BOOK REVIEWS 99 THE GROUP MIND. By William McDougall M.B., F.RS. (Cambridge University Press, 1921. Pp. 304. Price 21s.)
The most remarkable thing about books that deal with the 'Group Mind' is that they are frequently difficult to distinguish from the leading articles of a daily paper. Mr. McDougall's book is not one of these that err the most in this line, but still, from a purely scientific point of view, we must ask why the author finds it necessary to state that 'politically, my sympathies are with individualism and internationalism, although I have, I think, fully recognized the great and necessary part played in human life by the "Group Spirit" and by that special form of it which we now call nationalism' (p. xi Preface). What have 'sympathies' to do with the topics in question, which concern a department of applied psychology, localised on the border-line between psychology and social anthropology or sociology? We do not generally 'sympathise' with totemism or animism: why should we not be able to adhere to this 'désintéressement' when discussing other questions of collective psycho- logy? The father of sociology, Herbert Spencer, bas given us a book (the Study of Sociology) in which the authors of books on this subject might see, as in a mirror held before their eyes, how nation and party distort their view of facts. But it has had remarkably little effect on them and books are still written, calling themselves scientific, which try to show that one nation was 'wrong', another 'right', that certain politics are 'justified', others 'condemned', by science. The superiority of the British type of social organisation over the German is one of the leading themes of W. Trotter's 'Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War', 1916, whilst the defeat of Prussian militarism bas not cured the Germans or their leading philosopher of their old ideals (cf. W. Wundt: Völkerpsychologie, Vol. X 1920; Kultur und Geschichte, S. 446). The learned author of the 'Group Mind' is of course fully aware of this remarkable dependence of science on politics (cf. p. 3), but he does not think it necessary to explain the fact Yet we think that this "abnormal' character of books which touch these questions should be explained, and that the reason why authors cannot get rid of 'bias' is simply that then they would be rid of the subject; for it is just this 'bias', or rather the unconscious impulse for which it is a substitute in consciousness, that draws their attention to the problems of group psychology, and perhaps contains the key to the problem of the "group mind'.
Although this group mind' is, properly speaking, the subject of 'group' or collective psychology, it is yet a matter of much dispute between authors whether, and in what sense, such a thing as a group mind can be said to exist at all. McDougall answers this question in the affirmative by saying that 'society when it enjoys a long life and becomes highly organized acquires a structure and qualities which are
