What then is the essence of the group process by which are evolved the collective thought and the collective will? It is an acting and reacting, a single and identical process which brings out differences and integrates them into a unity. The complex reciprocal action, the intricate interweavings of the members of the group, is the social process.

We see now that the process of the many becoming one is not a metaphysical or mystical idea; psychological analysis shows us how we can at the same moment be the self and the other, it shows how we can be forever apart and forever united. It is by the group process that the transfiguration of the external into the spiritual takes place, that is, that what seems a series becomes a whole. The essence of society is difference, related difference. “Give me your difference” is the cry of society today to every man.10

But the older sociology made the social mind the consciousness of likeness. This likeness was accounted for by two theories chiefly: the imitation theory and the like-response-to-like-stimuli theory. It is necessary to consider these briefly, for they have been gnawing at the roots of all our political life.

To say that the social process is that merely of the spread of similarities is to ignore the real nature of the collective thought, the collective will. Individual ideas do not become social ideas when communicated. The difference between them is one of kind. A collective thought is one evolved by a collective process. The essential feature of a common thought is not that it is held in common but that it has been produced in common.

Likewise if every member of a group has the same thought, that is not a group idea: when all respond simultaneously to the same stimulus, it cannot be assumed that this is in obedience to a collective will. When all the men in a street run round the corner to see a procession, it is not because they are moved by a collective thought.

Imitation indeed has a place in the collective life, it is one of the various means of coadaptation between men, but it is only a part and a part which has been fatally overemphasized.11 It is one of the fruits of particularism. “Imitation” has been made the bridge to span the gap between the individual and society, but we see now that there is no gap, therefore no bridge is necessary.

The core of the social process is not likeness, but the harmonizing of difference through interpenetration.12 But to be more accurate, similarity and difference can not be opposed in this external way⁠—they have a vital connection. Similarities and differences make up the differentiated reactions of the group; that is what constitutes their importance, not their likeness or unlikeness as such. I react to a stimulus: that reaction may represent a likeness or an unlikeness. Society is the unity of these differentiated reactions. In other words the process is not that merely of accepting or rejecting, it is bound up in the interknitting. In that continuous coordinating which constitutes the social process both similarity and difference have a place. Unity is brought about by the reciprocal adaptings of the reactions of individuals, and this reciprocal adapting is based on both agreement and difference.

To push our analysis a little further, we must distinguish between the given similarity and the achieved similarity. The common at any moment is always the given: it has come from heredity, biological influences, suggestion and imitation, and the previous workings of the law of interpenetration. All the accumulated effect of these is seen in our habits of thinking, our modes of living. But we cannot rest in the common. The surge of life sweeps through the given similarity, the common ground, and breaks it up into a thousand differences. This tumultuous, irresistible flow of life is our existence: the unity, the common, is but for an instant, it flows on to new differings which adjust themselves anew in fuller, more varied, richer synthesis. The moment when similarity achieves itself as a composite of working, seething forces, it throws out its myriad new differings. The torrent flows into a pool, works, ferments, and then rushes forth until all is again gathered into the new pool of its own unifying.

This is the process of evolution. Social progress is to be sure coadapting, but coadapting means always that the fresh unity becomes the pole of a fresh difference leading to again new unities which lead to broader and broader fields of activity.

Thus no one of course undertakes to deny the obvious fact that in order to have a society a certain amount of similarity must exist. In one sense society rests on likeness: the likeness between men is deeper than their difference. We could not have an enemy unless there was much in common between us. With my friend all the aims that we share unite us. In a given society the members have the same interests, the same ends, in the main, and seek a common fulfilment. Differences are always grounded in an underlying similarity. But all this kind of “similarity” isn’t worth mentioning because we have it. The very fact that it is common to us all condemns it from the point of view of progress. Progress does not depend upon the similarity which we find but upon the similarity which we achieve.

