'.•■--*U|.;-: njlfj. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES ^•^SF GENERAL SOCIOLOGY AN EXPOSITION OF THE MAIN DEVELOPMENT IN SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY FROM SPENCER TO RATZENHOFER ALBION W. SMALL PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ,'o 2>4-D CHICAGO THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 1905 )\m 1907 Copyright 1905 By The University or Chicago Entered at Stationers Hall 5 C S 4 SU3 PREFACE Treatises always have their place, but one may venture the belief that, in the present stage of sociological thought, there is more use for the humbler service of a conspectus. There is more in common between the scattered forces of sociology than can easily be made to appear. Differences of emphasis create illusions of separateness, and even antagonism, where there is only division of labor. Disagreements about details of fact or method cover up unities in fundamental conception. A dis- tinctive social philosophy is already here, and the sociologists accept it more generally than most of their number realize. We need claim for it no more than that it is a point of view, first about the reality in question, and second about ways of inquiring into the reality. This philosophy has happily as yet a very meager doctrinal content, as distinguished from its literature of scope and method. It is the more free to grow into a commanding scien- tific technique. Whoever attempts to map.the present outlook of sociology will, of course, put his own limitations on exhibit ; but even a rude chart of present sociology will doubtless pay for itself in helping others presently to make a better one. The following outline, accordingly, contains the skeleton of a lec- ture course occupying four hours a week for an academic year, and of a program of seminar work in sociological methodology continuing through three years. The outline also represents, in a general way, the point of view occupied by my colleagues in the Department of Sociology in the University of Chicago. Of course, they are in no way responsible for anything which this syllabus contains, and I do not know to what extent their conclusions about details may differ from those here indicated. The course of lecture and seminar study to which the pres- ent arnri_i-^jent is an introduction constitutes one of several vi PREFACE lines of approach by which graduate students are introduced to research in sociolog}' in the University of Chicago, The contents of this book are just what they purport to be — the actual working syllabus of the course. In form it is rough, fragmentary, unsymmetrical. Quite likely the portions which are worked out most in detail will for that reason seem to be appraised by the author above their relative worth. Both intrinsically and in my own estimate, however, these parts of the outline may be quite subordinate and incidental to others which the syllabus merely mentions by title. It is hoped that the table of contents will serve in some measure to correct apparent errors of perspective in the text. The things said and left unsaid in the syllabus are no criterion of the relative values assigned to the subjects so disproportionately discussed. They merely represent certain didactic conveniences. For practical purposes certain things need more than others to be registered in shape for ready reference. Other things which are perhaps more important may then be attended to with better results. The main objects of this syllabus are, first, to make visible different elements that must necessarily find their place in ultimate sociological theory; and, second, to serve as an index to relations between the parts and the whole of sociological science. Innumerable sociologists have asserted, and are still assert- ing, not merely that the portion of knowledge, or the " base of knowledge, about which they are primarily interested is a part of sociology, but that it, and it alone, is sociology. These conflicting prophets tend either to divide their disciples into narrow and intolerant sects, or to confuse all who attempt to reconcile apparent contradictions in their doctrines. The aim of this syllabus is not to exploit another of these competing systems of sociology, but to bring into view the field of knowl- edge which all sociologists have instinctively attempted to sur- vey. The aim is, further, to show how the different attempts to gain knowledge of this field actually supplement and rein- force each other. They have not been systematic or intentional PREFACE vii divisions of labor. They have rather been unorganized and wasteful. Nevertheless, enough work has been done to demon- strate an essential reason for all the seemingly unrelated effort. There is knowledge to be gained. Many men have been in quest of it from many points of approach. The result is increasing definiteness of perception as to the precise knowl- edge needed, and clearer recognition of the reciprocal depend- ence of the different plans for gaining the knowledge.^ In a word, whether we will or no, men's thoughts are pass- ing under the control of a distinctly new conception of human life — its facts, its meanings, its moral implications, and the resources for realizing the purposes given in this latest world- interpretation. Psychology and sociology are the most impor- tant media through which this new thought is finding expres- sion. It is not worth while to attempt at this point to say how function and merit are divided between them. Enough that psychology and sociology, both immature, are together formu- lating a " world-consciousness " in a way which must surely set off the epoch upon which we have entered from all the thought-eras that have preceded. Comparatively few men are aware of this radical shifting of view ; but because of it there is already going on, and there must continue to go on, a general rethinking of all our theories, from our most concrete economic and political and legal poli- cies, to our logic and our theologies and our metaphysics. In the aggregate the sociologists have already done much to answer the question : What, and how, and to what purpose, is association of human beings with each other ? This syllabus attempts not merely to report these results, but to correlate them in a constructive way. It is an attempt both to give the hyman a general idea of the ground covered by sociological theory, and to orient the student who wishes to prepare him- self for independent sociological research. For both of these reasons the syllabus is deliberately not a * Cf. " A Decade of Sociology," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XI, p. I. viii PREFACE bibliography. It is easy to bewilder and discourage both lay- men and young specialists by revealing the already unwieldy mass of sociological literature. If this is to be ventured at all, it should be by degrees, in connection with special divisions of the subject. In this discussion references to the literature have been limited strictly by the immediate demands of the argu- ment. One further purpose of the syllabus may be distinctly avowed. It is a frank address to the whole fellowship of scholars throughout the social sciences. It is an argument to the effect that knowledge of any portion or aspect of human experience is deceptive, if it is not correlated with knowledge of all the other phases of experience that help to make the whole- ness of life, and if it is not set in its proportional place in a scale of knowledge reaching from the minutest detail of individual experience to the most inclusive world-philosophy. A sociology is abortive, if it is not a higher correlation and generalization of all the kinds of knowledge about men which are derived from more intensive observation of abstracted phases of life. The special social sciences are mere dissections of dead tissue, if they do not relate themselves at last to a common sociology. Our task, then, is to show how far the sociologists have gone toward establishing a point of view that will reveal the actual world in which real men have their life- problems. The explanatory clause in the title should account for the nature of the references, in the following pages, to other socio- logical writers. As the book does not profess to contain a system of sociology, but merely an argument to indicate the line of action which may ultimately work nut a credible sys- tem ; so it equally disclaims the intention of proposing even an outline of a history of sociology. The two chapters entitled "The History of Sociology" merely sketch a few historical factors which have peculiarly intimate connections with the main line of development that the Ix^dy of the argument attempts to explain. If the proper task of an historian had been . PREFACE ix undertaken, it would have been necessary to place the work of every writer mentioned, and of many not named, in a per- spective quite different from that in which it appears, or fails to appear, in this syllabus. Much work of first-rate impor- tance for general sociology can nevertheless not be used to advantage in a rapid survey of the trunk line of development in recent sociological theory. Our thesis is that the central line in the path of methodological progress, from Spencer to Ratzcnhofcr, is marked by gradual shifting of effort from analogical representation of social structures to real analysis of social processes. I have not even presumed to pronounce upon the relative claims of different scholars to credit for this change ; still less to compare the importance of work directly upon this primary method with that of men who have been engaged upon more special inquiries. My attempt has been simply to expound the change itself, and its bearing upon cer- tain prime factors in sociological problems. With this pur- pose in view, I have made use of material most directly in point. An adequate history of sociology may recognize intrin- sically superior merit in a large amount of work not brought into focus from the present center of attention. Forestudies for considerable portions of this syllabus have appeared from time to time since* 1900 in the American Journal of Sociology. The substance of Part VIII was printed, under the title The Significance of Sociology for Ethics, in the " Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago," Vol. IV, and also as a separate monograph. June i, 1905. TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I. INTRODUCTION Chapter I. The Subject-Matter of Sociology . Chapter II. Definitions of Sociology . Chapter III. The Impulse of Sociology Chapter IV. The History of Sociology Chapter V. The History of Sociology (continued) Chapter VI. The Problems of Sociology PAGE 3 23 36 40 63 98 PART II. SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS A WHOLE COMPOSED OF DEFINITELY ARRANGED PARTS (STRUCTURE) (An Interpretation of Herbert Spencer) Chapter VII. The Place of Spencer in Sociology . . . 109 Chapter VIII. Spencer's Analysis of Society . . . . 115 Chapter IX. The Value of Spencer's Method .... 130 PART III. SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS A WHOLE COMPOSED OF PARTS WORKING TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE RESULTS (FUNCTION) (An Interpretation of SchdMe) Chapter X. A Conspectus of Schaffle's Scheme .... 157 Chapter XI. The Value of Schaffle's Method .... 167 PART IV. SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS A PROCESS OF ADJUST- MENT BY CONFLICT BETWEEN ASSOCIATED INDIVIDUALS Chapter XII Chapter xni Chapter XIV Chapter XV Chapter XVI Chapter XVII Chapter XVIII. Chapter XIX (An Interpretation of Ratsenhofer) The Problem Restated Ratzenhofer's Epitome of His Theory Elements of the Social Process . The Nature of the Social Process The Primitive Social Process Stages of the Social Process The Social Process in Civic Groups The Latent Antagonisms in States 183 189 196 201 207 213 224 242 CONTENTS Chapter XX. Types of Antagonistic Interests in States . Chapter XXI. Types of Antagonistic Interests in States (con- tinued) ........ Chapter XXII. Typical Conflicts of Interest in the State . Chapter XXIII. Typical Conflicts of Interest in the State (con- tinued) . . • . PAGB 265 281 PART V. SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS A PROCESS OF ADJUST- MENT BY CO-OPERATION BETWEEN ASSOCIATED INDIVIDUALS (Further Interpretation of Ratsenhofer) Chapter XXIV. General Survey 325 Chapter XXV. The Content of the Social Process . . . 344 Chapter XXVI. The Transition from Struggle to Co-operation . 357 Chapter XXVII. The Actual Conflict of Interests in Modern Society . . . . , . . . 372 PART VI. CONSPECTUS OF CONCEPTS DERIVED BY ANALYSIS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS Chapter XXVIII. Chapter XXIX. Chapter XXX. Chapter XXXI. Chapter XXXII. Chapter XXXIII. Chapter XXXIV. Chapter XXXV. Chapter XXXVI. Chapter XXXVII. Relation of Part VI to the Whole Argument . Schedule of Sociological Concepts . The Conditions of Society; the Elements of Society; Society; the Physical Environment Interests ....... The Individual ...... The Spiritual Environment ; Contacts ; Differ- entiation ; Group ; Form of the Group ; Conflict; Social Situations Association ; the Social ; the Social Process . Social Structure ; Social Functions ; Social Forces; Social Ends; Subjective Environ- ment ; Social Consciousness ; the Socio- logical Point of View .... Some Incidents of the Social Process . Some Incidents of the Social Process (con- tinued) ....... 397 401 404 425 443 482 501 524 559 589 PART VII. THE SOCIAL PROCESS CONSIDERED AS A SYSTEM OF PSYCHICAL PROBLEMS Chapter XXXVIII. The Relation of Part VII to the Previous Argument ...... 619 CONTENTS xiii PAGE Chapter XXXIX. The Elements of Social Causation . . 626 Chapter XL. The Initial Problems of Social Psychology . 640 PART VIII. THE SOCIAL PROCESS CONSIDERED AS A SYSTEM OF ETHICAL PROBLEMS Chapter XLI. Current Confusion of Moral Standards . . 653 Chapter XLI I. The Unknown Quantity in Moral Problems . 662 Chapter XLIII. The Logical Form of Moral Judgments . . 666 Chapter XLIV. The Relation of the Process-Conception of Life to Moral Judgments ..... 674 Chapter XLV. The Sociological Content of Moral Judgments . 678 Chapter XLVI. Working Tests of Ethical Valuations . . 686 Chapter XLVII. Sociological Prerequisites for Ethical Valuation 690 Chapter XLVIII. Categorical and Telic Valuations Contrasted in the Case of Temperance .... 697 PART IX. THE SOCIAL PROCESS CONSIDERED AS A SYSTEM OF TECHNICAL PROBLEMS Chapter XLIX. The Premises of Practical Sociology . . . 705 Chapter L. Social Achievement in the United States . . 718 Chapter LI. Conclusion 728 PART I INTRODUCTION CHAPIER I THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY The proposition to be developed in this chapter, and then in greater detail throughout the syllabus, is that the subject- matter of sociology is the process of human association} Ever since Comte proposed the name " sociology," and parallel with all subsequent attempts to give the term a definite content, one mode of attack upon the proposed science has been denial that it could have a subject-matter not already pre- empted by other sciences. This sort of attack has been encouraged by the seemingly hopeless disagreement among sociologists about the scientific task that they were trying to perform. If sociology has had anything to say about primitive peoples, for instance, it has been accused of violating the terri- tory of anthropology and ethnology. If it has dealt with evi- dence recorded by civilized races, it has been charged with invading the province of the historian. If it has touched upon the relations of social classes in modern times, the political scientist or the economist has warned it to cease infringing upon his monopoly. Thus sociology has seemed to workers in other sciences either a pseudo-science, attempting to get pres- tige in their own fields by exploiting quack methods, or a ' The idea of human association as a process has been familiar to philosophers since Hegel, but hardly in a realistic sense. From abstract dialectics to socialistic agitation, the idea has had a certain vogue and influ- ence. It would not be difificult to show that all the sociologists since Comte have more or less consciously assumed this concept as their major premise. So far as I am aware, the theorem of this chapter was first formulated by Professor E. C. Hayes, in a monograph written in 1902, and published, under the title " Sociological Construction Lines," in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. X, pp. 603 and 750. Professor Ross had virtually assumed the above formula, though he did not directly declare it, in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. IX, pp. 201 ff. (cf. Foundations of Sociology, p. 91), and his projected book on social processes will go far toward promoting the theorem from the rank of a neologism to that of a commonplace. 4 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY mere collector of the waste thrown aside by the more important sciences. Sociologists themselves have unintentionally done not a little to confirm this impression. As has been hinted above, their failure to agree upon a definition of their science, or upon precise description of their task, has seemed to afford ocular proof that their alleged science was merely a name with no corresponding content.^ Has sociology a material of its own ? Jealous friends of the older sciences promptly answer ** No." Friends of the new science as confidently answer " Yes; " but they have not always been able to justify the answer to each other, or even to themselves. The formula adopted above is not an individual variation of the many alternatives already proposed as a fair field for a science of sociology. It is rather an interpretation of all the efforts, both within and without the older sciences, which have been prompted by a more or less distinct feeling that there are important reaches of knowledge about human conditions not provided for in the programs of the older sciences. Instead of leading to the conclusion that there is nothing to do which the older sciences do not properly attempt, if the heterogeneous labors of the sociologists are reviewed with a little care they furnish abundant evidence, both that there is unoccupied terri- tory, and that these unsystematized surveys have each actually been doing some of the necessary work of plotting the ground. The proposition which we are now supporting is not that the sociologists ought to fix upon a new material as the subject- matter of their science. In fact, the sociologists have long ago instinctively fix^d upon their material, and its peculiar char- acter is gradually beginning to appear. The subject-matter ' The most recent betrayal of this judgment may be seen in a discussion of two papers by Mr. Victor Branford and Professor Durkheim on " The Relation of Sociology to the Social Sciences and to Philosophy " (vide American Journal of Sociology, Vol. X, pp. 134 ff. and 256 ff.) - The differences of opinion and vagueness of view betrayed in the discussion fairly reflect the prevailing state of mind as to the subject-matter of sociology, even among persons who have given more than casual attention to recent sociological literature. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY S upon which the sociologists are engaged is the social process as a whole. This is to be sharply distinguished, on the one hand, from mere knowledge of isolated phenomena, or classes of phenomena, that take place among men; and it is also to be distinguished from mere knowledge of immediate relations that may be abstracted from the whole complex of relations which make up the entire fabric of human life. The former kind of knowledge is description, narrative, story, tradition, that does not rise to the generality of science. The latter kind of knowledge may be organized into science of a certain order of generality. This has occurred, schematically at least, in the case of the accepted social sciences — ethnology, history, eco- nomics, etc. The sociologists are attempting to develop a gen- eral science which will have relations to the special social sciences analogous with the relations of general physics to the special physical sciences, on the one hand, and to the various physical technologies, on the other ; or analogous with the rela- tions of general chemistry to subdivisions of chemistry, or the relations of general biology to subordinate sections of biology. Comparisons of this sort are so loose that they might easily prejudice the case under discussion. They are merely illustra- tions, necessarily inexact, but presenting certain instructive parallels. Let us suppose that, at a certain stage in the develop- ment of the science of physics, investigators had acquired con- siderable amounts of knowledge alx>ut groups of physical phe- nomena determined by relaitively superficial marks. Let us suppose that one type of physicists had specialized upon gravi- tation, with the least possible attention to all other phases of physical phenomena. Suppose another type had in the same way confined attention to the phenomena of light ; another, to those of magnetism ; etc. Suppose that in each case the knowl- edge gained by such abstraction had been carefully system- atized. This whole body of knowledge would doubtless have had a certain value. Obviously that value would have been narrowly limited, however, because such arbitrary isolation of things that are essentially related is possible only so long as 6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY insight into the real facts is rudimentary. Modern physics could not come into existence until, by some means or other, students of these things had learned to entertain the idea of the unity of their phenomena, resting in an underlying unity of substance manifesting the phenomena. That is, there could be only superficial arrangements of amateurish observation, not respectable science, until a unifying conception gave coherence to the details observed. Thus the conception of matter, and of the molar and molecular processes of matter, might have arisen after a long history of such unconcerted specialization as we have supposed. These conceptions would presently serve as bonds of connection between the scattered workers. They would serve as clues to common interests between them. They would lead to meanings previously undiscovered in the phenomena, and they would promote further investigation of the phenomena. Thus, in place of desultory pursuit of knowl- edge about interesting physical facts, there would arise a science of physics. Although the actual development of physics has not literally followed this order, the essential development has involved virtually the above stages. Consciousness of a subject-matter, on the one hand manifesting diverse phe- nomena, and on the other hand strictly delimited from other subject-matter, has been a precondition of a science of physics at once comprehensive and independent. We may vary the form of the illustration in the case of chemistry. Suppose something like our present knowledge of chemical occurrences had grown up before there was any such generalization as "matter" or "atomic ])hcnomcna." Suppose some men had by some sort of intuition grouped the metals together, and had observed their behavior under different cir- cumstances. Suppose others had studied salts, others acids, etc. Again we should have had a certain grade of knowledge, in a certain system of arrangement; but we should have had no science of chemistry. There must first have arisen a conception of an order of phenomena common to all matter, and conform- ing to laws varying merely in details according to the com- THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY 7 position and circumstances of the particular portions of matter in question. Otherwise more or less interesting information about capriciously distinguished sorts of matter could never attain the dignity of a science of chemistry. The like is true of biology, and the literal history of biology has perhaps more obviously conformed to the logical necessity we are citing than the history of physics or chemistry. The "natural history" still found in many schools harks back to conceptions of the organic world which are logically neither more nor less respectable than the traditional English farmer's division of the animal kingdom into "game, vermin, and stock." No matter how patiently one type of men studies plants, and another reptiles, and another fishes, and another birds, and another beasts, and so on, neither one nor all of them could go much beyond advertising the need of a biological science which did not exist. In order that dilettantish natural history might pass over into positive biology, it was necessary that all observation of living nature should submit to control by an antecedent conception of organic matter and laws of the variation of its phenomena. In a word, whatever the chronological order of occurrence of the ideas, all the concrete and special knowledge that goes to make up our present sciences has been unified at last around some central conception of subject-matter and appropriate method. We may express the fact for our present purposes in the formula : Physics is the science of matter in its molar and molecular processes ; chemistry is the science of matter in its atomic processes ; biology is the science of matter in its organic processes. In each case the comprehensive science has the task of organizing details which may already have been studied separately by several varieties of scholars. The same logical methods which have arrived at these generalizations make irresistibly toward the conviction that coherence and unity of knowledge about human experience demand a science of men in their associational processes. Many of these processes have long been studied in detail, but 8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Study of them in their correlations is, as in the case of chemi- cal and vital processes, the work of a distinct order of science, with a peculiar object of attention. To the range of general- ization which the needed general science comprehends in the present case, the men who have most felt the need apply the name sociology. Without referring to details which might further guard this summary comparison, our present interest is in the fact to be illustrated in the case of sociology. The phenomena pre- sented by human beings have been studied in ways which are on the same logical plane with the treatment of organic phe- nomena by the obsolete types of "natural history." Not to mention the lesser social sciences, conventional history and economics and ethics, as represented by still extant types of thinkers, are sometimes as fragmentary and unvital and uncen- tered as a " science " of garden vegetables or of draft-horses would be, if not correlated with larger knowledge. The sociologists represent a protest against this situation. The pro- test has been long in developing out of the spontaneous, inar- ticulate stage. It is rapidly finding its voice. The formula which we are emphasizing expresses the implicit assumption of all the sociologists who are to be taken seriously. If they could, they would materially weaken the force of the names used to designate the conventional divisions of sciences pertain- ing to man. The past and present convenience of these names, and of the academic classifications for which they stand, is counterbalanced by the obstructions which they oppose to the progress of real knowledge. They interfere with discovery that all serious students of society are investigating phases of the same subject-matter. Tlie supreme need in the human sciences at the present moment is to make out what that one subject-matter is. and how the different kinds of. research are related to it. This central and comprehensive reality appears to the sociologists as the associational process. Wherever there are liuman beings there arc phenomena of association. Those phenomena constitute a process composed THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY 9 of processes. There can be no convincing science of human life till these processes are known, from least to greatest, in the relation of each to each and to all. Knowledge of human life which stops short of this is at best a fragment, and at worst a fiction. Hence we assert that studies of selected phases of human affairs, no matter how ancient and awful the tradition that sponsors them, are logically in the class of pseudo-sciences, until they take their place within the plexus of sciences which together interpret the whole process of human association. Men who call themselves by either of the names that signify attachment to either of the traditional divisions of knowledge are at liberty to define their intellectual interests for themselves, and to shape their individual pursuits accordingly. Thus cer- tain interests may posit a *' science " of archaeology ; others, a "science" of epigraphy; others, a "science" of cartography; others, a "science" of numismatology; and so on, up to his- tory, and law, and economics, and cosmic philosophy. Men of each type may cultivate their peculiar section of knowledge as though it outranked every other kind of knowledge. Not group-provincialisms, however, but the reality of objective relations, must determine at last whether a selected portion of knowledge is relatively a fragment or a whole, relatively insig- nificant or important. No incident, phase, machinery, institu- tion, product, stage, or program of human life is central enough to clothe knowledge of it with more than the rank of a tributary science. The process that is taking place among men, through the ages and across the ages, is the largest whole of which men can have positive knowledge. This whole consequently fixes the goal of complete science of human life. No less than this whole is contemplated by the sociologist as his aim. He neces- sarily represents a desired generalization of knowledge which is farther than any other scientific program from actual or probable completion. Sociology thus defined is, and must remain, more a determining point of view than a finished body of knowledge. At the same time, and by virtue of both these sides of its case, sociology exposes the relativity and the par- 10 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tialness of any body of knowledge which comprehends less than the full sweep of the social process. Whatever be the appraisal of the fractional sciences in the subjective estimate of their pro- moters, the objective importance of each of them is measured by the kind and amount of tribute it can bring to knowledge of the human process as a whole. These conceptions have been expressed in such general terms that repetition in less abstract form may not be super- fluous. Wherever two or more human beings are within each other's ken, there is set up between them action and reaction, exchange of influence of some sort or other. That influence, on the one hand, molds the individuals concerned, tending to make, unmake, remake them without end ; and, on the other hand, it composes those individuals into more or less rigid group-relationships, perhaps after having decomposed previous relationships to another group. This reciprocating process, growing infinitely complex as the circle of association widens, and as the type of individual becomes more and more evolved — including, besides its form, the content of the process, first in the evolving objective conditions within which the associa- tion takes place, second in the developing consciousness of the persons engaged in the process — this is the human reality, and all knowledge of human conditions is abortive in the degree in which it fails to fill out a complete expression of this reality. Let us suppose the savage man A, and the savage woman B, of the horde X. Their wants are few. Food is plenty. B supplies it for A, who eats till he is satisfied, and treats his food-getter with tolerable gentleness. But the food grows scarce. The horde breaks up into foraging pairs. A and B wander beyond their usual haunts, and encounter the savage man C of horde Y. They had never met before. To an impartial observer there is little to distinguish the savage A from the savage C. Up to date all the ferocity which we asso- ciate with the word "savage" may have been dormant in both. In each other's presence new factors of stimulation and response begin to operate. Each wants food. Each wants the THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY ii woman. Each wants to eliminate the other. Treating the woman as merely a passive factor, we have in action rudiments of the universal process of association, viz., antithesis of indi- viduals, stimulus of one by the other, through the medium of common or conflicting wants, self-assertion by the opposing individuals, resulting reconstruction of the individuals them- selves. That is, they fight; one prevails, and is transformed from a socially indifferent personality into a master; the other yields, and is transformed from a socially indifferent person- ality into a slave. The group is changed from a diad into a triad. Both A and B, we may suppose, become subject to C, wtiile the relation of neither A nor B to C is precisely identical with the previous relation of A and B to each other. This process of individual and group-reaction, remaking both the individuals and the groups, extends from the savage group of two or more, to the most comprehensive and complex group of groups which ultimate civilization may develop. It is incessant. It is perpetually varying. It is the main movement, within which migrations, race-mixtures, wars, governments, constitutions, revolutions, reformations, federations, civiliza- tions, are merely the more or less important episodes, or situa- tions, or factors. This whole process is the supreme fact within the reach of human knowledge. It is the final inter- preter of each and every lesser fact which may attract human attention. Since this process, from beginning to end, from component to completeness, in its forms and in its forces, in its origins, its variations, and its tendencies, is the subject-matter which sociology proposes to investigate, the relation of every other science to sociology is fixed, not by the dictum of any scientist, but oy the relation which the sulDJect-matter and the methods of other sciences bear to knowledge of the entire social process. To make the point more precise, we may distinguish the work of sociology in turn from that of ethnology, of history, and of economics. Before passing to these specifications, or illustrations, we must provide for all necessary corrections of 12 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the personal equation. We will not assume, whether to the advantage or the disadvantage of either science, that any single man, still less a single fragment of his work, fairly represents Ithe whole of his science. We will not even venture to assume that our use of the material to be cited for illustration gives all the credit due to the writer from whom it is taken. His own views of the final correlation of that material with other sub- jects of knowledge may be quite unobjectionable. Our purpose is merely to illustrate the point that, in the form in which it appears in a given version of one of these sciences, the same objective material may have no interest whatever for sociology, or, on the other hand, it may be viewed in such relations as, at one and the same time, to furnish subject-matter for one of these sciences and also for sociology. To express the case from the point of view of desirability, as I see it, and of ulti- mate adjustment, as I predict it, there will presently be no apparently statical dualism or multipleism between the subject- matter of the other human sciences and that of sociology; When every student of human life realizes that the reality which he tries to know is a one, not a many, each will regard the material of his immediate science, not as belonging to his science instead of belonging to another science, but as being to some extent the common material of several sciences, or at most as held in trusteeship by his science for its final use in the complete science. In this spirit we may cite for illustration, first, the little book, Deniker's Tlie Races of MajiJ^ The author states his purpose as follows: "My object .... has been to give ..... the essential facts of the twin sciences of anthropology and ethnography" (Preface). In carrying out this purpose a chapter is devoted to each of the following subjects: " Somatic Characters ; " " Morphological Characters ; " "Physiological Characters;" "Ethnic Characters;" "Lin- guistic Characters;" "Sociological Characters" (a chapter each on "Material Life," "Psychic Life," " l-'amily Life," and 'London, 1900. THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY 13 "Social Life"); ''Classification of Races and Peoples;" "Races and Peoples of Europe;" "Races and Peoples of Asia;" "Races and Peoples of Africa;" "Races and Peoples of Oceania;" "Races and Peoples of America." Without f^assing judgment upon the expressed or implied correlations in which the author views this material, we may repeat our abstract propositions in terms of the particulars which he schedules. If there be a science or sciences that are content to discover, describe, compare, and classify such details as these, and thcreivith to let the matter rest, such sciences may be credited with a preserve of their own, from which sociology holds itself unconcernedly aloof. With these details, simply as details, or merely as foils reciprocally to display each other as curiosities, sociology has no manner of concern. If the items thus considered are the subject-matter of any science, sociology is not likely to disturb either its- possession or its title. On the other hand, every one of these details has occurred somewhere along in the course of the process in which rudi- mentary men, and rudimentary human associations, evolve into developed personalities and complex associations. With the whence, and the how, and the why, and the whither of this process, sociology is supremely concerned. If any of the details in question can be brought into such visible relation with this social process, and in the precise measure in which they can be made to shed light upon the process, they come wi-thin the scope of sociology. Thus the most spectacular detail, like a racial peculiarity^ or a ceremonial anomaly which remains unaccounted for, may be the chief pride and the center of attraction in an ethnological museum. It would have no value at all for sociology. If, however, it could be made to yield any evidence whatever about the facts, or the forms, or the forces, or the conditions, or the laws of the social process, to just that extent it would come to be the common material of sociology and of the science which exhibits it in the museum. In the same way we may distinguish between the object of attention in sociology and the subject-matter beyond which cer- 14 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tain types of mind do not pry in studying history.^ Let us refer to one of the most respected among English historians. In his Constitutional History of England, Vol. I, chap. 9, "The Norman Conquest," Bishop Stubbs presents the subject under the following minor titles : " Complex Results of the Con- quest;" "State of Normandy;" "Growth of Feudalism;" " Feudal Ideas of the Conquest ; " " National Policy of Wil- liam;" "Introduction of Feudal Usages;" "Maintenance of Old Forms ; " " Results of Changes of Administrators ; " " Sub- ordinate Changes : in Judicature, in Taxation, in Ecclesiastical Affairs;" "Transitional Character of the Period." We are citing an author who is among the least liable to the charge of belonging to the former of the two types just * As I have implied above, the point of view which we are explaining assumes that, when studies of the social reality are properly centered, we shall no longer speak as though the ethnologists were studying one thing, the his- torians another, the economists another, the sociologists another, etc., etc. We shall perceive that, if we are using a valid method, so far as we are actually contributing to real knowledge, rather than practicing an art, or indulging in play, we are in fact all studying the same thing. Our particular task will require primary attention to certain fragments or aspects of the one thing. It will always be understood, however, that our results have to be completed by assimilating, within the entire report, the whole made up by correlation of the results of all research. Accordingly I am trying to avoid a use of language which carries the old implications. I do not want to say : " Ethnology deals with this subject-matter, history with that, economics with the other, etc." I want to say, rather, that certain material with which historians concern themselves may be treated by the historians in such a way that it satisfies no general human interest, and for that reason has no value for the sociologist. That same material may be treated by other historians in such a way that, so far as it goes, it both explains and is explained by the whole social process. If the former occurs, there is no fellowship between such historians and the sociologists. If the latter is the case, the names " historian " and " sociologist " would be appropriate merely as indicating where the two types of scholars respectively place the primary emphasis in their work. The historian would be he who puts most stress upon discovering the facts of past situations. The sociologist would be he who puts most stress upon the correlation of these facts with knowledge of the social process in general. This line of cleavage between types of historians was brought out very clearly in a discussion at the joint meeting of the American Economic Association and the American Historical Association at New Orleans, December, 1903 (I'idc Proceedings of the American Economic Association, Third Series, Vol. V, No. i, Part II). THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY 15 indicated.^ We are not criticising his work, but abstracting from it, for purposes of illustration, a series of familiar topics which may be treated by either of two contrasted methods. On the one hand, if the items in the series were treated by the one type of historian, a minimum of relationship would appear between either of them and the others, or anything else. Each topic would be discussed very much as a landscape painter snatches from an environment an " effect " and puts it on canvas. Volumes full of such detached, impressionistic sketches would go no farther toward making a science of his- tory than an equal bulk of description of detached pieces of rock, culled from different parts of the world, would go toward making a science of geology. No one with the least impulse toward generalization can imagine that information of that fragmentary sort is science. It may be worth getting for other purposes than science, and individuals may be as well within their rights in busying themselves with this sort of litter as those who really devote themselves to science. In itself, left in the uncriticised, unorganized, heterogeneous condition of facts set side by side, with no discrimination of relative worth, information about the past is of no more scientific value than the same number of miscellaneous items in the newspaper today. In the modern literature classed as "history" we accord- ingly find quaint and curious information in all stages of organization, from a minimum to a maximum of coherence. Our argument is that sociology has no part ncfr lot with the type of history which is content to find out facts and there rest its case. Like all genuine science, sociology is not interested in facts as s«ch. It is interested only in relations, meanings, valuations, in which facts reappear in essentials. One fact is worth no more than another, if its correlation with other facts is concealed. On the other hand, every fact in human experi- ence has a value of its own as an index of the social process that emerges in part in the fact. In so far as the historian " Vide note, p. 14. i6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY hunts down facts for the purpose of finding the social process revealed in the facts, his interest is identical with that of the sociologist. The difference between them is again merely a difference of greater or less attention to different steps of one and the same approach to knowledge of the social reality. We might in>itate a verbal distinction familiar in a related field, and say that as ethnography is to ethnology, so is histori- ography to historiology. I would by no means concede that the subject-matter of sociology is confined to the past. It is still more concerned with interpretation of the social process in the present. This term "historiology" is suggested as a synonym for one segment of the arc of sociology, and merely as a temporary expedient in this particular part of the argument. To point the contrast between mere discovery of details of past experience, and the work that the sociologists want to do, we may fairly call the former historiography and the latter historiology.^ The real progress of the historians toward promotion of science is not in the line of which many of them have recently grown so proud. History does not become more scientific by shifting its attention frcftn relatively insignificant kings and sol- diers to equally insignificant common folks. History becomes scientific in proportion as it advances from knowledge of details toward reconstruction of the whole in which the details have their place. Tlie sociologists have entered the field of social science with a plea for a fair share of attention to that correla- tion of knowledge, notorious neglect of which has thus far been the paradox of our era of "inductive science.""^ Recurring to the titles from Stubbs, we may add that investigation of such topics may, and indeed must, proceed in ' All this has been anticipated and stated so conclusively by Professor Ross that there remains little room for discussion {vide American Journal of Sociology, pp. 194 ff., and Foundations of Sociology, chap. 4). Masaryk, Grundlngen des Marxismus, pp. i.iS flf., has given energetic expression to similar criticism. Cf. Reich, " Psychological vs. Arm-Ghair Historians," Fortnightly Review, January, 1905. ' Cf. chap. 35, sec. 7, " The Sociological Point of View." THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY 17 the first instance with severe disregard of collateral details. The test of historical work, however, is not where it begins, but where it ends. It is a misconception of fact, and a misuse of terms, to speak of any program that begins and ends with details as "scientific." Historiography as such is not science; it is merely a technique. The output of that technique is raw material of science. There is no more scientific value in know- ing merely that William the Conqueror, or William the Red, or any of their successors in past centuries, did this or that, than there is in knowing what Edward VII and the Kaiser did on their yachts at Kiel last summer. We do not reach science till we advance from knowledge of what occurred to knowledge of the meaning of what occurred. On the side of the meanings of occurrences, whoever follows connections as far as they can be traced, whether he calls himself historian or sociologist, pursues the essential sociological interest.^ * Tarde charges both historian and sociologist with attention to the par- ticular in disregard of the general. For instance, he says that physicists, chemists, and physiologists " show us the subject of their science only on the side of its characteristic resemblances and repetitions ; they prudently conceal its corresponding heterogeneities and transformations (or •transubstantia- tions)." He then alleges a contrast in the case of the social sciences as follows : " The historian and sociologist, on the contrary, veil the regular and monotonous face of social facts — that part in which they are alike and repeat themselves — and show us only their accidental and interesting, their infinitely novel and diversified, aspect. If our subject were, for example, the Gallo- Romans, the historian, even the philosophical historian, would not think of leading us, step by step, through conquered Gaul in order to show us how every word, rite, edict, profession, custom, craft, law, or military maneuver, how in short every special idea or need which had been introduced from Rome, had begun to spread from the Pyrenees to the Rhine, and to win its way, after more or less vigorous fighting against old Celtic customs and ideas, to the mouths and arms and hearts and minds of all the enthusiastic Gallic imitators of Rome and Caesar. At any rate, if our historian had once led us on this long journey, he would not make us repeat it for every Latin word or gram- matical form, for every ritualistic form in the Roman religion, for every military maneuver that was taught to the legionaries by their officer-instructors, for every variety of Roman architecture, for temple, basilica, theater, hippo- drome, aqueduct, and atriumed villa, for every school-taught verse of Virgil or Horace, for every Roman law, or for every artistic or industrial process in Roman civilization that had been faithfully and continuously transmitted from i8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Happily it is impossible for the most atomistically minded historiographer utterly to overlook the pointings of each event or situation toward connections with other events and situa- tions. Even a list of topics like the one we have cited at ran- dom testifies of this necessity. " Results," "state," ''growth," "policy," "introduction," "maintenance," "transitional," are all terms of relationship. Moreover, the relationships implied are not merely those of nearness in time or space, nor of series. They are relationships of w'orking-with, of process.'' This process may be contemplated merely within an arbitrarily restricted area; e. g., causes and effects so far as they appear in contrasts between the before and the after of relations of classes, of economic systems, of constitutional principles, of legal enactments, of social customs, of religious conventions, in a certain population. In this case there is rudimentary, but narrowly restricted, recognition that specific knowledge gets its value by correlation with other knowledge. The interest of the historian converges toward that of the sociologist in the precise degree in which the former desires to advance from knowledge of occurrences as such, not merely to their immediate correla- tions, but to their last discoverable meanings as indexes of the whole process of social evolution. At one extreme is sheer interest in bare details. At the other extreme is interest that rates everything short of dynamic interpretation of the details as mere preliminary. The same distinction may be stated in terms of discrimina- tion between the economic and the sociological interest. Again, it should be urged with all emphasis that every use of words pedagogues and craftsmen to pupils and apprentices. And yet it is only at this price that we can get at an exact estimate of the great amount of regularity which obtains in even the most fluctuating societies." {The Laws of Imitation, English by Parsons; New York, 1903, pp. 8, 9.) Whether Tarde is right or not in grouping historians and sociologists ecjually under this censure, our point is substantially the one that he makes : viz., that knowledge does not pass from .scraps into s-cience until its regularities are recognized and their laws dis- covered. The sociologists rather than the historians arc making the fight for use of this theorem in the social sciences. • Cf. below, chap. 34, sec. 3, " The Social Process." THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY 19 which implies an exclusive division of subject-matter among the social sciences is merely a convenient concession to a con- dition which the progress of science should at least mitigate. As we have said above, from the sociological view-point differ- ent workers in the social sciences are not working on different kinds of material. They are merely carrying on different divisions of labor upon one material. That material is human experience in general. Regardless of the special name by which sections of it are known, the total purpose of social science in general, up to the point where it ceases to be mere knowledge and begins to pass over into power, is to discover the meanings of human experience. Our present illustration should bring out another real difference between degrees of approach toward this end. In his Grundriss der allgemeincn Volkswirtschaftslehre^^ Book II, chap. 7, Professor Schmoller draws the outlines of a description of modern forms of industrial enterprise. His sub- titles are as follows : " The Conception of Industrial Enter- prise (Untcrnchmung) ;" "Its Starting-Points, Trade, Labor, Community, Family;" "The Development of Rural Economic Enterprise;" "Hand Labor;" "Movements in the Direction of Larger Enterprises and Organizations in Community and Corporate Form up to 1800;" "Domestic Industry (das Ver- lagssystcm) ; " " Modern Enterprise, Wholesale Business, the Factory ; " " The Social Problem of Large Business ; " " Public Stock Companies;" "The Newer Economic Associations;" " The Combinations of Traders and Promoters, Syndicates, Rings, and Trusts ; " " Conclusion. Bird's-eye View of the Social Constitution of Industry, Particularly of Capitalistic Enterprise." Instead of selecting our illustration from economic topics which are extremely fractional, as it would be easy to do, we prefer to take specimens of a sort more representative of recent tendencies. In the above titles we have references to economic phenomena of highly developed and complex types. Correla- ** Third edition, Leipzig, 1900. 20 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tion of most intricate nature is implied in all such analyses. Can there be room in the premises for any scientific interest distinct from and in addition to the economic interest? The answer depends entirely upon the extension which the econo- mists claim or allow for their interest. As in the case of the historians, the subject-matter may be so defined as to merge the economic interest at last completely with that of the sociologist.^^ On the other hand, the economic interest may be so circumscribed that attention is restricted to an economic mechanism merely as such, an endless chain composed of the main links : capital, labor, production, consumption. In pro- portion as this latter is the case, the economic activities of life are wrested by an intellectual tour de force from the real social process, and are looked upon as an entity sufficient unto itself. From the sociological view-point, economic activities are merely a division of the manifestations of the human process as a whole. That process begins with the power of individuals to feel wants, and to act in response to the stimulus of wants. It continues through limitless cycles of differentia- tion of wants, of individual types characterized by variations of wants, of groupings of individuals incidental to effort to satisfy the wants, and of institutions and other achievements deposited in the course of this incessant endeavor. To the sociologist, every type of individual, every combina- tion of activities, every institution, whether economic, political, artistic, scientific, or religious, is of interest, not for its separate " For a striking illustration of the tendency among recent economists to see these things essentially as the sociologists see them, x'ide Sonihart, Der moderne Kapitalismus, Vol. I, Introduction, pp. xxv ff. Processor Sombart is not directly discussing the relationship which we have in mind. His argument virtually amounts to a special application of the general principle which we are formulating, i. e., to know any economic relationship fully, its connections have to be traced with the whole process of human activities. Thus : " Was namlich von dem Wirtschaftstheoretiker der Zukunft verlangt werdcn wird, sind wieder lange Gedankcnreihcn, die heute ganz aus der Mode gekomnien zu sein scheinen. Der Theoretiker von heute b.istelt fast immer cin hcobachtetcs I'hanomen an die nachstliegende Ursache an, wenn er es nicht vorzieht, durch Mcssung an einem bercitgehaltenen (meist ethischen) Massstabe seiner llerr zu werden, etc., etc." THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF SOCIOLOGY 21 self, but so far as it can shed or reflect light about the articula- tions and the motivations of the process as a whole, in which each detail in its own degree is an incident. Without involving ourselves in a boundary dispute with the psychologists, we may repeat that the sociological interest begins with individuals feeling wants. How do those wants bring them into contact with other individuals feeling wants ? How do the individuals thus in contact modify each other's wants? How do the wants of the separate individuals become a species of environment, conditioning all the individuals? How does the reaction between the elements — i. e., individuals, physical environment, and social environment — become complex, and ever more complex, in the progressively varying reaction of cause and effect within the combination ? How do types of want, and of individual and social contact, and of environment, result from the different stages of this process ? What significance, at any stage of the process, have details, or groups of details, or sys- tems of details, as means of interpreting the process? Thus, from the sociological point of view, either a group of economic facts, or the economic system of an age or a civiliza- tion, or the economic theory of a culture epoch, is each in its way merely a term in the whole proposition which sociology is trying to formulate. The human interest is in knowing the human whole. The sociologists have broken into the goodly fellowship of the social scientists, and have thus far found themselves frankly unwelcome guests. They have a mission, however, which will not always be unrecognized. Their part in the whole work of knowing the human reality is, in the first place, to counteract the tendency of specialists to follow centrif- ugal impulses. The tendency has already gone so far that social science is apparently split into fragrpents which cannot be reorganized into a unified body of knowledge. Sociology stands first for the co-ordinating stage in the knowing process. Recognition of its legitimacy and its necessity is merely a ques- tion of time. We have specified some of the grounds for this 22 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY belief, in an editorial reviewing the course of thought about sociology during the past decade.^ - To recapitulate : The sociologists are attempting to show that salvation of the social sciences from sterility must be worked out, not by microscopic description and analysis of details alone, but by such correlation and generalization of par- ticulars that the whole social process will be intelligible. The limits of this chapter restrict discussion to that phase of socio- logical theory in which intellectual apprehension is uppermost. From the human standpoint no science is an end in itself. The proximate end of all science is organization into action. The ultimate interest of the sociologists, therefore, is in turning knowledge of the social process into more intelligent promo- tion of the process. This outcome of sociological theory is more fully indicated in Parts VIII and IX. ^•American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XI, p. i. CHAPTER II DEFINITIONS OF SOCIOLOGY Having indicated in chap, i the view of sociology which this syllabus represents, we now retrace our steps, and in the remaining chapters of Part I we shall call attention to some of the gradations through which approach has been made to the present sociological outlook. Comment upon alternative definitions of sociology will throw light upon the steps already taken toward final survey of the field to be explored. From possible definitions we select the following: 1. Sociology is the science of society, or the science of social phenomena} 2. Sociology is the study of men considered as affecting and as affected by association."^ 3. Sociology is a unified view of human life, derived (a) from analysis of all discoverable phases of human activity, past and present; (b) from synthesis of these activities in accord- ance zvith their functional meanings; (c) from telic interpreta- tion of the zvhole thus brought to view, in so far as tendencies are indicated in the process analysed; and it is -finally a body of guiding principles, derived from this analysis, for the conduct of life. Each of these definitions or descriptions of sociology is consistent with the others, and each may be used to complete or to recapitulate the others.^ Definition i is the most compact statement which can be made of the whole subject-matter which sociology finds it necessary to treat. 'Ward, Popular Science Monthly, June, 1902, p, 113. ^ Small, American Journal of Sociology, January, 1900, p. 506. ' For a large number of definitions of sociology v/hich we need not notice, vide Ward, " Contemporary Sociology," American Journal of Sociology, Janu- ary, March, and May, 1902. 23 24 GENEIL\L SOCIOLOGY Definition 2 states the same thing in terms of the units which have to be recognized in all our treatment of this subject- matter. Definition 3 puts the emphasis on the great divisions of the content of the science, after it has employed its methods upon the subject-matter.^ The foregoing may serve at once as samples of the thousand and one definitions of sociology, and as approaches to a work- ing definition. Whatever their variations, whatever their merits and demerits, they all indicate at last more or less definite purpose to reach the same result. In presence of the same body of facts about human experi- ence, intellectual interest in organizing and interpreting the facts concentrates in several distinct ways. For instance, one variety of thinkers look out over human associations, and they are moved to ask : " How did men come to associate as they do now? " This is the typical question of those whose primary curiosity is about the genetic aspect of human experience. Thinkers of another variety survey the same facts, and they ask: "How do men manage to preserve the status quo?" This question voices the peculiar interest of the men who care more for insight into the present social situation, for analysis of present social arrangements and the way they work, than for knowledge of how they came into existence. A third variety of thinkers are relatively indifferent to both these questions, and they ask rather : " What are the visible indications about the ways in which men will associate in the future?" This is the question that rallies the men who are trying to make the things which are seen disclose those that are unseen. It is the question of the seer, the idealist, the constructive philosopher. * " Was der Mensch ist, verdankt er der Vereinigiing von Mensch und Mensch. Die Moglichkeit, Associationeii hervorzubringen, die nicht nur die Kraft der gleichzeitig Lebenden erhohen, sondern vor Allem durch ihren die Personlichkeit des Einzelnen iiberdauernden Bestand die vergangenen Ge- schlechter niit den Kommenden verbinden, gab uns die Moglichkeit der Entwicklung, der Geschichte." — Gierke, Das dculsche Gcnosscnschaftsrecht, Vol. I, p. I. DEFINITIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 25 To him past and present are nothing except as they contain and reveal the future. Still another variety of men take for granted all the answers to these questions that seem to them worth con- sidering, and their question is : " What is the thing to do here and now, in order to make the better future that is to be?" This is the query of the men who want to be more than mere scholars. They want to accomplish something. They want to organize rational movements for making life yield increasing proportions of its possibilities. The fact that these lines of cleavage exist between men who deal with sociology, calls for attention to several things that have caused much confusion. In the first place, men of these different varieties have expressed or implied definitions of the scope of sociology which perhaps seem irreconcilable. The truth is that they have merely emphasized, and in some cases overemphasized, the particular phase of the vast reaches of sociology which is peculiarly interesting to themselves. They have very naturally placed special stress upon their own division of labor, and they have incidentally slurred over the other divisions of labor. It by no means follows that these men would explicitly eliminate or disparage these other portions of science, nor that the final answer to the different types of ques- tion will contain anything irreconcilable. The fact, however, that men have actually pursued these different inquiries under the name of sociology, accounts for the wide divergencies between treatises and monographs that have used this title. In one case we find plain anthropology or ethnology ; in another, simply old-fashioned philosophy of history, with little except its arrogation of a new name to redeem it from the condemna- tion under which the older thinking rests ; in other cases we have had political or economic or ethical philosophy ; and again v^e have had the same rule-of-thumb policy that experimenters have time out of mind adventured, sometimes to worse than no purpose, and sometimes with fortunate results. Now, the truth is that human experience has aspects and implications that are at one and the same time genetic and 26 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY static and teleologic and technologic.^ Probably very few sociologists, however special the studies which have given them most prominence, have entirely neglected the other aspects of social reality. At all events, sociology will be an abortion until it is a successful integration of the genetic and static and teleologic and technologic elements involved in the social process, and consequently in sociological theory. It is by no means desirable that division of labor within the sociological field should cease. On the contrary, our problems are demand- ing further differentiation without visible limit. The desirable thing is that the workers of the types just mentioned shall keep within sight of each other, shall remember that they are parts of each other, and shall acquire more facility in correcting themselves by each other. We may say of the innumerable definitions or descriptions of sociology, of which we have cited samples, that each repre- sents the opinion of a person or of a school, in opposition to some other view of what sociology is or ought to be. Each definition represents the best that someone has done in his effort after a clear and whole view of all that is necessarily involved. No definition has yet won the assent of all the sociologists, and it is not certain that all of them whose opinions have weight can agree in the near future upon the same provi- sional definition. One fact nevertheless crops out in the writings of all the sociologists, namely : they are all trying to reach judg- ments of a higher degree of generality than the subject-matter of any single branch of social science is competent to authorize. It makes no difference how narrowly a given sociologist defines his discipline for himself; he sooner or later begins to betray his tacit conception of his mission by propounding judgments that leap over his own boundary. Their validity depends upon knowledge that belongs, in the first place, to each of the more special divisions of social science. It follows that, in spite of all disagreements about territory, sociology is in practice, as a 'This proposition will be expanded in I'arts 11, III, IV, V, VII, VIII, and IX. DEFINITIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 27 matter of fact, an attempt to organize and generalize all avail- \ , able knowledge about the influences that pervade human asso-/ ciations. The men who make the most restricted definitions of sociology often indulge in the most absolute generalizations in the name of sociology, and they seem to take themselves quite seriously while they are thus placing the eccentricity of their logic upon exhibition. The impulse to generalize social laws of higher orders than those to be derived from the traditional social sciences may be audacious. It may look to results which are beyond the reach of human reason. The ambition to develop a system of generalizations which will interpret the influences that mold human destinies may be foredoomed to disappointment. The fact remains that the sociologists are in the midst of an adven- ture which means nothing less than going to the limits of our mental powers in attempt to trace the workings of human association in all times and under all circumstances. As was said above, this turns out to be true about equally, though in different w^ays, of those who seek wisdom through a sociology defined as the science of an abstracted section of social facts, and of those who boldly describe sociology as a comprehensive science or philosophy. In a word, our intellectual limits confine us, as a rule, to particular examination of some fraction of the conditions of life, upon which our attention has been fastened ; but we all alike tend to make that special fraction of life a key to life in general. We want to see life as it is, and to see it whole. This is what is expressed in the first definition. We find, however, after preliminary surveys of life as a whole, that all its visible external phases are made up of some sort of reactions, physical or spiritual, between persons. We sum this up in the general term "association." To under- stand life, past or present, we have to be clear in our per- ception that it is, from beginning to end and through and through, an affair of association between person and person. After w^e discount the purely vegetative factor in life, our 28 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY - drawing sustenance from the soil, and our dependence upon climate, all of which we share in common with the plants, all the external stimuli which affect us are occurrences in associa- tion with other people. We make associations, and associa- tions make us; and these reciprocal actions are all there is to life on its outward side. This is what is expressed by the second formula. All society is association, and all association is society. To get a scientific view of society, therefore, we have to resolve it into details of association between persons, and to find out the different sorts of things that are involved in human association. It may be worth while at this point to give further positive expression of our assumption that this sort of knowledge is worth getting. Many people deny the value of all generalized knowledge. They believe in the arts, but they do not believe in the sciences. If we were to argue the question of the value of sociology, the course of reasoning would be precisely parallel with that which is necessary in order to support the claims of any science, in contrast with hand-to-hand knowledge of some of the details with which the science deals. Is it good to know how to dress wounds ? Then it is good to know anatomy and physiology. Is it good to know how to reduce crude ore to iron bars? Then it is good to know physics and chemistry, and their application in metallurgy. Is it good to know how to raise wheat, or make cloth, and find a market for it ? Then it is good to know agricultural chemistry and political economy. Is it good to know how to draw a contract, or to transfer a title? Then it is good to know legal and political science. Is it good to know how to teach a boy or girl the three R's ? Then it is good to know psychology and pedagogy. Is it good to try to live our own personal lives as wisely and well as possible? Then, by the same token, it is good to know sociology. As has been pointed out in the previous chapter, and as this syllabus will assume throughout, for many years to come there will be a demand for a few professional sociologists ; but the great value of sociology to most people will be an indirect DEFINITIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 29 consequence of its furnishing a point of view, a perspective, an atmosphere, which will help to place all the problems of life with which each has to deal ; or, to use a different figure, it will serve as a pass-key to all the theoretical difficulties about society that each of us may encounter. The meaning will be plainer after this argument is finished than it can be at once ; but we may say in general that there is a close analogy between the service which physical science has rendered to everybody — those who know some of it, and those who know none of it, alike — and the service which sociology is destined to render. In the case of physical science, the service is this : not one person in ten thousand can state a single law of nature ; only rare persons can formulate exactly the general law of gravitation, not to mention the specific Newtonian theorems of motion. Such phrases as " the indestructibility of matter," "the equivalence of forces," "chemical affinity," "evolution," and the like, are words only, if they are even as much as that, to most of the people of the civilized world; yet ignorant and learned alike show some of the effects of living in a time when these ideas are current. We do not talk very much in home, and shop, and school, and church about these scientific techni- calities, but we behave ourselves in the presence of physical facts in a way different from that in which people behaved before these scientific ways of looking at things were reached. Early in the school life of the child the teacher begins to say things no longer in terms of facts — as, "The dog barks," "The boy runs" — but in the form of generalizations: "All dogs bark when they are hurt;" "When dogs are hurt and bark, they are apt to bite ; " " The boy who hurts the dog may need to run ; " and so on up to the widest inductions. Now, the point is that we have learned to think of the physical world as a place where cause and effect reign. We may be able to put into words not a single large operation of cause and effect; but we are out of the realm of myth and miracle; we are in the realm of order, and regularity, and consistent sequence of antecedent and consequent. Whatever takes place is assumed 30 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY to have a rational reason, whether we have any ckie to the reason or not. Whatever takes place today we believe will take place, under exactly the same circumstances, tomorrow, or the next day, or any day. That is, whether we know much physical science or little, we are all in a relatively scientific attitude toward physical facts, and new knowledge does not entail utter reconstruction of our plan of life. Scientific knowledge of society is bound to do a similar thing for our attitude toward social facts. Before the French Revolution the average Frenchman held the government responsible for everything, from weather to war. The gov- ernment was, to all intents and purposes, just as mystical as Zeus was to the Greeks who heard Homer's songs, or as Walhalla was to the Norse braves. Today, to certain types of people, society is an arbitrary imposition upon the indi- vidual, W'hile to other types of people the individual is an impudent pretender in the exclusive domain of society. That is, when people look out upon life, they still see men as trees walking. They do not see real men, but only figiuTs in a mirage, just as rain, and hail, and lightning, and thunder, and earthcjuake, and birth, and growth, and death were capricious actions of mysterious spirits before people got insight into the physical world. Technical sociology will always be as rare as technical astronomy and geology and biology. Most of us will simply have the use of the general conceptions which it organizes. But, in either case, as people advance in knowledge and mental power, they get their ideas into more and more exact shape. We may teach a third-grade class without knowing nuich science of any sort. At that stage we need tact, and acquaint- ance with live children, rather than formal science; but the farther along the pupils arc whom wc have to teach — let our subject be mathematics, or literature, (u- history, or Latin, or whatever — the more we shall have to shape our utterances within the molds which scientific discoveries have fashioned. So it is with sociology. Whether we are talking ;il)out Cain DEFINITIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 31 and Al^el, and the causes of Uieir family quarrel, or about President Mitchell and the coal barons measuring strength against each other, or Britannia ruling the waves, and all the other nations of the earth meditating what they are going to do about it, we are dealing with variations of rudimentary elements, operating in accordance with certain general laws, displaying quite as evident regularity and consistency as is the case with physical occurrences. This syllabus will deal with some of these rudiments of every social situation. It will not lay down rules for securing human happiness, because such measure of happiness as is within our reach has to be won by practice of the arts of life, rather than by simply knowing the science of life. The argu- ment will attempt to show, however, what sort of general conceptions of social facts must be assimilated, in order to make us relatively as intelligent about the social conditions of life as we are about the physical conditions. We may now return to the third definition of sociology (P- 23)- This statement expresses what we find out after we have worked a while on the facts of life, along the lines indicated by formulas i and 2. That is, we find that " social phe- nomena," or " society," when examined somewhat closely, all run into each other. They, or it, are really one phenomenon. What is taking place in Chicago today, in the way of buy- ing, and selling, and getting gain, of marrying and giving in marriage, of playing and learning and teaching, of worship- ing God and of shaming the devil, turns out to be part and parcel of the same thing which the earliest nature-men were doing when we find them on the frayed edges of traceable history. If there was "no new thing under the sun" at Solomon's time, neither has there ever been since. Stone age, iron age, steam age, electricity age, magic age, philosophy age, and science age ; the age of household religion, of tribal reli- gion, of national religion, of cosmic religion — all of these are parts of the present, and the present was laboring in them all. 32 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY We do not see the real fact in a simple familiar episode of today — like a teamsters' strike in the stock yards, or a merger of railroad systems — unless we see it as a transient phase of a permanent whole, which not only fills the present, but which shades off gradually into an invisible past, on the one hand, and into an impenetrable future, on the other. In a very real sense, the life which we live is one with all the life that has occupied the earth, or will occupy it hereafter. The moment this fact becomes clear to us, if we have any degree of the genuine scientific spirit, we begin to be aware that the second and third specifications of the third formula are inevitable. To understand any sort of unity, we have to take it to pieces in thought, and then put it together again. We have to perform the process of analysis and synthesis. Now, this accounts for what has been going on in all the different ways of studying society ; and it accounts further for the fact that sociology is intimately allied with all the other social sciences. We need not turn aside to discuss the nature of this relation. Enough that people have felt the need of analyzing society from a hundred different points of view. It has proved, sooner or later, that each of these types of analysis has tended to organize itself into some sort of syn- thesis with all the rest. Whether this is the case in every instance or not, the laws of the mind assert a demand for that sort of synthesis, and a hunger of mind remains wherever the demand is not satisfied. A unified view of a reality, which we have come to think of as a real unity, involves alternate analysis and synthesis of the reality, until nothing remains vague, and nothing seems to be unrelated to the rest. Wc may be sure that our conception of life is essentially defective unless the most trifling sorts of occurrences have a place in our scheme of thinking. In this argument we are showing the use of some of the most necessary categories in which sociology arranges the chief types of social facts. Then we reach clause (c) in the third formula. We dis- cover, in the course of sociological analysis, that all the moral DEFINITIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 33 judgments which men have entertained at any time in the past have derived their force at last from beliefs which men have held about the effects of that conduct upon life as a whole. Some picture of life in the large has swayed before people's minds, and those things were supposed to be good which helped to fill out the scheme of life. Those things were bad which interfered with the dominant facts of the world.*' The same is true today. Whatever our theological or philosophical beliefs, we are all substantially alike in holding that conduct to be moral which in the long run and on the whole works well. Moreover, we have no other appeal, when we are trying to decide what is most moral in a given case — for instance, our treatment of the Filipinos. We have no other test of what is moral than our best judgment of how different kinds of con- duct will work on the whole. Tliat being so, ability to trace the effects of social causation, in past, present, and future, is of radical importance as a part of real knowledge of human soicety in general. We do not know anything until we know what it is for. Suppose, for instance, that I am trying to describe a given object, but have no idea of the service it was designed to per- form, or that I carefully repress all references to its purpose. I distinguish certain upright columns and certain ci"oss-bars; then a horizontal plane composed of leather or wood or cane ; then some connections with columns higher than the former, and some further cross-bars connecting the before-mentioned bars; but I do not describe anything. I simply make a cata- logue of some items which, so far as my description has gone, are only arbitrarily connected. But presently I get, or choose to divulge, the idea of a device for the support of the human body in a semi-recumbent position — a chair. Then I can give some sort of an account of the relation of these materials to the process that is to be performed ; and the thing begins to have reality. Nothing is ever described properly unless it is described ° Vide chaps. 43-45. 34 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY with reference to the end which it is supposed to be fitted to serve or to the process in which it occurs. This is conspicu- ously the case with the fact of human association. Can we get such a view of association as a whole that we may see all around it, and along toward the outcome of it, and may thus describe the details and incidents of it in the light of its ulti- mate purpose? If the question means, "Can we find an absolute terminal for the social process, and can we describe association as a finished affair? " the answer is emphatically no. If the question means, " Can we discover a definite content of the social process, a work which it is always doing, and which, in the nature of the case, so far as we can see, it must always continue to do, so long as the process persists?" the answer is emphatically yes. We must therefore reach some sort of a con- ception of what this vast unity that we call human society is for; then we must be able to trace the effects which different kinds of action have in the line of promoting or retarding this total purpose of society. We have in this knowledge a basis for practical morality. This brings us to the last clause of our third formula. We shall say more about it under the next title. The final phase of sociology is "social technology," viz., principles of adapting means to ends in practical improvement of society.^ Just as the science of physics proves its right to exist by contributing to the various divisions of engineering, so the general science of sociology will prove its genuineness as knowledge in propor- tion as it can mold principles for the successful conduct of life. Sociology is not reformation of criminals, nor administration of charities, nor solution of the poverty problem, nor preven- tion of labor conllicts, nor reform of government, nor improve- ment of education, nor the making of religion practical. Yet sociology would be an abortion if it did not eventually promote each and all of these things. The matter may be left for the present in this somewhat paradoxical form. The cmi)hasig at this point is on the fact that sociology is primarily kiiou'lcdgc, 'Cf. Part L\. DEFINITIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 35 not action. It is detailed knowledge, analytical knowledge; it is all-around, inclusive, synthetic knowledge of the whole social reality. Comte said : " See in order to foresee ; " " Know in order to foreknow." This is what all the definitions of sociology try to provide for. The thought is not to frame a science that ends with knowing; for no knowledge is complete until it passes into action. The aim is science that will pass naturally into doing. In order to have such science, the basis must be laid in -knowledge which is as general, and abstract, and objective, and disinterested as though mere statement of truth were the final thing to be desired. After this prolonged discussion, an entirely different description or definition of sociology may be timely. For cer- tain purposes it is an advance on the others, viz. : 4. Sociology is an attempt so to visualise and so to inter- pret the whole of human experience that it will reveal the last discoi^erable grounds upon zvhich to base conclusions about the rational conduct of life. It is unnecessary to comment on definition 4. We may simply repeat that all these definitions are results of attempts to formulate the same thing.^ A still more accurate description of sociology has been implied in chap. i. It is the main thesis of this syllabus, and the body of the argument is in support of it. We simply record it here as more accurate and inclusive than any other single formula, viz. : 5. Sociology is the science of the social process. ' This fact has been discussed at length under the title, " What is a Sociologist?" American Journal of Sociology, January, 1903. CHAPTER III THE IMPULSE OF SOCIOLOGY Suggestions contained in chap. 2 have made long discus- sion of the present subject unnecessary. We may merely answer, in brief, the question : How did it come about that sociology is in the world at all? This is something more than a mere matter of historical curiosity. The answer to the question goes far toward explain- ing very prevalent confusions about sociology itself. The subject sometimes seems to be utterly abstract speculative philosophy. As it is represented by other men, it knows nothing whatever of logic or philosophy, and is simply a scheme of sentimentally benevolent experiment. How does it come about that such different things can pass under the same name? The answer is, in a word, that in all probability the senti- mental philanthropic impulse has done more than the scientific impulse to bring sociology into existence. Men of the type of St. Simon (1760- 1825), Fourier (1772- 1837), and even Comte (1798-1851), in France; Robert Owen, Ruskin, Maurice, Kingsley, Robertson, and Mill, in England; the socialists in all countries; a group of earnest so-called "social- scientists," and especially certain types of philanthropists, in this country, so industriously advocated tJic improvement of social conditions that presently attempts to develop a scientific sociology became inevitable. The various agitations for social reform or improvement worked in this way : People of philanthropic temper decided that something was wrong and ought to be righted. It might be the existence of paupers ; or of competent workmen out of woirk, or of long hours, low pay, and. bad sanitary conditions for those who did work ; or of private ownership of what might have been owned by the 36 THE IMPULSE OF SOCIOLOGY 37 public; or a hundred other things. Earnest people declared that these things ought not so to be. Then obstinate con- servatives were roused to opposition. They said : " Non- sense! These people are crazy. Sentimentalism has gone mad in them. They mean well, but they are trying to do the impossible. It is paternalism. It is contrary to the laws of political economy to attempt to help people who do not help themselves. There is no scientific ground for these visionaries to stand on." There was some truth on both sides. Evils were being allowed to take their course which the proper amount of attention could have mitigated, if not wholly remedied. On the other hand, schemes of reform were being promoted without serious attempt to find out what their con- sequences would be, outside of a very narrow circle. As Herbert Spencer has shown, in his essay on The Sins of Legis- lators, laws were passed, in the most confident spirit, which time and again produced greater evils than they were devised to remove. All this tended to educate people of a different type ; people who could see the evils, on the one hand, but, on the other hand, could see that our knowledge of social rela- tions is too meager to be a safe guide in attempts to reorganize society. These men said : " Yes, the sentimentalists are right that we ought to do better, but the conservatives are also right that we ought to look before we leap. We must be sure we are right before we go ahead; or, at least, if we cannot be sure, we must study society deeply enough to justify our beliefs that courses of action are reasonable, and in the direction of progress." ^ It followed that a few people accepted the logic of the situation and marked out a course of study accordingly. Lester F. Ward, the author of Dynamic Sociology, is the best illus- tration. His position was, in brief, that men may make human life vastly more rational, profitable, worthy, and satis- fying, if they will train the same sort of study upon life as a whole which they now devote to more or less meaningless ' I'idc Spencer, The Study of Sociology. 