Any fairly distinct and durable detail of this structure may be called a social type; this being a convenient term to use when we wish to break up the whole into parts, for analysis or description. Thus there are types of personality, of political structure, of religion, of classes, of the family, of art, of language; also of processes, like communication, coöperation, and competition; and so on. The whole is so various that from every new point of view new forms are revealed. Social types are analogous to the genera, species, and varieties of the animal world, in being parts of one living whole and yet having a relative continuity and distinctness which is susceptible of detailed study. Like biological types, also, they exist in related systems and orders, are subject to variation, compete with one another, flourish and decay, may be flexible or rigid, and may or may not form prolific crosses with one another. Without forgetting to see life as individuals, we must learn to see it also as types, processes, organization, the latter being just as real as the former. And especially, in order to see the matter truly, should we be able to interpret individuals by wholes, and _vice versa_. FOOTNOTES: [3] See his essay on Coleridge. [4] Pollock’s Spinoza, 2d ed., 195. [5] Amply expounded, with due stress on the moral value of letting-go, by William James, in his Varieties of Religious Experience: “This abandonment of self-responsibility seems to be the fundamental act in specifically religious, as distinguished from moral practice. It antedates theologies and is independent of philosophies ... it is capable of entering into closest marriage with every speculative creed.” Page 289. CHAPTER III PRIMARY GROUPS MEANING OF PRIMARY GROUPS—FAMILY, PLAYGROUND, AND NEIGHBORHOOD—HOW FAR INFLUENCED BY LARGER SOCIETY—MEANING AND PERMANENCE OF “HUMAN NATURE”—PRIMARY GROUPS THE NURSERY OF HUMAN NATURE. By primary groups I mean those characterized by intimate face-to-face association and coöperation. They are primary in several senses, but chiefly in that they are fundamental in forming the social nature and ideals of the individual. The result of intimate association, psychologically, is a certain fusion of individualities in a common whole, so that one’s very self, for many purposes at least, is the common life and purpose of the group. Perhaps the simplest way of describing this wholeness is by saying that it is a “we”; it involves the sort of sympathy and mutual identification for which “we” is the natural expression. One lives in the feeling of the whole and finds the chief aims of his will in that feeling.