Before stating the principles of this later school it is neces sary to trace some other movements. The German school pro duced a monumental work in the Vo/kerpsycho/ogie of Wilhelm Wundt. The French school which follows Durkheim approaches the psychological questions from the basis of social organization.
Durkheim felt that mental contents are not strictly individual. What a man thinks or wills is not merely the product of his neuro-cerebral system : it is equally the product of the social life which he shares. There are collective representations and collec tive volitions, states and activities of the tribal mind, which owe their character and particularly their compulsive force as beliefs to what can only be described as their super-personal reality. This type of theory is perhaps biassed by excessive pre-occupation with primitive mentality. The difficulties of understanding the nature of primitive thought are very great, and credit is due to Durkheim and his school for the vigorous attack made on the problem. Im portant work has been done on the psychological aspects of prim itive life under the impulse of this movement, for example by Levy-Bruhl (Les Fonctions Mentales dans les Societes Inferieures, 1912; and other works). While this type of work was predomi nantly sociological, there was another line of development which could be regarded as conforming more closely to the definition of social psychology. This was rooted in Darwinism and was an attempt to analyse the whole life of the individual as it developed in a social environment. In this class must be reckoned G. S. Hall and J. M. Baldwin. Hall became dissatisfied with the narrow limits of the psychology which he first expounded and sought to make the science more concrete, vital and comprehensive. His work was mainly descriptive, registering the information obtained from questionnaires and other sources. Such topics as "The Con tents of Children's Minds on Entering School" (1882-3) and the major work on Adolescence indicate sufficiently the interests which dominated Hail's work. Baldwin aimed to show that individual development was achieved through interaction between the per son and the society, the two being at all times coexisting aspects of an organic unity. The growth of animal psychology gave a new direction to thought by bringing into prominence the question of the relation between the native endowment of the human animal and its acquired characters. E. L. Thorndike undertook to define the "original nature of man" and to discover what instinctive tendencies determine human behaviour. A similar aim inspired the work of William McDougall, An Introduction to Social Psy chology (1908). McDougall's work in experimental and physio logical psychology made him a leader among psychologists before he attacked the special questions of social psychology : his work in this field has had exceptional influence among British and Ameri can students of the subject. McDougall adopts an attitude which is defined by the concept of purpose. All life and all mental activ
ity has the striving, conative or purposive characteristic : it is not merely response to a stimulus. The elements of social psychology are found in the natural instincts and emotions. A list of instincts is made and to the majority of them a corresponding emotion is assigned. Examples of these pairs are flight and fear, repulsion and disgust, pugnacity and anger, self-assertion and elation. The value of this catalogue of instincts has been disputed by some critics and vigorously denied by others. But the wide acceptance given to McDougall's views is good proof that they harmonized with some general trend of opinion. The popularity of reason was already waning and everyone was ready to turn over the page and begin another story. For the learned reader there was already a model provided by Galton's essay on Gregarious and Slavish In stincts, in which he endeavoured "to prove that the slavish apti tudes in man are a direct consequence of his gregarious nature, which itself is a result of the conditions both of his primaeval bar barism and of the forms of subsequent civilization." Galton based his generalizations on the observation of cattle in South Africa and his real topic was the nature of herd instincts. The signifi cance of the gregarious instinct did not at the time receive much attention : the average man was not prepared to see in social institutions the working of impulses which were operative below the levels of reflective thought. But the study of animal societies and the popularity of theories about the Unconscious have united to make attractive any interpretation of human life which throws emphasis on primitive instincts. A further result has emerged from the distinction between natural impulses and social organiza tion. In so far as the impulses must exist in order to maintain the structure and continuity of society, while society at the same time requires their restriction, there will necessarily be forms of con flict both in the life of the individual and in the society. Here psychoanalysis steps in to corroborate the general principles of this social state of transition which involves repression of the most dynamic forces, especially sex-instincts and pugnacity. An adequate treatment of this topic demands an equal knowledge of the medical, psychological and anthropological aspects. Very few men combine these studies in a way that would qualify them to succeed in the task, but W. H. R. Rivers was one of the few and his contributions were exceedingly valuable (Instinct and the Un conscious, 192o; Psychology and Politics, 1923). The extension of social psychology into the analysis of political organization and the nature of the modern state carries the subject beyond the out look of this article, and studies of the group-mind must be regarded as belonging to the almost unlimited field of applied psychology.