38 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY abstractions from life. The shortest and surest route to better doing in the end is more thorough knowing. There is work for a few students who will devote themselves to patient study of human society as a whole, without impatience about the length of time which will be required to reach practical results. There is work for men who will consent to be sneered at as dreamers, who will be patient while people revile and ridicule them as impractical transcendental philosophers. There is work for men who will run large surveys of life in its ultimate meanings, and will discover general principles that are always valid in society. This will in the end prove the most practical sort of work, for it will furnish the only possible rational basis for intelligent programs of social action. Meanwhile nobody is fit for this grade of work who cannot devote himself to it with patience and persistence, in spite of probability that during his lifetime it will yield very meager returns which can be put to any practical use. Essentially, search for fundamental or general social prin- ciples is the most practical sort of social work that can be undertaken. Superficially, immediately, and to the person capable of appreciating only concrete details, it is bound to seem a sterility and a mockery. Yet sociology has come into being from this deep loyal impulse of social service. Its whole animus is constructive, remedial, ameliorative. Even its most abstract and technical refinements have their final meaning as ultimate contributions to the art of life. Of course, it is true in sociology, as everywhere else in the scientific world, that men get swamped in technicalities and forget the larger inter- ests which alone make the technicalities worth while. In spite of these individual lapses, sociology is through and through a plan to lay the necessary foundations of knowledge for the most enlightened program of human life which it is possible for men to propose. It is not dead embalmed science. It is an attempt to reach vital insight for the sake of efticient action. It is at the same time a consistent protest against THE IMPULSE OF SOCIOLOGY 39 action, or agitations for action, in advance of ability to furnish morally conclusive reasons for the action. After what has been said, it is to be hoped that two things have been made clear : First : The program of sociology aims finally at the most thorough, intense, persistent, and system- atic effort to make human life all that it is capable of becoming. Second : This thoroughly social and constructive impulse is held in restraint by scientific sociology until a philosophy and a theory of action can be justified. There is nothing in soci- ology, therefore, for people who are not able and willing to consider today's practical affairs in their relation to the largest generalizations of human conditions and actions that the mind can reach. The impulse is humanitarian. The method is that of completely objective science and philosophy. CHAPTER IV THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY GiDDiNGS, " Modern Sociology," International Monthly, November, 1900. Ward, " Contemporary Sociology," American Journal of Sociology, January, March, and May, 1902. """ Vincent, " History of Sociology," ibid., September, 1904. Professor Vincent begins his courses on the history of sociology with Plato, and he finds some contributions to the subject in every subsequent period of progress in thought. That is, men have puzzled their brains about general social truths ever since Plato, and probably long before. There is essential likeness, in impulse at any rate, between all these efforts to know ourselves and our life-conditions. In that sense it is true that sociology is as old as human reflection. Then there is a more special sense in which a closer approach to modern sociology is reached, beginning with Montesquieu (1689-1755). His two works. The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans (1734) and The Spirit of the Laws (1748), are often called the beginning of the philosophy of history. Now, sociology is a radically different affair from the philosophy of history, as we find it in the abundant litera- ture of that subject, from Montesquieu to Marx, or from Bossuet to Buckle, or from Herder to Hegel or Lotze. At the same time the philosophers of history were groping toward the very thing that the sociologists are attempting, although their methods were very different. \ They wanted to discover the general principles which human experience shows to be the laws to which human life must conform. The common fault of the philosophers of history was the inordinatelv large ratio of their speculative philosophy to their positive history. They reasoned before the facts, and without the facts, and thus fabricated an artificial world, instead of interpreting the real 40 THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 4I world. Yet the development of the philosophy of history was pioneer work for sociology, and we may also say for history. It got a series of untenable hypotheses out of the way. It helped push real social problems out into clear light. It cannot be urged too strongly, therefore, that for practical sociology patient study of the history of the subject, including the many schemes of the philosophy of history, is thoroughly worth while. Indeed, it will often happen that the reality of the fundamental social problems will not be visible until one has gradually approached them along the path which these specu- lat' ve systems .followed in finding at last the terra iirma of social reality. To see that there are actual problems to be solved, we sometimes have to adjust our vision to vague con- ceptions of social facts as they appeared in the panorama which one philosopher of history after another imagined, and which one sociologist after another drew in more literal perspective. Assuming acquaintance with the outlines cited at the beginning of this chapter, our contribution to the subject will be a version of the same facts from a point of approach slightly different from that of either of these sketches. The sociologists have exhibited progress in the development of methodology. This progress has both directly and indirectly promoted advance toward definite conceptions of problems which are awaiting use of adequate methods. In a word, the present problems of sociology are necessary sequences of increas- ing precision in presenting the exact questions which arise in the course of passing from the known to the unknown. This is the case with sociology just as with physics or chemistry. In arranging our knowledge of social facts, we constantly run against our limitations, and we forthwith attempt to break down the barriers and arrive at more general knowledge. The most convenient illustration is that of the economic man who served the science of political economy so faithfully for a century. People tried to exhaust knowledge of the " economic man." What does the " economic man " do under all circum- 42 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Stances? But they found at last that the ''economc man" sometimes becomes a bar to knowledge. He gets himself installed in the place of the real man. Before we knjw it we are assuming that the only man there is, is the * economic man," while in fact " the economic man " never is. V-^e take it for granted that what the economic interests in men end to do, the actual man really does. Then this turns out to be wide of the mark, and w-e are driven to the necessity of staking more general knowledge of man than that which is summed up in the economic man. We have to find out, not what the economic man does in hypothetical circumstances, but w^at the real man does in actual circumstances. That involves much more general knowledge of man than traditional eco- nomic science supposed to be necessary. The history of soci- ology consequently covers a development of thought about society, from the most rudimentaiy reflections about man and his lot, through the profoundest metaphysical speculations about human origins and destinies, to the present prevailing attempts to analyze all classes of human activities, and to explain them as terms in a practically endless series of physi- cal and psychical causation. The history is thus, in ^_ word, the history of the growth of the mind's power to penetrate the complexity of human- events. To get our bearings, therefore, in today's sociology, it is necessary to survey the course of thought by which we have arrived at our present attitude toward the problems of society. We must review the forms under which the pioneers in soci- ology have presented the problems to themselves. These early attempts are instructive, not because they have contributed directly to the solution of sociological or social problems, but because they have led to more exact statement of the problems. Judged by results, sociology up to date has comparatively little to say for itself. Possibly the chief significance of the sociologists is in their instinct of the oneness of all knowledge about men. If names were consistently used, s<3ciology would THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 43 not be understood to mean a fragment of social science. It would be the comprehensive term for all search into the facts of human association, somewhat as biology no longer means any special phase of the science of life, but the whole body of investigation into vegetable and animal phenomena. We are obliged to use the term "sociology," however, to designate that standpoint from which a better survey of human associa- tion is becoming possible. At present this standpoint seems, to those social scientists who do not occupy it, entirely isolated from their interests. The best that has been done so far by sociology in the current technical sense, except incidentally in certain of its con- crete divisions, is to demonstrate the lack of method in analyzing social relationships, and in searching for the secrets of social cause and effect. The history of sociology is a record of an apparently aimless hunt for something which the hunters did not know how to describe or define. In the last half- century a few students of society have been filled with vague discontent because of haunting dissatisfaction with the sort of insight into social truth which the traditional studies fur- nished. These students have beaten the air, sometimes only to raise more dust, but sometimes also with the result of chasing away some of the lingering clouds. On the whole, the history of sociology consists mainly of attempts to plan a kind of study which will yield more intimate knowledge of society than the traditional social sciences have reached. As yet there is very little to show by way of con- clusion from these quests. The fortunes of the attempts are nevertheless a precious legacy to the present generation. They are, first of all, object-lessons in how not to do it. In the second place, they are indirect and fragmentary indications of how to state the problems of society and how to proceed in solving them. The history of sociological method is thus useful training for research, if we are wise enough to gather up its teachings. In accordance with the foregoing, we may join with Tarde 44 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY in finding the progenitors of our sociologists long- before the name was invented. Tarde impHes beHef that the old philoso- phers and theologians were actually the pioneers in the fields of study which have at last reached such intensive cultivation that the class of investigators known as sociologists had to be differ- entiated.^ He speaks of the " change promising better results " which is observable from the time when " such specialists in sociology " as the philologists, the philosophers of religion, and especially the economists began to perform the more modest task of identifying minute facts and of formulating their laws.^ There has been a gradual recognition of interlacings among human relationships, and this perception has been calling for larger co-ordinations of research, and closer organization of results, than older students of society felt to be necessary. We have consequently arrived at conceptions of the relations of knowledge about society which constitute a totally new setting for all particular facts. This anticipated organon of knowledge about society is sociology. In order to get the most intimate view of sociology, both as it is and as it must be, we shall make a rapid survey of certain typical attempts to formulate socio- logical problems and methods. We may do this most con- veniently for our present purpose by reference to Earth's Die Philosophie dcr Geschichte als Sociologies Earth's thesis is that there is no sociology except the phi- losophy of history. The theorem is not true, but it contains truth. The philosophy of history attempted to formulate the laws of social sequences. Sociology almost universally attempts to formulate, not merely laws of sequence, but also laws of past and present correlation. Many sociologists declare that the most important division of sociology is beyond both these * Les lots socioles, p. 26. ' Symptomatic of changes taking place in views of the correlations of prob- lems is the phrase of Steinnietz : " L'economie politique, la branche [sic] la plus avancee et la plus indt-pendante de la sociologie " (Durkhcini, L'annee sociotogique, 1900, p. 47). 'Vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1897). ^^- review, American Journal of Sociology, March, 1898. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 45 groups, in laws of social aims and of the available means of attaining them.^ Even if we were reduced to a conception of sociology which identifies its subject-matter with that of the philosophy of history, it would be easy to show that sociology is perfecting a method which distinguishes it from traditional philosophy of history somewhat as astronomy from astrology, or chemistry from alchemy. This is by no means to deny essential similarity of purpose, to a certain extent at least, between the earlier and the later attempts to discover social laws. *' Sociology is accordingly the natural successor, heir, and assign of the worthy but inefifective philosophy of his- tory."'^ The fundamental difference between the philosophers of history and the sociologists is that the former hoped to explain human experience by means of logical deductions from speculative premises. The latter know that human experience is to be understood only by inductive investigation of an evolu- tionary process. It is needless to ask how early men directed their attention to the actions of men, and tried to see those actions in their connections with each other, and then tried to recount the facts in their supposed relations.*^ There came a time, at all events — let us say, for convenience, with Herodotus and Thucydides — when this attention to actions of men in the large was con- scious and deliberate. It had taken the place and rank of a dignified intellectual pursuit. It called itself history. It undertook to tell both what men had done and why they had done it. This, in general, is precisely what sociology tries to * " Die Socialwissenschaft hat zwei Aufgaben — Erkenntniss des Seienden und Erkenntniss des Seinsollenden ; jener dient die theoretische, dieser die practische Sociallehre " (Dietzel, Theoretische Socialokonomik, p. 4). Dietzel obviously means by the term Sociakvisscnschaft very nearly what we shall indicate as the proper connotation of the term " sociology." " Die Aufgabe der practischen Sociallehre ist also eine dreifache : normative, kritische, technische ; die der practischen Naturlehre nur eine einfache : technische" {idem, p. 5). ^Journal of Political Economy, March, 1895, p. 173. * On the early history of social ideas, vide Riimmler, Prolegomena cum Platans Staat (Basel, 1891). 46 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY do today. History is, therefore, sociology in the yolk. We shall understand sociology^ best not by dogmatizing about the sort of thing which it would please us to designate by that name. The name has come to stand for something which is asserting itself, whether we like it or not, and history, whether the historians like it or not, will remain a collection of litter, more or less artistically arranged, until it is generalized as sociology. We shall form a more intelligent view of sociology if we follow the trunk line of its evolution from men's earliest naive attempts to see human actions together. This is what history has been from the beginning. It is what sociology is now\ Sociology exists today because a few men have dis- covered that, if we are to see human actions in their most essential relations^ a more complicated' machinery of research and organization is necessary than historiography controls. The disrepute into which the philosophy of history has fal- len is not due to disbelief that there has been method in human experience. When a modern critical historian speaks with con- tempt of the philosophy of history, he refers either to some of the obsolete methods of reaching historical judgments, or to some other man's philosophy of history. He is surely not con- temptuous himself, nor willing that others should be, toward his own philosophy of history. He always has one, if he is anything more than a rag-picker from the garbage-heaps of the past. But the more we study the philosophies of history that are no longer in vogue,'^ the more are we impressed by a few commonplaces concerning them ; for instance : First : People have attempted to make a very little knowl- edge go a long way in coining generalities about society. History has proved to be like the Bible : it may be made to teach anything, if we take it in sufficiently minute fragments. Second : People have tried to create the general truths of history out of philosophical presuppositions, instead of build- ' Vide Flint, Philosophy of History. The first edition is more useful for a general survey than the incomplete second edition. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 47 ing them up by collection and generalization of facts. That is, they have trusted to dogmatism and deduction instead of attempting induction. Third : People have had very crude conceptions of the com- plexity of the things to which their assumed historical prin- ciples were supposed to apply. They have not been able to analyze the subject-matter so as really to see the elements involved. Fourth : Hence the foregone conclusion of demand, sooner or later, for a method which shall be an improvement upon that of the philosophy of history. At the same time, critical study of the philosophies of his- tory is a most valuable propaedeutic for sociology. Every sociological system that is trying to push itself into favor today has its prototype among these more archaic systems, and not a few recent sociological schemes may be disposed of by the same process that rules these philosophies of history out of court. On the other hand, each of these abortive philosophies of history has contributed its quota toward comprehension of the conditions of social problems, and together they have indirectly promoted the adoption of adequate sociological methods. This fact may be indicated more in detail if we adopt for illustration Earth's seven-fold division of the philosophy of history, instead of discussing a score or more of familiar theorems of alleged central principles in history. We find that each of these views attempted to bring into focus something that is actually present in human afifairs. It may not be the something alleged. It surely is not present in the proportions alleged. It is a real something, however, and the final science of society must know it and place it. For instance, Barth distinguishes first The Individualistic View of History. There are still historians who hold that the actions of great individuals are the only proper content of history. There is no universal or general current which, from the beginning of society, carries the hero along with the rest of mankind. On the contrary, according to this view, each hero 48 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY digs the course of his own current. This may have relations with the similar life-courses of other great men, but it by no means forms part of a great common current. The individual- ists think of the great personalities as free, as creators out of nothing, as first links of a new chain of events, which are so independent of the past that they are capable of beginning a new life in opposition to the endeavors of the past. It is evident that so far as this view prevails there is no possibility of science. Science is knowledge of things in their correlation. If they have no correlation, there is no material for science. If there are no recurrences, no regularities, no uniformities in societary events, there is no possibility of the rudiments of all science. There can be no descriptive classifi- cation. In order to appreciate the problem with which we are now dealing, it may be an advantage to state it in concrete form, thus : The things that we want most to know about society are not things of the past, but of the present and the future. We turn back to the past because it is once for all before our eyes. It is a reality. We hope it will reveal some guidance for present and future. We want to know how men should act if they would make the most of life. We want to know what influences are at work, and how they work, in affecting social conditions. To that end we inquire into great historical move- ments, for example tlie transfer of power in the Italian penin- sula from the old Roman element to the barbarian element. We call it the fall of Rome. We name other simihr move- ments: the breaking up of the Carolingian monarchy into European feudalism; or the consolidation of feudalism into the new monarchies; or the overthrow of the aristc^cracies and the enfranchisement of the democracies in the early part of the nineteenth century. From such great movement-s we ought to learn something about what would be involved in a social change of cf|ual magnitude today; as. for instance, a solution of the labor problem which would give wage-earners a more direct and decisive influence in the economic order. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 49 Suppose we are asking how such a change in modern industrial society is to be brought alx)ut, and we go to history for the answer. We find a class of interpreters of history ring- ing the changes on this one theme, namely : " Great social changes are the product of individual factors alone." Now this answer is not as simple as it sounds. One man means by it that a few great, perhaps almost superhuman, men — Solon, Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Bismarck — have been the main- springs of social movement, and the rest of the human herd have been inert masses moved by them. Others mean that social movements are simply the slow accretions of volume or force by addition of one human individual to another — the drop added to drop that wears the rock away, or the atom added to atom in one scale which at last overbalances the huge mass in the opposite scale. The individualistic view would say to the wage-earners of our present generation who want their class to become the dominant type in the state : " To bring about the industrial revolution that you want, either * labor ' must incar- nate itself in a giant or hero, who will perform some modern labors of Hercules and make the world over; or the mere multiplication of the numbers of the wage-earners, regardless of combinations or changes of their ideas, or the co-operation of other classes, or the limitations of the constructive capacity of the operative class, will in time effect the desired social transformation, or it is impossible altogether." This view of social forces makes individuals alone — whether the few great and forceful ones or the multitude of average ones — the sole factors in social complications. Now, there is a sense in which this must be true. Society is made up of individuals, just as matter is supposed to be made up of atoms ; but no theory of atoms alone will account beforehand for the behavior of the particular atoms that make hydrogen or oxygen or sulphur or phosphorus. Nor will any theory of the atom alone account for what happens when one pair of substances enter into a reaction, and the unlike results when another pair of substances react upon each other. The so GENERAL SOCIOLOGY case is similar with the actions of individuals. All social facts are combinations of individual facts. Yet the influences at work in these combinations are not accounted for by any a priori conception of individuals which we can reach. For instance, a hundred socialistic German students are mustered into the imperial army and are sworn to defend the Kaiser and the flag. So long as they wear the uniform they are imperialists, not socialists. Now, there is something besides the sum of those individualities which is at work in giving them a character, when they are combined, that is different from the sum of their characters as isolated individuals. In this case the flag and the uniform may symbolize the added something. At all events, it would be a very shallow and unpenetrating account that would find in the company merely oaie hundred detached and self-sufficient individuals. It may be said that the individualistic view of history marks a sort of extreme swing of the pendulum from the fatalistic, mass notion of human affairs that prevailed before men were conscious of their own personal agency, before they had fairly differentiated themselv^ from their surroundings. It may be said that the task of finding out the facts about influences in society is virtually the task of finding the qual- ifications which must be thought of when we regard human fortunes as events of which individuals are the elements. It may be said that the individualistic view gives us a primary term in the social equation, and that our further work is to find out the value of the other terms which affect the value of the individual term. These pn^positions are no doubt approxi- mately correct. The individualistic conception of human affairs is not utterly false. It is a rough, uncritical, . inexact exaggeration of a perception which must l)e reduced to more precise and proportionate formulation. In this play between unscientific, uncritical, wholesale assumptions about society, students have been brought to face a specific problem, namely : Given individual elements in society, given also a certain coherence of society, by virtue of THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 51 which influences stronger than those of any individual persist, or at least influences persist with more than the personal energy of any individual, what are the specific modifying and differ- entiating factors which procure social motion, progress, development? Accordingly the historians, independent of the sociologists, have struck out in a new direction in the past half-century. The older historians told of the fortunes of per- sons, of states, of humanity. The newer history, however, becomes more specific and realistic. Both in theory and in practice it considers nations as the vehicles of culture. It traces the development of their internal conditions. It com- pares them with each other. It tries to fix upon what is typical in each, and by that course to arrive at the history of humanity. Even in conservative Germany, perceptions of scientific demands which have arisen in the course of arriving at such historical views have produced sociologists. They are not recognized in many of the universities, but they are working under various titles — philosophers, historians, economists, etc. They are searching for the most general truths about human associations, and about the forces that are working in them. In other words, the friction between the individualistic view of history and opposing views has been one of several distinct producers of inductive inquiry into real conditions. When the different inductive inquiries so provoked have become aware of each other, they have been seen to constitute a new line of approach to social reality, and they have together received the name "sociology." A similar form of conclusion must follow due considera- tion of each attempt to account for the historical movements of society. Earth's second title is The Anthropo-Geographical Vieiv of History. Having shown in the foregoing paragraphs how a single one-sided view of past, events has helped to form our methods of thinking, and to make scientific demands more precise and adequate, we need not consider other one-sided views at equal length. The outcome in each case is essentially the same. Each one-sided view has drawn attention to an 52 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY actual factor in the problem of society. The sociologists are now stating the problem in terms of all these factors so far discovered. The form of the sociological inquiry is not the old form of the historians: ''Is the secret of human life this or that? " The sociological form of inquiry is : '* Given observed forms of influence in human affairs, how much of each detected form of influence is present in a given social movement, and in what measure does it work ? " The several one-sided views have thus been merged into a many-sided inquiry.** We should notice, in passing, that a similar practical result is produced upon individuals by the study of the social sciences. Whether a given student gets a system of social doctrine satis- factory to himself or not, he emerges from the study of the social sciences, as at present organized, with a perception that the world of people is the arena of many interactive influences. In his judgments, either of past times or of current events, the student of the social sciences, from the sociological point of view, is forearmed against the narrowness that presupposes the prevalence of a single force rather than the interplay of many forces. The outlook that sociology makes familiar brings into the field of view the whole number of modifying influences that have been discovered among men. The soci- ologist, studying the present condition of China, or Turkey, or Japan, or the Philippines, or Spain, or Germany, or France, or Russia, or the United States, does not imagine that he has before him a simple case of economics or politics or ethics. He sees the resultant of numerous physical and spiritual antece- dents, varied in each case by special combinations, and con- stituting in each case a peculiar organization of primary and secondary factors, the force of which has to be determined in each instance for itself. Thus the development of thought about society has had the double result, on the one hand, of enlarging and clarifying ' yide Chamberlin, " The Method of the Multiple Working Hypothesis," Journal of Geology, November, 1897. This paper is a veritable sermon in stones, which the sociologists would do well to consider. Mutatis mutandis, it may be taken bodilj as a lesson in sociological methodology. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 53 technical social science, and, on the other hand, of forming the molds in which practical judgments of the world's present social problems must be cast. All the one-sided views of history are, in the first place, exaggerations of ideas which may be detected very early, at least in germs or suggestions. Barth observes that something of this anthropo-geographical conception of history is to be found in Hippocrates, Herodotus, Thucydides, etc. Coming to more recent times, the idea was so prominent in Herder that many readers have hastily reduced his theory of history to terms of this notion alone. Ritter, professor in the university and military school at Berlin (1779-1859), systematically expanded the idea. His geographical studies have become the basis for school work in the subject in Germany, and his influ- ence may be traced throughout the world. His ambition was to make geography an interpreter of history. His purpose may be described as a wish to develop a dynamic geography. Yet it would be unfair to treat him as blind to all other influ- ences affecting society. He distinctly recognized a certain dimhiucndo movement in history, so far as the relative influ- ence of physical environment is concerned. The view to w'hich Ritter gave such prominence has been exploited with less balance by Buckle '^ and Draper.^" The essential thought which Ritter did so much to justify impressed President Oilman, of Johns Hopkins University, while he was still at Yale. He might have developed a sociology on the basis of geography, if he had not turned to administrative tasks.^^ Professor Geddes, of Edinburgh, is the most energetic expounder of this idea in the English-speaking world. Not the most prominent geographer, but the most scholarly expo- nent of this particular anthropo-geographical idea on the con- tinent today, is Ratzel, of Leipzig (Anthropo-Geographie). ^History of Cii'ili"ation in England. ^"Intellectual Development of Europe. " Cf. Ripley, " Geography as a Sociological Study," Political Science Quar- terly, December, 1895. 54 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Ratzel, again, is to be classed with Herder and Ritter in pla- cing his pecuhar perception in balance with co-operating forces. He aims to show the ways in which humanity depends upon the spatial relations of the earth. While the analysis of influ- ences from the environment, as carried out by Ratzel, is full of instruction, and while it opens up still uncultivated fields of research, it is still comparatively free from the fault of his- torical one-sidedness. Not so with men who have taken up this clue to history without the corrective which Ratzel expresses in the words : " Not nature, but mind, produces culture." For instance, Mougeolle^^ declares: "Thus the environment alone can truly explain the chief events of history, and furnish the solution of its most general problems." ^^ As in the case of the individualistic conception of history, so with this exaggerated estimate of the part that nature has played in the formation of human society. Doubtless the social problem has waited longer than it ought for adequate formula- tion, because many men have too implicitly and literally believed with Plato that " ideas make the world." Such men have told the story of history as though it were a ghost-dance on a floor of clouds. They have tried to explain how spirits with negligible bodies have brought about the visible results. They would not admit that the facts of human association have been the work of flesh-and-blood men with their feet on the ground. How much of the soil and the sunshine and the wind and snow and rain has lodged itself in men's works and ways remains to be determined. At all events, we have been taught by the contradictions of extremists that history in the future will neither be turned over entirely to the weather bureau, nor will it be exclusively the affair of the introspective rhapsodist. Human fortunes are not diluted climatology. They are not visualized spirituality, in any sense at least which we can comprehend. They are the resultant of physical and spiritual forces, reacting upon each other in the most complex " Le probli-me de I'histoire (Paris, 1886). " Cf. chap. 30, sec. 4, " The Physical Environment." THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 55 combinations which we know.^"* They will not be summed up in any simple equation of a single term. The views of history which exaggerate a co-operating factor into an exclusive factor, and assume that a constant influence is a monopoly of influence, are gradually forcing us to study new terms in the social problem. Each partial view of the influences that have made and remade men and associations gives us a 'distinct factor about which correlated search by the different kinds of sociologists must find means of answering the general question : " In what cases does this factor work ; with what tendencies does it work; with what ratio of force does it work?" In other words, the sociological scheme which appropriates the lessons of previous failure to penetrate the social mystery, will have a use for all accessible knowledge about the time, place, direction, and intensity of the purely topographical and climato- logical factors among social influences ; but for the same rea- son it will have an appropriate place also for all the other influences that may be discovered. Earth's third title is The Ethnological Viezv of History. It is not easy to draw a sharp line of division between this view and the second, just noticed. Of the two, the view now to be considered seems to have more prominence in today's social science. It appears less extravagant, less open to the suspicion of being crass materialism and mechanicalism, and therefore less taxing to the credulity. It is easier to see, or to imagine that we see, how the Teutons and the Romans could coalesce in a third something which turns out to be the Carolingian empire, than to see how the dust of one peninsula, stirred by one set of breezes, made Spartans, while the dust of another peninsula, vexed by other breezes, made Etruscans. The traditional belief that blood tells prepares a welcome in our minds for the stock-breeder's theory of history. It is supposed to have such backing in the findings of biology that the people who get the view fairly into their minds are strongly tempted '* This necessary classification of forces is dualistic merely in form. It rests upon a deeper monism. 56 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY to trust in its all-sufficiency, and to abandon further search for historical explanations. Indeed, the ethnologists and the ortho- dox economists are the closest competitors for the distinction of making a very narrow abstraction stretch to the utmost extension as a total explanation. The prestige of the ethno- logical view rests, however, upon very precarious support. Whether genetic laws large enough to explain any single his- torical movement have been demonstrated within the field of ethnology proper is open to serious question. Much that passes for severe ethnological science is merely ingenious speculation. Even if it is proved that races have been the vehicles of influ- ences which have affected different societies in different ways, it remains to be proved that the racial element was cause rather than eft'ect of this influence, or of some other which was a more important cause. Moreover, many of the theorems of racial influence are theses in psychics rather than in physiology or zoology. They are dogmas in folk-psychology, not data or results of ethnology at all. In this connection the most prominent ethnologists have failed to clarify their ideas. Such men as TojMnard in France, and Tylor in England, and Brinton in this country have per- formed some grotesque straddles by defining ethnology as a physical science and then including in it every manifestation of man's complex nature. They have seemed to be uncertain, and they have surely left their readers uncertain, whether they were discovering physical traits, and then showing how these lend themselves to industrial and cultural development ; or whether they were starting with mental developments and were reasoning back to differences of physical traits sufficient to account for the phenomena. In other words, the most eminent ethnologists have not yet shown themselves such patient investigators of the facts within their own field that their con- clusions have had a very profound effect upon laymen, espe- cially those who are experts in other branches of physical science.'*'^ This is likely to grow less and less true since more '° Cf. Cummings, " Ethnic Factors and the Movement of Population," Quarterly Journal of Economics, February, igoo. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 57 carefully trained scholars are entering the ethnological field. The work of many of these, however, tends to the opposite extreme of mere description and classification of details, from which no general truth of large dimensions emerges. Hence the recent differentiation of the folk-psychologists. They are really only ethnologists of a new type. They are less first-hand discoverers of ethnological facts, and more interpreters of the material that collectors and classifiers place at their disposal. The two types together realize a division of labor that is bound to make ethnology a powerful ally of the other search-sciences in revealing the social mystery. We need not deny that blood tells, but we should not be prematurely certain that we can hear what it tells, or that we can distinguish the voice of the particular blood that speaks. Whatever truth is to be found out along this line is apparently farther from present demonstration than the truths about the transmission of physical traits in general. It will doubtless be long before we shall be able to distinguish between proof in this field and fiction under a thin mask of illustration. Even if we were disposed to assume a priori that the whole truth lies in this direction, we should be phenomenally credulous to believe that the truth is already in sight, sufficient to make a science of society to be remotely compared in precision with either of the physical sciences. The one prominent result thus far of attempts to fit the ethnological assumption to interpretation of the social mystery, has been to impress judicial investigators with the non-correspondence between the hypothesis and the evidence chiefly relied on for proof. Instead of making toward the conclusion that blood corpuscles in one race so differ from the blood corpuscles of another race that civiliza- tions are contrasted with each other in consequence, the evi- dence makes for the conclusion that ideas weigh more than differences in animal tissue in determining what the traits of associated life shall be. This is the reason why ethnology is finding its most promising developments today in the line of ethnic or folk-psychology, which is only a cross-section of 58 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY mass-psychology. Each is a chapter of social psychology in general. The problems of the relation of the animal organism to the spiritual nature of man seem at present to be in progress toward solution, if anywhere, in the psychological laboratories. People who deal with human phenomena in bulk are not likely to solve these problems, whatever they call themselves. They can merely deal with aspects of human facts which leave these fundamental questions unexplored. Whatever may be the form which our conclusions may one day take about the influ- ence of the body upon the mind, our interpretation of human events must have respect to this by-product of ethnological theory, namely, the observation that different ethnic and tribal groups somehow come to be the vehicles of a tradition which, so far as effects appear, might as well be part and parcel of their physical structure. Their bodies and their tradition of thought and feeling constantly function together. The colored and the white elements in the United States, for example, are not made up of individuals of absolutely identical force in the social equation. A group of colored men and a group of white men, who had passed through schools of the same grade in the same city, would not be social forces of identical quality and equal energy, for the reason that they somehow carry along unlike traditions from unlike conditions in the past. We may see these differences in men, and we should see them as they manifest themselves in racial peculiarities. On the other hand, we should not assume that these racial manifestations present to us irreducible factors of human force. Tliat would be like a theory of chemistry which assumes that vapor and water and ice are three irreducible elements. The final solution of the social mystery will have an answer to the question : " What is the value of the racial factor in the social equation?" Meanwhile, neither physiology nor zoology nor ethnology nor history lends sanction to the super- ficial assumption that the social equation is an affair of only one set of variables, namely, the racial characteristics of THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 59 peoples. When we have in mind the ethnic factor in the social problem, it is necessary to render the sociological question in this form : " What is the formula of the racial factor in its combinations with all the other factors in the social equation ? " Earth's fourth title is The Culture-History View}^ The very idea of "culture," as the term is used among German scholars, has hardly entered distinctly into American calcula- tions. In order to indicate the view-point which is occupied by the interpreters to whom the title of this paragraph applies, it is necessary to define words in a way not yet adopted as a rule in English usage. What, then, is " culture " (Knltur) in the German sense ? To be sure, the Germans themselves are not wholly consistent in their use of the term, but it has a technical sense which it is necessary to define. In the first place, "culture" is a condition or achievement possessed by society. It is not individual. Our phrase "-a cultured person " does not employ the term in the German sense. For that, German usage has another word, gebildet, and the peculiar possession of the gebildeter Mann is not " culture," but Bildung. If we should accept the German term " culture " in its technical sense, we should have no better equivalent for Bildung, etc., than "education" and "edu- cated," which convey too much of the association of school discipline to render the German conception in its entire scope. At all events, whatever names we adopt, there is such social possession, different from the individual state, which consists of adaptation in thought and action to the conditions of life. Again, the Germans distinguish between " culture " and "civilization." Thus "civilization is the ennobling, the increased control of the elementary human impulses by society. Culture, on the other hand, is the control of nature by science and art." That is, civilization is one side of what we call politics; culture is our whole body of technical equipment, in the way of knowledge, process, and skill for subduing and ^° Cf. Tarde, Les transformations du pouvoir, pp. 187-go ; Espinas, Les origines de la technologic. 6o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY employing natural resources, and it does not necessarily imply a high degree of socialization.^^ Now, there are very positive theories based on human tech- nology as the one determining factor, and even the efficient cause, of all social development. These views are indicated when Barth speaks of the "culture-history idea." The theorem is that men's ways of dealing with nature have been the cause of their spiritual life, and of their social and political conditions. Here belong at first glance all the numerous waiters who have divided the history of the race into periods, according to the kind of tools or implements that men have used.^^ It may be that the apparent importance of the method is not real enough to make their view quite as one-sided in this respect as the classification would indicate, but the symptoms should be regarded as danger signals. For instance, when Dubois-Reymond divides historic times into three periods — namely ( i ) that of the building arts, bronze-casting, and stone- cutting; (2) that of the three inventions of the compass, gunpowder, and printing; (3) that of machinery moved by steam — he implies the one-sided culture view that men's inventions are the sole causes of their social condition. We might well ask of this view, as men at last asked of their mythologies: "If Atlas holds up the skies, who holds up Atlas?" If inventions cause social conditions, what causes inventions? Dubois-Reymond finds the cause of the fall of Rome in the fact that the Romans did not advance beyond the second of these three stages. He does not say whether the barbarians conquered Rome because they, too. had not advanced beyond the second stage! Of the culture-history view it is sufficient to say, with Barth : The naturalists, technologists, and ethnologists accordingly start off on a false scent, if they try to make out that increase in the amount of " Cf. below, ch.Tp. 24. '" Cf. Patten, " Theory of the Social Forces," Annals of the American Academy, January, 1896; and Ej'olution of English Thought; also Ward, review of same, American Journal of Sociology, March, 1896. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 6i " culture possessed " is the mainspring of human progress. In this case, as before, we find that all historical events, both progressive and retro- gressive, are phenomena of volition." The will is not moved, however, by endeavors after culture alone ; but before and besides these endeavors are all sorts of other forces. Progress of culture is accordingly only one element, and not the only one. In many periods it constitutes, indeed, only a feeble factor in the historical movement. (P. 261.) We reach similar conclusions in turn about the " political," the "ideological," and the "economic" conceptions of history. Upon this last view a single paragraph may be cited from Barth : But economics thus undertakes much more than it can accomplish. Economics is rather in peculiar need of close connection with the history of the other branches of social life. In other words, economics needs sociology. Isolated from sociology, economics cannot even adequately determine fundamental conceptions. Thus Wagner ^° asks the question : " Is the limitation of the economic motive, that is, the effort to get a maximum return for a minimum effort, desirable in itself, or attainable if desirable?" The answer will, without question, depend upon the assumed purpose of social life. Economics alone is incompetent to define this purpose. It is the affair of a comparative historical science like sociology, which works in conjunction with philosophy, that is, with the science of the highest theoretical and practical questions of humanity. In his Politics, that is, in his theoretical and at the same time practical sociology, Aristotle claimed that happy life is the proper purpose of the State, which to him was identical with society. His notion of happy life was more fully defined in his Ethics. His whole politics and economics would have been different if his ethics had been different. So each modern system of economics takes form according to its assumed idea of the pur- pose of social life, that is, according to the sociology, and, in the final resort, the philosophy, from which it takes its departure. The isolation of economics has had as a consequence, so far as conceptions of history are concerned, only confusion. Without resorting to further illustration from the phi- losophy of history, we may repeat that these snap- judgments about social laws, with all the dogmatism reinforced by them, have been so many rule-of-thumb attempts to do the thing which the sociologists want to do more scientifically. They " Cf. below, chaps. 39 and 40. ^ Grundlegung der politischen Oekonomie, 3d ed., Vol. I, pp. 9-12. 62 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY want to formulate precise problems. They want to bring valid methods of inquiry to bear upon the problems. They want to derive knowledge that will be profitable in all things civic. At the same time, it has to be confessed that, as was hinted above, most of the sociology up to date has repeated in its way the same methodological errors which the philosophy of his- tory committed. Yet, although the sociologists have not been forearmed individually, as they might have been, with lessons taught by the mistakes of the philosophers of history, sociology is gradually assimilating those lessons. Moreover, sociology is profiting by the provincialisms of the pioneer sociologists. It is learning to find the element of truth in the clues upon which different men have attempted to build sociology. These premature schemes have accordingly served their purpose toward perfecting a method which, in its turn, will ultimately organize a body of knowledge. CHAPTER V THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY (continued) The account which Barth gives of " the sociologies " fails to bring into focus the fact noticed at the close of the previous chapter. The titles which he gives to the groups into which he divides the sociologists really beg very important questions. As in the case of the philosophers of history, use of Earth's groupings, however, will serve to bring out the necessary facts about gradual perceptions of what sociological problems involve. This continued reference to Barth is incidentally for the purpose of correcting a radical error in his exposition. It prevents comment upon some very important writers, but the main point at present is to show that Barth misconceives the facts when he schedules a series of "sociologies." Super- ficially, he is correct ; but closer inspection shows that, con- sciously or unconsciously, the sociologists have been working upon one sociology. Exaggeration of some single factor in association, or of some single feature in method, does not con- stitute a special sociology. It contributes, directly or indirectly, positively or negatively, to the development of the one general philosophy. Recapitulating our argument, we may say that all the stu- dents of society who properly belong in the gild of philoso- phers of history have virtually undertaken to interpret human life as too exclusively a function of some single influence, about which they have formed a priori conceptions. They have done their best to arrange all the knowledge about human life within their reach so that it would tally with this hy- pothesis of prevailing influence. Their method has exhibited only a minimum of positiveness or objectivity. In spite of this long-distance communication with reality, the philosophers of history have bequeathed to present social science a perception 63 64 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of a complex problem, which may be stated in this form : " Given the fact of these influences, which are evidently real, in some degree of force, in human affairs; to discover when, how, in what proportions, under what conditions, and with what additional influences these factors operate in human associations." While the philosophers of history have been shaping study of society in such fashion that students of society must inevitably propose their problem at last in the above form, dissatisfaction with the method of gaining knowledge has been growing. A few men have been moved by a feeling, rather than by a clear perception, that there has been defective realism or objectivity in the treatment of human experience. They have virtually said to themselves : " Let us plan methods of research by which we may know actual facts, to take the place of the irresponsible fancies with which social philosophers have been content to speculate." One outcome of this movement is modern sociology. The implication is not intended that the sociologists have invariably been more scientific than the philosophers of his- tory. On the contrary, they have been, as a rule, equally and sometimes more unscientific. They have, however, undertaken more deliberate attempts to construct plans of research that would conform to the principles of exact science. The conse- quence is that, while sociology up to date can show compara- tively little in the way of absolutely new knowledge about society, it has accumulated a wealth of perception about the value of different portions of knowledge, and about ways in which knowledge of society must be tested and organized. Although these perceptions are not yet co-ordinated in any system which is generally accepted by sociologists, there is an unformulated consensus about standards of objectivity and correlation which is steadily reducing sociological speculation to the soberness of observational and experimental science.^ '" Unfortunately, the relation of facts is always less simple than we think; the demand of our intellect for unity is often a little too strong, especially in THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 65 Each of the chief types of sociological theory has contrib- uted something to this result. Perhaps the largest contribu- tions have been not direct, but indirect. There may be close parallelism here between the merit of the sociologists and that of the philosophers of history. The share of the sociologists in the result may be quite different from the spirit of their own premises. We may trace, however, in the progress of sociological theory, first, a reaction and a protest against speculative social philosophy; second, a struggle by men still wearing the shackles of speculative tradition to perfect a posi- tive method ; third, attrition among quasi-positive methods. Reciprocal criticism of schools and programs of sociological inquiry has been the order of the day, and unfortunately the chief employment, of the sociologists. Out of all this prelimi- nary maneuvering a sociological method is emerging. It is an organization of ways of knowing society as it is. This is a substitute for the ways in which people thought about society without knowing it as it is. We shall comment upon certain typical proposals of sociological method, for the purpose of illustrating this last proposition. A. The importance of classification. — Disregarding earlier prophets of scientific method, we may consider Comte ( 1 798- 1857). It is worth while to emphasize the contribution of Comte to the method of sociology, not because his method in his own hands accomplished much that is in itself memorable, but because he made the inevitable problem more obvious. He defined it more precisely than it had been defined before, the realm of social science. Hasty conclusions are still the order of the day. One assumes something, not because it is so, because one has actually so observed it, but because it would agree so finely with something else. This is all very unscientific, but it suits our best thinkers not seldom. Really, we pro- ceed still from the theory and seek facts merely for illustration. If one does otherwise, starts from the facts and goes no farther than they permit, then people are astonished that his result is not so beautifully rounded off, not so faultless, as their own fancies. That the latter, even if ever so consistent, harmonious, complete, are yet absolutely worthless — that does not appear to such people." (Steinmetz, Zeitschrift fiir Sociahvissenschaft, August, 1898.) 66 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY His point of departure is indicated in the following proposi- tions : It cannot be necessary to prove to anybody who reads this work that ideas govern the vvorld or throw it into chaos ; in other words, that all social mechanism rests upon opinion. The great political and moral crises that societies are now undergoing are shown by a rigid analysis to arise out of intellectual anarchy. While stability in fundamental maxims is the first condition of genuine social order, we are suffering from an utter dis- agreement which may be called universal. Till a certain number of general ideas can be acknowledged as a rallying-point of social doctrine, the nations will remain in a revolutionary state, whatever palliatives may be devised; and their institutions can only be provisional. But whenever the necessary agreement on first principles can be obtained, appropriate institutions will issue from them without shock or resistance; for the causes of disorder will have been arrested by the mere fact of the agreement. It is in this direction that those must look who desire a natural and regular, a normal state of society.^ Accordingly, Comte attempted to classify the sciences. His fundamental principle was described as follows : We may derive encouragement from the examples set by recent botanists and zoologists, whose philosophical labors have exhibited the true principle of classification, namely, that the classification must proceed from the study of the things to be classified, and must by no means be deter- mined by a priori considerations. The real affinities and natural con- nections presented by objects being allowed to determine their order, the classification itself becomes the expression of the most general fact.' Upon this basis Comte classified the sciences in his well- known hierarchy : astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiolog}^ and social physics; mathematics being treated as antecedent to all the sciences. Comte's ideas of method are further illustrated by his use of the distinction between statical and dynamical relations. On this point he says : This division, necessary for purposes of exploration, must not be stretched beyond that use. The distinction becomes weaker with the advance of science. We shall see that, when the science of social physics is fully constituted, this division will remain, for analytical purposes, but not as a real separation of the science into two parts. The distinction is 'Positive Philosophy, Introduction. 'Ibid., Book I, chap. 2. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 67 not between two classes of facts, but between two aspects of a theory. It corresponds with the double conception of order and progress ; for order consists in a perfect harmony among the conditions of social existence; and progress consists in social development ; and the conditions in the one case and the laws of movement in the other constitute the statics and dynamics of social physics. Further peculiarities of Comte's method are alkided to by Barth as follows : We find in Comte's proposal an antithesis, namely, on the one hand he insists that the social series is a continuation of the animal series, but it is impossible to deduce the one from the other. The development of society cannot be traced to the peculiarities of individuals. Sociology cannot be derived from physiology, however important biology may be in laying foundations for sociology. Biology furnishes only certain general notions ; for example, that of evolution, the specialization of organs, solidarity, etc. On the other hand, the positive law of evolution, according to Comte, is that of the three states, namely, the theological, the meta- physical, and the positive. This, however, is not a biological, but an epistemological principle. In view of this antinomy in Comte, the fact of value for our purpose is not the intrinsic merit or demerit of his theory of the three states. That theorem is not close enough to reality to deserve any attention except as a curious conceit long since discredited at the author's valuation. The impor- tant point is that the conceit, although incorrect, posited a mental, not a physical, principle, as the clue to the social mys- tery. Comte had a rigidly mechanical conception of the forms in which the social principle works, but he still had a pre- sentiment that the principle itself is not mechanical, Comte is therefore not a successful monist. In his scheme these two elements are left antithetical, as must always be the case so long as we confine ourselves to descriptions of phenomena. The physical and the spiritual aspects of phenomena may be assumed to be manifestations of one underlying reality, but no one has succeeded in making that unity visible.^ It is accordingly not surprising that the followers of Comte took two divergent courses. Some of them pursued the * Cf. below, pp. 78-82. 68 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY spiritual clue; others worked in accordance with the mechani- cal or physiological conception. It would have been very natural if those followers of Comte who were most impressed by the spiritual conception in his doctrine had emphasized the idea which superficial readers have always fixed upon as the most important part of his teaching, namely, his division of human experience into the three stages. With more correct insight, or instinct, however, the tendency which we have now to notice followed rather the methodological clue in the doc- trine than its material content. We have noticed how important in Comte's mind was the principle of classification. Beginning with the simpler sciences, and continuing through the subject-matter of all science, including sociology, Comte insisted upon classification dictated by the peculiarities of the things classified. Thus classification with Comte is itself science. To know enough about objects or facts to arrange them in scientific classes, we must obviously have enough knowledge of their essential peculiarities to mark a good degree of scientific progress. Conversely, an attempt in the Comtean spirit to classify the subject-matter chosen as a scientific field amounts to a pledge that the things to be classi- fied will be duly investigated, so that their likenesses and differences may be known. For this reason those writers whom Barth calls the "classifying sociologists" deserve sin- cere respect, whether the categories which they have proposed prove permanent or not. Their attempt has been to discover those essential attributes of social facts which constitute marks of likeness or unlikeness. So far as it goes, this search for the signs of similarity and dissimilarity is true science, provided it observes scientific principles in deciding what are the qualities attributed to the subject-matter in question. It is not an invention of the sociologists. It is merely a sign on the part of the sociologists that they have so far heeded the lessons taught by the maturer sciences. Among the followers of Comte there has not been due observance of the limitation just suggested. Descriptive analy- THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 69 sis is logically presupposed as a condition of validity in genetic classification, or in causal analysis, which is another aspect of the same thing. Social facts and forces have been arranged in classes by sociologists whose haste to reach genetic classifica- tion has made them neglect necessary descriptive analysis. This criticism may be applied at once to De Greef. His famous schedule of social phenomena involves a thesis about the order in which those phenomena emerge.^ That hypothesis turns the schedule, to a certain extent at least, into a genetic classifica- tion. In that character De Greef's proposition is more than questionable. As a descriptive analysis for certain purposes it has not been excelled. We may then at once set down to the credit of the sociologists of this group a commendable begin- ning of the process of grouping like social facts. This is a necessary preliminary in all science. The " classifying soci- ologists " have been criticised, not so much because they did not do their part well, as because the critics did not see that this part was worth doing at all. Such judgments condemn the critics rather than the criticised.^ Classification is not the whole of science, but it is an essential stage in the scientific process. The men who belittle it tend to disregard the author- ity of facts, and to claim scientific authority for their gener- alizations independent of facts. The processes that have given the group-name to the "classifying sociologists" have sometimes been called col- lectively " descriptive sociology." This term stands for all that is involved in arranging the material facts in classified order, without attempt to enter upon the next step, namely, interpretation. Whether this designation is to be permanent, experience alone can decide. A passage from Barth is pertinent at this point : According to Comte, sciences must be parallel with things. When we ^Introduction a la sociologie, Vol. I, p. 217. • E. g., Giddings, Principles of Sociology, p. 12. Professor Giddings speaks of such work as " constructing a doctrine by inventory instead of by abstrac- tion." Of course, there could be no valid abstraction in default of an inven- tory of the items from which the abstraction is drawn. 70 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY arrange the latter according to their decreasing generality, and their increasing complexity, we have at the same time their actual correlation. Just so, when we arrange the sciences according to the same principle, we have the sequence of their origin, that is, their history. Since the same logical motives which operate in humanity as a whole are in force also in the individual, he not only may but must repeat in himself the develop- mental course through which the knowledge of the race has passed. Other- wise his development is incomplete. He must, in other words, recapitulate in himself the history of science. Comte's classification of the sciences, accordingly, purports to be, not merely descriptive, but at the same time genetic and reconstructive.' The idea was close at hand that the same should be done for society which Comte tried to do for the world at large and for general science. A subdivision of society, from its most general to its most complicated phenomena, was attempted by Comte only incidentally and imperfectly. Accordingly, he produced no classifications in sociology that satisfy his pro- gram of scientific division. If this omission could be supplied, it would mean, according to the presuppositions of the Comtean system, that we should have, not merely a division of social phenomena, but also the way in which society came into being and grew to its present state. This idea is the clue to the significance of those "classifying sociologists," as they are named by Barth, who have attempted to complete Comte's work. The best representative of this group is De Greef.* His methodological merit in applying and developing the Comtean idea consists primarily in carrying the attempt to classify phenomena, and consequently sciences, into the societary realm. Some of his most characteristic work has been in connection with his proposal of a hierarchy of societary phenomena and of societary science. Selecting 'On Comte's hierarchy ride Spencer, The Genesis of Science (1854), reprinted in Essays, Vol. I, p. 116. Also Vol. Ill, p. 13, and Recent Discussions, p. 124; also Fiske, Cosmic Philosophy, Vol. I, pp. 185, 219, et passim. 'Introduction a la sociologie (2 vols., Paris, 1886-89), and Vol. Ill, a translation of which began to appear in the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VIII, p. 478; Les lois sociologiques (Paris, 1893); Le transformisme social (Paris, 1895) ; L' evolution des croyances et dcs doctrines politiques (Paris, i8';s). THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 71 De Greef as a representative of the classifying- tendency, we appropriate Earth's account with certain variations.® De Greef's idea is that classification of the sciences has more than a merely subjective significance. If it is successfully objective, it reproduces the real interdependencies of things in particular and of reality as a whole. The universal is the least dependent. That which rests upon it is the more dependent, the more special it becomes. It is in the same degree more modifiable. For teleological theory this consideration is car- dinal. It is useless to apply effort to the unchangeable. Effort is practical in proportion as it is applied to the changeable. Hence the desirability of finding out the degrees of generality among societary phenomena as a basis for programs of ameliorative action. De Greef regards inattention to the foregoing principle as the reason for poverty of results in sociology since Comte. Society is not simplicity, but extreme complexity. Comte wanted society to be regarded as a whole. He wanted explana- tion of its parts to proceed from explanation of the whole, instead of procedure from the parts to the whole. He did not encourage study of the isolated parts. Referring possibly to Comte's fourfold division of societary evolution in the modern world — namely, the industrial, the aesthetic, the scientific, and the philosophicaP*^ — De Greef seems to have attributed to Comte a classification which cannot be found in the Positive Philosophy. At all events, he argues that Comte did not draw the obvious practical conclusions from subdivisions of the phenomena.'^ De Greef's motive, then, is desire to furnish a scale of societary activity that will show decreasing orders of generality, increasing orders of complexity, and consequently relative susceptibility of artificial modification. De Greef's point of departure is selection of a psychical factor — contract — to mark the division line between the * Pp. 67 ff. Cf. conspectus of De Greef's scheme, below, p. 235. ^"Positive Philosophy, Vol. VI, pp. 51, 53, 54, 56. " Introduction, Vol. I, p. 228. 72 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY physical and the social. Upon the basis of conclusion that Spencer's criteria of distinction between the physical and the social are merely quantitative and mechanical instead of quali- tative (i. e., the greater distance between the elements and the distribution of consciousness among the elements), De Greef claims that neither Comte nor Spencer has adduced adequate reasons for separating sociology from biology.^^ Throughout De Greef's work the differentiating factor of human volition is insisted upon as marking a separate body of phenomena. Up to this point we have practically no controversy with Barth as to the significance of the classifying tendency. It is, however, a mistake to seek in such a writer as De Greef important contributions to knowledge of the concrete. As in the case of the one-sided views of history, w^e get some methodological details from inspection of the method of approaching reality represented by De Greef. His classifica- tion is in essence a series of theses to be tested. In the classi- fication the elements of social activity are made more distinct than in any previous classification. His claim with reference to the hierarchical order of the phenomena so arranged must stand or fall as a result of specific investigation of the activities and subactivities distinguished in the schedule. Sociological method is changed, however, by this scheme of categories, from a confused dumping together of miscellaneous informa- tion, as called for by Spencer's famous catalogue of what his- tory should teach, ^^ to an orderly arrangement of phenomena according to scientific principles of classification. This is not to assert that De Greef's classification is final. It has, however, admirably served the purpose of tentative analysis of social activities, while criticism of the characteristics of the activities is proceeding. Barth discusses under the present subtitle Lacombe^"* and "Introduction, Vol. I, pp. 19-23. "Vide below, pp. 109, no. "Df I'histoirc considcrce commc science (Paris, 1894), THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 73 Wagner.^^ Neither of these writers has added anything- of vakie to the portion of methodology with which we are con- cerned, and we may allow De Greef to stand as the representa- tive of the classifying tendency. Recurring to the claim made above,^^ and in accordance with our argument upon the different philosophies of history, we repeat our conclusion with reference to the different emphases in sociological methodology, viz. : Each has con- tributed something to be worked in some way or other into the final sociology. It is not strictly accurate to speak of a " classi- fying sociology." Certain men have won recognition for the fact that classification is a necessary element in scientific method, but classification was not beginning and end of their conception of sociology. It was one of the means of develop- ing a sociology. It would be as fair to describe the work of succeeding generations of farmers in this country by the phrases ; " the tree-felling agriculture," " the stump-pulling agriculture," " the plowing agriculture," " the rock-picking agriculture," and "the rotation-of-crops agriculture." The men who had to give most of their strength to the different partial processes respectively may have had all the other pro- cesses as clearly in mind as though circumstances permitted their use. The feller of trees functioned with reference to rotation of crops just as truly as the men who lived to practice it. So of the men who emphasized the need of sociological classification. Classification is an arrangement of abstractions around selected centers of interest. No single classification can ever visualize the social reality, because that reality presents as many aspects as there are subjective centers of attention. The object cut up into abstractions has to be represented by com- bination of all the classifications which our alternative centers of interest incite us to make. These alternative classifications cannot be put together in any hierarchical order, if faithfulness " Gnmdlegung der politischen Oekonomie, 3d ed. (Leipzig, 1892). " Pp. 63-65. 74 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY to reality is to be maintained. To visualize the social reality, it is necessary to learn how to think these classifications as they shoot through and through each other in objective fact, forming the most complicated plexus ever observed. If we try to symbolize or formulate this plexus in categories appropriate to any lesser order of complexity, we shall either give up in despair, or we shall rest satisfied with falsification of the reality, B. The use of biological figures. — No scientific movement has been more misunderstood by both friends and foes than that phase of sociological thought to which the present title applies. Barth exemplifies radical misconception of the situa- tion in using the title '^ the biological sociology." The essential idea which has supplied impulse and suggestion to all the investigators in this group is that everything somehow hangs together with everything else; as the French phrase it : " Tout se tient dans ce monde ici-bas." It is further assumed that science is incomplete until it includes discovery of the forms and principles of this coherence. In other words, the emphasis here is upon the organic concept, not upon biological analogies in formulating the concept. Not merely in sociology, hut in every department of knowledge, the organic concept is the most distinctive modern note. It has been a serious oversight and blunder to confound the organic concept with the non- essential device of employing biological analogies when using the concept. Accidents in connection with this merely technical detail have been magnified by some thinkers into essentials, and misrepresented by others as the substance of the subject- matter in question. At best they are means of finding out and reporting a certain portion of reality. The most intimate and complex and constructive coherence of elements that we discover, previous to our study of society, is the coworking of part with part in vital phenomena. About a generation ago, men who wanted to understand the social reality more precisely began to make systematic use of ascer- tained vital relationships as provisional symbols of societary THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 75 relationships. In general, it has been true from the beginning that the so-called biological sociology has not been biological at all, except in its figurative modes of expression. Men have detected apparent analogies between better understood vital processes and less understood societary processes.^ ^ They have said virtually : " So long as terms of these vital processes put us in the way of approaching more truth about societary pro- cesses, let us use them as means to that end." Following this clue, descriptive analyses and many interpretations of social relations have been worked out in biological terms. It is not absolutely certain that any single writer who has been taken seriously by the sociologists has ever been a " biological sociologist " in any other sense than the foregoing. There have been many lapses into linguistic usage that prima facie meant a very fantastic literalism. In general, however, the use of biological figures has amounted to about this : There are functional relationships between men in association that are analogous with functional relationships between parts of living bodies. No analogies seem to be closer, on the whole, to the societary facts than those in biological facts. We will, therefore, follow out these clues. We will discover all the biological analogies we can. We will test the closeness of the similarities. We will make them divulge all the truth possible about the literal terms of social relationships. We will report these discoveries in biological metaphor, if no better medium of expression is available. We will get nearer to the truth with some other medium of expression, whenever we can invent it. With occasional exceptions, the objections that have been urged to this use of organic analogies may be charged chiefly to a mental condition which Dr. George Dana Boardman aptly termed "defect of the analogical imagination."^^ " The converse was for a time the case. Vide Annals of the American Academy, March, 1895, p. 745. Cf. Small and Vincent, Introduction to the Study of Society, pp. 87-96 ; Small, in a notice of Schaffle, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. II, p. 311 ; ibid.. Vol. IV, p. 411 ; ibid.. Vol. V, p. 276. " Cf. Spencer, " The Social Organism," Westminster Review, January, i860, and revised in his Essays; also Ward, American Journal of Sociology, 76 GENERAL SOQOLOGY In order to deal properly with the actual use which has been made of biological analogies, it would be necessary to dis- cuss at length Lilienfeld, Spencer, and Schaffle. This would take us too far afield. For our present purpose we may assume such a review. After all the controversy about the organic concept, the gist of the whole matter is that knowledge of human associations involves knowledge of the most com- plex interdependence of function that has been discovered in the whole realm of reality. Precise formulas of the inter- relations of functions among associated men are mostly desiderata for future social science to supply. Meanwhile, approximate statements of social relationships must employ the best available means of expression. At our present stage of knowledge, our insights into the social mystery express themselves most adequately, in certain of their phases at least, in biological figures. In other words, there are vast reaches of societary fact our present apprehension of which falls into symbolical expression in biological forms more conveniently and satisfactorily than into any alternative mode of expression. This proposition recognizes the provisional and inexact char- acter of such expression. The use of biological terms to symbolize societary relationships is, therefore, desirable only so long and so far as they are on the whole better vehicles of expression than any available substitutes. Beyond that the device is a snare and a delusion. For these reasons, we repeat, the title " biological soci- ology" is a misnomer.^^ There is a method of presenting problems and of stating results in sociology by means of bio- logical terms. That method does not make, nor wish to make, the subject-matter biological, any more than the graphic Vol. I, p. 317, and Vol. Ill, p. 260. For the most recent discussion of the biological method of expression Z'ide Annalcs de I'Institut international de Sociologie, Vols. IV and V. " In his paper, " The Failure of Biologic Sociology," Annals of American Academy, May, 1894, Professor Patten has disposed of certain real errors, but his blows are delivered chiefly at straw men, so far as the epithet " biologic " is concerned. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY ^^ method of presenting statistics makes the subject-matter geographical. To be sure, Lilienfeld, Spencer, Schaffle, and a numerous host who have Hghted their tapers from these flames, have sometimes appeared to carry symboHsm into reahsm. They have sometimes seemed to treat society as though it were the last term in the zoological series. Whatever faults of this sort may be on record, they do not lie along the trunk line of advance from Comte to securely scientific sociology. They are excursions which call for very little attention at present. Apart from the men, if there are any such, who actually think that society is a big animal, the investigators who have use for biological figures in connection with societary relation- ships no more convert their subject-matter into biology, by using organic metaphors, than use of Arabic notation in astronomy would convert the subject-matter into Semitic philology. The term "biological sociology" implies what is not and never has been true of that which is most essential in the method to which it applies. The assumption of the critics is that, behind all use of the biological terms, there is a sup- position contrary to fact; namely, that society is a zoological species. The truth is that the method thus misunderstood does not assume that human associations are anything at all except a plexus of relationships formed by the mingling together of many human beings.^^ The method starts, however, with the perception that has coined the sociological axiom : " All men are functions of each other." Setting out with this perception of the com- plexity of associations between men, these particular soci- ologists, as we have said above, cast about for relationships of *" The men who have made most use of biological terms in sociology might without strain or shock accept the starting-point and the methodological policy implied in Tonnies' formula : " . . . . for a working hypothesis we may say that society is a crowd of individuals scattered over a particular terri- tory, who do business peaceably with each other, and enforce the observation of certain rules of conduct " (" Zur Einleitung in die Sociologie," Zeitschrift fiir Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, January, 1900). 78 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY equal or like complexity. They found none apparently more similar in that respect than those between parts of animal organisms. Scientific study of animal organisms has pro- gressed relatively farther than scientific study of human asso- ciations. It serves to spur the imagination and to sharpen the curiosity of investigators who w-ant to know the literal truth about the social reality. For these reasons biological science has been called to the assistance of sociologists, not merely in furnishing truth about the physiological substructure of human associations, but in furnishing thought-appliances for investi- gation of those relationships which are beyond the competence of biology. It is thus sheer muddle-headedness to confuse the tool of investigation, and the medium of expression, with the supposed nature of the portion of reality investigated. It must be admitted that some of the most perspicuous thinking on this subject has uttered itself in language that encourages this confusion. It has doubtless been a mistake to allow the terminology of sociological inquiry to seem to over- shadow in importance the subjects of inquiry themselves. Sociologists who are perfectly free from uncertainty about the above distinction have frequently used terms in a way that has prevented less discerning persons from reaching the distinction. The phrase "biological sociology," whether used with correct or incorrect connotations, has always been unfortunate in this respect. It seems to imply what has been denied above. Hence it is to be pronounced a misnomer, whether adopted by friends or applied invidiously by foes. It must be admitted, too, that use of biological figures is worth only what it is worth. Its utility depends largely upon the temper, training, and taste of the investigator, or, in the case of teachers, upon the mental content of their pupils. Doubtless much discovery among serial relationships may be made by men whose methcKl of approach and whose form of expression are predominantly mathematical, or mechanical, or philosophical. Whatever may be claimed to the contrary, the prevailing note in sociology, from Comte down to the THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 79 present time, has been belief in a psychical something and somehow, marking a sphere of societary reality distinct in thought from physical reality. This proposition is not intended in a dualistic sense, although it may have been true in that sense of some men. It is used here in a sense in which the stoutest monist might employ the terms, namely : sociologists actually distinguish orders of fact and process which we cannot yet reduce to terms of a single unity, no matter how sure we may be that the underlying unity exists. Though we may be monistic in our theory of reality, we are necessarily dualistic, if not pluralistic, in our apprehension of phenomena.^^ Accord- ingly, every form of expression whatever which tends to obliterate the distinction in consciousness between the physical and the psychical in societary relationships must be regarded as a crudity in our symbolism. We all regard the social reality as something that cannot be reported accurately in terms of factors less elementary than the attributes of human individuals. Whether we shall symbolize what we can find out about asso- ciations of individuals in terms of quantity, or quality, or form, or function, or ideal conception ; or how much of each sort of symbol we shall employ, is purely a question of tech- nique, not to be settled by any stereotyped formula. With all the dangers of abuse, the device of physiological symbolism has very considerable advantages at certain points, although it is a stumbling-block to men who lack " the ana- logical imagination." The use of the device for what it is worth will not be discouraged by dogmatism or misrepresenta- tion or ridicule. It has a quite incomparable pedagogical value within wise limits, and it is likely to be more or less useful, even to investigators, for a long time to come. Indeed, there is not a sociologist in the world who can write upon any part of sociology today, even if his subject be the total depravity of "the biological method," without framing some of his own arguments in tropical use of biological terms.-^ We cannot " Cf. above, p. 67. " How it would have scandalized the critics of " biological sociology " if 8o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY think the social complexity to the limit of our ability to appre- hend it, without assistance from the next lower degree of com- plexity that we know. The extent of our use of this aid is a mere matter of detail, and must be determined by expediency. C. The investigation of dynamic lazvs. — In the case of the philosophers of history we saw that any characterization is inaccurate which purports to distinguish all that their con- ceptions contain. Not merely in such an instance as that of Herder, but likewise, though in less degree, in case of the most contracted view, each philosophy of history leaves some room for factors not thrown into prominence in its formulations. The like is true of the sociologists. Each group manifests something of all the tendencies which peculiarly mark the other groups. Under the present head we are to consider a portion of the group in which Barth places Lester F. Ward, J. S. Mackenzie, Hauriou, and Franklin H. Giddings. Earth's title for the group is ''The Dualistic Sociology." Except in the case of Professor Giddings, we may waive the question whether the most significant resemblances and differences of method justify classification of these men in the same group. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that their methods are anyone outside of their own number had suggested " social anastomosis " or " social inosculation " ! Vide Tarde, Les transformations du pouvoir, p. 8 ; and Ward, Pure Sociology, p. 30. Professor Ross has often turned his fund oi sarcasm against the biological method of expression, but he so far forgets himself as to indulge in liberties like the following: " .... a man .... will cast into the stock of ideas circulating through the capillaries of intercourse ( !) only those which are not hateful or shocking to his readers " (American Journal of Sociology, Vol. V, p. 765). Professor Giddings also, who has been most pronounced in his disapproval of biological terms, drops into use of them very frequently in his own writing. For instance : " Thus the modification of social units by one another, the modification of society by its units, and the modification of the units of society are always organic phenomena ; they are processes of psychological assimilation and biological evolution " (Principles of Sociology, p. 399). Again, he says: "We have, in short, materials for a structural sociologfy — a descriptive social anatomy" (Inductive Sociology, p. 29). Ratzenhofer says: " Der Staat als hoheres Socialgebilde gleicht den hoheren Organismen, in welchen sich die Zahl der Organe vermehrt, um dem Totalzweck des Ganzen besser entsprechen zu konnen " (Sociologische Erkenntniss, p. 165) ; etc., etc. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 8i sufficiently alike to place the first three in a group by them- selves, we must insist that the group is neither adequately nor fairly classified by the phrase "the dualistic sociology." We may concede that Comte was predominantly material- istic and mechanical in his conceptions, though we have seen that even among his views an insistent spiritualism had a place, and that he had no self-consistent synthesis of the two phases of reality. Whether we count Comte as an example or an exception, there is nolx)dy in the whole series of men who have made an impression upon sociology to whom the epithet " dualistic " would not apply as properly in the last analysis as to the men here named. In point of fact, all the philosophers in the world today are dualists in the sense indicated above. The fact that a few will not admit the impotence of their for- mal monism does not affect the proposition. That is to say, no matter how prominent the assertion of fundamental unity may be in our philosophy today, there is practically no difference of opinion as to the methodological necessity of recognizing a phenomenal duality.^ ^ The diversity of matter and spirit must be admitted by all to this extent, namely : whether we assert an underlying unity or not, we cannot successfully express what we see in the objective world without describing elements that seem distinct in quality. That which is phenomenally psychic is not reducible by any means at our disposal to terms of physics. On the other hand, it may be said with equal truth that there are today no philosophers of any influence v^'ho are not in the last analysis monists. However vigorously they may insist upon the phenomenal distinction between the spiritual and the physical, they assume sooner or later that underneath the duality of appearance there is an inscrutable unity of reality. It is accordingly a mark of inferior rather than of superior insight to characterize philosophers as monistic or dualistic. Practically all philosophy today is monistic in its ontological presumption; it is dualistic or pluralistic in its " Cf. above, p. 67. 82 ^ GENERAL SOCIOLOGY analytical methods and in its classification of phenomena. In the case of the sociologists the epithet is of very doubtful utility in any instance.^^ It is certainly so in the case of the men named by Barth in this group.^^ Ward makes the physical element, which must be taken account of by the sociologist, so prominent in the scale that he has more than once been denounced as a materialist. On the other hand, his distinctive efifort has been to get for the psychic factors in social reactions due recognition and adequate formulation. If we use the term " dualistic " as a mark of commendation, it is appro- priate to this group. The men named deserve praise for their efforts to show that a psychic as well as a physical phase of the underlying unity is wrought into, and must be recognized in, the social complexity. More precisely, the significance of Ward is historically this : He first published (1883) when the influence of Herbert Spencer was probably at its height. In sociology that influence amounted to obscuration of the psychic element, and exaggera- tion of the physical factors concerned in shaping social com- binations. Whatever be the fair estimate of Spencer's total influence upon sociology, it certainly operated for a time to concentrate attention upon the mechanical and vital elements in social combinations, and to obscure the psychic elements which are in excess of the physical. While the Spencerian influence was uppermost, the tendency was to regard social progress as a sort of mechanically determined redistribution of energy which thought could neither accelerate nor retard. Against this tendency Ward, a most energetic monist. opened a crusade. He undertook to show that mind can control the con- ditions of human life to such an extent that it is possible to inaugurate a new and better era of progress. According to Ward, there is a difference so great between the progress of " Especially as it is a term without meaning, unless it bears the tag of the particular doctrine from whose view-point the fault is alleged. ° This view of the error in Earth's characterization was expressed almost simultaneously with the oriRinal publication of this chapter by M. Alessandro Groppali, Annates dc t'Instilut dc Sociologie, Vol. VI, p. 262. THE HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY 83 the past and the progress to be anticipated when mind shall have applied itself to the problem, that we may speak of the latter as artificial progress and the former as accidental progress.