided into smaller groups or subtribes under the force of external conditions of life, and because of the increase in the number of individuals in the tribe. The smaller groups or subtribes usually continued organized after their separation from each other in a general protective league which gave the impulse for the formation of general families through the intercourse of individuals of different tribes. From these general families in turn, there arose, as civilization progressed, the single family. As the interrelations between individuals, which arose at first out of temporary causes, began to be reduced to permanent rules, the tribe underwent a change and passed into the first stages of state organization by becoming a confederation of tribes. Partly as a result of such confederations and partly in an independent fashion there finally grew up under the influence of the increasing demands for protection and the organization of warlike undertakings, organizations which constituted military groupings as contrasted with natural groupings based on blood relationship. Military organization led to the various forms of political organization.

12. With customs, as with language and myths, the change in meaning has exercised a modifying influence on development. In individual customs there arise as a result of this change in meaning two chief kinds of transformation. In the first, the original mythical motive is lost and no new meaning whatever takes its place. The custom continues merely as a consequence of associative habit, but loses its imperative character and becomes much weaker in its outward manifestations. In the second class of transformations, a moral-social purpose takes the place of the original mytho-religious motive. The two kinds of change may in any single case be most intimately united; and even when a custom does not serve any particular social end directly, as is the case, for example, with certain rules of deportment, of etiquette, on the manner of dressing, eating, etc., yet, the custom may serve some social end indirectly in that the existence of some common rules for the members of a community is favorable to their united life and therefore to their common mental social life.

In social customs the change is in a direction opposite to that seen in individual customs. Social customs usually retain, more than individual customs, the old significance along with the new which they acquire. The transformation of social customs is due to the fact that there come to be associations of the original purposes of these customs with more remote motives so that sooner or later religio-mythical motives are added to the original motives which are the necessities of social life. Thus, the rules of action which at first grew up as the result of certain necessary impulses, come to be regarded as commands of the gods, or they are rendered sacred by some kind of religious ceremonial. For example, the common meals, the erection of common dwelling places, agreements and confederations, declarations of war and treaties of peace and marriage, are all combined with certain mythical concepts or else they arouse the myth-making apperception to such an extent that new deities are created especially for the governing of these social customs. Finally, it is to be noted that the mythical notions which have attached to social customs may in time fade out. There then takes place a kind of retransformation in which the religious element of the custom either disappears, or remains merely as a formality due to habit and unsupported by recognized significance.

The psychological changes in customs just pointed out, constitute the preparation for their differentiation into three spheres, namely into the classes of pure custom, of law, and of morality. The last two are to be regarded as special forms of custom aiming at certain social ends. The detailed investigation of these processes of development and differentiation is, however, a problem of social psychology, and the discussion of the rise of law and morality belong to social psychology, to general history, and to ethics.

References. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, 1865. L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, 1877. H. Schurtz, Urgeschichte der Kultur, 1900; Altersklassen und Männerverbände, 1902. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, vols. 2 and 3. v. Ihering, Der Zweck im Recht, vol. I, Pt. 2, 1877—1883. Wundt, (English trans.) Ethics, Sect. I, chap. 3. Barth, Die Philosophie der Geschichte als Soziologie, vol. I, 1897.
 
 

D. GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE DEVELOPMENTS STUDIED IN SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.



13. Speech, myths and customs constitute a series of closely related subjects which are of great importance to general psychology for the reason that the relatively permanent character of speech, myths, and customs renders it relatively easy to recognize clearly through them certain general psychical processes, and to carry out through them certain psychological analyses. Such recognition of general processes and such analyses are much easier here than in the case of transient compounds of individual consciousness. Indeed, such transient compounds require as their necessary conditions preliminary social developments, especially if compounds are in any way connected with language and therefore dependent upon the laws of social thought which have been crystalized in language. Thus, it was necessary in an earlier paragraph, when treating of the processes of apperceptive synthesis and analysis, to call attention to the effects of these processes as they appear in speech (p. 298). Just as the psychical processes of individual consciousness show themselves in language as there indicated, so also in the case of broader social developments, the psychical processes which underlie the observed phenomena are most clearly recognizable in the attributes and modifications of the ideas which are expressed in speech. The accompanying affective excitations can be inferred only indirectly through an examination of the total series of facts and with the aid of certain known conditions.

