Espinas extends the view to other animal societies of which the members are not all derived from one parent, including human societies; and concludes that, except in the case of the Infusoria at the bottom of the scale and of the highly organised societies at the top of it, every individual consciousness is a part of a superior more comprehensive consciousness of an individual of a higher order. He illustrates at length the fact with the consideration and explanation of which this chapter is concerned, the fact namely that, in all social groups, emotions and impulses are communicated and intensified from one individual to another; and he asks—“If the essential elements of consciousness add themselves together and accumulate from one consciousness to another, how should the consciousness itself of the whole not be participated in by each?” He argues that to be real is not to be known to some other consciousness, but is to exist for oneself, to be conscious of oneself; that, in this sense, the ‘collective consciousness’ of a society is the most real of all things; that every society is therefore a living individual; and that, if we deny self-conscious individuality to a society, we must deny it equally to the mass of cells that make up an animal body; that, in short, we can find unity and individuality nowhere. This doctrine of the ‘collective consciousness’ of societies may seem bizarre to those to whom it is altogether novel; but it is one that cannot be lightly put aside; it demands serious consideration from any one who seeks the general principles of Collective Psychology. We have no certain knowledge from which its impossibility can be deduced; and the new light thrown upon individuality by modern studies in psycho-pathology shows us that the indivisibility and strictly bounded unity of the individual human soul is a postulate that we must not continue to accept without critical examination. Nor is the conception one that figures only in the writings of philosophers and therefore to be regarded with contemptuous indulgence by men of affairs as but one of the strange harmless foibles of such persons. It has a certain vogue in more popular writings; thus Renan wrote—“It has been remarked that in face of a peril a nation or a city shows, like a living creature, a divination of the common danger, a secret sentiment of its own being and the need of its conservation. Such is the obscure impulsion which provokes from time to time the displacement of a whole people or the emigration of masses, the crusades, the religious, political, or social revolutions.” Phrases such as the soul of a people, the genius of a people, have long been current, and in almost every newspaper one may find important events and tendencies ascribed to the instinct of a people. It is probable that these phrases are written in many instances without any explicit intention to imply a ‘collective national consciousness,’ but merely as well-sounding words that cloak our