^® At the time of its publication (1890) Mackenzie's book, An Introduction to Social Philosophy, was the ablest survey that had been made of the whole field properly so designated. Nothing that has since appeared has made the book obsolete, although the strategic points in sociological inquiry have shifted greatly, and have become in many respects more salient since he wrote. It is a mistake on Earth's part to represent Mackenzie as the exponent of any particular type of sociology. He did most successfully what he attempted. In his preface he says : Little, if anything, of what is now pubHshed can be claimed as original .... It is scarcely necessary to add that this work is not intended as a systematic treatise on the subject with which it deals, but only as a slight contribution to the discussion of it. It is, indeed, not so much a book as an indication of the lines on which a book might be written. The only merit which I can hope it may be found to possess is that it has brought into close relation to each other a number of questions which are usually, at least in England, treated in a more disconnected way. (P. viii.) Mackenzie's work has been appraised by the sociologists generally at a higher valuation than the author's modest esti- mate claims. It not only furnished a conspectus of relation- ships which had frequently been confused or ignored, but by so doing it promoted systematic sociological inquiry. It thus deserves a high place among the factors that have developed sociological method. It tried to make real the subject-matter of sociological inquiry, and to indicate in large outline the manner in which approach must be made to knowledge of this reality. This is plain from the author's own summary.^'^ Professor Mackenzie carefully guards against calling himself a sociologist at all. That he is an exponent of a special type of sociology in Earth's sense is, we repeat, a mistake. He has " De Greef expressed a similar view in 1891 : Les lots sociologiques, p. 31. " First edition, pp. 369 ff. 84 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY certainly contributed a large share toward the introduction of sanity into thought about social relations. He has not attempted, however, to influence sociological method except in the general way above indicated. Hauriou is for our purposes a wholly negligible quantity.^^ Professor Giddings stands for certain tendencies which deserve distinct mention under another head. We accordingly return to Ward as the proper representative of the phase of metho- dology to which the title of this section refers. We must observe once more that none of the methods with which we are dealing entirely lacks or entirely monopolizes any factor of scientific process. Ward, for instance, did not invent the quest for formative social influences. Men had been searching for them since the world began. When Ward wrote Dynamic Sociology, however, the sociological fashion set by Spencer was to treat social forces as though they were mills of the gods which men could at most learn to describe, but which they might not presume to organize and control. Ward did not declare independence of the natural conditions within which the human problem has to be worked out. He declared that we may learn physical conditions, and at the same time mental conditions, to such purpose that we may eventually make human progress a scientific program. His emphasis, then, was upon knowledge of the effective forces in social con- ditions, with ultimate reference to deliberate telic application.^® Altogether apart, then, from any specific theorems to which Ward committed himself, his work has a secure place as a force making for modification of the aims of sociological theory. It is Comte, to be sure, from whom Ward takes his cue, but Comte had no scientific standing-ground broad and firm enough to permit clear prevision. Spencer was virtually training prevision backward. The primary meaning of Ward's "La science sociale traditionelle (Paris, 1896). "Vide ist ed., Preface, p. vii ; Vol. I, p. 81 ; and Vol. II, p. 159. For Spencer's unlike views jiecu- liarities in these Utah Americans. The fact that southern planters and northern farmers were hundreds of miles apart, and in most cases never came within touching distance of each other, made it possible for forces to gather strength enough presently to hurl these fellow-citizens together with the fiercest physical violence. The Texas ranchman or the Kansas corn- grower may never see a New York banker; yet Wall Street is a presence as real, on ranch and prairie, as flood or cyclone * that destroys herds and crops and men. We have no adjective adequately to characterize the sort of entity that society is. We shall do better, then, not to attempt to sum up these peculiar traits of society by use of terms that are easily mis- construed. We call attention to the fact that the different truths to Ije brought to light about society all comport with THE VALUE OF SPENCER'S METHOD 141 this wonderful fact of reciprocal influence throughout a society, of many and potent sorts, although the persons who compose the society may be at distances from each other varying from residence in the same house to location at oppo- site sides of a continent. America does not cease to be one in essential respects, although its people are widely dispersed in space. America does not cease to be millions of individuals, in certain other essential respects, although these individuals are subject to certain common conditions which make for them, in important relations, one and the same destiny. [220] We may express still more distinctly the facts referred to in the last paragraph. We may say negatively that the rela- tion between the persons that make up a society is not prin- cipally mechanical. One person acts upon other persons, not chiefly by use of physical force, but by communication of thought and feeling and purposes in one way and another. Through the different agencies that people have at their com- mand, the persons in a society make themselves felt by each other. They are responsive to each other's moods. They accommodate themselves to each other's wishes. They observe nicely calculated bounds of conduct. They balance, and restrain, and instigate, and inspire each other, so that cer- tain common characteristics come to be a sort of ground plan of each individual's personality; certain common impulses move all in like ways and often at the same time; a certain consensus of idea organizes their actions into co-operation and concert ; and thus all America may be said to share one career, while at the same time each individual has a more special career of his own. [221] We come now to an important check upon a possible tend- ency to go out in search of fanciful expressions of this won- derfully complicated entity, society. We have seen plainly enough that America is not a lifeless, mechanical entity. Shall we go to the other extreme, and try to persuade ourselves that America is a living entity — an animal, or more definitely a magnified man ? Many people have been so impressed by the 142 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY marvelous workings of society that they have used language which seemed to carry this meaning. If that was really their idea, they were certainly mistaken. If America were a big animal, a superhuman man, many things would be true of America which are obviously not true. So long as the indi- viduals in a society are morally sound and mentally sane, there is no single vital part in the society, like a man's heart, destruction of which would destroy the society. There is no brain that is the center of sensation and of motor impulses in society. All the sensations are in the individuals. All the impulses to action have their seat in individuals. All the vitality there is lodges in the individuals. These individuals do not grow together into a great animal. They adjust them- selves to each other in a society. This adjustment multiplies the wants, and the opportunities, and the efficiencies of the individuals, so that one can hardly be surprised if some men look upon the social bond as a translation of individuals into a superior order of animal existence. Such a conception, how- ever, is merely the conceit of unlicensed imagination. With all its intricacies, society is not itself a living person. Society is many living persons, acting with and upon each other in such a way that each person is a magnified and diversified person, compared with the person that it would be possible for each to be if doomed to a career isolated from the rest of society. We must very often speak of the welfare of society, and we even have to speak of the welfare of society in specific contrast with the welfare of individuals. These forms of language would seem to mean that society has an existence distinct from the existence of the individuals within the society; or, in the concrete, the society America exists in addition to, and apart from, the Americans. This is, of course, nonsense. The truth is that, when we put the welfare of society in antith- esis with the welfare of individuals, we are either trying to express what is not clear in our own minds, or we are using a highly condensed form of expression, which does not do complete justice to our thought. The fact is this: There can THE VALUE OF SPENCER'S METHOD 143 be no welfare of society which is not welfare experienced by individuals. But as society is made up of many individuals, some of the number may act in such a way that they interfere with satisfactory and profitable association by the rest. Thus if a few Americans are criminal, we may say that the welfare of America is incompatible with criminality, and irreconcilable with the welfare of those criminals, so far as their welfare is held by them to be inseparable from crime. We cannot, how- ever, believe that anything is real welfare for a few which endangers the welfare of the many. We always, therefore, identify society with a certain eminent majority of the indi- viduals, and we repudiate the thought of interests in the small remaining minority respectable enough to override the obvious interests of the larger many. [222] Thus we have roughly indicated the sort of entity which inspection proves a given society to be. We have no precise words for this entity, because there is no other entity of exactly the same order. Men have invented words to fit other entities, but we are just now starting upon the work of analyzing societies scientifically, so as to distinguish them with the utmost accuracy from other entities. To avoid vagueness and apparent misstatement, we must confine ourselves to forms of expression that do not seem to confound societies with other entities from which they differ. We are therefore obliged to describe what takes place in societies, without arriving at ability to announce what societies are. Thus we have seen that societies grow, Am.erica being our example. As growth goes on, the number of individuals becoming greater, certain of the individuals come to be set off from other individuals by virtue of differ- ences in the parts that the several sorts of individuals perform within the society. These distinctions between individuals come to be somewhat permanent. They are accompanied also by various indexes which register the divisions. At the same time, these differences between the persons do not destroy the society; on the contrary, they make association more intensive. They accrue to the benefit of all the individuals, and the indi- 144 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY viduals accordingly come to be dependent upon the modes of life that are induced by the differentiation. This division of individuals goes so far that such a society as America comes to be something like a nest of boxes. It is made up of societies within societies — the state within the nation, the county within the state, the town within the county, the ward within the town, the precinct within the ward; and each of these divisions reproduces, on a smaller scale and with vanishing definiteness, the structure of the larger whole. Our last illustration, from political structure, should not be taken as implying that social structure is merely political. America, like all societies, is structurally arranged geographically, industrially, educationally, religiously, as well as in its politics and its social intercourse. This fundamental fact — that real persons, in any society, lead lives in which their structural relations are always an efficient factor — is a first primary lesson in knowledge of society, [223] Following Spencer's lead, we may profitably look into the fact of social structure somewhat more in detail, and observe some of the more obvious things which it involves. In the first place, we have the item of growth, already con- sidered. Human societies are entities that undergo change in the number of their members, without losing their identity. There are societies whose origins we may trace, and whose beginnings we may accurately date. Thus we know that the Society of Jesus was at first merely an idea in the mind of Loyola. Then we know that he associated a few kindred spirits with himself, and we may read how the society grew till it was aptly described as " a sword whose hilt is at Rome, and whose blade is everywhere." Other societies are so ancient and complicated in their lineage that no two scholars might be able to agree as to the place of their beginning. This is the case with almost every society of the national order. When did France begin? With Louis XI, and his triumph of monarchy over the feudal princes? With the Karolingians, and, if so, with which of them? Shall we find the beginnings of France THE VALUE OF SPENCER'S METHOD 145 with Charlemagne at the beginning of the ninth century, or with his ecclesiastical ancestor in the middle of the seventh? Or must we go back farther still, and find the beginnings of France in the triply divided Gaul that Julius Caesar invaded before the Christian era? We can no more trace the absolute beginnings of nations than we can follow back the genealogy of an individual to the first parents. The comparatively late history of many nations is known to us, and we find that their growth varies indefinitely. Some never attain imposing size, as in the case of Tyre, Carthage, Venice, Holland, Portugal, Liberia, Korea. Others attain enormous dimensions — China, Russia, Great Britain. This growth of societies — whether of the smaller type, like a conventicle or a trade guild, or the larger type, like a nation — takes place by two processes which go on some- times together and sometimes separately. The one process is the addition of individuals to the society, as by birth in the case of the nation, by proselyting in the case of a sect, or by absorption of whole groups of persons at a time. Thus religious societies may combine to form one ; a larger number of feudatories may unite in one kingdom ; the score of states in North Germany may coalesce in the German Empire; etc., etc. In each of these cases there may be little or no visible change in the individuals. It may be only after close analysis that we can make out that the individuals lead in any sense a different life in the developed society from that which they would have led in the simpler society. Perhaps we can dis- cover these differences only by looking at the two societies as wholes, and by inferring the effect which the more developed sort of association must have upon the individuals. [226] There is another sort of growth that takes place in societies. We may describe it as increased compactness. This does not necessarily mean merely that the people are nearer to each other in space, though this is likely to be one element of the growth. We have the tradition of the settler in our western country, whose nearest neighbor was six miles away. When 146 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY another family settled nearer to his claim, he abandoned it and moved on, because he " wanted breathing- room." On the other hand, we may cite the social growth that is seen in the introduction of the rural telephone and rural free delivery. The farming population of a district which shows this growth may not have increased, but the society has nevertheless become more compact through these facilities for communicating ideas. A society whose members occupy a given number of square miles has a very different character, if it is without these agencies, from a society, otherwise of the same heredity. and living in the same conditions, plus these instruments. There is growth in firmness of texture, so to speak, as well as in bulk. [227] These facts about societies are so intimately connected with each other that it is difficult to speak of one phase or ele- ment without at the same time speaking of others. Thus we have already implied a further incident of social growth, viz. : as a general riile, the larger a society becomes, the more will its structure become varied. This law holds good of societies of the same order, but not necessarily betw^een societies of differ- ent orders. A banking association of one hundred members would have a structure many times as complex as a farmers' club with the same number of members. If the banking asso- ciation started with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, its structure would doubtless be much simpler than when it had increased its capital to ten million dollars, with correspond- ing increase of stockholders, depositors, and customers. If the farmers' club should meanwhile become a farmers' alliance, with one hundred times the membership of the original club, its structure would meanwhile have become more complicated; but it might still be rather sini])le in cc^nparison with the banking association, even in its earliest form. In the case of such a society as a town, we may see the fact of increasing structure with increasing population, though the two things are by no means in any constant proportion to each other. Within my recollection, a certain New England town THE VALUE OF SPENCER'S METHOD 147 had neither health officer, undertaker, lamp-Hghter ( for it had no street lamps), caterer, street-railway employees (for it had no street railways), superintendent of schools, sewer-inspector (for it had no sewers), policemen, telephone employees (for it had no telephones), nor regular fire-fighters. With constant growth in population, the town has exchanged its political structure for that of a city, and has supplied each of these missing elements in its make-up. Similar changes are inci- dental to all social growth. Henry Ward Beecher used to say that his first church consisted of himself as pastor, sexton, chorister, and sometimes as congregation. Before he moved on to a more prominent pastorate, the church had its full quota of officers, with a considerable membership. Thus, as societies increase in size, they almost invariably increase in complexity. This change has endless consequences for the members of societies. These are matters for more special divisions of sociology, and they present some of the urgent problems of practical life. [229-33] Not to follow out these observations about social structure into more minute details, we may pass from the structure phase of society to another, closely connected with it and largely dependent upon it ; yet the two phases have to be sharply dis- tinguished from each other before either can be understood very thoroughly. Societies have structures, because societies con- sist very largely of services rendered by member to member, and structures are means by which these services are secured. As a rough general principle, the complexity of a society is in direct proportion to the number of services exchanged between its members. The principle would be more exact if we made it express, not only the number of the services, but their regularity, and the degree of assurance afforded in the society that the services will be available when needed. This approach to precision is not necessary for our present purpose. Our emphasis is merely upon the fact that a society is an entity within which services are exchanged between individuals, and that this exchange of service has relations, both as cause and 148 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY effect, to the existence of structure. This fact again, of ser- vices as a normal incident in society, is pivotal both in general sociology and in practical social problems. A nciv service is needed, or an old service is suspended or retarded, is one way of telling the story of social crises, from the departure of the Hebrew shepherds from Egypt, and the servile revolts in Rome, and the French Revolution, to a miners' strike, or a merger suit, or a struggle between the " stalwarts " and the " half-breeds " in a political party. Society is an entity which exists by virtue of incessant interchange of service between the members. If we can succeed in setting in order all the essential truth about the relations of services to each other, we shall have gone a long distance toward developing a science of sociology. [234-7] At this point we may look ahead a little, and anticipate something which will be insisted upon at length when we advance to the view-point represented by Schaffle. We have used the social term " service " in place of Spencer's biological term " function." Spencer meant by " function " neither more nor less than we want the term " service " to express at this point. When we come to occupy Schaffle's point of view, we shall find that he has his eye all the time pointed directly at social functions, and only indirectly at social structures. It may seem, therefore, that there is really no gain in turning for guidance from Spencer to Schaflfle. It may seem that the latter has carried his analysis no farther than the former. We shall find that this is a mistake, and the clue to the mistake is, in a word, this: Spencer is chiefly interested in demonstrating tlwt functions are; Schaffle is chiefly interested in demonstrat- ing zvhat functions are. The one is busy with showing how functions work together in a system ; the other tries to point out the different kinds of work that the various functions per- form. Spencer consequently treats functions structurally; Schaffle treats functions functionally. Later on we shall develop this distinction, and show its imix^rtance. Meanwhile we may add further details to our schedule of structural facts in society. THE VALUE OF SPENCER'S METHOD 149 The arrangements of individuals into somewhat per- manent relationships, or structures, come about, as we have seen, in consequence of utilities which people discover, acci- dentally or otherwise, in those arrangements. To take one of the simplest cases : Two woodsmen may have no personal interest in each other, but both are trying to earn a living clearing neighboring pieces of forest. The trees are so big that after the trunks have been trimmed neither woodsman alone could move one end of the logs. From sheer economic necessity the personally indifferent individuals combine their efforts. Together they can handle the logs quite easily, and roll them into positions from which they may be floated toward the mill. The skilful combination of efforts between these two men is an instance of social structure, serving as a device to accomplish work. In general, this is the underlying meaning of social structures always. People instinctively or deliberately arrange themselves in adjustments that have the effect of devices, tools, instruments, to serve purposes of some sort that could not be as conveniently accomplished, if at all, vyithout such arrangements. These purposes are not merely economic. Political structures are devices to gain political ends; social structures, in the special sense, are devices for achieving cer- tain purposes of polite intercourse ; so of scientific, educational, artistic, professional, religious structures; etc., etc. The arrangement of boss and crew, of foreman and operatives, of manager and clerks, of teacher and pupils, of pastor and parish, of author and publisher, etc., throughout the whole range of social relations, always has in it more or less of this device, or instrument, element, and can be thoroughly accounted for only when this element is taken at its full value into the reckoning. Soldiers are not useless ornaments; they are devices for defending people w^ho are not soldiers. Bishops, and judges, and editors, and artists are not cases of superfluous people who have happened on ways of getting along without paying for their keep ; they are instruments for kinds of work which the interests of other people demand. With certain apparent 150^ GENERAL SOCIOLOGY exceptions, which we must talk about presently, this is the elementary fact in all social structures. But society is such a complicated affair that we cannot do justice to it in such simple terms. The work that men carry on is so interwoven that the means for carrying it on must be described in ways that recognize its complexity. In order that a most trifling piece of work may be performed for me this morning, the aid of thousands of men, several thousand miles apart, has to be brought into requisition. Months ago a paper factory turned out its product; a force of engravers did their work; manufacturers of pens, and other manufacturers of ink, furnished writing material; furniture-makers contributed tables and desks and office requisites at various points; men collected and distributed mail from boxes that other men made, and into bags and pouches made by still others ; transported in Avagons built by others, drawn by horses raised by others and stabled by others; deposited in cars constructed elsewhere, attached to trains operated by men of another type, and running over roads built by still others, and managed by others; distributed in Chicago, and brought to my door by the last of the tens of thousands who have directly or indirectly had a share in the errand. The note from my friend in San Francisco, which he sent at a total cost of perhaps three cents for materials and delivery, is merely one of a thousand daily evidences, too familiar to provoke reflection even in the most monotonous lives, that society is equipped with wonderfully effective systems of contrivances for serving its needs. Thus the initial fact of structure becomes the larger fact of device for ivork, and the still larger fact of organisations of devices with higher and higher correlations of agencies for work. We have no single and final scheme for describing the systems of agencies into which the elementary structural arrangements of men are organized throughout a national society. [241-55] These agencies cross one another, and co-operate with each other in so many ways that we cannot speak of these co-operating persons as though they were so THE VALUE OF SPENCER'S METHOD 131 many cogs, or levers, or belts, always in one place in a machine. Take a newspaper, or a telephone exchange, or a public school, or a church, or a saloon. It is easy enough to say what either of these devices does in. the way of work, in its usual routine ; but it is impossible to say of either of them, when all the rela- tions of its activities are traced out, that it is confined to one work rather than another. Either of these devices may lend itself on occasions to work of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, guarding public health, protecting against crime, help- ing the fire department, promoting all branches of industry, trade, professional action, education, morals, or religion. It is accordingly impossible to divide human beings as if they were physical machines, and to say of one man that he is part of the telephone system, another a part of the telegraph sys- tem, another a part of the educational system, etc. Every man is a part of many social structures, and all attempts to partition society off are consequently more or less arbitrary. It is a fact, however, that there are certain great groupings which arrange the members of society into systems of activities that take charge of certain great divisions of human service. In showing this, Spencer has in mind, more than he seems to be aware, the facts of society considered with reference merely to its material wants. He shows truly that in this respect a society like America may be divided into three great systems of structures : First, the people engaged in getting the differ- ent kinds of raw material demanded by our present wants, and in working over that raw material into forms that are avail- able for use. These may be called the national providers. Second, the people who carry on the work of getting all these material supplies from the places where they are produced to the persons w^ho need to use them. Here belong not only teamsters and railroad men and sailors and longshoremen, but traders and bankers, whose help is necessary in effecting exchanges. We may call this whole body of men the carriers. Third, we have the men who are necessary as checks upon the selfishness of people who are too much interested in their own 152 . GENERAL SOCIOLOGY private schemes to do their part honorably; or men who are needed to help keep the business of providers and carriers from getting tangled because of mistakes and misfortunes that special attention may avert. These are, in the first place, legis- lators, judges, and executive ofiicers, police, armies, and vari- ous voluntary agencies. We may call these the organizers. We may say, then, that America, considered as an association of people satisfying merely physical wants, has a structure containing a system for providing, another for carrying, another for organizing. It is literally true that, in our present state of civilization, the energies of a nation are very largely expended in satisfying the fundamental physical wants. It is very natural to think of these three systems as making up the structure of the nation. They do this, however, only in a sense in which the parts of a house constitute a home. The mere shelter is not the home, but the family life domiciled in the shelter is necessary to complete that idea. So of the structure of a nation. There is all that pertains to the knowledge, the sentiments, the ideals, the tastes, the religion of the people. These are realities that require their social structures just as literally as the physical wants demand them. We must take this grouping of struc- tures into the providing, the carrying, and the organizing sys- tems, as merely one illustration of the way in which social structures arrange themselves in complex systems of structures. We have thus elaborated Spencer's idea sufficiently for our present purpose. After sociological analysis has gone much beyond anything contained in Spencer's scheme, it becomes profitable to use this structural conception in much greater detail. For many purposes it is necessary to distinguish social types from the smallest to the largest groups, and to study the laws of their development out of and into other types. In order to do this effectively, there must be minute analysis of contrasts in structure which mark the types. Without dwelling on this structural conception further at present, we may pass to a more intimate conception. We register here a repetition THE VALUE OF SPENCER'S METHOD 153 ^ of the central notion in the whole Spencerian scheme ; viz. : The members of society, from the very earliest stages, arrange themselves in somezvhat permanent forms; these forms are rearranged in adaptation to varying needs; the forms are related, both as cause and effect, to the individuals who make up the society; they are thus factors that may never be left out of account in attempts to understand real life. All this we may accept as fully as Spencer did, but it is no longer possible to let this fact of structure fill up as large a part of our interpretation of society as it did in Spencer's system. We must add to this elementary insight into social facts, per- ceptions that will penetrate deeper into social essentials. PART III SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS A WHOLE COMPOSED OF PARTS WORKING TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE RESULTS (FUNCTION) (An Interpretation of Schdffle) CHAPTER X A CONSPECTUS OF SCHAFFLE'S SCHEME* If it were merely a matter of introducing another author, no matter how well known and highly respected among soci- ologists, it would hardly be justifiable to mention Schaffle at all. From such signs as I can discover, it seems probable that there are a score of leading writers on sociology whose actual contributions to the science are better known, among students of the subject generally, than those of Schaffle. His name is now seldom omitted from references to the recent literature, but there are only rare indications that those who name him have read him. In general, he is cited chiefly as an awful example of the vices of the biological method of interpreta- tion. By general consent, that method is now ranked as crude at best, serviceable for stimulating attention and for rudimen- tary exposition, rather than for strict science. It is a pre- liminary expedient, rather than a factor in final knowledge. If, then, Schiiffle were merely an inventor of a few varia- tions of the biological imagery for representing society, which has probably had its largest vogue already, he would not be worth our notice. Apparently most of the people who know his name imagine that this is the case, unless they are acquainted with his economic writings, and rate them high enough to overbalance the supposed worthlessness of his sociology. I have no disposition to spend time contending for Schaffle, and I shall not discuss his analysis of society in detail ; but the place assigned to him in this outline is due to an element in his system which is a 'necessary transition from a cruder to a less crude conception of the social reality. As an aid to comparison of his range of thought with Spencer's, a translation, slightly * Cf. Small and Vincent, Introduction to the Study of Society, Book IV. 157 158 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY abbreviated, of the table of contents of Ban und Lehen des socialcn Kdrpers (2d ed. ) follows: SCHAFFLE'S ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL FUNCTIONS PART I. THE GENERAL THEORY OF FORMS AND FUNCTIONS (Social Morphology, Social Physiologj-, and Social Psychology.) Book I. Introduction. Book II. The Elements of the Social Body, and the Primary Phys- iological Unity of the Same, or the Family. Div. I. Sec. I. The physical environment and the elements of the social body in general. Sec. II. The physical environment as social environment, or the land. Sec. III. The elementary parts and functions of the social body itself. First. The passive element, or property. 1. Property phenomena in general. 2. The separate materials of public property, especially the symbolic goods. Second. The active elements of the social body ; the indi- vidual. 1. Bird's-eye view ; fundamental conceptions (spiritualism and materialism). 2. The several fundamental types of the psychical activity of individuals ; representation. A. Reflection ; cognition. B. The feelings and the evaluating activity. C. The transcendental elements in the human mind ; the symbolism of transcendental ideals ; specula- tive philosophy ; religion. Div. II. The Primary, Physiologically Determined Element, or the I-'amily. Sec. 1. General survey. Sec. II. The structure of the family. First. The family property. Second. The members. Third. The organization of the family. Sec. III. The function of tlie family. A CONSPECTUS OF SCHAFFLE'S SCHEME 159 Sec. IV. The discharge of social functions by the family; heredi- tary monarchy and capital. Sec. V. Phenomena of disruption of the family. Book III. The Simple Voluntary Social Combinations (not physio- logically determined; the theory of social tissues). Div. I. The Elementary Aggregations; Classification of the Same; the Different Combinations of Masses; the Equilibrium of the Various Sorts of Mass-Combinations. Div. II. The Functionally Different Elementary Combinations. First. The universal phenomena. Second. The five elementary social tissues. 1. The fundamental device of settlement. 2. The fundamental devices for protection. 3. The housekeeping (economic) devices. 4. The technical apparatus ; devices for application of skill and power. 5. The elementary spiritual combinations. Div. III. Special Aspects of the Spiritual (Psycho-Physical) Com- binations. Book IV. The Simple Institutions or Organs of the Social Body, AND their Origin (Organization). Div. I. General View. Sec. I. Complete and incomplete organs. Sec. II. The impulses to construction of organs. Div. II. The Subjective and the Objective Side of Social Organization. Sec. I. Theory of the membership of society. 1. The general articulation of society. 2. The special forms of articulation. A. The forms of the individual organizing impulse. B. The voluntary collective institutions, or the private unions. C. The public institutions. Sec. II. Theory of social organization. 1. The construction of the organs out of the five elementary combinations. 2. The elementary processes in the operation of the organiza- tion ; the appropriation of goods ; the acquisition of per- sons ; examination, appointment, training. Div. III. The Chief Institutions, or Systems of Social Organs. Book V. The Spiritual Life of Society (Social Psychology). Div. I. The Fundamental Facts. Sec. I. Division and unification of the total spiritual labor. i6o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Sec. IL Review of the elementary psychological apparatus. Sec. in. Quantitative determination of the spiritual energies of the people. Sec. IV. The threshold phenomena in the spiritual life of society. Sec. V. The extension of the circumference of social conscious- ness ; publicity. Sec. VI. The socio-psychological law of contrast. Sec. VII. Authority and dependence ; publicity, the public, public opinion and the daily press ; pathological conditions. Div. II. The Distinct Elementary Combinations in the Spiritual Life of Society. Sec. I. The social activity of observation and of executive action. Sec. II. The social process of cognition, feeling, and will. 1. The intellectual phase of social life. 2. The evaluating activities of society; honor and distinction, ornamentation and decoration. 3. The ethical life of society. A. In general. B. Distinction between action and willing. C. The social movement as a system of psychically con- trolled natural movements. D. The ideal of " social mechanics ; " compromise, oppo- sition. E. The process of social volition in its various stages. a) Preliminaries to decision, agitation and party sys- tems. b) Actual decision. Sec. III. Law and morality. A. In general. B. Morality. C. Law. Div. III. The Higher Reproduction of the Intellectual Life of the Individual in the Spiritual Life of Society (Twenty Theses). Book VI. The Fundamental Questions in the General Theory of Evolution. Div. I. The Gradation of Natural and Social Creation. Sec. I. Survey. Sec. II. Animal societies. I. The heterogeneous animal societies; parasitism, commen- sualism, and mutualism. A CONSPECTUS OF SCHAFFLE'S SCHEME l6l 2. The homogeneous animal societies. A. Nutrition-society. B. Propagation-society. C. Animal communities. Sec. III. The gradation of social development. Div. II. The Nature-Philosophical and the Social-Philosophical Theories of a " Natural " Creation. Sec. I. Survey. Sec. II. Psychogenetic and psychological insufficiency of the present evolutionary theory. Sec. III. Change and development; causality and finality in development. Sec. IV. " Natural selection " as outcome of the instinct of self- preservation. Sec. V. Significance of the theory of physical evolution for sociology. Sec. VI. The charactertistic traits of the processes of social selection. Sec. VII. Formulation of the law of social development. Div. III. Height, Type, Direction, Beginning, and Goal of Social Development. Sec. I. Time and space in relation to the level of development. Sec. II. Morphological phenomena in social development. Sec. III. The scale of social development. Sec. IV. The duration of civilization. Sec. V. The parallelism of different grades of development. Sec. VI. Types of development. Sec. VII. Developmental types and developmental grades. Sec. VIII. Relativity and timeliness in the directions of social development. Sec. IX. The earliest signs of social differentiation and integra- tion. Sec. X. The progressive tendency toward the common civiliza- tion of all peoples in a social body. Book VII. The Diverse Elementary Facts in Social Development. Div. I. Law and Custom as Stages in Social Development. Div. II. The Agents That Take Part in Social Development. Sec. I. The forms of social agents and powers, and their develop- ment. Sec. II. The necessary development of freedom and equality. Div. III. Social Variability, Adaptation, and Heredity. Sec. I. The phenomena of variation. i62 GENER.A.L SOCIOLOGY Sec. II. The phenomena of adaptation. Sec. III. The phenomena of heredity, tradition, and propaganda. Sec. IV. Preservation and progress. Div. IV. The Course of the Social Struggle fof Existence. Sec. I. The concepts repose (Rtihe). peace, conflict, war. Sec. II. Stimulation of conflict; its objective occasions and its subjective motors. T. The instinct of multiplication ; the " law of population " from the standpoint of the evolutionary theory. 2. Stimulation of conflict through increase of wants and differences in opportunity to gratify them. 3. Stimulation of conflict through endeavor for general im- provement (public spirit; idealism). Sec. III. The conflicting interests. Sec. IV. The factors in the adjustment of conflicts; accident and force; the result. 1. Conjunction. 2. The decisive subjective superiority. 3. The species of superiority. 4. The result. Sec. V. The different species of adjustments of social conflicts and of results. 1. By lot, games, speculation. 2. By appeal to hand-to-hand conflict, foreign and domestic war. A. Struggle for existence against external nature (pro- duction and protection). B. Self-help among human opponents; war — first, for- eign ; second, domestic. 3. Adjustment through voluntary agreement (treaty). 4. Through rivalry, competition, etc. Div. V. Politics as Bearer of the Unity of Development. Div. VI. Internal and External, Independent and Derived Develop- ment. Sec. I. National and international development. Sec. II. Derived development, especially colonization. First. Idea and nature of colonization. Second. Species and grades of colonization. Third. Obstacles to colonization. Fourth. Colonization as abbreviated repetition and intensifi- cation of the moral type of the mother-country. A CONSPECTUS OF SCHAFFLE'S SCHEME 163 Fifth. The position of colonization among the total phe- nomena of derived development. Div. VII. The Outcome of Social Development; Culture and Civili- zation. Sec. I. Moralization, culture, civilization. Sec. II. The content and the gradations of culture. Sec. III. The content and the gradation of civilization. Div. VIII. Conclusion : The Law of Evolution, and the Possibility of an Ethical Conception of the World (Weltanschauung). Book VIII. Special Sociology of the Individual; Particularly of Social Psychogenesis. Div. I. Limitation of the Problem of Special Sociology. Sec. I. Survey of the field of the problems. Sec. II. Preliminary limitation of the problems. Div. II. Social Anthropology (Theory of Population ; Statistics of Population). Sec. I. Survey of the tasks. Sec. II. The mass and the mass-movements of the population. Sec. III. The age-classes and their movements. Sec. IV. Peculiar somatic traits of the population. Sec. V. Sex in the population. Sec. VI. Special anthropological marks : differences of skull, brain, size, figure, and color. Sec. VII. Race-characteristics. Sec. VIII. Spiritual characteristics of individuals. Sec. IX. The connection of morality with differences in the external characteristics of individuals. Div. III. The Social Derivation of Individual Reason and Language. Sec. I. Introduction. Sec. II. Development of language and writing. Sec. III. Improvement of language. Sec. IV. Further development of writing. Sec. V. Development of individual reason. Book IX. The Special Sociology of the Family. Div. I. General Survey. Sec. I. Problems. Sec. II. History of cultural evolution in family relations. Sec. III. Family property in particular. Sec. IV. Culture history of marriage in particular. Div. II. The Family in the Visible Future. Div. III. The Family and the General Law of Evolution. i64 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Book X. The External " Material " Existence and Life of the People. Div. L The Social Life in a Time and Space. A. General survey. B. Time divisions as social phenomena. Sec. L The generally important time-phenomena. Sec. IL Primary devices for determining time. Sec. IIL The elements of the social time-organization. Sec. IV. Persons concerned with time-divisions. Sec. V. Unity of standard and divisions of time. Sec. VI. Rise of systems for reckoning time. Sec. VII. International time-reckoning. C. Occupancy of space, and the organization for support of the social body : systems of settlement, of abode, of roads, and of transportation. Sec. I. Independent scientific treatment of the subject. Sec. II. Elementary articulation of the parts and arrange- ments that make up provisions for settlement and trafific. Sec. III. The principle and evolutionary law of settlement and of traffic. Sec. IV. The struggle for space. Sec. V. The systematic articulation, and growing intensity of the social organs for protection. Sec. VI. The system, or so-called " web," of means for intercourse in space. Sec. VII. The morphology of the social organism for pro- tection. Sec. VIII. Conceivable expansion of these systems. Sec. IX. Elementary articulation of the arrangements for settlement and transportation. Sec. X. Relations between settlements and transportation systems and the other systems of organs and functions in society. Div. II. The Systems for Defense and Security. Div. III. Technique as a Social Phenomenon. Book XI. Internal Life of the People; (Conclusion) Public Econ- omy. Div. I. Public Economy as a Species of Ethical Transfer of Matter. Div. II. The Principal Conceptions of Economic Theory. Div. III. The Composition of the System of Organs in Public Econ- omy. A CONSPECTUS OF SCHAFFLE'S SCHEME 165 Div. IV. Social Determination of Values. Sec. I. The determinants of exchange value. Sec. II. Recent theories of value. Sec. III. The universal measure of value (measure of exchange value). Sec. IV. The larger determinants of exchange equivalents ; " capitalistic " market prices and systems of public taxation. Sec. V. External organization of exchange values ; markets and exchanges. Div. V. The Organization of Special Economic Interests. Sec. I. Public control of industries. Sec. II. Co-operative economy and individual economy in private law. Sec. III. Family industry. Div. VI. Influence of State, Law, Custom on General Industry. Div. VII. History of the Development of Economic Systems. Div. VIII. The Modern Economic System of Free Competition. Div. IX. Criticism of the Capitalistic Epoch. Div. X. Forecast of the Economic Future. Sec. I. Development of media of exchange. Sec. II. Regulation of social demand. Sec. III. Public regulation of production and exchange. Sec. IV. Means for assuring general economy of production and of circulation. Sec. V. The distribution of the national income. Sec. VI. Industrial regulation of consumption. Sec. VII. Reactions outside the economic sphere. Sec. VIII. Conceivable overcoming of obstacles in transition. Div. XI. Increasing Intensity, Differentiation, and Integration of National Industry. Book XII. The Subjective (Ideal) Life of the People. Div. I. The Social Life and the Intellectual Nurture of the People. Div. II. Popular Education and the School. Div. III. Science. Div. IV. The Esthetic Life of the People. Book XIII. The Subjective Life of the People (Concluded). Sec. I. Idealism in its religious and its non-religious manifestations in society. Sec. II. The attitude of the church toward the " secular " life of society. i66 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Sec. III. The ecclesiastical machinery. Sec. IV. Development of religion and church. Book XIV. The State and the Community. Div. I. Introduction. Div. IT. Idea, Purpose, Origin, and Methods of the State. Div. III. Composition of the State. Div. IV. The System of Civic Organs. Div. V. Composite States. Div. VI. Types of Constitutions. Div. VII. The Civic Functions. Sec. I. Politics and routine administration. Sec. II. Organization of civic activity according to subject-matter. 1. The general function of developing civic power. 2. The special branches of civic activity. A. The positive services. B. The regulative activities. Div. VIII. International Relations. Div. IX. The Stages of Civic Development. Sec. I. The State and the law of evolution. Sec. II. The five stages of civic development up to the present. 1. Undifferentiated community. 2. The State of classes, officials, and feudatories. 3. The city or citizens' State. 4. The territorial State. 5. The modern State. 6. Probability of a world-State? Book XV. The Development of the Social Body into a World- Population. Div. I. The People. Div. II. The Geographical and Political World. Div. III. The Various Human Stocks. Div. IV. Retrospect and Prospect. CHAPTER XI THE VALUE OF SCHAFFLE'S METHOD A glance at the foregoing scheme shows that it uses, in some form or other, all the conceptions in Spencer's outline. Schaffle even elaborates some biological parallels more mi- nutely than Spencer does. He dwells at great length upon the fact of social structure, and upon analysis of social structures. Accordingly, few people have taken the trouble to find out whether he has added anything to the Spencerian system. There is nothing in Schaffle's general analysis of society which might not be grafted upon Spencer's. There is nothing which is not implied in Spencer's terms, and possibly it is all expressed in a general way in his formulas. Nevertheless, one cannot read Schaffle carefully without presently becoming aware that the " social bcxly " of his conception has more of real life in it than the " society " that Spencer dissects. Spencer's analysis afifects one more like the disentangling of a mechanical puzzle, while there is more of the atmosphere of actual life in Schaffle's description of the social body. The difference, as I see it, reduces to this : Spencer does not succeed in making his interpretation of society picture it as more than an organization of mechanisms. Schaffle's cen- tral conception of society is of an organisation of work. Of course, mechanism implies work, and work implies mechanism. Moreover, language has grown up in such connection with the working processes of life that we cannot talk of mechanism without talking of work, and vice versa. For that reason, the ideas of mechanism, structure, and work (function) are in both of these systems, as certainly as they are in either. They have different degrees of importance in the two systems. The relative prominence of structure in the one system, and the relative importance of function in the other, give them the 167 i68 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY rank, respectively, of a first step and a second step in approach to adequate analysis of human association. Just as we have seen that arrangement of people into com- binations (structure) is one of the prime factors in shaping their lives, so we must see beyond this, and become equally familiar with the companion fact that the sort of work per- formed by means of these structures is a still more direct and efficient molder of our lives. We may go even farther than this, and say that social structures are only external conditions of our lives, while SQcial functions are parts of life itself. To make this idea clearer, we may use biological distinc- tions of structure from function, with no thought of trying to make out that these particular structures and functions have any parallels in society. Let us suppose that we have never heard the words " struc- ture " and " function." Let us suppose we are attending our first demonstration in anatomy. The professor informs us that the object before him is a part of the body of a vertebrate of a high order. He tells us he will show how it is put together. He begins by pointing out one of its surfaces, which he calls a conjunctiva. He shows that this surface is convex. He points out that there is a part of the same body which is adjusted as a movable cover for this convex surface, to protect it in various ways. Then he shows how muscles are attached to this portion of the body, to give it various kinds of motion. Then he proceeds to dissect the different layers which make up this part of the body. He shows that it has three coats, to which he gives names. Then he points out a peculiar capsule in the center of the front portion of the part he is dissecting, and he gives this a distinguishing name. Behind this capsule is a lluid mass, and in front of it another Huid. Encircling the cases in which these fluids arc carried are fibers which are woven into a great nerve running off into a more distant part of the body. So the demonstration might continue down to finer and finer details, and not a word might be said about any- thing except the way in which this piece of organic tissue is THE VALUE OF SCHXFFLE'S METHOD 169 made. Our attention is centered on its mechanical arrange- ment. The least possible thought is given to what it is all for. It may be that I have not even suggested by these vague terms the organ that I have in mind. The moment that I men- tion the eye, however, we are aware that we know some things about the eye which are not made any more real by anatomical demonstration. Dissection brings structure to light that we knew nothing about before ; but we did know before what the eye can do. We knew the various kinds of skill that the eye has. We knew how it helps us judge of the size and distance and quality of objects beyond our reach. These capacities of the eye to do work may, in their turn, be analyzed in endless detail, without any attention whatever to the particulars brought to view by the anatomist. In other words, the struc- ture of the eye may be studied with no regard for its functions, and the functions of the eye may be studied with little knowl- edge of its structure. It usually happens in actual practice that our knowledge of structure and functions in organic bodies is gained some- what simultaneously, and when we think of the one, we do refer more or less to the other. It should be evident, how- ever, that these closely related things are not one and the same thing. One may be thoroughly acquainted with the functions of the ear, without an item of information about the internal structure of the ear. On the other hand, a man deaf from his birth might become thoroughly acquainted with the anatomy of the ear, while he might never be able to form any satisfactory conception of the functions of the ear. We may be expert track athletes, with but the most shadowy notions of the bones of the foot, or of the muscles in any part of the body. The structure of the hand is one thing: the different things that can be done by the hand are quite another matter; etc., etc. Now, people are not merely putting themselves in structural formations. People are incessantly bringing things to pass. These achievements, from least to greatest, are certainly as I70 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY definite material for knowledge as the mere ways in which men arrange themselves, with reference to each other, in the process of bringing about these achievements. It was this phase of society that was most prominent in Schaffle's system. He regarded social structure as the leverage which made social achievement possible. He was quite correct in treating social structure, however, merely as a means. He was interested to go on from the elementary fact of how men are arranged, to the more vital fact of what they are doing by means of these arrangements. With the success of Schaffle in carrying out this idea we are not now concerned. It is not necessary to follow him step by step. The facts about social functions are important; not his way of treating them. We may, however, allow him to sug- gest certain more obvious items which go to make up a general outline of functional relationships in society. Men are always acting. They are not merely existing, like so many fossils or crystals in a museum. They are not merely so many standing illustrations of types of structure. They are doing something. The like is true of men in groups or social structures. A family, with its structure of more or less equal partnership of husband and wife, and of greater or less sub- ordination of children to parents, is not an end in itself, as a sample of how individuals can be grouped. Any and every type of family comes into being because there are certain life- problems to be solved, and because experience in dealing with the problems gradually enforces the custom of approaching them in these family formations. The family structure then is to be understood, not as passive, but as active. It does work. So of economic, professional, political structures. They are agencies in bringing thinjjs to pass. What are the sorts of things that are brought to pass in society, not what are the mechanical devices by which they are brought to pass, is the central question from the functional point of view. Schaffle occupies the whole of his first volume and the first fifty-seven pages of the second volume (i. e., to THE VALUE OF SCHAFFLE'S METHOD 171 the end of Book VIII) with the morphology and evolution of social types. This would seem to prove that structure is cen- tral with him, after all. In spite of the liberal share of atten- tion given to these aspects of society, they are treated, however, as means of bringing the more significant aspects into clearer relief. Beginning with Book IX, the stress falls, not on the forms or the methods in which social tissues are constructed, but on the kinds of work that the social tissues accomplish. Thus the family has the task of providing for the continu- ance of the race — propagation ; for securing necessary rela- ^ tions to nature — settlement and shelter. Then it falls to the family to do much of the elementary work of preparing the children to take their places in carrying along the succession of technical workers, and observing the moral standards, the laws, the social order, the religion, that are traditional in the community. When we pass from the family to larger and more complex structures, we are immediately face to face with differences of opinion about the ways in which they should be classified. For instance, in a given section of Chicago is a population of about thirty thousand people subsisting directly upon one industry. How shall we treat that population for scientific purposes? Shall we look upon them as falling into divisions which corre- spond with the categories of pure economic theory ? Shall we treat them in the groupings necessary in legal theory? Shall we look upon them in the subdivisions which their race- differences suggest? Shall we deal with them as they are subdivided by affiliation with political parties or religious sects? These are all debatable questions. No matter what answer we might reach, the main point which we are now considering could not be permanently affected. In each and all of these relationships, men are bringing things to pass — they are functioning. This bringing things to pass, moreover, is by means of these different groupings, or in spite of them. The only valid way of deciding what use to make of these different groupings, in making up our whole idea of the thirty 172 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY thousand people in the given case, is to find out what part each sort of grouping plays, pro or con, in their bringing things to pass. By that means we shall at last arrive at a conclusive way of associating the different kinds of groupings with each other in our theories. We need not bother ourselves with these questions now, however. They are suggested for the purpose of emphasizing the point that we need not be turned from the essential thing, if we find ourselves dififering radically with Schaffle about proper ways of classifying social structures and functions. What we are chiefly concerned with now is the fact that there are such things as social structures and functions. Schaffle's analysis of the latter would serve to bring out the fact of their existence, even if we were quite sure that he has not detected the most important of them, nor put them in their proper orders and degrees of dependence. The thing to insist on now is that we get deeper into the essentials of society when our attention is fixed on what society is doing, than when we stop with making out the types and sizes of social formations. Accordingly, we may take the next step in company with Schafifle. He passes from the family, and what it does, to the "people" (das Folk). He speaks of "popular existence" and "popular life" (Book X), with little to show whether he is thinking of the people in a tribe, or the people who make up a whole civilization, or whether he is using the concept " people " in highly elastic and contractile senses. This latter is really the case. He is not thinking of mechanical limitations of " the people " in any way, but merely of all the people who have an actual part in fixing the general conditions of life within a given area. With that understanding he can make out a good case for dividing the functions which people must perform, as follows (Books X and XI) : In the first place, there are all the tasks which radiate from the necessity of getting control of rela- tions in time and space. These tasks are subdivided into, first, problems of settlement and transportation ; second, problems of security and protection ; third, the whole technique of civic THE VALUE OF SCHAFFLE'S METHOD 173 and public community life; fourth, the development of public industry, or the whole sphere of social transmutation of matter. In the second place, there are the functions which satisfy the wants of the inner life, which fall into five divisions, viz. (Book XII), first, social intercourse; second, education; third, science; fourth, aesthetic life; fifth, the religio-ecclesiastic life. In the third place, the functions connected with the chief insti- tutions for unified volition and action throughout the whole range of external and internal life — the tasks of State and community. I do not myself consider this classification a very skilful piece of work. It is untenable in more than one way. It does not rest on a single principle, and the functions thus scheduled are neither mutually exclusive, nor are they listed in satisfac- tory correlations. This is, nevertheless, not fatal to the value of the exhibit. The main thing is discernment of function, as a more searching test of the meaning of human actions than mere structure. What the precise functions are that reveal this meaning most fully is a question to which we shall come presently. We may approach it by pointing out that just as Spencer, in spite of himself, tended to seek the meaning of social structure in structure, so Schaffle's limits are indicated by his tendency to see the meaning of social functions in func- tion, rather than in causal and consequent conditions in the persons functioning. That is, we must see much clearer than either Spencer or Schaffle did, that no social function, any more than a social structure, is an end in any final sense. It is an intermediate factor, that gets its meaning from conditions in persons, which conditions, on the one hand, demand and maintain the function, and, on the other hand, result from the function. In other words, while function is more than struc- ture, people are more than both. Any analysis of social facts that rests with social functions in the abstract is necessarily noncommittal as to the final interpretation of life. There is something about Schafifle's treatment that suggests the bureaucratic order in which he grew up. Function seems 174 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY to him a happy way of giving the traditional social machineries something to do. The machineries are foreordained parts of the universe. Now, if we find a function that employs the machinery, we have explained the machinery, while this taken- for-granted machinery in its turn explains the function ! That is, we have the family, the State, the church, the school, the economic system, the scientific and aesthetic cultus; now, keeping themselves busy in their characteristic fashion is their function. Thus, a system of reasoning in a circle is only partially concealed in Schaffle's conceptions. As mere phe- nomena, not inquired about further, it is true that social structures are the means for performing social functions, and social functions are the ways for utilizing social structures. This is as though we should say, for instance : " Princes are people who live in luxury, and maintain an ornamental exist- ence, without responsibility for earning a living; on the other hand, court functions, military parades, display of decora- tions, and similar spectacular performances, are occupations to employ princes." We should thereby make the princes and the shows account for each. other, without really accounting for either. What I am trying to point out is that, after we have recog- nized Schaffle's merit in signalizing the fact of social functions, over and above social structures, we must deny two things : first, that he succeeded in making a satisfactory schedule of social functions; and, second, that he discovered the proper center from which to find the meaning of social functions. Of course, this latter failure explains the former. The proper social functions are the activities through which the essential human wants are evolved, gratified, balanced, adjusted between person and person, and then started on their next evolutionary cycle. These functions are by no means identical with operation of the structural machinery which we call institutions. The essential social functions are promotion of the primarily individual functions of securing sustenance, controlling nature, estaijiishing working relations between THE VALUE OF SCHaFFLE'S METHOD 175 man and man in the common use of opportunity, acquiring knowledge, developing aesthetic activity, and realizing religion. The forms and combinations of these functions vary infinitely, with variations in the stages of social advancement, and innumerable minor circumstances. They must never be con- founded with the routine operation of economic, civic, social, scientific, artistic, or religious structures. These routine per- formances are functions in the narrow, mechanical sense, but not necessarily in an intelligent human sense. For instance, the function of a State is to maintain civic order. Russia is maintaining civic order in Finland. Ergo, Russia is discharging the immanent civic functions. The con- clusion does not follow. Civic order is merely one of the means to human ends. The enlargement and enrichment of the lives of the people maintaining the order, not order itself, is the criterion of civic functions. Russia is crushing out the life of the Finns. The revolution of the wheels of government according to a despotic system is not discharge of the indicated social function. It is obstruction of the proper function through misuse of structure. So in the case of the mediaeval Romish church. It was the recognized structure in the service of religion. It was at the height of its power as a political and police force, but it was exterminating rather than promot- ing religion. Huss and Luther and Calvin and Knox were promoting the real functions of religion, while the church was satisfying itself with a routine that displaced the functions. Thus we must distinguish between the mere workings of social machinery and the discharge of social functions. When the Russian fleet fired on the English fishing-vessels in the North Sea (October 24, 1904), the engines, and steering-gear, and batteries were all working according to their design ; but these workings were not in the service of a social function, in a large sense. They were misapplied to the jeopardizing of the whole system of social functions. The machinery of a runaway engine is working according to the principles of its structure, but it is not fulfilling its proper office in the economy 176 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of life. It is projecting itself to certain destruction. In like fashion, we must draw the line very sharply between mere operation of the social devices that have come into existence, and the performance of true social functions. The latter is always to be tested by finding out what the motions of social machinery actually have to do with the real interests of the persons chiefly concerned. Judged by this test, those institutional actions alone discharge social functions which actually help more than they hinder the general process of developing, adjusting, and satisfying the wants of the people whom they affect. This brings us to the perception that we cannot make the most of the notion of social functions, until we find a way of representing to ourselves a sphere of relations by which the functions may be approximately explained. Functions are parts of processes, not parts of machineries. To know social functions, as far as they are knowable, we must become acquainted with the social processes within which they are incidental. We have thus taken brief account of two conceptions which have been prominent in the history of sociological theory : the conception of social structure, and that of social functions. These concepts have been, in turn, centers for ambitious socio- logical systems. Those systems are no longer regarded as serious competitors for leadership in social theory. They have served their day, and social theorists cannot be fully equipped without thinking through the problems which those systems confronted and tried to solve. The clue idea in each of those systems is not, and never can be, obsolete. The concepts "social structure" and "social function," or some substitute which we cannot imagine, will always be indispensable in analysis of the social reality. The principal deposit of perma- nent value left by the two types of sociological theory developed around the two notions "structure" and "function," consists of the two conceptions, as elementary terms in more adequate explanation. The work of testing these ideas, as embodied in sociological systems, has trained thinkers to carry analysis far- THE VALUE OF SCHAFFLE'S METHOD 177 ther, and to propose more adequate programs of social interpre- tation. We are now at a point from which we may with advan- tage approach the most searching scheme of social analysis that has thus far been proposed. In reaching this line of transition from two partial views of social reality to the most compre- hensive view at present possible, it is worth while tO' take time for a restatement of our problem. We may put it in this summary form : When one starts to think about the facts of human experi- ence, there is no logical stopping-place until anszvers have been found to the questions: ( i) What arc the essentials in human association? (2) Hozv do these essentials change their mani- festations from time to time? (^) By virtue of ivhat influ- ences do these variations occur? (4) What social aims are reasonable in viezv of these conclusions from experience? Every scheme of sociology, and every special inquiry that has been pursued by sociologists, zvotdd be found to deal zvith one or more of these questions. We cannot describe the zuork of sociology better than by saying it is an attempt to anszver these four questions. However the sociologists appear to differ among them- selves, very slight examination will show that every one of them has found his employment in trying to find out something that would tend to diminish uncertainty in one or other of these directions. All the different systems or theories of sociology will be found to grapple more or less wisely with some part of these questions. What the sociologists, and others who did not call themselves by that name, have done instinctively, and accidentally, and without system, must be done reflectively, and deliberately, and methodically, if our most searching questions about cause and effect in human experience ever receive answer. In order to answer these questions, we must use the elementary notions " structure " and " function " for what they are worth, while we proceed to more searching analysis of the actual social process. ITS GENERAL SOCIOLOGY An illustration at the outset may help to explain these abstract statements. We find at a given spot on the earth's surface, at a given time, a group of people leading a quiet, uneventful life, tending their flocks, and tilling the soil in a small way. In another spot we find the temporary bivouac of a tribe of people who never stay long in a place; who never hunt, except for sport or when in desperate need ; who never till the soil ; but they harry peaceful folk, rob them of their food, disperse, enslave, or kill them. At another spot we find men who neither till the soil nor rob those who do, but they trade, and improve their condition by passing from one owner to another the things that someone else has made. Again, we find groups of men who live, not by farming, nor robbing, nor trading, but by separat- ing themselves from their fellows and praying, relying on the seculars to furnish material support for this spiritual exercise. Or, again, we find groups that neither farm nor rob nor trade nor pray — at least not as a vocation — but they devote their time to increasing knowledge. In each case we may compare the group with others doing substantially the same thing in ways so different that we may easily overlook the similarity. The cattle-raider of the Scotch Highlands seems to have nothing in common with the East India Company taking pos- session of a continent, the white settlers pushing the American Indians off the earth, or the Russians grasping Manchuria. The caravan packed with curious products of strange lands hardly betrays relationship with the ocean liner carrying freight enough to burden an army of camels, or the railroad train trundling masses of goods at a speed that no living creatures could overtake. The howling dervish, or the slayer of sacrificial beasts, seems to pursue totally different aims from the Salvation Army lassie or the intoner of the liturgy of the Anglican church. The Chinese mandarins and the Hebrew scriljes suggest no relationship with the occupants of modern laboratories, or the explorers in social science. Yet one does not observe any type of man long without beginning to sus- THE VALUE OF SCHAFFLE'S METHOD 179 pect that one may find in it every other type of man more or less disguised. One gets hold of the idea that these men are all alike ; that the one is doing what all are doing, and that all are doing what the one is doing. We get the notion that, if we could look down below the surface of these lives in turn, we should find radically similar springs of action, and we should find that the conduct which on the surface seems so unlike and unrelated, really is the same essential activity, with variations to be accounted for after slight attention to the surroundings in which they occur. What is the key to this identity in diversity? How may we find out the common element in lives that seem so unlike? How may we account for the differences? What conception of the principles that should govern life do our perceptions of these social facts and laws enforce? These questions must be asked over and over again, and answered with reference to every stage of human develop- ment with which we can get acquainted, if we are to reach the utmost intelligence possible about the practical problems of modern life. These questions may seem at first abstract and scholastic. They may seem to concern closet philosophers merely. To be sure, they can have no direct practical value for people who cannot apply large generalizations to specific cases. For everyone with mental power to correlate the par- ticular with the universal, the detail with the principle, the small with the great, these questions are keys to intelligent conduct of life. Our next step in planning adequate methods of analyzing human experience will be an approach to ways of answering these questions. PART IV SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS A PROCESS OF ADJUSTMENT BY CONFLICT BETWEEN ASSOCIATED INDIVIDUALS (An Interpretation of Ratzenhofer) CHAPTER XII THE PROBLEM RESTATED In Parts II and III we have run two trial surveys over the general field of sociology, but its contour is little plainer than it was in the beginning, and we find ourselves again at the point from which we started. In chap. 6 we said that the problem of sociology is to compose our scattered views of society into a truthful com- posite picture. We have examined two outlines of composite pictures of society, and have found that there is truth in them, or that they suggest truth, but that they are far from satisfying our demand for a literal account of human relations. Criticism of these two proposals in solution of the socio- logical problem has made demands for more specific analysis and description and explanation. For example, we have lost confidence in the utility of the word "society," that has given sociologists so much trouble. ,' The term has such persistent structural — i. e., statical — associations that it starts us with false presumptions. The more we use the term, the more it seems to stand for a fixed species of some sort — a definite arrangement of quantity, size, and structure. But, in spite of ourselves, when we make active search for the phenomena and laws of " society," we examine many " societies " of dif- ferent forms, structures, sizes, qualities ; and we find ourselves at fault when called upon to locate the society />ar excellence with reference to which we posit our problem.J| \ We speak of the family as society, and again we refer to the human race as society. Every intermediate group of people may also be denoted by the same term. Thus the very * Perhaps the most conspicuous sample of illusion in this connection is Tarde^s abstraction " society." It proves to be " those relationships between men which are made up of imitation." We shall return to the subject in Part VII. 183 / i84 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY word by which we attempt to determine our problem becomes an ignis fatiius. It flies so uncontrollably from one aspect of humanity to another ; we not only waver in our faith that the problem may be solved, but, if the truth must be told, we some- times wonder whether, after all, a real problem exists. Is not this *' society" a veritable will-o'-the-wisp? Is it not a fabric of the imagination? Is it not whatever we please to make it, instead of something actual and tangible? / Questions of this sort have led to the perception that /human experience is the real mystery which we are trying to solve. We have seen, further, that human experience is not a thing, nor a species of things. It is relationships between persons and the world they occupy. It is activities that have connections of cause and effect with each other. It is pro- cesses linked together into compound, and doubly compound, and nthly compound processes. In short, if we make human beings the center of our inquiry, and refer to the rest of the universe merely in so far as it conditions the activities of human beings, we find that the mystery reduces itself to the process of human association from its minutest to its largest phenomena,^ This shifting of attention from "society" to "human association " is not a mere verbal change. It marks real prog- ress in discovery. In the first place, it repudiates an a priori element that clung to the concept " society." That term connoted arbitrary extensions, or limitations, or qualifications, which continually seduced sociologists into profitless dialectics. It begged ques- tions — such, for instance, as the extension of human relation- ships, the kind and degree of human unity.^ In the second place, this transfer of attention from "society" to "human association" throws down the artificial barriers between investigators of different phases of human experience. If there is unity of any sort between men and events, the probability is that, whenever we begin to investi- ' Chap. I, ct passim. 'Chap. 34. THE PROBLEM RESTATED 185 gate the processes of association, we shall sooner or later come upon whatever likeness there is to other processes of associa- tion, and whatever nexus there is between one process and another. At the same time, we are freed from all assumptions that bind us to theories of likeness or other relation, if it does not exist. In the third pl^ce, although we may not presume that this step carries us beyond liability to error in explaining human experience, it certainly marks a departure from analogical methods of dealing with our subject-matter, and by so much an approach to scientific precision. For instance, we may have been perfectly aware of the provisional character of the theo- rem, " Society is an organism." We may have used it with decent mental reservations. Yet so long as that formulation of the matter to be explained controlled our view of the task involved, we were at a disadvantage. It is like clearing the decks for action to advance beyond use of that pedagogical, symbolic theorem, and to propose the analytic questions : What and how and why are the real processes that occur when two or more people associate? The answers to these questions will include all that we can ever scientifically ascertain about the meaning of human experience. Attempts to interpret human experience in terms of the structure and functions of society have, still further, forced us to take human individuals literally. We have had to aban- don, one after another, fantastical interpretations of society, in which individuals figure merely as so much material in course of cosmic evolution, or so many cogs in a social machinery, or so many cells in living social tissue. Individuals are not to be disposed of in either of these summary fashions. The philosophical concept " individual " may baffle us forever.^ Since the individual encountered in experience is the ultimate term in the associational process, sociologists and psycholo- gists have been compelled to make common cause with each other in determining his meaning traits. Of what sort is this * See chap. 32 ; and Royce, The World and the Individual. i86 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY individual, by whom the social process is made, who never- theless could not exist except as a consequence of the social process ? Without pretending to speak with scientific accuracy, in plain words our task in explaining human experience is to understand the ways in which everyday people act under the different circumstances in which their lot js cast. We know that plain people feel wants. They act in hope of satisfying their wants. We easily find that all the wants which plain people have ever betrayed make up demands for satisfaction which may be put together in a very few groups. The decisive element in the wants in each of these groups may be discovered without much trouble. Starting with the clue that plain people, judged by what they want and the means at their disposal for getting it, are essentially the same, whether they live in primitive caves or in modern palaces, and that the world around them is constant in essence, however varied in circumstance, we find that our task is to discover, in every phase of association which we try to explain, on the one hand the specific type of the constant genus homo concerned as active agent, and, on the other hand, the specific variations in his surroundings which both limit and stimulate his wants. Other- wise expressed, human experience is always a mesh in a web of causes and effects, in which persons, in the elements of their nature changeless, in the manifestations of their character infinitely variable, mingle with each other in the exercise of their qualities. In this association they encounter constant variations of circumstances, both in each other's attitude and in physical surroundings. At the same time, all experience reacts upon the development and assortment of the rudimen- tary factors combined in the individuals. The infinitely diverse phenomena of human association are thus particular situations presenting peculiar variations and combinations of the same fundamental elements ; viz. : the physical universe ; human wants; combinations of these wants in individuals ;° " The reason for speaking of wants before we name individuals is indicated below, chaps. 31 and 32. THE PROBLEM RESTATED 187 contacts between individuals, each pursuing purposes given by his wants ; conflicts or correspondences of the purposes of the associated individuals; adjustments of the individuals to each other in accommodation of their purposes; consequent union of effort producing new situations, which in turn become con- ditions for another cycle of the same series, each term having a content somewhat varied from that in the previous cycle, the process continuing beyond any assignable limit. For example, the Hebrews in Egypt wanted generically the same " life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness" for which the signers of the American Declaration of Independence were ready to fight. Their specific want was escape from their Egyptian task-masters. No sooner was this accomplished than the wanderers in the wilderness were different people from the slaves in Egypt. In different surroundings, their economic, social, pohtical, and religious wants underwent change, and their activities manifested new phenomena. Again, when they ceased to be nomads and established per- manent settlements, another similar cycle began; Each gen- eration in a way accomplishes some portion of such a cycle of social cause and effect. Some of the elements of the process begun by the Hebrews in Egypt worked through the whole process of the Christian centuries, and entered into the motives of the American colonists, to make their action so different in detail from that of the insurgent Semites. The same process has made the Americans of today, in pursuit of " life, liberty, and happiness," seek the merit system in the civil service, and electoral reform, and combinations of labor and capital, and a limitless program of universal education. All of these facts have had an influence upon social theo- rists. They also necessarily feel somewhat modified demands for explanation of the facts which put on aspects not visible to earlier theorists. Accordingly, the problem that presents itself to sociologists today cannot be expressed in terms that sufficed a generation ago. Our present demand is for a way of explaining what is taking place among people, with literal i88 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY values for the different terms which we find concerned in human experience. We want an explanation, not of men's crystalline formations, not of their machineries, not of their institutional remains. We want an account of the intimate process of their lives, in terms that will assign their actual meaning and value to the chief and subordinate factors con- cerned in the process. We want especially an explanation that will guarantee its proportional place to the factor human purposes. We want to know all that can be discovered, from the most particular to the most general, about the laws of rela- tionship between the physical surroundings, individual endow- ments, social environments, specific purposes, interrelations of purposes, collective achievement, and the reaction of achieve- ment on the conditions of subsequent cycles of effort and result. No larger contribution to explanation in this spirit has been made than that of Ratzenhofer.^ * Wescn und Zweck der Politik (3 vols., 1893) ; Die sociologische Erkennt- niss (1898). CHAPTER XIII RATZENHOFER'S EPITOME OF HIS THEORY' The social process of men exhibits (a) forces operating throughout its extent, (b) regular procedures, and (c) inner necessities; all of which are to be regarded as manifestations of conformity to law in the sociological realm. Thus : 1. The sustcntation and the multiplication of human beings are the occasions of all social contacts. Their influence creates the impetus to the peaceful relationships and to the hostile interruptions which social structure may encounter. In social reaction they manifest themselves as the instinct of self- preservation (rivalry for food — Brotneid) and the sexual instinct (hence the blood-bond — Bltitliebe). All possible motors of social contact are modifications or evolutionary forms of these natural impulses, in the same sense in which the various forms of the interests that control the individual are modalities, or evolutionary qualities, of the inborn interest. 2. In every creature the instinct of self-preservation and the sexual impulse are in juxtaposition with the life-conditions, to which species and individual must adapt themselves, and which they strive to exploit in accordance with their inborn capability. Man and his communities are accordingly per- fected products of that primal force which works in the endow- ment of their order in the evolutionary series, and of those life-conditions which are changing in the course of terrestrial development. 3. Every creature has originally the disposition to fulfil without hindrance his primal impulses. It would eat without labor and without struggle, and it would reproduce itself with- out limits. This impulse leads men to spread over the earth's surface, in order to be unhindered in finding food and abode. ' Die sociologische Erkenntniss, sec. 22. 189 igo GENERAL SOCIOLOGY This impulse is indirectly the occasion for the variations of men and of their social structures, because it compels them either to exchange or to modify their life-conditions. 4. The limitations upon exchange of life-conditions which are introduced by increase of population force upon individuals and upon social structures the struggle for existence. It com- pels men to decide whether they will at last labor for their subsistence, and by social organization, in spite of increased numbers, accommodate themselves to their abodes — which amounts to the beginning of culture; or whether, to the same end, they will destroy or subjugate other men, the latter alter- native leading to forcible struggle and to organized com- pulsion. Whether communities decide upon the former or the latter course is determined radically by the conditions of life among which they develop ; for only those people decide primarily in favor of culture who are in tolerable life-conditions. Only those decide for war whose life-conditions are inadequate. 5. Although man, like all other creatures, would prefer to feed and propagate at peace with his kind, yet progressive increase of numbers and the need of sustenance develop his individual interest into absolute hostility toward all fellow- men. In so far as men constitute a community of interests through the blood-bond, or co-operation in labor or war, this hostility is silent ; only to break out, however, at every disturbance of the community of interest. This outbreak will disregard community of origin and all previous relatk">nships. Absolute hostility is the psychical guardian over the continu- ance of a community of interests. 6. The origin of all social interrelations is the blood-hand. Hence all primitive social structures are based on community of origin. Through increase of numbers and the quest for food, the primitive social structure is forced into spatial differ- entiations; which further leads, through the various life- conditions, to race-differentiation. Contacts between differ- entiated men lead to flight or to battle. The latter has for its RATZENHOFER'S EPITOME OF HIS THEORY 191 purpose the destruction of opponents, in order to get control of their food-supply and their abodes, or the conversion of them into servants. The last is a social compromise between destruction and culture. Hence it leads to a higher step in the social process, in which the social structure no longer rests principally upon blood-relationship, but upon culture and a system of control. 7. The social structures of like origin are always simple. Subjugation by rulers is the beginning of social articulation, and of the State. Since sustentation and multiplication lead to continual expansion, and thence to subjugation of some people by others; since the conditions of life tend to become progressively more complex in their effects; and since culture enriches without limit the forms of human requirements, there begins, with this first articulation, an incalculable differentiation of social structures. Culture promotes commerce, which in itself has a dissolving influence upon the restraints of the unified social structure, of origin, common culture, or common control (State). Hence commerce tends to spread differentiation without limit over all social structures. The differentiation and the blending of social structures is the practical content of the social process. It is the social effect of the struggle for existence, and the social means of paralyzing absolute hos- tility. In this social process of differentiation and of blending, the controlling influence of the primal force, with its apper- taining interest, asserts itself in the social realm. 8. The social process is a continuous rhythm of the indi- vidualization of structures arising anew out of others already in existence — i. e., the reappearance in the social realm of the biological phenomena of the propagation of organisms; and, on the other hand, of the socialization of social structures already existing — i. e., the reappearance in the social realm of the physiological phenomenon of the somatic upbuilding of organisms. Social differentiation is as limitless as the increase of organisms. Both individualization and socialization have 192 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY their roots in the inborn interest of the individual ; or, in turn, in the concrete interest of each social structure. Differentia- tion is stimulated by variation of interests. This variation of interests, however, is the consequence of the increase of num- bers, and of the quest for food, under the influence of different life-conditions. In the individualizing side of the process, variation asserts itself. In the socializing side, the evolution of the social structure is foremost. 9. Differentiation (or impulse to individualism) has its boundaries in the number of individuals; i. e., differentiation can go on up to the atomization of society, because each indi- vidual may regard his own interest as the content of a social structure. Socialization (or impulse to form communities) is bounded only by "humanity;" i. e., "humanity" may become a social structure, if throughout that most inclusive range a unifying interest comes to be felt as a need. The practical boundaries of differentiation are, however, those interests which arise in the struggle for existence, from the require- ments of men in connection with the life-conditions. The practical boundary of socialization is the extent of copartner- ship which these interests find to be feasible. 