This classic text has set a standard for American sociol-ogy. Cooley provides analysis without empiricism, applying psychological insight to his study of the individual and collective self. First published in 1909, this work attempts to motivate man and society to be more responsible to each other. "The style of his book is clear and attractive, the text abounding in happy quotation."--Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

Excerpt from Social Organization: A Study of the Larger Mind It will be seen from my title and all my treatment that I apprehend the subject on the mental rather than the material side. I by no means, however, overlook or wish to depreciate the latter, to which I am willing to ascribe all the importance that any one can require for it. Our task as students of society is a large one, and each of us, I sup pose, may undertake any part of it to which he feels at all competent. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This work remains a pioneer sociological treatise on American culture. By understanding the individual not as the product of society but as its mirror image, Cooley concludes that the social order cannot be imposed from outside human nature but that it arises from the self. Cooley stimulated pedagogical inquiry into the dynamics of society with the publication of Human Nature and the Social Order in 1902. Human Nature and the Social Order is something more than an admirable ethical treatise. It is also a classic work on the process of social communication as the "very stuff" of which the self is made.