The group mind : a sketch of the principles of collective psychology, with some attempt to apply them to the interpretation of national life and character / by William McDougall.

  • McDougall, William, 1871-1938.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The group mind : a sketch of the principles of collective psychology, with some attempt to apply them to the interpretation of national life and character / by William McDougall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    mind of the nation which we developed at some length in an earlier chapter. In the developing individual, as in the evolving animal series, the development of self-consciousness is the condition of the development of true volition. Before self-consciousness and a self- regarding sentiment are developed, conduct is determined by feelings and impulses or by ideas and the desires they arouse, either some one desire rising alone to consciousness and issuing at once in action, or through a conflict of impulses and desires, some one of which eventually predominates over the others and determines action; but action issuing from such a conflict of impulses and desires is not true volition. Action is truly volitional only when the ideal of the self in relation to the idea of the end to be achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies determines the issue of the conflict. In the mental life of nations, all those conflicts of ideas, of parties, of principles and of systems, in which each strives to pre¬ dominate over and displace others, and by natural selection of which (the death of the many less fit, the survival of the few better or more fit) the progress of recent centuries has been chiefly due; all these conflicts have been more or less blind conflicts, in which the idea of the whole nation, in relation to the end to be achieved by each of the conflicting tendencies, has generally played but a small part and a part that often has not made strongly for progress. National actions were in the main impulsive and instinctive actions, like those of young children or the higher animals. And for this reason—that nations had too little true self-knowledge, and had not developed a true and rich ideal of national life—the self-consciousness of nations was too poor in content to serve as the guide of actions making for progress. In the individual man, it is the growing richness and accuracy of self-knowledge which alone enables him to direct his actions effectively to secure his own welfare and to improve his char¬ acter and powers. Just so in nations the rapid growth of their self- knowledge and the enrichment of their ideals of national life which characterise the present time must render their self-consciousness a far more efficient guide of all national deliberation and action. The self-knowledge of the individual grows chiefly, as we have seen, through intercourse with his fellows; his idea of himself de¬ velops in fulness and accuracy in the light of his knowledge of other selves, and this knowledge in turn develops in the light of his in¬ creasing knowledge of himself. Just so the self-knowledge of nations is now growing rapidly through the intercourse of each nation with