10. Differentiation, consequently, frees men from irksome social restraints, so that they may live for those interests which are inborn, or to which they have become devoted through social influence. Differentiation, accordingly, fluctuates along the line of social necessity, between variations of the indi- vidual will. Socialization, on the other hand, confines men in restraints, in order to reach the needed sup[)ort and co-operation for ful- filling and securing their natural or supposed interest; or in restraints which the force of social conditions imposes upon them. Socialization vibrates along the line of social neces- sity, between voluntary submission for the sake of a social interest, and forcible subjugation under an alien interest. 11. For differentiation, as well as for socialization, social necessity is either the interest involved and implicit in the RATZENHOFER'S EPITOME OF HIS THEORY 193 immanent capabilities of men, or that which is prescribed by the life-conditions and determined by the social situation. Subjective motive and external compulsion may temporarily veto the social necessity, but in the result of general evolution it nevertheless arrives at unlimited realization. 12. The more men spread over the available places of abode (life-conditions) in consequence of increase of numbers — i. e., the more occasions for social variation enter — the more variations of individual choice (departures from social necessity) will occur in the social process, so that socializing constraint (subjugation) is necessary in order to bring social necessity to its proper influence. Every subjugation deter- mines a relation of control. The social type of this reciprocal relationship is the State. But because the individual will degenerates, the socializing constraint degenerates also, and it produces systems of con- trol which are contrary to social necessity; i. e., States which do not fulfil their task of procuring social order. Then differ- entiation, supported by public intercourse and the aggrieved interests in the State, interposes, and dismembers, reforms, or destroys the State, until the demands of social necessity are satisfied. 13. The species of control in the State depends upon the evolutionary stage of the social process. The transition from the simple to the complex social structure, the progress from the destruction of all alien social structures to varying blend- ing of them, is marked by the State in which conquerors rule. The predominance of peaceful interests, on the basis of a com- munity character assured by conquest, opens the culture-State. This State attempts to bring the necessity of control over the subjugated into harmony with creative culture- freedom. 14. Struggle and war, in general social disturbances, con- solidate social structures. They are, consequently, sources of political power. Culture and commerce weaken the social bond. They are, consequently, sources of social differentiation 194 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY and of political dismemberment; but at the same time they occasion extension of the social relationship. 15. Just as variation leads to relative perfection and com- plexity of organisms, so social differentiation produces a more highly developed and complicated combination of social struc- tures in superordination, co-ordination, and subordination. Through their interests and life-conditions these structures are in reciprocal dependence, which extends as far as societary contacts are possible between them. While social structures originally occupied a kind of isolated position within their environment, contacts between them became later more fre- quent, until at last men are surrounded by a web of social rela- tionships, which may sometime make "humanity" take on the appearance of a social structure. Propagation, sustentation, and exploitation are the causes; war, culture, and commerce, the means; harmonious satisfaction of interests, the end of this social development. 16. While the web of social relationships grows closer, violent disturbances of social conditions diminish, because every disturbance in the complex framework of the recipro- cally dependent social structure is felt on many sides, and presently on all sides, as opposed to interest. Just as in the case of sparse population the dominant power orders social affairs in the politically independent social structure by means of force, so in case of denser population the dominant power will maintain order in social affairs through compromise of the opposing interests. The culture-State comes into the fore- ground in consequence of the greater density of the society, and, by the side of violent subjugation, industrial exploitation by means of capital gains influence. What sort of controlling system follows this mixture of political and industrial control is not yet disclosed by the social process. 17. That absolute hostility imbedded in the nature of indi- viduality, which at first did not come to expression on account of the al)sence of social contacts (with the exception of those consecjuent upon blood-relationship), which, however, became RATZENHOFER'S EPITOME OF HIS THEORY 195 dominant during the extension of the social process through- out mankind, is suppressed again by universal socialization. Deficiency of social contacts in the original condition of man- kind, and the difficulty of social disturbances if culture is gen- eral, have here the same result. Absolute hostility breaks out again, however, when unlike social structures with like inter- ests encounter each other in the struggle for existence, if no superior power controls them, or if no interdependence of interest brings them to agreement. 18. In the degree in which the culture-State takes the place of the conquest-State, the differences among men in the satis- faction of interests equalize themselves. Political, social, and industrial inequality among men transform themselves again into such equality in participation of enjoyment as prevailed in primitive social conditions. General socialization of men complicates the social structure, to be sure. It tends, how- ever, to produce concord of interests through increasing per- fection of the social organization; nevertheless, with existing varieties of life-conditions it cannot remove all occasions for social conflict. Social order is an organizing of the struggle for existence, for the purpose of assuring sustenance and the propagation of wholesome generations. It is, accordingly, justifiable to assume, as the conclusion of social development, a condition in which, in spite of manifoldness of individualities in adapta- tion to their occupations, there will ensue a cultural, political, and social equality of men under the leadership of individuals who are intellectually and morally the most perfect. Under a system of control by ethical and intellectual authority, social development without degeneration of inborn and acquired interests might be possible; but the equality must remain for an incalculable period modified by inequality and by changes of life-conditions. CHAPTER XIV ELEMENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS In the beginning were interests. We are now using the word in the same sense in which it is famihar in business and in politics. Nothing would be gained by greater exactness of terms at present. We shall have to provide for closer analysis later.^ Both something in men that makes them have wants, and something outside of men that promises to gratify the wants, is implied by the word "interest." We need not now enter into these details, but may frankly speak as we do when we refer to the farming inter- ests, or the banking interests, or the labor interests, or the interests of the "machine." The primary interest of every man, as of every animal, is in sheer keeping alive. Nobody knows how many ages men consumed in getting aware of any other interest. This pri- mary animal interest can never be outgrown, although it is doubtful if we ever observe it alone in normal human beings. In nearly all men who have left traces of their mode of life, we find indications, faint perhaps, that the radical interest is in partnership with a few generically unlike interests. Among more highly developed men the latter display innumerable specific variations, and enter into countless combinations. For example, a universal form of the primary interest is the food-interest. Men must eat to live. This is true no more and no less of the primitive savage than of the poet laureate. It is true no more and no less of men who eat roots or uncooked flesh, than of the men who make up their bill-of-fare according to the gastronomic standards of any capital, from Pekin to London. It is true no more and no less of the men whose food is so precarious that they first eat their ' Vide chaps. 15 and 31. 196 ELEMENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 197 vanquished enemies before exploiting their lands, than of the men who start bread riots in the streets of Milan, or who call a strike in New York, or who plan over a banquet table to suppress a strike in Chicago. The interest is at lx)ttom, and in social effects, in principle one. In variations, and in ratio of social effects, it is infinitely variable and dependent upon countless shadings of circumstance. Again, the food-interest is merely foremost in a group of interests that are in the most intimate sense peculiar to the body, the animal part of men. They are all the interests that seek their satisfaction in the activities and enjoyments of the body. In this group the sex-interest is usually made co- ordinate with the food-interest, and it is doubtful if there is a third approaching these in importance. I venture to call all the other positive types of bodily interest by the general name the work-interests. Whether this is a good designation or not, I mean by it all the impulses to physical activity for its own sake. I mean the impulses to physical prowess and skill, that vary from the pranks of childhood to the systematized trial of skill among athletes. The three species of interest which I call food, sex, and work make up one genus of human interests, to which I give the name the health-interest. By this phrase I mean all the human desires that have their center in exercise and enjoyment of the powers of the body. So far as I am able to account for the activities of men, they all run back to motives that have their roots in com- binations of this health-interest with interests that arrange themselves in five other groups. Men have a distinct interest in controlling the resources of nature, in asserting their indi- viduality among their fellows, in mastering all that can be known, in contemplating what seems to them beautiful, and in realizing what seems to them right. I have not been able to find any human act which requires, for explanation, any motive that cannot be accounted for by specialization and com- bination of these interests. Each of the groups has subdi- visions, more or fewer than those of the first. All men, how- kc 198 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY ever, from the most savage to the most highly civiHzed, act as they do act, first, because of variations in the circumstances of their environment, both physical and social ; second, because of variations and permutations of their six elementary inter- ests. I name these, for convenience, health, wealth, socia- -^ BILITY, KNOWLEDGE, BEAUTY, and RIGHTNESS.^ Of course, this analysis of human interests is from the standpoint of the observer, not of the actor. Real human beings are not such prigs as to start by saying: " Go to now. I propose to secure health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness." It is only the rare individual, even in relatively advanced society, whose powers of abstraction are so developed that he can say: " I want food." Most men know simply that they are hungry and want the particular food that will satisfy present cravings; or they want work, because its wage will buy today's dinner. Still less do men, as a rule, define the other groups of interests, but all men act for reasons which the few reflective men may trace back to combinations of motives conveniently classified in our six groups. The precise type and balance of motive is a distinct problem in each social situation. In all literal description of the social process, therefore, the key must be found in the purposes, general and special, that call out the efforts of the people concerned. All their social structures are to be understood as aids or hindrances to those purposes. All the social functions, acting or lacking, have a meaning that depends upon their help or hindrance to achievement of these purposes. Each incident in social experi- ence must be construed in its relations to these purposes. In brief, then, the form in zvhich zve must try to think all social experience is this: individuals in large numbers, each repre- senting such and such combinations of speciHc interests, and Zi'orking by means of, or in spite of. such and such social structures, in and through, or in spite of, such and such opera- ' Professor Ross pronounces this classification untenable {American Journal of Sociology, Vol. IX, p. 537; and Foundations of Sociology, p. 165). ELEMENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 199 HoHS of social function, directing their efforts toward such and such immediate aims, resulting in such and such episodes, incidental to conscious or unconscious endeavor of such and such nature, to achieve such and such ultimate purposes. A science of the zvhole social process is possible simply to the degree in ivhich ive become able to give a definite value to each of those indefinite terms, through long series of social experi- ences.^ Expressed in an illustration : To know that phase of the social process which was displayed in England during the period of Roundhead and Cavalier, we must first know the personal make-up of all the different types of Englishmen whose force counted at all in the social situation. We must know how they were grouped, and how much force each kind of group was able to bring to bear upon the situation. We must know the framework of the institutions — domestic, economic, political, legal, ecclesiastical, and social — which constituted at once their means of expressing themselves and limitations upon their self-expression. We must know how the different groups of effective Englishmen regarded the actual working of these institutions ; whether, and in what ratio, they classed them as channels of their will, or as obstructions of their wishes. We must know what specific social efforts were undertaken, and how they clashed or combined with each other ; and we must know the larger purposes that defined the general aims. We must know how the elements of the situa- tion at the end of the period compared with their character at the beginning — viz., the personal make-up of the English- men of the later time, their rearrangements, the changes wrought in the structure and functions of their institutions, their specific aims, and the main purpose that gave general tone and direction to their action. In so far as we can know these things of any historic period, we know the social process as it worked itself out in that period. In so far as we can know these things of many ^ Cf. chap. 39. 200 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY historic periods, among many peoples, we have the means of generalizing laws of the social process. In so far as we can combine such knowledge of the past with similar knowledge of the period in which we are living, we have all the scientific equipment available for intelligent participation in promoting the social process.^ In the foregoing paragraphs I have not intentionally left anything unsaid which might disabuse any mind of the impres- sion that it is easy to understand the social process. It is by far the most difficult problem in the field of positive knowl- edge. My claim as to possible results is simply this : For the present the best that any man can accomplish, under the most favorable circumstances, through study of the social process at large, will be merely a little better balancing of his mind for social judgments than would have been possible in his case without the study. Whoever knows enough about the social process to appreciate the difference for social weal or woe between the effects of wise and unwise action, even by an individual, will hardly doubt that merely the meager amount of result fairly to be expected from diligent study of the social process is worth more than it costs. * The above specifications in terms of purpose are in sufficiently distinct contrast with Spencer's schedule; above, p. 109. CHAPTER XV THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS We have spoken of " interests " as " elements of the social process." In order to see haw they take on that character, it is necessary to analyze interests a little more carefully from another point of view. What we have to say now applies to interests, whether we use the term in the most general sense, as when we said that interests may be reduced to six; or in the most particular sense, as when we speak of an interest in buying- at the lowest price, or in getting an invitation to a social function, or in catching the train, or in occupying a good seat at the theater. An interest is a plain demand for something, regardless of everything else. An interest is unequivocal, intolerant, exclusive. We may see this in the case of different interests in the same individual. Everybodyj for instance, is interested both in eating and in resting. One of the marks of a high state of civilization, as contrasted with a lower state, is per- sistence in carrying on the work needed to assure the food- supply, even when starvation is not an immediate danger. The interest of the savage in rest often leaves him at the verge of missing his last chance for food. Men of low grade will let their rest-interest have its way till hunger asserts itself; then the food-interest in turn banishes rest till hunger is appeased. I may be interested in talking with my family, or in music, or in games, or in celebrating the Fourth of July. If, however, at a given moment my main interest is in going to sleep, I have patience neither (with talk, nor music, nor games, nor celebrations. Every interest tends to be absolute. If we were concerned now with individuals, as such, we should have to dwell upon the psychology of interest. It is enough for our present purposes to observe that each individual is a 202 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY resultant of many interests, which have been reduced to a cer- tain working basis of mutual concession. When we consider individuals in their relations with each other, we find that their reactions are produced by the interests that they severally represent. Each individual is a simple or a compound interest-factor. For instance, a newly arrived Slovak sees in a boss builder simply and solely the source of a w^age. The builder sees in the immigrant simply and solely a power to work. The one wants the wage, the other wants the work; and beyond that the two neither expect nor desire more of each other. But presently the immigrant becomes a voter, and the builder becomes a candidate. Now the voter wants an easier wage, and the candidate wants other services besides work. The two may be at heart quite as self-centered as before. To each the other is merely a means, while self is for each the end. Yet the interests of the two have a different content, and as a result their reaction upon each other is some- what changed, both in form and in method. Each is still bent on making the other tributary to his own interests, and on avoiding payment of more tribute than necessary to the interest of the other. Stages in the social process differ according to the degree in which the interests of individuals are independent or inter- woven. At one extreme is the condition in which either A's interest and B's interest in food may be satisfied without reference to the other, and as they have no effective interests of any other sort, they live without attention to each other; or, A's interest in food cannot be satisfied if B's interest in food is satisfied. Their interests in this case demand either the same food or control of the same source of supply. Under the latter circumstances, fierce hostility, war of extermination, is the phase of the social process inevitable between the indi- viduals, or between the tribes whose situation they typify. At the other extreme is the condition in whicli neither major nor minor interests of one person are satisfied in any considerable degree except at the price of contributing to satisfaction of the THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 203 interests of others. From one extreme to the other, the social process is a reaction between persons each attempting to satisfy his own interests. If we look into the different modes of this reaction, we find that they reduce to two; viz., conjunction of interests and conflict of interests. The former type occurs when it is neces- sary for the persons in question in some way tO' further each other's interests in order to promote their own interests. The latter type occurs when it is necessary for the persons in ques- tion to oppose each other's interests in order to promote their own. The members of a patriarchal family, of a tribe, of a band of outlaws, or of an army are illustrations of the first type. Two tribes fighting for possession of the same hunting- grounds, the criminal element and the law-abiding element in a community, competing schemes for monopoly of an eco- nomic opportunity, or two intolerant religions, are illustrations of the second. The social process could not occur at all if a certain measure of the conjunction of interests did not exist among the earliest specimens of the human species. Such community of interests as that between parent and offspring, children of the same family, members of the same clan of tribe, may contain little that is clearly different from the community of interest in a pack of wolves. If the latent community of interests among primitive men had been no greater than that among other ani- mals, their descendants would not have developed the contrasts that now exist between human individuals and their societies, on the one hand, and brute individuals and their societies, on the other. At the same time, the conspicuous element in the history of the race, so far as it has been recorded, is universal conflict of interests. It may be that philosophers will some day be able to reconstruct views of the social process, throughout historic time, in terms which will present implicit consensus of interests as the ultimate motor of the process; while they will con- strue the obvious conflict of interests as merely secondary inci- 204 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY dents in the development of the process. It would be mere dogmatism to pretend that the facts in sight at present justify such a rendering. Conflict between men interested in the same thing, which could not be controlled by both contestants ; or between men interested in different and incompatible things, has always been the prominent social situation ; while con- ciliation and agreement have been rather resultants of social forces than prime factors in movement. We shall see later that the last proposition has to be modified when we observe the most advanced stages of the social process. It is approxi- mately correct of the earlier stages. At first, conflict is the active factor, while consensus is the passive factor. The former of these factors is so constant and, at the beginning of the social process on a large scale, so predominant, that the initial forms of the process have been subsumed under the so-called "law of absolute hostility."'^ Yet we must not even provisionally assume that " absolute hostility" is literally absolute, as a general relation between men. There is absolute hostility between interests, considered as pure abstractions. There is limited hostility between actual interests, either in the same person or in different persons. In cases of blood-feud, or wars of extermination, the notion "absolute hostility" has its evident application. For practical purposes the formula means that human relations range upward from a state in which men will fight each other to the death. The very men who are destroying each other in the latter case may be prompted to that violence by desire to pro- tect other persons from similar violence. Their "absolute hostility" is not universal, therefore, but particular. It is not an essential human ])rinciple, but merely a mode of social rela- tionship under peculiar circumstances. "Absolute hostility" reduces to something like this: So long and so far as the struggle for existence develops merely material wants, the persons or groups feeling those wants are implacably hostile to all persons or groups whose existence ' Vide Ratzcnhofer, Wescn und Zivcck dcr Politik, Vol. I, sec. 7. THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 205 threatens the satisfaction of those wants. As other wants develop, and as means for securing the essential wants increase, the terms on which persons are willing to pursue satisfaction of their wants become less absolute. The social process con- tinues to be largely in the form of struggle, but it is less and less inexorable struggle. Without affirming that either conflict or conjunction of interests is the essence of the social process, we may say that, in form, the social process is incessant reaction of persons prompted by interests that in part conflict zvith the interests of their fellows, and in part comport with the interests of others. The ratio of the conflict and of the harmony is almost infinitely variable. The kinds of conflict and harmony are likewise variable. In general, conflict is the obvious phase of association in earlier stages of the social process, while con- junction of interests grows more evident in later stages. Our analysis of the social process will, accordingly, take the corre- sponding order; viz., first the conflict phase of the process, second the co-operative phase. In thus speaking of opposition and conjunction in the social process, as though they were earlier and later in order of time, we are doing a certain necessary violence to reality, as has been indicated above. The two aspects of the process are not consecutive, but simultaneous. Yet it is doubtful if they are ever equal either in quantity or in importance. One is always the main tendency, while the other is secondary. Cer- tain interests in given persons are always engaged in social struggle, while certain other interests in the same persons are in co-operation with other, or possibly the same, persons. An obvious illustration is the conflict between England and the United States as producers of steel rails, for instance, and the harmony of the two nations as consumers and producers of cotton. Without forgetting the interplay of these two principal aspects of the process, we shall first observe the phenomena of conflict, and later those of co-operation. Socio- logical analysis, guided by the process-conception of life, must 2o6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY have gone far beyond its present results, before it can be per- tinent to venture generalizations about the relative importance of these factors as dynamic forces. It is not superfluous to repeat that we do not reach the deep meaning of any social situation, past or present, until we have found final answers to the questions : What are the effective interests in the activities observed, and what is the law of their operation ? In practice we shall hardly be able to hold these questions entirely separate from the questions which are logically subordinate : How do these factors operate, by collision or by conjunction; and by what form and j)roportion of compounding the two modes ? "1 CHAPTER XVI THE PRIMITIVE SOCIAL PROCESS Although it may never be possible to draw a definite boundary line between animal and human societies, so that we may say without qualification, " At this point the species graduates from the animal class into the human class," we may find an approximate distinction. So long as biological interests control, the process does not reach the plane of the social. When choices, as distinct from physiological cause and effect, begin to modify individual action, the human plane is reached. In so far as individuals on that plane come in con- tact with each other, their reactions initiate the social process At the beginning there is little or no outward difference between the more highly developed forms of the biological process and the rudimentary forms of the social process. Herds of elephants appear to be better organized than some collections of men. It is only by detecting evidence of factors in actions of men which cannot be discovered in elephants, that we have the means of making out the more involved process which men maintain. We have called the ultihiate moving springs of human action " interests." Among interests some are common to beasts and to men. Added to these basic interests, both as variations of them and as factors of generically different orders, are other interests which contain the promise and potency of unlimited differentiation of human action. These interests are mighty forms of impulse. They presently spur or curb the animal interests to such purpose that other ends are gained than those indicated in physiological impulse. They reach out after satisfactions either in the possession of things, or in adjustments between persons, or in higher types or degrees of individual attainment. These interests transform 207 2o8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY themselves into wants, which are each individual's expression of a generic interest, and they manifest themselves in desire for something. Experience merely develops power to desire, and modifies the direction which desires take. We have thus far placed the emphasis upon the single person. We begin to find the social process when we turn our attention to groups of persons. In fact, nobody has ever seen a person who is independent of other persons. Human life is always and necessarily social life; i. e., life in groups, the members of which influence each other. All that we need say, for our present purposes, about contrasts between human groups and animal groups, is that the members of the former influence each other in more ways than those of the latter. From a very early stage in the social process, if not abso- lutely from the beginning, men live and move and have their being as members one of another. Indeed, it is more than probable that we are doing violence to facts when we speak as though individuals, in the modern sense, first came into existence, and afterward social groups were formed. It is probably nearer the truth to suppose that originally individuals were differentiations of groups, than to suppose that groups were syntheses of individuals.^ It becomes a problem of more particular analysis to make out the precise course of the rhythm between movements from group to individual^ and vice versa.^ To get at the reality of the social process, we must see not only that this interdependence is a fact; we must see that this fact is the necessary outgrowth of the fundamental fact of interest. If we place a plant in a cellar to which only a narrow crevice admits a ray of sunlight, we find after a few days that the plant is growing toward that crevice. Within the plant is some sort of interest that makes it seek sunlight. The sun- ' Cf. Lang, Social Origins; and Atkinson, Primal Law, f^assim. »Cf. Part VII. THE PRIMITIVE SOCIAL PROCESS 209 light furnishes something that the plant wants. It, accord- ingly, tries to get into partnership with the sunlight. Speaking literally, there is something like this — how like and how unlike need not trouble us at present — in the social process. Not referring to the facts of animal propagation, which unite generations by the bond of blood, leaving no gap in the physical continuity of races, there are facts about persons which satisfy or antagonize the interests of other persons. People are not therefore like fugitive bits of dust in the air — disconnected with each other. Persons everywhere attract or repel persons. Persons lean toward each other or avoid each other. Persons attach themselves to each other or proscribe each other. Persons form groups, because inborn interests push them toward association, in place of individual isolation, and also stimulate antagonism to other associations. The reference is now to groups in which the bond of union is not alone the mere physical bond, but in which choices in a measure independent of physical necessity begin to operate. In the purposeful groupings of persons we have the initial phenomena of the social process in the proper sense — that is, in distinction from the biological process. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: in groupings so far as they are pur- poseful. This is the point at which to start, if we would find the essentials of the social process. While we must hark back constantly to the traits of individual persons, the philosophy of social action can never long at a time leave out of sight the affinities that work in groups of persons. In other words, the social process is a continual formation of groups around inter- ests, and a continual exertion of reciprocal influence by means of group-action. We will use the terms " tribe " and *' tribal condition " to designate the most rudimentary type of social status that can be described in detail. For all that we positively know to the contrary, these earliest tribal conditions may have been the outcome of social processes that occupied much time and passed through many stages. At all events, we have only the 210 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY most dubious scientific sanction for assuming that we know the " original " social condition. Speaking of men in the least developed social status that has been credibly described, we might almost confess that we are in candor bound to stop with this noncommittal generality " least developed." Whatever we add in the way of particulars has various chances of being out of focus, especially if we try to make statements that apply to more than one case at a time. Considering both the facts reported, and the character of the investigations on which the reports were based, we prob- ably have no better cases of quasi-original conditions than those described by Spencer and Gillen.^ As those writers clearly enough show, it is well-nigh impossible to use the simplest words in the languages of civilized men,^ in connec- tion with these tribes, without attributing facts, or relations, or ratios of each, that do not exist. In connection with the rudest tribes, the words " father," " mother," " husband," "wife," "brother," "sister," "family," "right," "wrong," and of course all terms that have less constant meanings, vary from the sense which we assign to them somewhat as the term "citizen" in the case of Russian peasants would vary from the sense in which it applies to American farmers. It is only with this qualification that we can safely discuss savage tribes in familiar language. Having the Arunta and Warramunga in mind as examples, we may say, in the first place, that no sufficient warrant appears for denying that individuals in the lowest tribal state manifest some small degree at least of each generic human interest. To be sure, we might put into our terms arbitrary or conventional meanings that by definition would deny each of these interests to savages. With a restricted sense reserved for each predi- cate, we might say that the Arunta, for instance, show signs of neither the health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, nor Tightness interest. The truth would be that, with the possible exception of health, they afford very little of the same kind of "Native Tribes of Central Australia, 1899; ami Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904. THE PRIMITIVE SOCIAL PROCESS 211 evidence of those interests which our present standards demand. They have no hygienic, economic, poHtical, scientific, aesthetic, or ethical organizations, of a sort that would cut much figure in advanced society. They give little evidence of abstract thinking about any of these interests. When we explain their actions, if we happen to be correct, the explanation probably never occurred to them. It is our formulation of causes and effects which never assumed that relation in their minds. In a word, their desires represented a maximum of the instinctive form of the interests, and a minimum of the conscious form. At the same time, from another point of view, we may say that the actions of the most primitive men known manifest a certain degree of response to stimuli which we must interpret as rudi- ments of the general interests. In the second place, primitive tribes have rudimentary social structures, which serve inchoate social functions. It is not enough to say that the members of the tribe complete the round of their lives by simply feeding, and mating, and breed- ing, as the other animals do. They have developed a certain system in their feeding and mating and breeding. It is not certain that the system is more complex than the social system of bees and ants, for instance ; but there is plenty of evidence in the case of savages, not discovered in the case of bees and ants, that forces are beginning to be set free which must pres- ently carry the human social process far beyond that of the other animals. In the third place, while we may not venture in this argu- ment to interpret tribal conditions,^ we may name elements in the structure of the tribe. Referring to the same illustrations, we have, first, the totcmic structure; second, the arrangement of the sexes; and, third, the system of secret rites. It would be a theorem in explanation, if we should assert that this classification corresponds exactly with the functional meaning * In this field my colleague, Professor W. I. Thomas, has done notable original work, and I have not expressed even the summary judgments contained in this and the following chapters without getting the support of his con- clusions. 212 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of these systems. In all probability it does not. The totem not merely rallies a fraction of the tribe supposed to be nearest of kin, but it doubtless has economic, moral, and religious meanings. Possibly all this is true in a way of the other two systems. The essential thing is that interests, such as they are in the savage tribe, produce a certain structural and functional arrangement. Thinking of the social process as beginning at this point — a harmless fiction after the qualifications above — we have now before us in the concrete elements which we schedule generally in Part VI ; viz. : environment, interests, individuals, social structure, social functions, social purposes. The incessant workings of reciprocal cause and effect between these elements make up the social process. In the fourth place, implied in the last paragraph, the sav- age tribe exhibits the rudiments of social authority.^ This authority is apparently at first not that of individual over individual, nor of functionaries over individuals, in the mod- ern sense of those terms. On the contrary, it is the authority of group-interests, made vivid in group-customs, and insisted upon by virtually unanimous group-opinion. It is an author- ity which prescribes conduct very minutely with reference to the whole program of life. Economic activity, relations of persons, beliefs, rituals, attitude toward outside groups — all are foreordained, and perhaps more specifically and per- emptorily than any conduct of civilized men, under constitu- tions and statutes. To social beginnings which must be described along the general lines thus indicated, not to the phenomena in connec- tion with which he stated the proposition, we would apply the familiar words of Herbert Spencer : Setting out with socal units as thus conditioned, as thus constituted physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and as thus possessed of certain early-acquired notions and correlative fccliuRs, the Science of Sociology has to give an account of all the phenomena that result from their com- bined actions.* ' Mr. Eben Mumford is about to publish an important study of this subject. 'Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, sec. 210, quoted above, chap. 6. CHAPTER XVII STAGES OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS Our present argument is not an attempt to demonstrate the series of stages through which the social process has passed. We are rather concerned with showing that the work of making out such series remains to be done, and that until it is done the gaps in our social knowledge are serious. The problem is a distinct advance upon the work done by Herbert Spencer, for instance in Parts III-VIII, inclusive, of his Principles of Soci- ology. Whatever his own estimate may have been of the results there set down, he neither succeeded in making out a sequence in stages of the social process in any selected case, nor did he collect sufficient evidence about any given step in the process to justify an induction as to the method of transi- tion from one stage of the process to another. He exhibited assorted types of the several chief social institutions, as they have appeared among different peoples. How it comes about that one of these types of institution gave place to another type of institution does not appear in the evidence. We are not yet in a position to supply that lack to any large extent. The purpose of this chapter is to emphasize the fact that the operation of interests in human groups tends, from the beginning, to motion within the groups, and that the motion sooner or later gathers strength enough to change the form and tone and tendency of the process which the groups carry on. We have pitifully little insight as yet into the precise steps of such transitions. We have to make our way toward knowledge of them by first making the lack of information as conspicuous as possible. It has been taken for granted over and over again that a change in a form of government or in the personnel of ruling bodies is an affair so vital that nothing profounder could be told 213 214 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of a society. We have accordingly been satisfied not to look deeper or wider. In fact, political revolutions are quite as likely to be effects as causes, and, whether effects or causes, they do not necessarily register the most important social changes of which they were incidents. For example, it has been claimed that the reason why the Revolution broke out in France rather than in Germany was that social changes had already occurred in the former country, which came much later in the latter.^ Still further, it is an open question whether the total political changes involved in exchanging Louis XVI for the first Napoleon amounted to as much socially as the change of relations that has occurred between the people of France and the papacy under the present republic. Accordingly, we are bound to be on our guard against assuming that the social process is identical with the building up or tearing down of governments, or ecclesiastical systems, or economic orders, or any other mere structure. Each and all of these are means, machineries, by which the process of realizing interests is carried on. Changes in the means are worth what they are worth for the total process. We may and must depend on these changes to mark advances in the process, but we must not assume that the external sign is the only reality. Our main proposition is that human groups either reach certain degrees of achievement in the satisfaction of interests and then stop, or they make any given plane of achievement the base of operations in developing successive stages in the process of realizing interests. That is, the social process, so long as it lasts, is a succession of stages in the correlation of human activities, each stage marked off from those before or after by certain distinguishing traits. How the social stages may be most appropriately indicated, is a question alx)ut which there are almost as many opinions as there are social theorists. These disagreements at all events ' Cf. De Tocqueville, L'ancien regime ct la ri'iolntion. Book II, chap, i, et passim. STAGES OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 215 make the essential fact the more evident, viz., that stages of the social process differ from each other in so many ways that the task of procuring unanimity about the best way to analyze them seems almost hopeless. This deadlock among theorists need not trouble us in our present undertaking. We are simply pointing out that the social process, involving distinct stages, is a reality; and that progressive social knowledge will persist in attempts to discriminate and to trace the precise order of these stages, and to determine the laws that have governed transitions from one to another stage. For illustration we may cite the familiar classification of "the principal stages of human development" by Lewis H. Morgan.^ It is based on progress of invention and discovery, and the summary is as follows: 1. Lower Status of Savagery. From the infancy, of the human race to the commencement of the next period. 2. Middle Status of Savagery. From the acquisition of a fi.sh subsist- ence, and a knowledge of the use of fire, to the invention of the bow and arrow. 3. Upper Status of Savagery. From the invention of the bow and arrow to the invention of the art of pottery. 4. Lower Status of Barbarism. From practice of the art of pottery to domestication of animals in the eastern hemisphere, to the cultivation of maize and plants by irrigation, and to the use of adobe, brick, and stone in house-building, in the western. 5. Middle Status of Barbarism. From the end of the previous stage to the invention of the process of smelting iron ore. 6. Upper Status of Barbarism. Beginning with the manufacture of iron, and ending with the invention of a phonetic alphabet, and the use of writing in literary composition. 7. Status of Civilization. From the beginning of the use of writing to the present time.' Since we shall presently follow Ratzenhofer's guidance in our general account of later stages of the social process, his classification of the social stages should be noticed. ^Ancient Society, chap. 1. ' For a brief resume and criticism of alternative schemes, with a proposed substitute, vide Steinmetz, "Classification des types sociaux," in Durkheim's L'annce sociologique, Vol. Ill (1900). 2i6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY He makes out two distinct series in the social process. It will do most complete justice to his idea to present these series in parallel columns, thus : STAGES OF CONFLICT DEVELOPMENT* STAGES OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT* & Ethical satisfaction. 7. Aggressive combinations cross- 7. Preservation and multiplication ing state boundaries. of -sources of supply. 6. Balance of power. 6. Intensive production. 5. Coalitions. 5. Diplomacy between States. 4. Hegemony and world-control. 4. Universal freedom, with equality of legal rights. 3. State as exclusive society. 3. Political self-restraint for the sake of peace. 2. Settled race. 2. Community of interest. I. Horde and race. i. Care for fellow-beings. In spite of his extended analysis of these two series, or perhaps more properly because of the very minuteness of his analysis, their relation to each other in Ratzenhofer's own mind is by no means clear. His idea, on the whole, seems to be, not that the one series follows the other, nor that they are precisely parallel with each other. The conflict series has the start of the ethical series, and for a long- time seems to be wholly decisive. Indeed, Ratzenhofer devotes so much space to exposition of this series that his briefer discussion of the ethical series probably does not have the effect of making it seem as important in his system as he intended. The trite figure of the warp and the woof in the web might be of some service in conveying his thought, but the analogy would not be very close. The conflict series represents rather a progres- sion in forms of social reaction, while the ethical series repre- sents rather the content of this visible reaction. Just as the most evident facts in a factory are the motion, and the noise, and the heat, and the dirt; while all this is merely incidental to the less evident progress of raw material from one stage of manufacture to another; so the conflict series is rather an *lVesen und Zweck, Vol. I, sec. 12. ^ Ibid., Vol. Ill, sec. 62. STAGES OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 217 exhibit of social machinery and its motions, while the ethical series is the content of the movement. Without expressing a judgment about the comparative value of the classifications of social stages just referred to, we may expand our general theorem as follows : Human associations are not things ; they are processes. To know them, we must ascertain their functional values, just as truly as we must know both the general and the special service to be rendered by a wheel, or a shaft, or a valve, or a connecting-gear, in order to be able to classify that part of a machine, first in its immediate relations to the machine as a whole, and then in a general mechanical scale. As we have seen, human life, in the individual or in associations, is a process of realizing latent interests. The life of a given primi- tive group, of a people at any stage of historical development, of any contemporary civilization, or of a minor association within an earlier or a later civilization, is a stage and a factor in that process. Human associations must be classified, then, not. as though they were constant structures, but in view of the fact that they are variable functions. They must be dis- tinguished by the part which they perform in the life-process. Inasmuch as that part varies according as the whole process is less or more highly developed, the classification of associa- tions that would satisfy the facts of one stage of evolution would not fit the facts of another stage. Associations must therefore be classified functionally, and, more than that, our working test of all functional classifications must be our teleo- logical concepts. That is, we are bound to schedule associa- tions in accordance with our judgment of their relation to the scale of the ends at issue in the particular situation in which those associations function. Returning to the question of criteria by which to distin- guish social stages, we may say with confidence that, in the nature of the case, no simple criterion can be adequate. We have seen that the social process is a perpetual equating of interests. We have classified all the specific interests which 2l8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY men have been known to betray in six generic groups. Social stages concern each of these groups. At any selected stage the element contributed by each interest, not by one or two alone, may vary both in quality and in quantity from the cor- responding element in every other stage. This is merely a more abstract way of saying that an adequate standard for measuring social stages would have to be a multiple standard. To illustrate : Suppose we represent social stages by X, X\ X", X'" , etc., and the generic interests by a, h, c, d, c, and /. Then the simplest symbol that could be used for a given social stage, in terms of its component interests, would be the equa- tion : X=i^(^„,,, ^„,, ^„., A,). X' , X" , X'", etc., would differ from X because of changes in the value of either variant, n or q, in either term. Expressing the same thing literally, one social stage may differ from another because the term representing one generic interest only may have a value different from that which it has in other social stages. The probability is that a variation in the value of one term will be accompanied by variation in the value of one or more of the remaining terms. Still fur- ther, it is by no means certain that the most important differ- ences between social stages will be marked by variations of the same term. Thus a stage X'may be most strongly character- ized by the value of term a; a change in the relative impor- tance of term b may set off another stage X' ; the altered significance of term c may justify discrimination of a stage X" ; and so on. If, therefore, we attempt to classify social stages by use of either of the simple criteria above noticed, we arc sure to make an arbitrary series. A social stage that is marked chiefly by alterations in the index value of hygienic, or social, or scientific, or aesthetic, or ethical interests cannot be fitted into an economic classification. All attempts to reduce social stages to a common economic denominator are fore- ordained falsifications. Since they assume the constant super- STAGES OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 219 importance of the economic element, they estop discovery of the greater importance of other elements, when the latter are in turn decisive. The same must be said of each of the six generic interests. Neither of them is a competent measure of a process in which each may from time to time occupy places shifting from top to bottom of the scale of relative value. Returning to Ratzenhofer's scheme for illustration, we may say that he appears to have respected the foregoing con- clusion more in substance than he did in form. His " Stages of Ethical Development " are evidently not variations of activi- ties within our group " rightness " merely. They cover in a way the whole gamut of interests. On the other hand, his "Stages of Conflict Development," if held to strict account, would prove to be based on the assumption that a more or less of a certain forvi of the social process is the distinctive mark of social stages. More precisely, according to his assumption, one social stage differs from another by variations in the mass and manner of conflict among the people concerned. The first and more impressive half of Ratzenhofer's work is constructed on the basis of this assumption. Yet the more we read between the lines, the more we discover that this conflict explanation is in effect a rhetorical recourse, rather than a strictly fundamental hypothesis. Conflict turns out to \ be a symptom, an incident, a means — we may even say for / the greater part of known history the most evident symptom, ) incident, means — to that very accommodation of interests i which makes up the ethical series. But to make divisions of social stages turn upon the kind of conflict that is carried on may be reduced ad absiirdiDn by formulation in a particular case, thus : " The progress of European civilization from Charlemagne to Wilhelm II is gauged by the changes in equip- ment, discipline, tactics, and strategy of European armies " ! No ! Human interests are always the essential thing. Clashings or conjunctions of interests are external and tribu- tary. These latter may be accepted as milestones of progress, but only in the sense in which we use popes or kings to mark 220 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY historic zones. The popes and the kings are not the social process. They may be merely punctuation marks in the record of the process. So struggle, as such, means nothing. The persons struggling, and the interests for which they struggle, are the meaning terms. Still we may use even this most ques- tionable part of Ratzenhofer's scheme to emphasize the fact of social stages ; while we must decline to accept his rating of conflict as the final index of the stages. Reduced to the simplest form of expression, Ratzenhofer's theorem is that stages of conflict development, or at any rate the earliest of them, belong in a scale produced by variations in the type of regulative authority. That is, if we make the tribal condition, as described in the previous chapter, the low- est stage in the scale, other stages will rise above it in the order of differentiation of hostile interests, and of institutions for holding hostility in check. Later chapters must supply details that will do more complete justice to his whole theory. This initial proposition alone would seem to call for a classifi- cation of social stages on the basis of variations of a factor that composes our term " sociability," or c in our algebraic formula. We have stated the general principle which challenges all such simple explanations.^ It would carry us too far into detail if we should attempt to analyze the particular applications of the principle in this instance. It is enough to say that Ratzen- hofer's supposition not merely attributes to this element an importance that no single factor in the social process can claim, but, still further, the supposition is supported by a highly imaginative account of the passage from tribal to civic condi- tions. Thus Ratzenhofer implies that the tribal condition and the nomadic state necessarily go togctlier ; that tribal authority is a negligible quantity; and that the organizations of author- ity in subsequent stages necessarily involve advances upon the tribal condition in respect of social control. So far as positive "Cf. pp. SI, 52. STAGES OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 221 evidence appears, each of these assumptions contains less Wahrhcit than . Dichtung. The hypothesis develops in this form : After tribes have taken permanent possession of lands, there follows division of the land, either temporary or permanent, among families. At the same time there occur struggles to destroy or to drive out other tribes. The settled tribe begins to manifest the essential traits of a mature community. We find, for instance, first a patriarchal authority, and, second, a recognized tradition, or body of customs, in accordance with which the authority is exercised. By these means, violence is restrained within the group, and, on the other hand, the power of the group is con- centrated for exertion upon outside forces. Thus the marks of the second stage of conflict development are the separate family and the settled tribe. In such a community as this there develop authority, defense, and judicature. Public business is confined to provision against crime, i. e., violation of custom; to protection against attack, and to wars for extension of terri- tory, i. e.^ to insure means of support. The third stage in conflict development is marked by the State and civic society. The subjugation of already settled tribes by nomads, and thereby the conquest of lands and laborers, brings in this stage. Authority becomes sovereignty. Defense and judicature remain the prerogatives of the victor. The vanquished become slaves. From this time on conflict falls into two divisions : first, the struggle for the exercise of the sovereignty against the opposition, i. e., internal politics ; second, the struggle of the community with foreign groups to secure and extend the com- munity possessions, i. e., external politics. In the former division hostility is limited. In the latter case it is absolute. This highly idealized scheme is an excellent illustration of the abstract conception " social stages," but it would be, to say the least, premature to accept the description as a valid generalization of the actual process from savagery to legal States. The surmise does not fit our present knowledge of the 222 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Stock of Abraham, either before or after the Egyptian captivity. It does not satisfy the facts of the Iroquois Confederacy.'^ There is plenty of room for doubt whether it correctly expresses the genesis of the Hellenic chieftainships of the pre-Homeric period. There is much reason to presume that, if we had literal accounts of all the racial metamorphoses which have taken place, from the primitive tribe to civic government, the methods would often prove to depart widely from the type thus constructed. The fact that Ratzenhofer, or any other theorist, is not con- clusive when he carries surmises about the primitive social process beyond the frontier of established fact, does not in the least affect the essential point of this chapter. We do not know enough details about the actual advance of any single tribe through the conditions intervening between savagery and legalized government, to justify very confident assertions about the relative value of the factors involved, or the precise method of their co-operation. Generalizing our meager information about the many tribes, into a formula of the steps taken by all tribes in covering this interval, of course amounts only to more or less impressive conjecture. Nevertheless, it is evident from our fragmentary knowledge that the passage of no tribe from savagery to civic order could have been by a leap; it must have been by a process. Innumerable cross- sections of this process have been observed, and more or less accurately described. Each of these cross-sections represents a major or minor stage in the process in a single tribe or race. That is, there are distinct types of correlation among the inter- ests working together to carry on the social process of every tribe. Ilie prevalence of one of these social types constitutes a stage in the life-process of that tribe. The adjustment of interests is, on the whole, less developed in one stage, and more developed in another. Whether we can make out the chief traits of these stages or not, whether we can discover the precise order of succession of the stages or not. whether we can ' Morgan, Ancient Society, chap. 5. STAGES OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 223 ascertain the laws of the forces that transform one stage into another or not, we have taken a first step toward social intelH- gence when we have reached the distinct perception that these stages exist, and that the social process will not be understood until the facts about the most significant social stages are veri- fied and interpreted. Among the divisions of sociological labor which will doubtless develop in the near future, attempts to identify social stages, and to classify them in a scale, according to relative realization of interests, can hardly fail to be notable. CHAPTER XVIII THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS' In Part I, chap, i, reference was made to faults of method which have retarded the progress of social knowledge. By whatever name they have preferred to be known, social theo- rists have been very generally addicted to one or both of two logical vices. On the one hand, they have confined themselves to such restricted ranges of evidence that they have lost sight of connections with other segments of the social process; or possibly they have never had such outlook to lose, and their provincialism is congenital. On the other hand, men of more speculative temper have been so zealous to construct philoso- phies of society that they have covered time and space with a priori reasonings, but have failed ignominiously to fortify their doctrines with positive evidence. If we take him at his word, Bastian, " the founder of ethnology in Germany," deliberately chose the downward road to the former vice. Of his plan in laying foundations for a new social science, and of his program during his long researches among primitive peoples, he says : Familiar with the various branches of Hterature, my first care was to erase from the tables of my memory as completely as possible all the dogmas that I had learned in the schools. Only when my conclusions from purely objective and unprejudiced observation confirmed the conventional ideas, or rather necessarily led back to them, did I allow them to take a place again as authorized portions of my thinking.* Whether Bastian actually yielded to the temptation that lurks in this program, we need not decide. Certain it is that his greatest services to science are those of a collector, rather than those of an interpreter of ethnological material. ' Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zweck, Vol. 1, Part I, and Sociologische Erkennt- niss, sees. 12-15. ^ Dcr Mcnsch in dcr Gcschichte, Vol. I, Vorrede, p. xvi. 224 THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 225 For another illustration, we may again point the obvious, but none too familiar, moral from English economic theory in the nineteenth century. Adam Smith's scheme of lectures on "Moral Philosophy" at Glasgow proves that he had a broad and fairly adequate view of the chief divisions of the social process.^ If the disciples of Adam Smith had constantly oriented themselves by reference to this general survey, instead of taking their cue from The Wealth of Nations alone, they might not only have shared in developing a sane sociology, but without much doubt the economic theory which would have been a division of that sociology would have gained both in breadth and depth from the association. In fact, until John Stuart Mill, the economists grew less and less able to focus anything but wealth-interests within their field of vision. Under their treatment society tended to shrivel into a mere association of wealth-getters and wealth-users. Because the case is so notorious, we may cite, as an illustra- tion of the other vice, Rousseau's social-contract theory.'* It does not even claim to rest upon ascertained facts, but it is a purely speculative picture of a past conjured up by the author's deductions from a priori premises. In the sections discussed in the last chapter, Ratzenhofer has furnished a much more innocent case of the same vice. The bulk of his work deals with the social process in historical times. In the main, his generalizations may be held to the 'The course "was divided into four parts: (i) natural theology; (2) ethics ; (3) a treatment of that branch of morality which relates to justice, a subject which he handled historically after the manner of Montesquieu, endeavoring to trace the gradual progress of jurisprudence, both public and private, from the rudest to the most refined ages, and to point out the effect of those arts which contribute to subsistence, and to the accumulation of prop- erty, in producing corresponding improvements or alterations in law and gov- ernment ; (4) a study of those political regulations which are founded, not upon the principles of justice, but those of expediency, and which are calculated to increase the riches, the power, and the prosperity of a State. Under this view he considered the political institutions relating to commerce, to finances, to ecclesiastical and military establishments." (Ingram, in Encyclopedia Britan- nica, title " Adam Smith.") * The Social Contract, trans, by Rose M. Harrington. 226 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY test of fact. He seems, however, to have been led by desire to round out his system into discoursing about phases of the prehistoric process in a way not sanctioned by the present \ state of the evidence. Positive knowledge of the social process must depend upon the use of methods which avoid both these vices. It is neces- sary, on the one hand, to analyze concrete conditions. It is necessary, on the other hand, to interpret each and every con- crete condition by locating it correctly in the whole social process. We can hardly find a secure support for both ele- ments of this program, until we deal with the social process in historic ti)iics. The records deal chiefly with peoples already organized in States. If we restrict attention to the social process within States, there is not only at our disposal an enormous mass of partially sifted evidence, but this material permits comparative study of the process within many States. It is with the social process at this stage that Ratzenhofer has done his effective work, and the most clearly indicated line of "Ni advance in general sociology is use of his method. He has made the social process in States his center of operations in building up a general sociology. We shall follow his example. We must at the outset disarm the prejudice that States are merely political organizations. That notion is parallel with the economic provincialism just noticed. The modern State is both a political organization and an economic system, but it is much more. The State is a microcosm of the whole human process. The State is the co-operation of the citizens for the furtherance of all the interests of which they are conscious.^ ') That is, we have no quarrel with those legists who mean the government when they speak of the State. In this syllabus, however, the term contains no trace of the I'ctat c'cst moi idea, ° This paragraph sufficiently defines the sense in which the term " State " is used in this argument. We might adopt, with slight variations, Bluntschli's definition : " The State is a combination or totality of men, in the form of government and governed, on a definite territory, united together into a moral organized personality " {Theory of the State, p. 23 ; Clarendon Press, 1885). THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 227 in any of its variations. It means people so far integrated that a government is one of their bonds of union. We need not overlook international intercourse, and inter- national law and comity governing the intercourse ; but all that occurs within this larger circuit of intercourse occurs also, in embryo at least, within the State. For qualitative analysis, therefore, we may confine ourselves at the outset to the social process within State boundaries. We may abstract the State from the world and, up to a point which will appear much later in our analysis, we may ignore contacts beyond State limits. States embrace all other associations of persons. All lesser associations find their correlation within the State. The State is the social process in the largest unity which it is profitable to consider. We shall, accordingly, speak for the present as though States were the whole of the human process. In the first place, then, we must mobilize a notion already used in this argument,^ viz., thatvthe social process in general is a rhythm of differentiations and integrations. That is, there are evidently, first, individualizing factors at work throughout the social process. These cause the detachment of larger or smaller parts from the tribe or the nation. Then it is equally evident that socializing factors are at the same time active. We detect the effects of these forces when many persons who had been unorganized, or in merely accidental and irregular contact with each other, are subdued by one or more persons and brought into a system of subordination. We detect the same thing in the growth of States through the merging of co-ordinate groups, or the absorption of weaker by stronger groups. The force of the individualizing factors is by no means eliminated from the social process when it has advanced into the national stage. States are always individualizing and differentiating reactions on a large scale. Indeed, the origin of nations, and their organization as States, is rather an assur- ance, and in a certain sense a cause, of further individualization * Cf. above, pp. 117, 118 et passim. 228 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY after the social process has resulted in States. The same ele- mental interests which work together to make States continue their work in producing further differentiation within States. .The State itself is a highly differentiated social structure. Within the State we have at once the differentiation of rulers and subjects. Then the initial forms of interest persist — hunger, sex, and kinship. These, with the less elemental spiritual interests, perpetually stimulate differentiation.) Every variation in the form of these ultimate impulses tends to pro- duce corresponding variation in social reaction, and presently in social structure. If the tendency has scope to develop, it brings into existence another group within the State. The members of this group, from that time on, reinforce each other against opposing interests. Not even the most intolerant opponents of biological symbolism can fail to observe that at this point there is likeness between States and physical organ- isms. The State is certainly a highly complex organization. It is an organization of organizations. It is more than a mechanical organization of organizations. The groups which are co-ordinated within the State, and to some extent by the State, grow into and out of each other, without conscious guid- ance by anybody, as well as by deliberate invention. It is petty and petulant to question this resemblance, because the real situation is more clearly exposed to view by means of the analogy than without such aid.'^ Just as in a physical organism the number of organisms multiplies, and through this multiplication the whole organism becomes adapted to a larger total activity, so civic society, the State, is constantly differentiating into more and more associa- tions. Thereby the interests of the individual members, and those of the whole society, are both accommodated to each other and adjusted to the prevailing conditions of life. ^ Tarde's repudiation of the organic analogy, and his announcement in the next breath that society is not like an organism, but like a brain, shows that he misunderstood either the organic analogy, or the brain, or both. {La logique sociatc, pp. 127 ff.) THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 229 States remain relatively simple so long as the groupings which they contain are not stimulated to competition and strife. Whatever the origin of civic organization, whether through common consciousness of the need of leadership, as in the case of the Israelites submitting to the dictatorship of Moses, and later transforming the status of his successors into kingship; or through conquest; there may be but two visible elements in the State, the government and the governed! In the former instance the hostility latent in various inchoate groups may not be sufficiently developed to produce political action and reaction in any marked degree. The people may be homogeneous, and there is a minimum of occasion for strife and consequent inequality. In the latter case the subjugated stratum cannot make its particular interests effective. It is practically a tool of the other stratum. The stratum wielding the sovereign power is supreme and absolute. Interests that make against those of the rulers exist in such States just as really as in a democracy — for example, the interests of the Jews in Russia today, or of the Christians in the Roman Empire before Constantine. In the former case, complexity of political life develops only from within, unless there are foreign compli- cations. In the latter case, political complexity can develop from within only by some reinforcement of latent antitheses from without. As an instance of the promotion of political action that presently complicates the social process within the State, we may cite the assimilation of alien elements. When a third element is added to the original strata, rulers and ruled, the latter begin to find ways of making the new element useful in asserting their repressed interests.^ )If a State has absorbed alien populations, the citizen element may turn the new sub- jects to advantage by giving themselves certain privileges of political or economic or strictly social precedence, by such dis- abilities as those in force today in Russia, for instance, against •A case of the social "form" tertius gaudens ; of. Simmel, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VII, pp. 174 ff. 2J0 GENER-\L SOCIOLOGY Jews. Thus a middle stratum comes into existence. It is a means of keeping up a sort of social seething ; as in the case of the plebs at Rome.^ It must be understood that we are not attempting to specify the precise steps that occur in the differentiation of interests in all States. That will not be done with resj>ectable authority until much more highly developed qualitative analysis of the social process shall have been followed by a t%-pe of historical research not yet developed; viz., a quantitative analysis of the process at successive periods in the development of States. It is possible merely to indicate generic forms of reaction within States. These appear in specific variations according to the circumstances of each State. Thus, one of the characteristic tendencies of the governing class in States founded by con- quest is to set themselves with all possible vigor against social differentiation, and especially against the formation of a middle class. The like is true of ruling classes founded on industrial or commercial supremacy in modem England, France, and America, not less than of classes founded on militar\' conquest in the ancient world. The long judicial and parliamentary struggles in England against the growth of trade unions, and against reform of the franchise, are in point. So long as the differentiation in a State is merely the survival of the relation of conquerors and conquered out of which that State arose, social stratification is virtually as much a matter of course as that on the basis of sex in the primitive tribe. Thus the Ostrogoths in the realm of Theodorich ('493-526) were sharply separated from the subjugated inhabitants of Italy. In like fashion the Xorman conquerors of the Anglo-Saxons tenaciously maintained their racial distinction. \\'ith lapse of time that sepa^^ateness ceases to be possible, especially when the races in a State have become numerous. We accordingly find in the oldest States of which we have records, even after they have, by conquest and extension of territories, become a mixture of many races, the endeavor to * Ratzenhofer, Sociohgische Erkenntniss, p. io6. THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 231 petrify the social condition — that is, to fix for all time the status of superiority and subordination which conquest pro- duced. In other words, we find in these cases determined efforts, both instinctive and deliberate, to arrest the natural social movement which the unfettered action of interests — social in the special sense, racial, economic, religious, scientific, in all variations — constantly promotes. Every new group of population has to take a dependent and subordinate place in the settled order, unless it is strong enough to be itself the sub- jugator of the older groups. This is the essential history of the caste system in Egypt and India. This intrenchment of the military stratification within impossible barriers of tradition prevents the subjugated groups from making themselves felt as factors in social struggle. It thereby prevents the social order from becoming flexible 'as a result of natural play of interests. In general, the despotic State, true to its subjugating instincts, uses every means to make its original form permanent. To the dominant element this seems to be the only way of securing what is held to be the foundation of social weal. The world over, those who have power imagine that retention of power by their class is necessary to the stability of society in general. The only decency and order which the despots can imagine for society is a state of things in which people of their kind hold sway. While this principle must be expressed in modified forms, the farther we get removed from the condition of subjugation by violence, the course of history up to the present scarcely leaves the principle for a moment without witnesses. The classes that have power are always trying to prevent other classes from getting power. This is as true of a Holy Synod as of robber barons or Persian despots. The politically influ- ential rack their brains to prevent other classes from sharing their influence. Just as the caste system was resorted to in the Orient for this purpose, so in the Occident the "Optimates," the " Patricians," and the feudal nobility had the same mean- ing as buttresses of the existing order. "Divide and control," 232 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY divide et impcra, is not a principle which the Romans invented. It is the obvious dictate of the typical military State. It expresses the natural spirit and policy of such a State. The policy cannot be entirely abandoned without surrendering such a State to subversion by elements presumed to be unworthy of social eminence.^*^ In primitive agricultural populations, and under the patri- archal form of society, there is little need of placing limits upon the freedom of the individual to work out his salvation accord- ing to the measure of his own powers. When a State organi- zation is to be maintained, and when the incursions of nomads are to be repelled, then public policy calls for political restraints upon the independence of individuals. Civic society necessi- tates to some extent surrender of pursuit of individual ends, and of freedom to form separatistic groups. The individual must bear the yoke of common necessity. In other words, the order of the State as a whole is always maintained at a certain cost of self-surrender on the part of the individual.^ This program of collision between the powers that be, and the social elements that scarcely have recognized being or power, may be traced, in other forms, in the most advanced societies. The third estate in France, before the Revolution, had interests as distinct from those of king and nobility and clergy as though it had been made up of an alien race, and had been enslaved as a result of conquest. King, nobles, and clergy, on the other hand, just as is the case today in Russia, were spurred, both by counter-interest and by sincere prejudice of political necessity, to prevent the third estate from exercising distinct political influence. We have seen the same assertion of political right, on the one hand, and repression of the asser- tion, on the other, in the case of the three great campaigns for extension of the suffrage in England in the nineteenth century. The same struggle, in principle, is still in progress there on a " An ex parte statement of a situation alleged to be similar in principle is contained in a paper on the English Educational Rill, by William T. Stead, in the Independent, October 30, 1902, pp. 2575-77. The claim is that the dominant class does not want the masses educated. THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 233 different level. While in politics there is practically manhood suffrage in England, social suffrage is far from equal emancipa- tion. The ranks of the social hierarchy, from navvy to noble, are almost as distinct, if not quite as final, as they were five hundred years ago. In the United States we have the same antagonism of forces rallying about different interests. With approximate abolition of political classes, we have economic strata that use both economic and political means of conflict. The managing class is suspicious of the fitness of the many to share in political and industrial management. Our political campaigns are becoming more and more trials of skill between men, on the one hand, who have the confidence of successful business organizers, and, on the other hand, men who are attempting to organize the fears and the jealousies of those who distrust the political integrity and ability of the economically successful classes.^ ^ Two general propositions are pertinent with reference to the whole subject of the differentiation of interests within States : / 1. The various institutioris, political, ecclesiastical, profes-^ sional, industrial, etc., including the government, are devices, means, gradually brought into existence to serve interests that develop within the State. 2. Each of these devices, and even their accidental varia- " As we have said more than once, the data for description of the actual steps by which political antitheses, and thus the factors of differentiation and strife within States, have come into existence, are not yet available to any adequate extent. The fact of social differentiation, and the varieties of insti- tutions developed, partly before and partly after the beginning of the civic stage of the social process, appear in Spencer's Principles of Sociology, under the titles : Part V, " Political Institutions ; " Part VI, " Ecclesiastical Institu- tions ; " Part VII, " Professional Institutions ; " Part VIII, " Industrial Institutions." Those parts of his work are pertinent at this poinf, but with this reservation, as we have virtually said in Parts II and III : Spencer does not successfully transfer attention from institutions in the structural phase to their functional character, not to speak of their teleological value. Function itself, under Spencer's treatment, still seems like a machine at rest, not doing its work. Function seems to be a sort of fiction hanging around the structure of these institutions, but its reality is not impressive. 234 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tions and subordinate parts, are likely to be transformed, in the minds of the persons who get their status in society by working with them, into ends, to be cherished and defended and per- petuated on their ozvn account. Instead of standing on their merits, as agencies for accomplishing needed work, and use- less when they no longer do the work, or when the demand for that sort of work no longer exists, they acquire a certain sacredness of their own, which obscures their real character as means. It follows that the persons who get their living as the functionaries of these institutions come to have the same atti- tude toward persons who would judge the institutions by their social utility, that two alien races have toward each other when one is ruler and the other subject within the State. In other words, social institutions always tend to become causes of the same kind of social strife which in an earlier stage of the process they were developed to prevent. Accordingly, it makes no difference how minutely we ana- lyze mere institutions, or mere activities, within the State. If we go no farther, we may not be within striking distance of the real process carried on by those activities. For example, the familiar schedule of social phenomena, by De Greef,^^ is a very useful chart of activities, and it corresponds in general with the traditional divisions of the social sciences. For certain pur- poses such divisions are sufficient. If, however, we want to answer the principal questions that pertain to the social process, these schedules prove to be merely the binding-twine of the social reality. They are utterly external. We want to find out what are the deep undercurrents of energy in all association. We find that those undercurrents apparently flow with incon- stant form, force, and direction through all these activities. At the moment of this discovery our relation to the traditional divi- sions of social analysis is precisely parallel with that in which a student of human physiology would be when he had just begun to realize that it does not avail very much, in the way of under- standing the vital processes, to divide the body into head, " Vide p. 235. Cf. Introduction d ta sociologic. Vol. I, p. 200. THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 235 2 z O 01 & X < M Us a o U p 9 ^ z z m " o OS Ps S z Ox o . u u 5'- ^ ■3 "o "s O qL ^ purs rt in c bo ~ c 6 S< •S u rt 5 •-: Mc t:>i2 rt •at: •c- n •o *" o i2 5 n CO O o in V> (J -a ana b _ O Q- 9 rt Q.Q- rt O ^«i4 4~* ^ -t^ a " 0.5 n U ^y3 .50 in.S Q-rt^o^iiO^ SqC^, w = OQ.orta.o in «J 3 p:^ "O CL_ CI, rt Ji? Q. asvg 236 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY trunk, and limbs. He does not get his physiological problems fairly presented until he discovers that head, trunk, and limbs are alike collections of activities shared by a nutritive system, a circulating system, a nervous system, an osseous system, and a muscular system. This discovery does not rule head, trunk, and limbs out of existence. It relegates them to a rank of minor importance for the physiologists' purposes. It may be said that the divisions which De Greef uses are quite parallel with the physiological division of organisms into functional systems. To a certain extent this is true ; but in a deeper sense, and from the sociological center of attention, it is not true. The divisions of phenomena presented by De Greef are essentially structural, not functional. ^ All divi- sions of associational activities which are not based upon teleological criteria must for that reason be essentially struc- tural. The sociologist is after the telic meaning of all social factors. Their phenomenal groupings must, of course, be understood; but this is merely preliminary to discovery of functional and telic relations. We are at present calling atten- tion to facts of differentiation within nations in order to pre- pare the way for the more vital matter, viz., the differentiation and the correlation of purposes within national groups. It cannot be repeated too often that the industrial system, and the domestic organization, and the state of the arts, and the development of science, and the perfecting of government, and the adoption of moral standards, are merely incidents in the process of realizing the essential human interests. At any selected moment the facts in either of these divisions of activity may be relatively obstructive of that process. To know whether the concrete facts are positive or negative factors in the human process, at a particular date or point, we have to find how to advance upon the mechanical, structural concep- tion of human activities, and how to add a sufficient functional and teleological interpretation of the involved process. Resum- ing our analysis of antagonism between interests within THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 237 nations, we encounter what Ratzenhofer calls the political principles}^ Perhaps the precise force of the term in this connection would be better conveyed if we said that the phenomena of opposition between the groups differentiated in the State dis- play the counter-tendencies at work in the social process, and the various gradations of those tendencies. Adopting Ratzen- hofer's term principle, let us bear in mind that it would not be far away from the sense of the word if we used the less techni- cal term tendency. At all events, we are now face to face with the primary opposition of social forces as they display them- selves within States. On the one hand, we have the stereotyping principle. We are now merely giving a name to the tendency which we have already described in action. I This .principle operates in the direction of retaining the social situation in statu quo. On the other hand, we have the antithetical innoziating principle. Its tendency is to resolve one social balance into another, or at least to break up a social situation. Strictly analyzed, there is noth- ing immediately visible in the operation of these two prin- ciples which entitles the one to a moral precedence over the other. Each is primarily the energy of a portion of the nation which has interests opposed to those of other portions. In the sense in which we are obliged to use the terms at this stage, it by no means follows that the stereotyping is the undesirable force, and the innovating the desirable one. Which is which is in each case a question of fact, to be determined by the scale of social purposes, and the relation of the principles respectively to those purposes in the given case. It is conceivable that, in a given social situation, the stereo- typing factor might turn out to represent the program that in the end would be best for society. Meanwhile, for the purposes of description within the field of social dynamics, the force that makes for rest within the situation must be called stereotyping, ^^ Sociologische Erkenntniss, p. 167, and more fully in Wesen und Zweck, Vol. I, p. 146. Cf. below, pp. 287, 288. 