George Herbert Mead was born in 1863; he died in 1931. The span of his life coincided with the rise of Darwin's theory of evolution and Whitehead's philosophy of organism; with Einstein's theory of relativity and Bradley's Appearance and Reality;with Spencer's system atics and Oooley's theory of society; with James' Principles of Psychology and Dewey's early logic; with Watson's radical behaviorism and the rise of Gestalt psychology; with the advent of Freud and the defeat of psychologism; in short, with most of the generative movements, thinkers, and works of a period of unusual intellectual ferment and achievement. Within the span of these years Mead developed his central ideas and formulated them into a position of remarkable originality and profound consequence. My task in the work ahead is to give some indication of the scope and character of Mead's genius as it expressed itself in that great part of his work concerned with the philosophical problems of societal structure.