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The University of Chicago
FOUNDED BY JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTIES OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOLS OF ARTS,
LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY)
BY
EDWARD CARY HAYES
PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
HM
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1
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES. I¹
SECTION I. INTRODUCTORY
In several issues of a German chemical journal there appeared
a curious advertisement. It stated that a certain name had been
registered as a trademark, and offered a reward to the chemist
who should produce a compound to fit the name. Somewhat
similarly, the name "sociology" has taken a prominent place in
the public mind, and has become the center of high hopes, before
there is any clear and general agreement as to what sociology is
or is to be. Even intelligent persons, who believe that the name
contains a splendid prophecy, would be at a loss to assign to it a
definite content, satisfactory to themselves or to other people of
like intelligence and interest in the theme.
The word "sociology" is the name not so much of something
that we already possess as of something to be striven for,2 of a
body of knowledge that we deeply need, that we have learned to
want, and that we are beginning to accumulate. The spirit of
sociology appears in an awakening up to our ignorance of matters
that are of the highest interest, as some items of knowledge sug-
gest how much more we ought to know. The glimmering of light
serves to make darkness visible. The problems to be studied are
vast and intricate. No true spirit of sociology will pretend to
their easy or quick solution. A new science is to be built up by
1
¹ This paper was read and discussed in my seminar in the spring of 1902, and
was accepted in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for a Doctorate which was
conferred in June of that year. It contains, so far as I am aware, the first
formulation of the theorem which I supported in a paper in this Journal, Vol. X,
No. 3,
"The Subject-Matter of Sociology." The manuscript of Professor Hayes's
paper had never been in my hands until after the publication of mine. Mean-
while I had completely overlooked the fact that he had anticipated me in drawing
a conclusion to which the logic of the situation has been pointing for a half-
century. Upon reading the manuscript it was evident that an apology was due to
the author, and this is the most adequate means of making the proper amends.—
ALBION W. SMALL.
66
2 Since this was written, in 1902, that which we already possess as soci-
ology has increased in definiteness and richness, beyond the hopes of some of its
disciples. Yet that "to be striven for still forms the alluring horizon in every
direction, and at many points presses close about us.
623
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149753
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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the patient toil of many, as cathedrals grew by the devotion of
generations. The new age is not without its devotion. A science
of sociology cannot be the discovery of a sudden inspiration: it
is the supreme intellectual task of the twentieth century. This
study is published, not as a dogmatic pronunciamento upon the
points which it touches, but as a phase of thought which may
prove to be one stage of progress.
It is not the popular mind alone that is in uncertainty as to
what sociology is. Even to the scientist devoted to the subject the
name stands for a problem rather than for an achieved solution.
The problem is, moreover, so involved, and it presents so many
phases and reduces itself into so many subsidiary problems, that
each sociologist addresses himself to a different phase of the
whole, a different set of subsidiary problems involved in the total
solution; and, as a rule, each is inclined to describe the study of
sociology as being just the particular kind of work in which he is
absorbed. An extreme illustration of this is the remark of a
German scholar, already famous for contributions to the subject
which he has embodied in lectures and articles. This man, on
being asked what he regarded as the most important sociological
books in the German language, answered: "There are no
books in the German language on sociology as I conceive it."
One who surveys the various and contrasting beginnings that
have thus far been made is ready to appreciate the words with
which Professor Fairbanks begins his Introduction to Sociology:
Sociology is the name applied to a rather inchoate mass of
materials which embodies our knowledge about society." That
this mass of materials includes much that is of great practi-
cal importance, and that in connection with it there have been
developed already some broadening and illuminating points of
view, is beyond question. But these points of view are not only
independent, but largely isolated and unrelated, and these mate-
rials are presented in a multiplicity of unreconciled half-systems.
The time for complete systematizing is not yet. Is it therefore
necessary for the student to plunge at random into the tangle, and
wander in confusion; or may he hope to form some approximation
to a general concept of the field of sociology?
<<
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
625
As school-children drawing maps, we were taught to use con-
struction lines. A few salient points were located, and these were
connected by lines which indicated vaguely the outline of the
country to be studied. From these points the pencil began to trace
the intricate windings of the shore, and with reference to these
lines it located rivers, mountains, and cities. The student of soci-
ology cannot yet lay down a chart of the continent he explores,
but he may attempt to form some general conceptions, to discern
and state some truths with far-reaching implications, that will
serve, like construction lines, to facilitate his progress toward the
more accurate tracing of the outlines of this realm, and the com-
pleter discovery of its particulars.
SECTION II. WHAT IS A SOCIETY?
What does the sociologist study? He studies societies, we are
told. What, then, is a society?
The state is the most imposing of social organizations. There-
fore it was naturally the first to receive scientific treatment.
The two chief social sciences that preceded sociology had been
developed from the point of view of interest in the state; they were
political science and political economy. And the state has con-
tinued to be the most conspicuous society in the eyes of sociolo-
gists. Moreover, the idea of the state has grown concreter, richer,
and more interesting by coming to include that which may be
more accurately indicated by the word "nation." A "nation" is
a people that is of one nativity, and that shares the other similari-
ties of custom and culture which usually accompany unity of
blood. During the period within which the notion of a science of
sociology has been taking shape, the idea of a state, commonly
held, has not been the idea of a massing of heterogeneous popu-
lations, forced by political power into a merely political unity.
Instead, the state usually has been thought of as the political
organization of a nation, together with only such others as have
been "naturalized" by adoption into the national family or clan,
so that the state is bound together, not alone by political authority,
but also by sharing, if not literally in the national blood, yet in
the national patriotism, ideals, customs, economic and cultural
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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
life-current. Sociology was welcomed as the science of such com-
plex unitary entities. Thus the history of sociology has been
influenced by the fact that the idea of such a new science has taken
shape during a period when thought about social facts has been
intensely politico-nationalistic. Nationalism was winning, or had
newly won, its triumphs, and it was assumed, almost as a matter
of course, that social topics would be contemplated from a politico-
nationalistic point of view. The idea that any social science is
politico-national science had the field, and governed thought, as
the idea that anything to travel in was a stage-coach once had the
field, and governed the form of early railroad cars, and even
yet appears in the compartments of European cars, and some-
times in moldings upon their exteriors that outline the form of a
series of coach bodies.
Although it has been common to admit that the word "soci-
ety" is also a name for other forms of human relationship,
including the fortuitous concourse in a hotel lobby, or a culture
group like Christendom, Jewry, or the Hellenes; and it even has
been added that all humanity, save isolated groups that live in
ignorance of the existence of any other portions of the race,
constitutes a single society; yet these admissions have been little
more than lip-service. These forms of society have been recog-
nized with a nod and passed by, while the only society really
accepted as fit to be the object of study for the sociologist has
been the nation-state.
This view has not only occupied the popular mind. The sci-
entists also clearly show that they feel the association in a railway
coach or a hotel lobby to be far too temporary and trivial, and that
of "humanity" too tremendous or too vague or too remote from
interest to be the object of their study. Even a culture unit like
Christendom is not the kind of a society that extensively engages
their attention. A city comes nearer to being the real and inter-
esting thing, inasmuch as it is more like a nation-state, being a
political body, definitely limited and having a complex and inclu-
sive common life. The conception of a society that enlisted them
in the study of sociology, that dominates their thought and dis-
cussions, the society that they wish to study and aim to explain,
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
627
is suggested and typified by the nation-state. This has been
regarded as the social group par excellence, and as being not only
a political unit, but a distinct and unitary combination of the total
tide of associative activity.
It is necessary for sociologists to form the habit of thinking
that it is enough to constitute a society when people are united in
any one of the significant forms of collective action. Besides
political societies, there are economic societies, creedal societies,
intellectual societies many and various, ethical societies each with
a distinct conscience code of its own, and æsthetic societies each
with its own conventionality, etc. But hitherto the habit has been
to think that the most important and only adequate meaning
attached to the term "a society" is that of a population unified.
by political, and usually by racial, ties, and also by its manifold
non-political institutions and customs, and by constant communi-
cation and interaction, each modifying the whole and modified by
the whole, while this highly integrated society is distinct from
other societies and from the rest of the world.