238 - GENERAL SOCIOLOGY while that which makes for disturbance or modification of the situation must be called innovating. Going back to primitive conditions, we find at first, as the most evident impulses, blood-relationship, hunger, and sex. When we observe society developed into the stage of civic organization, however, we find these primitive impulses sub- jected to the limitations of the new environment. (The State is consequently the expression of the social need of composing the antagonistic principles by means of mutual concession. That is, the opposing interests must, to a certain extent, practice self-denial in order to exist in the same State. This restraint upon the absolute assertion of each one's interest is the phase of the social process next in order after the opposition of interests which precedes the legal State, In our description of the social process up to, and including, the formation of the State we saw that at first this restraint or self-denial has to reach the extreme of self-effacement in the case of the conquered people. The interests which the victors overpower have to be swallowed up in the interests of the con- querors. ^ Another stage in social differentiation is reached when this absolute absorption of one interest by another is fol- lowed by a condition in which such absorption is only relative. \ Thus between savages of the lowest order there was no com- promise until the one tribe had eaten the other. An advance in the social process is marked by so much of restraint on the part of both victors and vanquished as permits the acceptance of mastery and slavery as the triumph of one interest over the other, with minimum concession to the weaker interest. Still later, the dominant race, say Romans, retain claims of tribute from defeated and absorbed States, without subjecting the conquered citizens to personal slavery. Later still, as in mediaeval and modern aristocracies, privileges are secured by law to certain classes, while corresponding burdens are bound by law upon the shoulders of other classes. In either case the process is that of accommodating interest to interest through total or partial expression, on the one hand, and repression, on THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 239 the other. As the State becomes more permanent in form and spirit, the process approaches universal restraint of each inter- est within the Hmits decreed by the aggregate of interests. There is a social function, which we need not discuss here, that in its own way accomplishes something like the work of the director of an orchestra. Each instrument has its own note, and each, without direction, tends to confuse, and perhaps to drown, the other notes. The leader not merely keeps the instruments in time, but he modulates the force of the dififerent notes, so that each falls into its proper proportion in the whole tone scheme. The State accordingly becomes a moral institution. It is an ethical effect or deposit of the social process. From the present point of view, the establishment of a State, whether it has a modern written constitution, or the older and more common constitution, consisting of customary and recognized order, means substantially this : There has previously been play of individual and group interests, either unregulated, or from the current point of viezv less appropriately regulated. These interests are now brought together under a common or improved order, in which each restrains itself somewhat, in obedience to the general interests of the community. From this same point of view, we may also interpret the constant action and reaction between the two social tendencies just scheduled; viz.: it is a conflict for adjustment between the forces of social innovation, on the one hand — forces which instinctively resist the dominance of the existing order; and, on the other hand, the social necessity of preserving the national interests from evaporating in the partial interests of individuals. Perhaps no clearer case is familiar to Americans than that of our own Federal Union, which was the final compromise between the almost irreconcilable interests of sectionalism, on the one hand, and of nationalism, on the other. To be sure, Federalism was in this case the innovating principle, but in effect it illustrated the group interest in contrast with special 240 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY interests. What was apparent in this case on a somewhat extended scale is the fact in every nation. There could be no civic society in advance of anarchy, if it did not come into existence, and stay in existence, by virtue of restraint upon interests which would destroy each other, if not restrained. ( Civic society is practical agreement of many interests not to assert their claim to the full, and it is, beyond this, practical agreement of each of the interests to contribute something toward enforcing the claims of the aggregate interests. Phillips Brooks once said: "No man has a right to all of his rights." The theorem sums up a whole social philosophy.) We may summarize the facts in another form in this way : The evolution of a State out of the primitive spontaneous social process results, in the first instance, in a rigid adjustment of persons to a scheme of subordination. The State is, in one view, a piece of machinery produced by the social process, but the justification for its existence is its continued furtherance of the process. The immediate tendency, however, always is for the machinery of the State to rust in its bearings, so that it becomes an effective arrest of the process. In order to promote the process, it is necessary for the same social forces which produced the State to co-operate further in keeping the State flexible, so that it may continue to be serviceable. Otherwise the State becomes the terminus of the social process, instead of a term in its evolution. The forces that have produced the State are, on the one hand, the interests of individuals ; on the other hand, the conflict of interests between individuals who cannot see that their interests coincide. We have thus drawn the main lines of the social process within the State. The State never is, but is always becoming. This is true because the persons composing the State never are, but are always becoming. " A process is going on," is our most general way of telling the essential truth about a person or a society. This social process is an incessant dialectic of interest, of function, and of structure. Interests in individuals start activi- THE SOCIAL PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 241 ties in which individuals colHde with each other. These con- tacts necessarily tend into a certain form of arrangement of contact and reaction. This form of the process tends to become fixed in structure or status of the persons who carry on the activities involved. Yet this tendency to rest is never absolute. It becomes in turn a stimulus of new motion in the group. That is, as some of the persons in the group see their own interests, this stationary condition of the group is desirable. As other members of the group see their own interests, this crystalliza- tion of the group in a permanent form is intolerable. Thence- forth, the molecular motions in the group begin to take new directions. Some of the persons are trying to preserve all of the old structure that they can. Others are trying to get for their interests all of a new structure that they can. Here is a social antithesis which presently becomes visible in a somewhat modified social structure, around which a later-born conserva- tism rallies, and against which a freshly provoked interest in innovation revolts. So the differentiating rhythm go€S on. Interest and function and structure are constantly recreating each other in new forms. The State grows from the com- pound to the doubly, the trebly, and the wthly compound differ- entiation of the interests and functions and structures of which the individuals composing the State are the units. ; The social process of which the State is both the product and the condi- tion always goes forward through the reaction of the variable forces which these social combinations represent. Our analysis must accordingly proceed to examine more in detail these reactions between the alternative social prin- ciples. CHAPTER XIX THE LATENT ANTAGONISMS IN STATES ' From the point of view which we have now reached it is possible to sum up in a single convenient conception the whole process which the State includes. It will epitomize for us all that we have now to examine in detail. It will, at the same time, do not a little toward rational interpretation of the details. In a word, the zvhole social process is a perpetual reaction between interests that have their lodgment in the individuals who compose society. This reaction is, more specifically, in the first instance, disguised or open struggle between the indi- viduals. The State itself is the expression of a somewhat highly differentiated interest, which becomes operative sooner or later in the social process; viz., the interest of the indi- viduals composing a relatively distinct section of society in having the struggle of interests within the range of their asso- ciation go on under the limitations of certain positive rules. Whatever else the State may or may not do, this at least is its constant role, viz. : The State always brings to bear upon the individuals composing it a certain power of constraint to secure from them, in all their struggles with each other, the observance of minimum established limits of struggle. This is not a hypothetical statement of what the State might, could, would, or should do. It is a literal generalization of what every State actually does. It is an objective statement of a cardinal fact in the social process. From this primary fact another follows ; not logically, but as actual matter of experience ; viz. : States from first to last represent different orders of instincts or ideas about the proper scope and methods of civic constraint. We might select at random, provided only that we were familiar with the distinc- * Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zwcck, sec. 17. 242 THE LATENT ANTAGONISMS IN STATES 243 tive civic tradition of the States chosen for illustration, and it would prove that, whereas the essential purposes and forms of State action are one and the same everywhere, the ideas or feelings that diversify those forms and methods are never in two States identical. Between two such States as Turkey and Great Britain, or Russia and France, the fact is obvious, even to those who could specify only the most notorious particulars. . Even between two such apparently similar States as Germany and Austria-Hungary, or Italy and Spain, or Great Britain and the United States, however, the same fact might be shown without difficulty. One people has a slightly different history; a slightly different moral, political, economic, and religious tradition; a slightly different social situation. The stress of interests in the one takes a slightly different tone from that in the other. The civic constraint in the one consequently differs from that in the other by degrees which ordinary observation would not detect. For instance, in Russia and in Germany it accords with the general ideas of decency and order that the government shall require all citizens to attach themselves to some recognized religious body, in order to become eligible to certain civic positions. In France such State requirement of religion is at present out of the question. In England an income tax is accepted as matter of course. In the United States it is regarded as an infringement upon the rights of private property. Thus two States of the more primitive and the more modern type respectively may have little more in common than the identical wish to gain protection of their peculiar interests through civic control. The master-key to the occurrences which take place in all States, throughout their development, is the perception that,v whatever the incidents of political struggle in any case, the one constant factor is the civic organization attempting, in one way or another, to guard the interests of the individuals and groups of which the State is composed, by constraint appropriate to the needs of the situation. In other words, the State, the national group organized as 244 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY a unity, is a certain implicit conception, idea, purpose, conscious in certain persons, and committed at all hazards to self- assertion. The State is a certain vague or definite theorem to be maintained. It is a body of interests to be guarded. It is a claim, to be defended against all comers. Whatever else happens, that body of purpose with reference to fundamental general order which the State incarnates must be carried out. It must succeed. It must prevail over every possible opposi- tion. Here, then, is not the old '* absolute hostility " which we found in the case of individual interests, abstractly considered. There is rather relative hostility; or, viewed from the other direction, relative sociability. That is, some of the interests of all the persons are merged in this common organization, the State, j Something that is common to all the persons projects this organization into being. The persons cannot now be abso- lutely hostile to each other without warring each against a part of himself. In spite of a certain degree of this always-present " war in the members," the very nature of the State makes the submission of the individual a foregone conclusion, He must bend or break. To that extent the State, which is essentially, and more and more in realization, the visualized assertion of its members' interests, is from the start and always the avozved and uncompromising opponent of every member of the State.^ As the interests common to all the persons are at the start in a small ratio, numerically, to the interests in which no com- mon element appears, the civic condition necessarily presents, from the beginning, the aspect of struggle. Implicitly all are groping after a condition in which all will be ruled by the inter- ests of all. In each person's feelings, however, his own inter- ests may loom up into a degree of importance altogether out of proportion to that which they have in any other person's estimate, and still more out of proportion to their actual ratio ' The sense in which the term " State " is used in this argument should be kept in mind. Cf. pp. 226 and 292. It does not mean government, as contrasted with the governed. It means " organized civic unity," with government as one of the factors of the unity. THE LATENT ANTAGONISMS IN STATES 245 with the total interests of the nation. There is no scale of weights and measures to harmonize these conflicting estimates of interests, except the naive gage of battle between the inter- ests. They hav6 to test brute strength for a long while, as the only means of taking each other's measure. Public interest, a certain minimum demand for order, is one party, and each individual in the State may at any time be the other party.\ By virtue of combinations, always stronger than individuals, the modicum of common interest intrenches itself more and more firmly, while the quantum of common interest mean- while increases. Throughout this process, the State is becoming more and more necessary to the typical individual, but at the same time more and more antipathetic to everything in the indi- vidual in proportion as it conflicts with the typical. Here, then, we have the conditions of the irrepressible conflict which the State does not originate, but by means of which the State car- ries on the social process. National life is conflict, hut it is conflict converging toivard minimum conflict, and maximum co-operation and sociability. The elementary interest of a State, as we have already virtually said, is the development of its corporate individuality.^ Probably no better example is on record than that of the American State at the close of the War of Independence. It is begging a mooted question in political philosophy, of course, to assume that there was an American State at that precise time. It would also take us too far afield if we should attempt to settle the question, in passing, what constituted the corporate individuality of the actual or potential American State in 1776 or 1783. For the sake of concreteness, we may let the two unquestioned elements of the incipient State-personality repre- sent all. The implicit common interest in America was, first, independence of Europe; second, co-operation at home. Yet there were a thousand partial interests which stimulated indi- viduals and groups to ignore or challenge or defy these com- mon interests. American independence and co-operation were ' Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zweck, Vol. I, p. 160. 246 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY thus committed to a war of subjugation against these partial interests. Of course, it savors of metaphysics and pure fancifuHsm to express the facts in this way, as though American " inde- pendence " and American " co-operation " were physical enti- ties contending for standing ground in space. There is danger, to be sure, of carrying this figurative form of expression to a point which will defeat itself by disguising the literal facts to be expressed. To guard against this excessively literal figura- tiveness, we may well put the facts in a more exact form before returning to the more convenient and vivid form of expression ; viz. : All the people in America at the close of the War of Independence had so large a stake in permanent independence and growing co-operation that, in the judgment of the most influential, numerically and morally, it was the absolute dictate of social expediency to transform this dictate of expediency into a principle of public law. The reality of a public com- munity, a whole, a State, depended upon the assertion of this much in the shape of common interest. With so much guarantee of good faith in the use of meta- phor, we are at liberty to say that the existence of an American State meant the establishment of independence, and the inaugu- ration of co-operation at whatever sacrifice of conflicting interests. The separate existence, the individuality, of the American State hung upon the maintenance of independence and co-operation up to an indeterminate point, where recogni- tion of a common lot with all the world might begin, in the form of treaty stipulations with other powers; and, on the other hand, up to another indeterminate point, where the indi- vidual initiative of the citizens might be recognized as com- patible with the public interest. How uncertain the points were through which the boundaries should be run, may l>e suggested, in the former case, by the fact that, after more than a century, we have not settled to the satisfaction of everybody what Washington's Farewell Address meant, on the subject of entangling alHances with foreign powers; or whether what- THE LATENT ANTAGONISMS IN STATES 247 ever he may have meant was the proper national program for all time. In the other case, we have certainly changed our original constitution of 1789 in numerous ways; and beyond that we have passed through, and are still passing through, numerous transitions of thought about the forms, the terms, the means, and the limits of State and personal co-operation within our national borders. With these details, however, we are not now concerned. Our business here is with the main proposition, that, in the very nature of the State, it is uncompromising warfare with everything that threatens to limit the State-individuality. As the location of the elements of social force in general is in indi- viduals, it would be a safe deduction, without observation of the facts, that the process of evolving human interests in asso- ciation would be a process of collision between general inter- ests and differentiating special interests. If we turn from deduction to observation of actual civic life, we find that this is always the case. The State is not merely an assertion of common interests. It is so far forth a denial of special inter- ests. Conflict begins with the appearance of absolute incom- patibility between the general and the special interest. It goes on until some development is reached in which it appears, either that the alleged general interest or the special interest was unreal and untenable, or that an adjustment, which adjourns conflict between the two, better satisfies the larger implications of both than the total extermination of either. We may state the point by recurring to our American his- tory. No sooner was independence conceded by England than the conflict of interests began to emerge in a new form. In the first place, there was the Tory element which had never wanted independence of England. During the war, this ele- ment had to be fought in the rear, while Great Britain was fought in front. American independence consequently had to down Toryism. Then there were interests which threatened to sell out to France, or Spain, or possibly to other countries. Each of these interests, in a negative way, undermined both 248 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY independence and co-operation. Then there were positive refusals to co-operate."* There were the antagonistic trade regulations; the counter-claims to public lands; the objections to adoption of a workable constitution; etc., etc. Meanwhile individuals were selfishly trying to work out an atomistic sal- vation, so far as compatible with the social and religious tradi- tion which restrained them by invisible checks. Here was the whole social process in embryo. The part upon which we are throwing the emphasis now is the struggle of the State itself for existence. Any given stage of national development is a struggle of that which has come to be regarded as the common interest, and thus the spiritual substance of the State, against all and several of the contesting interests which dispute for place within the civic order. We may anticipate the results of the whole process of sociological description by the summary: Civilisation, so far as it is hounded by natioJial limits, consists in enlargement of the content of the common spiritual sub- stance, until it approaches inclusion of all interests, so far as they depend upon concerted conduct; leaving scope for inde- pendence only in those activities in zvhich free individual move- ment best reqlizes the common interests. * Vide Fiske, Critical Period. CHAPTER XX TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES' It should be pointed out in advance that the discrepancy between the types of interests now to be discovered, and the sixfold division of interests assumed throughout this argument, is apparent, not real. Ratzenhofer's classification is analytic; that of the syllabus as a whole is synthetic. The two confirm each other at last. We cannot repeat too often that one constant motive in the civic stage of the social process is the impulse of the State to confirm and magnify itself. The State, as we have seen, has an individuality of its own. Whatever else occurs within the State, whether it is ancient Sparta, or imperial Rome, or democratic America, this State- personality is always and forever the key to the plot. In and through and above and beyond all other interests that have a place in the social reaction, that phase of interest which marks the individuality of the State as a whole is forever striving for mastery. This is not less true in a country like ours, where the popular nature of the State disguises its actual individu- ality, than in a State like imperial Rome, where sovereignty was made into an absolute absorbent of all other interests. Indeed, there are reasons why the citizens of a democratic State need more than others to examine their own State- individuality, and to be sure that it is sane and wholesome. ' Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zweck, sec. i8. Up to this point, except in Part IV, chap. 13, the references to Ratzenhofer have been either by way of dissent, or they have been rather remote. The remainder of Part IV will closely follow his qualitative analysis of the civic process. This version, however, must not be taken as representing his views, without careful com- parison of the corresponding passages in his books. In this part of his work Ratzenhofer has gone beyond all his predecessors in drawing plans and specifi- cations of the kind of positive knowledge necessary as basis for a real science of social relations. 249 250 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY "^ It is possible for the State-individuality, like the single person, to harbor self-destructive illusions. It may be that the very idea of a democratic State will prove to be one of those illu- sions. We certainly have not yet proved the contrary. It is safe to say that the form in which democratic notions are at present conceived in all democratic States must undergo thorough revision, before they are fit to mold the best think- able social condition. For instance, the idea of " freedom " was one of the elementary notions which constructed our national idea of independence. But our whole first century of national life was virtually exhausted in arriving at necessary modifica- tions of the concept " freedom." Our State was promoting an " irrepressible conflict " by trying to accommodate two sov- ereignties, where, in the nature of the case, there could be in the last resort but one. It proved that " freedom " which worked out in license of state after state to sit in judgment upon the United States, must give way to something which would make either the states or the United States paramount. In other words, our original State-idea, or at least the political element of it, was a self-contradictory idea, and the life of the State depended at last upon abandonment of the idea and sub- stitution of another more tenable.- I venture the prediction that some day it will appear that the United States, like France, is sick from inoculation with other virus, which we call by the old names "liberty" and "equality." Our State is committed at present to the coddling of a visionary type of " liberty " and "equality." Our State is lavishing its strength in making its citizens believe in a liberty and equality which never did nor can exist. It will one day be a question of life and death for our State whether it has left itself vitality enough to assert, against all the artificially incubated "liberty" and "equality" in its membership, its elementary purpose of securing the human, whether or not it turns out, in the case of individuals, to be "free" or "equal." As we have seen, States once came into being as a result of conquest. Conquerors made themselves masters and rulers TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 251 of the conquered. Now individuals and large groups join together because of common interest in a certain organizing idea, i Illustrations are the case of the American colonies ; the union of England and Scotland; the foundation of the king- dom of Italy; of the German Empire; etc., etc. We described the State interest earlier, so far as its form is concerned, as unrelenting and uncompromising self-assertion, to the exclu- sion of every rival assertion. So far as its content is con- cerned, the national interest is never quite the same in any two States. Each State alleges its right and duty to maintain itself because — and the make-up of that "because" varies indefinitely. In literal truth, the operative motive within the State interest, in a given case is x parts instinct and vague senti- ment, y parts shrewd calculation of personal advantage, and 2 parts pure insight into the reasons why that State has a right to exist among the nations. The 2 element is usually least in quantity. Yet, however composed, the State interest marshals the population against foes from within and from without. It stimulates patriotism, sense of honor, personal pride in civic purposes. Whether the little kingdom of Greece is held together most by fear of the Turk, or by the sentiment of descent from a classic past, the Greek civic interest is a reality, and is capable of employment as truly as though it were a controllable natural force. The same is true of our own civic interest, as was proved somewhat to our own surprise by the virtual unanimity of all interests in placing $50,000,000 at the disposal of the President to prepare for war with Spain in 1898. It will sometime become a part of the serious study and instruction of all enlightened nations to identify the precise content of their State interest. At present we take it for granted, in phrases which may mean much or little, but which in fact usually operate merely as stimuli of the unreflecting suggestibility of the population. We enter now upon discussion of the subordinate interests which always array themselves in varying forms against the common or national interest. We are not attempting at this 252 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY point to classify the interests that are active in a particular society, past or present. We are not now referring to any special stage of civic development, early or late. We are pre- senting a schedule of interests that are not necessarily all present in an appreciable degree in all States. They are merely typical of situations in States sooner or later. The following conspectus will serve as an index to the contents of this chapter : TYPICAL INTERESTS WITHIN STATES A. The universal interest ; sustenance. B. The kinship interest. C. The national interest. D. The creedal interests. E. The pecuniary interests. F. The class interests. 1. Extraction. 2. Artisanship. 3. Manufacture. 4. Wage labor. 5. Trade. 6. Professional and personal services. 7. Parasitism. 8. Pseudo-classes. a) Capital. b) Massed capital. c) Massed industry. d) Massed agriculture. G. The rank interests. H. The corporate interests.* Recasting the leading thesis of this section, we have : Cknc society organised as the State is composed of individual and group factors, each of which has in itself certain elements of political independence. That is, each has interests seemingly distinct from the interests of the others. Each has some degree of impulse to assert these interests in spite of the others. Thus the State is a union of disunions, a conciliation of conflicts, a 'This is Ratzenhofer's list. In a later section (71) he has a somewhat difTerent schedule, which represents the particular grouping of interests in the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the date of writing. TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 253 harmony of discords. The State is an arrangement of com- binations by zvhich nintually repellent forces are brought into some measure of concurrent action. The universal interest of every person and group in the State is in security of existence, i. e., guarantee of opportunity to maintain life, including satisfaction of the wants which pro- tect life. This we may call the universal interest. In so far ns the State protects its citizens in unhindered application of their powers to the task of supplying the elemental wants, the State is an agent for serving the universal interest. That every State does this, in some measure, is a primary datum of social observation. This fact constitutes, by the way, a dis- tinct and decisive challenge of that political philosophy which regards the State as a necessary evil, or still worse, an unne- cessary evil.^ If the development of the State has due regard to this universal interest, that interest plays at first but an unconscious role in the struggle carried on within the State. Every citizen feels that it is his own private afifair to win the means of exist- ence. On the other hand, the universal interest is in a measure sacrificed if the State directly assumes the burden of providing the necessities of life for certain individuals or groups; while it is in accordance with the universal interest that the State should rectify conditions which virtually deprive individuals or groups of opportunity to use their talents to the full in get- ting the means of livelihood. In either case, if the State by commission or by omission fails to perform its function of pro- moting the universal interest, that interest forthwith springs out of the depths of social unconsciousness and becomes a lively political factor. It forces itself to the front as a party in con- flict. If the civic organization is so misapplied in this respect that the whole population is conscious of social friction and failure, then the whole people will become a political factor in struggle against the government. The universal interest will • Ratzenhofer, Wesen ttnd Zweck, p. 162. 254 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY array itself against the administration that subordinates it to partial interests. A variation of this situation occurs in the case of a gov- ernment run on a too expensive scale, and imposing intolerable burdens of taxation. The later days of the Bourbon monarchy in France furnish the clearest example of this situation. The universal interest is always operating, but at the present stage of social development it becomes a political factor only excep- tionally. If the truth were known, the politics of Russia, Germany, Italy, and Spain today are kept from being frank fighting on the issue of artificial hindrance of the universal physical welfare, only by conventionalities w'hich first obscure the issue, and, second, play off against each other sections of the population whose immediate interests are affected in differ- ent ways by the artificial arrangements that make the issue. In France, England, and the United States, material prosperity interposes a buffer between State policies and the universal interest, as it comes to consciousness in certain classes. In these latter nations it seems less probable that a rehearing of the whole case of governmental programs can be called for at an early date. Yet the moment there is a temporary disturb- ance of industrial prosperity in either of these countries, the cry of the part of the people closest to the margin of subsistence at once goes up against fundamental policies of government. It is alleged that government is in the interest of those who have, and regardless of the interests of those who have not; in other words, that it does not represent the State, but has borrowed the livery of the State for the service of special inter- ests. In such a case the universal interest becomes the issue for one side of the conflict, while on the other the contention is only indirectly for the universal interest, but rather for derived interests; that is, specialized interests in which the universal interest is a relatively remote factor. The conservative inter- ests contend for " vested rights," or their customary political influence, rather than immediately for means of existence. The kinship interest. — The primitive party interest in the TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 255 State is that of like derivation — i. e., the bond of common physical ancestry. It is hardly necessary to enlarge here upon the phenomena of clannishness — the universal tendency to feel that the stranger is an enemy, and the man of one's own blood is of a superior sort to the alien. " Man is a wolf to the man whom he does not know." \ Primitive tribal and national wars are survivals and extensions of family feuds. ) While this type of special interest is by no means without influence today, yet^t is relatively on the decline in general. In its place comes : The national interest.* — The nation consists of the people of a State developed from linguistic and cultural unity. So long as the nation and the State are coextensive, the national and the civic interest are also one. But the State may either be a mere arbitrary combination of nations that would prefer inde- pendence, as in the case of the provinces absorbed by Rome after conquest, or a State which has once been partially uni- 1/ fied may cleave into various parts^ one of which dominates, the others of which antagonize the prevailing power. There are thus nations within the State. Such is the case in Great Britain today with reference to Ireland, in Austria-Hungary, in Russia, in Turkey, etc. It often occurs that these fragments have more virility and group-consciousness than the main or trunk portion of the nation. They consequently oppose obsti- nate resistance to amalgamating tendencies.^ V An incident, a tool, and to some extent a cause of the national interest is common language, and the same is true of common customs and culture. ' At the same time, as in all other cases of social fact, the cause and the means are also agent and effect; the aspect in which they appear depending upon the stage in the process in which we view them. The more highly the national interest is developed, the more will the tribal or racial interest merge itself into the national inter- * Loc. cit., pp. 164, 165. ' Vide Simons, " Social Assimilation," American Journal of Sociology, May, 1 90 1 — January, 1902. 256 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY est. With this higher national development comes a surrender of the tribal interest in maintaining separate language and customs, and in its place adoption of the language and customs of the State. ' This is seen most conspicuously in Europe today in the Rhine provinces of Elsass and Lothringen; and in the United States we have striking illustrations in the pathetic and ineffectual struggles of the older elements in our immigrant population to preserve their own languages in church and school. ' The first generation born in America of foreign par- entage throws off the foreign language as a burden too heavy to be borne. N It is worth while to notice a generalization and an infer- ence which Ratzenhofer ventures in this connection." He says: In North America we see the population in such haste for gain that they form no close groups upon the basis of common language. They abandon their mother-tongue for the English language, which is everywhere needed for practical purposes. But the time will come when the popula- tion will have become dense. The struggle for existence will have to be more carefully planned. Then the people of America will be forced to stop and reflect. There will be need of attaching themselves to the several political groups into which their individual interests naturally divide them, in order to gain the reinforcement of the group interest for each one's individual interest. When that situation comes about, the memory of racial extraction may at last be reawakened. The different languages may become the rallying centers for the different interests. Thereupon for the first time will America confront decisively the problem of its national unity. There is a delicious long-distance assurance between the lines of these sentences, which is unmistakably German. Ratzenhofer does not say in so many words that the United States will break up into little England, and Ireland, and Sweden, and Norway, and Germany, and Poland, and Bohemia, and Italy, and Africa ; but that is the suggestion. This forecast is a typical case of European failure to sen.se the trend of American tendencies. It is of a piece with both German and Spanish predictions, early in 1898, that a foreign * Loc. cit., p. 165. TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 257 war would be the signal for a new secession of the southern states from the Union. It is part and parcel of the same hal- lucination, which certain pan-Germanists cherish, that in case of collision between Germany and America, the German popu- lation would go over to the side of the Fatherland. It is a symptom of radical failure to appreciate the crucial fact in the American situation, viz., that the Americans live in the present, not in the past. The sense of reality among them is strong enough to force reminiscences of past reality into their rightful place. The new practical interests of our population relegate the minor interests to roles so subordinate that they certainly cannot be taken seriously as factors of future disunion. Once a year, in our great cities, it is possible to gather around a banquet table a few hundred actual and constructive descend- ants of the Huguenots, or the Puritans, or the Knickerbockers, or the Sons of New England, or New York, or Ohio ; but even during their celebration these people know that their strongest interests are not with each other, but with people of all the ancestries that compose our population. The next morning they will go about their business with their neighbors with no more sense of stratification along these hereditary lines than if they were sprung from a single racial stock. While we discriminate these threads out of which the social fabric is woven, and we remember that they were originally of very different textures, we must also bear in mind that this difference of texture in the individuals is a vanishing quantity, at least under conditions like those in America. We must learn to give due value to the different elements involved in the social process; but this calls for absolute veto of the idea that their historical and their contemporary force are equal. Races which are found today within the confines of civilized States, and which can neither consolidate themselves into nations nor become integral parts of nations, must inevitably disappear. Such, for instance, are the Gypsies in Europe, and the North American Indians. The cause of their decay is not essentially their clinging to their racial affinities; but thev ^'^'- 2S8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY out gradually in the course of social conflict, because they intro- duce into it no higher interest than that of race. The higher interests always provide themselves with more effective means of conflict, and these inevitably extinguish sooner or later the groups which do not enter into the higher competition. The creedal interest. — The most important interest in its historical bearings upon the social process is the creedal or confessional interest. Ratzenhofer ventures the generalization that the creedal interest is genetically a more highly developed racial instinct. This again is one of the formulas which con- tain a diminishing ratio of truth the farther along we follow the social process. It is relatively true at the beginning. It is far from true at the present stage of progress. Moreover, Ratzenhofer's theorem is always a mechanical statement of the fact, and it so far fails to indicate the essential dissimilarity of the racial and the creedal interests. It seems at first glance that there can be nothing in common between an interest that utters itself in a formula of religious belief, and the political interests that have striven against each other throughout the social process. It is a fact, however, that up till now the creed element has confirmed and intensified race- antipathies, so that we cannot understand racial struggles unless we see them as at the same time creed-struggles; nor can we understand creed-struggles in their earlier forms unless we interpret them in part as race-strugglesj At all events, the racial and the creedal interests have been in the closest sort of co-operation, and have together formed the political units that have conflicted. In other words, people of like origin and common abode usually have the same religious belief. When this belief is crystallized in a formula, the political interest of the group in which the creed holds sway is apt to take posses- sion of the formula, and to organize the people into a stronger political unity by means of it. Of course, the converse of this also occurs, as we shall observe later. When conquest brings to pass mixture of races, the dominant religious formula gives a new lease of life and new extension of sway over the con- TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 259 quered peoples and areas. Then follows the question of per- manent relations between the creedal interests of conquerors and conquered. The solution may be permanent absorption of one creed by another, or it may be differentiation of the creedal interest. Schism may occur. This division may be very far from a matter of pure religious abstraction. It may occur quite within the lines drawn by political interest. As a general rule/ whenever the political interest gets v/eightier than the zeal for creed, then those adherents to whom the creed means least, desert. They become schismatics. Those who can adjust the creed to their political interests, on the contrary, stand by it, and become the orthodox defenders of the faith. Both in the case of the schismatic and of the orthodox ele- ment of the State, the higher powers bring all possible influ- ence to bear upon the inferior orders to procure civic and reli- gious conformity, and thus new and stronger unity. All the party groups which exist within the range of the State or the creed try to gear on to their machinery the power of the con- fessional interest. For instance, the petty princes of Germany made the most of the Protestant movement, and the Catholic reaction, to strengthen their own government, and conversely they gave all the force at their command to support or to defeat the movement. In the same way, the French nobility used Protestantism in the struggle against the monarchy; and, on the other hand, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was a means of confirming the absolutism of the throne. The chief builders of States have been the racial and the confessional interests. It naturally and necessarily follows that, within the States which they construct, the special struc- tures peculiar to each exist as relatively distinct factors — per- sonalities, so to speak."^ VThe universal interest is the mother of all interests. This interest of the individual, however, in self-maintenance and self-expression, needs a fraternity of interests to organize the struggle for the universal interest. There is use for a special interest representing the need of all '' Loc. cit., p. 167. 26o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the individuals to co-operate. This demand is supplied at first by the racial and the creedal interests, with their corresponding co-operation. Under the workings of the racial and the creedal interests the universal interest is merely veiled. But presently still other factors are differentiated; viz.: The pecuniary interests. — We give them this name for brevity, although it is not strictly precise and adequate. Inas- much as money is the civilized medium by which all the efforts to be indicated under this head reach their aim, we shall not go far astray in using this designation. We mean now the inter- est which every individual manifests in adding to his posses- sions. It may be that the effectiveness of the interest in a given case does not reach beyond spasmodic and precarious pursuit of barely enough food to support life. It may be that it takes the form of capitalistic organization on the largest scale, with a view to further creation and control of capital. / Everything arriving at qualitatively the same end — i. e., more material possessions — whether verging toward one extreme or the other, is in view under this head. ) The individuals who make gains by the same occupations are naturally hostile to each other; their interests invade the same fields of satisfaction. This is the situation of economic competition without political complications. Until comparatively recent years the appearance of clash- ing interests between individuals in the same occupation has been so conclusive that competition could not pass into com- bination within a State. This statement does not ignore ancient associations, mediaeval gilds, etc., etc. We are making a general comparison of ancient and modern extremes. People pursued the same occupation either without paying attention to each other, or, in case the competition became sharp, in unregulated rivalry with each other. There was group- consciousness of the same sort only which is present between two dogs fighting for the same bone. In order that the scat- tered and hostile persons pursuing the same vocation may be brought to form class groups, wath group interests that will TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 261 organize the primary individual interests, some sort of political diversion has been historically necessary. The political inter- est has had to act as a reagent to fuse the divergent persons carrying on the same gainful occupation. If these persons are stimulated by some common interest, say national, creedal, local, or whatever, they may form themselves into homoge- neous clusters, with distinct group-reaction against other simi- lar clusters. For instance, Christian artisans against Jewish artisans, or, in terms of modern conditions, union vs. non- union labor. That is, in order that a distinct vocational interest may develop, in contrast with the individual interests of the persons pursuing the vocation, the calling must pass into a corporate form. This occurs in the case of that sort of competition which the workers of a given vocation encountered with like workers in foreign States. Here is the origin of ancient and modern protective tariffs. That is, the foreign competition stimulates class-consciousness, and sense of common danger, among the competing workers at home. Their fears of each other are for the time forgotten in the fact of common peril. To ward off this threatening evil, they unite as one person, so far as the common interests go. They throw their influence into the arena of commercial politics. Again, persons pursuing the same vocation form themselves into political personalities, with the common purpose of procur- ing modifications or additions to the formal law of the State, which will be favorable to their vocation; and beyond that, to procure administrative action that will place them on a more favorable level as compared with other occupations. Thus the mediaeval gilds; the modern agricultural party, as against the manufacturing and commercial interests, in Germany; the populistic in conflict with the capitalistic interests in the United States; etc. For samples of the political power which voca- tional interests have exerted in the past we need cite only the Hanse League and the British East India Company as instances. 362 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY For convenience, we have roughly divided gainful occupa- tions into eight groups. We shall not discuss them seriatim, but in general the remaining paragraphs of this chapter will have the series in view. In every State the balance of occupa- tions will be prescribed by a variety of circumstances, such as geographic, climatic, and topographic conditions; historical tradition; genius of its people; the productivity of the soil; etc., etc. Thus the geographical location of England has given it a distinctively commercial development. Its wealth of coal and iron has made it a leader in manufacture, and at the same time given to commerce its necessary exchangeable material. On the other hand, the conformation of the surface has made Switzerland a country of hotel-keepers, and the vicissitudes of history have turned many of the Italians into showmen and beggars.^ \ Extractive industry and manufactures are fore- ordained by natural conditions. Commerce is cause and effect of both. Supply of raw material and of manufactured products creates effort to exchange them for goods not produced at home, or not so advantageously, and the commercial machinery thus promotes further increase of supply in order that it may have more goods to exchange. The other gainful occupations attach themselves to these cardinal classes (extraction, manufacture, and trade )^ As a rule, they do not count much in social struggle, until class status begins to become intolerable through actual or relative disadvantage, as compared with other classes in the State. For instance/ there has always been in the United States some mani- festation of political energy on the part of the agricultural population, whenever it has been suspected that the industrial or commercial interests were getting the better of them.^ Thus the opposition of the southern states to the tariff policy of the North was one element in the irrepressible conflict between the sections. Of course, this seemingly economic question pure and simple was obscured by the more obviously moral question of slavery,(but the agricultural 7's. the commercial and the " Loc. cit., p. 168. TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 263 manufacturing interest was as real a political factor as it has been in recent years in campaigns over the tariff issue. In the case of every State, or civic society, it is at least thinkable that there shall be a condition of working equilibrium between these interests, or, if not that, in societies too little advanced for such a condition, at least non-interference, if not harmony. This situation actually occurs when political antag- onisms are held in check, and when the different individual interests have free scope to seek satisfaction. Competition among individuals for gain of individual ends must, however, be on a purely individual basis. So soon as some persons join themselves with others, and form partnerships to make them- selves more effective in competition than others are alone, there comes into existence by this very fact a distinct struggle ele- ment which turns free competition into artificial political strife. In such a period of industrial harmony, gainful occupations sub- divide into countless branches. The people who carry them on constitute casual or organized groups, but rather for cultiva- tion of common affinities than for purposes of making them- selves felt in struggle with others. Such a condition of industrial peace and fellowship within occupations was most conspicuous in the most prosperous period of the Middle Ages. But there are latent antagonisms between one branch of industry and another which sooner or later place them in more or less ruthless opposition, as factions striving for antagonistic ends. The organization, structure, and activity of these fac- tions as such are rather irregular, spasmodic, and ineffective, so long as social struggle is well distributed. When, however, there arise real life-and-death problems, then industrial group- ings at once consolidate into distinct parties in conflict. Then the artisan class will group itself into trade organizations according to the kind of work produced. So also with the factory workers. The classes of extractive laborers, traders, and wage-workers divide along the lines of ability, property, methods of production, or common location. These spontane- ous or systematic groupings will at once begin, not only to 264 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY guard the interests of their members, but also to attack the positions of other industrial groups. If the general economic condition is relatively favorable, the friction between these groupings may continue, simply as action and reaction between vocations or localities. If, how- ever, there occurs some general industrial disturbance of a serious sort, such as a condition of overproduction, or a failure of the harvest, it is likely to turn out that these vocational groupings will be weakened or even destroyed. In their place the economic classes will enter the political arena, and carry on the conflict with greater energy. At this stage, and under these conditions, the question at issue is not the favorable or unfavorable economic ciicum- stances. The classes are rather up in arms to gain or keep political rights, and to get the power of the State to support their interests. It may be that the standard of life of an industrial class may be so seriously threatened that this class- struggle will reach the extreme of absolute hostility, CHAPTER XXI TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES (continued) At this point a distinction is necessary. There is a differ- ence between danger to an interest, or to the standard of Hfe represented by a particular class, and danger which may threaten the individual existence of the persons within the class. The two may in a given case depend more or less directly upon each other, but a moment's thought will show that they have different force and meaning in the social reaction. For instance: The land-owning interest is threatened if importa- tion tends to supply raw material to such an extent that rents fall; the professional begging interest is threatened by legal prohibition of begging; the small farming interest is threatened if taxation, and such other demands as feudal ser- vice or modern military duty, depress the possible standard of life below the traditions of the class; labor interests, if wages are cut below the customary scale ; etc., etc. While in each of these cases the danger points toward further dangers, till life itself may be in question, yet in themselves these pressures upon particular interests are not equally immediate attacks upon the universal subsistence interest of individuals. The landowner is not deprived of food by foreign competition. The beggar is not debarred from work when begging is for- bidden. In the case of the small farmer and the wage-worker, on the contrary, the changes supposed come very much nearer to matters of life and death. Other means of subsistence are fewer, even at a lower standard of life. Thus the class interest and the subsistence interest approach identity as the class remains in its standards of life close to the margin of subsist- ence. Furthermore, the fierceness of class-struggle will be determined in general by the same ratio. That is, in propor- 265 2(56 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tion as the class interest and the existence interest coincide, will the struggle of the class against other classes grow intense. ' This principle expresses the law which has always been illus- trated by the occasional peasant and artisan revolts. The other side of the law may be illustrated by the fact that there is struggle between the women of New York society only to the extent of cutting each other from their invitation lists; while the husbands of these women, in Wall Street, may be attacking each other's means of subsistence. It comes about in various ways that the different industrial classes find themselves in frank and sharp conflict within the State. Civic measures for the security of circulating capital, such as bankruptcy laws; measures to protect particular branches of industry, such as tariff laws; measures to secure real property ; policies of taxation ; and the conferring of corporate rights, whether economic or administrative — each and all may array classes in direct political hostility to each other. A further case of the same general fact is the challenge given and accepted, on the one hand, by combined industrial interests, and, on the other hand, by members of several minor industrial classes — as the wage-workers and the farmers, against the capitalists. ; There is usually conflict of interests between the three groups : producers of raw material, wage- workers, and manufacturers. Trade interests act as a bal- ance of power between extractive and manufacturing inter- ests. Trade may ally itself according to circumstances with either, but seldom, if ever, with labor, whether that of wage- earners or of independent artisans. Parasitism is normally isolated, but it may actually be encouraged by the productive interests as a measure of political warfare against other inter- ests, as when firms and corporations contribute to campaign funds with knowledge that the money will go largely to the support of tramp voters. It further occurs that branches of industry which have reached extraordinary development pose in the political arena in opposition to all other branches together. Thus the cattle TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 267 interest in certain South American countries may practically control the government. In Great Britain the textile industries, or the iron industries, may virtually dictate terms to the rest of the nation. In general, the political power of industrial classes depends upon their facility in combining their forces for political action. It is not a question of actual, but of controllable political power.^ The amount of available power for struggle in an industrial class varies, of course, with the personal equation of the members of the class. Leaving this out of consideration, however, and supposing that the units of two classes are equal to each other, man for man, in possible aggressive energy, the struggle-capacity of the classes to which they severally belong will vary, first, with the quantity of their wealth, either actual or potential; second, with the degree of physical contact between the members. Those industrial classes and branches of classes that com- mand considerable wealth have relatively little need of physical contact. By means of money they can put themselves in spiritual contact with each other. Thus the means of spiritual communication and exchange unify the members of the large land-holding class, the manufacturing and the commercial class. They become struggle-factors of the first rank. They can act with system, and can bring their whole power to bear at a single point. They are like a well-disciplined regiment opposed by crowds of unorganized civilians. We have been realizing this fact more and more in the United States, in the commercial and manufacturing era since the Civil War. Capital and the advantages of property give, to the classes possessing them, both legitimate means of calling govern- mental agencies to their assistance, and also more or less questionable power to enlist physical force to carry out their aims (e. g., the Pinkertons, armed cowboys, fights of street- and steam-railway builders, etc., etc.). On the other hand, the industrial classes that lack property '' Loc. cil.j p. 169. L^ 268 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY have only a minimum of concerted unity. They must for a long time act in an unintegrated fashion. They work at cross- purposes. They obstruct each other, and oppose no strong resistance to the united classes. Russia presents this situation in an extreme form today. The artisans, the small farmers, the small retail traders are least powerful of all. They are scattered in space. They have little contact with each other, and they have only limited means for establishing spiritual contact. On the other hand, the wage-earners in factories and mines, though possessing individually less property in general than the types last named, have the compensating advantage of physical contact. They are in close touch with each other. They share a common lot. They have simultaneously the same experiences and feelings. They can develop, not only group-consciousness, but campaign programs. They are thus more frequently in powerful battle array as strong factors in social conflict. For precisely opposite reasons, or because of separation in space, 'agricultural wage-laborers are usually the least powerful of all in social strife. > In this connection we may most conveniently refer to what I have called the pseudo-classes. Saved up labor becomes capital. While it is the source of endless confusion in economic theory to personify capital, and to treat it as though it were an active factor in the social reaction, there is a certain limited propriety and convenience in discussing the facts under this form. At this point we are not dealing with the ethics of the situation at all, but only with the process. We are merely singling out the active factors in the actual social struggle, and showing the mode of their action. Now, it is certain that capital plays a role in social struggle which makes it necessary for us to understand it as an impersonal, but not less real, party in conflict. In the first place, capital itself produces nothing. It earns nothing. This is contrary to general economic presumptions, and all forms of orthodox economic doctrine covertly or TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 269 expressly appropriate certain amounts of inference from the opposite assumptions to buttress their own positions. Capital puts in a claim to the spoils of struggle in the economic and political field, just as though it were an active factor in produc- tion. Capital claims for itself a portion of the product of industry. This is quite different from the valid claim of the capitalist as a laborer to his share of values produced. Inci- dental to its pushing of this claim, capital collects a share of industrial products in the form of interest, profits, dividends, etc. In other words, the capitalist collects, besides his personal dues as a laborer, another portion of products credited to the impersonal factor, capital. Not asking now whether this fact of interest-paying and interest-taking conforms to a real reciprocity of service, but leaving that question for later treatment, we have at present to do merely with the fact, as evidence of an interest that has been growing more and more significant in recent develop- ments of the social process. The capitalistic interest calls for regular payment, by the user of capital to the owner of capital, of a certain share of products. So far, all possessors of capital have identical interests, whether they are merely depositors in the five-cent savings banks, or holders of millions of govern- ment bonds. The farmer in Maine, who holds a $500 mort- gage on a Dakota farm, is a part of this support for the dis- tinct claims of capital, just as really as the operator in Wall Street. Indeed, the claims of capital are often more strenu- ously maintained by people whose income is derived chiefly from labor, than by those who draw their income wholly in the form of interest. The complexity of the social conflict is perhaps nowhere more observable than in connection with the phenomena of capital. So soon as the artisan, the small trader, the farmer, the wage-laborer, has a few dollars saved and put at interest, he is henceforth, like Desdemona, perplexed by a double duty. In spite of himself, he is now in league with interests hostile to his primary and chief interest. He is a laborer or a trader, in either case a laborer ; but in so far as he 270 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY saves the earnings of labor or trade, and invests them, he is a capitaHst. As a capitalist he wants that which, as a laborer or a trader, he opposes. The working balance between these con- flicting claims in the same persons has been represented at times by the legally punishable limit of usury, at other times by the customary rate of bank discount, and again by the down- ward pressure upon wages. The fact, however, that all posses- sors of capital, whether in large or small amounts, really form a contending political element in the State, emerges very dis- tinctly in case a large debtor, say the State itself, proposes to scale down the rate of interest promised when the loan was made. Then large and small creditors join as one man against the failure to observe the terms of the contract. All resort to every legal means within their reach, and even to revolution- ary means, to hold the State to its pledged obligations. ,. At this point we bring to view the line of division between politics proper, in the modern sense, and the primitive activity of the State as protector of the lives of all. I. e.^whensoever the machinery of the State begins to be used to protect one interest within the State against another, from that moment mischief is afoot.^ The Pandora's box of political evils is wide- open. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of political good and evil has been tasted. Henceforth the life of the State is a series of rapes of the law by the interest or interests within the State temporarily able to control the civic power. For weal or for woe, for better or for worse, justly or unjustly, the State lends itself to the protection and promotion, now of this interest, now of that, according as one or the other pre- vails for the time over the rest. The reality or the fiction of general interests comes into use, to justify the preferment of certain claims, assumed to be those of the public, over others, classified as those of individuals. " Considerations of public policy" — i. e., in plain language, the interests of those persons or classes that have^cquired the balance of power in the State — constrain the administration to protect the interests of that portion of capital which is concentrated in the hands of a few, TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 271 and which is consequently available for application on a large scale. That is, there comes a time when the pseudo-class, capital, differentiates the derived pseudo-class, massed capital. One is always tempted to indulge in large generalization at such a point as this; one feels like offering a formula of the relation of governments in general to the interests of concen- trated capital. One would like to be able to say : As .r is to 3;, so is administrative favoritism to the bulk of capital con- cerned. We must resist the temptation, for no such simple formula will suffice. Whether any law may later be made out or not, our plan calls at present merely for analysis of the fact of distinct interests, always more or less hostile, within the State. We have to point out the fact that massed capital actu- ally does react in such peculiar ways among the rival interests within the State that its distinctness as a political factor must not be overlooked. { Administrations inevitably begin to con- strue the law to the advantage of concentrated capital. The most familiar illustration is the use which capital devoted to railroad construction has been permitted to make of the right of eminent domain, and of peculiar charter privileges. From earliest to latest civic history, States have found it expedient to encourage commerce, to assist in the accumulation of treas- ure, to promote industry on a large scale. All of these create sinews of State power. In order to conciliate the capitalistic interests, and to have their aid in case the administration has special occasion for the use of money, it has always been cus- tomary to practice some sort of special promotion of their interests, as by monopolies, privileges, and peculiar rights to economic resources. All of these arrangements, of course, react in the way of placing all branches of labor, by so much, in a tributary relation to the favored capitalistic interests.^ Tt may nevertheless be impossible to show this in an individual case before the courts. The preferment of capital, and the involved handicapping - Vide, on the other side, a series of articles in Harper's Weekly, November-December, 1903, on " The Strangle Hold of Labor." 272 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of labor, is somewhat analogous with the inevitable over- payment of brain labor as compared with manual labor. The former must be had, and in order to have it, specially favorable conditions must be provided. Brains cannot work to good advantage, as a rule, in conditions which would suffice for development of the maximum muscular power of manual laborers. So with large capital, though of course in particu- lars that are not suggested by the analogy, "v, Capital must have certain security, certain prerogatives, certain scope, cer- tain powers to override the will of single individuals. Now, it is always an ethical question whether the game is worth the candle : whether the things gained by the power of capital are worth to the whole State what they may cost individual mem- bers of the State. This is not at present our concern. We are now merely trying to see exactly how the wheels do go round ; and it is not difficult to make out this monster driving- wheel of massed capital always to a certain extent deflecting the other interests within the State from their peculiar course. This influence of massed capital may not be discoverable and definable in the case of individuals. It is instinctively per- ceived, or at least suspected, by an almost unerring political instinct. When we call the instinct unerring, however, we must qualify the statement by adding that its inerrancy does not go beyond discovery of the fact itself. '^ In a capitalistic society there is almost universal perception that property interests are more jealously guarded than any of the interests in which property is secondary. ; People are aware that capital is the arbiter of legislation. At the same time, they may exaggerate and distort the part which capital plays, and may wholly mis- judge its total effect upon other interests. These considera- tions are all in point when we are examining selected social situations, or dealing with particular social problems. They are not prime factors in fundamental analysis of the social process. Meanwhile we may further observe certain prominent TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 273 characteristics of the capitaHstic interests.^ The capitahst is prone to deny the soft impeachment, whenever he is accused of legal or moral wrong in advancing capitalistic interests. He is sustained by an unfaltering sense of support by the State, and he comes to feel that honor and emolument go, in the case of his class at least, where honor and emolument are due. Because the capitalist wants the continued favor of the State, it is for his interest that public measures should always maintain programs to which the capitalist will be indis- pensable. It is for his interest that the State shall always be in need of money. He is interested in promoting vast under- takings far ahead of effective demand, except that stimulated by capitalistic instincts.! Capital is tempted to promote excess- ive and artificial commerce, overproduction at certain points, overpopulation at others. ' In these artificial conditions, capital is sure to find employment. It can exert its monopolies, collect its interest, control its incidental losses, and make them fall most heavily on the class of small capital or the various labor interests. We may notice also that capital is capable, like the strictly personal interests engaged in the social conflict, of conscious and premeditated wrong. We need not interpret the capital- istic mind as being an exception, psychologically, to the ordi- nary workings of human judgment. Very few men distinctly say to themselves: "This is wrong, therefore I will do it." Most men say to themselves : " What I propose to do rates as wrong in some people's minds. I am superior to their opinion. For me it shall be right." And forthwith men go on their egoistic way under the stimulus of a certain virtuous exhilara- tion. The capitalist is no exception to this rule; and the pressing problems of modern States all involve the question : To what extent have we entangled ourselves in policies unwar- rantably catering to capitalistic selfishness ? It is very certain that all the grievances alleged by other interests against capi- tal are not imaginary. They are by no means all merely the ' Loc. cit., p. 172. 274 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY necessary pressure of wholesome social growth upon the units affected by the growth. The nobility, at various periods of history, succeeded in freeing themselves from proportionate public burdens. In the same way, massed capital today has many ways of collecting all its dues, and of avoiding large shares of its liabilities. The sting of the social situation in countries like ours today is not so much the fact of unequal possessions, as the belief that these inequalities are partially due to evasion of just and legal responsibilities. The plain people are uneasy when they suspect that government itself is made the tool by which these evasions, and even deliberate plunderings, are accomplished. It is unnecessary to speak at length of the parallel situation in the case of the other pseudo-classes — massed manufacture, so far as it may be distinguished from massed capital, and massed landownership. In each case these interests clash immediately with those of the small operator in the same field, and there are analogous incidents of use and abuse of rela- tionship with the civic power in pushing the massed interests. We seem to encounter a different order of phenomena when we turn to the rank interests. These are of relatively little concern to Americans, except as we study comparative condi- tions in other States. In brief, however, the fact is that politi- cally recognized social ranks are merely the survivals of suc- cessful struggle for advantage in respect to the primary inter- ests. Men have tried to get the power of the civic and economic order permanently allied with themselves and their descendants, so that they would not be liable to the extremes of competition for means of subsistence, or for means of main- taining a relatively advanced standard of life. The larger the rights and customary claims of a rank in society, the farther they seem to be from any relation at all to primary needs. On the other hand, the people with the fewest privi- leges in the State seem to be concerned about those necessities of life alone to which the ranks are indifferent. The truth is, however, that this indifference is merely the result of TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 275 assured provision of the fundamental needs. The ranks have found a way of taking care of those preHminaries, so that they can devote themselves to something else. The masses are necessarily devoted to these fundamentals, because daily labor alone will secure them their daily bread. What the masses must secure by the hand-to-mouth process, the ranks have pro- vided, for by means of their privileged situation in the State. In short, rank, seen from the side of the individual interests that culminate in it, is genetically a labor-saving device, and is strictly a concession to the desire to escape disagreeable exertion. Seen from the side of the social interests that express themselves by sanctioning rank, it is an attempt to secure certain types of social efficiency. ( Every social rank strives,^ consciously or unconsciously, to assure its relative position in the economic and political process, so that, on the one hand, it may not sink back into the mass struggling for daily bread, and so that, on the other hand, it may have secure footing upon which to reach out after higher interests. Whatever be the form of civic societies, each of them tends to stratification into the same essential components. There are always, either developed or developing, three chief groups : (i) the privileged; (2) the middle class; (3) those without property, rights, or influence. This stratification takes place at first not politically, but industrially. After people have attained some degree of economic prosperity, they attempt to assure their position by action in political groups composed of people similarly situated. They try to make their economic advantage permanent by surrounding themselves with insti- tutional protection, or by providing themselves with means of X defeating encroachments on the part of envious neighbors. We discover the beginnings of this process the moment nomads settle in permanent abodes. The individuals who act as umpires or referees in quarrels, who lead in battle or in religious rites, try to secure their place for themselves and their families. They may build up castes. They may succeed only to the extent of establishing hereditary offices. In all cases 276 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the same principle is at work. On the other hand, the State includes individuals who have neither skill nor power nor influence. These are gradually relegated by the others to per- manent exclusion from the advantages of which the earliest skilled and powerful and influential had taken possession for their descendants. In the third and fourth stage of development of the politi- cal struggle, these two strata in the original stock are increased by the addition of the subject, or slave, stratum, taken in from conquered peoples. With this development we have the completed structure of ancient society, viz. : first, the influential, dominant rank; second, the free rank; third, the slave rank. Under the influence of various circumstances, of which Christianity was probably most decisive, chattel slav- ery was at length abolished, but the lowest stratum remained relatively strangers to property, rights, or influence. It was only within the nineteenth century that these strata obtained real political standing as recognized factors in European States. This process of adjusting, and even approximately equaliz- ing, ranks is constantly going on as one of the incidents of the social process. On the other hand, stratification of ranks is at the same time always and necessarily present. We find societies which seem to be homogeneous masses. They have not developed visible structure. One man is apparently just what every other man is. Even in comparatively late times, approaches to this situation are found, under exceptional cir- cumstances; e. g., the members of our American colonies at the earliest periods of settlement; the citizens of the French Republic, say from 1789 to 1793; the pioneers in California in 1849. It is needless to say that even in these cases there was a certain division of functions, and a certain embryonic stratification. Whether the division into ranks is clear or obscure, every ' society, whether ancient or modern, if it is in health, presently V betrays distinct tendencies toward differentiation of ranks. TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 277 There is a constant struggle against the prestige and privilege of those in superior social positions, on the part of those in lower positions. From the non-influential stratum a middle rank is always developing, and from this middle rank a quota is always forcing its way up into the privileged rank. The interest of the privileged rank is to keep its members as lim- ited as possible. To this end institutional devices are invented, such as nobilities, aristocracies, patriciates, corporations of various kinds, like those of feudalism, chivalry, ecclesiasti- cism, etc. In addition to these, arrangements of less rigid and legal sort are devised — modes of behavior and other externalities' which serve to separate the sheep from the goats. Species of this genus are forms of social intercourse, styles of dress, amusements ; in short, the whole realm of fashion.^ Ratzenhofer ventures the thesis that fashion is primarily not an affair of aesthetic taste at all, nor yet of love of novelty, but of politics : an incident and a means of social struggle. It is a method which the privileged adopt to make it difficult to intrude upon their preserves.^ The middle rank has no firm bond of coherence, because its members seize every oppor- tunity to become, or seem to become, members of the upper rank. They are likely, in consequence of this tendency, to be constant traitors to their own class. The lower strata are usually inclined to deny their separateness as a rank ; yet they constantly confront a condition of unsuccessful and exas- perating rivalry with the middle class. Consciousness of this situation spurs them, at irregular intervals, to spasmodic class eruptions for violent adjustment of opportunities. We may simply name, in passing, a specific differentiation of the rank interest, viz. : the dynastic interest. Although it has played a tremendously important role in history, we may restrict ourselves to bare recognition of it in the catalogue of social factors.® More important in modern times, and par- * Vide Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class. 'Wesen und Zweck, p. 175, ^ Loc. cit., p. 178. 278 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY ticularly in America, is what we have called the corporate interest? We must remember that we are engaged in a teleo- logical analysis of the social process, not a structural or merely a functional analysis. We are singling out separate interests, which create structure and stimulate function. At the same time, these interests combine in countless ways, and thus run across the structures which they produce. The con- tent of the interests has been chiefly in mind, therefore, in our previous classification. The present detail is rather a form which nearly all the foregoing interests may take. That is, ( people who are pursuing identical or even similar purposes tend to recognize themselves as composing a body in society, ■ distinguished by their interest, whatever it may be, from the rest of society. They are likely to keep that interest in mind, and to stimulate in each other attention to the interest. For instance, what we mean would be illustrated by the feeling which members of the criminal classes have for each other. Criminality is essentially unsocial. Criminals work in as small groups as possible. Yet each criminal feels a measure of fel- lov/ship with all other known criminals, and of antagonism with the law-abiding portions of society. Other illustrations are the teaching body ; the clerical body ; the civil-service body; the military, medical, legal, and naval professions; employers; employees; etc, etc. After all, this enumeration of interests is so general that it would have to be accurately particularized before it would be of service in solving actual social prol)lcms, or even in stating the precise terms of actual social situations. Such a list as we have given is valuable, as far as it goes ; but when we come to deal with the problems of civic progress in New York, or the problem of pedagogical reform in Chicago, or the problem of economic or political reform in Russia, we find that the situation has its setting within this general scheme of interests, to be sure; but we also find that the ' Loc. cil., i>. i8i. TYPES OF ANTAGONISTIC INTERESTS IN STATES 279 \ decisive interests are much more specific, and that these which we have enumerated are merely generic. Both commonwealths and communities develop peculiar interests, some of them merely differentiations of those that we have named, others more conveniently treated as distinct orders of interests; e. g., the university interest in Germany. On account of the tradition of academic freedom, the uni- versities are in a sense and degree exotic and independent — in, but not of, the general fabric of the State. In a word, Lculture everywhere in turn produces and destroys manifesta- tions of interest, as, for instance, the race interest in modern States. All of these interests, including the possible aims of particularly powerful individuals in the State, are expres- sions of struggle impulses. They are indexes of the parties implicitly and actually in conflict, as well as in co-operation, within the State. The initial task of the practical sociologist must always be to distinguish the operative interests in the society with which he is concerned, and then to make out an approximate scale of proportions in which the interests are effective. \ The practical sociologist must also know how to classify operative interests in the State according as they, on the whole, make for socialization or for unsociability,^ under the circumstances with which he is specifically concerned. Every interest is, in the first instance, exclusive. It strives for self- realization, and by so much resists the realization of conflict- ing interests. . The social problem is to give freest scope to those interests zvhich actually require for their realization the largest sum of other interests. The negative statement of the same thing, or at least a negative factor in the same process, may be expressed in this way : The social problem is to defeat all interests zvhich, in content or possibly even in form, subordinate general interests to special interests. As an index of how to reach judgments in this connection, we may say, the more immediate an interest is, the more unso- 28o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY cial it is. That is, if I am thinking of myself and my imme- diate interest in physical comfort, I shall want to eat, drink, and be merry, regardless of effects on my larger self or on my neighbors. I shall be a viciously unsocial factor. If a church is interested simply in itself as a church, with care only for its peculiar type of edification now, and forward- looking to the triumphs of a judgment day, when it can mar- shal a certain number of saved individuals as its credentials, that church is a separatist affair, if not antagonizing, at least abandoning, the rest of society, instead of helping to carry on the social process. On the other hand, interests are social in proportion as they contemplate themselves as at their highest power zvhen in co-operation with the social process. \ As a self-sufficient individual, I am a clog in the social process. As an individual finding my individuality incomplete except as it progress- ively completes the social process, I am a part of the material and the motive that make society. A State is normal or mature in proportion as the interests operating within it find their adjustment and completion in the progress of the common interest. Each interest is normal in proportion as it lends itself to the completion of the total civic interest. These, of course, are merely formal statements. They have to receive a content from criticism of concrete situations. They serve to place political interests abstractly, however; and in later portions of sociological theory they become available as measures of social value.^ * The theorem of this last paragraph has been supported, from a quite different point of view, by Professor Karl Pearson, in a lecture delivered at Newcastle, England, November 19, 1900, and published under the title, National Life from the Standpoint of Science. The main contention is not affected one way or the other by possible defects in the author's application of the principle to questions of concrete policy in the Boer war, then in progress. CHAPTER XXII TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE Reviewing the steps of our argument, we have passed from the generaHzation, " A process is going forward," to analysis of principal elements in the process. We have had recourse to the concept of " interests " in the individual, com- bining to make him a social factor. We have observed the more obvious groupings of individuals thus constituted, and have noted their one common dynamic trait, viz. : whether the interest in question is an elementary individual desire, like hunger, or the sex instinct, or the race-antipathy in a specified savage ; or a highly complex purpose, like the territorial policy of an aggressive State; it is at bottom exclusive, peremptory, and insistent upon being satisfied.^ We repeat that, in the nature of the case, our analysis is and must be qualitative throughout. We are not even attempt- ing to characterize the precise combination of qualities pre- sented by the actual interests in any concrete social situation, because that is work for special rather than general sociology. We are simply saying from step to step : " Of such is the social process." We are discovering the categories of all degrees which must be employed if we think any portion of the social process as it is. It is proper once more to put all the emphasis possible on the key-value of our results thus far. In fact, if sociology has found out anything at all, what we have said in terms of inter- ests is the clue to the whole discovery. To put it in the other way : when we fairly have working use of this clue, interests, * " Wie alles Leben, so ist alle Geschichte ein Kampf, und der Kampf fiihrt in seinem nachsten Erfolge selten zur Harmonic, haufiger zur Unterdruckung des Besiegten und zur Tyrannei des Siegers. So ist es nicht bloss bei dem Kampfe der Individuen und Volker, so ist es auch bei dem Kampfe der Ideen." (Gierke, Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht, Vol. I, p. 2.) 281 282 ' • GENERAL SOCIOLOGY we have the open sesame to all the secrets that sociology is likely to detect for a long while to come. As we have said, interests run back in one direction into the psychological mechanism of interest. Since analysis of psychological procedure finds interest to be the motor of the mechanism, it is evident that the psychologists and the sociolo- gists are confirming each other in a promising and prophetic way. On the other hand, when we turn from psychological or subjective analysis to sociological or objective analysis, we have no clearer light to throw upon the concrete process of human association than that which displays it as a rivalry, and a competition, and an adjustment of interests; the term ^ in the latter case being used in the objective sense. The latest . / word of sociology is that human experience yields the most and the deepest meaning when read from first to last in terms of the evolution, expression, and accommodation of interests.^ ^ It is an important sign of the times that the most distinctly American school of history which has developed in the United States has been following this clue. Professor Turner, of the University of Wisconsin, has for nearly twenty years been studying American history in terms of the interests which have contended with each other for political and industrial power. The first monograph to attract wide notice was a study of the distribution of votes on the adoption of the federal constitution. The general hypothesis was that the farming interests opposed the constitution, while the commercial interests favored it. In a similar way, Professor Turner and his students have applied this test of interests to American experience down to the latest presidential campaigns. I am indebted to Professor Turner for references to some of the more important of these studies : C. McCarthy, Anti-Masonic Party, Winsor Prize Essay (" American His- torical Association Reports," 1902, Vol. I). N. B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights, Winsor Prize Essay (" American Historical Association Reports," 1901, Vol. II). W. A. Schafer, Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina j(^" American Historical Association Reports," 1900, Vol. I, pp. 237-446). (Professor Turner adds that both Dr. Phillips and Dr. Schafer completed their work as graduate students at Columbia University. The traces of the influences of the Wisconsin idea are sufficiently evident, however, in their monographs.) T. C. Smith, Liberty and Free Soil Parties (" Harvard Historical Studies," Vol. VI). TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 283 In order to understand the economic factors only in one of our national campaigns since 1875, it would be necessary to get an accurate schedule, lx)th by name and by relative political influence, of the pecuniary interests that appeared before the Committee of Ways and Means, and secured recog- nition in spite of other interests that actively opposed them or that had no representation. In November. 1901, a so-called Reciprocity Convention convened in Washington, It was a unique object-lesson in the antagonism of pecuniary interests and in the balancing of interests, or, as free-traders would say, "the conspiracy of interests," in any tariff. In that con- vention it became evident that each protected interest was like every other in wanting to hold on to all it had got, and in willingness that concessions should be made ad libitum by all the other interests. In general, sociological insight is a matter of ability, first, to make out the several interests actually operative in a given social situation ; second, to calculate the relative force of the many interest-factors in reaction with each other in given concrete situations. This very form of statement implies not merely that our present conceptions of sociological method^ave left behind the schematologies of Comte and Spencer and Schafifle, but that they, reject in advance any attempt to reduce the social process to an operation of a single force. ^ Nor do we think of the (Dr. Smith was for one year fellow in history at the University of Wis- consin, but took his degree at Harvard.) O. G. Libby, Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States {Bulletin, University of Wisconsin, Vol. I, No. i). Professor Turner has papers that show the results of his method : International Monthly, December, 1901, Vol. IV, p. 794; September, 1896, p. 289; Atlantic Monthly, April, 1877, Vol. LXXIX, p. 433; January, 1903, Vol. XCI, p. 83. Dr. Libby has studies of sectional influence in smaller areas : Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy, Vol. XIII, p. 188; Wisconsin Historical Col- lection, Vol. XIII, pp. 330 ff. ^ For instance, in the sense in which Marx and his followers predicate " the materialistic interpretation of history " — if, indeed, they can be pinned 284 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY social process as chiefly the operation of any sort of machinery. It is rather the formation and action of human feeHngs, wants, purposes, for which the machinery merely serves as a medium. The social process is a drama of hiunan endeavors to express the whole gamut of interests, zvhile every effort toward expres- sion tends incessantly to impart to each interest a new variant force. This last qualification is important as a preliminary to the analysis that follows. In spite of ourselves, in such a general survey as this we must describe the social process very largely in terms of the mechanism of the process, rather than of the content of the process. We are in danger of stopping short, after all, with mere analysis of instruments, or channels of forces, instead of pressing on to inspection of the spiritual forces themselves that use the visible devices. As a partial corrective of this tendency we insist again that every motion in the social process is merely an index of some variation of human interest which is behind the motion, and attempting to get a better leverage wherewith to vindicate itself. Our atten- tion to the visible motions is merely a means of approaching the view-point from which it will be easy to inspect the spirit- ual reality that impels the motion. With this understanding, we proceed to notice some of the more obvious ways in which certain orders of interests express themselves. We are still dealing with interests that figure in civic experience. Ratzenhofer's plan of analyzing the social process, first in its conflict phase, may be indicated by the following scheme : ^ I. The Phenomena of Parties in the State (Sec. 19). A. The composition of parties. B. Molecular changes in parties. C. Party affinities. D. The fighting strength of parties. down to a precise meaning for the i)hrase. Cf. Masaryk, Die Grundlagen des Marxismus, pp. 52-168. * With slight variations, this is a literal abstract from the table of contents of Wesen und Zweck. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 285 E. The relation of party programs to fighting strength. F. The " desperate " vs. the " radical." G. Stability of parties. H. The fundamental antagonism of parties. I. The dissimilarities of parties. J. " Open " vs. " secret " parties. K. The party the fulcrum of interests. 2. The Interdependence of Political Bodies in the State (Sec. 20). A. The political significance of the government. B. The State vs. the government. C. The administration as a party in conflict. a) The ultimate sources of political power. b) Despotism the veto of politics. c) The reaction of popular interests upon despotism. d) Law a stimulus of latent civic power. e) Constitutional law shifts the basis of morality. f) Constitutional law an implied equilibrium of interests. g) Distinction in principle between absolute and constitutional State. h) Governmental varieties under the two forms. i) Partisanship of governments under constitutional forms, (i) Partisanship of dynasties. (2) Partisanship of armies. (3) Partisanship of civic officials. /) Partisanship of religious bodies. k) Partisanship of aristocracies. /) Partisanship of economic classes. (i) Landed property. (2) Handicrafts. (3) Manufacture. (4) Capital. (5) Trade. (6) The submerged classes. m) Summary. 3. The Principal Parties in the State and their Dynamic Rela- tions (Sec. 21). A. Integration of interests by compromise. B. Resulting tri-partite organization of the State. C. The political reasons for compromise. D. Subordinate reasons for compromise. E. Degrees of factional attachment to parties. F. Variations of factional influence in parties. 286 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY G. The Zeitgeist as a distinct political factor. H. Summary. 4. Political Leadership (Sec. 22). 5. The Governing Idea of Political Groups (Sec. 23). 6. Ambiguity as a Means of Political Struggle (Sec. 29). 7. Terrorism as a Campaign Device (Sec. 30). 8. The Time Element in Social Struggle (Sec. 33). 9. Political Tactics (Sec. 34). 10. The Tactical Results of Success or Failure (Sec. 35). 11. Review and Summary (Sec. 36). To restate our valuation of Ratzenhofer's work : It is the most comprehensive sketch of plans and specifications for objective analysis of the whole social process, considered as an interplay of interests, that has thus far been offered. It does not complete the task of interpreting the social process, but it goes farther than any previous attempt toward fairly beginning the work of interpretation. For the present it is best worthy of all the schemes in sight to serve as a pioneer survey upon which to base more critical study of concrete social situations. Each title in the foregoing schedule may be regarded as a demand for a specific investigation. Ratzenhofer has done his part toward the necessary inquiry. He has formu- lated propositions under each title which may stand as tenta- tive conclusions until superseded. In the resume that follows we attempt to indicate rather the nature of the relationships in question than the particular theorems about them which Ratzenhofer has proposed. The interests that lodge in the individuals who compose a State sooner or later prompt those individuals to form ^ groups within the State, in promotion of common purposes, by offense and defense against opposing or retarding interests. In general, we may call the contacts between these groups the relations of parties.^ The term " parties " for the present includes such minor groupings as factions, cliques, coteries, cabals, which are distinct factors in the rivalry of interests within the State. These groups, larger or smaller, vary in '■' " The Phenomena of Parties in the State," Wesen und Zweck, sec. 19. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 287 their harmony or disharmony with the main interest of the State, and thus in their stabihty or instabihty. I, A. The composition of parties. — The partisans are the atoms, so to speak, which combine, by virtue of affinity of interests, to form the groups (molecules). In the party, how- ever, the individuality even of the single person always tends to assert itself.*^ The history of social movements within creedal parties illustrates the universal principle. Dissent, if not schism, is always present, though perhaps impotent. Moreover, every interest intermediate between food and creed may act as a variant of the individuals within the party. I, B. Molecular changes in parties. — There is no con- stant structure or status of the molecules, for reasons sug- gested under the last head. There is incessant movement of the individuals. ( When interests which earlier had less influ- ence within the party come to have more influence, the party bond may no longer hold them together; what the chemists call a decomposition occurs. (The split of the Jacobins into the Radicals and the Feuillants.) A new political situation follows, since these changes in one party react more or less upon all the contemporary parties.'^ I, C. Party affinities. — The bond of union of a party is always to a certain extent double; viz.: first negative — i. e., absence of demands of the individuals upon each other, or, otherwise expressed, refraining of the members from crossing each other's interests; second, positive — i. e., all the mem- bers must be interested in acting together to get something that they do not want to miss. ("The cohesive power of pub- lic plunder.") ^ This agreement of purposes among the indi- ' Contra Gumplowicz, Grundriss der Sociologie. '' Throughout this discussion variations of the term " politics " connote all sorts of contact of interests within the State — "politics" in the Greek sense, rather than in the modern usage. ° In an earlier portion of his discussion Ratzenhofer introduced two terms, ere of which we have already explained ; cf. p. 237 above. They do not mean much to the American reader unless he is familiar with the vocabulary of German political philosophy. These two terms, however, stand for important 288 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY viduals in parties is rare, except upon the basis of the same political principle, and usually also upon the basis of the same political system. (Thus in ecclesiastical parties, papacy, episcopacy, presbytery, congregation, etc.) It is therefore of prime importance for leaders of parties to understand whether an interest has a progressive or a retrogressive tendency, and which principles in the party are represented. The character which the party stands for in principle is determined by the nature of its interest, and, as a rule, is easily recognized. So soon, however, as it comes to a question of action in detail, it is impossible to assume that the principle represented by the interest in question will be completely decisive. (For instance, the Republican party in the United States is supposed to stand for the federal principle, and the Democratic party for local sovereignty — autonomy. Analysis of arguments and votes in the Senate during the last two or three sessions would tend to show that the idea lacks much of precision.) I Every political party may temporarily adopt tactics that make against the fundamental tendencies of the party/ (Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase; Cleveland's Venezuela pol- icy; nineteenth-century liberal legislation by the Conserva- tives in England; etc., etc.). i^At the same time, the "system" which is relied upon in general as the means of a party is a more uncertain platform for the unity of a party than its more fundamental "principle." (For instance, the feudal and cleri- cal parties in Austria support the national parties in their struggles for autonomy only in a half-hearted fashion, while they stand together as reliable allies toward each other; both being reactionary and retrogressive parties.) I, D. The fighting strength of parties. — If we can find social categories. First, political principles, for which we may substitute the term " tendencies " and not go far astray. Four political tendencies or principles are distinguished by Ratzenhofer, viz.: (i) the progressive, (2) the retrogressive, (2) the moderate, (4) the radical. Second, political "sys- tems," i. e., the mode of putting the political principle in action; viz.: (i) autonomy, (2) centralisation, (3) federation. With this explanation the next proposition is intelligible. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 289 out, in a given case, the party conditions, with the interests which create them, and the poHtical situation, we have in those facts a certain measure of the relative power, or fighting strength, of parties. Yet it would be a mistake to believe that we may form a final conclusion as to the probable success of a party from these factors. (The fighting strength of a party — i. e., its actual force in the social reaction — depends not merely upon the number of its adherents and the wealth or the logic at its command, but rather upon the actual force which it can bring to bear through the fighting courage that it can command for struggle. By " fighting strength " is meant in each case the available force of persons who can be relied upon to resort at last to extreme measures of offense and defense admissible in the species of fighting in question,^ I, E. The relation of party programs to lighting strength. — A program of practical action will, first, group factions into consolidated parties, and, second, determine the amount of their available energy. The former element makes up the material extent of the party; the latter fixes its fighting strength. Every political group, faction, or party, consid- ered in itself, possesses a certain nucleus of fighting force. This nucleus consists of those partisans who will go to the last extreme for the party interest; that is, the irreconcilables. Around this nucleus there are gathered the remaining adher- ents of the party, whose attachment varies in strength from that of these irreconcilables to almost utter indifference. (^In every party there are certain members whose devotion to the cause might be symbolized by the martyr's crown; but the constancy of the remainder shades off toward the type of devo- tion which exhausts itself at five o'clock teas. For effective action, party plans must take accurate account of the relative numbers of the different types of adherents. • In one case it may be armed force ; in another, appeal to the courts ; in another, filibustering by a parliamentary minority ; in another, church schism ; in another, scratching from the calling list ; etc., etc. The whole philosophy of this problem is correctly represented in caricature in Mr. Dooley on the Irish Question. 290 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY I, F. The "Desperate" vs. the "Radical." — The nucleus of irreconcilables referred to above must not be confounded with the " radicals." The two types may be associated, but the latter are by no means sure to pursue their radicalism to its logical extreme. They may lack the courage of their con- victions or of their sympathies.^*' I, G. The stability of parties. — In spite of fluctuations of zeal, changes in membership, and variations of surrounding circumstances,, experience proves that parties and their group- ings possess astonishing stability. ) This stability grows out of the constancy of needs within the spheres of interest. (A party is an incarnate want, and so long as that want remains unsat- isfied, or so long as the means of satisfying the want may be attacked, the persistence of the party, in some form or other, is assured.^ ^ I, H. The fundamental otitagonisni of parties. — Speaking in terms of the essential incompatibility of interests, which we have called " absolute hostility," there can in general be no reconciliation between antagonistic parties. The antithesis is always absolute, and usually it is effective. In case a concilia- tion occurs, it is the work of practical tact, which temporarily induces grou]:>s otherwise hostile to combine their efforts for an end more immediately desirable than satisfaction of their enmity.) Social leadership accordingly makes large demands upon the judgment of the leader. He is bound to understand to a nicety the interests essential to his party, in order that he may know the limits beyond which it will not and cannot go. I, I. The dissi)iiilarities of parties. — Names and analogies are not to be trusted as means of inferring the traits of parties '" For instance, the Girondists vs. the Jacobins ; the German Kateder- Socialisten vs. the Engels, Bebel, Liebknecht type of political leaders ; the Irish Home Rulers vs. the Clan-na-Gael ; the Russian Liberals vs. the Terrorists. " For example, the centuries of antagonism between Guclphs and Ghibel- lines, i. e., in the rough the demand for papal vs. imperial control ; the legitimists vs. the modernists in England and France ; the ritualists vs. the spiritualists in every denomination in Christendom. ( TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 291 in one State from apparently similar parties in another. The most obvious instance is that of the Democratic party in the United States in contrast with the Social Democrats of Germany. The Liberals in England have scarcely anything beyond academic truisms in common with the Liberals of Russia. The same thing is true of " liberal " or " secessionist," and " conservative " parties in the art of different countries, and there are parallels in all religious bodies. The same qualifica- tion applies in detail through all the ramifications of party structure. I, J. "Open" vs. "secret" parties. -\ln the constitutional State parties are always public, because real party power in such States depends upon publicity. The necessity and the certainty of secret parties are inversely as the amount of con- stitutional liberty. The Terrorist party — if it may be so called — in Russia today is characteristic of an extreme situa- tion. The Ku Klux Klan, in the "black belt" of the United States immediately after the Civil War, illustrates the same principle. Professor Simmel has analyzed secrecy as a social factor in a paper to appear in the eleventh volume of the Ameri- can Journal of Sociology. I, K. The party the fulcrum of inter ests.^^ — Earlier in our discussion we found that the social process is primarily the formation of groups.^ ^ Our later analysis has tended both to confirm the fact and to impress the importance of the fact. Life is assertion of interest; it is community of interests; it is association or grouping, both as effect and as means of asserting interests. ^' We merely set down a more specific ren- dering of this general truth when we conclude these theorems about the phenomena of parties in the State with the proposi- tion : The party furnishes to the partisan the chief arena of activity in the State; i. e.,[it is only in the group, larger or smaller, that the interests of individuals can reach their maxi- *^ As a case book for use at this point, vide Ostrogorski, Democracy and the Organisation of Political Parties (in Great Britain and the United States ; 2 vols.). ^^ Chaps. 12-16. 292 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY mum expression. ' This perception has, of course, many bear- ings, in many directions. Among them not least is the corol- lary (T/ia/ State is the strongest in zvhich the spirit of action by groups is most highly developed. 2, A. The political significance of the government}^ — We have recognized, first, the interests, and then the parties which incarnate the interests, as the elements which come together in struggle in the State, each with a disposition which, if unchecked, would make all the others subservient. We have so far only hinted at the reasons which induce these warring factions to depart from the path of absolute hostility; i. e., to close a truce in obedience to the purposes of the State, or at least to conduct their struggle within the lines of civil law. In order to bring this about, an administrative power must come into action. It must be a power wnth actual energy enough to cope with all the parties. This power, an outflow of the general interest in holding social struggle short of actual violence, is the government. That is,cone among the many interests actually reacting in the social process is the governmental interest. , In a sense, this is merely one of the interests like all the rest which have to be correlated in a work- ing equilibrium. The relative importance of this interest, and the prominence of the role it must play in the social process, are matters of detail which vary incalculably according to combinations of circumstances in the State in question. 2, B. The State vs. the government. ^^—T\\^ government is the machinery either imposed upon, or elaborated by, the State to exercise the function of control. ; Like the individuals composing the State, and the State itself,(the government of a State and the functions of government are not static entities. They are incessant becomings. Political philosophies still in vogue formulate the functions of government as though they were as fixed as the relations of the angles of a right-angled triangle. In so far as we arc aware that human association " Loc. cit., sec. 20. "We have already nncle this distinction: vide chap. 18. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 293 is an evolving process; we see in governments past and present, and we foresee in governments future, shifting relations in detail to the States in which they function. No one can fore- tell, for instance, to what extent the evolution of the social process may change governmental control from bare prevention of evil-doing to leadership in correlation of civic activities for constructive well-doing. Always and everywhere, however, in the last analysis, the State is the whole, while the govern- ment is a tributary agency functioning within the whole. In point of fact, the law administered by the government is always an expression of the will of those interests which are for the time being dominant. Changes in the law and in the spirit of administration are consequently always affairs of the readjustment of interests within the State.^*^ Close analysis of the acts of any administration will show that all the adverse criticisms passed upon it amount to charges that gov- ernment has taken sides with interests to the prejudice of other interests. A first-rate historical problem is presented by the mass of such indictments always on record against govern- ments. 2, C. The administration as a party in conflict. — On the one handj then, the administration is primarily the protector of the civic law against all interests that would evade or change it. For that very reason the administration is, on the other hand, in perpetual conflict, covert or overt, with all the interests that are opposed to the law, either in letter or in spirit. /Accordingly, the government is in form the opponent of all parties. In fact, the government must serve as executor or leader of the party that is for the time being dominant in the State.\This fact is both a challenge and a clue to analysis of concrete relations between governments and States. 2, C, a). The ultimate sources of pozver. — It is a truism that the ultimate source of all political power, whether in despotic '" That is, in so far as the social process in the State is a struggle-process. We are now attending to this factor only. We shall presently consider the other main factor in social evolution. It necessarily modifies the above formula. 294 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY or democratic States, is the people. Political evolution sooner or later places a certain amount of the physical power pre- viously distributed in a population at the disposal of a gov- ernment.^^ The latter accordingly possesses the means of maintaining civic order, and a minimum observance of mo- rality and law. The distinctive peculiarity of the government is that the portion of political power at its disposal is arranged in somewhat systematic fashion, while the interests opposed to the government are, as a rule, relatively unorganized. The government can bring its power to bear more directly upon a particular struggle. Hence a considerable element of the power of a government. It is capable of misuse, but failure to use it is prima facie evidence of an abnormal condition in the State. 2, C, b). Despotism the veto of politics. — In a despotism the government lays claim to the whole power of the State for itself. Despotism assumes that the government is the proper organ of all the interests in the State; i. e., that the people have no interests entitled to consideration except as they find voluntary expression in the administration. Despotism is accordingly so far forth arrest of the social process. On the other hand, there are doubtless cases of the "benevolent despo- tism" (Prussia under Frederic William I and Frederic the Great) which, in a longer and wider view of the process by which they are to be measured, must be counted as stages of adaptation to the conditions of international struggle to a degree which affords compensation for relative repression of minor interests. 2, C, c). The reaction of popular interests upon despotism. — Wherever consciousness or instinct of the power of non- governmental interests is roused in a people, effort presently follows to make these interests felt, both reciprocally by their immediate agents (community of interests), and as a limita- tion of administrative rights. This reaction is the first assur- ance that the State will hold to its proper task. Government "This is virtually repetition of chap. i8. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 295 in consequence comes under the constraint of popular inter- ests and of the parties in which they are incarnated. There arises a demand for law to which government as well as people shall be responsible (constitution), A modern development, closely analogous in principle, is that of trade unions. Their implicit struggle is for industrial constitutionality in the place of absolutism. 2, C, d). Lazv as a stimulus of latent civic pozvcr. — One of the functions of (constitutional) law is to serve as a basis on which any and every popular interest may rest secure, even if it is opposing the administration. This legal mediation between interests, including the governmental interest, has assumed the most diverse forms. So soon as this mediation is a reality in any form, its effects begin to appear in the emergence of popular energies which had before been latent. Be the constitutional guarantees never so meager, they afford new encouragement to the expression of popular interests. The political situation is henceforth of necessity a condition of progressive emancipation of interests. There can be no permanent sanction in the social process for the exclusion of any interest from its share of freedom. No political oppres- sion is more onerous than that which enfranchised interests are permitted to exert with reference to interests still excluded from legal protection. (Hence the American War of Inde- pendence; the three great stages of electoral reform in England; the progress of industrial, scientific, and religious emancipation throughout the world.) 2, C, e). Constitutional lazv shifts basis of morality. — In the constitutional State, crime in general, political crime not excepted, must be rated as immorality. The correctness of this classification is directly as the extent of enfranchisement of interests. In the absolute State the single individual who antagonizes the government may be regarded, both at the time and in the judgment of history, as a morally justified political champion, attacking intolerable oppression. A con- stitution, however, indicates what must be viewed as crime 296 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY according to the moral estimate of the people. In other words, a constitution being present, political crimes take on an immoral aspect. Other alternatives have been provided. In the absolute State, government is an end unto itself. It is an interest threatening all other interests. In the constitutional State the partisan attitude of the government toward the people vanishes in principle. The social fact thus called to mind is virtually the same to which St. Paul referred with slightly varied implications : What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid! Nay I had not known sin, but by the law, for I had not known lust, except the law had said, " Thou shalt not covet." .... For without the law, sin was dead .... But when the commandment came sin revived . . . . " Morality is observance of a certain code recognized by the group as suitable. So long as government and laws are not recognized as suitable, conduct regardless of government, or subversion of government, may count merely as physical resist- ance of superior force trying to maintain itself in the place of rightful government. Such conduct may be denounced as crime by the de facto government, but it will not be so rated by the State as a whole, nor will it be classed as immorality. It is not violation, but observance of the order regarded as fit (e. g., the Boers, November, 1901, resisting the British gov- ernment in spite of Lord Kitchener's proclamation declaring them traitors; the Ku Klux Klan under negro domination in the reconstruction period ; this is doubtless the psychology of much of the lynching in the United States today). When, however, a consensus has been developed that a certain con- stitutional order is adapted to the situation, and fair to the interests involved, it becomes violence against the moral sense of the community to disregard that order. Lawlessness is now both crime and immorality. 2, C, /). Constitutional lai\.' an implied cquilibrimn of interests. — The possible antithesis between government and people disappears in proportion as all interests are admitted " Rom. 7:7f!. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 297 to legal participation in the struggle for existence. Struggle in the constitutional State, in spite of heat and passion, bars absolute hostility. If this extreme antagonism appears, it is prima facie evidence of belief that some interests have over- ridden the constitution, or of crime on the part of the persons displaying the extreme hostility. The typical working of the social process progressively eliminates possibility of such epi- sodes, by assuring to each interest its proportionate freedom within the State. 2, C, g). Distinction in principle between absolute and con- stitutional State. — There are really only two State forms; viz., first, that in which the source of authority is presumed to be in the government, or in some superhuman power speaking only through the government; second, that in which the source of authority is presumed to be in the people. 2, C, g). Governmental varieties under the tivo forms. — Within the two types of States the following varieties of gov- ernmental forms occur in the case of monarchies and republics, viz. : L Within the Absolutistic Form of the State. o) Monarchical absolutistic (Russia). b) Despotic (Persia). c) Oligarchic absolutistic republic (one-time Venice). d) Democratic absolutistic republic, or dictatorship (Rome at certain periods, and several South American states). II. Within the Constitutional Form of the State. a) The constitutional monarchy of the autocratic type (Prussia). h) The monarchical parliamentary constitutional State. (i) On the aristocratic basis (Great Britain). (2) On the democratic basis (Norway), c) Parliamentary republic on the centralized and democratic basis (France), d) Democratic republic on the autonomous basis (Switzerland)." 2, C, i). Partisanships of governments under constitutional forms. — Although the constitutional State seems to give the " Vide Wesen und Zzveck, Vol. I, pp. 198, 199. The above scheme is Ratzenhofer's entirely. As criticism of it belttngs primarily within the scope of political science, we present it without comment. 298 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY government a distinctly limited status, yet even in such a State exercise of the public power becomes more or less an interest of the persons intrusted with power, and consequently these functionaries are never entirely free from the characteristics of a distinct party. This is true of the chief magistrate of a republic.^'^ It is very much more true of the sovereign in an unlimited monarchy. 2, C, ;'). Partisanship of religious bodies. — Until recent times, and in most States still, all religions have been among the factors of partisan struggle, and they have been either part- ners or opponents of the government. In proportion to the priestly character of a religion will be the value of its support or the gravity of its opposition to other interests. Conceding the claim of " divine right " for both monarch and church, harmony between the two factors is practically irresistible. Opposition between them must enthrone the one or the other as de facto supreme.^ ^ If ecclesiastical parties are not devoted to the interests of the dynasty against the rest of the State, or to some other State interest as opposed to the dynasty, the explanation is likely to be that their center of gravity is an interest outside of the State.^^ In this case the communicants of that church are in so far to be subtracted in computing the power of the ™ After Mr. Roosevelt had been seven weeks in the presidential office, one of the most acute political observers in Washington wrote to the paper which he represents (December i, 1901) to the effect that Roosevelt "is likely to be an ideal president, but there is doubt whether he will be enough of a partisan to satisfy his party interests and lead his party." That is, this phenomenon of the partisanship of a democratic chief magistrate is a distinct force to be reckoned with, and it may work either for weal or for woe. From the stand- point of party discipline, it is irregular, impertinent, intolerable for an elected chief magistrate to serve his party best by serving his country best. On the day of Mr. Roosevelt's inauguration for the second term (May 4, 1905) the New York Evening Post editorially expressed the belief that Mr. Roosevelt's most praiseworthy qualities are likely to involve him in difficulties with his party, like those for which history will honor Mr. Cleveland. " Cf. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire. "Thus the War of Investitures; the Kulturkampf in Prussia (1873); anticlericalism in France in the period of President Faure. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 299 State. Such of that power as actually counts in with the State is not of ecclesiastical origin, but it is derived from other interests which have their fulcrum within the State. 2, C, k). Partisanship of aristocracies. — In spite of a general law of affiliation between nobilities and dynasties, the former always constitute a distinct separatist element, more or less energetic according to circumstances. If the aristocracy is an active political factor, its instinctive aim is supreme con- trol.^^ The position of a political aristocracy is, however, more and more equivocal. It has neither the justification of mon- archy, on the one hand, nor of democracy, on the other. It instinctively conducts itself as a vanishing quantity.^^ On the other hand, every survival of a nobility by patent stands as a reminder of a social condition in which the original holder of the patent was reckoned as useful to the State in discharging some sort of function. 2, C, /). The partisanship of economic classes. — This sub- ject of course covers the whole range of relations for which such terms as " social economics " have been invented. All the phenomena are here included in which conflicting interests in means of obtaining material goods are the primary source of strife within the State. In this summary it is in order merely to point out the reality of the distinct economic interests and to emphasize their reciprocal hostilities. At no point in analy- sis of the social process is there more evident need of recon- sideration than in connection with conventional doctrines of the industrial harmonies. Considered as one continuous technical process, viz., extraction of raw material from nature, and passing it through the various stages of transformation till it is ready to be con- sumed by laborers, who will thereby be fitted to keep up their part in the productive process, there is actual interdependence of all concerned, from the farm laborer plowing the ground for food crops, to the banker guarding the money supply ^ Witness the grand dukes vs. the Czar in Russia today. " Thus the British House of Lords. 300 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY required in transporting the crop, or in buying other raw material which other workers may transform into goods to be exchanged for food from the farms. As a mechanism for turning out wealth, the industry of a State demands harmony of the parts co-operating in the industrial process, no less than a battleship needs a maximum of efficiency, and a mini- mum of frictioUj in each element of its structure and equip- ment. But a State is not literally a mechanism for producing the largest possible output of wealth, any more than it is a battle- ship. In order to produce the amounts and kinds of wealth which the physical well-being of the State requires, the people must adapt themselves to the technical necessities of the indus- trial system by means of which they produce economic goods ; but the part which the people perform as producers by no means corresponds with the wants that they feel as consumers. As claimants upon the output of industrial co-operation, the people are, both as classes and as individuals, irrepressibly inharmonious. It would not be true to say of civilized men that any class, if left to itself, would take the whole output of wealth, and leave none to the other interests. It is approximately true, however, that each class, if left to itself, would eagerly settle, from its ozvn point of viciv, terms by which division of wealth between itself and all other interests should be regulated. There is not and cannot be harmony between people as claim- ants to the product of industry. The unfonnulatcd and uncon- scions struggle today, in all industrial States, is for constitu- tionalism in economic enterprise, just as the struggle of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was for constitu- tionalism in politics. That is, each economic class wants a fundamental economic order which will contain checks and balances adequate to keep other classes from usurping eco- nomic power. Indeed, we have come to realize that politics at bottom is very largely a maneuvering to control the means of controlling wealth. We see that political liberty is an illusion, TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 301 unless it is liberty with respect to all the interests upon which our welfare depends. Democracies have discovered that the ballot is not what the champions of political liberty supposed it to be, if they cannot use it so as to enforce their class inter- ests in the fundamental conditions of welfare. From the very fact that modern systems of production organize all the people of a State in a vast co-operative process, the politics of modern States must become more and more a perpetual measuring of strength between the classes that get their livelihood in differ- ent ways within the process. Each class wants cither to retain or to increase its poiver to enforce its own estimate of its own economic rights. We are not concerned in this connection with any question about the ethical strength or weakness of these conflicting claims. We are analyzing the social process just as it is, with- out regard to the moral quality of the facts that we observe. The truth is that a farm laborer in Kansas, or a street-cleaner in New York, has the same legal liberty as the multi- millionaire to have wants of his own, to talk about them whenever he will, and to combine with others of like mind in making his wants felt as a force in business or in politics. When the man who raises wheat in Dakota learns the price which it brings in Liverpool, the difference between that sum and the price he received at the nearest railroad station tends to represent the measure of his supposed grievance against society. He naturally suspects the railroad of taking more than is due for freight. He vaguely charges every middleman with depriving him of some part of his own. Above all, if he finds that a banker has had any connection with handling his wheat, he easily persuades himself that here is a party guilty of great wrong against his interests, if the truth could be known. If this farmer finds that political or economic power is within the control of his class, he will accordingly be sure to attempt the use of that power in the direction of curbing the power of each of these other interests of which he is sus- picious. 302 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY With differences of detail, essentially the same is true of every other class. Each believes that its own rights are under- estimated and inadequately guarded in the existing social order, while too much tether is given to other interests to pro- vide for themselves. Each class, in its own manner and degree, is using all the means at its disposal to change the balance of power. Moreover, classes that would not of their own choice raise social issues about wealth are indirectly drawn kito alliances, in one combination or another, in this campaign of economic readjustment. Artists, teachers, schol- ars, physicians, clergymen, newspaper men, besides many men and women who so far desert the natural program of their class, swell the numbers of partisans who throw themselves with greater or less reserve into the struggle to strengthen the social influence of a particular interest by weakening its rivals. To enumerate the economic interests that are thus passively factors in social struggle would involve proposal of a complete economic analysis of society. Ratzenhofer's sched- ule above (2, C, /) is merely an approximate classification, which does not purport to be exhaustive. Without entering upon detailed discussion of the economic factors of conflict in modern society, we may call attention to a single feature of modern social conflict which will doubtless occasion as great modifications in social theory as it has wrought in social practice. This phenomenon may be consid- ered in a double aspect. In the first place, the modern world has tacitly assigned to capital a position as an end in itself; i. e., we now assume that it is a virtue to increase capital, and a vice not to increase capital. In the second place, we have given to capital the legal status of a person, by incorporating capital. Capital thus becomes a titanic superman, incompar- ably superior to the natural persons who find their interests challenged by this artificial being. The most significant factor in the modern social struggle, therefore, is not any natural person or party of natural persons. It is this legally created TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 303 competition of a fictitious person with each and all natural persons for pre-eminence as a social force.^^ Of course, such a perception as this leads us to the actual fighting line between capital and labor. We are tempted to turn aside and discuss details and practical issues between these interests. Our present business, however, is not of that sort. The sociologist's duty is to determine the place which all concrete details of life have in the general social process. His work will at last contribute to the adjustment of social conflicts by exhibiting each of them, and each phase of interest involved in them, in its ultimate relations with the whole sys- tem of human activities. Meanwhile the sociologist's business is not to agitate, but to investigate. He will do his best work in the end upon concrete questions, by provisionally not work- ing upon them at all. Thus in the present instance there is work enough for many sociologists, in determining typical relations of the leading social interests, without leaving the field of scientific investigation to enlist in the fighting ranks of any particular social class. ^ We return to these propositions in chap. 27. CHAPTER XXIII TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE (continued) We have roughly outlined the social process, as it takes place in the State, under the general form of an initiative of all interests, each in the line of its most natural impulse. The process at once becomes a reaction between each person incar- nating an interest, and all other persons. The nature of this reaction varies all the way from struggle to the death between individuals, to political alliances that divide the State into an administrative and an opposition party. In the latter case, there is a minimum of struggle between the members of each party, so far as the interests are concerned upon which the coherence of the party depends, while there is vigorous strug- gle, with diminishing violence in means used, between the parties. At the same time, both within and without the politi- cal groupings of the population, the play of interests weaves the most intricate web of social combinations. The initiative of interests in each individual remains always the key to the whole process. This force changes in detail both its strength, its aim, and its method, as experience advances, but it always presses on to realize itself so far as the like initiative in other individuals leaves room. This universal effort to realize inter- ests results in progressive coalition of interests throughout a scale of permutations which extends beyond an assignable limit. The problem of all social science, whatever its name, is to discover the facts and the laws of some portion or aspects of these combinations. The duty of the general sociologist is to w^ork on methods of organizing social investigation toward the end that no part of the social process shall be left out of sight, no part shall be treated as though the other parts did not exist, or as though they existed in any other ratio than that which the facts of life present, and each part shall 304 TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 305 be understood at last in its precise working relations with all the other parts. With this end in view, we continue our attempt to visualize leading features of the social process to which the program of sociology must give increasing attention. As in the previous chapter, we are following Ratzenhofer, first, in his attempt to avoid the dogmatic atti- tude;^ second, in trying to approach more concrete and ana- lytic knowledge of the actual relations in which the precise methods of the social process must be sought. 3. The principal parties in the State and their dynamic relations [Ratzenhofer, Wesen und Zzveck, sec. 21]. — The factions into which the people group themselves under the impulse of their respective interests can seldom accomplish anything singly, in conflict with the existing law and the gov- ernment. ' The only way in which interests can gain any. ground in the State is to combine into parties large enough to give their interests political weight. This combination can occur only by agreement or compromise between the rival interests, 3, A. Integration of interests by compromise. — The actual social process within the State is consequently a well- or ill- conducted program of opportunism on the part of each inter- est, from least to greatest. The progress of one interest rather than another is a survival of the most tactful in social combina- tion. The first step which a faction must take in allying itself with another faction is more or less explicit concession of some portion of its claims to the counter-claims of other factions. By, thus sacrificing a less important margin of its interest, the faction is able to make common cause with other factions equally bent with itself upon gaining some more important remainder of interest. Thus the whole story of the social process might be told from this particular point of view, as an ^ Whoever studies his works with a fair measure of sympathy must be impressed by their exceptional freedom from the dogmatic spirit. Their most confident propositions are always held subject to correction by any new evi- dence that may appear. I 3o6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY unfolding plot of the compromise of interests. Incidentally we may remark that a cardinal reason for the comparatively characterless aspect of political life, in the popular sense, in the United States, from the Civil War to the period of Presi- dent Roosevelt, was the control of both principal parties by virtually the same type of interests. Groups devoted to other types of interest failed so to combine that they could command a hearing within either party. 3, B. Resulting tri-partite organization of the State. — The trend of this economy of compromise is through cycles of shifting ratios of power between three elements. They may be distinguished roughly as (a) the constitution, (b) the majority party, (c) the minority party.^ In accordance with paragraph i, C, /) ( i ) in the preceding chapter, the administra- tion is practically one of the distinct interests reacting with other interests. In the absolute State the administration is de facto the paramount interest, while there may be scarcely enough consolidation of the other interests to form a percep- tible opposition. As the social process advances, the differ- entiation of these three factors becomes more real and evident. They are not always represented by king, lords, and commons, by any means. There is always a representative of the tradi- tional order, and for this reason we have generalized this factor as " the constitution," instead of retaining Ratzenhofer's more special concept "the administration." The rest of the State tends to separate into two chief parties, each promoting a program more or less divergent from that sanctioned by the dominating order or the rival party. In the actual working of the American system today, rather than in its theory, it would not be difficult to make out that the Supreme Court, more than any other institution, occupies the position analo- gous with that of the absolute monarch, "the constitution;" ' The history of the English constitution, from the Conqueror to the third reform period of 1885, furnishes the most available material for studying the laws of these cycles. King, barons, and commons are merely terms in a series which is repeated essentially in every highly developed State. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 307 while the President, however great his actual influence upon public policy, wields his power rather as the leader of the majority party than as the exponent of sovereignty. This illustration at the same time calls attention to the wide differ- ence between results obtained by conventional analysis of eco- nomic or political institutions, and those reached when we analyze the whole social process of realizing interests. The dramatis personae in the plot referred to in the last paragraph are always assignable to one of these three divisions of actors in the main movement. 3, C. The political reasons for compromise. — The prin- ciple of antagonism of interests discussed above ^ makes com- promise inevitable, unless annihilation of an interest eliminates it from the process. The compromise will accordingly take place on the basis of resemblances between the persons, under- lying the differences which they must adjust. Such bases of compromise have been referred to above in the terms "politi- cal systems" and "political principles."'* Limited interests are usually able to unite upon some principle, and to consti- tute a party of resistance, on the ground of existing condi- tions, or for aggression with the aim of changing conditions. To illustrate from everyday occurrences at present in the United States, we have the familiar phenomenon of employers, otherwise competitors, adjourning competition enough to unite against the "closed shop;" and, on the other hand, laborers, likewise competitors, uniting upon the principle of the " closed shop." More general interests must unite, therefore, not upon a "principle," but upon a "system" which admits of latitude in application of tributary principles. That is, there is room for choice between centralization and localization as the com- mon basis of action. For instance, the general line of cleavage for a century in the United States, between the supporters of federal sover- eignty and of state sovereignty. After the bond of union between types of people in the United States had apparently 'Chaps. 19 and 20. * Pp. 237, 287, 288. 3o8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY passed into the catalogue of antiquities, it reappears in new form and force as an assorter of interests affected by rate schedules in commerce between the states. The variations of the rule just formulated (that special interests unite upon a principle, while general interests unite upon a system) are so many that we cite the two clauses of the rule rather to suggest familiar illustrations of reasons for combination in parties, than as a formula of the law of such combinations. 3, D. Subordinate reasons for compromise. — In contrast with the interests which, on grounds of system or principle, coalesce in a chief party, factions without number may have a weak affinity with one or the other party; but their more effi- cient special interests may at any time overcome that affinity, and lead the factions into an equally unstable combination with the other party, or with some third alliance more temporary than either. We cannot understand the history of such coun- tries as Germany and Italy, for example, without appraisal of these volatile elements at each step of the process. One of the important differences between the political life of such countries as Great Britain and the United States, on the one hand, and the present French Republic, on the other, is to be found in the superior subordination, in the former cases, of the factional interests to the main party interests. 3, E. Degrees of factional attachment to parties. — General propositions upon this subject, as indeed upon the whole series of concepts which we are here setting in order for further examination, can have merely tentative value, because the precise facts of each individual case will indefinitely modify any possil)lc formula. With this proviso, we may suggest a few sample occasions for variations in party affiliation. Thus we have at once each of the interests in turn that were referred to in Part IV, chaps. 20 and 21. The more constant the motive that correlates a party, the more permanent will be its struc- ture. The more .shifting or temporary the motive around which the members of the party rally, or the more divergent TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 309 from the central motive of the party the special interests of factions which unite in its formation, the more subject is the structure of the party to decomposition and re-formation. These are almost truisms, and hardly more than restatements of 3, D. These considerations point, however, to the general law that governments must in the long run get their strength by accord with the relatively permanent interests in the State; and, further, to the rule that, prima facie, the permanent inter- ests and the control of the land of the State are to be looked for in the same persons. If this coincidence is absent, the social order has presumably drifted into a condition of insta- bility, so far as the governmental party is concerned. 3, F. J'ariatious of factional inilucncc in parties. — The intrinsic importance of interests by no means always deter- mines the relative influence of factions within parties. It is sometimes true that the influence of a faction is directly as the frivolity or the meanness of the interest which .it repre- sents. This has been shown over and over again, on a small scale, in the case of the liquor interest in certain of the American states and cities. Capital invested in the liquor traffic has contrived to control a balance of power between the parties and within the parties, so that its interests were secured regardless of popular majorities against the liquor traffic as a distinct issue. While it is true that the social process tends to equate all interests by the common standard of ultimate importance to the process, it is also true that, at any given stage of the process, the influence of factions upon a principal party is a function of the jwlitical initiative and facility of combination in their personnel. 3, G. The "Zeitgeist" as a distinct political factor. — Although men struggle primarily to assert their selfish inter- ests, yet selfishness is itself an indefinitely variable factor, both in quantity and in quality. If we have to explain, in terms of selfishness, both Washington and Benedict Arnold, both Oyama's soldiers and the looters of the Red Cross supplies, both the Spaniards and the Americans in Cuba, both the mis- 3IO GENErLA.L SOCIOLOGY sionaries and the slave-traders in Africa, we are evidently dealing with a concept that has a different content with each type of person. Nothing can be made out more clearly in the social process than the tremendous influence of a something different from the particular interest of any individual or group in the whole range of association — a something differ- ent from the mere arithmetical sum of those interests, or aii average of those interests. It belongs to social psychology to analyze this plus in the social process; but one factor of it at least is what we know as the Zeitgeist. It is a way of look- ing at the current problems of life, that constitutes a sort of major premise, to which each minor premise of special inter- est must conform. Americans find the readiest illustration in the change in general presumptions about slavery between 1789 and 1861. At the earlier date the influential slave-owners in the South who frankly deplored the system were perhaps relatively as numerous as the men of equal prominence in the North who frankly condemned it. Each section accepted it as a necessary evil. At the later period the South felt lx>und to defend slav- ery as a divine institution, while the North was controlled by increasing purpose to destroy the system. In society, as in the individual, the "psychological moment" is likely to deter- mine the success or failure of particular impulses. Any inter- est may assert itself in opposition to the Zeitgeist, but only rarely and to a limited extent can interests prevail unless they are in harmony with the Zeitgeist. We are talking at present of " the imperialistic spirit " throughout the civilized world. The phrase stands for the whole modern bent for operations on a large scale, whether in politics, production, commerce, finance, publicity, scientific research, social amelioration, education, or religion. We speak of our time as "the age of combinations." It is prover- bial that it is easier to "float" a big enterprise than a little one. We have not outgrown eighteenth-century individualism as the respectable social creed, but the real world has never TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 3" been so complexly collected, not to say thoroughly collect ivistic, as it is today. The successful type of individualism, in current practice, is syndicated. No man is quite sure of himself today outside of a combination with other men. At the same time, the social rating of men is more openly than ever before reduced to a common denominator of market values. The tone of court and church and school, as well as of farm and train and shop and bank, is modulated to these two facts. At the same time, this very fact of the enormous influence of a Zeitgeist is the constant stimulus of the sociologists. Genuine sociology has no vocation as a contestant in the arena where hostile interests struggle for division of material goods. Toward such contestants, the sociology that is most conscious of its ultimate function will calmly insist : " Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" The proper influence of soci- ology will be exerted through the sociological Zeitgeist that is developing as a result of serious attention to social problems.^ i The sociologists will do most in the end by assisting their fel- lows to understand the social process precisely as it is, and to form programs of conduct conformed to the largest concep- tions of human well-being and of social resources. This work will sooner or later contribute to social progress, while the sort of conflict waged between social classes today merely leaves one party or another a temporary victor, but essential social principles remain as confused as before.^ 4. Political leadership [sec. 22]. — We have passed in review leading types of concrete manifestations of interest ° This confession of faith harmonizes with the forecast of Mr. Bryce, but it is still more specific. After drawing the conclusion that " men do not for any long time remain without a consistent theory of life, and a faith on which to ground such a theory , " he applies the generalization to our own time in these words : " Ages of negation and criticism are succeeded by ages of con- struction. Filled with discordant schools of thought and irreconcilable schemes for social progress, permeated by a skepticism which distrusts all schemes equally, the world may appear to be waiting for some new idealistic system possibly already in the germ." '^Holy Roman Empire, ed. of 1904, p. 511.) " Vide Ward, " Theorems of Dynamic Sociology," Dynamic Sociology, Vol. II, pp. 108-19. 312 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY within civic society. The wide margin between the manifested and the latent interests in a people is very largely due to the absence or impotence of leaders. Social initiative depends upon the function of directing the activities of the members of a group toward a common purpose. The power of a group does not often focalize spontaneously in efficiency to make its interest felt. The effective value of two groups may be inverted by superiority of the weaker over the stronger in the element of leadership."^ The phenomena of leadership are accordingly of first-rate importance as keys to the social process. ) They require, in the first place, objective description, like all other elements of the social process; but objective description must pass so directly into psychological interpreta- tion that lines of investigation can hardly be indicated in this connection without assuming elements of social psychology which the present argument has not brought into view. We therefore merely call attention in passing to this constant fac- tor in group reactions. After rough surveys of social facts are more complete than at present, and after social psychology has made its methods more objective, it will be in order to face the problems that leadership presents.'*^ 5. The governing idea of political groups [sec. 23]. — Given the existence of a group gathered about an interest, not merely a pack of human animals, a purpose is necessarily implied for which the membei's of the group will struggle. That is. the group instinctively obeys its impulse to assert itself, and thus to realize its purpose. Speaking in less general terms, with familiar political facts as our particular illustra- tion, the existence of a party organization, or of a leader with an assured position at the head (^f followers, is a condition which assures the beginning of aggressive action. The single ' It is hardly to be doubted that the case of Russia and Japan at the present moment is clearly typical, both in civic and in military relations. ' Significant bcRinninRS have been made in this field by Tarde, Les trans- formations du pouvoir : Ross, Social Control, particularly chap. 21, "Person- ality;" and Mumford, "The Beginnings of Leadership," to appear in the American Journal of Sociology. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 313 politician does not create the party. At most he gives the final impulse which brings dormant interests to consciousness and effort. )The purpose of party (group) policy is accordingly given in the fact that the group came into existence. This pur- pose can be no other than practical assertion of the idea which forms the rallying-point of the group. In this trite observation we have the key to the relentless collective selfishness that is invariably the initial trait of group action (e. g., "corporations have no souls"). In studying the actual social process, therefore, whether seen in associations as comprehensive as the State, or in the minutest groups within the State,ia cardinal sociological factor is the group idea, pur- pose, selfishness, interest, or animus. Knowing this bond of community, we have found a real value for the first term in the group equation. In this term we have the first social force energetic enough to make a distinctly collective manifestation. \ By producing coherence between persons, the group idea is distinguished from factors of individual consciousness, which are the subject-matter of pure psychology.^ ) Like the subject of the previous paragraph, the present title is therefore a way- mark on the borders of social psychology. We merely note its significance in passing, 6. Ambiguity as a means of political struggle [sec. 29]. — Again we call attention to a real fact, which has a certain degree of prominence as an objective incident of the social process, but which looms up larger in psychological explana- tion of the process than as a feature of the process itself. In a word, it is this : Besides its impulse in the special interest of the group, every factional activity, from least to greatest, has also bearings upon more and most general interests, through a wide scale. For example, a carpenters' union has its reasons for existence primarily in the common interests of employees, as opposed to employers, in one branch of the build- ing trades. Yet this union may find itself forced to choose for ' I have argued this point somewhat at length in a review of Giddings' Indue tice Sociology, in Science, May 2, 1902. 314 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY or against community of interests with the building trades unions in general, organized labor as a whole, the educational, political, or religious organizations of the country, or with some debatable phase of democracy at large. As a rule, every group in civilized States imagines, and perhaps proclaims, that its aim is essential to the general good, if not identical with the general good (thus, "the Three Tailors of Tooley Street"). (^There is a direct ratio between the degree of social advancement in a group and its desire to have its group-selfishness appear in the guise of public spirit.^ Accordingly, promotion of group interests goes forward under the stimulus of appeal to, and sanction from, either of the wider ranges of interest with which it is closely or remotely related. For example, not a war has been fought in Europe for a thousand years which was not proclaimed by both con- testants as a religious struggle. On the other hand, no reli- gious movement has failed to claim that it alone was the condi- tion of all the lesser temporal good that men ought to desire. Group programs are accordingly always more or less at the mercy of popular confusion, and of demagogic indirection, with reference to the real and the ostensible motives for actioii> The path of popular movements is made up of tangents, because purposes are aimed at one fraction of interest after another, and the different objects of attention never fall into a perfectly straight line. Ambiguity is both an unavoidable accident of social situa- tions, and it is artificially promoted. It is one of the most flexible devices of public leaders. In the United States, for instance, one of the most familiar illustrations is the canon of " party regularity," which, with large numbers of citizens, has had the force of an elementary virtue. The distinctions between members of party machines and voters who use party organizations just as they would choose between two trans- portation lines, are kept as indistinct as possible by the politi- cal workers, and "regularity" is enforced upon all who can be persuaded to regard it as an end in itself. In general. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 315 ambiguity is the ambush from which special interests assail common interests. 7. Terrorism as a coiiipaig)i device [sees. 30 and 31]. — In every State, party life rests properly upon exchange of opinion, that is, upon the means of intellectual commerce. The struggle for power, however, induces every group, accord- ing- to the intensity of the political struggle, and at the same time in exaggeration of group opinions, to adopt terrorism. 1 The wish to convert fellow-citizens to the group opinion stimu- lates abandonment of spiritual for material means of persua- sion. Thereupon discussion ceases, and a policy of using more or less evident violence begins. In the social process as a whole, the phenomena of terrorism run the gamut from old wives' fables in the nursery to "peaceful picketing" by strik- ers, and the bugbear of yellow perils, and the moral suasion of marking down national credit. 8. The time element in social struggle [sec. 33]. — The parable of the sower might be paraphrased in terms of time instead of soil. The merits of a social impulse, abstractly con- sidered, are no measure of its immediate social influence. The effectiveness of interests is a function of the attention of people. f An interest logically formulated, at a time when general atten- tion is otherwise preoccupied, may either gain abnormal advan- tage because the usual obstructions are not interposed, or it may fail utterly to make an impression, because the necessary co-operation cannot be enlisted, i It is merely a variation of this commonplace to say that the progress of interests depends upon the length of time through which its supporters can per- sist in representing its claims. The elements of present social status may be found in a very remote past. The story of the gradual development of the present out of the past might be told coherently on a plan in which the opportuneness or the inopportuneness of promotion in the different directions mak- ing for progress would form the basis of the plot. In like manner, it is easy to classify current social dogmas as timely or untimely. To all practical intents and purposes, these 3i6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY terms are equivalent respectively to true and false. In the social process, as in mechanics, that is true which will work.-^** All the absolute truth that was in the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 would have been equally true in the time of Nero, but it could not be available until a vast amount of approximate truth had first been assimilated. It is con- ceivable that the time may come when some of the postulates of socialism may be accepted as valid generalizations. ]\Iean- while, upon present social consciousness they have only the effect of more or less irritating distractions. 9. Political tacticJ [sees. 32 and 34]. — The social process in its struggle phase must sooner or later be considered as a strategic alignment of hostile organizations conducting delib- erate campaigns. Leadership in these campaigns is of many types, and the corresponding strategy and tactics will vary accordingly. For instance, a government may be the strategic authority. The campaign which it carries on will present the phenomena of a general policy, instinctive or deliberate estab- lishment or preservation of conditions favorable to the policy, such as repression of popular thought and prohibition of politi- cal discussion by the autocracy in Russia, or the opposite pro- gram with a view to a contrasted policy in England and the United States. Then there follow the details of action in pursuance of the policy ; crises and the means of meeting them; changes of working plans and fall of ministries; coups d'etat; dissolutions of parliaments; usurpations of authority; coalitions of factions; use of armed force; revolutions; under- mining of opposition by corruption. Viewed from the side of parties as strategic leaders, the phenomena are varied by com- binations of the parties with their governments; maneuvers of minority parties ; varieties in degrees of opposition ; coali- tion parties; obstruction, hostile demonstration, popular revo- lution ; etc. In contrast with the phenomena referred to above '" This f.ict is an index of the irreprcssihle conflict between all the tradi- tional metaphysical systems of morals and the sociological criteria of ethics. The antithesis will be treated at length in Part VIII. TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 317 ) as primarily material for social psychology, these details are primarily the affair of social technology in the broader sense. They are ways and means of bringing the social purposes to pass. Their psychology, as compared with that of the more spiritual factors of the social process above named, is relatively secondary. 10. The tactical results of success vs. failure [sec, 35]. — From the point of view of social philosophy, each distinguish- able campaign is a means of comparing the consequent with the antecedent social status. Has the movement, on the whole, been constructive or destructive? How has the social situation been altered? How does the resulting equilibrium differ from the previous adjustment? What line of movement among the active interests is indicated by the new situation? 11. Review and summary [sec, 36]. — In practice, Rome is usually taken as the most distinct exhibit of civic phenomena. The facts of Roman history seem to constitute a perfectly clear-cut piece of human experience. Conventional treatment seems to have accounted for everything in the record. Our view of Roman history, however, makes it much simpler than it really was.^^ If we should ask the historians to give us the facts to fill out the foregoing scheme of analysis, it would be found that they had to a considerable extent glossed over and evaded the crucial problems both of description and explana- tion. If we must presume hitherto unperceived complication of social forces in a society as sharply defined as that of Rome, how much more will this be the case in a modern State! In the latter there is, at first glance, endless multiplication of con- flicting interests, and inextricable chaos of antagonistic motives and purposes. The beginning of social wisdom must be sought in reduc- tion of this apparent chaos to mental order, in discrimination of the conflicting motor forces, and in understanding of their reciprocal relations. Rigorous analysis of interests traces out " Cf. Mommsen's version of Roman history with that of Pais. 3i8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the kind of aggressive impulse that actuates the groups, from least to greatest, within the State. Only on the basis of such discovery can the meaning of each group for the social process as a whole be made clear. At the end of the second volume of Wescn und Zweck, Ratzenhofer again surveys the course of his argument. He has meanwhile extended his analysis of the social process beyond the limits of the State, and has been discussing the struggle of interests still, but the point of view of the second volume is that part of the struggle which takes pla<:e across the boundary lines of States. The animus of the process is the same which he has pointed out from the beginning, namely, personal or collective selfishness trying to make itself success- fill in territory not within the control of any single State. This whole division of social struggle, as distinguished from the struggle within the State which Ratzenhofer calls the political struggle, he designates as social politics. An illustra- tion of what is meant by social politics would be the present struggle of all mercantile States for trade advantages in China. The negotiations in 1901 and earlier with reference to the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, and the prospective building of an Isthmian canal, are incidents of " social politics," interna- tional but not necessarily official. The same thing is true of such organizations as the International — an attempt of labor- ers in all countries to accomplish their purposes by combina- tion which would be effective regardless of State boundaries. The operations of the Roman Catholic church, in so far as they have penetrated many countries at the same time, are illustra- tions of what is here meant by social politics in distinction from State politics. After carrying out his analysis of the ways and means of this struggle, first between States, and then particularly between elements which disregard the boun- daries of States, Ratzenhofer concludes that portion of his analysis in this way : I have thus attempted to portray the nature of political struggle pre- cisely as it is. I now take the liberty of saying, in conclusion, that politics TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 319 is essentially as I have described it. I may have erred in my judgment of particular political facts/ The material on which judgment has to be passed, that is, history and Social conditions, does not lie so plainly open before the eye of the investigator as is the case of the cadaver before the anatomist, and investigation of this material must practically proceed without the assistance of direct experiment. The liabilities to error are consequently very great. Nevertheless, the leading ideas which I have followed rest upon definite sociological laws and political theorems. In my description of the nature of political phenomena, I have often recoiled from the logic of fact, and I am consequently quite sure that in many of my readers these same facts, and the conclusions unavoidable from them, will have aroused disagreeable emotions. The science of politics, however, is primarily a psycho-pathology of human beings, and with reference to such a science the truth is always rather of a depressing than of an exhilarating nature. For the very reason that the essence of politics is so repulsive, and because it is difficult to discuss politics without rousing the suspicion of attempting thereby to play politics, political science has up to date displayed decided reluctance to use the probe relentlessly in research within political conditions. A consequence of this shyness about political truth, and hesitation to carry on severe investigation of the essence of politics, has been that we have satisfied ourselves with a sort of pseudo- science, which attempted to rouse the belief that politics has an ethical content, and that political theory can be built up upon ethical considera- tions. We have produced such falsification of human and social motives in politics that in many scientific treatises they have amounted to intoxica- tion of our senses with reference to our political nature. The fact is that people have been afraid to investigate politics, because of the liability to be accused of political intentions. This 'fact itself confirms the foregoing analysis of the essence of politics. It is just as impossible to expound the essential nature of politics in generalities built upon a priori assumptions about the purpose of politics, as it would be to expound the real nature of the physical world by means of idealistic conceptions of the destiny of mankind. Accordingly, I make bold to say, on the basis of the foregoing analysis, we now know what politics is ; we know that it is the product of a certain social compulsion working as natural energy in human society. Whoever seriously takes into consideration the consequences of this sociological doctrine will lose thereby the politically hateful aftertaste which many conclusions in the realm of political research have had. When we regard the single individual as the product of his environment, the question of the morality of the interest which he or his group represents will become in a large measure empty, and we shall see that the mode of political action 320 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY which the person adopts is predominantly an affair of political necessity. If we penetrate to comprehension of sociology, we shall be able to under- stand the essence of politics in the abstract and to develop political doctrine. If, however, we remain outside of such intelligence, we cannot master our political sensibilities, and we shall play politics whenever we pretend to study politics, and we shall not succeed in understanding our subject- matter. f It is the essence of political doctrines that they are least understood by those in whom the political impulses most energetically work. It can be accounted for only by failure to comprehend the essence of politics, when people preach morality to the politically functioning individual. Love and reconciliation are psychical phenomena which in the political situation cannot be effective through a personal volition, but only through facts. The objective point is accordingly to make these desired spiritual mani- festations possible to the active partisan. Moral wrong in politics is not a human error which can be avoided on the basis of instruction. It rests, on the contrary, upon a conscious or instinctive compulsion. ; We cannot bring politics and ethics into immediate harmony. On the contrary, ethical motives are a product of political development, and the sovereignty of morality is not a product of free volitions, but rather a political organiza- tion which produces the social will for ethical motives. Accordingly, what seems to be wanting in my account of the essence of politics — that is, the other side of human phenomena, the ethical motives in contrast with the political — all this comes to control in society as product of political development. It is an organization of morality with political means. iThe ethical motives bring the political impulses to silence. Wherever struggle rules, however, ethical motives can at best vitiate the political concept, so that neither politics nor the ethical purpose has definite success.) A theory which attempts to establish politics, in disregard of its nature, upon the ethical tendencies of mankind, not merely falsifies the truth of natural law, but even the ethical ideals themselves. If we look around us in political life, we see how, for political purposes, the ethical talents of men are set in motion, with their selfish foundation. It would be difficult to name a political purpose which cannot and is not credited with edifying fundamental principles, or animating aims. When- ever anything particularly barbarous or contemptible is proposed in the course of political struggle, there is always some way of crediting it with lofty purposes, by means of which the barbarism is seldom removed, but, on the contrary, it works scandal for the ethical idea. The ethical development of men demands first of all that ethical and political conceptions shall be distinguished. Morality is a higher purpose of our struggle ; politics, however, is always merely a means for our TYPICAL CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IN THE STATE 321 purposes. ' By its very nature, therefore, politics is absolutely following of utility with reference to purposes, regardless of the ethical character of those purposes. Morality in itself can render politics no service. I Politics, however, can serve all interests, incidentally even our ethical interests, if we can only gain a standpoint from which these ethical interests can also be struggle interests. } The development of the political struggle shows us the growing power of society over the individuals. The study of politics thus displays to us the fact that the whole is triumphing over the special. Since, however, every morality rests upon our social obligations, that political under- standing which opens up to us the growing co-operation of social com- pulsion must of itself produce moral insight and ethical principles. An ethic which is derived merely from the subjective condition of the indi- vidual — like, for example, Schopenhauer's ethic, founded upon sympathy — is u.seless, and it disregards an essential part of our existence. Only when we turn to the social phase of our existence, do all moral ideals emerge clearly and definitely. The ultimate source even of Kant's conception of ethics is in the sociological conceptions ; that is, his fundamental theorem of practical reason was, " So act that the rules of your will may be fit to become uni- versal laws." This must also be the fundamental rule of all practical ethics. Thus sociology, and particularly insight into the essence of politics, lead us to that other side of our individuality which, anticipating the scientific development which we are now atterhpting to complete, has always been presented as the higher aim of our endeavor. What I mean is this ; Kant could not have established his fundamental law of practical reason upon pure reason alone. The proof of its validity appears only after we have investigated the relationships that till out the scope of sociology; that is, the proof lias to be found in the social nature of our being. The dualism of our individuality, the political and barbaric side of which has been so zealously veiled and denied, in order to exalt as much as possible the ethical side of our nature, resolves itself, in the sociological conception, into a monism in accordance with which ethical completeness is merely a higher stage in the evolution of our political individuality. Morality conceived as an individual affair — that is, formulated from the individual standpoint, and developed out of an unsociological thought- process — has always had at its side a parallel conception of individualistic politics. Under this conception, we attempted in vam to reach a unifica- tion, a synthesis, a realization of ethical principles in politics. Social , morality, on the other hand, is itself a thoroughgoing social policy. The \/ fundamental ethical law of the zvorld is completeness on the individual side, in and by means of the reciprocal dependence of all things. Accord- 322 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY ingly, from this point of view we see before us a mighty and lofty task of poHtics and of its science, the accomplishment of which, however, neces- sarily demands painfully accurate comprehension of the nature of politics and of its antithesis with ethics. We shall necessarily arrive at this perception sooner or later, for the very fact that I am discussing it is already a proof of the social demand for this insight. Our thinking actually takes place under the political con- ditions which contain this insight. PART V SOCIETY CONSIDERED AS A PROCESS OF ADJUSTMENT BY CO-OPERATION BETWEEN ASSOCIATED INDIVIDUALS (Further Interpretation of Ratzenhofer) CHAPTER XXIV GENERAL SURVEY At the beginning of our analysis of social struggle we observed that struggle and reciprocity are always to a certain extent functio^is of each other.^ None of the types of phe- nomena to which we have referred could take place if mem- bers of groups were not in a measure reciprocally helpful. We shall presently turn our attention to the co-operative element of the social process. There is a law of diminuendo value governing the struggle phase, and of crescendo value govern- ing the socializing phase, of the social process. That is, the process tends to pass from struggle into approximate status, which in turn becomes basis for higher differentiation of inter- ests, with incidental elimination of primary phases of struggle. The series is therefore something like this : Unregulated ivar, regulated war, extension of the area and duration of intermit- tent strife, legally regulated conflict of interests, fraud, legal trickery, fair rivalry, emulation, reasoned co-operation. In other words, while an element of conflict is always present in social relations, we have now to consider phases of the move- ment from a maximum toward a minimum of conflict, or from a minimum toward a maximum of helpful reciprocity. We are still representing Ratzenhofer's method of approach. The remainder of the argument will be more briefly epitomized, and we can comment upon only a few cardi- nal points. To assist in adjusting the perspective, we present, as before, a modified topical index of this part of the analysis : THE SOCIALIZING PROCESS IN CIVIC GROUPS 1. Recapitulation of the Struggle Phase. 2. Contrast between the Struggle Phase and the Social Phase. [Sec. 86] ' 'P. 203. * The figures in brackets are the numbers of sections in Ratzenhofer's Wesen und Zweck. 325 326 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY 3. The Content of Civilization. [Sec. 58] 4. Contrasted Principles of Civilization and Barbarism. [Sees. 59, 60] 5. The Ideal of Civilization. [Sec. 61] 6. Stages in the Development of Civilization. [Sec. 62] 7. The Function of Law in Civilization. [Sec. 63] 8. By-products of Struggle Added to Civilization. [Sec. 64] 9. Direct Effects of the Civilizing Forces. [Sec. 65] 10. The Ideal of Civilization as a Means of Progress. [Sec. 66] 11. The Ideal of Civilization as a Test of Political Systems. [Sec. 67] 12. The Ideal of Civilization as a Nucleus of Social Groups. [Sec. 68] 13. The Ideal of Civilization as a Modifier of Political Struggle. [Sec. 69] 14. The Form Which Material Interests Assume in the Civilizing Process. [Sec. 70] 15. The Specific Interests at Present Struggling for Civilization. [Sec. 71] 16. The Civilizing Program in Action in the State. [Sees. 72-74] 17. The International Problems of Civilization. [Sec. 75] 18. The Relation of Civilization to the Integrity of States. [Sec. 76] 19. The Dependence of Civilizing Progress upon the Social Situation. [Sec. ^^\ 20. The Antithesis between International Conflicts and Civilization. [Sec. 78] 21. The Significance of International Law for Civilization. [Sec. 79] 22. The Bearings of Trade upon Civilization. [Sec. 80] 23. The Bearings of Colonization upon Civilization. [Sec. 81] 24. The Bearings of International Agreements upon Civilization. [Sec. 82] 25. The Bearings of Combinations between Citizens of Different States upon Civilization. A. The Effects of the Civilizing Social Process. [Sec. 83] B. Civilizing Social Politics and the Civilized State. [Sec. 84] C. The Present Status of Civilizing Social Politics. [Sec. 85] 26. General Traits of the Civilizing Tendency in the Social Process. [Sec. 86] 27. The Political Means Available for Socialization. [Sec. 87] 28. The Maximum and Minimum Levels of Socialization. [Sec. 88] 29. The Mobilization of Politics in the Interest of Socialization. [Sec. 89] 30. The .Sciences in the Service of Civilization. [Sec. 90] 31. Religion and Civilization. [Sec. 91] 32. Concluding Survey. [Sec. 92] We have explained at such length the significance of the different titles in Ratzenhofer's scheme of analyzing the striig- GENERAL SURVEY 327 gle factor in the social process, that it will not be necessary for our present purpose to continue the explanation at great length in connection with the co-operative factor of the process. Our immediate argument claims merely that Ratzenhofer's scheme is the most conclusive evidence up to date that relative nescience reigns in the place of a desirable science of the social process. The scheme is a system of theorems, amounting to a tentative survey ofl^he social process considered as a progress- ive adjustment of interests between persons zvhose vision is trained at first solely on ends as they appear from the indi- vidual standpoint. Whether the theorems themselves will stand is relatively unimportant. The main thing is that no previous attempt to explain human experience as a whole has been projected upon an equally literal perception of what is actually going on in society. Analysis of the social process, according to this scheme at all events, deals with reality, and correction of specific theorems, addition to their number, and synthesis of them in an exhaustive account of the social process are matters of detail. To enforce this argument, we may briefly review the pre- vious analysis, and indicate its general connections with the complementary aspect of the process now to be considered. In the first place, we may express the whole argument in its most general form as follows : The order of associational development may be symbolized by the terms: one, struggle; two, moralization ; three, social- ization. The differentia observed in the series are quantitative rather than qualitative; i. e./we trace a passage from less to more integration in a common process. The symbolic terms chosen are selected, not because they are supposed to be exclu-^ sive, but because they are evidently non-exclusive. Each con- notes something of the others. One involves a minimum of three. Three contains a minimum of one. Two is merely a conveniently chosen stadium between one and three. It is potentially, and in part actually, in one; it is developed and extended in three. Morality, as we propose to use the term. 328 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY is the type of modus vivcndi recognized at any given stage of the associational process, by the persons conscious of asso- ciation, as appropriate to their association. Not the per- sons passing judgment, but the associational process itself which they implicitly judge, renders the last valuation of a morality which it is possible for men to justify. When struggle has become so moralized that it loses the out- ward marks of struggle, in regularly co-ordinated interchange among all the persons in contact, under the prevailing idea that the good of the whole is paramount to the good of the parts, considered as having an existence in antithesis with the whole, we have a quantitatively intense association, with a modus vivcndi of its own, which contrasts sharply with all the previous mechanical regulations of categorical morality. Again, the stages between struggle and socialization may be distinguished qualitatively in this way : One connotes indi- viduals convinced, either emotionally or intellectually, of an individuality which is predominantly antagonistic to other individuals. Not recalling now in detail our analysis of the content of the individual element, but assuming that this con- tent is in principle constant, we restate the progress of indi- viduals from struggle to socialization as a passage through (fl) recognition of other individuals (or groups) ; (&) advance toward recognition of equal value in other individuals (or groups) ; (c) progressive discrimination of the elements of value thus to be recognized; {d) progressive extension of the diameter of these recognitions until it includes all men. The foregoing general statement may be made more par- ticular, as follows : When we attempt to get a Ijird's-eye view of the social process under civic conditions, we detect at the start indi- vidual interests, developed into the composite interests of groups, clustered around centers which may be, for example, racial, confessional, vocational, social (in the restricted sense), corporate, factional, etc., etc. As another phase of these same or like composite interests, GENERAL SURVEY 329 we have in every State all the phenomena of parties, alHances, intrigues, combinations, principally on the basis of political struggle; but also, both as independent movements and as complications of the political struggle, on the basis of reli- gious, economic, and social class interests. Incidental to this stress of struggle for existence between interests we have those familiar figures, politicians, statesmen, administrative functionaries, agitators, popular leaders, party leaders, dema- gogues, heads of States, political theorists, etc. Then we have the analogues of all these in the economic, artistic, social, scientific, and religious sections of conduct. Between all these, as incidents of the reactions between them, we have all the phenomena of control, by all the different means analyzed by Ross ^ and studied genetically by Tarde.'