Since unconsciousness, instinct, and reflex action characterize the psychic life of inferior beings, and even the greater part of the intellectual activity of those most highly developed, man included, we ought not to be astonished, _a priori_, that the collective force which constitutes the social superorganism presents the same characteristics. Consciousness is aroused in the individual, and new activities result, which soon, however, lose their conscious character, and become reflex and automatic. So with society. Then follows an elaborate analogy between the individual brain and nervous system and their functions, and the social structure and its functions, which we need not reproduce here. This analogy seems forced to me. There is little point to trying to find such exact correspondences. It is enough if we have our general organic principle as a method of study, and then proceed to the study of social facts. I shall myself, however, make use of some analogies in what follows, but shall not insist too strongly upon them. I may here express the opinion that society is an organism less highly developed than a man's body or a man's mind, and that its unity is primarily a unity of _function_ rather than of _structure_,[107] though there is some structural unity. The conception of the social unity which seems most useful for the purpose of our study--and the writer would insist that no social theory is valid for all purposes, and that many social theories have value for some particular purposes--is that of Professor C. H. Cooley, as set forth, particularly, in the opening chapters of his _Social Organization_. As this book, however, presupposes certain doctrines set forth in Professor Cooley's earlier book, _Human Nature and the Social Order_, a brief account of certain points in that study must also be given. It may be noted, at the outset, that Professor Cooley neglects the study of the material aspects of society, and centres his attention upon the mental side. His purpose in this is not to deny the significance of the material factors, as he explains in the preface to _Social Organization_, but simply to narrow the scope of his labors. The writer wishes here to make a similar statement regarding his own viewpoint. In the following pages, attention will be centred almost exclusively upon the psychical forces involved, upon what we shall call the "social mind." In this, however, it is explicitly recognized that the physical environment and the biological individuals are essential factors, and that the forces which are manifested in them must be recognized as coefficients with the psychical forces which we shall study, in the determination of any concrete social situation. I have no intention whatever of giving an independent, ontological character to this psychical abstraction. For the purposes of this study we shall regard the physical