Human group

“ The Evolutionary Processes of Society.—Social activity is primarily group activity. Consequently the kind and nature of the group, the methods which brought its members together, its organization and purpose, indicate the type of civilization and the possibility of achievement. As group activity means mutual aid of members, and involves processes of co-operation in achievement, the type of society is symbolic of the status of progress. ”

“ Human groups of other kinds owe their existence in various proportions to these two conditions; such groups, for example, as are constituted by the members of a church, of a university or a school, of a profession or a township. ”

“ The social group as a group will be more interesting, colorful, and various when every experimentation and variety of life are encouraged and promoted. And the individuals in such a society will be personalities, not the mere mechanisms of a regimented routine. ”

“ This holds true of any social aggregate, great or small; of a family, a city, a nation, a race; of mankind as a whole: no matter how extensive, complex, or enduring a group may be, no good reason can be given for regarding it as essentially different in this respect from the smallest, simplest, or most transient. ”

“ But, as I have pointed out in the Introduction to my Social Psychology, those who approached these problems were generally stimulated to do so by their interest in questions of right and wrong, in questions of norms and standards of conduct, the urgency of which demanded immediate answers for the practical guidance of human life in all its spheres of activity, for the shaping of laws, institutions, governments, and associations of every kind ”

“ The function of the group is to establish social order of its members, protect them from external foes, as well as internal maladies, and to bring into existence a new force by which greater achievement is possible than when individuals are working separately. ”

“ They are one in virtue of certain broad human characteristics; they are divided by certain qualities characteristic of their special groups. Each society is marked by the possession of certain psychological characteristics—a number of specific beliefs and emotional developments—without which its distinctive group character disappears. ”

“ We may define it as a group of human beings associated in a common life, depending upon and cooperating with each other. This definition will apply, to be sure, to lesser groups within a tribe or state ”

“ What is the value, of present-day knowledge if not to stimulate the conscious group, through the individual perhaps, but the group finally, to better use of its powers and opportunities toward a higher form of social life? ”

“ Constant Factors in Social Phenomena.—Our study of social life has made it plain that it is a complex affair, but it has been possible to classify society in certain groups, to follow the gradual extension of relations from small groups to large, and to take note of the numerous activities and interests that enter into contemporary group life. ”

“ For this we need, as I must continually repeat, the study of group psychology. “Life,” “man,” “society,” are coming to have little meaning for us: it is your life and my life with which we are concerned, not “man” but the men we see around us, not “society” but the many societies in which we pass our lives. ”

“ The point I wish particularly to bring out in this chapter is that the normal self is moulded in primary groups to be a social [Pg 36] self whose ambitions are formed by the common thought of the group. ”

“ Here we have the basis for a true selective process. A study that indicates those characteristics of a group that favor victory and survival amid intergroup conflicts, marks the path of necessary social development. ”

“ If I try to discover or to invent some new experience which I may call the true nature of the group, I am simply adding to it in thought another experience which takes its place among those the group already contains. ”

“ There was a time when the division of mankind into two classes, a small one of masters and a numerous one of slaves, appeared, even to the most cultivated minds, to be a natural, and the only natural, condition of the human race. ”

“ The essential conditions of collective mental action are, then, a common object of mental activity, a common mode of feeling in regard to it, and some degree of reciprocal influence between the members of the group. ”

“ Though these divisions give somewhat roughly general group types, humanity shows infinite variety of expression, and individuals may change from time to time according to influence and environment. Each may be developed through her special abilities. ”

“ A second very important condition, essential to any highly developed form of collective life, is that in the minds of the mass of the members of the group there shall be formed some adequate idea of the group, of its nature, composition, functions, and capacities, and of the relations of the individuals to the group. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How much is left undone, for the sake of society! But let us pause a moment, and ask what society is. Is it a community of tried and trusted friends, united together by the ties of perfect love? Listen to the remarks of those, even of your own family, who return from the evening party, or the morning call. Is it a community of beings with whom mind is all in all, and intellectual improvement the purpose for which they meet? Observe the preparations that are made—the dress, the furniture, the food, the expense that is lavished upon these. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Laws and opinions of particular groups, group morality, individual morality, even inertia, and a long list of more subtle and often capricious reactions are channels through which social purpose finds expression. ”

“ But here we have it all again, not in parts, but as a comprehensive whole, in a novel which asks us to consider every class in the social ladder in modern England, which questions the whole organisation of our society, which raises central questions about birth, marriage, religion, death, and survival, and presents the whole as a personal and human affair. ”

