Gumplowicz, unlike Spencer, begins with groups, not with individuals. Human aggregates are the true social elements, and they are sufficiently simple and uniform in their behavior to allow social laws to be formulated. In its interaction with other groups each group is a perfect unit. It acts solely in its own interest and knows no standard of conduct but success. However the individual may blunder, the collectivity never errs in seizing and applying the right means to gain its end.
The individual is to be understood through his social group, instead of the group through its component individuals. The great error of individualistic psychology is the assumption that man thinks. The truth is, it is not the man that thinks, but the community. The source of his thoughts is the social medium in which he lives, the social atmosphere which he has breathed from childhood. The individual unconsciously derives his qualities from his group, and the qualities of his group are determined by the nature of its dominant interests, its special life-conditions, and its situation with respect to other groups.
It is clear that this theory of the relation between the aggregate and its units is not intended to apply to voluntary or ephemeral associations, but only to those great permanent groups—horde, tribe, community, social class—into which we are born and from which we rarely escape.
In his monograph on Social Differentiation Simmel gives reasons why the character of a group-unit does not correspond either intellectually or morally to that of its average member, but, as social development proceeds, falls more and more below it. He points out that the differentiation and specialization that take place as the social mass increases make difficult the recovery of a common plane of thinking and feeling when some occasion arises for joint action. This plane, if it does actually get established, is sure to be low, because those who are mentally beneath this plane cannot possibly rise to it, whereas those who are above it in intelligence or ideals can stoop and re-enter it. In a differ-