The new psychology, therefore, gives us individual responsibility as the central fact of life because it demands that we grow our own like-mindedness. Today we are basing all our hopes not on the given likeness but the created unity. To rest in the given likeness would be to annihilate social progress. The organization of industry and the settlement of international relations must come under the domination of this law. The Allies are fighting today with one impulse, one desire, one aim, but at the peace table many differences will arise between them. The progress of the whole world at that moment will depend upon the “similarity” we can create. This “similarity” will consist of all we now hold in common and also, of the utmost importance for the continuance of civilization, upon our ability to unify our differences. If we go to that peace table with the idea that the new world is to be based on that community of interest and aim which now animates us, the disillusion will be great, the result an overwhelming failure.

Let us henceforth, therefore, use the word unifying instead of similarity to represent the basis of association. And let us clearly understand that unifying is a process involving the continuous activity of every man. To await “variation-giving” individuals would be to make life a mere chance. We cannot wait for new ideas to appear among us, we must ourselves produce them. This makes possible the endless creation of new social values. The old like-minded theory is too fortuitous, too passive and too negative to attract us; creating is the divine adventure.

Let us imagine a group of people whom we know. If we find the life of that group consisting chiefly of imitation, we see that it involves no activity of the real self but crushes and smothers it. Imitation condemns the human race. Even if up to the present moment imitation has been a large factor in man’s development, from this moment on such a smothering of all the forces of life must cease.

If we have, however, among this group “like-response,” that is if there spring up like thoughts and feelings, we find a more dignified and worthy life⁠—fellowship claims us with all its joys and its enlargement of our single self. But there is no progress here. We give ourselves up to the passive enjoyment of that already existing. We have found our kindred and it comforts us. How much greater enhancement comes from that life foreshadowed by the new psychology where each one is to go forth from his group a richer being because each one has taken and put into its right membership all the vital differences of all the others. The like-mindedness which the new psychology demands is the like-mindedness which is brought about by the enlargement of each by the inflowing of every other one. Then I go forth a new creature. But to what do I go forth? Always to a new group, a new “society.” There is no end to this process. A new being springs forth from every fresh contact. My nature opens and opens to thousands of new influences. I feel countless new births. Such is the glory of our common everyday life.

Imitation is for the shirkers, like-mindedness for the comfort lovers, unifying for the creators.

The lesson of the new psychology is then: Never settle down within the theory you have chosen, the cause you have embraced; know that another theory, another cause exists, and seek that. The enhancement of life is not for the comfort-lover. As soon as you succeed⁠—real success means something arising to overthrow your security.

In all the discussion of “similarity” too much importance has been put upon analogies from the animal world.13 We are told, for instance, and important conclusions are drawn in regard to human society, that the gregarious instinct of any animal receives satisfaction only through the presence of animals similar to itself, and that the closer the similarity the greater the satisfaction. True certainly for animals, but it is this fact which keeps them mere animals. As far as the irrational elements of life give way to the rational, interpenetration becomes the law of association. Man’s biological inheritance is not his only life. And the progress of man means that this inheritance shall occupy a less and less important place relatively.

It has been necessary to consider the similarity theory, I have said, because it has eaten its way into all our thought.14 Many people today seem to think that progress depends upon a number of people all speaking loudly together. The other day a woman said to me that she didn’t like the Survey because it has on one page a letter from a conservative New York banker and on another some radical proposal for the reconstruction of society; she said she preferred a paper which took one idea and hammered away on that. This is poor psychology. It is the same reasoning which makes people think that certain kindred souls should come together, and then by a certain intensified thinking and living together some noble product will emerge for the benefit of the world. Such association is based on a wrong principle. However various the reasons given for the non-success of such experiments as Brook Farm, certain religious associations, and certain artistic and literary groups who have tried to live together, the truth is that most of them have died simply of non-nutrition. The bond created had not within it the variety which the human soul needs for its nourishment.

Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, nor absorbed.15 Anarchy means unorganized, unrelated difference; coordinated, unified difference belongs to our ideal of a perfect social order. We don’t want to avoid our adversary but to “agree with him quickly”; we must, however, learn the technique of agreeing. As long as we think of difference as that which divides us, we shall dislike it; when we think of it as that which unites us, we shall cherish it. Instead of shutting out what is different, we should welcome it because it is different and through its difference will make a richer content of life. The ignoring of differences is the most fatal mistake in politics or industry or international life: every difference that is swept up into a bigger conception feeds and enriches society; every difference which is ignored feeds on society and eventually corrupts it.

