The Group Mind Part 4

It has even been maintained with some plausibility that group self-consciousness preceded individual self-consciousness in the course of the evolution of the human mind. That again is, it seems to me, a proposition which cannot be substantiated. But it is, I think, true to say that the two kinds of self-consciousness must have been achieved by parallel processes, which constantly reacted upon one another in reciprocal promotion.

In the lives of the humblest savages the group spirit plays an immensely important part. It is the rule that a savage is born into a small closed community. Such a community generally has its own locality within which it remains, even if nomadic; and, if settled, it wholly lives in a village, widely separated in s.p.a.ce from all others. In this small community the child grows up, becoming more or less intimately acquainted with every member of it, and having practically no intercourse with any other persons. Throughout his childhood he learns its laws and traditions, becomes acutely aware of its public opinion, and finds his welfare absolutely bound up with that of the village community. He cannot leave it if he would; the only alternative open to him is to become an outcast, as which he would very soon succ.u.mb in the struggle for life. There is nothing comparable with this in our complex civilised societies. The nearest parallel to it is the case of the young child growing up in a peculiarly secluded family isolated in the depths of the country.

This restriction of the intercourse of the young savage to the members of his own small society and his absolute dependence upon it for all that makes his survival possible would in themselves suffice to develop his group consciousness in a high degree. But two other conditions, well-nigh universal in savage life, tend strongly towards the same result.

When the young savage begins to come into contact with persons other than those of his own group, he learns to know them, not as individuals, John Smith or Tom Brown, but as men of such or such a group; and he himself is known to them as a man of his group, as representing his group, his village community, tribe, or what not; and he displays usually some mark or marks of his group, either in dress or ornament or speech.

The other great condition of the development of the group spirit in primitive societies is the general recognition of communal responsibility. This no doubt is largely the result of the two conditions previously mentioned, especially of the recognition of an individual by members of other groups as merely a representative of his group, rather than as an individual, and of the fact that his deeds, or those of any one of his fellows, determine the att.i.tudes of other groups towards his group as a whole. But the influence of the principle of communal responsibility, thus established, becomes immensely strengthened by its recognition in a number of superst.i.tious and religious observances. The savage lives, generally speaking, bound hand and foot by _tabus_ and precise prescriptions of behaviour for all ordinary situations; and the breach of any one of these by any member of the community is held to bring down misfortune or punishment on the whole group; so far is this principle carried, that the breach of custom by some individual is confidently inferred from the incidence of any communal misfortune[34].

The recognition of communal responsibility is the great conservator of savage society and customary law, the very root and stem of all savage morality; it is the effective moral sanction without which the superst.i.tious and religious sanctions would be of little effect. By its means, the idea of the community is constantly obtruded on the consciousness of the individual. Through it he is constantly led, or forced, to control his individualistic impulses and to undertake action with regard to the welfare of the group rather than to his own private interest. Through it the tendency of each to identify himself and each of his fellows with the whole group is constantly fostered; because it identifies their interests.

We may then say that, just as the direct induction of emotion and impulse by sense-perception of their bodily expressions is the cement of animal societies, so group self-consciousness is the cement and harmonising principle of primitive human societies.

And the group spirit is not only highly effective in promoting the life and welfare of the group; it is also the source of peculiar satisfactions. The individual revels in his group-consciousness; hence the principle is apt to run riot in savage societies, and we find that in very many parts of the world a great variety of complex forms of a.s.sociation is maintained, beside the primary and fundamental form of a.s.sociation of the village community or nomadic band (the kinship or subsistence group), apparently for no other reason than the attainment and intensification of the satisfactions of the group spirit. Hence, among peoples so low in the scale of savagery as the Australians, we find a most complex system of grouping cutting across the subsistence grouping; hence totem clans and phratries, exogamous groups, secret societies, initiation ceremonies.

