194 ADAPTATION AND PROGRESS 



In the reflective or social group we have not merely instinctive or 

 unconscious imitative activity, but " an intelligent judgment 

 made with a view to consequences to be attained." Here, alone, 

 according to our author, do we find a group of activities that may 

 properly be called social. In this group of intelligent acts of 

 co-operation he notes the following characteristics: (i) They are 

 social novelties, yet on the whole progressive and constructive in 

 contrast to mob action which comes under the second mode; 

 (2) these issue in a " solidarity of intelligence, of conviction, of 

 higher sentiment, . . . [which] takes the place of the solidarity 

 of mere instinct or blind feeling " ; and (3) the result is a solidarity 

 of conscious intention and voluntary co-operation} 



These three modes are not mutually exclusive or definitely 

 demarked. The instinctive issues in the plastic and this in the 

 social yet all three are co-existent and overlap. 



Professor Baldwin's genetic approach to social philosophy and 

 the gist of his theory including the inter-relation of the individual 

 and society, the dialectic of personal growth and the all-impor- 

 tant function of imitation cannot be stated better than in his own 

 words as found in his latest work The Individual and Society, 



The individual comes into the world with the impulse of the history of the 

 race behind him. He has few perfect instincts, such as many of the animals 

 show. He is, on the contrary, plastic and educable. But his development 

 is nevertheless to be a compromise between the two tendencies which 

 throughout all his life represent individualism and collectivism. He has 

 distinctly egoistic and individuaHstic impulses, but with them he has also 

 positive predispositions to social life. These two germinal tendencies are to 

 receive their more perfect adjustment, or at least a working relation, in his 

 education and training in the habits and usages of the social group. 



It is not necessary to dwell upon the more individualistic factor in his 

 heredity; it is summed up in the word " appetite." He has a mass of ten- 

 dencies which are necessary to the preservation and advancement of his 

 vegetative and animal life. These are of necessity direct, strong, and self- 

 seeking. 



But over against these we find certain positive impulses which are of a 

 quasi-social or gregarious sort, ready soon after birth to develop the other 

 side of his nature. Bashfulness, shame, jealousy, are some of the more 

 fundamental tendencies rooted in the organic structure of the human babe, 

 which seem to reveal ancestral conditions of collective life and habit. 



1 The Individual and Society ^ pp. 36 f. (italics as in text). 



