Finally, the question may be raised whether the impersonal stage of socialization is the final or highest goal of the process. The study of social development in England in the last fifty years suggests that a new stage, which we may call the social, is being attained. We perceived that the great social movement of the nineteenth century was surcharged with the emotional force of this trend, that the social sciences reveal the highest rational expression of this mental change, and that the march of State Socialism in England exemplifies the objectification of the new attitude in concrete, practical action. The social tendencies are multiplying which denote that the impersonal way of looking at things will become permeated by the social outlook and spirit; that the perfected outward co-operation of our present industrial order will become motivated by a perfected inner co-operation; that out of the moral ferment and psychic seething of the thronging thousands in our cities, united in spite of themselves by the closest and most complex external interdependences, will be evolved a group-consciousness necessary for the solution of our problems and for the control of conditions in the common interest. Such a change in the mental and social organization presupposes and requires a change in the habits of mind of the individual. The ✔requisite transformation can occur only through the socialization of the individual by means of his freest personal participation in the community of thinking, feeling, and action of the group. The process of perfecting the social order makes possible and requires the all-round development of personality. CHAPTER XI PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT Social valuation, social heredity, social organization, social stimuli, are all involved in scientific discovery and mechanical invention: this argument constituted our proof for the function of socialization in material progress. The history of the English people is exhibited as a process involving the participation of wider groups in the developing sentiment, knowledge, and activity of a nation: this survey demonstrated that socialization plays an essential rôle in social evolution. Two parts of the thesis have now been exhibited, and we therefore come to the consideration of the third proposition, namely, that the socialization of the individual, in the sense of the all-round participation of the person in the knowledge, in the feeling, and in the activity of the group, is necessary for the fullest personal development and for social progress. In this statement of the final step in our thesis, we have taken for granted two characteristics of socialization, which, while commonplaces in our thinking, should nevertheless be analyzed to avoid the possibility of later misunderstanding. The first point, tacitly assumed in our definition, is the recognized fact that socialization is fundamentally a mental process, and progressively calls into play the higher psychic processes. Societies exist below the human stage, but how different is the character of animal socialization! The bees and the ants in their social organization exhibit a marvelous coadaptation of individuals, but the co-ordination here is mechanical and instinctive, imbedded in the physiological makeup of the organism. In primitive and savage society we appreciate the immense advance from the instinctively fixed conduct of the animal to the socially imposed ways of action. The taboos and the "mores" of the group, illogical, arbitrary, often injurious, exercised a social control in which the emotional element was predominant. In modern society a higher type of socialization is evolving, which will permit a natural and co-ordinated development of the instinctive tendencies. under the discipline of reason, good taste, and social feeling. Outer, coercive control is being superseded by the spontaneity of inner direction. An awareness by the head and by the heart of the interdependence of the interests of the person and the group makes possible a socialization organized to promote aims and ends rationally defined, a socialization at the same time buttressed by a solid masonry of social sentiment. Before we turn to the consideration of the second point, it is appropriate to emphasize the importance of the rôle of mental development in socialization. The fundamental fact in the life of the individual is its mental nature. This is also true of society. The unity that holds the group together, whether derived from past experience, present activity, or future purpose, is psychic. The changes which are taking place in society, no matter how material or physical their origin, become socially important when they are registered in the formation of, individual and group feeling and thought. Thus a thunderstorm, which is of slight social significance to a modern community, will undoubtedly be of prime social import to a savage tribe. All qualitative social changes are, at bottom, transformations of mental attitude. The change in the point of view on the part of Mr. Gary and Mr. Carnegie in the last twenty years in regard to government regulation of industry is a striking example of a process of social mental interaction in which the American people are participating. The changing attitude of the North and South upon the negro situation is an element of difficulty or of help in the solution of the problem. These two illustrations must suffice to represent the multitude of facts which might be presented to indicate that, from first to last, the mental interrelations of persons constitute the social structure and determine social function. The second point, tacitly assumed in our definition and implicit in the preceding chapters, is that socialization has become the central factor in evolution. Animalization, cephalization, socialization, are the three important stages in evolution, in the animal, in the primeval human, and in the social-human situations. Animalization begins with the first organisms capable of free movement and reaches its highest point of development in the highest complexity of movements which can constitute a co-ordination, an end not achieved until cephalization has reached a high stage. Cephalization begins with the tendency toward centralization in the nervous system. It has apparently ended with the human mind as we know it today, appar |