Collective identity

“ In this way too, with the increase of these stored values, of which members realise parts but none the whole, the spirit of a people more and more surpasses the measure of any individual mind. It is these social forces within and without, working in the minds of individuals whose own social inheritance is an essential part of their individuality, stored in the institutions which they maintain from the past or establish in the present, that mould the communal spirit of the successive generations. ”

“ Unity and difference here too weave their eternal web, the greater social scheme which none of us who are part of it can ever see in its entirety, but whose infinite subtlety and harmony we may more and more comprehend and admire. As a community grows in civilisation and culture, its traditions are no longer clear and definite ways of thinking, its usages are no longer uniform, its spirit is no longer to be summed up in a few phrases. ”

“ Coming now to close quarters with the doctrine, we may ask those who, like Schaeffle and Espinas, regard the ‘collective consciousness’ as a bond which unites the members of a society and makes of them one living individual,—Is this ‘collective consciousness’ merely epiphenomenal in character? Or are we to regard it as reacting upon the consciousnesses or minds of the individuals of the group, and, through such reaction, playing a part in determining the behaviour of the group, or rather of the individuals of which the group is composed? ”

“ If it is possible for the members of a group to evolve a unified consciousness, a common idea, a collective will, for the many to become really one, not in a mystical sense but as an actual fact, for the group to have a real not a fictional personality, this process can be carried on through group and group, our task, an infinite one, to evolve a state with a real personality. ”

“ WHAT then is the essence of the group process by which are evolved the collective thought and the collective will? It is an acting and reacting, a single and identical process which brings out differences and integrates them into a unity. The complex reciprocal action, the intricate interweavings of the members of the group, is the social process.
We see now that the process of the many becoming one is not a metaphysical or mystical idea; psychological analysis shows us how we can at the same moment be the self and the other, it shows how we can be forever apart and forever united. ”

“ As he grows, the community in which he lives pours itself into his being in the language he learns and the social atmosphere he breathes, so that the content of his being implies in its every fibre relations of community. He is what he is by including in his essence the relations of the social State.... ”

“ Conscious of the usefulness of solidarity, the group, as it becomes self-conscious, endeavors by definite policies so far to prescribe individual conduct as to control and limit variation from type. Society thus becomes a type-conforming group of associates, endeavoring, by self-instituted discipline, to maintain, as a type, its distinctive characteristics.
To observe the successive stages, and the complications of man's collective struggle for existence, is to examine the evolution of tribal society and to follow the history of civilization—a large undertaking. ”

“ A strong component in the construction of identity is the degree to which either we absorb the values of the community we are in or find a community whose values we can absorb comfortably, summarised in the dictum ‘self reflects society’. ”

“ If we pass by these serious difficulties, others arise as soon as we inquire what kinds of human groups have such ‘collective consciousness.’ Does the simple fortuitously gathered crowd possess it? Or is it confined to highly organised groups such as the leading modern nations? If every psychological crowd possesses it and owes its peculiarities of behaviour to it, does it come into being at the moment the individuals have their attention attracted to a common object and begin to be stirred by a common emotion? ”

“ Let us consider now the type of nation which from our present point of view is the most interesting, the type which approximates most nearly to a solution of the problem of civilisation, to the reconciliation of individuality with collectivity, to the synthesis of individualist and collectivist ideals; that in which the rights and wills of individuals are not forcibly subordinated to those of the State by the power of a governing class, and in which the deliberative side of the national mind is well developed and effective. ”

“ Having seen the importance for national life of the idea of the nation, the diffusion of which through the minds of the people constitutes national self-consciousness, let us glance for a moment at the way other ideas may play leading rôles in national life. Such are ideas which became national ideals, that is to say, ideas of some end to be realised by the nation which became widely entertained and the objects of strong sentiments and of collective emotion and desire and which, therefore, determine collective action. ”

“ In adopting a so far unsympathetic attitude towards this doctrine, we ought to admit that, if there be any truth in it, the ‘collective consciousness’ of even the most highly organised society may be still in a rudimentary stage, and that it may continue to gain in effectiveness and organisation with the further evolution of the society in question. ”

“ No matter what the character of the idea, its collective acceptance by a people enhances for the time the homogeneity of mind among them, renders the people more intimately a unity, and serves also to mark it off more sharply from other peoples among whom other ideas prevail. ”

“ Man has two selves, they say, the individual self, and the collective self of the organized state or nation. The study of history is, then, the study of this larger, corporate, social and civil self. The importance of this idea is thus brought out more clearly in its educational significance. For to learn this civil self is to learn the substantial condition which makes possible the existence of civilized man in all his other social combinations—the family, the Church, and the manifold associated activities of civil society. ”

“ The idea of the nation is, then, a bond between its members over and above all those bonds of custom, of habit, of economic interdependence, of law and of self-interest, of sympathy, of imitation, of collective emotion and thought, which inevitably arise among a homogeneous people occupying any defined area; and it is the most powerful and essential of them all. As Fouillée put it, the essential characteristic of human society is that “it is an organism which realises itself in conceiving and in willing its own existence. ”

“ It will be maintained on a later page that we may properly speak not only of a collective will, but also of the collective mind of an organised group, for example, of the mind and will of a nation. We must, then, ask at this stage—Can we properly speak of the collective mind of an unorganised crowd? ”