I lay stress on the satisfaction which group self-consciousness brings as a condition or cause of these complexities of savage society, because, I think, it has been unduly neglected as a socialising factor and a determinant of the forms of a.s.sociation. If we ask-What are the sources of this satisfaction?-we may find two answers. First, the consciousness of the group and of oneself as a member of it brings a sense of power and security, an a.s.surance of sympathy and co-operation, a moral and physical support without which man can hardly face the world. In a thousand situations it is a source of settled opinions and of definite guidance of conduct which obviates the most uncomfortable and difficult necessity of exerting independent judgment and making up one's own mind. And in many such situations, not only does the savage find a definite code prescribed for his guidance, but he shares the collective emotion and feels the collective impulse that carries him on to action without hesitation or timidity.

Secondly, we may, I think, go back to a very fundamental principle of instinctive life, the principle, namely, that, in gregarious animals, the satisfaction of the gregarious impulse is greater or more complete the more nearly alike are the individuals congregated together. This seems to be true of the animals, but it is true in a higher degree of man; and, in proportion as his mind becomes more specialised and refined, the more exacting is he in this respect. To the uncultivated any society is better than none; but in the cultivated cla.s.ses we become extraordinarily exacting; we find the gregarious satisfaction in our own peculiar _set_ only-a process carried furthest, perhaps, in university circles. In savage life this shows itself in practices which accentuate the likeness of members of a group and mark it off more distinctly from other groups-for example, totems, peculiarities of dress, ornaments and ceremonies; things which are closely paralleled by the clubs, blazers, colours, cries, and so forth of our undergraduate communities.

The life of the savage, then, is in general dominated by that of the group; and this domination is not effected by physical force or compulsion (save in exceptional instances) but by the group spirit which is inevitably developed in the mind of the savage child by the material circ.u.mstances of his life and by the traditions, especially the superst.i.tious and religious traditions, of his community. Such group self-consciousness is the princ.i.p.al moralising influence, and to this influence is due in the main the fact that savages conform so strictly to their accepted moral codes.

Group self-consciousness in savage communities brings then, I suggest, two great advantages which account for the spontaneous development and persistence among so many savage peoples of what, from a narrowly utilitarian point of view, might seem to be an excess of group organisation, such as the totemic systems of the Australians and of the American Indians;-namely, firstly, the moralising influences of the group spirit; secondly, the satisfactions or enjoyments immediately accruing to every partic.i.p.ant in active group life.

And these two advantages, being in some degree appreciated, lead to a deliberate cultivation of group life for the securing of them in higher measure. The cultivation of group life shows itself in the many varieties of grouping on a purely artificial basis and in the practice of rites and ceremonies, especially dances, often accompanied by song and other music. There is nothing that so intensifies group consciousness, at the cost of consciousness of individuality, as ceremonial dancing and singing; especially when the dance consists of a series of extravagant bizarre movements, executed by every member of the group in unison, the series of movements being at the same time peculiar to the particular group that practises them and symbolical of the peculiar functions or properties claimed by the group. Many savage dances have these characters in perfection; as, for example, those of the Murray islanders of Torres Straits, where, as I have witnessed, the several totemic groups-the dog-men, the pigeon-men, the shark-men, and other such groups-continue, in spite of the partial destruction by missionaries of their totemistic beliefs, to revel in night-long gatherings, at which each group in turn mimics, in fantastic dances and with solemn delight, the movements of its totem animal.

The importance of group consciousness in savage life has been recently much insisted on by some anthropologists, and indeed, in my view, overstated. Cornford[35] writes "When the totem-clan meets to hold its peculiar dance, to work itself up till it feels the pulsing of its common life through all its members, such nascent sense of individuality as a savage may have-it is always very faint-is merged and lost; his consciousness is filled with a sense of sympathetic activity. The group is now feeling and acting as one soul, with a total force much greater than any of its members could exercise in isolation. The individual is lost, 'beside himself,' in one of those states of contagious enthusiasm in which it is well known that men become capable of feats which far outrange their normal powers." And again "Over and above their individual experience, all the members of the group alike partake of what has been called the collective consciousness of the group as a whole. Unlike their private experience, this pervading consciousness is the same in all, consisting in those epidemic or infectious states of feeling above described, which, at times when the common functions are being exercised, invade the whole field of mentality, and submerge the individual areas. To this group-consciousness belong also, from the first moment of their appearance all representations which are collective, a cla.s.s in which all religious representations are included.