This, of course, was the position of sociologists as long as they
regarded society as a great organism, almost as if it were a higher
type of animal. And it is by no means confined to such sociolo-
gists. It dominates the discussions of men who do not state it,
and it is stated and advocated by men whose thought it no longer
dominates. It should cause no wonder if the true and heuristic
definition of society is reached only after society has been exten-
sively studied. First discoveries must be made without the aid
of construction lines which facilitate later exploration. And if,
as in this case, a false idea is once formed, either of the shape of
a new land, or of the object of study for a new science, the
discoveries that will rectify it must be made in spite of the early
misconception. In that case the notes of the explorer will contra-
dict the map with which he set out, and such contradictions may
accumulate before he modifies his map. And the true observa-
tions of the scientist may indicate the erroneousness of the
academic definitions from which he starts for some time before
he attends to the inconsistency and remedies it.
Thus even Professor Tarde was at pains to defend the notion
628
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of societies that are unified, not only with reference to political or
creedal or any other single kind of social activity, but with refer-
ence to all kinds at once. He writes:
The phrase social groups
is a more comprehensive expression by
which one means a community having the same type of civilization, which
implies a combination of economic, legal, moral, religious, scientific, and
political similarities."
(C
""
In an article entitled "La réalité sociale" he says that a
society distinct from others, and identified with respect to the
total tide of complex activities which the sociologist investi-
gates, is a real unity in a much completer sense than the Nile
or the Ganges.¹ He defends the statement thus:
The question is whether the social group forms a true totality that is
objective and not merely subjective. . . . Even when not thought, the
chemical whole formed by the combination of several molecules, the astronomic
whole formed by a solar system, the mechanical whole, etc., and a fortiori the
organic whole, is something. Is the same true of the social whole? Yes.
•
Special emphasis is laid upon the statement that society is unified
not alone with respect to its subjective life. He says:
Societies (plural) are not merely masses of inter-spiritual action; they are
at one and the same time masses of inter-spiritual and inter-corporeal actions,
combined with many physical actions, united struggles with the forces of nature
to repel and to utilize them.'
Professor Tarde went out of his own way to emphasize the mate-
rial unity of the social group, thus comprehensively considered.
His more characteristic emphasis is upon the spiritual individu-
ality of societies, expressed by the phrases "esprit sociale" and
"moi social"-phrases especially prominent in his Logique
sociale. And in closing his article on "La réalité sociale he
says: "The social organism is only a metaphor, but the social
spirit is a reality."8 The assumption even of a spiritual life of
the community that is unified and distinct save in certain par-
99
8
Les transformations du pouvoir, p. 2.
• Loc. cit., p. 459.
6
4
* Revue philosophique, Vol. LII, pp. 458, 459.
"The italics in each instance are his.
¹ Ibid., p. 450.
8 Ibid., p. 476.
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LInes
629
ticular activities is in no way essential to his contributions to
sociology. Although in his theoretical discussion of the scope
of sociology he insists on this conception, in his actual investiga-
tion he ignores it. And he more nearly describes his own object
of study in the following, from the same article:
A sentiment, a principle, an intention, at first individual, spreads and
becomes more and more general, and in becoming general consolidates, opposes
itself to the individuality of each one of those associated; then, a subjective
thing, it becomes by this opposition an objective thing, and takes on a material
appearance, since it resists each one of us, though founded upon the mental
habits of us all.
Contrast this contention of Tarde with an assertion of Seig-
nobos',10 who has no concern about building up a science of soci-
ology, and consequently no sensitiveness about social unity. He
says that it is a matter of supreme difficulty to mark out a group
having a distinct economic history of its own, because some
processes of economic development will belong only to sections
of the population to be studied, and others will be shared by people
outside the group. If, then, as Seignobos declares, it is a matter
of the greatest difficulty to distinguish a group that is the bearer
of an economic evolution, how many times greater than the
greatest is the difficulty of marking out a group that is the bearer
of a complete social development?
Seignobos further remarks that the same man may be Luxem-
burger by nation, Frenchman by language, Roman Catholic by
religion, and member of the German Zollverein economically.
If these four trunk lines intersect in one man, how many lesser
lines cross in him? As soon as one tries to mark off a society that
is the bearer of all the social influences which mold a single life,
he will find that this society will contain only the single individual,
with fragments of countless others, and not the whole of any
other life. Or, to put the same fact otherwise, each one of us
belongs to many different groups of association, but to no society
that is coextensive with them all. Our social relations shade
• Ibid., p. 460.
10 La méthode historique appliquée aux sciences sociales, pp. 216 ff. According
to Seignobos, the social sciences are economics, demography, and the history of
social doctrines.
F
....
630
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
away from us in all directions, and where they become faintest
to us they are center points for new processes of radiation. No
comprehensive society can be isolated from others except by a
bleeding abstraction. The only distinct societies are distinguished
by particular activities, not by the total complexus of social
activity in which its members are engaged. A state is a political
unit, but not a unit in the comprehensive sense imagined.
There is nothing in national lines to hem the social process as
such. London, Berlin, and New York may be in the same market.
A technical invention made in Paris is a social fact for the
American electrician. A scientific discovery made in Jena is a
social fact for the scholars of Christendom. The ethical, artistic,
scientific, and fashion resemblances and interactions between the
ethical, artistic, scientific, and fashionable élite of different nations
may be greater, though oceans intervene, than between the people
of different wards of the same metropolis. It may be that, as a
rule, the total social impact of things American upon a Bostonian
of Beacon Street is greater than the total social impact of things
cosmopolitan; but even that would be a question of doubt. The
man in Beacon Street may be the intellectual offspring of Scho-
penhauer, Darwin, and Spencer; æsthetically and ethically he
may be most akin to Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Tenny-
son, Browning, and Goethe. If it be true that, as a rule, the
American most affects and is most affected by things American,
this difference in degree is no organic line of separation. There
is no such difference in kind, no such essential distinction, as to
justify a definition of the society in which he lives, including all
that is American and excluding all that is cosmopolitan. And as
to the mere matter of difference in degree, what is to be said of
the comparative degree of social separation between the man of
Beacon Street and the man of the wharves? Tarde avers that
In fact, the principal obstacle to free imitative radiation of inventions in our
day is far less the frontier of states, formerly so high and so opaque, at
present so transparent and low, than the partitions that separate different strata
of the population, different classes, different parties, different religions, etc."
Most of the groups that engage in more or less permanent activi-
Les transformations du pouvoir, p. 185.
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
631
ties, like families, clubs, churches, or schools, are relatively only
points, foci from which radiate in narrower or wider circles
activities that are finally merged and lost to view in the total cur-
rent of associative activity. Cities are vortices made up of great
numbers of such smaller whirls. Most of the facts that the soci-
ologist needs to study are limited and local, and belong to classes
of facts that are international. Social interactions disregard national
boundaries in every way. Some overleap national boundaries, but
not class lines within the nation, and are international without
including the whole of any nation; others are confined within a
single group within a single nation. The social units they create
are international, infra-national, and in every way non-national.
A “social whole," a "true totality," as defended by Professor
Tarde, unified and distinct with reference to the whole complex
of social activities, is a fancy; it does not exist. There is nowhere
in the world a society unified within and distinct without in
the sense that has been commonly understood in the definition,
"Sociology is the science or study of society." This assertion
need cause no dismay. It is by no means removing the sociolo-
gist's right to exist, but is a step toward making that right evident.