Heterogeneity, not homogeneity, I repeat, makes unity. Indeed as we go from groups of the lower types to groups of the higher types, we go from those with many resemblances to those with more and more striking differences. The higher the degree of social organization the more it is based on a very wide diversity among its members. The people who think that London is the most civilized spot in the world give as evidence that it is the only city in which you can eat a bun on a street corner without being noticed. In London, in other words, difference is expected of us. In Boston you cannot eat a bun on the street corner, at least not without unpleasant consequences.

Give your difference, welcome my difference, unify all difference in the larger whole⁠—such is the law of growth. The unifying of difference is the eternal process of life⁠—the creative synthesis, the highest act of creation, the at-onement. The implications of this conception when we come to define democracy are profound.

And throughout our participation in the group process we must be ever on our guard that we do not confuse differences and antagonisms, that diversity does not arouse hostility. Suppose a friend says something with which I do not agree. It may be that instantly I feel antagonistic, feel as if we were on opposite sides, and my emotions are at once tinged with some of the enmity which being on opposite sides usually brings. Our relations become slightly strained, we change the subject as soon as possible, etc. But suppose we were really civilized beings, then we should think: “How interesting this is, this idea has evidently a larger content than I realized; if my friend and I can unify this material, we shall separate with a larger idea than either of us had before.” If my friend and I are always trying to find the things upon which we agree, what is the use of our meeting? Because the consciousness of agreement makes us happy? It is a shallow happiness, only felt by people too superficial or too shut-up or too vain to feel that richer joy which comes from having taken part in an act of creation⁠—created a new thought by the uniting of differences. A friendship based on likenesses and agreements alone is a superficial matter enough. The deep and lasting friendship is one capable of recognizing and dealing with all the fundamental differences that must exist between any two individuals, one capable therefore of such an enrichment of our personalities that together we shall mount to new heights of understanding and endeavor. Someone ought to write an essay on the dangers to the soul of congeniality. Pleasant little glows of feeling can never be fanned into the fire which becomes the driving force of progress.

In trying to explain the social process I may have seemed to over emphasize difference as difference. Difference as difference is nonexistent. There is only difference which carries within itself the power of unifying. It is this latent power which we must forever and ever call forth. Difference in itself is not a vital force, but what accompanies it is⁠—the unifying spirit.

Throughout my description of the group process I have taken committee-meetings, conferences etc. for illustration, but really the object of every associating with others, of every conversation with friends, in fact, should be to try to bring out a bigger thought than anyone alone could contribute. How different our dinner parties would be if we could do this. And I mean without too labored an effort, but merely by recognizing certain elementary rules of the game. Creation is always possible when people meet; this is the wonderful interest of life. But it depends upon us so to manage our meetings that there shall be some result, not just a frittering away of energy, unguided because not understood. All our private life is to be public life. This does not mean that we cannot sit with a friend by our fireside; it does mean that, private and gay as that hour may be, at the same time that very intimacy and lightness must in its way be serving the common cause, not in any fanciful sense, but because there is always the consciousness of my most private concerns as tributary to the larger life of men. But words are misleading: I do not mean that we are always to be thinking about it⁠—it must be such an abiding sense that we never think of it.

Thus the new psychology teaches us that the core of the group process is creating. The essential value of the new psychology is that it carries enfolded within it the obligation upon every man to live the New Life. In no other system of thought has the Command been so clear, so insistent, so compelling. Every individual is necessary to the whole. On the other hand, every member participates in that power of a whole which is so much greater than the addition of its separate forces. The increased strength which comes to me when I work with others is not a numerical thing, is not because I feel that ten of us have ten times the strength of one. It is because all together we have struck out a new power in the universe. Ten of us may have ten, or a hundred, or a thousand times the strength of one⁠—or rather you cannot measure it mathematically at all.

The law of the group is not arbitrary but intrinsic. Nothing is more practical for our daily lives than an understanding of this. The group-spirit is the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night⁠—it is our infallible guide⁠—it is the Spirit of democracy. It has all our love and all our devotion, but this comes only when we have to some extent identified ourselves with It, or rather perhaps identified It with all our common, everyday lives. We can never dominate another or be dominated by another; the group-spirit is always our master.