“ This is the peculiar merit and efficiency of the complex motives that arise from the group spirit; they bring the egoistic self-seeking impulses into the service of society and harmonise them with the altruistic tendencies. The group spirit secures that the egoistic and the altruistic tendencies of each man’s nature, instead of being in perpetual conflict, as they must be in its absence, shall harmoniously co-operate and re-enforce one another throughout a large part of the total field of human activity. ”

“ These new acquisitions, first made by individuals, are, if true or useful, sooner or later imitated or accepted by the society of which the original-minded individual is a member, and then, becoming incorporated in the traditional stock of knowledge and morality, are thereby placed at the service of all members of that society. ”

“ Only when the general principles of group life have been applied to the understanding of particular societies, of nations and the manifold system of groups within the nation, will it be possible for Social Psychology to return upon the individual life and give of it an adequate account in all its concrete fulness. ”

“ Society like the kingdom of God is within us. Within us, within each of us, and yet greater than the thoughts and understandings of any of us. For the social thoughts and feelings and willings of each, the socialised mind of each, with the complex scheme of his relation to the social world, is no mere reproduction of the social thoughts and feelings and willings of the rest. ”

“ The totem of primitive man, the flag of a nation, a religious creed, the number system, and Darwin's theory of the descent of man—all these are collective representations. Every society and every social group has, or tends to have, its own symbols and its own language. The language and other symbolic devices by which a society carries on its collective existence are collective representations. Animals do not possess them. ”

“ The most striking result of the formation of nations and the development of civilisation has been this replacement of the progress of the individual mind by the progress of the collective national mind. And the most interesting and important problem of group psychology is—What are the conditions of the progressive development of the collective mind? ”

“ The collective concept 'mankind,' as representing, not merely a generic term created by the intellect, but a real totality ultimately uniting all its members in a social whole, preceded the concept 'human nature,' as connoting a recognition of universal human rights to which each of the members of the human race may lay claim, and of duties which he, in turn, owes to human society. ”

“ The crushing predominance of what is collective should make us realise what peculiar care and attention must be given to the delicate plant "individuality," if it is to develop.
Human beings have a capacity which is of the utmost use for purposes of collectivism and most prejudicial to individuation, and that is the capacity to imitate. ”

“ Since, then, the social aggregate has a collective mental life, which is not merely the sum of the mental lives of its units, it may be contended that a society not only enjoys a collective mental life but also has a collective mind or, as some prefer to say, a collective soul. ”

“ These psychological principles of group consciousness are, I think, well borne out inductively, by any comparative survey; that is to say, we find that, where family sentiment and the sentiment for the local group are strong, there also the wider group sentiments are strong, and good citizenship, patriotism, and ready devotion to public services of all kinds are the rule. ”

“ The development of the group spirit in general and of national self-consciousness in particular is favoured by, and indeed dependent upon, conditions similar to those which develop the self-consciousness of individuals. Here is another striking point of the analogy between the individual and the national mind. Passing over other conditions, let us notice one, the most important of all. The individual’s consciousness of self is developed chiefly by intercourse with other individuals—by imitation, by conflict, by compulsion, and by co-operation. ”

“ And we must remark here in passing that, if we accept (as I think we must) the fact that the essence of a man involves identity with others, the question what the final reality of that identity is, is still left unanswered: we should still have to ask what is the higher whole in which the individual is a function, and in which the relative wholes subsist, and to enquire whether that community is, or can be, a visible community at all. ”

“ Further, the motives supplied by the group spirit may be stronger than, and may overpower, the purely individualistic egoistic motives, just because they harmonise with, and are supported by, any altruistic tendency or tendencies comprised in the make up of the individual; which altruistic tendencies will, where the group spirit is lacking, oppose and weaken the effects of purely egoistic motives. ”

“ For how a thing works must depend on its special relations, while the principle, as we have seen, remains perfectly general. Two souls, for example, which live together, may by their identity be drawn into active community. ”

“ We are concrete, not abstract; and our vital identity one with another is concrete too. It may be and might not be. We choose whether it shall be or not. And, happily, we choose that it shall be, up to a point, far more often and more steadily than we choose that it shall not. Hence the existence of a human community in common knowledge and reason and common will—up to a point. ”

“ On a smaller scale our ancient universities and their colleges illustrate the same great type of the partly traditional partly purposive group, and the same great principles of collective life,—namely, the stability derived from the continuity of tradition, from its careful culture, and its partial embodiment in ritual and material structure.
An essential weakness of all such groups in a progressive community is that tradition tends to overshadow purpose; hence every such group tends towards the rigidity and relative futility of the purely traditional group. ”

“ Almost the whole of the religion and morality of the average civilised man is based on his acquisition of such collective representations, traditional sentiments grown up about ideas of objects, ideas which he receives ready made and sentiments which are impressed upon him by the community that has evolved them.
It is no doubt true that in the main the field of objects to which collective representations apply is larger in savage life; and these ideas are more uniform and more powerful and unquestioned, because the group is more homogeneous in its sentiments. ”

“ In the majority of instances these declared purposes really serve merely or chiefly to exert a certain natural selection of persons, to bring together persons of similar tastes as voluntary associates, to enable, in short, birds of a feather to flock together. Even some of our enduring historical institutions owe their continuance chiefly to the advantages and satisfactions that proceed from group consciousness, for example, colleges, school-houses, and political parties, especially perhaps in America. ”