“ Over against each of these social groups and classes there is already, in most instances, a body of experts, whose lives are devoted to the study and administration of social organization in relation to this class or group. ”

“ It is moreover a name well contrived for the purposes of the class; because it is calculated to keep the real character of the associations out of sight.
6. The aggregate, included under the comprehensive term Mankind, is in so many ways associated with our pains and pleasures, that the interest of each individual appears, in some degree, bound up in the interest of the race. Any act of ours, then, by which the interest of the race can be promoted, is associated in our minds with our own interest; and becomes a motive. ”

“ Classification of social problems.—Every society and every social group, capable of consistent action, may be regarded as an organization of the wishes of its members. This means that society rests on, and embodies, the appetites and natural desires of the individual man ”

“ If, then, we are to accomplish anything by taking advantage of the very peculiar crowd or group psychology—owing to which a collected body of men may feel as a group and act as a group, differently from the way in which any one of its components would feel or act—we must see that our group is properly selected and constituted. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ Here, too, in this many-bodied and many-souled community, as well as in the individual man's life, function determines structure. But function has there become self-conscious and world-conscious, aware of the many bodies and the many souls, aware of their needs and dangers, aware of their giving and their gaining. Men have societies within the community such as on the whole their conscious desires and purposes, their attitude towards their fellows, their sense of responsibility and obligations, their aims and ideals, demand. We have indeed the societies we deserve. ”

“ But indeed it is impossible to isolate complete communities of men, or to trace any but rude general resemblances between group and group. These alleged units have as much individuality as pieces of cloud ”

“ These groups are the main-drainage-system of modern life; they are the ordinary channels through which the business of the world has to pass, and its organised thought be directed. Take any one of these groups, and consider its differential character, its mode of apperception, its êthos, and you find it something deformed, twisted, strained in one direction, like a tree by the sea-shore. But take a few score of them, and imagine their qualities fused together, and the result would accord with the ideals of common humanity—ideals vaguely conceived, perhaps, but generous. ”

“ It is, rather, one in which the self-consciousness and initiative and volition of individuals, personality in short, is developed to the highest degree, and in which the minds and wills of the members work harmoniously together under the guidance and pressure of the idea of the nation, rendered in the highest degree explicit and full and accurate. ”

“ At the same time, the relations of the individual to the group, relations which the general loosening of social ties was rendering sharply distinct, became the great questions to which philosophy addressed itself. ”

“ This group morality, with which the true history of the unfolding moral consciousness of the race begins, we shall meet with as a sort of survival in every stage of the moral progress of humanity from the lowest to the highest level of culture. ”

“ These persons are united by community of interest into a group, or class, or interest, and, when interests come to be adjusted, the interests of this group will undoubtedly be limited by those of other groups. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The normal social unit is a group of families predominantly of the same race, territorially compact, of substantially the same ideals as expressed in religion and the philosophy of life, and sufficiently numerous to provide from within itself the major part of those things which are necessary to physical, intellectual and spiritual well-being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In so far as they are successful in this, their representatives are able men and men to whose minds the social consciousness, the consciousness of the whole people, of its needs and tendencies and aspirations, is more fully and clearly present than to the average mind. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have now seen, gentlemen, two periods of the world, each of which is dominated by the ruling idea of a particular class of the community which impresses its own principle on all the social arrangements of its time. ”

“ Individualist doctrines celebrate the ‘I’, collective movements the ‘we’. Devoid of the fullness of self-assertion or the positive connotations of friendship, community and political solidarity, ‘you’ can tend to get overlooked. ”

“ It is indeed by going back to these simpler forms of social life and seeking means of coordinating the group in fundamental activities that the greatest headway will be made in the solution of wider social problems. ”

“ In a sentence, they were honorable and exemplary members of that great mass of humanity which has the custody of the present and the future of the race—those who live by the sweat of their own brows or their own brains, and train their children to do likewise, those who maintain the true ideals of happiness and progress, those from whom spring all the workers and all the leaders of thought and action. ”

“ The types of people, their kinds and styles of work, their whole environment, all become represented in the mind of the community, and these react upon the individuals, their activities, their place itself. ”

“ The more of true human life each member of a community receives, or the more each one suffers himself to be governed by the highest good and truth, the more orderly, industrious, united, healthy, and happy is that community. The more truly human does it become in its form, organization, and activities. ”

“ The tendency of this social life is to differentiate into more and more groups, positive in character, which renders our social existence complex and difficult to analyze. The social groups overlap one another, and are interdependent in all their relations. ”