These likewise are diffused over the whole mentality of the group, and identical in all its members.... The collective consciousness is thus super-individual. It resides, of course, in the individuals composing the group. There is nowhere else for it to exist, but it resides in all of them together and not completely in any one of them. It is both in myself and yet not myself. It occupies a certain part of my mind and yet it stretches beyond and outside me to the limits of my group. And since I am only a small part of my group, there is much more of it outside me than inside. Its force therefore is much greater than my individual force, and the more primitive I am the greater this preponderance will be. Here, then, there exists in the world a power which is much greater than any individual's-super-individual, that is to say superhuman."

"Because this force is continuous with my own consciousness, it is, as it were, a reservoir to which I have access, and from which I can absorb superhuman power to reinforce and enhance my own. This is its positive aspect-in so far as this power is not myself and greater than myself, it is a moral and restraining force, which can and does impose upon the individual the necessity of observing the uniform behaviour of the group." This writer makes group consciousness the source of both morality and religion. "The collective consciousness is also immanent in the individual himself, forming within him that unreasoning impulse called conscience, which like a traitor within the gates, acknowledges from within the obligation to obey that other and much larger part of the collective consciousness which lies outside. Small wonder that obedience is absolute in primitive man, whose individuality is still restricted to a comparatively small field, while all the higher levels of mentality are occupied by this overpowering force[36]." The first religious idea is that of "this collective consciousness, the only moral power which can come to be felt as imposed from without." And Cornford goes yet further and makes of the group self-consciousness the source of magic as well as of religion and morality. This primary reservoir of super-individual power splits, he says, into two pools, human and non-human; the former is magic power, the latter is divine power.

On this I would comment as follows. Although Cornford is right in insisting upon the large influence of group consciousness, he is wrong, I think, in underestimating individuality. He does not go so far as some writers who suggest that group self-consciousness actually precedes individual self-consciousness, but he says of individual self-consciousness that it is but very faint in savages. I am more inclined to agree with Lotze, who in a famous pa.s.sage a.s.serted that even the crushed worm is in an obscure way aware of itself and its pain as set over against the world. Many facts of savage behaviour forbid us to accept the extreme view that denies them individual self-consciousness-individual names, secret names, private property, private rites, religious and magical, individual revenge, jealousy, running _amok_, leadership, self-a.s.sertion, pride, vanity, compet.i.tion in games of skill and in technical and artistic achievement. The flourishing of these and many other such things in primitive communities reveals clearly enough to the unbia.s.sed observer in the field the effective presence of individual self-consciousness in the savage mind.

In this connexion I may refer to two pieces of evidence bearing very directly on the question reported by Dr C. Hose and myself. Among the Sea-Dayaks or Ibans of Borneo we discovered the prevalence of the belief in the 'nyarong' or private 'spirit helper,' some spiritual or animated individual power which a fortunate individual here and there finds reason to believe is attached to him personally for his guidance and help in all difficult situations. His belief in this personal helper and the rites by aid of which he communicates with it are kept secret from his fellows; so that it was only after long and intimate acquaintance with these people that Dr Hose began to suspect the existence of this peculiarly individualistic belief[37]. In the same volumes we have described the Punans of Borneo, a people whose mode of life is in every respect extremely primitive. In this respect they are perhaps unequalled by any other existing people. Yet no one who is acquainted with these amiable folk could doubt that, although their group consciousness is highly developed, they enjoy also a well developed individual self-consciousness. How otherwise can we interpret the fact that a Punan who suffers malicious injury from a member of another tribe will nurse his vengeful feeling for an indefinite period and, after the lapse of years, will find an opportunity to bring down his enemy secretly with blow-pipe and poisoned dart?

With Mr Cornford's view of the part played by the group spirit in moralising conduct I agree. I agree also that it is the collective life or mind that develops religion and in part magic; but in my view Cornford attributes to the savage far too much reflective theorising; he represents him as formulating a theory of the collective consciousness which is really almost identical with the interesting speculation of M.

