be a society in
which there were neither persons nor freedom. The processes of
competition, segregation, and accommodation brought out in the
description of the plant community are quite comparable with the same
processes in animal and human communities. A village, town, city, or
nation may be studied from the standpoint of the adaptation, struggle
for existence, and survival of its individual members in the environment
created by the community as a whole.

Society, as Dewey points out, if based on instinct is an effect of
communication. _Consensus_ even more than _co-operation_ or _corporate
action_ is the distinctive mark of human society. Dewey, however, seems
to restrict the use of consensus to group decisions in which all the
members consciously and rationally participate. Tradition and sentiment
are, however, forms of consensus quite as much as constitutions, rules,
and elections.

Le Bon's classification of social groups into heterogeneous and
homogeneous crowds, while interesting and suggestive, is clearly
inadequate. Many groups familiar to all of us, as the family, the
play-group, the neighborhood, the public, find no place in his
system.[80]

Concrete descriptions of group behavior indicate three elements in the
consensus of the members of the group. The first is the characteristic
state of group feeling called _esprit de corps_. The enthusiasm of the
two sides in a football contest, the ecstasy of religious ceremonial,
the fellowship of members of a fraternity, the brotherhood of a monastic
band are all different manifestations of group spirit.

The second element in consensus has become familiar through the term
"morale." Morale may be defined as the collective will. Like the will of
the individual it represents an organization of behavior tendencies. The
discipline of the individual, his subordination to the group, lies in
his participation and reglementation in social activities.

The third element of consensus which makes for unified behavior of the
members of the group has been analyzed by Durkheim under the term
"collective representations." Collective representations are the
concepts which embody the objectives of group activity.

The totem of primitive man, the flag of a nation, a religious creed, the
number system, and Darwin's theory of the descent of man--all these are
collective representations. Every society and every social group has, or
tends to have, its own symbols and its own languag