in restating the problem but have not solved it.
Rene Worms has been particularly ingenious in discovering identities and
carrying out the parallelism between the social and the biological
organizations. As a result he has reached the conclusion that, as
between a social and a biological organism, there is no difference of
kind but only one of degree. Spencer, who could not find a "social
sensorium," said that society was conscious only in the individuals who
composed it. Worms, on the other hand, declares that we must assume the
existence of a social consciousness, even without a sensorium, because
we see everywhere the evidence of its existence.

Force manifests itself by its effects. If there are certain
phenomena that we can only make intelligible, provided we
regard them as the products of collective social consciousness,
then we are bound to assume the existence of such a
consciousness. There are many illustrations ... the attitude
for example, of a crowd in the presence of a crime. Here the
sentiment of indignation is unanimous. A murderer, if taken in
the act, will get summary justice from the ordinary crowd. That
method of rendering justice, "lynch law," is deplorable, but it
illustrates the intensity of the sentiment which, at the
moment, takes possession of the social consciousness.

Thus, always in the presence of great and common danger the
collective consciousness of society is awakened; for example
France of the Valois after the Treaty of Troyes, or modern
France before the invasion of 1791 and before the German
invasion in 1870; or Germany, herself, after the victories of
Napoleon I. This sentiment of national unity, born of
resistance to the stranger, goes so far that a large proportion
of the members of society do not hesitate to give their lives
for the safety and glory of the state, at such a moment the
individual comprehends that he is only a small part of a large
whole and that he belongs to the collectivity of which he is a
member. The proof that he is entirely penetrated by the social
consciousness is the fact that in order to maintain its
existence he is willing to sacrifice his own.[33]

There is no question that the facts of crowd excitement, of class,
caste, race, and national consciousness, do show the way in which the
individual members of a group are, or seem to