These various mental and moral types found in any large population of civilized men have been produced by varying degrees of responsive ness to differing stimuli, and in their turn they determine the degree to which the whole popula tion, or large sections of it, can share a com mon impulse. The more highly differentiated a population is into intellectual and character types the fewer are the stimuli which can move all to common purpose and action.
Each type affords the basis for a conscious ness of kind, especially if the type is correlated with a tie of kinship. as nationality, or ethnic or color race, or a tie of local or class interest. The consciousness of kind is a complex state of mind, including sympathy, perceptions of re semblance, affection, and the desire for recog nition. The consciousness of kind is almost as influential as the resources of the environment in determining the ethnic composition of a population. Thus, for example, the overwhelm ing preponderance of Teutonic elements in the foreign-born population of the North Central States of the United States is largely to be accounted for by the selective attraction of kin ship.
Little if any less important than the perfect consciousness of kind is that consciousness of potential resemblance, of mental approach, which is the subjective side of assimilation. In a mixed population the different ethnic elements are continually undergoing changes which tend to break down their differences, and to establish community of feelings and ideas. In like man ner, differentiated types of mind and character when brought into close association tend to be come alike, just as when under unlike influences they tend to become differentiated.
The causes of assimilation are conflict, toler ation, and imitation. Gabriel Tarde, as we have seen, has undertaken to derive the entire social process from imitation. Ile recognizes in society, and in the universe at large, conflicts of action, as well as repetitions or similarities, and in his important work, La logique sociale, he develops the social aspect of a process of adaptation, whereby conflicts of action and repetitions of action are reconciled. This is to identify all similarities or repetitions of action with imita tion. It would seem 'to be more accurate to recognize both original (or simultaneous) simi larities, and repetitious (or sequent) similari ties, and to identify imitation with the latter only. Moreover, inasmuch as it is through the establishment of sequences of similarity that adaptation or adjustment is brought about, imi tation must, necessarily be identified with adapta tion. All of these processes are seen in perfec tion in a society of mixed elements. Conflicts sometimes result in the subjection of the weaker, sometimes in an equilibrium of strength, which is the basis of toleration, and sometimes in good feeling and imitation. So far, then, from being an original social process (which simultaneous like response to stimulus is). imitation is prac tically the auxiliary process of assimilation, whereby conflicts are softened and unlike ele ments are made alike.
Given, now, similarities of mind and char acter in a population, and a consciousness of kind, conditions are present for the formation of agreeing purposes, a concert of wills, and co operation. Together these processes may be
called concerted volition. The degree of resem blance, the consciousness of kind, the character of the stimuli, determine the extent of concerted action. This may be a temporary concerted vo lition, such as is seen in festivals, crusades, strikes, panics, insurrections, and political cam paigns, or A may he a relatively enduring co operation. Cooperation grows by indistinguish able gradations out of momentary like responses which may begin accidentally, as, for example, when bystanders run simultaneously to a person hurt or in trouble. The consciousness of kind is necessary to supplement such beginnings by making it evident to each of the participating individuals that they are working toward the same end, and that they are sufficiently alike to work together successfully. There must, how ever, be yet another factor. The purpose achieved by the combined action must be of mutual benefit, and the utility must be perceived.
Cooperation is public or private. It is public when all individual members of an entire natural society act together with one purpose and au thority, either because all have the same desire, or because one or a few take the lead and others acquiesce or obey. An entire natural society viewed as coOperating is a State. When only a part of the social population responds to the same stimulus, and engages in cooperation with out the participation or command of the State, although not without its tacit or implied con sent, the cooperation is private or voluntary. Cooperative activities, whether public or pri vate, are of four kinds, namely cultural, eco nomic, moral or legal, and political. The order in which these activities have been named is the order of their genesis and evolution. Seemingly, but not in reality, this order denies the primi tive, fundamental character of economic rela tions. Betrayed by a misconception of cultural activities, many sociologists have placed them wrongly in the series. Their true nature and history can be understood only when we remem ber the distinction already mentioned between organic and industrial economy. The organic economy of the world of vegetation shades into the instinctive economy of animals, and that in turn into the rational economy of mankind. For ages before it becomes an industrial or business economy, the practical life of man in his struggle with the forces of nature is a ceremonial econ omy, consisting chiefly of magic, incantations, and formal rites. Cultural activities are neither more nor less than ideas and practices of the early economies surviving in an industrial age. Language and manners begin among the lower animals as products of their efforts to appro priate the bounty of nature and of their strug gles with hostile natural forces and with one another. Animistic ideas. the plastic and poetic arts, religious ideas and practices, originate in primitive human society, in attempts to under stand and to master o• propitiate the powers upon which man's life and comfort depend. They are all a part of the primitive economy.