Levy Bruhl presently to be noticed, and he regards his conduct, his religious and magical practices, as guided by these theories. But that is to reverse the true order of things-to make theory precede practice; whereas in reality, especially in religion and magic, practice has everywhere preceded theory, often, as in this case, by thousands of generations[38].

It is true that the savage often behaves as though he held this theory of the collective consciousness as a field of force in which he partic.i.p.ates; that his conduct seems to require such a theory for its rational justification. But it by no means follows that he has formulated any theory at all. What the savage is conscious of is, not a collective consciousness as a mysterious superhuman power, but the group itself, the group of concrete embodied fellow men. He behaves and feels as he does, because partic.i.p.ation in the life of the group directly modifies his individual tendencies and directly evokes these feelings and actions; he does not discover, or seek, any theory by which to explain them. Still less is it true that he performs these actions because he has formulated a theory of a collective consciousness.

Mr Cornford regards the savage idea of a collective consciousness as the germ of the idea of divine power or of G.o.d. Now this is connected with the question of animism, preanimism, and dynanimism. It may be true that the notion of _mana_ is the common prime source of religious and magical ideas, but it does not follow that the idea of G.o.d is arrived at by way of a notion of collective _mana_. No doubt that would be the probable course of events, if the savage had so little sense of his individuality as Cornford supposes; but it seems to me rather that the savage's strong sense of individuality has led at an early stage to the personalisation, the individuation, of _mana_, the vaguely conceived spiritual power and influence, and that it was only by a long course of religious and philosophical speculation that men reached the conception of the Absolute or of G.o.d as a universal power of which each personal consciousness is a partial manifestation.

It is interesting to note that, if we could accept Cornford's views, we could now claim to witness the completion of one full cycle of the wheel of speculation, the last step having been made in an article in a recent number of the _Hibbert Journal_[39]; for it is there suggested that the only G.o.d or super-individual power we ought to recognise and revere is, not a collective consciousness conceived as a supra-individual unity of consciousness, but the collective mind of humanity in the sense in which I am using the term, a system of mental forces that slowly progresses towards greater harmony and integration.

M. Levy Bruhl has written an interesting, though highly speculative, account of savage mental life which he represents as differing profoundly from our own, chiefly in that it is dominated by 'collective representations[40].' His view is not unlike that put forward by Cornford.

Collective representations or ideas are rightly said to be the product of the group mind rather than of any individual mind; that is to say, they have been gradually evolved by collective mental life; and they are said to differ from our ideas in being "states more complex in which the emotional and motor elements are integral parts of the ideas." Thinking by aid of these collective representations is said to have its own laws quite distinct from the laws of logic.

These statements are no doubt correct; but both Levy Bruhl and Cornford commit the great error of a.s.suming that the mental life of civilised man is conducted by each individual in a purely rational and logical manner; they overlook the fact that we also are largely dominated by collective representations; for these collective representations are nothing but ideas of objects to which traditional sentiments, sentiments of awe, of fear, of respect, of love, of reverence, are attached. 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 h.o.m.ogeneous in its sentiments. But it is, fortunately, only a rare individual here and there among us who in considerable degree emanc.i.p.ates himself from the influence of such representations and becomes capable of confronting all objects about him in a perfectly cool, critical, logical att.i.tude-who can "peep and botanise upon his mother's grave." Only by strict intellectual discipline do we progress towards strictly logical operations in relation to real life, towards pure judgments of fact as opposed to judgments of value. For our judgments of value are rooted in our sentiments; and whatever is for us an object of a sentiment of love or hate, of attachment or aversion, can only with the greatest difficulty, if at all, be made an object of a pure judgment of fact.

