There is no such thing as a
social vacuum. The few Robinson Crusoes are not exceptions to the rule.
If they are, they are like the Irishman's horse. The moment they begin
to get adjusted to the exceptional condition, they die. Actual persons
always live and move and have their being in groups. These groups are
more or less complex, more or less continuous, more or less rigid in
character. The destinies of human beings are always bound up with the
fate of the groups of which they are members. While the individuals are
the real existences, and the groups are only relationships of
individuals, yet to all intents and purposes the groups which people
form are just as distinct and efficient molders of the lives of
individuals as though they were entities that had existence entirely
independent of the individuals.

The college fraternity or the college class, for instance, would be only
a name, and presently not even that, if each of its members should
withdraw. It is the members themselves, and not something outside of
themselves. Yet to A, B, or C the fraternity or the class might as well
be a river or a mountain by the side of which he stands, and which he is
helpless to remove. He may modify it somewhat. He is surely modified by
it somewhat; and the same is true of all the other groups in which A, B,
or C belong. To a very considerable extent the question, Why does A, B,
or C do so and so? is equivalent to the question, What are the
peculiarities of the group to which A, B, or C belongs? It would never
occur to A, B, or C to skulk from shadow to shadow of a night, with
paint-pot and brush in hand, and to smear Arabic numerals of bill-poster
size on sidewalk or buildings, if "class spirit" did not add stimulus to
individual bent. Neither A, B, nor C would go out of his way to flatter
and cajole a Freshman, if membership in a fraternity did not make a
student something different from an individual. These are merely
familiar cases which follow a universal law.

In effect, the groups to which we belong might be as separate and
independent of us as the streets and buildings of a city are from the
population. If the inhabitants should migrate in a body, the streets and
buildings would remain. This is not true of human groups, but their
reaction upon the persons who compose them is no less real and evident.
We are in large part what our social set, our church, our political
party, our business and professional circles are. This