There are certain processes which are essential in character and are constantly reappearing on the ideational side in all development of language, custom and myths. We may point out three such processes which are closely related to each other. They may be called respectively, condensation of ideas, obscuring of ideas, and finally, corruption of ideas. Ideas become condensed when a number of ideas which were originally separate are, in consequence of repeated and strongly affective association, so united that they come to be bound together in apperception in a single whole. But since certain elements in the course of such a process of condensation are more clearly apperceived because of their more intense affective influence, it follows that other elements not strong in affective tone sink into obscurity and may at length disappear entirely out of the complex product. In this way, a corruption of the ideas may finally take place which will give as its final stage, especially when condensation and obscuring have been repeated several times, and have affected different components each time, a product which is entirely different from the original ideas with which the processes started. Condensation, obscuring and corruption in their various forms are what bring about all the changes in the meaning of words and all the transformations in myths and customs. When either a word, a myth, or a custom, has been modified, the others may be indirectly affected also. Thus, when a word changes, it is very easy for the mythological ideas connected with it to undergo a modification. The change in the myth may then react upon the word. It is possible in cases in which other conditions are favorable, for words to give rise directly to mythological ideas which put content into the word furnished by language. On the other hand, the existence of a myth may lead to the formation of a name or word.

Throughout all these general social processes, it is the idea which is first noticed. Psychological analysis shows, however, that it is after all the affective processes and the volitional processes which are the determining factors in the original formation of the ideas and in their gradual transformation. Thus, we can think of the original incoherent sounds which must be recognized as the beginnings of speech only as simple impulsive actions which follow directly upon the reception of a strongly affective impression and which serve in some way to communicate this impression to the listener. The communication may be through the sound alone, or through the aid of added gestures (p. 340). When the development of social thought has once begun, the mythological ideas show beyond a doubt traces of the influences of the feelings. Personifying apperception which shows itself in the myth differs from more highly developed consciousness in one characteristic more than in any other. In personifying apperception the subject refers not merely the formal attributes and the sensation content of the percept to the object, but he refers also his whole affective and volitional state to the object. For example, a hopeful subject finds in the object before him a protecting spirit, while the fearful subject finds in the same object a demon of injury. In the processes of nature, the savage sees a will which corresponds to his association of these processes with his own actions and corresponds also to the effect produced on his feelings. Even the three processes of condensing, obscuring and corrupting of ideas are to be looked upon as indications of changes in the affective state of the subject. These changes in affective state result at first in a change in the significance of myth and custom and then secondarily they react upon language also.

14. In mental communities and especially in their development of language, myths and customs, we discover, thus, mental interconnections and interactions which differ in essential respects from the interconnection of the psychical compounds in an individual consciousness. And yet these social interconnections have just as much reality as the individual consciousness itself. In this sense we may speak of the interconnection of the ideas and feelings of a social community as a collective consciousness, and of the common volitional tendencies as a collective will. In doing this we are not to forget that these concepts do not mean something which exists apart from the conscious and volitional processes of the individual, any more than the community itself is something altogether apart from the union of individuals. Since the social union, however, brings forth certain mental products, for which only the germs are present in the individual, and since this union determines the development of the individual from a very early period, it is just as much an object of psychological study as is the individual consciousness. For psychology must give an account of the interactions which give rise to the products and attributes of collective consciousness and of the collective will.

14a. The facts arising from the existence of mental communities have only recently come within the pale of psychological investigation. These problems were formerly referred either to the special mental sciences (philology, history, jurisprudence, etc.) or, if of a more general character, to philosophy, that is, to metaphysics. If psychology did touch upon them at all, it was dominated, as were the special sciences, by the reflective method of popular psychology, which method tends to treat all mental products of communities, to as great an extent as possible, as voluntary inventions designed from the first for certain utilitarian ends. This view found its chief philosophical expression in the doctrine of a social contract, according to which a mental community is not something original and natural, but is derived from the voluntary union of a number of individuals. This position is psychologically untenable, and completely helpless in the presence of the problems of social psychology. As one of its after-effects we have even to-day the grossest misunderstandings of the concepts collective consciousness and collective will. Instead of regarding these simply as expressions for the actual agreement and interaction of individuals in a community, some continue to suspect that there is behind these terms a mythological being of some kind, or at least a metaphysical substance. That such notions are utterly false requires no further proof after what has been said. It is obvious that these notions are themselves the results of the unjustifiable use of the concept substance, which concept has so long dominated psychology and led to the identification of substance and reality. Furthermore, the confusion of the concepts substance and reality shows clearly how close is the true inner relation between popular spiritualism and materialism although such spiritualism is openly at war with materialism (compare § 2, p. 6).
 
 

References. Lazarus and Steinthal, Zeitschr. f. Völkerpsychologie u. Sprachwissenschaft, vol. I, 1860. Wundt, Völkerpsychologie, vol. I, Introduction.