III
THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE IDEA
(CONTINUED)
WHAT then is the essence of the group process by which are evolved the collective thought and the collective will? It is an acting and reacting, a single and identical process which brings out differences and integrates them into a unity. The complex reciprocal action, the intricate interweavings of the members of the group, is the social process.
We see now that the process of the many becoming one is not a metaphysical or mystical idea; psychological analysis shows us how we can at the same moment be the self and the other, it shows how we can be forever apart and forever united. It is by the group process that the transfiguration of the external into the spiritual takes place, that is, that what seems a series becomes a whole. The essence of society is difference, related difference. “Give me your difference” is the cry of society to-day to every man.[[10]]
But the older sociology made the social mind the consciousness of likeness. This likeness was accounted for by two theories chiefly: the imitation theory and the like-response-to-like-stimuli theory. It is necessary to consider these briefly, for they have been gnawing at the roots of all our political life.
To say that the social process is that merely of the spread of similarities is to ignore the real nature of the collective thought, the collective will. Individual ideas do not become social ideas when communicated. The difference between them is one of kind. A collective thought is one evolved by a collective process. The essential feature of a common thought is not that it is held in common but that it has been produced in common.
Likewise if every member of a group has the same thought, that is not a group idea: when all respond simultaneously to the same stimulus, it cannot be assumed that this is in obedience to a collective will. When all the men in a street run round the corner to see a procession, it is not because they are moved by a collective thought.
Imitation indeed has a place in the collective life, it is one of the various means of coadaptation between men, but it is only a part and a part which has been fatally overemphasized.[[11]] It is one of the fruits of particularism. “Imitation” has been made the bridge to span the gap between the individual and society, but we see now that there is no gap, therefore no bridge is necessary.
The core of the social process is not likeness, but the harmonizing of difference through interpenetration.[[12]] But to be more accurate, similarity and difference can not be opposed in this external way—they have a vital connection. Similarities and differences make up the differentiated reactions of the group; that is what constitutes their importance, not their likeness or unlikeness as such. I react to a stimulus: that reaction may represent a likeness or an unlikeness. Society is the unity of these differentiated reactions. In other words the process is not that merely of accepting or rejecting, it is bound up in the interknitting. In that continuous coördinating which constitutes the social process both similarity and difference have a place. Unity is brought about by the reciprocal adaptings of the reactions of individuals, and this reciprocal adapting is based on both agreement and difference.