the spoil of war is an idea which is bound on the forehead of the victor till it cramps his growth, a theory which he cherishes in his bosom until it grows so large and so near that it afflicts its possessor with a sort of disease of responsibility for its preservation, it may easily overshadow the very people for whose cause the warrior issued forth.

We have not yet apprehended what the scientists call "the doctrine of the unspecialized," what the religious man calls "the counsel of imperfection," and the wise educator calls "the wisdom of the little child." If successful struggle ends in survival, in blatant and tangible success, and, as it is popularly supposed to do, in a certain hardness of heart, with an invincible desire to cling fast to the booty which has been thus hardly acquired, government will also have to reckon with the many who have been beaten in this struggle, with the effect upon them of the contest and the defeat; for, after all, they will always represent the majority of citizens, and it is with its large majority that self-government must eventually deal, whatever else other governments may determine for themselves.

Professor Weaver, of Columbia, has lately pointed out that "the cities have traditionally been the cradles of liberty, as they are today the centers of radicalism," and that it is natural that brute selfishness should first be curbed and social feeling created at the point of the greatest congestion. If we once admit the human dynamic character of progress, then we must look to the cities as the focal points of that progress; and it is not without significance that the most vigorous effort at governmental reform, as well as the most generous experiments in ministering to social needs, have come from the largest cities. Are we beginning to see the first timid, forward reach of one of those instinctive movements which carry forward the goodness of the race?

If we could trust democratic government as over against and distinct from the older types-from those which repress, rather than release, the power of the people—then we should begin to know what democracy really is, and our municipal administration would at last be free to attain Aristotle's ideal of a city, "where men live a common life for a noble end." JANE ADDAMS.

HULL HOUSE, CHICAGO.

THE PROVINCE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY1

The conception of a social mind set forth in detail by Lazarus and Steinthal in the first issue of the Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie forty-four years ago, and the conception of society as an organism elaborated in the same year by Herbert Spencer in his essay on The Social Organism, have given rise to much discussion as to whether there is a social mind or a social organism in any other than a figurative sense. Some of this discussion has been fantastic and futile, and there is at present apparently a general tendency to agree that the social organism is nothing more than a useful analogy, and that there is no social mind and no social psychology apart from individual mind and individual psychology. At the same time, the development of psychology and sociology during the past twenty years has made it plain that the individual mind cannot be understood apart from the social environment, and that a society cannot be understood apart from the operation of individual mind; and there has grown up, or there is growing up, a social psychology whose study is the individual mental processes in so far as they are conditioned by society, and the social processes in so far as they are conditioned by states of consciousFrom this standpoint social psychology may make either the individual or society the object of attention at a given moment. Ethnology, history, and the phenomena of collective life in general are its subject-matter when they are viewed from the psychological standpoint—the standpoint of attention, interest, habit, cognition, emotion, will, etc.—and the individual becomes its subject-matter when we examine the effect on his consciousness of conditions of consciousness as found in other individuals or in society at large. Otherwise stated, the province of social psychology is the examination of the interaction of individual consciousness and society, and the effect of the interaction on individual consciousness on the one hand and on society on the

ness.

1 An address delivered at the International Congress of Arts and Science, Department of Sociology, September, 1904.

other. If, instead of claiming for social psychology a separate class of phenomena, we accept this view, and regard it as an extension of individual psychology to the phenomena of collective life, we have immediately a set of important problems not included in the programs of other sciences.

Prominent among the problems which must engage the attention of the social psychologist is the genesis of states of consciousness in the social group and their modifying influence on the habits of the group. In group as in individual life the object of an elaborate structural organization is the control of the environment, and this is secured through the medium of attention. Through attention certain habits are set up answering to the needs of individual and group-life. When the habit is running smoothly, or as long as it is adequate, the attention is relaxed; but when new conditions and emergencies arise, the attention and the emotions are called into play, the old habit is broken up, and a new one is formed which provides for the disturbing condition. In the reaccommodation there is a modification and an enlargement of consciousness. Since it is through crisis or shock that the attention is aroused and explores the situation with a view to reconstructing modes of activity, the crisis has an important relation to the development of the individual or of society.

