146 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



In the writings of Durkheim is brought out clearly the concept 

 of social consciousness with some kind of objective reality, — 

 whether phenomenal or ontological is not discussed. Granted 

 that there is some kind of real objective unity that is applicable 

 to human beings in association whether phenomenal or ontologi- 

 cal, static or dynamic, whether predominatingly mediated by 

 thought, feeling, will, or a combination of these, we have next to 

 enquire if there is anything in this unity corresponding to the 

 self-consciousness characteristic of highly-developed man. This 

 seems to be the bone of contention among social psychologists 

 today, together with that other related and perplexing problem 

 as to the relation between the individual mind and the social 

 mind. Discussion of the development of thought along this line 

 would carry us through the whole range of recent socio-psychical 

 literature, but we may call attention in passing to James* doc- 

 trine of selves and self-consciousness as of special importance. 

 According to him we have a " hierarchy of the mes.^^ " A toler- 

 ably unanimous opinion," he says, " ranges the different selves of 

 which a man may be ' seized and possessed,' and the consequent 

 different orders of his self-regard in a hierarchical scale, with the 

 bodily me at the bottom, the spiritual me at the top, and the 

 extra-corporeal material selves and the various social selves 

 between." * 



This concept, making the approach to the discussion of social 

 self-consciousness from the point of view of biology and individual 

 psychology as do SchafSe, Fouillee, Ratzenhofer, McDougall, 

 Giddings and most of the other sociologists and social psycholo- 

 gists, is repudiated by Dewey, Cooley,^ Boodin^ and a few others 

 who make the approach from the point of view of spirituaHstic 

 monism and by Gmnplowicz from the point of view of positivistic- 

 social-pluraKsm, all of whom arrive at what might legitimately be 

 termed social realism. According to them individual conscious- 

 ness and self-consciousness are differentiations of original group 

 consciousness. A clarifying discussion of the whole subject is the 



^ Briefer Course, p. 190. Cf. McDougall, Social Psychology, chs. VII and VIII. 

 * Social Organization, ch. I; Human Nature and the Social Order, ch. I. 

 » Op. cit. 