The protest here entered is not against the study by sociolo-
gists of national societies, but it is against holding a concept of
a society which appropriates the name to great and imposing
unions of whole populations and which imagines that groups are
united in their multiplex social life as a whole, instead of seeing
that the larger the group, the more likely is their bond of actual
union and criterion of differentiation from all other peoples to be
comparatively simple, if not tenuous. If it is correct to think that
people become a society, not by being united in all the prominent
forms of their associative activity, but whenever they are united in
any one of them, then surely they are a society when united in so
important a form of association as the political activities, and the
state is of course one form of a society. The study of what is
national is an immensely important subdivision of sociology,
though very far from being the whole of it. The study of exten-
sive and permanent groups, whole populations, is important
because it reveals the radiating power of social influences, which
632
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
tend, after sufficient time, to cause the assimilation of a large
percentage of those within their range, so that among people who
are in free communication with each other prominent forms and
effects of social activity become prevalent, and are spoken of as
"national traits;" though the phrase properly means only that
these are rather more prevalent among a given population than
elsewhere, and not by any means that they are peculiar to the
nation described, nor universal among its people. Not one of
these so-called national traits is likely to be universal among the
population, and it may be that no single individual exhibits them
all. Moreover, the phrase should not be understood to mean that
the social radiation to which the prevalence of such traits is due
is hemmed in by national boundaries, nor necessarily that it
originated within them. The study of great groups, like the
nation, helps also to a comprehension of the interaction of
different social processes. The study of smaller societies may not
so illuminate the fact that the activity which they have in common
is affected and determined by many other activities which they do
not have in common. A study of political activity may sooner
lead to the perception that particular group activities are deter-
mined by many other activities. For it is clear that political
activities are affected by activities of many other kinds. The
interdependence of different forms of social activity has been
observed by the keenest students of each politico-national science.
And illustration of such interdependence was the essential service
of the biological analogy. But it is erroneous to jump to the
conclusion that because political activities are truly national,
therefore all the other activities that affect or are affected by the
political are parts of a national unity. Political activities them-
selves constitute a true unity which is affected by other activities,
which are international, sectional, personal, and in every possible
way uncoextensive with the nation or state and in contrast with
its unity. It may be possible to think of any unity as including
all that is related to it. But where will you draw a line around
such a unity? It may be possible to think of the unity of a
national society as built up out of the heterogeneous activities of
portions of the population-activities which they do not share
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
633
with the rest of the population, but do share with members of
other populations. But this is confusion of thought. It not only
ignores differences, but also obscures the true social unities which
are constituted by particular forms of social activity.
The prevalent notion of a society has, perhaps, truth enough
for some uses, but by no means accuracy enough to serve in
defining the object of study for a science. It is the natural result
of a rough and unprecise observation of resemblances, differences,
and interrelationships. It is a common-sense view, in the sense
in which that phrase is used when it is said that the business of
science is to test and correct common-sense views. In doing so,
science quite commonly supplants them, and shows that the earth
is not flat nor fixed, and that the sun does not rise nor set. The
notion of a complex, integrated society is true in so far as it
roughly recognizes some truths, and untrue in that it recognizes
them only roughly, adds unwarranted assumptions, and ignores
subtler realities. We are familiar with the air before we think of
the ether. We are impressed by great "national" movements
and their conspicuous consequences before we attend to the subtle
medium of social activities in which we are immersed, which enter
the molecular recesses of our psychic life, and whose pervasive
efficiency is the main element in social causation.
The word "society," far from denoting so stupendous, defi-
nite, integrated, and organic a unity, as many sociologists have
supposed, is a name for any group of people who are together.
Togetherness, interrelation, is the essential of society. If all
mankind are related by mutual causation, then with reference to
this interrelation there is one all-inclusive society. If at the same
time the members of a given group are related to each other in
a way peculiar to themselves, then by virtue of that relationship
they are a particular society. There are as many societies as there
are related groups. These societies may overlap to any extent.
A single individual may be related in one way to one group, for
instance, by sharing a common religious creed; and in another
way to another group, for instance by entering with them into a
political organization; and similarly he may belong at the same
time to many different societies. Each of us may have been a
634 ·
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
เ
member of thousands of societies, some of them too temporary
and trivial to deserve the name in any very serious sense. Each
of us probably has been a member of hundreds of societies, each
of which has left some permanent effect upon his life and char-
acter. Herein lies the explanation of the variety of individualities
in so far as that is a social product.
Important relations by which people may be united are those
of time, space, similarity, and causation. Similarity of persons.
as persons, is similarity in experience, and experience is conscious
activity. Relations of similarity and causation are more important
than those of space and time alone. If people are together in
time and space, yet without relations of similar experience or of
causation, as may be the case with a group in a railway car, then
they do not constitute a society in any important sense. If they
are united in experiences, or activities that are temporary, trivial,
and without causal importance, then they are a society in a thin
and attenuated sense of that word. There are degrees of associa-
tion, and therefore there are societies of many degrees. A society
is important in proportion to the number of persons united, the
duration of their union, the character of the similar experiences
or activities which unite them, and the causal effectiveness of their
union. A society in the fullest sense of the word is united by all
four of the mentioned forms of relationship. Its members are
together in time and space, but more especially they are together
in similarity of human activities,12 affected by similar causes,
affecting each other, and aware of their union. This is submitted
as an answer to the question, "What is a Society?"
Since the above was written, there has appeared in the
American Journal of Sociology an article by Professor Romanzo
Adams,13 in which he says, in effect, that it is impossible to prove
that society has any sort whatever of objective unity, but that the
12 The word " activity" includes all experience. All experience is psychic
activity, and all psychic activity that the sociologist has anything to do with is
experience. Nearly all experience has an "interest," an element of seeking or
shunning. Acordingly conscious similarity of human activities," at its fullest,
implies conscious co-operation in seeking common ends.
"
18" The Nature of Social Unity," American Journal of Sociology, September,
1904, p. 208.
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
635
sociologist is at liberty to think of society as a unity without
regard to whether it is an objective unity or not; that the ques-
tion of unity is a matter of method of thought. The statement
and argument are astute and ingenious, but an erroneous
hypothesis may be quite as ingenious as a true one.
Is it not preferable to deny that it is fundamentally important
for sociologists even to think of society as having the highly com-
plex unity which it does not objectively possess, and to discover a
form of social unity which is an objective reality? Without mis-
apprehending the idealistic argument, it is possible to insist that it
is important that the scientist should think of the object of his
science as it is.
It is true, not to say a truism, that "we are not concerned with
anything outside the world of experience," 13 in the sense that we
can think only our own thoughts and be conscious of only our own
states of consciousness. Nevertheless, the objective idealist, with-
out disloyalty to his metaphysics, may hold that it is of the
greatest concern to us whether our thoughts correspond to things
as they exist "independent of our experience;" and Professor
Adams appears to be an objective idealist and not a subjective
idealist; that is, he seems to recognize that there are "things in
themselves independent of our experience." And I suppose that
the apparatus of intelligence exists by reason of agelong contact
with things as they are, and that its biological teleology is to
set up subjective conscious states that correspond so well with
things themselves" that they will stimulate actions that fit the
external realities; for example, so that we shall not run against
ledges, leap over precipices, or try to walk up trees; or so that
all the engineers on a railroad, in presence of a given semaphore
signal, which exists out there independent of their subjectivity,
shall think "open switch." And this correspondence between
subjective experience and objective reality is quite as important
for science, as science, as it is for practice; indeed, it may be
said to be the only important consideration for science. Even
abstraction, which thinks things apart which do not exist apart,
is scientifically useful only when it thinks the objective truth about
CC
14 Ibid., p. 211.
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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
its fragment, and is scientifically dangerous in proportion as it
forgets the objective relations of its fragment, or ceases thinking
before it has thought the fragments together again as they really
exist.