A study of society on the psychological side involves, therefore, an examination of the crises or incidents in group-life which interrupt the flow of habit and give rise to changed conditions of consciousness and practice. Prominent among the crises of this nature are famine, pestilence, defeat in battle, floods, and drought, and in general sudden and catastrophic occurrences which are new or not adequately provided against; and in the process of gaining control again after the disturbance are seen invention, co-operation, sympathy, association in larger numbers and on a different basis, resort to special individuals who have or claim to have special power in emergencies either as leaders or as medicine men. Another set of incidents, regularly recurrent and anticipated indeed, but of a nature calling for recurrent attention, are birth, puberty, and death. The custom, ceremonial, and myth growing up about these incidents in group-life, and the degree to which

special functionaries have become associated with them, indicate that they have had a powerful influence on the attentive processes and the mental life of the group. Shadows, dreams, swooning, intoxication, and epilepsy represent another class of phenomena arresting the attention and causing reflection and readjustment, together with the development of ideas of causation and of a special class of functionaries who act as interpreters of the phenomena. Still another set of crises arises in connection with the conflict of interest between individuals, and between the individual and group-habits. Theft, assault, magical practice, and any and all invasion of the rights of others are the occasion of the formulation of legal and moral practice, and of the emergence of a class of persons specially skilled in administering the practice.

The mediation of crises of this nature leads, on the one hand, to the development of morality, religion, custom, myth, invention, art, and, on the other hand, to medicine man, priest, lawgiver, judge, physician, artist, philosopher, teacher, and investigator. It leads also to the formation of special classes and castes, to the concentration of knowledge, wealth, power, and technique in the hands of particular classes and persons, and to the use of special opportunity on the part of the few to manipulate and exploit the many. Viewed merely as incidents, both the crises and the practices growing up about them are a part of the history of institutions, but when viewed from the standpoint of attention and habit, they are subject-matter of social psychology.

It is in relation also to crisis, or the disturbance of habit, that invention, imitation, and suggestion― factors of the greatest importance in social evolution-may be studied to the best advantage. The crisis discloses the inadequacy of the habit, the invention is the mental side of the readjustment, imitation is the mode of reaction to the new condition or copy provided through invention, and suggestion is the means by which the copies are disseminated. Language is so rich a mine for the social psychologist, and so important in the study of suggestion and imitation, because it is not only a register of the consciousness of the race, but is, more than any other medium, the means by which suggestion is operative, and by which the race-copies are handed

on from generation to generation. For this reason all culture and all the history of culture may be said to be implicit in language. Another incident of profound importance to the state of consciousness of the group is the emergence of a great personality. The man of genius is a biological freak, whose appearance cannot be anticipated or predetermined. All that we can say is that a certain number of individuals characterized by unusual artistic or inventive faculty, great courage, will, and capacity for organization, or unusual suggestibility in respect to religious and philosophical questions, do occasionally appear in every group, and that they powerfully influence the life-direction and the conscious-. ness of their groups. Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, Christ, Aristotle, Peter the Great, Newton, Darwin, Shakespeare, have left ineffaceable impressions on the national life, and on the mental states of individuals as well. The fact that a school of thinkers at the present day grows up about a philosopher, or that a religious teacher may gather about him a group of fanatically faithful adherents, is a repetition of a principle of imitation which, apparently, has been in force since the beginning of associated life, and which in the history of all groups has tended to direct the thought and activity of the multitude into fixed channels. On the principle of Columbus' egg, one leads off and the others follow. The central Australian oknirabata is as influential in his smaller group as Aristotle in a larger, until the advent of the white man breaks up his influence. The Chinese are today carrying out principles of conduct inculcated by Confucius and Mencius, no crisis of sufficient importance having intervened to break up the old habits and establish new ones. The manner in which copies for belief and practice are set by the medicine man, the priest, the. political leader, the thinker, the agitator, the artist, and, in general, by the uncommon personality, as well as the more spontaneous manifestations of suggestion and hypnotism in public opinion and mob action, are to be studied from the standpoint both of individual and of group-consciousness.

Still another incident of importance to the consciousness of a group is contact with outsiders. The Japanese are a most instructive example of the effect of foreign copies on a people sufficiently