874 SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 



the allegiance of its members? How complete is the assimilation 

 possible among them? How does time contribute to the triumph 

 of the corporate self? Upon these and upon other factors, of which 

 we have as yet not even an inkling, depends the degree of socializa- 

 tion. How thick is the darkness that shrouds this process we realize, 

 as we stand amazed before the manifestations by the Japanese of 

 a national consciousness of an unprecedented intensity. The sys- 

 tematic reliance upon voluntary immolation is something new in 

 warfare, and no doubt ere long the envious Occidental statesmen 

 and war-lords will be inciting social psychologists to discover the 

 conditions hi Japanese national life that generate a spirit of self- 

 sacrifice so unexampled. 



Let no one interpose at this point that the search for specific 

 factors, that is to say, the quest for causal laws, is vain because 

 the human will is not law-abiding. It is precisely in the mass-func- 

 tions of conscious individuals that regularities declare themselves 

 and may be formulated. In dealing- with the behavior of num- 

 bers, the psychologist is not restricted to the humble duties of 

 classification and description, but may with full right aspire to 

 the noble office of discovering causes. 



The discriminating of levels in the emergence of a group-indi- 

 viduality will reveal all possible encroachments of the collective 

 self upon the personal self, all the possible proportions between 

 corporate feeling and private interest. But can this series of levels 

 be run through by any one group? If so, we could virtually plot 

 the life-curve of a group from birth to death, foretell its develop- 

 ment from stage to stage until, after it passed its zenith, it is ab- 

 sorbed, or breaks up into other groups, or gradually disintegrates 

 and allows the erstwhile submerged personal individualities to 

 reappear. The idea is attractive, but illusory. There are probably 

 a number of lines along which groups evolve. For example, a body 

 of eccentric co-religionists, hated and persecuted, may grow more 

 and more intimate, fanatical, and exclusive, until they become 

 "a peculiar people," keeping to themselves and sinking their en- 

 tire lives in the life of the sect. Active groups, on the other hand, 

 move in the direction of organization. Those who cooperate on 

 behalf of some vital common interest may differentiate organ after 

 organ, to serve as bearers of the common will and centres of co- 

 ordination. Again, the community may move along the line of 

 control, more and more subjecting private opinion and conduct 

 to general opinion, and secreting morality and law as binding ma- 

 terial. If my surmise be correct, we are called upon to trace these 

 diverging lines of group-development, and to discriminate the 

 forces at work in each of these evolutions. 



Lest I be reproached for bounding the field of collective psych- 