It is perfectly true, as Professor Adams says, that we may
select certain bricks in a wall and think of them as a unity; but
our thought, if it is anything intelligible, is a thought of the
bricks as existing in certain relations, in which they really do
exist. We may think of them as in certain spacial relations to
each other, other bricks in the wall not being in the same rela-
tions to these particular bricks; or we may even think of them
merely as the bricks we are thinking of. In the latter case we
are thinking of them as in a certain relation to the thinker, the
objects of his selection. Professor Adams's contention seems to
be that the sociologist selects certain phenomena to think about
and calls them a society, by reason of the fact that he has decided
to think of them together, and that this is all "the social unity" is.
If I understand him correctly, he falls into the same error as those
who say that space and time are only forms of thought. They
are names for real relations between things. And relations are as
real as things. Things are not only thought of as in relations,
they exist in relations to each other. Things that really exist
together in a particular relation to each other thereby constitute
a unity, whether anybody perceives it or not. Not all relations
are worth noticing. Others are among the most important of
realities.
The writer of the article referred to also says that "the social
process in its unity is not psychic," 14 and that to hold that it is
psychic is to imply the existence of a "transcendental somewhat,"
an "over-soul," that can think the social thoughts and will the
social deeds. This is just as true as it would be to say that a
company of marching soldiers cannot be regarded as a physical
unity without implying a colossal pair of legs to do the marching.
The unity in each case is a unity of relations, a unity of similarity
in activities, whether physical or psychic. The unity of the
marching company is real and does not depend on being thought
15 Loc. cit., p. 223.
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
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by the man on the curbstone. And social unities, constituted by
related psychic activities, are likewise real and not dependent on
the subjectivity that conceives the unity.
After all, the formal concept "society" is not the most funda-
mental one for sociology. The statement, "Sociology is the study
of society," even when accompanied by a truthful definition of
society, does not necessarily constitute an adequate definition of
sociology. The formal definition of society cannot be filled out
with its content, nor the conception of sociology receive its signifi-
cance, until an answer has been given to the question, What are
social phenomena? What are the phenomena of which it is true
that similarity with respect to these indicates social unity of a
kind far more significant than mere relation in space and time,
the phenomena that constitute social character in the most impor-
tant sense, and which are conditioned by social causes? The
answer to this query is the supreme element in a true and adequate
conception of sociology.
SECTION III. TWO ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION, WHAT ARE THE
SOCIAL PHENOMENA?
The aim of the last section was not only to answer the ques-
tion, What is a Society? but also, by a process of elimination, to
draw one step nearer to an answer to the question, What are the
characteristic objects of attention for a science of sociology?
It was attempted to remove from the list of tentative answers to
that question, the imposing but semi-imaginary notion of the
great, distinct society of highly complex integration. The defini-
tion of society which was substituted for it, however true and
important, is not an adequate answer to the query, What are the
social phenomena ?
"C
Next after the nation-state society, either other "organiza-
tions" and groups" or else "institutions" have claimed the
attention of sociologists, because they are relatively conspicuous,
permanent, static, and also because they are recognized as means
to social ends; and means are nearer than ends and wont to
press closer upon the attention and get themselves treated as the
be-all and end-all of the process in which they play a part.
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1
Organizations do not furnish the object-matter for a new
general science of "sociology." They are studied by the already
existing special social sciences. Legal, political, economic, reli-
gious and domestic organizations have not escaped painstaking
investigation, and if any forms of organization have escaped such
investigation, they are relatively unimportant. And while it is
not inconceivable that there might be a study of organizations as
such, which should investigate characteristics of organizations
which are not peculiar to those studied by any one social science,
but which belong to all organizations, yet such a study of organi-
zations as forms of association does not promise to reveal their
real significance, which is to be discovered only by studying the
various forms of activity for the sake of which they exist. More-
over, literary, religious, and other cultural activities, and social
activities as a whole, are not embodied in organizations. In so
far as they are organized at all, that fact is only an incident and
not the essence, and the great mass of social interaction is not
organized. Social activities that mold every man, as well as
every group and organization, must escape the sociologist whose
attention is riveted upon organizations. And, if it can be made
to appear that a general science of sociology can grasp this far
richer field, no one will be likely to content himself with the con-
ception of sociology as a study of organizations. Likewise, if it
be said that sociology should be a study of groups, which, whether
organized or not, are at least united by political, creedal, or some
other form of related activities, the same is to be said as has
just been said concerning organizations, namely, that the impos-
ing and important groups are already studied, as groups, by the
special social sciences. And those which are neither important
nor imposing as groups do carry on activities that are important
and that should not escape the attention of the sociologist.
Similarly, of institutions it is to be said that they receive atten-
tion from the existing special social sciences, and that a new gen-
eral science of sociology should not set out either to make itself a
hodge-podge of the study of institutions that are already receiving
detailed, special treatment, or to devote itself to the least impor-
tant and hitherto most neglected institutions. And whatever
J
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
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general truths there are concerning organizations, groups, or
institutions — truths which may not be discovered by any special
social science, and, when once discovered, may pertain to them
all—they are to be sought, not by merely studying organizations
as organizations, nor institutions as institutions, but by studying
the activities of human association, of which institutions and
organizations as such are not the essence, but more or less inci-
dental products and deposits, and which transcend the limits of
group or institutional forms. This is not excluding the sociologist
from the study of any of the products of association, but only
asserting that the range of his attention cannot be defined in these
terms. The truth of this assertion perhaps can be made evident
only by disclosing some more satisfactory view of the sociologist's
field of study.
A kind of social interaction that is of universal human signifi-
cance may appear in transient relations, now of a few individuals
here, now of a few individuals there. These interactions, like all
association, involve a certain degree of togetherness, and for con-
troversial purposes might be called, in a sense, group-phenomena.
It makes little difference what they are called after they are recog-
nized and understood. But to start out in search of group-
phenomena is a good way to prevent adequate recognition or
comprehension of them. Possibly a student of groups, as such,
might recognize that an essential object of sociological study often
may be present where two workmen sit on a doorstep smoking
their evening pipe. But there is danger that he would think such
fleeting phenomena negligible, and scorn the idea that they could
be subjected to scientific study. Yet the kinds of interaction that
go on in such transient meetings of twos and threes are of vast
significance, and by no means to be omitted from any adequate
account of the social process. The impossibility of enumerating
such meetings is no more a rational ground for disregarding them
than the impossibility of taking a census of microbes is a reason
why the pathologist should cease to study microscopic life.
A kind of action that occurred but once, an experience or trait
peculiar to a single individual, might be neglected. But a kind
of experience that pertains to millions cannot be neglected by
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sociologists, even though it recurs in the transient meetings of
twos and threes, and the millions by whom it is repeated never
form a group. Transitions are carried forward by such micro-
scopic phenomena, and when they become group-phenomena the
transition is already accomplished. It is more important for the
sociologist to distinguish kinds of activity that pass between man
and man, than to distinguish established groups. And actions
repeated millions of times, here and there, now and then, are often
of far greater social importance than the decrees of parliaments.
There is another particular in which sociology, as a mere study of
groups or institutions, is blindfolded to objects indispensable to its
investigation. Sociology must take note, not only of temporary
contacts between scattered individuals, but also of forms of asso-
ciation that overleap intervals of space and time. These are of
such significance, both in quality and in quantity, that some of
them must force themselves even upon the student of groups.
And he may conceivably make a definition of the word "group"
or the word "institution," from which none of these which he
has taken into account would necessarily be excluded, however
unlikely it is that he would get them all properly into his perspec-
tive. His habitual concept of a group may be such as not to
sunder from his society the Frenchman at the antipodes of France,
who, as Tarde says, is a Frenchman still. The student of groups
and institutions may possibly give adequate account of the part
played by literature in molding men and societies.