* Furthermore, we have the whole system of tactics and strategy, of the personal, economic, political, aesthetic, scientific, and religious orders, by which the means of combination and control are employed. Besides and beyond all this, we have the reactions of States with the rest of the world outside their borders. In this view ^States manifest interests in solidifying their own structures, in maintaining their own traditions, in clearing the way for intercourse of all desirable sorts with other States, These phenomena involve more or less of reference to extension of territory, sometimes by way of aggression, some- times merely as an incident in the program of insuring the existing situation, also more or less of peaceful commercial and other invasion of new regions, and protection of the points of vantage once occupied. Whether necessary before or not, contact of States with other States involves also war, or the means of waging war : armaments, troops, military resources. In addition to this we find, as a matter of fact, that actual States betray characteristics which mark them off as "great powers," and then as lesser powers, in a descending scale of innumerable degrees. These States are conservative or aggres- sive in almost equal variety. They pursue interests that are ' Social Control. * Transformations du pouvoir. 330 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of all sorts, from those of pure nature peoples, through the various degrees of technical culture; from persistent isola- tion, to the most extensive and sympathetic cosmopolitanism; from the most accidental and transitory program, to the most systematic and constant. We discover, as incidents of exter- nal reaction, the general conditions of peace alternating with war, and such particular incidents, tributary to one or both, as commercial agreements, international conferences, arbitra- tions, interventions, peace treaties, congresses, neutralities, non-interventions, isolated policies, "good offices," armistices, diplomatic formalities, etc., etc. Through all these movements we detect the pervasive presence of certain great combinations of interest : e. g., the fraternity of democratic sentiment throughout the western world; the freemasonry of the nobil- ity throughout Europe; the class interests of the great capi- talists; the distinctive interests of the vastly more numerous middle class ; the peculiar interests of the great racial divisions, both controlling whole States and constituting important fac- tors within States; the characteristic religious interests, for example, of the three great religious divisions in the western world, the Jewish, the Roman Catholic, and the Protestant. Now, the unsolved problem is : What do all these familiar things mean? The sociologist has not invented this problem. Every man who casts a vote, or expresses by word or deed an opinion about his own and his neighbor's rights and duties, is implicitly working on this problem, or assuming some part of its solution. Every program of organizing social action, from a neighborhood improvement association to a concert of the powers, assumes a theory in explanation of this confusion, that is at last an interpretation of it genetically, statically, and tendentially. f The sociologist simply takes up everybody's problem, and hopes by specialization upon it to make percep- tions in the line of solution more penetrating. "} The question, What does all the action in the State mean? cannot be solved by simply describing that action. As we have urged above,"'' nothing can be described until we know what it is 'Pp. 33. 34- GENERAL SURVEY 331 for./ On the other hand, it is impossible to find out what action in the State is for, until we are able to describe it sufficiently to make out some of its implications. On the basis, then, of such analyses and descriptions of action within the State as are thus far available; our present task is to gather up all that we can discover about the tendencies implied in State action; not what the actors individually and immediately want, but what their actions inevitably tend to bring to pass. In this way only can we reach, on the one hand, a rational criticism of action as we see it at present, and, on the other hand, specu- lative conceptions of what social action should be. ) On this basis only can we arrive at tenable ideas of the implicit content of socialization, or form respectable judgments of the tech- nological programs fit to promote advance toward socializa- tion. As we have indicated above, we find the apparent reading of the universal course of action in States in the formula struggle based upon the narrowest selfishness, resolving itself gradually into a moralization that tends toivard socialization inspired by the broadest selfishness. Barbarism is the activity of very partially realized individuals within very narrowly restricted relations. Civilization is the activity of very highly developed individuals within widely correlated relations. The social process moves from one pole toward the other. The process, then, which we discover is a progress from the least realised individuals in the least realized association, to the most realized individuals in the most realized association./ The struggle that we trace, first forming States, and then proceeding through the system of movements in and between States which we term in general ''politics," is in essence a struggle of public groups against the selfishness of individu- als.^ The tendency — and so we may say, in a certain sense, the purpose — of the struggle is the common good of the indi- viduals. We may state our problem again, then, in this form : C Given the historical and contemporary actions of men stimu- ' JVesen und Zweck, Vol. Ill, p. 401. 332 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY lated by each one's appraisal of his own good, to Und the com- mon good imperfectly foreshadowed in each individual's implicit conceptions of his separate good. Since the purpose implicit in State action is achievement of the common good,/ the accompHshment of selfish purposes on the part of individuals depends at last upon the circumstances that the good of the individual must be dependent upon the political condition of the whole, while the reverse is not in the same sense the case. The essence of the struggle, which the social process tends to reduce to a minimum, is its virtual attempt to subordinate the whole to the selfishness of the indi- vidual. The tendency of the social process is thus in sharp antithesis with the essence of the struggle incidental to the process. Yet, as a matter of fact, the process goes on by means of this unsocial and even anti-social spirit. The anom- aly is perhaps no greater, however, than that presented by the facts of mechanics. Friction is the condition both in spite of which and by means of which power is applied. From a lay- man's point of view, a machine may be described as a working compromise between the obstructive and the constructive pos- sibilities of friction. In a closely analogous sense, the State / is a working compromise between the unsocializing and the socializing possibilities of individual selfishness. The social process can use no tow-line made fast to a power outside of social struggle itself that will drag society toward its goal. Struggle must overcome struggle, and prescribe the limits and laws of struggle, and at last transform itself into socialization. We thus make out^the main tendency of civic struggle to be the ultimate harmonization of all interests. This result we call socialization or civilization. To what extent this har- monization will prove possible it is unnecessary to predict. We can see far enough into the tendency to reach teleological ground that is secure, and it furnishes a base for our judg- ments of the progressive or retrogressive quality of particu- lar kinds of action. Advancing now from the point of view natural to each GENERAL SURVEY 333 individual at his least socialized stage, we discover that prog- ress from unmitigated struggle toward relative socialization is always through gradual and largely unconscious adjustment of individual interests, to widening circumferences of social interests.) This process first results in a certain approximate socialization within the State, and it presently presses out- ward, with prospect of carrying increasing amounts of the adjustment over into contacts with other peoples, until the whole human family is included in approximate socialization. (^Selfishness is raised to a higher power, as it passes from the selfishness of the self-centered individual into the selfishness successively of the members of the family, the tribe;j^the com- munity, the State, the world-society, and at last in some cases into fellowship with men still unborn, no less than \IBh the present human family. Morality, in theory and in practice, (is an idea or a realization of proportions and adjustments within these various diameters. Morality, as theory or as practice, (yaries with the extent and with the circumstances of these overlapping areas whose necessities conduct tries to sat- isfy. That is supposed to be moral which seems to satisfy all the conditions involved.''' Changes in conceptions of morality are due to changes in judgment about the actual effect of con- duct, or to changes in apprehension of the conditions con- cerned, or to changes in the diameter of the conditions brought into calculation, or to all three in co-operation. It is merely repeating the implications of the first sentence of the preceding paragraph to say that the morality of bar- barism is in the narrozvest practicable degree individual; the morality of civilization is in the widest practicable degree social; the morality of each intervening stage is a mode of accommodation to diameters of relationship at innumerable removes from these extremes. What passes as morality at any given time is the ethical deposit of experience up to that stage. In so far as law represents the consciousness of utility in the group within which it applies, rather than the mere selfish- ' Cf. chap. 42. 334 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY ness of a law-giving person or group, it is in approximate assertion of the ethical perceptions implied in the group moral- ity. Frank struggle has use for the customs, including all the shades of foolhardiness for theisake of prospective selfish gain, that barbarians practice. Socialization makes another /sort of conduct the program, viz., a practice of self-surrender ■ in the common interest — a sort of conduct of which only highly developed people are capable. '' The more exclusively self-devotion aims to serve individual interest, the farther is it from the morality of genuine socialization. The larger .the community to which it dedicates itself, the nearer is it to the morality of genuine socialization.^ An obvious qualification is lacking in the last proposition, translated rather freely from Ratzenhofer. Extension of interest and dedication of action so as to affect a wide area may amount to an intermediate something which is neither brutal egoism, on the one hand, nor enlightened socialization, on the other. It is a sort of transcendentalism that dissipates good intentions so that they are socially worthless, or nearly so, instead of being narrowly serviceable to the individual or rationally serviceable to his social environment. Classic instances are large parts of the phenomena of mediaeval mona- chism, which withdrew some of the most capable from the actual work of the world, for profitless dreaming about a con- ceptual state; or the cosmopolitanism of the Renaissance, which speculated on the progress of humanity in general, but so wantonly neglected near social tasks that demoralization and decay of institutions are as evident during the period as the development of general ideas. The mother who chooses to devote her energies to the good of heathen in Africa, while her children are left to grow up as heathen at home, is not in rational contrast with the mother who allows her family to monopolize her physical and spiritual energies, f The area of the interests to which conduct is devoted is not the sole meas- ure of the morality or socialization of that conduct. ; Another ' IVescn und Zurtunity, and mutually beneficial reciprocity between person and person. These are not mere phrases. They are rather indexes of the essentials in the social process within which our everyday problems are set. Knowledge of the socializing phase of the social process must virtually develop by inductive construc- tion upon these lines. The interest of all men in the benefits of culture soon forms everywhere the State; i. e., the repository of power to control,'* We have dealt with the State in the character of a modifier of struggle, as a sort of referee in the prize ring. We have now to observe the positive office of the State in the civilizing- function. Through the State the implications of civilization are gradually realized. - The elementary function of the State as a factor in civiliza- tion may be described as that of reducing arbitrary inequalities between persons, in opportunity, influence, and wealth, to an inequality corresponding with their indicated fitness to bear a part in the social process. - This, to be sure, is a formula to which nothing corresponds very early in social experience. We could hardly point to exhibitions of this function of the State until a comparatively advanced stage of society. We may, however, with advan- tage anticipate to this extent, in order to be prepared to detect the earliest signs of the civilizing activities. As in the case of the former aspect of the social process, so in the case of this second aspect, which we refer to as " the content of the social process," or "civilization," we have to deal with it first as a * In emphasizing this aspect of the State, we do not abandon our distinc- tion between " State " and government. Cf. pp. 226, 244, 292. 348 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY purely formal notion. The implications of this formal defini- tion will be noticed presently, but at first we may say that the substance of what is coming to pass in and through the social process is the equilibration of persons. The equality that we have in mind, however, is not a quotient obtained by dividing the aggregate of opportunity by the population of the State. It is not the vulgar, " One man is as good as another," or, '' One man has the same rights as another." The equality which comports with civilization, the equality which is fore- shadowed in the personal endowments of people and in the workings of the social process thus far, we have called, for want of a better name, functional equality. - We may well stop to inquire whether this is an idea that can ever have a meaning for the multitude. If our sociology turns out to be real knowledge, not the temporary aberration of a few pedants, it must have a message that can be trans- lated from technical academic phraseology into the thoughts and words of common life. In the present case the proposition may be restated as fol- lows : -The social interest demands that every person shall use the talent which he has, for the union of the individual talents is the social talent. The social interest demands that the man who can till a field, or work a forge, or build a machine, or organize a crew of laborers, or increase knowledge, or inter- pret law, or lead an army, or do anything that can be turned to the service of the many — that each such man shall be equal with every other man in freedom to employ that talent under favorable conditions, and to get the appropriate return for his activity." It does not mean that the man whci might be a good carpenter, but would rather be secretary of the treasury, should be regarded as having an equal claim to the office with the man of financial experience and ability. It does not mean that people with one talent shall be rated artificially as equal to people with five talents. It means that the -one-talent man shall have the same liberty to develop and use and enjoy his one talent, within the limits of the general welfare, that the hundred-talent man has to exercise his hundred talents.- THE CONTENT OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 349- • In other words, "civilization " involves approach to a situa- tion in which each person shall be a person, not a commodity for other persons; in which also each person shall be equally free with every other person to develop the type of personality latent in his natural endowment, not the sort of personality to which he would be limited by arbitrary division of oppor- tunity. At every stage of the social process which is not on the whole barbaric, progress depends on adoption by the State of provisional scales of valuation. That is, there has to be social adjustment of the appraisals which individuals place on them- selves. In more familiar terms, restrictions have to be placed by the State upon the freedom of individuals to pursue their own interests regardless of others. Progress in civilization is thus, in one aspect, the substitution of standards approved by the State for standards set by the self-esteem of individuals for fixing personal values. In the nature of the case, social limitations upon freedom of the individual to impose his own estimate of himself upon others must at first be very rude. Such, for instance, are varia- tions of the institution of caste; that is, assignment of oppor- tunity on the basis of the presumption, '* once a low-caste man in station, always a low-caste man in talent." With such rough means of fixing the value of persons, it is foreordained that from the peasant class, for instance, can come only peasants — no soldier, no scholar, no statesman. Even this untenable device marks a stage in the evolution of effort to insure the functional equality which the social process tends to realize. A prime factor in the content of the social process is accord- ingly the progressive substitution of more for less objective standards of measure for personal values. The observation just recorded is crucial for sociology. It marks the parting of the ways between science of the mechan- ism of the social process, and science of the human transforma- tions which are going forward in and through the social process. The sort of analysis in which we have been engaged 3SO GENERAL SOCIOLOGY thus far has necessarily dealt chiefly with the externalities of the social process — its form, its ways and means, its methods — with only secondary reference to the substance by considera- tion of which the meaning and worth of these externalities must finally be ascertained. When we turn our attention to the content of the social process, we completely reverse the previous order, and we encounter the necessity of analyzing the social process by means of quite different tests. Hence- forward our chief concern is not as to how the social process goes on, but as to what goes on. The content of the social process being, in the last analysis, the evolution of persons, not the evolution of culture, from the moment that this reality of the process begins to be visible our chief concern is no longer with the technique of the process, but with the resultants of the process, as they appear in moral achievement. In other words, the very conception of a " content " of the social process to be discovered in the qualities and relations of persons, considered as the ultimate terms rather than as fac- tors in an ultimate cultural process, implies some normative judgment about the essentials of personality. That is, if devel- opment of technique of any sort is the center of attention, all else, persons included, must necessarily be rated according to its value for that development. If, on the contrary, devel- opment of persons is the final term, all else, culture included, must be rated according to its value for personal achievement. The success or failure of the social process to promote the pos- tulated requirements of the persons engaged in the process is now the ultimate test of the process. It is quite true that, as a matter of abstract logic, this situation presents a clear case of the vicious circle. We judge the objective social process by means of a conception of the implications of personality. But that very conception can be derived only from the social process itself, and is constantly answerable to the social process for its validity. ^ We get our data for conceptions of personality from experience with the social process, and we get our data for conccjitions of the social process by our experience with personality. THE CONTENT OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 351 This dilemma, however, is merely a specific case of the uni- versal epistemological situation. In the first place, everything that we call knowledge is hypothecated upon the strength of some antecedent assumption. In the second place, at a given stage of our thinking, we may correct our conception either of the social process or of human personality by new insight into the other term, but in the last resort 'it is psychologically impossible for us to give values to experience without assum- ing personality as the ultimate available standard of value. ■> We necessarily pass our final judgments about the meaning of human experience by reference to its effects, primarily upon the individuals immediately concerned, but ultimately upon the fortunes of all subsequent persons.^ Reasoning about the social process is subject, then, to the same limitations that afifect all other science. We are obliged to fall back upon a major premise which is an assumption of the relativity of values; and the worth of our conclusions depends upon the validity of this assumption. Returning to our main proposition, the social process in its civilizing phase has contained two correlative develop- ments, the one objective, the other subjective. On the one hand, along with the universal struggle between persons, there has been the movement already referred to, viz., a tendency toward adjustment of the relations of persons in accordance with their essential values; on the other hand there has been progressive formation of judgments about human values, and criticism of the social process in the light of these judgments. It does not fall within the scope of our present argument to inquire into the measure of influence which the latter factor has exerted upon the former.*' Enough for our present pur- pose that social relations have exhibited this equalizing tend- * So much at least may be reckoned as beyond dispute since Kant's Kritik der reinen tind der praklischen Vernunft. ' The point in our scheme of analysis at which this question would most properly be considered is indicated by title 30 in Ratzenhofer's schedule, above, p. 326. The facts, when ascertained, would of course be important data for social psychology. 352 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY ency, and that theories based upon valuations of social rela- tions have stood in judgment over against these objective tend- encies. Thought about the social process necessarily assumes . one of these valuations of the persons and the institutions concerned. To sustain or to impeach the valuation, recourse must be had to more knowledge of the social process itself. It should be perfectly clear that any description of civiliza- tion presupposes one of the valuations of the social process to which we have just referred. We cannot analyze a process in which the various material and moral factors are functions of each other, without passing judgment as to their relative worth, and as to the fitness of this or that conduct of those elements of the process which can be controlled. With dis- tinct recognition that these judgments are subject to correction by the social process itself, our discussion proceeds. The argument recurs to the proposition : " A prime fac- tor in the content of the social process is accordingly the pro- gressive substitution of more for less objective standards of measure for social values."^ We have remarked that, at every step in this process, restrictions more or less arbitrary have to be enforced by society upon the individual. Of what sort, and what in detail, the restrictions must be, will depend in general upon circumstances which vary from age to age and from people to people. -The rhythm — or, if we prefer, the "dialectic" — of civi- lization thus indicates, first, equalization; second, restriction; and we must schedule, next, the conditions which permit the necessary restrictions. - . The freedom, or equalization, which is implied or embry- onic in human association is, in a word, "a condition which excludes arbitrariness on the part of some individuals toward others." Our problem is to make out the conditions that promote this result. ^'We may name, first, a certain amount of poivcr on the * Above, p. 349. THE CONTENT OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 353 , part of the classes most in danger of falling into relative unfreedom and inequality, or conscious of desire to move for- ward into relative freedom and equality. Looked at from another direction, this factor involves physical ability to threaten the monopoly of the persons who have more satis- faction than is supposed to be their due. This item provides for the struggle factor in the case. We name, second, a certain force of moral impulse, acting within the persons concerned, as a power of self-restraint. It is intuitive feeling in accord with the principle already referred to in the aphorism of Phillips Brooks: ''No man has a right to all of his rights." ^ In short, a civilizing condition in the State involves not merely ability on the part of A to fight B into respect for A's rights, but it involves in the feelings of both A and B a sense that there is a line at which each, in justice to himself as well as to the other, must restrain himself in asserting his own rights. In other words,' there must be not merely talent in the individuals, and equality of freedom to use the talent, and social restraints to guard that equality ; but there must also be self-restraint to reinforce the social restraints ;<■ i. e., self- renunciation, of some sort and degree, is part of the moral substance out of which civilization is made. Progress in civilization is partly the enforced tribute of defeated selfish- ness to victorious selfishness. It is also in part the willing con- cession of individual or group loyalty to the social interest. A conscious civilizing program calls, therefore, for ability to detect the items of importunate social interest, and to con- form individual claims to these social demands. There is, however, always an appeal, on the part of those who feel a need that others deny, to the last resort, viz., the sheer power of the socially oppressed. jxWe remark, third, the moral impulse that produces civiliz- ing results must be not merely self-restraint and self-denial in ° Above, p. 240. 354 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the interest of present peace, equality, and liberty, but, still further, sacrifice for the future of humanity.^ If we analyze the implications of this third condition, we find that it points toward an ultimate content of civilization which we may schedule as," fourth, establishment of such secur- ity of material interests that all men will have a standing ground for further effort after the higher goods. This is, on the one hand, a task that society has hardly begun; and, on the other hand, if the condition were fully satisfied it would be but the ground course in the whole structure of civilization. The logic of the present social situa- tiottj in all advanced countries, points to this item of material security as the objective on which the masses may best concen- trate effort till this elementary condition is achieved.^*' Fifth, it should go without saying that progressive adapta- tion of the forces of nature, as disco^jered by science, is involved in civilization. That is," civilization must so control the culture upon which it rests that the resources of science and art will be turned to the benefit of the many as well as of the few.^^ This proposition applies not merely to the physical sciences, but to all sciences and their application in technique. The most pertinent illustration today is that of ''trusts" — using the term in its large sense, as concentration of capital under one management. On the one hand, as a pure culture devel- opment, the knowledge we have gained of the possibilities of concentrated management of capital may prove to be the most important technical discovery of the nineteenth century. It economizes technical resources in astounding measure. On the other hand, this very concentration threatens civi- lization. It tempts the men who control technical resources •Mr. Benjamin Kidd has done Rood service in emphasizing this factor; cf. Western Civilization. In the substance of the arRument, however, Ratzen- hofer anticipated him. " Vide " Meaning of the Social Movement," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. Ill, No. 3- " This is virtually the central thesis of Ward's Dynamic Sociology. THE CONTENT OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 355 unduly to monopolize the results of their power. • The trust problem, therefore, not economically or culturally, but socially considered, is how to save the technical advantages of organ- ization, and at the same time to seize the social advantage of equitably distributing the results. ^ In other words, we might act obstructively with respect to civilization in two ways : first, by refusing to adopt science into our culture; for instance, by a " smash-the-trusts " policy ; second, by failing to assimilate the trusts in the interest of the whole ; i, e., by surrendering both industrial and politi- cal control. Sixth, civilization involves, finally, progressive develop- ment of individual and social wants. " The talent for misery is the fulcrum of progress." Thus far, the present chapter has followed the spirit rather than the letter of Ratzenhofer's analysis. In conclusion, we append his own summary of the items essential to a civilizing program : 1. The restriction of absolute hostility, through shifting of the social struggle into peaceful transformation of the law, through conventions (political peace). 2. Establishment of the equal right of all men to compete peacefully, with their full natural capabilities, for influence and property (legal equality). 3. Assurance of individual freedom, so far as consistent with social necessity (statutory freedom). 4. Preservation and increase of the sources of production, for assur- ance of the future of men (conserving and developing economy). These four immediate purposes come to be definite aims of advancing peoples, at some stage of their progress. These aims are attainable, how- ever, only when the resources of culture are made tributary to them. These cultural applications must consequently take rank as mediate aims in a civilizing policy. In this class we schedule: 5. Investigation of nature and its laws (free science). 6. Ennobled conception of nature and its form (free art). 7. Development of custom and usage in accordance with nature (natural as opposed to arbitrary moralization), 8. Serious conception of the secrets of nature, and freedom from com- pulsion in reaching opinions about its essential content (free religion). 356 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY 9. Closest possible approximation to completion by each individual of the period of life appropriate to the race (free hygiene). 10. Promotion and control of the sense of right and of justice, of law and obligation (free ethics). " All results of civic policies which promote these purposes make for civilization, because their total effect is civilization." " " Wesen und Zweck, Vol. Ill, p. 25. The above scheme should be com- pared with the other schedule, p. 216. The two schedules are consistent with each other, but they represent views of the social process from slightly different lines of approach. CHAPTER XXVI THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION For analytical purposes the two chief phases of the social process have to be treated as though they had strictly defined separate existence. In fact, every phase of the social process, principal or subordinate, has intimate relations of cause or effect, or both, with every other phase. We noticed at the outset of this analysis^ that ^struggle and co-operation are correlates in every situation.^ From certain points of view, it is possible to maintain that struggle and co-operation are merely differences of degree, not of kind. When we have reference to the content of the process first, and to its methods second, there is difference both in kind and degree between the phase of the process in which men struggle for individual interests regardless of general interests, and the phase in which they co-operate for general interests in partial renunciation of individual interests. We are not arguing that there is a chronological line, before which the one phase exists, and after which the other phase takes its place. This would be no nearer the truth than to say that up to a certain date a railroad performs an economic service, but after that date its func- tion is social. The railroad discharges both economic and social functions all the time. It is conceivable that a road which does not pay economically may be run by the State for certain social benefits, but still the economic and the social services would be carried on side by side in some ratio. Our argument is that. the pursuit of super-individual ends becomes a part, and an increasingly important part, of the whole social process." Moreover, we shall not have reached a secure basis for psychological interpretation of the social process, without which sociology would lack the essentials * Pp. 203, 325- 357 358 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of science, until we have adequately analyzed the co-operative phenomena of society as well as the phenomena of conflict. In the present chapter we call attention to some phenomena intermediate between conflict and co-operation. I. THE FUNCTION OF LAW IN CIVILIZATION^ In the last chapter we described civilization as a process of conforming human associations to new ethical standards, or a process of rearranging association so that it conforms to a more intensive ethical principle. That is, civilization is a process in which each of the units associating comes to have conscious or unconscious regard for more of the ways in which every other individual is affected by the association. It is a process the undetected logic of which is: "Act for reasons, and akuays for more reasons, and in proportion as the reasons establish rank and precedence among themselves as reasons, until action is finally in harmony with all the reasons, correlated according to their intrinsic values." Whether individuals enter into the spirit of this logic or not, it is the school curriculum of humanity, and every stage in civilization finds humanity a step beyond the earliest stage in conforming to this logic. Now, what has law to do with this process ? We spoke of law above as restraint. From our present outlook, \ law is rather record, registration, proclamation of the secured logical result. V While law is primarily and immediately restraint of the individual, it is essentially a rationalizing of the association.- It is thus an induction of all the individuals into larger liberty. It induces them to act together in a way that widens the scope and enriches the content of life for each. For instance, the logic of association discovers the unrea- son, the uneconomy, of murder; and consequently the law, speaking for social reasons and social utility, says : " Thou shalt not kill." The logic of association discovers that theft is social fallacy; and consequently thq law decrees: "Thou ' IVescn und Zivcck, sec. 63. THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION 359 * shalt not steal." Social logic discovers that falsehood is social insanity; and after a while the law registers the sane prin- ciple : " Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh- bor." Thus the argument goes on, till social logic has not only answered the question: "Who is my neighbor?" It has not only learned that the boundaries of humanity are one neigh- borhood, but law enacts the discovery into display of growing implications of neighborliness. , Law is the conviction of the general mind, turned into a rule for the individual will, in case the latter lags behind the general mind in its choices. • ' In this fact, and in this way of statement, we have a pointer about the question : What social conclusions should have the force of law? In general, the question is settled by deciding what are social conclusions. That which is true is presumably expedient. .Whatever has demonstrated itself, in the logic of association, as true, is properly expressed by society in the imperative mood, to command the action of individuals." In this sense, law is the social schoolmaster. Like other pedagogy, law may be far behind the skirmish line of social discovery, but it is a force of occupation whose business it is to see that the flag of the conqueror is never lowered upon territory once annexed by social conviction. II. BY-PRODUCTS OF STRUGGLE ADDED TO CIVILIZATION^ Pure sociology may be said to deal with two classes of phenomena : £rst, the transformation of individual facts into social facts; second, the transformation of social facts into individual facts. The subject of both these propositions is a relative term; i. e., an individual fact, pure and simple, would be a physical or a mental event which did not spread its influence abroad in any degree. On the other hand, a social fact is essentially an occurrence which involves reaction between two or more peo- ple. Yet, on the one hand, it is difficult to imagine a fact so * Wesen und Zweck, sec. 64. 36o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY individual that it may not have the potency at least, and per- haps the promise, of sooner or later reacting upon other indi- viduals. I have a cold, for instance. It may not be noticed by any- body else. It may not make me cough, or speak with a hoarse voice; but it unnerves me physically, it beclouds me mentally, and it reduces me morally. My unconscious and undetected reaction upon others may affect their whole personal equation. It would not be profitable, however, for working purposes, to classify my cold as a social fact. By so doing we should vir- tually efface the distinction between social and individual facts. We may go a step farther. Suppose I not only turn to the left instead of the right, but suppose I push another pedestrian to the side of the walk which I should have taken. Here is a visible physical reaction between persons. It is also a sign of a mental and moral reaction. Shall we classify the incident for that reason as social? It certainly contains the elements of a social situation; and if we were speaking with absolute exactness, it would be necessary to admit it within the cate- gory "social." The social element would nevertheless not be present in sufficient proportions to display marks of distinction between the concepts "individual" and "social." For that reason such classification would fail to make the incident instructive. Events of which these are examples are to be rated, then, as in effect individual rather than social. On the other hand, the prevalence of colds is one of the factors that make men expectorate in public places. Presently laws begin to be passed and enforced, penalizing such action. Again, passengers on. foot and in vehicles meet so often that a law of the road develops. » The anti-spitting ordinance, or the law of the road, is a social affair of a higher potency than the fortuitous reaction of individuals. \ Just where shall we find the line of distinction ? Appar- ently it is here : That occurrence must be regarded as indi- vidual, i. e., as socially negligible, which is not seen to have THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION 361 considerable effect upon types of association ; which is merely an incident neither producing nor produced by typical group conditions, but is occasioned by variations of impulse peculiar to the individuals. That occurrence must be treated as social which appears to have a tendency to pass into a form or qual- ity of association, or to break up established types of associa- tion, or to express a certain resultant of associate personal influence. With this understanding- of terms, we may advance upon our analysis of the content of the social process. Struggle is primarily individual, in the sense just indi- cated. It is not of and by and for the group, in the largest sense ; or, at least, not the largest group within the horizon of the struggle. When king, barons, and commons fight, the royal forces are a group to be sure, the barons are another group, and the commons are another. Between them, however, England, as a social whole, for the time virtually ceases to exist. - Struggle dismembers the group that sustains the struggle.^ It is resolved into lesser groups, each asserting an interest that is individual relatively to the group within which they collide. So of the trade, within which laborer and employer fight each other. So of the community, in which farmer and manufacturer are at odds. Struggle is primarily centrifugal, which is virtually synonymous with individualistic, as we are now using the term. Civilization, considered as the accumulating product of the social process, is centripetal; i. e., it integrates inter- ests, and the groups that represent them, so that they settle themselves into types of association. The fact which we have now to emphasize is that, in spite of this antithesis in the direction of social forces, v struggle itself deposits elements of civilization."* \That is, selfish, indi- * Simmel, " Sociology of Conflict," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. IX, p. 490. Cf. notice of Durkheim, De la division du travail social, 2d ed., ibid., Vol. VII, p. 566. 362 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY vidualistic impulses perform a function in the interest of civi- lization, partly in spite of themselves, and partly through the merging of selfish impulses into socializing impulses. The generalization may be expressed in concrete illustra- tions : The British East India Company and the Hudson Bay Company were selfish enterprises of the frankest sort. They were organized struggles of alien cupidity against native weak- ness and ignorance. Without any considerable feeling of sym- pathy for the exploited populations, or desire to do them good, the persons who invaded either territory actually did leave in their track certain civilizing results. The like is true of men who in more recent years indirectly assaulted public morality, and pillaged public property, in the struggle to enrich themselves by building railroads. The illus- tration does not refer to railroad-builders as a class, but to notorious special cases. In these instances, their own private emolument was virtually the sole interest which the operators cared to satisfy. Incidentally, however, they forged bonds of unity between parts of the society which they exploited. There is still another form of the same principle, working in a more disinterested guise. William Lloyd Garrison, or Louis Kossuth, or Savonarola, champions a cause. It makes no difiference whether a hidden motive is involved or not. The cause is its own justification. The individual struggles for the cause, incidentally satisfying his own interest in means of subsistence, in social prestige, in vindicating his own theo- ries, or whatever. In either case a social adjustment may be brought about. The same thing occurs in the case of groups. The conflict of the American colonies among themselves, after the War of Independence, was in form and motive individual- istic ; it was selfish ; it was separatistic. It nevertheless visualized the evils of local individualism and selfishness and separatism. It argued the cause of community and co- operation and organization. It produced disgust with political cross-purposes. It thus prepared the way for union. THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION 363 In short,*- struggle, in spite of itself, reacts with social necessity in such a way that the resultant is a certain deposit of serviceable social arrangement. ' For further illustration, we may suggest : different forms of modus vivendi, as under- standings between nations, either preventing or suspending struggle ; treaties, embodying the results of struggle ; articles of civilized warfare, codifying experience so as to insure against extremest barbarity in future struggle; legislative or constitutional provisions — for instance, each of the fifteen amendments to the American constitution — which may be regarded as the positive output of previous party struggle; trade agreements ending strikes, lockouts, etc. ; and many similar adjustments. In a word, 'Struggle creates new conditions that become the line within which peaceful co-operation may proceed. III. THE DIRECT EFFECTS OF THE CIVILIZING FORCES^ At present we may use the terms " socialization " and " civilization " interchangeably. Each is a phase of the other. We have just seen how struggle — i. e., the specialization of interests — unwittingly pays tribute, and becomes vassal to, socialization. It turns the interests which are antagonists of each other into a common social stock, administered by a group composed of all the previously conflicting groups. In the last analysis, this element is in some measure present in every socializing movement. On the other hand, we find in progressing civilization the action of forces which their agents do not regard as selfish. Certain interests, which are necessarily individual in their ultimate units, project themselves into a region of relations outside the individual actors. The ends sought seem to these actors to be, not their own ends, but purposes intrinsically worthy. For example, I want the merit system to be adopted in our civil service, because it seems to me the efficient way of ' Wesen und Zweck, sec. 65. 364 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY doing the public business. This means at last, however, that the public service is my projected self. I want to be served by the most effective system possible, and I join forces with other people who feel the same want. ^ The civilizing forces, then, are generalized individual forces. ^ The apparent difference between them and frankly selfish forces is due to the fact that the terminus upon which the latter calculate is in the individuals who act, while in the former case the terminus in view is either in the persons acted upon, or in forms of relationship that are but remotely con- nected with the immediate actors. In the latter case the pre- sumption of disinterested quality in the action is easy. To illustrate. My health interest stimulates my frankly selfish desire for food and clothes and fuel, because of the bodily comfort which they produce. On the other hand, I say there is no selfishness in my desire that my neighbor, in the rear tenement in the next block, shall be housed and warmed and fed. I am mistaken, however. It is not the same interest in me which desires my own and my neighbor's physical comfort, but it is the same self in the two cases, expressing different interests. So it is not one selfish self that frankly wants to make money, and another unselfish self that wants to give some of that money to charity. The money- making and the charity are alike projected out of interests that have their lodgment in the same actor. Their force is derived from the impulse of the same actor to satisfy his own interests. v\ The distinction between a selfish and an unselfish action is not psychological, therefore, but sociological. All conduct is primarily of, for, and by the self.v If I risk my life to save a neighbor's child from drowning, it is not because my own wishes for the time being are suspended, and 1 become the mere channel of outside forces. Precisely the contrary is true. The action would show that I am less at ease with myself in seeing a neighbor's child drown than I am in expos- ing my life to prevent the accident. It is I that want the THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION 365 child to be saved, just as at another moment, for other reasons, I might want to kill another person. In the last analysis, the stimulus of every act is an interest of the individual who acts. < The possibility of conduct appar- ently tending away from the self, or 'even against the self, is given in the diverse types of interests that compose the self.^ These considerations prepare the way for our view of the direct civilizing process. Men first struggle for what they regard as satisfaction of their own individual desires. Then they differentiate ability, in some form and measure, to strug- gle for purposes whose ends seem to lie outside of themselves. Social arrangements — constitutions of government, laws, forms of intercourse, group policies — seem to be worth effort on their own account. Action aimed toward such ends is directly socializing. The fundamental condition of such action is that the individuals composing the group shall have passed out of the initial stages of personal development, into the stage in which the social and the ethical interests are attract- ive, i There must be in the individuals a distinct demand for social and ethical satisfactions^ or there will be no direct effort for socializing or civilizing ends. It follows that no new era can arise in socialization, no genuine advance of civilization to a higher plane can take place, until there has previously occurred, in the souls of the persons composing the civiliza- tion, either an extension or an intensification of the ethical interests. The power of a nation to socialize itself is not to be meas- ured by the excellence of isolated individuals in the population. Russia is not social in its temper because it has produced a Tolstoi, nor Italy from having a Mazzini. 1 The civilizing capacity of a people does not correspond with the mental or moral attitude of its best men, but with the general level of social impulse in the majority. I It is a frequent remark that Germany has profited more ' Vide Dewey, " Self-realization as a Moral Ideal," Philosophical Review, Vol. II, p. 652 ; also, " Green's Theory of Moral Motive," ibid., Vol. I, p. 593. 366 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY than France by the French Revolution. One of the obvious reasons is that the spirit of the French nation is relatively individualistic, in spite of the centralized government and the profession of collectivistic sentiments ; while the German spirit is relatively collectivistic, in spite of the Teutonic traditions of freedom. The German ideal has never been atomistic liberty, but the freedom of parts within a body. There has, accordingly, been arrest, and defeat, and confusion of progress in France, by individual fractiousness and perversity, because there has been defect of community spirit. At the same time, there has been in Germany comparative readiness to acquiesce in apparent demands of civic order, in spite of energetic dis- integrating impulses. The German is the more social in his individuality. The Frenchman is the more individual in his sociability. Again, as Ratzenhofer points out, we cannot measure the socialization of a people by the liberal character of its political constitution. On the contrary, as some South American States show, in the absence of an effective social bond in the temper of the people, a constitution that is free in form may be merely a product and a tool of anarchy. Actual socialization may be promoted, to be sure, by exter- nal pressure, as is doubtless the case at present in Mexico. That socialization may become intrinsic and secure, it must have its roots in popular interests. The latter must, more- over, be of the sort that find genuine satisfaction in community relations, in distinction from individual conditions. There must be the spirit of industry, thrift, self-respect, and respect for others. There must be love of order, love of justice, and pride in group achievements. There must be in the units talent for feeling themselves one with the whole, and for experien- cing personal triumph or defeat with the gain or loss of the whole. Without this psychical basis there may be mechanical organization, and imitation of civilized institutions, but no secure socialization. With this psychical basis socialization is in principle achieved. Its evolution is merely a series of details. THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION 367 I In so far as the socializing spirit acts directly, it is a con- scious movement, headed by alert idealists, selecting definite purposes in the common interest, and supported by the masses, in the spirit of group enthusiasm. IV. RESUME OF THE BEARINGS OF THE ARGUMENT UPON SOCIOLOGICAI- METHOD Parts IV and V have thus been a free commentary upon an epitome of the program of descriptive sociology which Wesen und Zweck der Politik proposes/ It has been a labor of love to point out the significance of Ratzenhofer's contribution to sociological method. Whether much or little of his particular analysis stands the test of criticism, it is only fair to say that the mystical descriptive sociologies of the pre-Comtean period, and the symbolical descriptive sociologies typified by Spencer and Schaffle, pass for the first time into securely objective descriptive method in the argument of Ratzenhofer. Reduced to their lowest terms, the problem and the method of sociology, as this syllabus has thus far discussed them, amount to this : 7 The problem is to state and interpret, as a coherent zvhole, the facts of human experience. The method is not metaphysical in any sense; it is not symbolical, or ana- logical, or indirect, in any sense; it is matter-of-fact gener- alization of the zvorkings of elemental human interests, as they manifest themselves in types of individuals, and in types of association. > The operations of human interests, we repeat, fall into two great classes : first, those in which the immediate aim is satisfaction of some demand which the actors locate in them- selves; second, those in which the immediate aim is satisfac- tion of some demand w^hich the actors locate outside of them- selves. These two classes of activities are infinitely inter- ' The title-page contains the clause : Als Theil der Sociologie und Grund- lage der Staatswissenschaften. It would have been quite in accord with Ger- man usage, and it would have precisely defined the scope of the work, if the alternative title had been substituted : Entwurf zu ciner beschreibenden Sociologie. 368 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY laced, so that we cannot sharply separate concrete acts, placing some in the one class and others in the other. We can go only so far as to say that in one aspect or relationship, or in ratio of influence, given concrete acts fall within the one class or the other. As a rough general principle, then, the former operations of interest produce the phenomena of struggle, the best direct product of which is " culture," i. e., a body of technical inven- tions for accomplishing results, irrespective of conditions gov- erning the use of the inventions; the latter produce the phe- nomena of co-operation, or civilization, the criterion of which is progressive use of all culture by increasing proportions of the people. It thus comes about that the descriptive or analytical stage of sociology encounters the task of tracing the terms in which interests present themselves to individuals and to groups, and the variations under which efforts to satisfy these interests occur. We have indicated in some detail a line of analysis appro- priate to the phenomena of struggle (Part IV). On the other hand, we have hardly gone beyond advertising the demand for similar analysis of the phenomena of co-operation (Part V). The reason for this is not far to seek. The struggle element is so notorious that not everyone will admit the presence of any- thing except struggle in the social process. The phenomena of struggle are on the surface, visible to everybody, and until very recently they have virtually monopolized the attention of historians and philosophers. The social sciences, whatever their names, have thus far done little else than thresh out the data of human struggle. So much of the work of descriptive sociology has been done already in this division that there should be little surprise at the skepticism of theorists about the existence of any other factor. For this reason I have never been able to see the force of Professor Giddings' hypothesis " consciousness of kind " as a sociological prin- THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION 369 ciple.^ In so far as its content is a physiological or a psycho- logical fact — i. e., "like response to like stimulus" — it seems to me simply to phrase a pre-sociological datum about which there is no ground for debate. In so far as it claims to be a generalization of social reactions, it seems to me to be rather a formula of what would or should be in a completely inte- grated human association, than of what has been, thus far, during the genesis of association. Consciousness of differ- ence has been enormously more apparent than consciousness of likeness. Some such phrase as " regularity of reaction " might stand for an undoubted fact. Whatever the phrase "consciousness of kind" implies more than this seems to me relatively a social desideratum rather than the generally deci- sive social fact. When we turn to the element of co-operation, on the other hand, we have to overcome the prejudice against interpreting co-operation proper into any social combination. The pre- sumption is that the social process is neither more nor less than struggle mitigated by acceptance of the inevitable; that what we name co-operation is merely stifled struggle. On the contrary, our thesis is that, -along with out-and-out struggle — i. e., self-assertion of the extremest type — and along with the externally socialized self-assertion which recog- nizes the self-interest of pooling issues w^ith others; a factor quite different in temper develops in the course of the social process. We have called this the co-operative or civilizing factor. • The tendency which it promotes begins to manifest itself before there is sure evidence of a conscious purpose to co-operate and to civilize. That conscious purpose does arise. It gathers definiteness and strength. There comes to be a certain assertion of purposes that locate their aim, not in the self, but in the community in which the actor functions. That community gradually widens. A few men dedicate them- selves to causes which they regard as greater than themselves. * Vide Principles of Sociology, Elements of Sociology, and Inductive Sociology, passim. 370 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY They speak of these ends as "country," "humanity," "science," "art," " Hterature," "reform," "God." Not all of these men, by any means, actually reinforce the co-operative impulse which we assert, but some of them do. There spreads among the multitude a certain contagion of this collective spirit. While a few men may be said to locate the aim of life outside of themselves, many more men locate some portion of the aim of their lives outside of themselves. Whether they are aware of it or not, this transfer or division of interest becomes an effort for the good of a society of men more or less beyond the individual sphere, and at its highest power devo- tion to the good of all men. The operations of this factor are much less easily proved than those of the narrowly selfish factor. It is seldom so distinct from the other factor that it may not be charged with wearing the mask of collective interest, merely to make its real selfishness more successful. The evidence of its presence is more indirect; or, at all events, the presumption is much stronger against the face value of evidence pointing toward the collective interest than against evidence of the more proba- ble selfish interest. For all these reasons, any analysis of social phenomena as manifestations of the co-operative purpose would be chal- lenged at every step, and called upon for proof that the inter- pretation did not force a theory into the facts. This syllabus of a general argument would miss its purpose if it should enter into the detail necessary to demonstrate a particular proposition, even though it were, as in the present case, a theorem of cardinal importance in the whole system. It is in point merely to define the issue, and to show its relation to sociological method. We assert, then, that a factor of increasingly conscious, col- lective, co-operative, civilizing purpose has had cumulative influence in the social process. Men's conceptions of their own interests have tended to shape themselves more and more in a setting of general interests. Collective purposes, which THE TRANSITION FROM STRUGGLE TO CO-OPERATION 371 men did not at all connect with their individual interests, or at most only as an after-thought or by-thought, have played an important, and often decisive, role in the drama of life. Analy- sis of the social process in terms of this co-operative factor is quite as essential as analysis in terms of the struggle factor. In other words,' the social process, as we actually find it, is a product, not only of individuals' efforts to attain satisfac- tions contemplated as wholly their own, but also to realize social conditions regarded as more or less external to them- selves, and desirable because of values recognized outside of themselves. The reality and the importance of this second main factor in the process have not received proportionate attention. Its operation overlays and informs the action of the struggle factor more and more decisively as human experi- ence matures. The ambition of sociologists to interpret the social process has far outrun their success in describing the process. We have had interpretations galore that do not interpret, princi- pally because they were lucubrated out of sight of the actual process to be interpreted. The peculiar merit of Ratzenhofer's work is that it presents a more realistic survey of the whole scope of the social process than any previous system had con- tained. We have had sociologies, and in particular social psychologies, of a vacuum, of imaginary societies, and of scraps of society. We have yet to develop a sociology that rests upon valid induction from the actual social process. Ratzenhofer has gone beyond all his predecessors in plotting the whole scope of the process, and in proposing tentative for- mulas of correlation. The sort of thing that he exhibits is the stuff out of which objective sociology must be made. So far as the co-operative factor in the social process is concerned, the work of collecting the material can as yet show only fragmentary results, while the work of criticising the material is hardly begun. CHAPTER XXVII THE ACTUAL CONFLICT OF INTERESTS IN MODERN SOCIETY With this subject we reach the rock on which sociology has thus far split. All that has gone before is relatively easy. Here is the difficulty beyond which sociology has not been able to go. Our general survey has brought to view the main features of the social process. Even if this general view were complete in detail, it would after all be a mere preliminary. Every sociologist, v»'hether he is an abstract theorist or an ardent and restless reformer, has some sort of vagne notion that sociology is worth while because it will somehow, some- time, show the way to move the world. It might as well be confessed that sociology has not gone very far toward justify- ing this idea. What we have done as yet is mainly descriptive. That is, it is a thinking over of what lias been done. The desideratum is to find out what remains to be done, and how to do it. Every system of sociology has paused perplexed before this requisition upon its wisdom. Now, we must not think that this amounts, on the one hand, to a condemnation of all the description, and analysis, and generalization that has been done, and which must con- tinue to be done in much greater detail ; nor, on the other hand, to proof that our aspirations for human progress are Utopian and chimerical. Everybody who allows himself to think above the level of commonplace mechanical routine has a certain amount of feeling, which he may never have dis- tinctly defined to himself, that there is sometime coming a new revelation of the meaning of life. We all imagine that some day a rift in the clouds will widen our horizon. We look for some sort of clarification of our vision that will show us what we should try to do in order to realize tiie largest 372 CONFLICT OF INTERESTS IN MODERN SOCIETY 2,7?^ values of life. We are conscious of the suspicion that cross- purposes, and no distinct purposes at all, of any wide scope, defeat the aims of our industries, our government, our edu- cation, our social intercourse, and our religion. We are all looking for some prophet to tell us how we have missed our bearings and how to find them. Doubtless he will come, but he will probably be the end of an era rather than its beginning. That is, he will be the man — or it will more likely be the whole Zeitgeist — that will gather up and bring into form the results of the kind of analy- sis of the social process which we are now carrying on. That new vision and purpose will have come when we are able to see the concrete details of our peculiar situation in their real sig- nificance as incidents in the general social process. We have made out that the gist of the social process is the struggle of men to realize their interests : the joining of hands among men to help realize the eominon interest, and to defeat the competing interest ; the development of more and more complex alliances, as the interests become more complicated, and as the gaining of them calls for more elaborate means. All this brings us to the very commonplace conclusion that' the ftmdamental sociological problem, viewed w^ith refer- ence to further achievement or progress, is the problem of stating the actual conflict of interests in present society. What is the actual division of the people of the United States, for example, in the pursuit of ends, and to what extent is this division necessary antagonism of the people ,against each other ? The solution of an algebraic problem is virtually accom- plished when the problem is correctly stated. That is, the formula of the problem has merely to be transformed by deductive logic into the formula of the conclusion. It would be too much to say that the same is true of the social prob- lem, but is is evident that our problem cannot be solved by any intelligent process until it can first be stated. I do not profess to have gone beyond the other scx:iologists at this 374 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY point. We are all putting the meagerness of our resources on exhibition before this final demand of life upon theory. It may be rash to hope that anything in this argument will go far toward advancing the present frontier of sociology. At all events, we can point out how important the problem is, and how hard it is. We have defined culture as the total technique for getting things done. We have defined civilization as popularization or democratization of the use of culture. Some people are starving to death, physically, socially, intellectually, aestheti- cally, and religiously; while others are beglutted with abundance of all the output of material, social, intellectual, aesthetic, and religious culture. There are infinite gradations between these extremes of poverty and superabundance. Probably those men who think about it at all would agree that progress must involve some sort of rearrangement of rela- tions between these extremes. To get at even an hypothesis of rearrangement, we need an approximately correct state- ment of the existing arrangement. Society has worked out a culture. The people who make up the living generation are so divided^ either in their interests or in the pursuit of their interests, that they believe they are in an anomalous situation in the enjoyment of that culture. The frontier problem of practical sociology Is to show whether the anomaly really exists, and if so, wherein it consists. It is easy enough to say the rich are divided against the poor, or the strong against the weak, or the educated against the uneducated ; but there has never been a time in the history of the world when so much riches was at the service of poverty as today, or so much strength enlisted in help of weakness, or so much intelligence devoted to general enlightenment. The attempt to show that there is irrepressil)le conilict between capital and lal^or does not convince, any more than we should be satisfied by a theory of health that pitted the stomach against the muscles. Yet everybo'thing that he learns is copied, reproduced, assimilated from his fellows ; and what all of them, including him — all the fellows, the socii — do and think, they do and think because they have each been through the same course of copying, repro- ducing, assimilating that he has. When he acts quite privately, it is always with a boomerang in his hand; and every use he makes of his weapon leaves its indelible impression both upon the other and upon him. It is on such truths as these, which recent writers have been bringing to light,5 that the philosophy of society must be gradually built up. Only the neglect of such facts can account for the present state of social dis- cussion. Once let it be our philosophical conviction, drawn from the more general results of psychology and anthropology, that man is not two, an ego and an alter, each in active and chronic protest against a third great thing, society; once dispel this hideous un-fact, and with it the remedies found by the egoists, back all the way from the Spencers to the Hobbeses and the Comtes — and I submit the main barrier to the successful under- standing of society is removed." At the same time, there should be no difficulty in getting it understood that, while biology and psychology have to do with the individual when he is in the making, sociology wants to start with him as the finished product. There is a certain impossible antinomy about this, to be sure; for our funda- mental conception is that the individual and his associations are constantly in the reciprocal making by each other.^ Never- ' E. g., Stephen, S. Alexander, HofTtling, Tarde. Wc show in Part VII that our emphasis at this point by no means commits us to acceptance of " the imitation theory." • Op. cit., p. 87. ' Cf. chap. 32. INTERESTS 431 theless, there are certain constant aspects of the individual which furnish known terms for sociology. They are aspects which present their own problems to physiology and psy- chology, on the one hand, and to sociology, on the other; but in themselves they must be assumed at the beginning of socio- logical inquiry. To the psychologist the individual is interesting primarily as a center of knowing, feeling, and willing. To the sociolo- gist the individual begins to be interesting when he is thought as knowing, feeling, and willing something. In so far as a mere trick of emphasis may serve to distinguish problems, this ictus indicates the sociological starting-point. The indi- vidual given in experience is thought to the point at which he is available for sociological assumption, when he is recognized as a center of activities which make for something outside of the psychical series in which volition is a term. These activi- ties must be referred primarily to desires, but the desires themselves may be further referred to certain universal inter- ests. In this character the individual becomes one of the known or assumed terms of sociology. The individual as a center of active interests may be thought both as the lowest term in the social equation and as a composite term whose factors must be understood. These factors are either the more evident desires, or the more remote interests which the individual's desires in some way represent. At the same time, we must repeat the admission that these assumed interests are like the atom of physics. They are the metaphysical recourse of our minds in accounting for concrete facts. We have never seen or touched them. They are the hypothetical substratum of those regularities of conduct which the activi- ties of individuals display. In this connection the term " interest " is to be under- stood, not in the psychological, but in a teleological sense.^ * Here again we have a term which has insensibly grown into force in sociology, and it would require long search to trace its history. It may be found almost indiscriminately among the sociologists. Its use sometimes 432 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY The sense in which we use the term is antecedent to that which seems to be predominantly in Professor Baldwin's mind in the following passages : The very concept of interests, when one considers it with reference to himself, necessarily involves others, therefore, on very much the same footing as oneself. One's interests, the things he wants in life, are the things which, by the very same thought, he allows others also the right to want; and if he insists upon the gratification of his own wants at the expense of the legitimate wants of the " other," then he in so far does violence to his sympathies and to his sense of justice. And this in turn must impair his satisfaction. For the very gratification of himself thus secured must, if it be accompanied with any reflection at all, involve the sense of the " other's " gratification also ; and since this conflicts with the fact, a degree of discomfort must normally arise in the mind, varying with the development which the self has attained in the dialectical process described above On the one hand, we can get no doctrine of society but by getting the psychology of the socius with all his natural history ; and, on the other hand, we can get no true view of the socius without describing the social conditions under which he normally lives, with the history of their action and reaction upon him. Or, to put the outcome in terms of the restriction which we have imposed upon ourselves — the only way to get a solid basis for social theory based upon human want or desire, is to work out first a descriptive and genetic psychology of desire in its social aspects; and, on the other hand, the only way to get an adequate psychological view of the rise and development of desire in its social aspects is by a patient tra- cing of the conditions of social environment in which the child and the race have lived and which they have grown up to reflect." The somewhat different concept of this element "inter- est" which we posit may be indicated at first with the least possible technicality. We may start with the familiar popular expressions, "the farming interest," "the railroad interest," "the packing interest," "the milling interest," etc., etc. Everyone knows what the expressions mean. Our use of the term " interest " is not co-ordinate with these, but it may be approached by means of them. All the " interests " that are leaves the impression that the ■author attaches to it very little importance. In other cases it seems to be cardinal. No writer has made more of it than Ratzenhofer, Sociologische Erhcnntuiss, chap. 2, ct passim. 'Social and Ethical Interpretations, pp. 15, 16, 21, 22. INTERESTS 433 struggling for recognition in business and in politics are highly composite. The owner of a flourmill, for example, is a man before he is a miller. He becomes a miller at last because he is a man; i. e., because he has interests — in a deeper sense than that of the popular expressions — which impel him to act in order to gain satisfactions. The clue to all social activity is in this fact of individual interests. Every act that every man performs is to be traced back to an interest. We eat because there is a desire for food; but the desire is set in motion by a bodily interest in replacing exhausted force. We sleep because w^e are tired; but the weariness is a function of the bodily interest in rebuilding used-up tissue. We play because there is a bodily interest in use of the muscles. We study because there is a mental interest in satisfying curiosity. We mingle with our fellow-men because there is a mental interest in matching our personality against that of others. We go to market to supply an economic interest, and to war because of some social interest of whatever mixed or simple form. With this introduction, we may venture an extremely abstract definition of our concept " interest." In general, an interest is an unsatisfied capacity, corresponding to an unrealised condition, and it is predisposition to such rearrange- ment as would tend to rcaliizc the indicated condition}^ Human needs and human wants are incidents in the series of events between the latent existence of human interests and the achievement of partial satisfaction. Human interests, then, are the ultimate terms of calculation in sociology. The zvhole life-process, so far as zve knozv it, whether viezved in its indi- ^^ Professor Dewey's formula is : " Interest is iinptilse functioning with reference to self-realization." Our formula attempts to express a conception of something back of consciousness, and operating more generally than in facts of consciousness. Whether this philosophical conceit is defensible or not, is unessential for the remainder of our analysis. All that is strictly necessary for sociology proper is the later analysis, which might be performed in terms of " interest," either in our own or in the psychological sense, or of " desires " in a more empirical sense. Indeed, the latter is the method to be applied in the following discussion. 434 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY victual or in its social phase, is at last the process of develop- ing, adjusting, and satisfyijig interests}^ No single term is of more constant use in recent sociology than this term " interests." We use it in the plural partly for the sake of distinguishing it from the same term in the sense which has become so familiar in modern pedagogy. The two uses of the term are closely related, but they are not precisely identical. The pedagogical emphasis is rather on the volun- tary attitude toward a possible object of attention. The sociological emphasis is on attributes of persons which may be compared to the chemical affinities of different elements.^ ^ To distinguish the pedagogical from the sociological use of the term " interest," we may say pedagogically of a sup- posed case : " The boy has no interest in physical culture, or in shop-work, or in companionship with other boys, or in learning, or in art, or in morality." That is, attention and choice are essential elements of interest in the pedagogical sense. On the other hand, we may say of the same boy, in the sociological sense : " He has not discovered his health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness interests." We thus imply that interests, in the sociological sense, are not necessarily matters of attention and choice. They are affini- ties, latent in persons, pressing for satisfaction, whether the persons are conscious of them either generally or specifically, or not; they are indicated spheres of activity which persons enter into and occupy in the course of realizing their per- sonality. Accordingly, we have virtually said that interests are merely specifications in the make-up of the personal units. We have several times named the most general classes of inter- " Quite in harmony with this formula is the conclusion of Professor Ludwig Stein, Die sociale Frage, 2d ed., p. 519. Closely connected with this conception of the social process is Stein's formula of the ultimate social im- perative : ibid., p. 522. " Probably it is needless to say that the term " interest " in this connec- tion, whether used in the singular or the plural, has nothing to do with the economic term " interest." INTERESTS 435 ests which we find serviceable in sociology, viz, : health, wealth, sociability, knoivlcdgc, beauty, and rigJitness. We shall speak more in detail of the content of these interests in the next chapter. We need to emphasize, in addition, several considerations about these interests which are the motors of all individual and social action : First, there is a subjective and an objective aspect of them all. It would be easy to use terms of these interests in speculative arguments in such a way as to shift the sense fallaciously from the one aspect to the other; e. g., moral conduct, as an actual adjustment of the person in question with other persons, is that person's " interest," in the objec- tive sense. On the other hand, we are obliged to think of something in the person himself impelling him, however unconsciously, toward that moral conduct, i. e., interest as " unsatisfied capacity," in the subjective sense. So with each of the other interests. The fact that these two senses of the term are always concerned must never be ignored; but, until we reach refinements of analysis which demand use for these discriminations, they may be left out of sight. Second, human interests pass more and more from the latent, subjective, unconscious state to the active, objective, conscious form. That is, before the baby is self-conscious, the baby's essential interest in bodily well-being is operating in performance of the organic functions. A little later the baby is old enough to understand that certain regulation of his diet, certain kinds of work or play, will help to make and keep him well and strong. Henceforth there is in him a co-operation of interest in the fundamental sense, and interest in the derived, secondary sense, involving attention and choice. If we could agree upon the use of terms, we might employ the word " desire " for this development of interest; i. e., physiological performance of function is, strictly speaking, the health interest; the desires which men actually pursue within the realm of bodily function may be normal, or perverted, in an infinite scale of variety. So with each of the other interests. Third, with these qualifica- 436 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tions provided for, resolution of human activities into pursuit of differentiated interests becomes the first clue to the com- bination that unlocks the mysteries of society. For our pur- poses in this argument we need not trouble ourselves very much about nice metaphysical distinctions between the aspects of interest, because we have mainly to do with interests in the same sense in which the man of affairs uses the term.^^ The practical politician looks over the lobby at Washington, and he classifies the elements that compose it. He says : " Here is the railroad interest, the sugar interest, the labor interest, the army interest, the canal interest, the Cuban interest, etc." He uses the term " interest " essentially in the sociological sense, but in a relatively concrete form, and he has in mind little more than variations of the wealth interest. He would explain the legislation of a given session as the final balance between these conflicting pecuniary interests. He is right, in the main ; and every social action is, in the same way, an accommodation of the various interests which are represented in the society concerned. It ought to be plain, then, that our analysis of society, first into the operative interests within the units, and then into per- sonal units, is not the construction of an esoteric mystery, to be the special preserve of sociology. It is a frank, literal, matter-of-fact expression of the reality which society presents for our inspection ; and it is the most direct step toward insight into the realities of society. Social problems are entanglements of persons with persons, and each of these persons is a com- bination of interests developed in certain unique proportions and directions. All study of social situations must conse- quently be primarily a qualitative and quantitative analysis of actually observed mixtures of interests. Whether it is a prob- lem of getting the pupils in a school to do good work, or of '' We might reserve the term " interest " strictly for the use defined above, applying the term " desire " to the subjective aspect of choice, and " want " to the objective aspect, i. c, the thing desired. Precisely because the term " interest " is in current use for all these aspects of the case, we prefer to retain it. INTERESTS 437 making the religious force in a church effective, or of defend- ing a town against illegal liquor traffic, or of organizing laborers for proper competition with employers, or of securing an enlightened national policy toward foreign peoples — whether the particular social situation or problem which we have in hand fills only the four walls of our house or reaches to the ends of the earth, in every case the primary terms of the problem are the particular interests of the particular persons who compose that particular situation. The phrase " properties of numbers " survives in many minds from their earliest encounters with arithmetic. Whether or not it was good pedagogy to use the phrase we will not inquire, but the idea and the program behind the phrase may furnish an analogy for our present use. The boy w4io simply makes change for the papers he sells on the street corner has this at least in common with Newton, and Laplace, and the bookkeepers, and the actuaries, and the engineers, who carry on the most complicated mathematical calculations, viz., they are concerned with the " properties of numbers." So far as the problems of each go, they must learn, somehow or other, to know the properties of numbers under all circumstances where they occur. In like manner, people who seek social intelligence, whether they are street gamins hustling for a liv- ing with help from nobody, or social philosophers attempting to report the past and to foretell the future of the human fam- ily, all are dealing with the properties of persons. Just as the chemist must very early get familiar with certain primary facts about his "elements," their specific gravity, their atomicity, their relation to oxygen, etc., etc. ; so the sociologist, whether amateur or professional, must early get a working knowledge of the essential peculiarities of persons. Sociology accord- ingly involves first of all a technique for detecting, classifying, criticising, measuring, and correlating human interests, first with reference to their past and present manifestations, and second with reference to their indications for the future. The sociological study that is provided for in university courses is 438 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY not like the instruction in law, whch is calculated to make men the most effective practitioners under the code that now exists. All our programs of sociological study are more like the courses in pure and applied mathematics which a West Point student is obliged to take. They are not expected to give him specific knowledge of the situations which he may encounter in a campaign. They are supposed to make him familiar with the elements out of which all possible military situations are composed, with the means of calculating all relationships that may occur between these elements, and with the necessary processes of controlling theoretical and practical dealings with these elements under any circumstances what- soever. Every real social problem throws upon the sociologist who undertakes to deal with it the task of calculating a unique equation of interests. General sociology is a preparation for judging a concrete combination of interests very much as gen- eral training in physiology and pathology and clinical observa- tion prepares the physician for diagnosis of the new cases which will occur in his practice. He may never meet precisely the same combinations of conditions and symptoms which he has considered in the course of his preparatory training, but he is supposed to have become familiar at least with all the general types of conditions and symptoms which can occur, and to have acquired ability to form reliable judgments on the specific nature of any new combinations of them which he may encounter. Suppose, for instance, we are dealing with the practical problems of law-enforcement in a particular town in a state which has a prohibition law. There are certain very familiar types of persons who persist in treating the situation as though it were an affair of two and only two simple factors, viz., the law on the one side, and its violation on the other. The fact is that both the law and the violation are expressions of highly complex mixtures of interests, and neither the law nor the vio- lation precisely represents the actual balance of interests in INTERESTS 439 the community. On the one hand, the law was derived from a co-operation of at least these six factors, viz. : first, a high, pure, moral interest that was uppermost in certain people; second, an interest in good social repute, spurred by a state of conscience that condemns the liquor traffic, but without enough moral sympathy with the condemnation to act accordingly, unless lashed to action by the zeal of the first interest; third, a political interest in making capital out of a policy which would win certain voters; fourth, a business interest, in get- ting the trade of certain people by opposing a traffic that they oppose, or in creating difficulties for a traffic which is indi- rectly a competitor; fifth, a personal or family interest, in preventing or punishing a traffic which has inflicted, or threatens to inflictj injury upon self or relatives; sixth, an interest in the liquor traffic itself, which calculates that oppo- sition may be fought more adroitly when it is in the shape of positive law, than when it is vague and general. In every par- ticular case these six sorts of interest that create the law will be subdivided according to circumstances, and the relative influence of each will vary indefinitely. We no sooner realize these facts than we are aware that in its substance, its force, its spirit, the law is not the absolute, categorical, unequivocal factor that it is in its form. While it has no uncertain sound as a statutory mandate, expressed in impersonal words, it has a most decidedly quavering quality when traced back to the human wills whose choices give it all its power. On the other hand, if we analyze violation of the law, we find that it arises, first, from thoroughly immoral interests — greed of gain, contempt for social rights, willingness to profit by the physical and moral ruin of others ; second, the interest in satisfying the drink appetite. This ranges from the strong and constant demand of the habitual drunkard to the weak and intermittent demand of the man who uses liquor some- what as he uses olives or citron or malted milk. Third, the interest in personal freedom. There are always people in con- siderable numbers who want to do w^hatever others presume 440 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY to say they ought not to do. This faction includes elements varying from hopeless moral perversity to highly developed moral refinement. Fourth, business interests not directly con- nected with the liquor traffic : belief that trade follows the bartender; desire to keep solid with the interests directly dependent upon the liquor traffic; competition with other towns that are said to draw away trade by favoring liquor sellers; etc. Fifth, political interests: desire to use the liquor interest for personal or party ends. Sixth, social interests. Friends are directly or indirectly interested in the liquor traffic, and influence must go in their favor, from the negative kind that allows hands to be tied and mouths closed, to the positive kind that manipulates influence of every sort to obstruct the operation of the law. Seventh, legitimate business interests. This rough analysis of the situation shows that, instead of two simple factors, viz., law and lawlessness, we are really dealing with a strangely assorted collection of interests, awk- wardly struggling to express themselves in theory and in practice. We are not arguing the question how to deal with the liquor traffic, and we are not implying an opinion one way or the other about prohibitory laws. We are simply showing that, whether we are dealing with one kind of a law or another, we may be very uncritical about the ultimate factors involved. The two facts in question, viz., the law and the violation, prove to be in reality the selfsame persons expressing different elements of their own interests. The father of the prohibitory policy has been known to plead with a judge not to pass sen- tence on a liquor-seller in accordance with his own law. The same persons who sustain the law also violate the law in some of the different degrees of violating and sustaining referred to above. The law on the one hand, and the violation on the other, are nothing but shadows, or apparitions, or accidents, except as they reflect the actual balance of interests present in the members of the community. The real problems involved are, first, to discover whether the law or the violation most nearly corresponds with the actual desires lodged in the per- INTERESTS 441 sons ; and, second, to devise ways and means of changing' the balance of desires in the persons, in case immorahty proves to be the community choice. It is both a social and a sociological blunder to proceed as though the law were something precise, invariable, and abso- lute. The law is an approximate verbal expression of social choices which are mixed, variable, and accommodating in a very high degree. The law has no existence, as a real power, outside of the continued choices of the community that gives it effect. In a very real and literal sense it is necessary to get the algebraic sum both of the law-abiding and of the law- violating interests, in order to know just what the psycho- logical choice of the community, as distinguished from the formal law, really is. This illustration has been carried out at such length because it is a kind of problem with which all of us are more or less in contact, and our ways of dealing with it frequently show practical disregard of the elementary significance of the operative interests concerned. The main point is that, for theoretical or practical dealing with concrete social problems, we need to be expert in detecting and in measuring the pre- cise species of interests that combine to form the situation. To carry the illustration a little farther, some of the states in the American union agree to prohibit both intemperance and ignorance. In general, all of us, both communities and indi- viduals, condemn both vices. We put our condemnation in the shape of laws regulating the liquor traffic, on the one hand, and laws establishing free and perhaps compulsory edu- cation, on the other hand. When we attempt to define intem- perance and ignorance, however, we find that we have infi- nitely varied points of view, and that our desires are cor- respondingly varied. We consequently lend very different elements of meaning and force to the formal laws. Some of us think that intemperance begins only when a man gets physi- cally violent, or fails to pay for the liquor he consumes ; and that ignorance means inability to read and write. Others of 442 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY US think that intemperance exists whenever fermented or alco- holic liquors are swallowed in any form or quantity, and that ignorance is lack of college education. Accordingly, the phe- nomena of the continued consumption of liquors, in spite of laws against intemperance, and of persistent non-consumption of school privileges, in spite of laws against ignorance, are equally and alike inevitable manifestations of the actual assort- ment of desires out of which the community life is composed. We repeat, then : The problem of changing the facts is the problem of transforming the interests (desires) that make the facts. Social efficiency, on the part of persons zealous to alter the factSj involves skill in discovering the actual character of the desires present, knowledge of the psychology of desires, and tact in the social pedagogy and politics and diplomacy which convert less into more social desires. These statements imply all the reasons for the study of fundamental sociology. From first to last, our life is a web woven by our interests. Sociology might be said to be the science of human interests and their workings under all condi- tions, just as chemistry is sometimes defined as "the science of atoms and their behavior under all conditions." Man at his least is merely a grubbing and mating animal. He has devel- oped no interests beyond those of grubbing and mating, or those tributary to grubbing and mating. Every civilization in the world today carries along a certain percentage of sur- vivals of this order of interests, and societies still exist wholly on the level of these interests. On the other hand, some men develop such attenuated spiritual interests that they pay only perfunctory and grudging tribute to the body at all, and live in an atmosphere of unworldly contemplation. Between these extremes are the activities of infinitely composite society, moved by infinite diversities of interests. These interests, however, as we have seen, are variations and permutations of a few rudimentary interests. Onr knowledge of sociology', i. e., our systematized knowledge of the human process, ivill be measured by the extent of our ability to interpret all human society in terms of its effective interests. CHAPTER XXXIP THE INDIVIDUAL Today's sociology is still struggling with the preposterous initial fact of the individual. He is the only possible social unit, and he is no longer a thinkable possibility. He is the only real presence, and he is never present. Whether we are near to resolution of the paradox or not, there is hardly more visible consensus about the relation of the individual to the whole than at any earlier period. Indeed, the minds of more people than ever before are puzzled by the seeming antinomy between the individual and the whole.