220 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
an end that exists for both alike. Diversity of objective content contributes to one purposed result.
A fourth view is that any consciousness is social in so far as it is socially conditioned. In so far as individual consciousness is determined by the fact that the individual is a social individual, it is social consciousness. Social consciousness is consciousness with reference to a social situation. In this sense all individual consciousness is social.
Nearly all writers of this school specifically reject the first conception the social over-soul and still they do not wholly escape from it. There is from their standpoint one thing strongly in its favor. It does secure unity. If we admit the existence of a conscious over-soul whose psychic processes include all social phenomena, we have society a psychic unity without any further argument. While nearly all sociologists disclaim this view, many of the psychological sociologists in their search for a unity are constantly forced back to it. In one sentence they will deny it, thereby losing unity for society; in the next they will assert unity for the social process by implying an over-soul.
Le Bon in describing the mental phenomena of people in a crowd, or mob, says :
The sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction, and their conscious personality vanishes. A collective mind is formed, doubtless transitory, but presenting very clearly defined
characteristics It [the crowd] forms a single being and is subject to
the law of the mental unity of crowds.*
Here we have the mental unity of a social group based upon the sentiments and ideas of all the persons taking one and the same direction, and the vanishing of individual conscious per- sonality. If this is taken merely as a rough figurative way of describing what takes place in a mob, there can be no objection to it. As a scientific description of what really occurs it is faulty in several respects. That the sentiments and ideas of all the persons in the gathering take one and the same direction is true only in part. Doubtless there is a general similarity of sentiments and ideas, but if it were possible to get an accurate description of
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind, p. 26.