He may
recognize every author and every book and every journal as the
creator of society. If so, then Robinson Crusoe, on his desert
island, was in a group, if he had a Bible or a copy of Homer
from that bounteous ship's store; and if by reading he warmed
a little his desolate heart with thoughts which he shared with the
wise and goodly company in all Christendom and in all ages who
have been quickened by the words he read, then lonesome Crusoe
was in a society of letters with all of those living afar and long
dead. The kind of interactions which it seems so difficult, if not
absurd, to think of as group-phenomena are of the greatest signifi-
cance to sociology; and, moreover, they become manageable and
fruitful objects of study as soon as the sociologist's task and
2.
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theme are adequately conceived. The part they play in making
individual and social life what life is, none can doubt, though
none as yet can fully comprehend it. There is a tide of human
action and influence which beats about every individual of the race
and evokes from each his self-realizing response.
One of the greatest hindrances to the progress of this new
science has been the difficulty of stating sociological problems.
We have been possessed of a general wish to understand society,
but have lacked definite questions to ask our sphinx-specific
questions, the answers to which would contribute toward the
solution of the general problem. Sociologists have been like a
party of men in the night, groping in the dark about the walls
of a mansion which they desire to enter, but unable to find its
doors and windows, getting vague notions of its mass and out-
line, but unable to enter and take possession of its apartments.
Definite problems are the doors and windows, and even while
unsolved they are full of promise, as barred doors give more hope
of entrance than blank walls. Adoption of the view here pre-
sented surrounds us with many manageable problems. As soon
as we realize that it is our task to discover the ways in which men
affect each other, so that men become what they are, we realize
that the unfolding of every human personality is a subdivision of
our theme. To understand the social molding of one common
life from the cradle to the grave would be one of the greatest
possible contributions to sociology. According to this view, every
human act, every human experience, has a natural history, and
has its roots in the interplay with other lives. Not only is the
development of an individuality a sociological problem, but it
ramifies into many sociological problems. A trivial act may
be as well worth studying as a revolution. Here lies one broad
distinction between the principle of dramatic interest which
guides the historian in the selection of his facts, and that which
guides the selection of the sociologist. For the sociologist does
not study any fact in order to understand that fact, but in order
to understand the process from which such a fact arises, from
which such facts have arisen in the past, and from which such
facts will arise in the future. To this end the facts that are of
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themselves most insignificant may best repay investigation. The
spoonful of water which the chemist gets by the union of hydro-
gen and oxygen is of no value, but to understand the composition
of that spoonful of water is to understand the composition of the
water of the five oceans. It is said that in all June no two leaves
are quite alike; certainly no two human experiences are. This
does not dismay the botanist, and should not the sociologist.
Every human experience arises after a manner akin to the rise
of countless other human experiences. It is the methods of the
genesis of human experience from human interaction that we
seek to learn.
Yet although each experience, when understood, presumably
illustrates the method of innumerable experiences, some will
attract the sociologist far more than others, because they obvi-
ously represent some specially important species of experiences, or
illustrate the origin of traits that characterize a class or a popula-
tion. These may not always be better guides to interpretation of
the methods of association than acts which seem more individual
and isolated. But their prevalence is itself a problem to be
explained. One class of experiences that will especially draw the
attention of sociologists are those which it is particularly impor-
tant to control. For example, those related to crime, vice,
pauperism, and education. The kinds of investigation which the
most intelligent exhibition of the practical spirit require can be
adopted as parts of the theoretical quest.
This section has carried the process of elimination farther and
has begun the positive statement of the object of the sociologist's
attention, which will be made more definite in the section to
follow. The characteristic objects of attention for sociology are
neither complex societies, organizations, groups, nor institutions,
nor any other of the great, imposing, and established, but rela-
tively stark and static, deposits of social activity. It is necessary
to conceive the object of sociological study in such a way as to
fix attention upon the comparatively minute and fleeting phe-
nomena that teem with causal efficiency. It is also exceedingly
desirable to attain a few dominant concepts that will serve as the
biologist is served by the differential stain, which picks out and
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
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colors each nerve fiber, too minute to be separated by the dissect-
ing knife; great truths into which we can immerse our confused
social observations, and have the parts that are essentially related,
however scattered and minute, take on a color of their own, and
stand out to view till we see them in their systematic unities; and
not that alone, but also see them pulsating with life.
EDWARD Cary Hayes.
MIAMI UNIVERSITY.
[To be continued]
H
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES. II
SECTION IV.
SOCIOLOGY A STUDY OF PROCESSES
What, then, is it that the sociologist studies? Is there some
special division or aspect of reality that is the object of his investi-
gation, and, if so, what is it? The common and obvious answer
is: "The sociologist studies society." The more elaborate and
analytical answers, when their main contents are summed up,
appear to have been twofold: first, the sociologist studies societies
--social organisms, or at least organizations, groups of people
among whom established relations exist; second, he studies social
institutions—ideas, beliefs, customs, and habits, that have become
common property throughout groups to which these institutions
give character and a certain unity. Each of these answers con-
tains a degree of truth. Not all of them together contain truth
that is complete and exact enough to make a final answer to the
question.
The sociologist is a student of processes. Sciences may begin
with an examination, description, and classification of things;
but all this is preliminary to a study of the processes that explain
the things, the processes by which they have arisen and by which
they are maintained and modified. We recall the time when
natural history occupied itself with minute description and classi-
fication of animals and plants. Now, the chief objects of research
in zoölogy and botany are the physiological processes that pro-
duce, maintain, and modify animals and plants. In the investiga-
tions that advance these sciences the main focus of attention has
shifted from products to processes, from the plant that can be
dried, labeled, and pigeonholed in an herbarium, to plant life. Not
until the processes of being and becoming are the objects of our
attention do we have any developed science of life, any real
explanation of living objects. The transfer of the botanist's
main attention from leaves, stems, and flowers to vital processes
must be paralleled by a transfer of the chief attention of sociolo-
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gists from organizations and institutions to the processes of inter-
action that constitute the life of society.
There is a doctrine among philosophers that all our final
knowledge of anything, living or not, is a knowledge of processes.
They tell us that wherever there is a thing there is an activity of
which the thing is the continuous result; and, if the thing is
unchanging, that is because the activity is constant. Animal life
is a highly complex process, comprising many subordinate pro-
cesses: the beating heart, the circulating blood, the heaving lungs,
peristalsis, osmosis, secretion, and the rest-a continual build-
ing up and tearing down of tissues of many kinds. Plant life is
also a process, less complex and less obvious save to the botanist.
In a dead animal or a log much of the activity has ceased, yet
some still goes on. The gradual process of decay is not the only
activity present in the log; decay, is rather the disturbance of the
activities that are present in the sound timber. In the sound wood
hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen hold each other in a vigorous
embrace, and if that embrace were loosened for an instant, the
result we call wood would disappear. Moreover, the united
hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen are in constant motion. It is
when their union is violently broken down by enzymes, and the
remnants are attacked by the avid oxygen, that decay takes
place and log and wood cease. The very soil into which it
crumbles is to be understood only in terms of process. It is
when molecules are liberated from encumbrance by solution or
fusion 15- that is, when the activities that constitute one kind
of matter are not interrupted by those that constitute some
other kind—that we get crystals. The absolute regularity and
constancy of the process appears in absolutely regular shapes. The
centers of activity push and pull each other just alike, and so hold
each other fast in ranks and files. These centers of activity
are the atoms; and physicists now tell us that atoms are sys-
tems of interacting electrons, and that electrons are vortices.16
18 In fusion communicated motion appears so to reinforce the characteristic
motion of molecules that they tear themselves free, and solution may well be due
to a relation between the vibrations in the body dissolved and the vibrations in the
solvent.
