“Une nation est une âme, un principe spirituel. Deux choses qui, àvrai dire, n’en font qu’une constituent cette âme, ce principe spirituel.L’une est dans le passé, l’autre dans le présent. L’une est la possessionen commun d’un riche legs de souvenirs; l’autre est le consentementactuel, le désir de vivre ensemble, la volonté de continuer à faire valoirl’héritage qu’on a reçu indivis.”
Ernest Renan.
in admiration of his work in philosophy, psychology,and sociology, and in the hope that he may discernin this book some traces of the spirit by which hisown writings have been inspired. |
In this book I have sketched the principles of the mental life ofgroups and have made a rough attempt to apply these principlesto the understanding of the life of nations. I have had the substanceof the book in the form of lecture notes for some years, but havelong hesitated to publish it. I have been held back, partly by mysense of the magnitude and difficulty of the subject and the inadequacyof my own preparation for dealing with it, partly becauseI wished to build upon a firm foundation of generally acceptedprinciples of human nature.
Some fifteen years ago I projected a complete treatise on SocialPsychology which would have comprised the substance of the presentvolume. I was prevented from carrying out the ambitious scheme,partly by the difficulty of finding a publisher, partly by my increasingsense of the lack of any generally accepted or acceptable account ofthe constitution of human nature. I found it necessary to attemptto provide such a foundation, and in 1908 published my Introductionto Social Psychology. That book has enjoyed a certain popularsuccess. But it was more novel, more revolutionary, than I hadsupposed when writing it; and my hope that it would rapidly beaccepted by my colleagues as in the main a true account of thefundamentals of human nature has not been realised.
All this part of psychology labours under the great difficulty thatthe worker in it cannot, like other men of science, publish his conclusionsas discoveries which will necessarily be accepted by anypersons competent to judge. He can only state his conclusions andhis reasonings and hope that they may gradually gain the generalapproval of his colleagues. For to the obscure questions of fact withwhich he deals it is in the nature of things impossible to returnanswers supported by indisputable experimental proofs. In thisfield the evidence of an author’s approximation towards truth canconsist only in his success in gradually persuading competent opinionof the value of his views. My sketch of the fundamentals of humannature can hardly claim even that degree of success which would beconstituted by an active criticism and discussion of it in competentquarters. Yet there are not wanting indications that opinion is[Pg viii]turning slowly towards the acceptance of some such doctrine as Ithen outlined. Especially the development of psycho-pathology,