social conditions under which he normally lives with the history of their action and reaction upon him " (p. 21).
Apart from the fact that an author's recognition of the circle into which he has fallen, while it does credit to his candor, does not eliminate the contradiction, such a statement does not modify the conclusion that while we set out to learn something about the structure and growth of society through studying the individual, we arrive simply at a statement that society is already there influencing the individual who is also equally taken for granted. As a negative result on the sociological side, that is, as against those who would assert individuals independent of society or society independent of psychical individuals, the discovery of this interdependence is of value. But once more, I do not see that we know any more of the psychology of the sense of personality and of society than we did before.
More, however, is true than this. Mr. Baldwin's method in simply sending us from society to the individual, and from the individual to society, fails as matter of fact to establish even this interdependence. It leaves us where we began with society and individual, and a reciprocal influence of each on the other.
This comes out first very clearly in his statement of the relation of social 'matter' and 'process' to each other. Mr. Baldwin says (pp. 478, 479) that while imitation is the true type of social function, it fails signally as a complete explanation of society, since it gives no answer to the question of matter. "The case of imitation at its purest is just the case in which the social vanishes." But when we come to discuss the 'matter' (pp. 487, 488) we are told that this consists of thoughts which originate in the mind of the individuals of the group. "At their origin there is no reason for calling them social matter, since they are particular to the individual. They become social only when society—that is the other members of the social group, or some of them—also thinks them."[1] This occurs through imitation. How a matter which is not itself social can become socialized through a process which is not social either, I do not see. The denial of sociality to the individual as such (that is, as distinct from certain elements of content which he finally takes on) is even more explicit in the following quotation: "The child must grow up to be an individual. That is incumbent on him at all hazards, what more he may attain in the
- ↑ Notice here the unconscious postulating of the very thing to be explained, namely, society, the social group with its members, etc. Were it not for this unconscious assumption, we should have an absolutely numerical individualistic view. The thought of the individual in itself is not social; but other individuals come to think in the same way and then there is society!