18 This clause is inserted in deference to the recent discoveries in radio-
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We are given to understand that green and red are not qualities
of inert matter, but results of motion. Fragrant and fetid, bitter,
sweet, salt, savory, are results of chemical attacks upon the nerves
of smell and taste. Heavy is a tug. Hot and cold are the vibra-
tion of molecules. Sounds loud and shrill are effects upon us of
motions violent and swift; sounds soft and low, of motions
slow and gentle. Every quality known to any sense of ours
is the effect on us of action; and we know matter only by
these sensations which nothing but action can stimulate. Hence,
if the quality of a stone appears to us fixed and constant, that is
because the activities that reach us from the stone are steady;
as the earth seems solid and unstirred because its rush and whirl
are without interruption, so the stone is to our senses an unchang-
ing thing, because it is the expression of a steady and unjarring
process. This theory of being implies that there are constant
activities continually issuing in results that do not change, results
that are commonly described as static phenomena; while there are
also other activities which reveal their presence by frequent
change, and it is these changing effects that are commonly called
processes. But if this theory be true, then the static is every-
where a cross-section of the dynamic. Acceptance of this view
suggests a corresponding view of the nature of science. Each
thing being the result of a continuous process, the science that
explains it must set forth the process of which it is an expression.
66
"C
Science echoes back to Heraclitus his Távτa xwpeî. The whole
activity. It is asserted that uranium, thorium, and radium, being elements, by the
procedure of their own activities become transmuted into other substances which
also are elements. The address of the president of the British Association for
the Advancement of Science, published in the Popular Science Monthly for Octo-
ber, 1904, contains the following: Gravitation, attraction, and repulsion between
electrically charged bodies, molecular action, and chemical affinity are the feebler
forces of nature and sink into insignificance beside the attractions and repul-
sions between the electric monads themselves." "If the dust beneath our feet be
indeed compounded of innumerable systems, whose elements are ever in the most
rapid motion, yet retain through uncounted ages their equilibrium unshaken
"The new theory of matter analyzes matter, whether molar or molecular,
into something which is not matter at all. The atom is now no more than the
relatively vast theater of operations in which minute monads perform their orderly
evolutions; while the monads themselves are not regarded as units of matter, but
as units of electricity, so that matter is not merely explained, but explained away."
""
"
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is in flux; being is process, not fixity. Not alone the immov-
able earth spins on its axis and careers around the sun; the solar
system sweeps through space, the fixed stars are not fixed, atoms
are systems of interaction, and elements of elements are power.
The soul of man we can know only as a concatenation of experi-
ences.¹7 We are a part of the never-ceasing change. Yet we need
not be distraught, nor fear as if we were like land-birds driven out
to sea where there is no solid thing to rest upon. Motion itself is
fixity, the only fixity. Each atom in its place is more obedient
than a Spartan hoplite. The process that we are is inflected into
the processes of nature, and the One Force in which all things
consist is self-consistent. Society is not an exception to all nature
which knows no exceptions. Society is a process. A sociological
problem is a glimpse of a process to be traced. As the psychologist
does not study thought by describing thoughts that are written
down in books, but by a study of thinking of which thought is the
function, so the sociologist must be not merely a student of
societies, in the popular sense, but a student of associating.
Society is associates associating. To know what society is we
must know what associating is. In order to render adequate the
definition of sociology as "the study of society," it must be recog-
nized that the word "society" in the definition is virtually a
verbal noun.18
Whether or not we accept the metaphysic of power in its
application to inorganic matter and the sciences of the inorganic,
it is sufficiently plain that the sciences of life, at least, are studies
of processes. Sociology is a science of life at its highest potency.
It can find problems in the static, but not solutions; and cannot
understand the problems until it looks upon that in society which
seems most fixed as the evidence of a process to be discovered.
This discovery is its real task; these processes are the true objects
of the sociologist's attention.
17 Wundt, Methodenlehre, Part IV, chap. 2, sec. 4a.
18 As read in Chicago in the spring of 1902, this declaration closed this section,
though, by a change of order, that which here follows had preceded it, except
the two paragraphs which now conclude this section. The title then used was,
66
The Sociologists' Object of Attention." Secs. 5 ff., which will appear in later
numbers of this Journal, were not read at that time, and only parts of them were
written.
}
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The fact that even among those who have given the subject
careful heed there is no clear and generally accepted notion as
to what is the province of sociology, may be due to this, that the
attempt has been to define a kind or aspect of accomplished facts
instead of a kind of processes. Confusion would result among
the material sciences if they should try to divide things among
them. They would literally be reduced to fighting over the same
bone. The biologist would, with indisputable right, claim every
bone; but so also would the physicist claim it as a thing of hard-
ness, impenetrability, and weight; and, with a claim equal to
either, the chemist also, as so much lime. But between the three
processes or kinds of action of which the bone is an expression —
growth for the biologist, gravity for the physicist, and atomic
affinity for the chemist - there is no confusion; and may not the
difficulty as to just what is the province of sociology disappear as
we adopt the true view, that here as there the objects of scientific
study are processes?
Every science or for us it suffices to say, every science of
life—has its static and dynamic side. That is, it describes what
it finds existent, sustained; and it also describes the processes by
which all that is arose and is sustained. In other phrase, it
describes beings, and aims to understand their being and their
becoming; or, seeing what is, it asks how, that which is become,
continues, and is transformed. In the static, the extant, the
results of many processes and the problems of many sciences exist
together in confusion; by distinguishing the processes, intelligi-
bility and order emerge. The search for things rather than move-
ments, groups and institutions rather than interactions, national
societies rather than the foci of association, has baffled defini-
tion and confused analysis. Society must be both defined and
analyzed, and it is society as a process, or as persons who carry
on a process, that can be defined; and it is when the congeries
of social phenomena is conceived in terms of process that it can
be analyzed. The fundamental and apocalyptic analysis will be an
analysis into the kinds of activity of which it is composed.
The static phenomena pertaining to society were studied be-
fore sociology came into existence, and will continue to be studied
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
755
if no special science of sociology should be developed. Economic,
political, juridical, linguistic, and religious institutions can be
described without the existence of a special science to correspond
to the name of sociology. But after this has been admitted, the
question remains to be answered whether there does not exist a
kind of processes which are not exclusively economic or political
or religious, the results of which appear not in any single class
of human institutions, but in them all; and requiring for its
investigation a special science which is neither economics nor
politics, nor any previously existing discipline, but sociology.
If such processes exist, the results of their study might at length
be taken up into the special social sciences to aid in the explana-
tion of particular facts, as the results of pure geometry are taken
up into the explanation of the particular facts of astronomy and
physics. That would not make sociology any less a special science
than geometry. The question is: Are there any kinds of social
activity requiring investigation that is not limited by the horizon
of any special social science? If such activities exist, then there
is need of a special science of sociology.
Now, there is no difficulty in seeing that there are forces,
factors, and processes that are active in producing and shaping
social phenomena, and the effects which are not confined to the
field of any one of the special social sciences. It seems not too
much to say that all the processes of nature and human nature
are actively shaping phenomena in the field of every social science;
so that general sociology, if it is to be a study of the processes
which shape social phenomena not of one sort, but of all sorts,
and which are adequately traced by no one social science, must
be a general philosophy; an attempt to account for human experi-
ence in the light of all science, synthesizing the results of all
sciences by referring all discovered processes to their effect upon
man. This is a possible view of the sociologist's task. But is
there not a kind of processes which not only have social effects-
all natural processes do that—but also have a social origin and
essence, which are not comprehended within the sphere of atten-
tion of any of the older sciences, but call for a new adjustment
of attention? If these conditions are fulfilled, the sociologist,
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without waiving the right to construct a new philosophy, if he
can, is also confronted with the task of developing a special
science.
If there is any social process that fulfils these conditions, what
is it? How can it be identified so as to become the object of our
attention? An answer to this question that is likely to offer
itself to the mind is, that the social process is social evolution,
and that the special social sciences are related to sociology some-
what as the special sciences that treat of organic life are related
to the study of biological evolution, which has contributed so
much to the advancement of these sciences, but which itself still
lacks so much of completeness and so urgently invites research.
