J.— PSYCHOLOGY 187 



depicts is the gradual orientation of individuals to each other — in other 

 words, their learning ways of living with each other. When the social 

 environment is changed a new set of behaviour tendencies has to be 

 established, until in the final setting an environment was found to which 

 the girls could not react successfully. But they had done so at an earlier 

 stage, and we must conclude that in the intervening period some change 

 had occurred in the other girls. The earlier objective conditions were 

 repeated, but there was no unity. Can we avoid the conclusion that the 

 unity had existed in the minds of the members, and those minds had 

 changed to such an extent that the old reactions had become impossible ? 

 An objectively observable group pattern is a product of the skill-characters, 

 or behaviour schemata, of the constituent members. So a problem of 

 group psychology reduces itself to one of individual psychology. 



Social patterns are largely manifested in institutions and current ideas, 

 and often in combinations of the two. The English Common Law 

 provides an excellent example of the last. This remarkable invention 

 of our race has been maliciously described as consisting of a vast body of 

 decisions and pronouncements, all readily deducible from a very few 

 simple and universally accepted principles, though no one knows what 

 they are. I cannot say whether this description is true, but there is no 

 psychological difficulty in it. Common Law principles are the ways of 

 living together developed by English people, and like all skills (for skills 

 they are) they were developed in pursuit of ends which did not include 

 the purpose of inspection. Pursuing a purpose and thinking about the 

 pursuit are quite different processes. So for a long time, possibly always, 

 they would not be amenable to analysis or description. To describe 

 necessitates the development of a new skill directed to the material 

 provided by the prior one. This is in essence Bartlett's illuminating 

 distinction between schemata as the instruments of reaction and schemata 

 as objects to which reaction is directed. The Common Law is the ex- 

 pression of the directive tendencies of citizens bent on living together 

 along determinate lines, though they may have never reflected upon them. 

 Probably the majority of Englishmen have never heard of the Common 

 Law, though it governs their lives in so fundamental a manner. It is 

 quite usual to find that people who evince a great determinateness of 

 behaviour are unaware of the principles which govern them. Why 

 should they pause in the process of achieving their ends, if all is going 

 well, to ' turn round upon the schemata ' which are serving them ? 



There is a danger in any form of expression which suggests an oppo- 

 sition between Social Psychology and Individual Psychology. The field 

 marked out by the former term is one proper for the specialist, but it 

 remains the study of individuals acting socially. It would avoid the risk 

 of over-abstraction, with possibly something of mysticism arising from it, 

 if we were satisfied to speak of the psychology of social behaviour. At 

 bottom it is the study of the development and nature of schemata employed 

 in orientation to other behaving organisms. They, too, act from schemata, 

 and if they are to live together they must effect a considerable degree of 

 uniformity. So the social pressure upon individuals is intensified by the 

 establishment of institutions which are the outward patterns resulting 

 from the psychological characteristics of the members of the group, and 

 jn return a potent means of shaping the next generation. Here the vital 



