The Group Mind: A Sketch of the Principles of Collective Psychology: With Some Attempt to Apply Them to the Interpretation of National Life and CharacterMcDougall, William
Science
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
McDougall, William
Ethnopsychology; National characteristics; Social psychology
A similar complex sentiment, the sentiment of patriotism, becomes
organised about the idea of his country as a whole; and, when war breaks
out and the army is pitted against that of another nation, while the
eyes of the whole world are turned upon it, it becomes the
representative of the nation and the special object of the patriotic
sentiment, which thus adds its strength to that of the more special
sentiment of the soldier for the army[33]. When, then, the patriot army
takes the field, it is capable of collective volition in virtue of the
existence of this sentiment in the minds of all its members. The
soldiers of a purely mercenary army are moved by the desire of
individual glory, of increased pay, of loot, by the habit of obedience
and collective movement acquired by prolonged drilling, by the
pugnacious impulse, by the desire of self-preservation; and they may be
led on to greater exertions by the influence of an admired captain. But
such an army is incapable of collective volition, because no sentiment
for the army as a whole is common to all its members. The soldiers of
the patriot army on the other hand may act from all the individual
motives enumerated above; but all alike are capable also of being
stirred by a common motive, a desire excited within the collective
self-regarding sentiment, the common sentiment for the army; and this,
adding itself to whatever individual motives are operative, converts
their desires into collective resolutions and renders their actions the
expressions of a collective volition.
Each soldier of the mercenary army may desire that his side shall win
the battle and may resolve that he will do his best to bring victory to
his side, and he may perform many truly volitional actions; and, in so
far as the actions of the army express these individual volitions
towards a common result, they are the expressions of the ‘will of all,’
but not of the collective will; because these volitions, though they are
directed to the one common end, spring from diverse motives and are
individual volitions.
The essence of collective volition is, then, not merely the direction of
the wills of all to the same end, but the motivation of the wills of all
members of a group by impulses awakened within the common sentiment for
the whole of which they are the parts. It is the extension of the
self-regarding sentiment of each member of the group to the group as a
whole that binds the group together and renders it a collective
individual capable of collective volition.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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