Reviews of Books SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY ‘psycholosigal In retations of _Society. _By Michael M. vrs,]r., .D. Columbia University Studies in History, Economics and Public Law.
v. 33, no. 2. Columbia University, New York. 260.
Pp.
(32.50.)
R. DAVIS'S work derives its chief interest
for the lawyer from its extended study of the sociological views of the distinguished criminologist Gabriel Tarde. Scattered through the large number of writings issued between 1880 and 1904 and nowhere collected in a succinct form are the fragments of Tarde's interesting theory of society, which Dr. Davis has also made the subject of an earlier mono graph ("Gabriel Tarde: An Essay in Socio logical Theory," 1906). In the present work we have a valuable criticism of Tarde's three principles of invention, imitation, and opposition. The artificial character of Tarde's philosophy is clearly brought out without detracting from the soundness and value of the greater part of his conclusions. The point of view of the author is favorable to the formation of a sane judicious estimate of Tarde's merits and shortcomings. 'Such a full discussion is fruitful and welcome. The author has also added a complete bibliography of Tarde's sociological Writings, most of which have not been issued in English translations. It is interesting to note in this connection that Tarde's "Penal Philosophy" is one of the works chosen by the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology for publica tion in its series of criminological classics. It can scarcely be doubted that Tarde will receive steadily growing attention from students of social and legal science in the next few years. Dr. Davis considers that with the exception of Marks and Herbert Spencer, "no social thinker of his generation has put forth a thought which has a greater clarifying power over so large a mass of human facts." The present work aims to formulate prin ciples of social psychology. The subject considered is not that of the individual consciousness, but the phenomena of inter action between individual minds and wills. The author considers that he is not treating of “self-consciousness" but of what he calls
“inter-consciousness," and he does not seem
entirely to avoid some pitfalls of terminology which mar an otherwise clear presentation of his ideas. He devotes four of the opening
chapters to "The Social Mind." a concept which is found in much of the sociological literature of the day. As in dealing with social forces we are concerned with a multitude of minds and their action upon one another, and the phenomena of public opinion and social action are comprehensible only when studied in terms of the individual, it is diflicult to see what warrant there is for the notion of a social mind. Such a concept appears to involve the reduction of a plurality of intelligences to a fictitious unity, and the social mind would seem to be little more than a metaphysical entity not simply of no help to scientific investigation, but decidedly a hindrance. Dr. Davis, however, expresses his satisfaction with Professor Giddings's analysis. Professor Giddings has called the social mind "a phenomenon of individual minds acting simultaneously, and especially of individual minds in communication with one another acting concurrently." The
writings of such writers as Giddings, Baldwin, Ellwood, Ross, and Durkheim have appar ently influenced Dr. Davis in his theory of a social mind. His position is therefore sustained by ample authority. But like most of the other writers, he has to insert
qualifications in his definition of the social mind to avoid falsifying the facts, and he
might have saved himself and his readers some trouble by starting from the postulate of a multiple social consciousness, instead of a social unity which merely to mention is to make absolute. This defect, however, will be found, on close inspection of the materials of the work, for the most part to be a fault of terminology rather than of subject-matter. The mistake does not seem to be made of over-emphasizing the collective at the expense of the individual aspect of human life, nor does the fiction of a social mind entrap the writer in the syllogisms of a chimerical realism. In the course which he takes doubtless may be found a partial justification for a term the use of which is shared with other sociologists. It may be misleading and of doubtful propriety to speak
