The Basis of Social Relations: A Study in Ethnic Psychology

by Daniel G. Brinton

The sense or self-recognition of individual life as apart from group life varies widely. In the totemic bonds of savage life, in the guilds of higher grades, in the “society centres” of modern life, the individual consciously and willingly renounces nearly the whole of himself in favour of the circle which he enters.

When he attempts the opposite extreme, and prides himself on his insulation, his egotism, and antagonism to others, he usually deceives himself. No matter how selfishly he pursues his aims, it is ever in obedience to the influence of the group. From it he takes his thoughts and the language in which to express them, his economic values are those recognised by it, its ideals are his, he will strive in vain to escape the iron bands of the social order about him. Unknown to himself, he abides the slave of others.

The group has another advantage over him which he can in no wise diminish or avoid. He will die, but it will live. He, with his petty strivings and personal ambitions, will soon sink into the dateless night, but the social order of which he was a part will survive in other and younger generations, moving forward to its destiny under compulsive forces of which he has not even an inkling, crushing his blind opposition under resistless wheels.

Not by antagonism to the group does the individual gain his highest personal aims, his fullest reality as an individual, but by devoting himself to the best interests of the group, learning what they really are, and furthering them by a study of the means adapted to their growth and fruition. This is “altruism,” the living for others, in its highest sense, the aim not primarily the individual, but the group and its welfare.

This is the more needful because the group, as a psychical unit, is never creative. It is receptive, active, executive, but for its creative inspirations it depends upon the individual. What is called “originality,” the stimuli and momenta of development, arise primarily from the single mind.

But it is equally true that the work of the group must precede the work of the individual, and prepare for it, if it is to be successful. Otherwise, the seed will be sown on barren ground.

In every historic event the group is the only active agent; through it the individual can bring to bear his limited powers over an indefinitely vast area, and with indefinitely multiplied force. History is a record of the sentiments and actions of groups; yet so little has this been understood, so obscured has this been by the potency of personality, that until recently it has been little more than an account of individuals. Without the aid of the group, what would have become of the most famous heroes of the past?

I would sum up these reflections on the relations of the individual and the group by the practical deduction that to understand the individual we must study him in relation to the group, and to understand the group we must study it, primarily in the individuals of which it is composed, in both their physical and mental life; and secondly, in those principles and processes which it, as an entirely psychical product, presents peculiar to itself.

The group is not a “natural” product in the objective sense in which that word is employed in the term “natural sciences.” It is a purely mental creation, though none the less real. It must be examined and investigated by other methods, therefore, than those customary in the biologic sciences.

Instead of studying external phenomena for their own sake, we must regard all such as valuable only as they indicate psychic changes, and as they can be translated into mental correlates. The study is, therefore, from within, and qualitative rather than quantitative, in this respect contrasting with experimental psychology and also with history.