Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/840

c) I have elsewhere shown in detail^[1] that the growth of the individual's sense of personality — of the "self," that is — proceeds by the organization of the psychological materials of social life. As individuals grow more competent personally, they also become more intimately organized socially. The growth of the individual "ego" involves the recognition of the social "alter," and establishes a conscious relation between them. The resulting solidarity is that of conscious intention and voluntary co-operation.

The view is now very widely accepted.^[2] It unifies the individual and society, and establishes solidarity on the higher plane of common intelligence and joint volition.

d) We may say, therefore, of this social and reflective mode of collective life, that it is not biologically determined, nor is it determined by the general psychological movement of feeling and impulse; but that it is determined by the specific psychological processes of intelligence: it requires the conscious and voluntary co-operation of individuals in a social situation.

IV

Coming now to consider these three modes of collective life comparatively, we find it possible to read them from the point of view of genetic continuity or progression : the instinctive passes into the plastic and that in turn yields, in the course of evolution, to the reflective, or social proper. In so far as all of these forms of life and conduct depend upon chemical and physical processes, these should be recognized as conditions essential to the move- ment; but such conditions do not of themselves yield any mode of group solidarity, nor do they of themselves explain any mode that actually exists.^[3]

1. Social and Ethical Interpretations.
2. See, for example, the very learned and authoritative work of Posada, Introduction to Sociology (Vol. I of Principles of Sociology).
3. If one cares to call chemical synthesis, for example, a case of solidarity, he does so only by eviscerating the term of all its social connotation. In that sense the planetary system is a "group," for it has the solidarity of gravitation I But what light do such statement's shed on social life?