I have used group in this book with the meaning of men associating under the law of interpenetration as opposed to the law of the crowd—suggestion and imitation. This may be considered an arbitrary definition, but of course I do not care about the names, I only want to emphasize the fact that men meet under two different sets of laws. Social psychology may include both group psychology and crowd psychology, but of these two group psychology is much the more important. For a good many years now we have been dominated by the crowd school, by the school which taught that people met together are governed by suggestion and imitation, and less notice has been taken of all the interplay which is the real social process that we have in a group but not in a crowd. How men behave in crowds, and the relation of the crowd conception of politics to democracy, will be considered in later chapters. While I recognize that men are more often at present under the laws of the crowd than of the group, I believe that progress depends on the group, and, therefore, that the group should be the basis of a progressive social psychology. The group process contains the secret of collective life, it is the key to democracy, it is the master lesson for every individual to learn, it is our chief hope for the political, the social, the international life of the future.[4] ----- Footnote 2: Probably by no means a group, but tending in some instances in that direction, as in the discussion or conference dinners now so common. Footnote 3: The old definition of the word social has been a tremendous drag on politics. Social policies are not policies for the good of the people but policies created by the people, etc. etc. We read in the work of a continental sociologist, “When a social will is born in the brain of a man,” but a social will never is born in the brain of a man. Footnote 4: This is essentially the process by which sovereignty is created. Therefore chapters II-VI on The Group Process are the basis of the conception of sovereignty given in Part III and of the relation of that conception to the politics of reconstruction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ II THE GROUP PROCESS: THE COLLECTIVE IDEA --------------