Whether this be the final answer to our query or not, the idea of
social evolution is so important and interesting as to call for
remark at this point, and, for the moment at least, we may use
the phrase "social process" as equivalent to social evolution.
The "growth" 19 of a society does not mean mere increase in
population, any more than the "growing up" of a child to man-
hood is mere increase in bulk into a two-hundred-pound infant,
and societies are always growing, though their growth is not
always progress. There is an onward and upward sweep in human
affairs, but there are also retrograde movements. There are not
only negative failure and lack, there are also positive harm and
ruin included in the social process, and to be explained by knowl-
edge of the principles of social causation. If the sociologist studies
the processes in which human lives affect other human lives,
he must recognize that men affect each other for evil as well as
good. Association includes war and hate as well as love and
beneficence. And the sociologist must study the whole process
as it is, good and bad together. The immigrant who brought
from a Moravian home a pietistic and refined conscience, and,
settling in the slums of an American city, became depraved,
exhibits a social phenomenon as really as another immigrant on
whom a better phase of our civilization has produced an opposite
effect. The depraving forces were all present in the complex
19 Possibly we might receive a suggestion from the biologists' distinction
between "growth" in mass and “development" in organization.
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American social process, and not to be omitted from any true
account of it. Forces of evil are sometimes referred to as anti-
social. That phrase misleads whenever, as has sometimes been
the case, it conveys the impression that evil and forces of evil are
not "social" phenomena, as well as good and the forces of good.
Even the forces of good have in great measure been directed to
their effect by no foresight and intention. The cumulative result
of human progress or decline has in great part been due to the
countless human interactions that have leaped forth with no judg-
ment passed upon the motive and no calculation of the result.
For example, the expressions that make up what we call uncon-
scious influence, which create the social atmosphere, and mold
the consciences of those who live in it, the panic that puts an
army to rout, the courageous bearing that helps to save the day,
the epidemic of crime, the waves of religious enthusiasm or of
patriotism that sometimes sweep over a people — all these scantily
illustrate the class of socially significant actions that are unin-
tended; though when they exist on a great scale they are likely
to become mixed with calculation.
Not only are unintended actions of great social significance,
but still more significant are the unintended effects that issue
from even the most deliberate deeds. Spencer remarks that the
indirect and unforeseen results of social action are often, if not
usually, more important than those intended. He applies the
remark to the thoroughly considered enactments by which states-
men seek to influence social progress. How much more far-
reaching is the truth when applied to the deeds of the millions
who design no far-reaching effects, but whose numberless activi-
ties are in fact incomparably more effective in determining the
character of social growth than all the enactments of legislatures!
Our knowledge of social causation has been so limited that the
best-intended acts might unwittingly open a Pandora's box, while
also beneficient consequences sometimes flow from follies, and
even from sins. Lawmakers and agitators, clear of purpose but
dim in their views of the social process, fail of their aims, but
sometimes reach good that was not intended. And vastly more
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do the multitudes of men, each following his individual motive,
work out the social changes.
As was made clear in the preceding section, the numberless
social activities, mostly microscopic, but of continental magnitude
in their fecund composition and combination, are not peculiar to
established organizations or groups. Their effects are often
indirect and circuitous, and the efficacy, both of the greater acts
and of the seminal combinations of minute ones, traverses long
intervals of space and time. Time and terrestrial space set us
no boundaries. We are all day in social contact with the men of
ages past and of every continent and clime.20 On rising I seize
a sponge, by service of a South Sea Islander who got it for me
from the ocean's floor; a cake of soap made by a Frenchman;
a towel made by Turks. With each article of my apparel I receive
the service of another group of my fellow-men. My underwear
is from Scotchmen, or perhaps from Merino in Spain. My shoes'
leather was stripped from the calf by Brazilian graziers, cut,
lasted, and stitched by Yankees in Massachusetts. My coat is of
wool from Australian rangers, carded, spun, and woven by
Englishmen. To inventors, machinists, designers, web-drawers,
weavers, I owe its fabric; to other such, its lining; to others, its
silk braid and its canvas; its buttons of metal and mohair required
the labors of yet other scattered companies. How many hands.
have touched some part of its material! How many brains have
perfected the technique of all the processes of its manufacture!
What an army in many detachments- some with fresh young
faces, some with bent and toil-worn forms do me service when
I don my coat. Throughout the day the marvel does not cease.
My breakfast orange was picked by a Florida negro; my coffee,
raised by the brown folk of Java and Arabia; my steak comes
from a Texas ranchman; my corn-roll, from a Kansas farmer.
All have been assembled at my table by aid of those who tame
the forces of nature, and build railroads and steamships, and of
uncounted common men. Having received in the first hour of
the day all these physical services, I take up the morning paper
20 Compare Harris, Moral Evolution, p. 36, and Faucett, Manual of Political
Economy, 6th ed., p. 12.
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and put myself into psychic contact with the world. It would
require far too long a catalogue to recount how those who have
made science and literature and art and customs and constitutions
and laws throng about a common life throughout a common day;
how our lives go on with all the earth and all the ages in one
process; how we live under the influence of the lawmakers of
England and of Rome, the artists of Greece, and the prophets and
apostles of Israel, and how we share in their greatness. It is not
alone the few pre-eminent souls that live pervasive and immortal.
We each partake of the greatness of our race; and this, too, not
alone in that we daily receive miraculous gifts for our physical
and our spiritual lives, but also in the greatness of the service we
return. Not Phidias only, but the mechanic of today, carving to
the line the foreman drew-nay, the carrier of the mortar —
gives immortality to the beauty that was Greece. The newsboy
thanks to Gutenberg and his successors renders me an
incredible service. And the mother in the nursery repeats the
teachings of Christ, and as they fall from her lips they are as
good as new and as potent of salvation. Like links in a chain
we hang on all the past, and the future hangs on us. "Our gen-
eration is a parliament of timeless persons, of whom we, the
living, are the least. By the fiction of death those are supposed
to be absent who actually hold the balance of power.' And
when we ourselves "join the majority" it will be a governing
majority, for we then shall be a part of the past that will have
created a new present. What that new present is to be waits on
the actions of today. The social process is unbroken. In it we
all enjoy an immortality that reaches backward so that we share
the wisdom and inspiration of race-experience, and reaches for-
ward into the greater blessing or the cursing for which we
prepare.
"21
The society we seek to understand is not so much a being as a
becoming. That which becomes is human experience and activity
of various types, to some of which we give the name of institu-
tions. The causal conditions from which they emerge are more
intricate than the causes of other phenomena, but perhaps not
21 Professor Small in American Journal of Sociology, November, 1900, p. 377.
¡
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THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
more fugitive, and may be even less difficult to observe than the
conditions of physical life and growth and change. We are told
that, by methods which we partly know and partly guess, and
cannot wholly even guess, this physical world, with all its diversi-
fied and rich content, has been evolved from a monotonous
mist that hung along the border-line between being and non-
existence. The social world has also had its evolution, dating
from a time not so remote, and proceeding by methods which it
is not rash to think are more accessible to investigation. And
shall no worthy object of study be perceived in this evolution by
which, from its poor precarious beginnings, the social world in
which we live has risen? Bacon said truly that we are the true
antiquity, and that which is called antiquity was the childhood
of the race. It is only ignorance or predetermined blindness that
can believe in a golden age that is somewhere behind us, and
receding ever farther into the unreturning past, though "we may
look backward for hope and cheer, since thus we see the direction
of the journey of humanity." Already practical men and students
of politics have begun to recognize, though inadequately, that
there is a social process which it would be worth while to under-
stand, which is not political nor national, but which underlies
politics and affects that which is national; that a new law does
not constitute a reform, but that reform is an effect of subtler
agencies. The path of progress is smoothed not chiefly by the
plow and roller of legislation, but, like the roads in central Africa,
by the passing of many feet. This path-making sociology must
understand and explain.