And Cornford and Levy Bruhl make the same mistake in regard to 'collective representations' as in regard to the group self-consciousness-namely, they credit the savage with theories for the explanation of the beliefs implicitly involved in the 'collective representations,' for example, the theory of mystic partic.i.p.ation, which is said to replace for the savage the civilised man's theory of mechanical causation. But, when we regard any material object as holy, or sacred, or as of peculiar value, because it was given us by a departed friend, or belonged to and perhaps was once worn by a beloved person, our behaviour towards it is not determined by any theory of partic.i.p.ation; if, for example, we touch it tenderly and with reverent care, that is the direct expression of our feeling. We even behave as if we held the theory of partic.i.p.ation, to the extent of believing that the dead or distant person will suffer pain if we ill-use or neglect the object which is a.s.sociated with him in our minds, but without actually holding that belief; and still more without elaborating a theory of the nature of the process by which our action will produce such an effect.

It is only a late and highly sophisticated reflection upon behaviour of this kind which leads to theories for the justification of such behaviour. It is not true, then, that we are logical individuals, while savages are wholly prelogical in virtue of the dominance among them of the collective mental life. The truth rather is that, wherever emotion qualifies our intellectual operations, it renders them other than purely and strictly logical; and the savage or the civilised man departs more widely from the strictly logical conduct of his intellect, in proportion as his conceptions of things are absorbed without critical reflection and a.n.a.lysis and are coloured with the traditional sentiments of his community. The average savage, being more deeply immersed in his group, suffers these effects more strongly than the average civilised man. Yet the interval in this respect between the modern man of scientific culture and the average citizen of our modern states is far greater than that between the latter and the savage.

If one had to name the princ.i.p.al difference between the conditions of life of the typical savage and those of the average civilised man, one would, I think, have to point to the lack in civilised life of those conditions which so inevitably develop the group consciousness of the savage. The family circle supplies to the young child something of these conditions, but in a very imperfect degree only. At an early age this influence is much weakened by general intercourse. As the individual approaches maturity, he finds himself at liberty to cut himself off completely from all his natural setting, to transplant himself to any part of the world, and to share in the life of any civilised community.

He can earn his livelihood anywhere, and he knows nothing of communal responsibility.

Progressive weakening of the conditions that force the development of group self-consciousness has characterised the whole course of the development of civilisation, and has reached its climax in the conditions of life in our large cities.

In primitive communities the conditions of group self-consciousness are, as we have seen, fourfold; namely kinship, territorial, traditional and occupational a.s.sociation. All these are present in the highest degree in the nomadic group under the typical patriarchal system.

When kinship groups take to agriculture and become permanently settled on one spot, the kinship factor tends to be weakened, through the inclusion of alien elements; and the territorial factor becomes the most important condition. Throughout European history the territorial factor, expressing itself in the form of the village-community, remained of universal importance in this respect; the Roman Empire and the Roman Church weakened it greatly; but everywhere outside those spheres it continued to be of dominant importance until the great social revolution of the modern industrial period.

The village community maintained much of the tradition and custom that tend to develop group self-consciousness with its moralising influence.

But at the present time almost the only condition of wide and general influence that continues in times of peace to foster group self-consciousness is occupational a.s.sociation. And so we find men tending more and more to be grouped for all serious collective activities according to their occupations. From the earliest development of European industry this tendency has been strong; it produced the trading and craft guilds which played so great a part in medieval Europe; and, though the monarchical and capitalistic regimes of modern times have done all they can to repress and break up these occupational groups, and have greatly restricted their influence, they have failed to suppress them entirely. The climax of this tendency for the occupational to replace and overshadow all other forms of self-conscious grouping is present-day Syndicalism.

The natural conditions of group self-consciousness, which in primitive societies rendered its development inevitable and spontaneous in every man, have then been in the main destroyed. But man cannot stand alone; men cannot live happily as mere individuals; they desire and crave and seek membership in a group, in whose collective opinions and emotions and self-consciousness and activities they may share, with which they may identify themselves, thereby lessening the burden of individual responsibility, judgment, decision and effort.

Hence in this age the natural groupings and the involuntary developments of group consciousness are largely replaced by an enormous development of artificial voluntary groupings, over and above the natural groupings that are still only in very imperfect measure determined by the weakened force of the natural conditions, namely kinship, neighbourhood and occupation.

