nguage are thus collective representations.

Even their contents bear witness to the same fact. In fact, there are
scarcely any words among those which we usually employ whose meaning
does not pass, to a greater or less extent, the limits of our personal
experience. Very frequently a term expresses things which we have never
perceived or experiences which we have never had or of which we have
never been the witnesses. Even when we know some of the objects which
it concerns, it is only as particular examples that they serve to
illustrate the idea which they would never have been able to form by
themselves. Thus there is a great deal of knowledge condensed in the
word which I never collected, and which is not individual; it even
surpasses me to such an extent that I cannot even completely appropriate
all its results. Which of us knows all the words of the language he
speaks and the entire signification of each?

This remark enables us to determine the sense in which we mean to say
that concepts are collective representations. If they belong to a whole
social group, it is not because they represent the average of the
corresponding individual representations; for in that case they would be
poorer than the latter in intellectual content, while, as a matter of
fact, they contain much that surpasses the knowledge of the average
individual. They are not abstractions which have a reality only in
particular consciousnesses, but they are as concrete representations as
an individual could form of his own personal environment; they
correspond to the way in which this very special being, society,
considers the things of its own proper experience. If, as a matter of
fact, the concepts are nearly always general ideas, and if they express
categories and classes rather than particular objects, it is because the
unique and variable characteristics of things interest society but
rarely; because of its very extent, it can scarcely be affected by more
than their general and permanent qualities. Therefore it is to this
aspect of affairs that it gives its attention: it is a part of its
nature to see things in large and under the aspect which they ordinarily
have. But this generality is not necessary for them, and, in any case,
even when these representations have the generic character which they
ordinarily have, they are the work of society and are enriched by its
experience.

The collective consciousness is the highest form of the psychic l