A history of social thought

by Emory S. Bogardus

In 1902, Human Nature and the Social Order by Professor Charles H. Cooley was published. This book was at once accepted as an authority on the integral relationship of the individual self and the social process. It was followed in 1909 by Social Organization, and in 1918 by Social Process. The three books constitute a chronological development of a logical system of psycho-sociologic thought.

The first volume treats of the self in its reactions to group life; the second explains the nature of primary groups, such as the family, playground, and neighborhood, of the democratic mind, and of social classes; the third analyzes the many elements in the processes by which society is characterized. The chief thesis of the three volumes is that the individual and society are aspects of the same phenomenon, and that the individual and society are twin-born and twin-developed.[XXIII-1]

An individual has no separate existence. Through the hereditary and social elements in his life he is inseparately bound up with society.[XXIII-2] He cannot be considered apart from individuals. Even the phenomena which are called individualistic “are always socialistic in the sense that they are expressive of tendencies growing out of the general life.”[XXIII-3] It is not only true that individuals make society, but equally true that society makes individuals.

Professor Cooley has given an excellent presentation of what he calls the looking-glass self. There are three distinct psychic elements in this phenomenon: (1) the imagination of one’s appearance to another person; (2) the imagined estimation of that appearance by the other person; and (3) a sense of pride or chagrin that is felt by the first person. The looking-glass self affects the daily life of all individuals. “We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on.”[XXIII-4] Even a person’s consciousness of himself is largely a direct reflection of the opinions and estimates which he believes that others hold of him.[XXIII-5]

Professor Cooley makes a lucid distinction between self consciousness, social consciousness, and public consciousness. The first is what I think of myself; the second, what I think of other people; and the third, a collective view of the self and the social consciousness of all the members of a group organized and integrated into a communicating group.[XXIII-6] Moreover, all three types of consciousness are parts of an organic whole. Even the moral life of individuals is a part of the organic unity of society. Social knowledge is the basis of morality. An upward endeavor is the essence of moral progress.

The three groups which Professor Cooley has called primary are so labeled because through them the individual gets “his earliest and completest experience of social unity.”[XXIII-7] The family, play groups, and neighborhoods remain throughout life as the experience bases from which the more complex phases of life receive their interpretation.

An unbounded faith in human nature is enjoyed by Professor Cooley. Human nature comprises those sentiments and impulses which are distinctly superior to those of the higher animals, such as sympathy, love, resentment, ambition, the feeling of right and wrong.[XXIII-8] The improvement of society, according to Professor Cooley, does not involve any essential change in human nature but rather “a larger and higher application of its familiar impulses.”[XXIII-9]

Communication is a fundamental concept in Professor Cooley’s system of social thought. Communication is “the mechanism through which human relations exist and develop.”[XXIII-10] Professor Cooley has pointed out that not only does language constitute the symbols of the mind, but that in a sense all objects and actions are mental symbols. Communication is the means whereby the mind develops a true human nature. The symbols of our social environment “supply the stimulus and framework for all our growth.” Thus the communication concept furnishes a substantial basis for understanding the psycho-sociologic phenomena which are ordinarily called suggestion and imitation.

Personality has its origin partly in heredity and partly “in the stream of communication, both of which flow from the corporate life of the race.” A study of communication shows that the individual mind is not a separate growth, but an integral development of the general mind.

The means of communication developed remarkably in the nineteenth century, chiefly in the following ways: (1) in expressiveness, that is, in the range of ideas and feelings they are competent to carry; (2) in the permanence in recording; (3) in swiftness of communication; and (4) in diffusion to all classes of people.[XXIII-12] Thus society can be organized on the bases of intelligence and of rationalized and systematized feelings rather than on authority, autocracy, and caste.