THE GROUP MIND A SKETCH OF THE PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGY WITH SOME ATTEMPT TO APPLY THEM TO THE INTERPRETATION OF NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER BY WILLIAM McDOUGALL, F.R.S. LATE FELLOW OF ST JOHN’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, FELLOW OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE AND WILDE READER IN MENTAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD “Une nation est une âme, un principe spirituel. Deux choses qui, à vrai 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 possession en commun d’un riche legs de souvenirs; l’autre est le consentement actuel, le désir de vivre ensemble, la volonté de continuer à faire valoir l’héritage qu’on a reçu indivis.” ERNEST RENAN. CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1920 TO PROFESSOR L. T. HOBHOUSE in admiration of his work in philosophy, psychology, and sociology, and in the hope that he may discern in this book some traces of the spirit by which his own writings have been inspired. PREFACE In this book I have sketched the principles of the mental life of groups and have made a rough attempt to apply these principles to the understanding of the life of nations. I have had the substance of the book in the form of lecture notes for some years, but have long hesitated to publish it. I have been held back, partly by my sense of the magnitude and difficulty of the subject and the inadequacy of my own preparation for dealing with it, partly because I wished to build upon a firm foundation of generally accepted principles of human nature. Some fifteen years ago I projected a complete treatise on Social Psychology which would have comprised the substance of the present volume. I was prevented from carrying out the ambitious scheme, partly by the difficulty of finding a publisher, partly by my increasing sense of the lack of any generally accepted or acceptable account of the constitution of human nature. I found it necessary to attempt to provide such a foundation, and in 1908 published my _Introduction to Social Psychology_. That book has enjoyed a certain popular success. But it was more novel, more revolutionary, than I had supposed when writing it; and my hope that it would rapidly be accepted by my colleagues as in the main a true account of the fundamentals of human nature has not been realised.