PROLEGOMENA TO SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 815
is carried on by cooperation;" and the proposition would be equally true if the limiting adjective were dropped. On account of the narrowed meaning of the word in popular usage, however, it would be better, in our estimation, to borrow a term like "coordination" from a science which in its essentials is one with social psychology, and to retain the word " cooperation " for those cases to which it manifestly applies : namely, the cases of social coordination which have come more or less fully into conscious- ness.
A social coordination which has once been successfully established, as in the case of the coordination in the individual organism, tends to persist, or becomes a social habit. Social habits are the basis of all activities of group-life. Every new social coordination, every new adaptation in the group-life, is made upon the basis of already existing social habits. Without the fixity or definiteness which social habit gives to the forms of group-activities there could be no group-life, as unity and stability in the group would be lacking. On the other hand, too great fixity of social habit gives rise to many of the abnormal phenomena of societary life. As in the case of the individual, if the social habit does not retain a certain amount of flexibility, enabling the group to adapt its activities to a constantly changing environ- ment, then it becomes of disadvantage to the group in its life- struggle, causing pathologic conditions, and even the disintegra- tion and destruction of the group. Social habits pass insensibly into customs and institutions. The term "custom" is, indeed, almost synonymous with the term "social habit." But customs are usually thought of as peculiar to the group, that is, as the habits which distinguish one group from another. Thus an almost universally prevalent social habit, like the storing up of food products for future consumption, is rarely spoken of as a custom. Institutions are social habits which have received a peculiar social sanction and which have been organized more or less fully into the structure of the group. Forms of marriage, property, government, religion, and the like become such. From the point of view of social psychology, at least, an institution is not an individual invention. It is rather an organized mode of
