Just as there are two kinds of psychology of individuals, so there are two kinds of psychology of peoples. There is the individual psychology which is primarily descriptive, which is the biography of persons, and whose aim is to impart an accurate conception of the general tendencies of a person and of the course of his development. And there is the psychology whose aim is to explain in general terms the conduct of individual men in general by the aid of conceptions and laws of general validity. The former, of course, was developed much earlier than the latter, which is in the main of quite modern growth. As this explanatory psychology develops, its principles begin to find application in the sphere of biographical or individual psychology, raising it also to the explanatory plane. Just so there are two parallel kinds of psychology of peoples. There is the descriptive psychology of the tendencies of particular peoples, the biography of nations and peoples, which is what commonly is meant by ‘history’; and there is the psychology which seeks to explain in general terms how these tendencies arise, which seeks the general laws of which these diverse national tendencies are the outcome. This last is the modern science which is beginning to take shape and to undertake the task so inadequately dealt with by the so-called Philosophy of History. It is essentially a branch, and by far the most important part, of Group Psychology[49]. Now individual psychology tends more and more to be a genetic psychology; because we do not feel that we really understand the individual mind, until we know how it has come to be what it is, until we know something of its development and racial evolution. Just so the explanatory psychology of peoples must be a genetic psychology. Here it differs from individual psychology in that the distinction between individual development and racial evolution disappears. For the national mind is a continuous growth; it is not embodied in a temporal succession of individuals, but in a single continuously evolving organism. Nevertheless, we may with advantage consider separately (1) the nature of the general conditions necessary to the existence and operation of a national mind; (2) the processes of evolution by which such minds are formed and their peculiarities acquired. I propose to take up the former problem in the following chapter. CHAPTER VII THE MIND OF A NATION