But however much we emphasize the idea of past social evolu-
tion, it does not by any means complete the concept of the social
process. The feet of the many are always passing. The development
of the social world goes on with ever-increasing complexity and
multiplying possibilities of further advance. Therefore the study
of social evolution is not a study of the past alone. Contemporary
social causation is one with the process hitherto. And the social
present is continuously caused. And even the social phenomena
which are most nearly fixed and changeless are manifestations of
the social process.
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Many persons, including Comte himself, have identified the
dynamic conception of society only with the idea of society's evo-
lution and change. The dynamic conception of society as here set
forth has as much to do with permanence as with change. It has been
said that even an unchanging stone can be conceived in terms of
process, and certainly the most established social institution can be
so conceived. An institution considered as established and per-
manent for instance, the courts or the school system-would
be called a static phenomenon by those who contrast the static
with the dynamic, and identify dynamic phenomena only with
change. But in reality such an institution is as really a dynamic
phenomenon when thoroughly established as when it was in the
act of coming into existence or is undergoing transformation.
When thoroughly established, and as they say static, it has
become a set of relatively constant and regular social activities.
Besides past evolution, then, the social process includes also
contemporaneous social activity and causation. The former ex-
plains the difference between historic periods; the latter explains
the difference between social classes. It is often the case that two
families living in the same city ward, because of different opera-
tion of social causes, are separated by a gulf as wide as that
between historic centuries. The differences are other than those
between historic periods, but they are as real and as great. Some,
identifying sociology with study of social evolution, care only
for investigations of the past and the primitive, and center their
attention chiefly on that which they recognize as good in the
making. Others, intent on the problems of today, are impa-
tient of such studies of the bygone and the primitive, and
center their attention on the present, and often chiefly on what
they recognize as present evil, and the question how it comes
to miss the better that is so near it. To restrict the scope of
sociology in either way is wrong by being only partly right. The
social process is one. The stream of the social past debouches in
the swirling present. The principles in operation are alike in both.
To discover these principles is the aim of sociology. Once dis-
covered, they may be applied to the solution of present problems,
or to the construction of a scientific history.
T
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For the discovery of these principles, the study of the past and
of the present have each some advantages that the other lacks.
Our knowledge of the present is incomparably more complete
than that which we can have of any past epoch. And our knowl-
edge of the social movements in which we participate is more
intimate than that which we can have of those which survive
among backward peoples. On the other hand, in the past long
sweeps of social causation can be traced, and the repetition of
similar instances gives play to the comparative method, which
reveals the essential and ever-present conditions of similar phe-
nomena, and makes it possible to distinguish the nonessential
elements of situations in which the phenomena are observed,
affording an elimination of the accidental and isolation of the
essential, like that effected in the laboratory. And from the
highly evolved complexity of the present we can escape to the
comparative simplicity of earlier stages.
Is the idea of the social process the answer to the question with
which this section opened: What phenomena are the objects of
the sociologist's attention? Is it enough to say in answer to the
question: He is a student of the social process? And have we
identified a kind of process which fulfils the conditions enumerated
above, so as to require the existence of a separate science which
is not economics or politics or any of the older special social
sciences, but the newer science of sociology? This idea that the
sociologist is not a student of things, of fixed results, but of a
social process, which finds expression in all the phenomena that
are studied by the special social sciences, and which in essence and
method is not peculiar to any of them, but underlies them all
this conception, when first it took shape in my mind, seemed to
be the revelation for which I was striving. But further reflection
raises further questions. This is not so much the recognition of a
new kind of reality as further insight into familiar realities; and
what it requires may not be a new science, but only completer
adjustment of old ones to the evolutionary and dynamic point of
view. The familiar phenomena of economics, politics, law, reli-
gion, etc., require to be studied as manifestations of process, the
static as instantaneous photographs of the dynamic, the permanent
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
763
as the constant function of regular and unintermittent activities.
Emphasize the dynamic side as we will, yet it remains true that
no process can be studied unless it "amounts to something." In
more scientific phrase, a process can be identified only by its
effects. Have we discovered any new kind of effects, or is it only
that the familiar social sciences have been studying effects with
inadequate attention to the processes of which they are the expres-
sions, and that we have merely come to a more adequate realiza-
tion that the fact of process characterizes social phenomena as it
does other phenomena? Have we discovered a new kind of
process, or merely come to realize that what we have been
looking at all along was process, though we did not know it;
that the very substance of these phenomena which we have been
describing and trying to account for is the process that perpetually
brings them forth? It need not daunt us to think that this view
may require the familiar social sciences to undergo as complete
a transformation as that which overtook the science of natural
history, when it was reconstructed into biology by the transfer
of attention to the study of processes. Ernst Haeckel for the
physical scientists, and Wilhelm Wundt for the mental scientists,
have said that, as the material sciences have had their blossoming-
time in the nineteenth century, so the sciences of which sociology
is the type, if not the sum, may be expected to have their
blossoming-time in the twentieth. Before such prophecies can be
fulfilled, long and wide avenues of further advance must be
discerned. And it is not excessive optimism to hope that they
will appear by the light of the dynamic conception of social
phenomena. The candid admission that the social process shows
its most important results in the fields already occupied by such
sciences as economics, politics, and ethics, is not the same as
saying that all existing phenomena have been adequately studied
even by the static and "descriptive" method. Moreover, when
the dynamic conception of social phenomena becomes habitual,
it may be expected to lead to a shifting of appraisal such that
facts hitherto regarded as relatively negligible will be seen to be
important, and such that added to the present list of social
sciences there may be one or more devoted to the study of social
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activities that have been regarded as too ephemeral or insignifi-
cant for serious study, but which illustrate the method of the
social process, or contribute to the cumulative evolution which
cometh not with observation," but is of mightier significance
than dramatic and eruptive events. But no such mere addition
to the list of social sciences will constitute sociology. And the
importance of the dynamic concept of society will not be confined
to any such relatively new field of research; it already is dis-
tinctly appearing in the study of economic, political, legal, and
ethical phenomena and in the history of religion, language, art,
and science. The temporary confusion as to the proper scope
and method of study in some of these fields, a feeling of the
inadequacy of results hitherto attained, which exists in some
quarters, and an increase of attention to the psychologic, that is
the active, aspect of these phenomena, all are due in part to the
dawning of the dynamic concept. To those who adopt this view
as the guide of their investigations, the obvious interweaving of
the social activities will forbid mutilating abstraction, and pro-
mote the growth of the realization that there is unity, or at any
rate correlation, in the social process. And this realization may
of itself suffice to create the need for the word "sociology" as a
collective designation for the sciences that study this totality,
which we indeed may analyze, in thought, for purposes of easier
apprehension, but which, in fact, stubbornly retains its vast
complexity.
The statement that the objects of sociological study are pro-
cesses means that the students of the existing particular social
sciences, as well as of branches of social investigation that may
remain to be worked out, cannot find the objects of their most
fruitful study in phenomena regarded as established, fixed, and
static, be they never so monumental and institutional, but will
find them rather in changes and the conditions of change which
are often diffused, minute, and fleeting. It means also that which
is yet more fundamental and significant, namely, that social
phenomena are essentially activities, whether they are constant or
whether they are changing, and that the most significant social
causes are likewise activities. "Associating" is nothing apart
SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES
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from the various activities which people perform together, and
these activities are economic, political, religious, etc., etc. Must
sociology, then, be either a mere collective name for the particular
social sciences taken together; or else a study of the crumbs that
fall from the tables of these sciences-an investigation of neg-
lected, subordinate, or primitive human activities? We must
decline to accept, without further research, either of these views.
EDWARD CARY HAYES.
MIAMI UNIVERSITY.
The four sections here printed appeared in the American Journal of Sociology,
March and May, 1905. Discussion of the questions suggested in the closing para-
graphs will appear in later numbers of that Journal, under the heading "Socio-
logical Construction Lines."
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