In part these artificial groupings are designed to reinforce the natural conditions, as, for example, village festivals. The whole population of a country such as our own is permeated by a vast and complexly interwoven, or rather tangled, skein of the bonds of voluntary a.s.sociations. Many of these are, of course, formed to undertake some definite work, to achieve some end which can only be achieved by co-operative effort. But in the majority of such cases the satisfactions yielded by group life play a very great part in leading to the formation of and in maintaining the groups, for example, groups of philanthropic workers, the makers of charity bazaars, the salvation army, the churches, the chapels, the sects. Most of such a.s.sociations that have any success and continuity of existence contain a nucleus of persons who identify themselves in the fullest possible manner with the group, make its interest their leading concern, the desire of its welfare their dominant motive, and find in its service their princ.i.p.al satisfaction and happiness.

And in very many voluntary a.s.sociations the group-motives, the desire for the satisfactions to be found in group life, are of prime importance, predominating vastly over the desire to achieve any particular end by co-operative action. Such are our countless clubs and societies formed frankly for recreation, or for mutual improvement, and for all kinds of ostensible purposes which serve merely as excuses or reasons for the existence of the club. 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 a.s.sociates, to enable, in short, birds of a feather to flock together. Even some of our enduring historical inst.i.tutions 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. Party feeling, as Sir H. Maine rightly said, is frequently a remedy for the inertia of democracy.

The savage, when he maintains a.s.sociations other than those determined by natural conditions, intensifies his group consciousness by wearing badges and totem marks, by tatooing and scarring, and by indulging in various rites and ceremonies, about which a certain secrecy and mystery is maintained. And civilised men exhibit just the same tendency and take very similar measures to intensify group consciousness. We have our club colours and ribbons and blazers, our college gowns and colours, our Oxford accent, our badges of membership, and so on. Freemasonry, with its lodges and badges and mysterious rites, seems to be the purest example on a large scale. And, when the group consciousness and the group sentiment have been acquired, we continue to cultivate it purely for its own sake, by holding annual dinners and reunions of old boys, and so forth.

It is of the greatest importance that this tendency to seek and maintain a share in group consciousness, which, as we have seen, manifests itself everywhere even under the most adverse conditions, not merely yields comfort and satisfaction to individuals, but brings about results which are in almost every way extremely advantageous for the higher development of human life in general.

We have seen that, in the well-organised group, collective deliberation, judgment, and action are raised to a higher plane of effectiveness than is possible to the average member of the group. But apart from that, the group spirit continues with us, as with the savage (though in a less effective degree) to be the great socialising agency. In the majority of cases it is the princ.i.p.al, if not the sole, factor which raises a man's conduct above the plane of pure egoism, leads him to think and care and work for others as well as for himself. Try to imagine any man wholly deprived of his group consciousness and set over against all his fellowmen as an individual unit, and you will see that you could expect but little from him in the way of self-sacrifice or public service-at most a care for his wife and children and sporadic acts of kindliness when direct appeals are made to his pity; but none of that energetic and devoted public service and faithful self-sacrificing co-operation without which the continued welfare of any human society is impossible.

The group spirit destroys the opposition and the conflict between the crudely individualistic and the primitive altruistic tendencies of our nature.

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.

For it is of the essence of the group spirit that the individual identifies himself, as we say, with the group more or less; that is to say, in technical language, his self-regarding sentiment becomes extended to the group more or less completely, so that he is moved to desire and to work for its welfare, its success, its honour and glory, by the same motives which prompt him to desire and to work for his own welfare and success and honour; as in the case of the student working for a scholarship or university prize, or the member of an exploring expedition or fighting group. 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. To ill.u.s.trate this principle, let us imagine an Englishman who, in a Congo forest, finds a white man sick or in difficulties. To succour the sick man may be to incur grave risks, and he is tempted to pa.s.s on; but the thought comes to him that in so doing he will lower the prestige of the white man in the eyes of the natives; and this idea, evoking the motives of the group spirit which unites all white men in such a land, brings victory to his sense of pity in its struggle with selfish fear.

