J.— PSYCHOLOGY 185 



organisation of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always 

 be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organic response. . . . 

 There is not the slightest reason, however, to suppose that each set of 

 incoming impulses, each new group of experiences persists as an isolated 

 member of some passive patchwork. They have to be regarded as con- 

 stituents of living momentary settings belonging to the organism, or to 

 whatever parts of the organism are concerned in making a response of 

 a given kind, and not as a number of individual events somehow strung 

 together and stored within the organism ' (2). This seems to me an ex- 

 cellent description of the growth of a psychological organism, emphasising 

 that at all moments reactions are dependent upon the integrated effects 

 of experience, which determine the character of the agent when confronted 

 with any emergency. I see this living, momentary setting of the organism 

 as the end-product of its history, and in so far as there is continuity 

 in the settings they form a skill. 



In once more advancing the views expressed in this address, maintaining 

 the two points, first, that racial and individual experience results in 

 schematic or outline preparation for future activity, thereby determining 

 the pattern of the experiencing (for example, of cognising) and the pattern 

 experienced (for example, the perceptual object cognised), and secondly, 

 that these preparations or schemata are best regarded as modifications of 

 the psychological organism, I do not pretend that I am stating anything 

 very original, or greatly advancing science. But I am concerned to 

 maintain that this line of thought is important because so unifying. In 

 my earlier paper I applied it to thinking, and only hinted that the principle 

 might be extended to other activities. Five years later, fortified by the 

 parallel advance of Prof. Bartlett in another part of the field, I am bold 

 enough to claim that our conception will cover all parts of animal and 

 human psychology, pulling together into a system many heterogeneous 

 results. The second part of my address will be an attempt to apply it 

 in a department which I have not yet mentioned. 



The most proper field for our study in Blackpool is obviously Social 

 Psychology, and the Sectional Programme shows that the Organising 

 Committee have recognised this. Can we apply the outcome of the pre- 

 vious discussion here ? If not, my claims were invalid. So I was forced 

 to undertake a new enterprise, passing from perception and thinking to 

 a consideration of social behaviour. The term ' social pattern ' is in 

 common use, and perhaps is employed with dangerous facility. In the 

 first place it appears to mean an observable system of relationships between 

 individuals and their activities, constituting a unity of a higher order of 

 complexity than that of any one of its members. Secondly, the social 

 group is a part of the environment of each of its members and of persons 

 who make contact with it from outside. It is a system of facts to which 

 individuals have to adapt their behaviour. In this it is parallel to the 

 inanimate environment, and since the principles of behaviour will re- 

 semble those already encountered the matter may be left for a moment 

 at that level. Thirdly, social groupings present a puzzling combination 

 of determinacy and flux. To live in society is rather like rowing in rough 

 water. Within a quite characteristic pattern of the whole there is an 

 inconvenient mobility of the elements, which requires continual varia- 