In this way, that is by extension to the group, the egoistic impulses are trans.m.u.ted, sublimated, and deprived of their individualistic selfish character and effects and are turned to public service. Hence it is that it is generally so difficult or impossible to a.n.a.lyse the motives of any public service or social activity and to display them as either purely egoistic or altruistic; for they are, as Herbert Spencer called them, ego-altruistic. And hence it comes about that both the cynic and the idealist can make out plausible cases, when they seek to show that either egoism or altruism predominates in human life. Both are right in a partial sense.

Another noteworthy feature of the group spirit renders it extremely effective in promoting social life; namely the fact that, although the group sentiment is apt to determine an att.i.tude of rivalry, compet.i.tion, and antagonism towards similarly const.i.tuted groups, yet a man may share in the self-consciousness of more groups than one, so long as their natures and aims do not necessarily bring them into rivalry. And in our complex modern societies this principle of multiple group consciousness in each man is of extreme importance; for without it, and in the absence or comparative lack of the natural conditions of grouping other than the occupational, the whole population would become divided into occupational groups, each fighting collectively against every other for the largest possible share of the good things of life. A tendency towards this state of things is very perceptible, in spite of the correcting cross-connexions of kinship, of church and political party, and of territorial a.s.sociation.

But another principle of multiple group consciousness is, perhaps, of still greater importance, namely that it allows the formation of a hierarchy of group sentiments for a system of groups in which each larger group includes the lesser; each group being made the object of the extended self-regarding sentiment in a way which includes the sentiment for the lesser group in the sentiment for the larger group in which it is comprised. Thus the family, the village, the county, the country as a whole, form for the normal man the objects of a harmonious hierarchy of sentiments of this sort, each of which strengthens rather than weakens the others, and yields motives for action which on the whole co-operate and harmonise rather than conflict.

Such a hierarchy is seen in savage life. It often happens that a man is called on to join in the defence of some village of the tribe other than his own. In such cases he is moved not only by his tribal sentiment, but also by his sentiments for his village and family. The sentiment for the part supports the sentiment for the whole.

It is of considerable importance also that in general the development of a sentiment of attachment to one group not only does not prevent, but rather facilitates, the development of similar sentiments for other groups. And this is especially true when the groups concerned are related to one another as parts and wholes, that is, when they form a hierarchy of successively more widely inclusive groups. The sentiment for the smaller group (e.g. the family) naturally develops first in the child's mind; if only for the reason that this is the group of which he can first form a definite idea, and with the whole of which he is in immediate relations. The strong development of this first group sentiment prepares the child's mind for the development of other and wider group sentiments. For it increases his power of grasping intellectually the group of persons as a complex whole; and it strengthens by exercise those impulses or primary tendencies which must enter into the const.i.tution of any group sentiment; and, thirdly, it prevents the excessive development of the purely individualistic att.i.tude, of the habit of looking at every situation and weighing all values from the strictly individualistic and egoistic standpoint; which att.i.tude, if once it becomes habitual, must form a powerful hindrance to the development of the wider group sentiments, when the child arrives at an age to grasp the idea of the larger group.

The organisation of an army again ill.u.s.trates these principles in relatively clear and simple fashion. In our own army the regiment is the traditional self-conscious unit about which traditional sentiment and ritual have been carefully fostered, in part through realisation of their practical importance, in part because this unit is of such a size and nature as to be well suited to call out strongly the natural group tendencies of its component individuals. On the whole the military authorities, and especially Lord Haldane in the formation of the territorial army, seem to have wisely recognised the importance of the group spirit of the regiment; although during the Great War it was, under the pressure of other considerations, apparently lost sight of at certain times and places, with, I believe, deplorable consequences.

In modern warfare, and especially in the Great War, the Division has tended to become of predominant importance as the unit of organisation; and accordingly, without destroying or superseding regimental group consciousness, the sentiment for the Division has been in many instances a very strong factor in promoting the spiritual cohesion and efficiency of the army. Certain Divisions, such as the 10th and the 29th, have covered themselves with glory, so that the soldiers have learnt to feel a great pride in and a devotion to the Division.