- ^ "* Advancing upon our analysis of interests as such, we have now to speak of interests as we find them combined in actual ^ Cf. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations, passim ; Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order. " Cf. Royce, The World nnd the Individual. ^ " Der Zug der Naturwissenscliaften .... geht zur Einheit. Anders im Bereich der Socialwissenschaften. Zwar die theoretische Sociallehre, das social Seiende durch Causalanalysen erklarend, zeigt gleichfalls den Zug zur Einheit. Nicht aber die praktische Sociallehre ; zwei contradictorische Grund- normen des Seinsollens stehen hier in ewigem Widerstreit sich gegeniiber : das Individualprincip und das Socialprincip Diese Grundnormen stehen sich als Axiome gegeniiber, welche nicht bewiesen, sondern nur geglaubt werden konnen. Es handelt sich um eine logische Antinomic ; das dem letzten Grunde des socialen Seinsollens naclispiirende Denken zwingt uns entweder im Individual- oder im Socialprincip den letzten Schluss socialer Weisheit zu suchen ; aber es zwingt uns zugleich zu der Erkenntniss, dass die Entscheidung, welche wohl oder iibel vollzogen werden muss, wilkiirlich ist." (Dietzel, Theoretische Sociatokonomik, p. 7.) Unless " ewiger Widerstreit " is to be understood as mere hyperbole, Dietzel does not see so far as he should into a theoretical and practical reconciliation of the two principles. Indeed, his proposition, taken literally, illustrates our assertion of confusion in modern minds. It posits an antinomy between theoretical and applied social science. Our whole conception of " the social process " offers something better than a hopeless dualism of " the individual " and " the social." *A very intelligent discussion of this subject may be found in McGilvary, " Society and the Individual," Philosophical Review, May, 1900. 443 444 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY individuals. We have thus to set in order certain common- places which are so obvious that all kinds of social theorists have usually treated them with silent contempt. Our purpose in this part of the discussion is not to propose psychological, and still less metaphysical, solutions. We shall simply sched- ule, with scant illustration, certain components of the real individual which are to be reckoned with whenever w^e try to understand human affairs. Psychological analyses and metaphysical hypotheses have their own competence with respect to these elements, but all sane social theory must first accept certain crude facts as part of its raw material, and the constant significance of these facts is not likely to be set aside by any sort of subsequent criticism. In general, then, the human individual, when considered as sentient, and not in his merely passive relations as a parcel of matter, acts always with reference to ends which may be classified in six groups. For the sake of convenient refer- ence, w^e may press a single term into service as a group- name in each instance. Speaking somewhat roughly and symbolically, we may say again that all the acts which human beings have ever been known to perform have been for the sake of (a) health, or (b) wealth, or (c) sociability, or (d) knowledge, or (e) beauty, or (/) rightness, or for the sak^ of some combination of ends w-hich may be distributed among these six.^ The individual as we know him is an insatiate demand for satisfactions included within these groups. The individual as we know him manifests no demands for satis- factions which may not be placed within one or more of these groups. Without affecting profitless precision in use of terms, we may promote our purpose by double ellipsis as follows : First, human individuals are centers of desires for (a) health, (b) wealth, (c) sociability, ((/) knowledge, (e) beauty, (/) rightness. Second, the desires in view of which men act are (a) health, (b) w-ealth, (c) sociability, (d) knowledge, (e) beauty, (/) rightness. Nothing in our present discussion • Cf. Small and Vincent, Introduction to the Study of Society, pp. 174 ff. THE INDIVIDUAL 445 hinges on this use of the term "desire," now in the subjec- tive and again in the objective sense. The Hberty will there- fore be taken of returning to our general term " interest," ^ and our thesis reduces to these algebraic forms : first, the human individual is a variation of the sixfold interests, i. e., desires (subjective) ; and, second, the conditions of human satisfaction consist of variations of the sixfold interests, i. e., wants (objective). It may be worth while to guard at the outset against pos- sible misconception of what the foregoing propositions imply. It is not asserted, for instance, that from the moment when the genus homo emerged in the zoological series there was forthwith efficient demand for each of the six species of wants. It is not asserted that men are invariably, or even usually, conscious of all six interests, or that they classify the ends of their actions under these categories. It is not asserted that when men are acting in ways which tend to satisfy some form of these interests, they are necessarily conscious of the motive or of the tendency of their conduct. The proposition is primarily that, so far as we are acquainted with the human individual, he does not and cannot get himself into motion, except under the conscious or luiconscious impulse of one or more of these interests ; and, moreover, he does not and can- not entertain a desire which is not assignable to a place in this sixfold classification. There may be individuals who have never betrayed a desire for knowledge or beauty or right- ness. If so, they must be classified as individuals in whom the life-process has not passed through all its typical forms. No individual has ever been observed with desires having a real content that could not be located within the six divisions speci- fied. Health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty. Tightness, exhaust the known demands of the individual, and at the same time in their varieties and permutations they fill the bounds of the known objective possibilities of the individual. 'As we have said above (p. 436), it would be an improvement in certain respects if we adopted the scale "interest," "desire" (subjective), "want" (objective) ; but we prefer for the present this alternative. 446 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY But we shall be very far from taking for granted the real individual with whom sociology has to reckon, if we picture either desires or wants as fixed in quantity or in quality. Human desires are not so many mathematical points. They may rather be represented to our imagination as so many con- tiguous surfaces, stretching out from angles whose areas pres- ently begin to overlap each other, and whose sides extend indefinitely. This phase of the facts carries inspiring teleological impli- cations. We shall return to them in later chapters. We shall try to show that in the facts to which we now refer, there is a clue to a more precise content for a philosophy of life, indi- vidual and social, than we have hitherto attained, and that sociology must at last undertake to trace out the indications already partly legible in these known human desires.^ At present, however, we are concerned neither with prophecy nor with history, but with discrimination of what actually is. We are recording our perceptions of certain marks which, to the best of our present knowledge, always characterize the human individual, and which always, sooner or later, combine to carry on the human part of the social process. In brief, either the social process in the large, or that portion of the process which is comprised within the limits of an individual life, is a resultant of reactions between the six interests, primarily in their permutations within the individual, secondarily in their permutations between individuals, and always in their varied reciprocity with the non-sentient environment. Each of these interests is incessantly conditioning and conditioned by each of the others. In scheduling them we are constantly tempted to digress into examination of their reciprocal relations. Our aim in this section, however, is to keep attention as steadily as possible upon these six interests in turn, as the ultimate human factors with which pure sociology has to deal. To recapitulate : The sociological form of study of human association sets out from the point where physiology and psy- ' Vide chap. 39. THE INDIVIDUAL 447 chology stop ; or, rather, it is more accurate to say that socio- logical study begins where physiology and psychology would stop if they conformed to a rigidly schematic program; or where they would stop if our mental processes occurred in the lineal and serial order in which we have to represent them in speech. In fact, each advance of our knowledge of men in association makes new requisitions upon physiology and psy- chology for closer knowledge of individuals ; and this more intimate physiology and psychology in turn reopens doctrines about association, and proposes new inquiries for sociology. In any given inquiry, Jiozvcvcr, the psychologist, as such, takes association as the known and fixed factor, in order to pur- sue investigation of his undetermined subject-matter — the mechanism of the individual actor. The sociologist, as such, on the contrary, takes the individual for granted, and pur- sues investigation of his undetermined subject-matter, viz., associations. The individual accepted by the sociologist as his working unit is the human person endowed with interests which manifest themselves as desires for health, wealth, socia- bility, knowledge, beauty, and rightness. To the best of our present knowledge, all the things that occur in human asso- ciations are functions of these factors composing individuals, in reaction with the variable factors of external conditions which make up each individual's environment. The descrip- tive task of sociology, or the task of " descriptive sociology," is to furnish a true account of real men in their real relations with the other men with whom they associate. We pass, then, to more specific indication of the individual interests : a) The Health Interest. — Men are first and generi- cally splendid animals. Human capacities mark the human type as fit for the most intricate correlations of physical func- tion, for superior economy of physical energy, for exquisite harmony of physical action, and for corresponding eagerness of physical enjoyment. Theories or appreciations of life derived from this perception exclusively have tended to the perversion of life manifested in the later Dionysia at Athens 448 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY or in the Saturnalia at Rome. On the other hand, theories of hfe which go to the other extreme of denying and repudiating the normaHty of physical excellence, with its appropriate glad- ness, have tended to the opposite monstrosities of asceticism. The anchorite is as far as the sybarite from a final rendering of life. The concrete goods of life are incommensurable, but they are not incompatible. The just balance of life has not been found by eliminating certain normal elements of human good, and exaggerating other elements beyond their propor- tionate worth. The Greek ideal was not the whole truth, but it contained elements of truth which men have never been able long to ignore. Plato declares that his wish for life is : " to be healthy and beautiful, to become rich honestly, and to be gay and merry with my friends." The first item in his specifications was doubtless his version of aax^pwavvr}. It appears to have meant to the Greek, not all that our render- ing " wisdom " connotes to us, but physical reasonableness, moderated and temperate sensuousness — not quite the " sweet reasonableness" of modern Hellenism, but a fragment of the later conception. If Hawthorne correctly transferred the idea of Praxiteles' Faun to Donatello, that artless creature before his transformation symbolized not merely the Greek, but the universal norm of one element in human personality. The right man will be a man of exuberant, exultant health. With- out generalizing this ideal as a program, every man, accord- ing to his insight, instinctively or systematically reaches after this realization. Right human life will be the life of a race of splendid physical men. The starved, the stunted, the feeble, the sick man advertises arrest or deflection of the life-process. Before and after health becomes a reflective desire, it is the primary instinctive desire. Before and after the activities that belong to health are balanced and proportioned and regulated, they often betray a fierce force that leaps over the limits of good in their own realm, and threatens all the other goods of life. Neither the abuses of excessive vitality, however, nor the misfortunes of defective vitality, can permanently confuse THE INDIVIDUAL 449 our inevitable desire for health in its appropriate form and power. Before and in and through all his other activities, the individual is incessant urgency and exercise of the health desire. Hebrew wisdom placed the half-truth, "All that a man hath will he give for his life," in the mouth of the father of lies. It is impossible to substitute a formula that wnll cor- rectly express the ratio between the health desire and all the other desires, because the ratio is infinitely variable. Some- times a man will forego all else for the privilege of continuing to exist. Again he will jauntily throw away his life for a principle or a sentiment or a passion. Today he will give his kingdom for the ransom of his body, and tomorrow he will stake life and fortune against tribute of a penny. We need not at present raise any of the baffling questions about the com- parative significance of the several elements of human desire. Our emphasis now is upon the fact that the actual individual of real life is made up of some proportion or other of the six desires which we have scheduled. One or more of these may be negligible quantities in exceptional cases, but in the aver- age man each of them is always present, and occasions may arise when either of them will become dominant. We do not know the real individual, then, until we recognize him as a resultant of these six desires in some power and proportion. The health desire is the least questionable of all. At this point we can indicate only a formal expression and application of this fact in sociological theory and in social praxis. There w^ill always exist an implicit minimum stand- ard of the health satisfactions. As in the case of each of the other constituent desires, this standard will vary with indi- viduals and with groups. Whenever the individual or group status falls below a certain minimum of health condition, the life-process in the individual or the group is to that extent turned destructively against itself. The practical bearings of this and similar abstract generalizations that are to follow should suggest themselves. We must confine this part of the 450 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY argument, however, to pure sociological theory. A later por- tion of the discussion will deal with the question, in the case of each of these desires in turn : What is the most and the best indicated by the known conditions of life, as available for men in each of these realms of satisfaction? b) The Wealth Interest. — After a century and a quarter of the economic abstraction recommended by Adam Smith, there is little call for debate over the existence of something in the human individual corresponding with the concept " the economic man." Even the economic man assumed in pure theory, howeverj is by no means a mere alias of the wealth desire as we apprehend it. The traditional economic man is a relatively advanced and complex social product, not a simple social element. The economic man is not a plain affinity for wealth. Sometimes he is a more expert and persistent scatterer than accumulator of wealth. Some- times wealth is almost altogether a means with him, and scarcely to any appreciable degree an end. Sometimes he plays the economic game just as another plays whist or bil- liards or golf. Sometimes he wants wealth because his wife wants society. Sometimes he wants wealth in order to propa- gate his creed, or to punish his enemy, or to win a maid, or to buy a title, or to control a party. In either case the economic man is a man of highly mixed motives, and it is curious that in all our economic literature there has been so little analysis of the wealth desire, in distinction from the forms of economic action in which the wealth motive is largely mediate. The fact that most of the things deemed desirable in highly devel- oped society are to be accomplished only with the aid of wealth, obscures more than it reveals the intimate nature of the wealth desire proper. When men want wealth for reasons extrinsic to itself, they are specimens of "the economic man." to be sure, but they are exemplifying the fact that the economic man is prompted by desires other than the wealth desire. Some men — indeed, the primal animal in each one of us — want wealth for the sake of the physical sensations that come from THE INDIVIDUAL 45i consuming it. Dialecticians might find it easy to maintain that in this case the health stimulus rather than the wealth stimulus is primary. At all events, when men want wealth for its own sake, the impulse appears to be at the outset an instinct of a creative sort, a desire to control nature or to conform nature to the agent's ideas.** In one fraction of his nature man is an eagerness to be a god. If autonomy, in the most restricted sense, satisfied this urgency, health would be a realization of the human ambition of sovereignty, i. e., complete autonomy of the physical organ- ism. Man does not find himself complete, however, as a god in a vacuum. His rule requires a realm. Things furnish that realm. The lordship of man over man occurs wherever force can assert it, and the sense of justice does not estop it. When men cannot or will not lord it over each other, there still remains to them a means of partially completing the circuit of self-realization in the lordship over things. Things subject to personality is the formula of a second stage or phase of the completeness of the real individual. It is part of complete human personality to exercise lordship over things. The sav- agery of the savage is primarily his inability to lord it over things. In the midst of limitless resources of ores and fibers and forces, he commands nothing, he marshals nothing, he compels nothing to his service. His wealth is raw roots and flesh and pelts, and tools that the monkeys may have used, and used about as well. He begins to be a man in beginning to take completer possession of things, in ordering them about, in molding them to his will, in mastering them at the caprice of his imagination. The truth is, the modern vice is not too much devotion to wealth, but too little. Our materi- alism is too extensive, but not intensive enough. It puts up with quantitative title instead of qualitative possession. Perhaps there is a literal truth which we have overlooked in the dictum of St. Paul: "The love of money is the root * Professor Veblen's theory of " the instinct of workmanship " seems to have much in common with this proposition. 452 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of all evil." Money is the emptiest wealth which men possess. Money is the opium of industry. The vice of money is its insinuation into the place of wealth. Money debauches men by leading them to substitute for the exercise of the possessing function habitual purchase of personal service. Money is a subtle means of tempting men from normal lordship over things to abnormal lordship over persons. Money makes men veritable rois faineants in the realm of things. The Mosaic code contains the precept: "And thou shalt take no gift : for the gift blindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the righteous."^ Money is a conventional dis- guise of gift-taking. This is not an estimate of the total func- tion of money, but a statement of one of the forms of abuse to which money is liable. Effects visible in modern society verify the Mosaic prognosis. Modern men are less than men because so many of us possess things only by proxy, and because such wealth as we have, as proprietors, is merely the partial usufruct of other people's lordship over things. I buy the thing I cannot produce. Another masters nature and pro- duces the thing which I buy. He lords it over things. I am powerless over the same things until he masters them for me. In this transaction he is the man, and by so much I am less than man. The only adequate demonstration of the " dignity of labor " is to be reached in this connection. The phrase in our civilization is, on the one hand^ an instinctive and indignant claim to more credit than society concedes, and, on the other hand, a form of cajolery which carries little genuine appre- ciation. The dignity of labor, as labor, resides in the pre- rogative of mastery. Not all labor is dignified. Courage is dignified, and the man who, for the sake of biding his time and meanwhile feeding his family, bravely digs ditches or carries a hod. while aware that the work is beneath his powers, is dignified in his courage, though menial in his toil. There is no dignity in drudgery, though there is dignity in endur- • Exod. 22, : 8. THE INDIVIDUAL 453 ance. Dignified labor is masterful and creative labor. A treadmill is a slave-pen. A forge or a carj^enter's bench may be a kingdom. That labor is dignified in which mind molds things. Labor is dignified in proportion as it is mental mas- tery of materials or conditions. The wealth produced by mental mastery is the regalia of the real man. The initial dignity of labor, then, is its realization of a portion of the process of manhood, not its mere seizure of the means of partial manhood. We repeat, therefore, that the modern vice is not too much devotion to wealth, but too little. Modern life drowns the wine's bouquet in the very mass of the wine. We literally lose our lives in the business by which we plan to find life. Our social inventions for the administration of things have spoiled their administrators for the lordship of things. The pseudo-wealth which we have ennobled to equality with real wealth has degraded us in return. We have gained the Midas touch, but we have forfeited the full franchise of wealth. While we handle the symbols of wealth, we neglect or we delegate the arts of creating wealth, and we grow impotent to appropriate wealth. ^^ The mere manipulator of money knows none of the campaigns with nature, the assaults upon intrenched resistance, the defeats, the changes of front, the retreats, the flank movements, the fine strategies against obsti- nate physical properties, the renewed attacks, the patience, the persistence, the intelligence that conquer things. Ignorant of the conflict, he cannot appreciate the conquest. If we have the money power merely, the victors have emancipated us, but they cannot enfranchise us. In spite of our liberty, we are still unfree. A partial recognition of these facts is in the tradition of many princely families that the sons and even the daughters must learn some industrial craft. There is also in this con- nection a profounder sanction than is usually asserted for the reinforcement of our school curricula by manual training. The experimental laboratory also has a function, apart from 454 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY scientific discovery, in affording to many men that element of experience in mastering nature without which their Hfe would be seriously unbalanced. Such discipline admits men to actual appropriation of material goods, for which they would else have no adequate sense. Real wealth is not appre- ciated by men who know nothing intimately of the difficulties of creating wealth. Wealth as the measure and as the realiza- tion of man's mastery over things is neither too highly nor too generally valued in our civilization. Wealth as the mere accumulation of things that others have mastered is both too highly and too generally valued. The materialism of our day is deplorable radically as a sign of man's mastery or desire of mastery over men, and of abdication or willingness to abdi- cate the real lordship of things for this unnatural lordship over persons. Personality, like any other whole, is the union of all its parts. It cannot be realized by a preference of certain parts which amounts to exclusion of certain other parts. Accord- ingly we recognize, alongside of health, this second factor which enters into complete personal realization, viz., that lord- ship over things which is founded upon direct mastery of nat- ural forces. The sense in which we urge that mastery over things is a phase of proper personality, and thus in so far an end in itself, may be illustrated by a sort of parallel familiar to scholars. Educated men pity people who have to put up with information without corresponding insight. The navi- gator or the accountant who mechanically applies his table of logarithms, without understanding how a logarithm is derived, or what essential relations it expresses ; the drug clerk who knows how to interpret the signs in the physician's prescrip- tion, but who has no idea why two substances may be com- pounded, while other two may not; the voter who learns the program of his party, but is impotent to criticise or to decide whether the program is wise and just — each of these, from the scholar's point of view, is pitiable. They have the form THE INDIVIDUAL 455 and some of the uses of knowledge, without that wisdom which is the completion of knowledge. Real knowledge is first-hand insight into the relations partly expressed by the practical information. A generation that had forgotten its mathematics and its chemistry and its statesmanship, and had retained only rules and formulas and statutes, would be a generation intellectually dead. It would have the form of knowledge, but none of that spirit of divination which is the vitality of knowledge. In a similar way, a generation that multiplies material products, and glorifies the controllers of them, while it exempts one order of men as completely as possible from personal mas- tery of things, and identifies another order of men as com- pletely as possible with unthinking machine production of things, inevitably diminishes in both classes the proper exer- cise of possession, and thus the appropriate realization of manhood. The perception which we are now emphasizing is that mastery of things is a function proper to complete personality. Speaking in terms of the appropriate product of this mastery, or wealth in the sense in which we have used the word, wealth is physical substance and attributes raised to a higher power by the reinforcement of thought. Wealth is man's first realization of independence among the world-forces. That lordship over things which directly creates w^ealth in the popular sense is more than proprietorship over matter. It is comprehension of matter, insight into its qualities, per- ception of its adaptabilities, and consequent personal appro- priation and control of its latent possibilities. It would be superfluous to argue that lordship over things in this sense is an essential social function. In order that human animals may progress through the stages of develop- ment to which their endowment foreordains them, somebody must create wealth and hold it subject to human use. But our theorem goes beyond this. We assert that the individual is incomplete and monstrous, unless the power and the practice 456 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of the direct lordship of things are evident in him. Wealth simply held subject to my draft is material toward which my relation may be unnatural and vicious. It may be merely property without the antecedent conditions of comprehension and control. Such proprietorship, unless counterbalanced by some direct lordship over other things, tends to unsocialize and dehumanize men by assigning to them a status manifestly artificial, because impossible of generalization. The exten- sion of this status to all men would extinguish society. Proxy wealth is necessarily impossible as the universal order. Dele- gation of the wealth function is in principle as abnormal as delegation of the health function. A man is not as fatally incomplete when others exercise all the primary control of nature for him, as he would be if he tried to have others exer- cise all the vital functions for him; but he is in an equally literal sense abnormal and artificial. Lordship over things, in the sense thus indicated, is the satisfaction appropriate to the wealth desire. Self- realization is promoted in the achievement of lordship over things by means of the candid contact with nature necessary to creation and control. Production of real wealth requires sympathetic and intelligent touch with reality which is prom- ise and partial potency of knowledge and art and virtue. There are very deep reasons for our customary epithet " honest " in the case of a simple laborer. When we speak of the " honest farmer," the association of ideas is with his matter-of-fact dealings with nature, which he is credited with carrying over consistently into his dealings with men. Plis attitude is accepted as typical of all right human relations with the real world. Other things being equal, the man who deals directly at some point with nature's physical veracities should become the more complete and genuine man from the association. Conversely, exemption from such relation, or reduction of it to mere brute contact, suspends one of the conditions of personal completeness. The radical and inevitable necessity of mastery over things THE INDIVIDUAL 457 by somebody, in order that anybody may maintain mere exist- ence, still more in order that anybody may be more than an animal, creates the most effective presumption against any theory of life which views the lordship of things as an acci- dent. Any function which is essential to the existence of the species must be regarded as proper to the individuals of the species, until reasons for believing the contrary appear. In this case observation of the wealth function discovers, not merely its necessity, but its inherent dignity. We cannot subtract that dignity from any man and regard the remainder as a complete man. For sociological theory, whether applying to the remote past or to the immediate present; for social practice, whether that of scholar or artist or moralist, or that of society in treating children or paupers or criminals or defectives, or of democracies in controlling and developing themselves — the individual always and everywhere in question is an agent intensely interested in compelling nature to his own use. We may not treat this incident as a trivial and transient foible of human character. So far as we know, it betrays an essential and permanent trait of human nature. At all events, valid sociological thinking must accommodate some form and pro- portion of this sort of self-assertion in its assumption of the real individual. c) The Sociability Interest. — We have appetites for personal intercourse of a purely spiritual sort, without con- scious reference to physical contact or material exchange. There are human affinities which nothing but reaction with human beings can satisfy. There are interchanges of stimu- lus and satisfaction between persons with no more dependence upon, nor ulterior reference to, any physical conditions than the slight minimum which is involved in the analogous case of cultivation and enjoyment of music for its own sake. In both cases, as we have said in another connection,^ ^ the physi- cal is the necessary vehicle of the spiritual, but it is uncon- *" Vide above, pp. 54, 423, 424. 4S8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY sciously involved, and a negligible factor so far as the char- acter of the paramount desire is concerned. There are enlargements of life aside from advantages that spring from use of the material things which men create. Those that we have now to consider proceed from spiritual reactions with other men. In our philosophies of justice we have confined our calculations too closely to relations which might be expressed or measured in material terms. Moral theorists have treated social relations almost exclusively as different arrangements into which men are assorted by care for their bodies and by pursuit of purchasable goods. We have had individual ethics, or the principles of physical and mental well-being, considering the person as an isolated group of related operations. We have had the ethics of business, of politics, of religion. We have even had the ethics of social intercourse, considered as a means to one of these other ends. But no one has made it evident that there is an important section of life made up of conditions in which personality pure and simple reacts upon personality, and immediately assists or retards normal satisfaction. No one, surely, has taken the further step of codifying the just balance of these purely spiritual relations. When we observe that affinities for certain personal rela- tions are manifested by some men, and when we discover the probability that these affinities are latent, if not patent, in all men, we may thereby reach another specification in our analy- sis of the real individual. The fact is that all men tend nor- mally to desire contacts with other men of a sort to gratify their pure sense of personality. We mean by sociability, then, those elements in the relations of persons which correspond with this desire.^ ^ A primary and simple demand of the sociability desire may be illustrated by analogy with the leadings of the health " We have not yet invented all the terms needed to avoid confusion in this connection. Thus " sociability " is not identical with " the social," as discussed below, chap. 34, sec. 2. It is one of the many forms of relationship within the larger category. THE INDIVIDUAL 459 desire. Parallel with the desire for bodily integrity is an equally naive and persistent desire for personal integrity. Each man embodies a claim to be a spiritual integer, an undi- minished unit among like whole units. The German term Selbstgcfiihl seems to contain more traces than any English equivalent of this instinctive impulse to assert the full measure of personality. The Germans talk also of pcrsdnliche Geltung, "counting for all that one is essentially worth," and this again seems to be an utterance of the native human instinct. The privilege of standing over against his fellow, with the assured franchise of equal freedom of self-expression, is an implicit demand of every unspoiled man. The demand is not primarily an assertion of " equality," in the sense in which the idea is notoriously abused by pseudo-democrats. It is the demand that, such as I am, with such sort and size of merit as I per- sonally possess, I may be permitted to assert myself, without suppression or subversion by the arrogation of others. The inherent desire of each man to see himself reflected at full length in his neighbor's eye is a factor to be counted on in calculation of every social equation, just as positively as each individual's desire for food and sleep. Another German word frequently in proletarian use is Anerkennnng. It loses some of its force when we render it " recognition," because in America the latter term has narrow political associations. The root of the matter is desire not to be socially discounted in accordance with any fictitious scale, but to be taken at full value. This demand is a very real and strong factor in American labor agitations, although it might have been more clearly expressed and more consistently urged. " We want to be treated like men," means demand, not alone for higher wages, but for opportunity to be accounted as men in the councils of men. It means assertion of right to have feelings respected and opinions weighed and judgments considered on their merits, instead of having them summarily quashed at the dictation of other men's interests. The spontaneity of our demand for the privilege of j>er- 46o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY sonal integrity may be detected indirectly in our involuntary resentment against violations of this relation. A case in point is the custom, long familiar in royal and noble families, of having in the castle a scapegoat in the person of a boy of plebeian birth and of equal age with the heir of the lordly house. The mis- sion of the humbler boy was to endure corporal punishment (der Priigeljunge) in place of the privileged scion. The latter was held to be too good to suffer bodily for his own mis- deeds, but was capable of committing rascalities enough to keep the skin of the human foil frequently smarting. When we think of that domestic institution, even across the inter- vening time and space, we are conscious of indignation, not chiefly on account of the physical afifliction, but because of the outrage against the personal integrity of the base-born boy. He was denied the individuality which distinguishes man from matter. He was forbidden to be a self, responsible for his deed and accountable for his fault. He was stunted in moral stature. His sense of justice was stultified. His pos- session of sentiment like that of other human beings was ignored. He was denied the right to develop as a man, and was turned into a wolf or a sheep. The judgment of history upon American slavery will doubtless emphasize the same element, while it recognizes that the slaves as a rule had ampler security of their standard of physical welfare than many free populations enjoy. Exclu- sion from the franchise of personal integrity condemned the system which so liberally guaranteed bodily integrity. The radical evil of our present wage system is not that it permits inequality of distribution, but that the inequality is so largely an index of an arbitrary personal inequality, which gives arti- ficial weight to the will of some persons and artificially counts out the will of others. Human nature unsubdued by social veto instinctively asserts for each indix idual a distinct inviolate dignity. As Fichte expresses it : " The marrow of the idea of justice is that each man has an e(|ual claim with every other man upon the full development of himself." ^^ "Ethik, Vol. I, p. 19. THE INDIVIDUAL 461 Closely related with this instinct of personal integrity, and intimately involved in its realization, is a social claim which may be called, in the absence of a better term, the craving for reciprocal valuation, A variation of this impulse manifests itself in manifold demands for functional valuation, all impelled at one point by the distinctively social desire, but all sooner or later resolving themselves, with all the other human impulses, into functions of all the others. Both Emerson and Carlyle have rung changes upon portions of this theme. The dictum, " No man can be heroic except in an heroic world," and the theory that we worship great men because they express to us our implicit selves, and help toward due valuation of ourselves, with possibly similar appraisal in other minds, both posit the desire for social valuation to which we are calling attention. The society in which the individual might most completely achieve himself would be in part a mutual- admiration society. Each member's potential excellence would be helped into actuality by each other member's recognition of the partially realized excellence. Without having attempted a final analysis of the socia- bility desire, we have indicated by these two marks certain qualitative traits of a distinct factor in human individuality. It develops in other directions, to be sure, as in ambition for prestige among men and for power over men ; but we have sufficiently indicated distinctive marks of this factor. If some extraordinary provision could be made for the wants of a human being, aside from satisfactions of sociability, the abun- dance of all things else would not prevent ultimate discovery of a radical lack. Assertion of personality in distinction from other personality, and exchange of recognitions of personal valuation, are as proper incidents of human satisfaction as supply of the bodily demand for food and air. d) The Knowledge Interest. — It is hardly necessary to insist upon the abstract proposition that the human indi- vidual wants to know. We encounter incredulity only when we try to follow the implications of the universal knowledge 462 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY desire, in case they begin to reveal indications of larger des- tiny for all men than the present state of knowledge permits. Without pursuing inquiry very far in this direction, we may briefly enter another detail in our specifications of the real individual. It would doubtless be entirely superfluous to argue with any reader of this syllabus that knowledge is good both as a means to other goods, and also as an activity of the person, without reference to any ulterior end. Whether the judg- ment is susceptible of logical confirmation or not, it is part and parcel of modern men's thinking, and few people would care to waste their time in seeking proofs for a perception so direct and clear. A machine is at its best when part so plays into part that the total function of the machine is performed. A man is not at his best until he is able to think all that he does, and to follow all his conditions and actions with intel- lectual comprehension. As Schiller expressed it : Denn, wer den Sinn auf's Ganze halt gerichtet, Dem ist der Streit in seiner Brust geschlichtet. — " Die Huldigung der Kiinste." Every man above the level of idiocy has to know some- thing in order to act at all. No man can know all that the rest of men know. Between the extremes of nescience and omniscience there must be a typical condition of knowledge for the normal man. What is the indicated condition of the knowing process for the individual who is achieving himself in a healthy way, and for a society that is progressing? If we think of knowledge primarily as a means to other elements of living, our judgment about the working ratio between this clement and the others is that knowledge is not in due proportion until it is sufficient to insure the standard of life appropriate to the individual in question; or, what amounts to the same thing, until it is sufficient to insure the persistence of the social process at the point where the given individual functions. One is not a well-working socius unless THE INDIVIDUAL 463 one has the knowledge necessary to provide for self-conduct of one's own part of the social process. This is the conception, by the way, on which the American public school implicitly rests. If, on the other hand, we think of knowledge as a portion of self-achievement which has implications of its own, apart from its bearings upon other phases of life, the ideal of knowl- edge is in a sense inverted.y Knowledge for the sake of a process outside of itself calls for a focusing of all reality that can be made available upon the particular process for which the knowing person is responsible. On the other hand, knowl- edge as an achievement by itself calls for a going out in thought as far as possible from the thinker's personal func- tion, and a discovering of the content and meaning of as much as possible of the whole life-process, within which the thinker occupies a place. There is no antithesis at last, except a rhetorical one, between these two aspects of the knowing function; but this view of them affords a clue to the two kinds of valuation that we actually pass upon the knowledge element in conduct. Knowledge as a means of maintaining the standard of life is practically demanded by everybody. Knowledge as vision of the meaning of life, and of what the standard of life should be, is needed by everybody, but is in far less general demand. So far as human relations are concerned, the largest con- crete conception which our minds can represent in detail is the persistence and the expansion of the life-process of which we find ourselves to be parts. We have a vague conception of this system of relations as in its turn an incident in a greater cosmic process, or a stage in the progress toward a " far-off divine event." This, however, shapes itself in our imagination as little more in detail than we discover actually or potentially in the social process. The latter includes all the reality which we have the means of thinking specifically. Accordingly, our valuations of knowledge tend to scale up and down from the meaning of the nearest details of our individual lives, at the 464 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY one extreme, to the largest correlations of the total life-process, past, present, and future, at the other. It is necessary to the integrity of the social process that the whole process shall reduce itself in my knowing to that kind and measure of appre- hension which enables me to be my particular kind of actor in the whole process. It is essential to the complete integrity of my individual self that, in my knowing, the conditions and contents of the whole social process shall be constantly arran- ging themselves more in accordance with objective fact, and constantly expanding toward juster and completer comprehen- sion of the all within which I perform a part. The whole social process thus realizes itself through the intelligence of the indi- vidual, while the individual process, in its intellectual phase, realizes itself through progressive mental representation of the whole social process. The knowledge interest has there- fore no limit short of complete comprehension, not merely of the social process, but of the cosmic process. e) The Beauty Interest. — Frank confession of incom- petence to discuss this portion of the subject will excuse fail- ure to give it proportionate emphasis. The theorem which this chapter is developing is that the actions of all men of whom record is preserved have betrayed impulses which may be traced to six implicit interests, or six more manifest derived desires. - We may recognize the aesthetic desire, and we may be familiar with some of the conduct which it prompts, with- out venturing to expound its implications. A literature of the beauty interest is rapidly developing; and the psychology and the sociology of feeling will doubtless be as thoroughly exam- ined in the future as the psychology and sociology of knowing and willing. Meanwhile, a sociologist who is most painfully aware of his own incompleteness in this section of life may register the bare intellectual perception that life, at its largest, involves feeling of the aesthetic type, and conduct aimed at satisfaction of the feeling. In this case again the element in question is both a means to other elements of life, and an activity to be regarded as having a distinct and self-sufficient THE INDIVIDUAL 465 value in the scheme of factors that compose the individual. In the fragment just quoted, Schiller put the present thesis in lyric form, when he made the Spirit of Beauty address the Princess of Weimar : Ich bin der schaffende Genius des Schonen, Und die mir folget ist der Kiinste Schaar. Wir sind's, die alle Menschenwerke kronen, Wir schmiicken den Palast und den Altar. Langst wohnten wir bei deinem Kaiserstamme, Und sie, die Herrliche, die dich gebar, Sie nahrt uns selbst die heil'ge Opferflamme Mit reiner Hand auf ihrem Hausaltar. Wir sind dir nachgefolgt, von ihr gesendet; Denn alles Gliick wird nur durch uns vollendet. And all the arts join in chorus : Denn aus der Krafte schon vereintem Streben Erhebt sich, wirkend, erst das wahre Leben. /) The Rightness Interest. — It would be easy to make this item in our schedule a pretext for an excursion into the metaphysics and the psychology of ethics and religion. Soci- ology will at last contribute in its own way to these subjects, but it is a far cry from the elements with which we are now dealing to the conclusions sought by ethical and religious philosophy. We should defeat our present purpose if we attempted to anticipate results in these territories. Our pres- ent proposition is not speculative. Like the substance of our claim under each of the preceding five heads, it is simply a generalization of facts that appear to be universal in the human individual. If they are not universal, the variations are to be accounted for by conditions which do not affect the fact that the traits so specified belong to the typical human person. We have seen that men act with reference to ends which prove to be health or wealth or sociability or knowledge or beauty, or their possible compounds. But this schedule does not include all the groups of stimuli that procure conscious human action. There remain activities which traverse the territory of all these desires, yet to the consciousness of the 466 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY actors the choices involved in them are not for the sake of satisfactions of either sort yet specified. In brief, men always manifest some species of premonition of a self somehow superior to their realized self, or of a whole outside of them- selves with which it is desirable to adjust the self. We will not inquire here whether these two states of consciousness are simultaneous or consecutive, or whether they are equally important. Enough for the present that similar consequences proceed from both. This superior self is a more or less vague image of the conscious self, somehow amplified by addition of activities beyond those of the actual self. The whole partly detected around the self is not the commonplace of people and things that the routine of life encounters. It is the mys- terious more that broods in and over the familiar surround- ings. The real individual is at last, in one fraction of his per- sonality, a wistfulness after that other self, or a deference to that inscrutable whole. In other words, there are distinct sorts of human action which are impelled primarily not by supposed demand for health, or wealth, or sociability, or knowledge, or beauty; but they are to be accounted for as conscious or unconscious efforts either to become the larger self or to be adjusted to the containing whole. We deliberately avoid implication that the desire with which we are dealing has originally any moral content in the subjective sense. To hold that from the beginning the feeling of oughtness goes with this half-consciousness of an immanent self, or with rudimentary cosmic perception, is pure specula- tion. We do not know the facts. What we do know is that in the most elementary manifestations which we are able to trace of the feeling of oughtness. or conscience, as a meaning factor in men's activities, it gets in its work by means of this pre- monition of a superior self, or by means of some presumption which reduces to an assumption atout the containing whole. "Ought" is sanctioned by the sovereignty either of the imagined self or of the posited whole. Whether the sense of oughtness is intuitive, or an evolu- THE INDIVIDUAL 467 tion from purely egoistic judg-ment of utility, we find it oper- ating first and chiefest in connection with those personal rela- tions which are most remote and mysterious. The thing which the naive man feels that he "ought" to do is the thing which has least visible connection with the kinds of action that appeal directly to the individual. Obligation is apparently not at first an incident of action within the realm where cause and effect are understood. The sense of duty does not at first apply in the region of known utilities. " Ought " is an oracle out of the unknown, or the vaguely known, and satis- factions within this sphere arise from belief that somehow the self has adjusted inscrutable conditions, which insure the desir- able surplus of well-being beyond that which can be specifi- cally imagined, or which can be procured by conduct whose relation to ends is supposed to be a matter of course.^ ^ It turns out that both naive and reflective men have sooner or later come to cherish the idea of a sphere of human activity the content of which is a rightness which has an existence independent of other departments of human conduct or condi- tion. Even today it is in comparatively rare instances only that rightness is thought as a quality of conduct proper to all action that deserves any place in human life, and as having no content apart from such ordinary action. The savage, per- forming mummeries which are senseless^ except for the fiction that they are agreeable to the fetich, is merely a less intellec- tual Kant finding the oughtness of the ought simply in its being categorical. We have only lately learned, and only a few of us have learned yet, that there is no supposed impera- tive, whether from the assumed source of absolute obligation or elsewhere, which can be obeyed without setting in motion antecedents and consequents within the known realm of health, or wealth, or sociability, or knowledge, or beauty. This fact, however, is steadily recasting the precepts of for- ^^ Ratzenhofer (Sociologische Erkenntniss, p. 64) uses the term the " transcendental interest." His analysis does not precisely coincide with the above, but the differences are probably unimportant. 468 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY mal morality in terms of declared utility. It remains true that, with all the past men of whom record survives, and with all living men in the civilized world, the conception of a dis- tinct Tightness sphere, separated not merely in quality but in content from other spheres of human conduct, has been a tremendous positive, or at least negative, influence. It is not at all necessary to an understanding of the human individual up to date to decide whether there is an actual realm for rightness apart from conduct in the spheres where men gain health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, and beauty satisfac- tions. This is a capital problem in its proper place, but its solution would not in the least affect the terms of the analysis that describes today's individual. If we discover that the only possible content for the formal concept " rightness " is fit conduct within the other realms, it remains true that men have very seldom so distributed the idea. To most men, whether they merely acquiesce in authority, or reason for them- selves, rightness is an activity with a content as peculiarly its own as the realm of the health activities. The conception therefore has played and does play as important a part among human impulses as though there were no question about its perfect co-ordination with the other objects of human desire. However we construe the content appropriate to the right- ness interest, more precise analysis of the interest as such will ratify its authority and reinforce its sanctions. It will dis- cover its sphere more and more definitely, however, within the ascertained scope of definable utility.^ ^ " This analysis of the individual should be compared with that of Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, p. 426. It is also worth while to quote again from the same passage, as a commentary upon our earlier reference (above, pp. 99, 100), Spencer's formula of the " scope of sociology," viz.: " Setting out with units thus conditioned, as thus constituted, physically, emotionally, and intellectually, and as thus possessed of certain early acquired notions and correlative feelings, the science of sociology has to give an account of all the phenomena that result from their combined actions." Thus, as we remarked before, it is an entire misconception to suppose that sociology neglects the individual. However sociologists may differ in their analyses of the individual, they know, and they have always known, that at last the individual is, in some aspect or other, their sole subject-matter. THE INDIVIDUAL 469 We may now add a little to the distinctness of the propo- sitions at the close of the last chapter. So far as we have any knowledge of human experience, the career of men, either as individuals or as grpups, has always been a process of getting content, correlation, and satisfaction for the desires after health, and wealth, and sociability, and knowledge, and beauty, and rightness.^^ A first consequence of this perception, so far as it affects method, is that it sets us the task of learning how to find the real individuals concerned, when we undertake to investigate a social situation, past or present.^ ^ It, further- more, sets the task of discovering the actual output of the institutions maintained by the association in question for the service of the desires. It is doubtful if these conditions have ever been satisfied, in any single instance of first-rate impor- tance. Our historical exhibits are, consequently, as a rule, utterly inadequate sources for the sort of conclusions that the sociologists, and even the historians, want to draw. In order to be justified in assuming causal explanations of human experience, we must in every case be able to make out the approximate content and combination of these variable desires in the particular individuals concerned. We must know, on the other hand, the workings of the several groups of institutions that have their reason for existence in their service to these desires. More than this, we cannot avoid valuation of the life-processes, past and present. We are bound to make the whole process, as we observe it, pass judg- ment upon those kinds and proportions of satisfaction which the persons concerned enjoy in the health, and wealth, and sociability, and knowledge, and beauty, and rightness realms. The form of judgment which sociology aims at authority to " At the close of his essay qn " Resources," Emerson says : " The healthy, the civil, the industrious, the learned, the moral race — Nature herself only yields her secret to these." He had plainly enough implied also the aesthetic category, in the same essay, which thus amounts to an assertion of very nearly our present thesis, with equivalents for each of our six terms. " That is, we have to find out as much as possible about the precise assortment of desires present in the persons in question. 470 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY pass upon any piece of social conduct is this: The co)idiict in question does or does not make for the most and the best development, adjustment, and satisfaction of the six divisions of interest knozcn to be typically human. If none but respon- sible men presumed to represent sociology, it would be gratui- tous to confess that social science is at present very far from competence to sanction such appraisals, except on the most restricted scale, and even then in cautiously tentative shape. The judgment of the most mature sociologist about the tend- ency of concrete social conditions is at least no more certain to be correct than the prediction of an experienced sailor about tomorrow's weather. We pass from our qualitative account of individuals to brief consideration of certain social meanings of the indi- vidual. We may repeat that the plot of the whole human drama begins to appear so soon as another interest beside the health interest begins to draw one specimen out of the mass of the human pack, and make an individual of him. Tlie drama starts first in his own person. It begins with the chal- lenge of one interest by another. We may summarize the human animal as a digesting machine. Presently this machine begins to feel impulses that compete with unlimited digestion, and henceforth human history is in the making. It is first and foremost a process of individual-building. One interest after another appears upon the scene and defies the primal interest. The actors in the drama have to acquire their own character as the plot proceeds. No one has yet traced, except in imagination, the actual course of events by which a dead level of sameness, like that in a fisher tribe of Es4 ^ -( Emotional (moral) forces o -2 Intellectual forces ^■z [ Whether we assume or not that Ward has found the final classification of the social forces, his analysis is a point of departure which affords the readiest approach to the subject. It is hardly necessary to enlarge upon the importance of the concept " social forces," because the argument was vir- tually foreshadowed in our discussion of interests. Every desire that any man harbors is a force making or marring, strengthening or weakening, the structure and functions of the society of which he is a part. What the human desires are, what their relations are to each other, what their peculiar modifications are under different circumstances — these are questions of detail which must be answered in general by social psychology, and in particular by specific analysis of each social situation. The one consideration to be urged at this point is that the concept "social forces" has a real content. It repre- sents reality. There are social forces. They are the desires of persons. They range in energy from the vagrant whim that makes the individual a temporary discomfort to his group, to the inbred feelings that whole races share. It is with these subtle forces that social arrangements and the theories of social arrangements have to deal. 'Dynamic Sociology, zd ed., p. 472. SOCIAL ENDS 537 4. Social Ends. — To suggest the notion of "ends" is to invite metaphysical argument. Our philosophical traditions incline us to speculation about ends as they exist in the absolute mind; ends proposed at the beginning of things; ends to which all events within our knowledge are tributary, whether we discover it or not; ends toward which the whole creation moves, whether men consent or not. If it were practicable to enter into greater detail at this point, we might easily show that what we have said about the unconscious phase of human inter- ests, as contrasted with specific desires, lends itself to a theory of ends that are not immediate and visible, but many steps removed, and so not consciously proposed by all or many of the members of society. For instance, to take the classic American illustration, the colonists in the seventh decade of the eighteenth century wanted " redress of grievances " from the mother- country. That meant certain specific things, which they plainly stated. To get redress of grievances, they adopted a series of concerted measures — committees of correspondence, continental congresses, non-intercourse agreements, insurrec- tion. But these steps did not avail. To get the specific things that all wanted, it became necessary to strike for another thing, independence, which, in the beginning at least, none wanted. Having obtained independence, it soon became apparent that another thing, which few wanted, was the only alternative with loss of what had been gained. Accordingly, the colonies founded that other thing, nationality. Now, there is a use of the conception of ends, in which independence and nationality may be said to have been the " ends " of American activities from the beginning. That is, they were consummations which the logic of events must bring to pass, whether any individual could foresee them or not. In this sense every stage of develop- ment through which men and nations pass in reaching more complete life is an " end " of all previous stages, and human experience is a scale of means and ends, regardless of men's thoughts about the meaning of their acts. This is the sense in which we think of all life as being a preparation for some 538 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY undefined end — "that far-off divine event toward which the whole creation moves." The conception of ends thus indicated has a place in social philosophy, but our present business is with a much more restricted concept. In a word, human associations always have reasons for existence as associations, and those reasons are conscious ends for the association, in a way which differs somewhat from that in which they are ends for the individuals in the association. Take, for example, the family, either primitive or modern. From a variety of motives a man and a woman unite to form a family. They thus secure certain reciprocal services. They assure to themselves certain comforts, conveniences, safe- guards, dignities, which unattached persons lack. To each of these persons individually independence is a desired end. These other goods are also desired, and for the sake of them the individuals exchange a certain kind of independence for that kind of interdependence which the family relationship involves. That very interdependence now becomes an end for the persons united in the family. The continued existence of the family is an end in itself. Both man and woman may shortly become aware that this end, which is decisive for them as a family, comes into sharp collision with ends that are dear to them as individuals. Each says in his heart : " I would like to do so and so ; " but each is restrained by the thought : " That would break up the family." Whether the conflict between the individual ends and the family ends becomes sharp enough to be thus realized by the meml)ers of the family, or not, it is always there in principle. Each society, large or small, has ends which may have every degree of harmonious or inhar- monious relation with the interests and desires of the individual members. For our present purposes it is not worth while to dwell upon the relation of social ends to individual ends. The present proposition is that social ends exist. Societies exist for pur- poses that are distinctive. Accordingly, the first end of every SOCIAL ENDS 539 society, as of every individual, is self-preservation.^'^ Whether it is one of the most permanent species of association, like the family or the State, or an accidental and unimportant associa- tion, like a bicycle club or a reading circle, every human society has its peculiar degree of tenacity of life. The end of per- petuating its existence asserts itself with corresponding force against the reactions of its individual members, on the one hand, and against collisions with the rest of the world, on the other. This fact of social ends, more or less at variance with the ends that the individuals who compose the society might, could, would^ or should pursue if they were outside of the society, is another of those cardinal realities in which we find clues to the mysteries of human experience. From the savage who is merely a wolf in the human pack, to the court circle of London, or Berlin, or Vienna, or the Vatican, every individual is carried along, partly by his own desires, partly in spite of them, in the current of the social ends pursued by the society to which he belongs. All human experience is thus not merely a fabric of personal desires, but those personal desires operate in a very large measure impersonally. That is, the desires get organized into institutions, and those institutions then in turn make requisitions upon persons, just as though the institutions actually had an existence of themselves, outside of and above the desires of the persons who make institutions. We have just seen this in the case of the family. As members of the family, the man and the woman composing it enforce reciprocal demands which may sharply antagonize each. These institu- tionalized demands become the ends which associations of per- sons pursue. The acts which individuals perform would be unaccountable if we did not know the social ends that dominate individual ends. Why do I obey the laws? Why do I per- form jury service? Why do I pay taxes? Why do I observe certain conventional proprieties? My strictly individual *" The implications of this fact have been dwelt upon at some length espe- cially in chaps. 15-22. 540 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY preferences may take up arms against each of these every time it demands my conformity. To remain in society at all, or to remain in good standing in society, ^vhich may seem to me more important, I must subordinate some of my individual ends to the social ends. Later chapters of sociology have to consider a great num- ber of relations which depend upon the fact here involved; e. g., when are social ends and when are individual ends pro- gressive, or retrogressive? Our present object is merely to give the fact of social ends its proportionate emphasis. Since social ends are organizations of the desires of per- sons, since they are the demands enforced by common elements in the desires of numbers of persons increasing with the size of the society, the presumption is strong that the social ends which control at any time correspond more closely with the real interests of the persons in the association than their indi- vidual desires. That this has been the case, in the aggregate, more than the contrary, is evident if we believe that, on the whole, real human interests have been promoted by the course of events thus far in history. It would be a generalization much too sweeping, however, if we should say that social ends are an expression of genuine human interests, while individual ends express merely apparent or approximate interests. The contrary is often the case. It is more nearly true to say that the social ends are more likely to express the demands of essential interests when they emphasize functional wants, and less likely to correspond with these interests when they con- verge upon social structure. Without attempting to reach an equation of the social and the individual ends, we may further illustrate the existence of the former by use of a diagram.^ ^ The interests implicit in every individual arc scheduled in the horizontal line at the bottom of the diagram. Each of these interests may assert itself in desires that form a rising scale, through innumerable gradations. The diagram merely " Cf. p. 542. SOCIAL ENDS 541 indicates these variations of the desires within the six interest- realms represented by the capital letters A-F, by the small letters a-f, with exponents from i to xiv. The left-hand column of the diagram follows Ratzenhofer. It means that there is a visible scale of progress in human society at large.^^ In brief, the proposition is that men arrange themselves from the beginning in groups, which are at first small and exclusive. These groups grow larger, both by growth from within and by various sorts of assimilations and mergings. Starting at the bottom of the column, there are two distinguishable lines of development : first, that in which conflict between groups is the cardinal activity ; second, that in which reciprocal interests of groups are recognized. These two lines of development are not absolutely separable in time. In general, the former is first in historical order; but, after a certain stage of progress, the latter development begins to overlap the former. Human groups, then, begin early to be conscious of distinct group-ends. The lowest in the scale is that of the horde and then presently of the race. Each may be hard pressed in the struggle for food. It has, consequently, an intense group- desire to keep the group intact, as the means of defending the sources of food ; and, for the same reason, to weaken and beat off or destroy all rival hordes or races. The ends which the groups pursue, as they develop from the horde, vary in two ways, which we may call extension and content. The former is represented somewhat ideally by the rising scale in the left-hand column. The latter may be repre- sented by combinations of terms in the other columns. We may find a group at Stage III of conflict-development, for instance. Suppose we take Sparta or Athens as our illus- tration. The society leads a very close and exclusive life. Its purposes are bounded by its own political confines. People "Vide chap. 17, p. 216. In the diagram we allow the two progress series to stand as though Ratzenhofer intended to have them understood as con- secutive. The explanation is in the passage cited. 542 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY F Satisfaction of Conscience > - 1 - - £ - ^ 1 I > > > - - ~ E Artistic Creation and Enjoyment V '« u u V V > i > > V V u •" V D Discovery and DiSSEMINATON OF Knowledge > •a •a •V •o TJ T3 •o 13 •o > •a T3 •a ■o •o ■a C Adjustment OF Personal Relations > '" o " •" o > *> u > > •" "- u c B Control of Natural Resources > Xi J XI x> ^ J3 > J3 J3 > J3 J3 > J3 J3 Xi ^ J2 A Bodily Well-Bbing « n rt n :; n n n > f5 n « n n « O w > Q O w o < 1^ c o cj n "n .c t2 > "3 ; B : 2 • « ; is- ■ "5 : E : n a a c = o ■" §i is > B .2 3 ■o o a V > c c > 2 B .a >> rt E o "d. Q "o ■. £" : 'n • 3 • o" ! i : S : o ■ ■a ; H ' ll V ^ > -z '5 01 -^ : V : j= . 2. ■ c : « : 1 ; ■- «; "o >> c 3 E o U c i "i I a, O > Q H u o t/) u o < H n : t« : cu> ' c • s •■ o c • o : rt ; .5 • .5 ; E : o . «i O a, "o u B ■ : : B O O u >' C 8 s 5 •o c C o E u tu > > _3 C B c75 « u « "2 O K H W H < Q G Q W N J o D M Z SOCIAL ENDS 543 beyond these boundaries are slightly esteemed. When accident brings the Spartans or Athenians into intercourse with outside individuals or States, the standard of conduct toward them is distinctly less sympathetic and humane than the public and private standards which the State or the population shows in domestic intercourse. Thus the social end, as such, is restricted in its extent. Meanwhile, in Athens, at the age of Pericles, many individuals have desires which we might represent as follows : Desire ^a^ + b^' + c^ + d "' + 6 '''^ + f™ Accordingly, the social end of Athens, compounded of many individual desires, might be symbolized, as to its content, in this way : Social end = a''"+ b'" + c" + d^'" + 0""+ f'^ I. e., every society whatsoever will have, in addition to its primary social end of self-existence, a qualitative end, which is the algebraic sum, so to speak, or, better, a chemical compound, of the desires cherished by its individual members within the realm of the several great interests. Having thus pointed out the meaning of the phrase " social ends " in general, and having indicated that every human association, however minute, has its peculiar social ends, sub- ordinate, as the members and the association itself may be, to a hierarchy of more inclusive ends, we are prepared to see that identification of the precise ends cherished and pursued by any society is a very considerable item in the program of getting an understanding of that society. The desires of individuals and of societies, from least to greatest, give us, on the one hand, our means of interpreting the social process as a whole; and, on the other hand, our conception of the social process as a whole gives us a basis of comparison by which to pass judgment upon the wisdom or the unwisdom, the pro- gressiveness or the obstructiveness, of the social ends actually in view in the particular societies with which we are dealing.^ ^ "A group of hypothetical illustrations of social ends of different grades, in the case of States, is proposed in American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VI, pp. 512-31. Formulas of the social end in general are proposed loc. cit., pp. 201-3. 544 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY 5. Subjective Environment. — This phrase seems to have been coined by Dr. Lester F. Ward.^'* The argument in which it occurs attempts to refute a certain dogma of the free- dom of the will, and to show that all volitions depend upon antecedents. These are principally internal, and constitute what may be called "the subjective environment." Ward dis- cusses at length the implications of this concept. It is so much more familiar in essentials than some of the other categories in our schedule, that elaboration may be omitted. Professor Patten has made use of the same phrase, though in an argu- ment which seems, on the whole, rather gratuitous.^ ^ Unless we desire to weave a tissue of esoteric mystery, there seems to be no more reason at this point than elsewhere in social analysis, for anything but straightforward description of the familiar. The fact that corresponds with the phrase is so obvious and so commonplace that it is difficult to realize that it deserves high rank among scientific categories. We instinc- tively grope after something beyond, to take the place of this everyday knowledge. The machinery and the consequences of the fact lie beyond our observation, to be sure, but the fact itself is hardly hidden from the most unobservant. Every individual begins to be a repository of feelings, notions, ideas, prejudices, beliefs, theories, purposes, so soon as he begins to be conscious. When we force a truce in psy- chology to the extent of assuming a distinction between the individual and these his mental equipments, we are aware that the individual, as we know him, is an agent whose scope is defined just as evidently by these mental furnishings, on the one hand, as by the forces of the external world, on the other. The born Fenian is as really limited in his conduct by an assortment of hereditary assumptions about England, as he is by the soil and climate of Ireland. The bom Protestant acts within the prescription of certain impressions about the Papists, that are just as real as the mechanical or chemical reactions of "Dynamic Sociology, Vol. II, p. 321. "Annals of the American Academy, November, 1894, pp. 404 f. SUBJECTIVE ENVIRONMENT 545 his body. The little mathematics, and less science, and the faint odor of ethical philosophy, that American children take with them from the common school, form a matrix whose properties the social psychologist will one day be able to describe with relative accuracy. Meanwhile the politicians already know how to count upon it with a high degree of precision. In other words, just as the individual carries within himself certain conceptions that constitute one of the cardinal condi- tions of his action, so groups of individuals in association are foci of similar influences. The association is the radiation of a common mental content through an aggregate of individuals. That content may be almost a negligible quantity. It may amount to scarcely more than common desire for food, com- mon assumption that the food must be got, if at all, within this particular territory, and common acquiescence in the necessity of allowing the persons born also in this territory tO' use it for their food-getting. On the other hand, the content that makes up the subjective environment may be that highly elaborated collection of per- ceptions and judgments common to the members of the British Association or the French Academy. Expressing the whole fact again in terms of an incident abstracted from the fact, the social process is a process of realizing the subjective con- tent of the associates. Association is implicit objectification of that which is in the minds of the associates. Association is practical adjustment between the subjective and the objective conditions of the persons associated. More simply still, the members of any association have certain notions in common. Their association is the common response to the stimulus of these notions. No association is merely the football of external conditions, whether social or physical. Each association is what it is by virtue of a common spiritual possession. The fact ought to be too clear for serious dispute. The only open question pertains to the propriety or utility of naming the fact "subjective environment." 546 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY 6. Social Consciousness. — Tarde has remarked: It is not true that there is a social mind distinct from individual minds, and in which the individual minds are contained as the ideas are within the individual mind. This is an entirely chimerical idea of social psychology. The social mind, like the individual mind, includes nothing but ideas — states of consciousness. The states of consciousness that make up the social mind are scattered among the individuals that make up the society. They are not assembled in one brain. This difference should be neither exaggerated nor ignored. There are two sorts of asso- ciations : first, that of different individual minds united in the society; second, that in each of them of states of consciousness which accumulate gradually, and proceed for the most part from other minds. In each individual man there is reproduced to a certain extent that more or less systematic aggregation of states of consciousness that constitutes the social type. The social mind consists in this very repetition." Mention of the incident " social consciousness " is the signal for attacks at various points along- the sociological line. What is social consciousness? Where is it? Does it have a place in every human association ? Is it merely a late and rare development? It is not necessary at this point to enter very far into formulation of all that answer to these questions would involve ; but it will mark an advance for all the social sciences when we shall have perceived that a reality is here recorded, and when we shall have resolved to make due account of all that the reality contains. Assenting in full to the general purport of the citation from Tarde, we furthermore concede at once that the fact to which we apply the term " social consciousness " is in one sense included in the fact which we have called above "subjective environment." All the content of the social consciousness in a given case is a part of the subjective environment of the per- sons in whom it occurs. At the same time, a very replete sub- jective environment in an individual, or in an aggregation of individuals, may contain but a minimum of social conscious- ness. Although the latter may be placed schematically as a species under the former as genus, each seems to be in fact a direct phase and expression of association, no more dependent " Lrj transformations du {'Otivoir, p. 197. SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 547 on the other than each term in our schedule is dependent upon all the rest. The phrase "social consciousness" has been construed in various ways, and survival must render the verdict of fitness; but there are certain plain facts which must not be confounded with each other, however we apply terms in dealing with them. The fact which is of most importance in this connection, to which we now apply the term ''social consciousness," is that at some time or other, and with some degree of clearness or other, members of every group perceive that the group exists, that they condition it and are conditioned by it, that their individual interests are more or less bound up with the affairs of the group, and that the existence and prosperity of the group are dependent upon the conduct of its constituent indi- viduals. All of this mental state, with its varying scope and intensity, that is in any individual's mind, is his social con- sciousness. If the group is composed of a thousand persons, and if in each of them the fact of the group-relationship has risen above the threshold of consciousness, to that extent social conscious- ness is a part of the subjective environment of that group. For instance, assuming that there is a common something in the minds of all the Frenchmen in an arrondissement when they shout, " Vive la France ! " that common element may be called the group-opinion, the group-feeling, or the group- sentiment, and it would be a part of the subjective environment of the group. It might or might not contain elements of social consciousness. It is conceivable that, in a given instance, " Vive la France ! " might be more of an individual than a social watchword. In one man's mouth " France " might stand merely for a lively sense of the advantage of a job on the public works; in another's, for a notion that "France" is a patron saint, to be conciliated by zealous shouting; in another's, for a vague feeling that " France " is his glorified and triumphant self, asserting miscellaneous superiority. In so far as either of these notions is common to the members of 548 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the group, or goes to make up the motives that actuate the group as a whole, it belongs in the category "subjective envi- ronment." In so far, on the other hand, as an element of this common mental content is the feeling or perception of the reality of the association, that factor is also the " social con- sciousness," first of the individual, and then of the group. In the most general terms, then, we may describe the reality in question as a state of mind primarily in the indi- viduals, and then diffused throughout the association, consist- ing first of perception that the group exists. If we may suppose that this perception may occur without any corre- sponding valuation of the fact so perceived, we may describe a more advanced development of this fact by adding, second, that the members of the group place a certain appraisal of value upon the group-relation, as something to be cherished and guarded. In this stage of social consciousness we have clannishness and tribal exclusiveness ; at later stages, class- consciousness, esprit dc corps, patriotism, or, as the Germans phrase a kindred, but not necessarily quite identical, concep- tion, NationalitdtsgefUhl. Social consciousness need not, of course, in all individuals, be restricted to the limits of national bounds. A few people have a lively sense of the oneness of the whole human race. International law is a certain sort of proclamation of more than national consciousness. It is not a universal rule that the intensity of social consciousness is inversely as the diame- ter of the association. The law is much more intricate than that, and cannot as yet be formulated. Our present purpose is satisfied by pointing out that, wherever there is a relatively permanent association, some form and force of an idea of the association begins to give character to the association. It is probably at its nadir in the horde. ^^ Perhaps it has never been at once more intensive and extensive than in the feeling of the "On the other hand, we have pointed out above (chap. i6, p. 208) that the present tendency is to interpret the horde as a society differentiating indi- viduals, more than it is individuals differentiating a society. THE SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 549 "chosen people" toward the "gentiles," and of the Greeks and Romans toward the rest of the world jumbled together as "barbarians." The ethnologists and folk-psychologists have the task of locating and measuring this incident in particular cases of primitive men. The historians must furnish data for detection and estimate of its w^orkings in later societies. A decisive factor in sociology as a scientific basis for social action must at all events be found in the operations of social consciousness. Study of the content of social consciousness, and of the processes that take place in individual minds, as causes and effects of the prevailing state of social consciousness, is pivotal in sociological theory. 7. The Sociological Point of View. — Perhaps there is no phrase which is used with more vagueness of meaning than the expression " the social point of view " or " the socio- logical point of view." Everybody who is intelligent today supposes himself to be, first, " scientific " and, second, " socio- logical " in his mental attitude. We need not now discuss what is involved in the "scientific" attitude, but under this title we may note some of the marks of the sociological atti- tude toward the world. The sociologists are trying to focal- ize within one field of vision all the activities that are going on among people, so that men and women who get the benefit of this outlook may see their own lives in their actual relation to all the lives around them. The sociological outlook is a position chosen for the deliberate purpose of placing each of us in his relations to all the rest, so that the meaning of each one's part in the complicated whole may appear. Most people are more familiar with political economy than with sociology — or they think they are. Now, political economy does an essential part of the work of mapping out relations between different human actions, viz., those actions that have for their primary and decisive aim the gaining of wealth. But the work of political economy, as compared with the demand which sociology discovers, may be likened to the 550 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY work which an ordinary railroad map does in showing up the features of a country. When we look, for instance, at a map issued by either of the railroads that have terminals in Chicago, we are able to learn from it all that it sets out to show about its own routes and connections. From that map alone, however, we should be likely to get little or no concep- tion of the topography and climate, of the kinds of soil or varieties of products, of the density of population, of the politi- cal divisions, or even of the precise geographical relations of the country through which the road runs. In order to have the knowledge necessary for all departments of life in the locality, it is necessary for us to possess the information that would be represented by a series of geological, topographical, meteorological, political, and even transportation charts, pic- turing in turn different phases of natural and artificial condi- tions within the selfsame portion of territory covered by the map of a single railroad system. In a somewhat analogous way. political economy deals with the system of industrial lines of communication in a society — the industrial nerves and arteries of the body politic, so to speak. But the life of society, or the social fact, or the social process, is a vast system of physical, physiological, psy- chological, and personal action and reaction. The associa- tional process is this social reality when we consider it in motion. In order to understand it we have to comprehend not merely the industrial element. That would be like seeing only one thread or figure that runs through the design of a tapestry. To know the social process, as a whole, we have to be a1)le to take in all of these departments of action that make up the process, i. e., the complete design of the fabric. We have to understand what these different kinds of action have to do with each other, and how each reacts upon the others. When we speak of all tliis in cold blood, it seems to be a far-off and vague affair, with which we have the least possible concern. That, however, is the same mistake which we make THE SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 551 if we think we have no concern with what the chemist calls "sodium chloride." When we find out that it is merely the salt that we want to use every day, we discover that it is our concern. In the same way we may he indifferent to the subject of "hydrous oxide/" but if it is presented to us as drinking-water, we may see the wisdom of knowing some- thing about it. So the "social process" is not an affair that exists outside of our circle of interests. Our whole life — from our eating and sleeping, to our thinking, and trading, and teaching, and playing, and praying, and dying — is a part of the social process. In us the process has its lodgment. In the process we live and move and have our being. Instead of not being concerned with it, nothing else is our concern, so far as we are citizens of the world. We do not know our per- sonal concerns until we see through and through the social process. Moreover, everything that we learn, and try to apply as action, gets its meaning in its connections with this social process. For instance, taking portions of school discipline as a sample of the larger whole , what is the good of geographi- cal knowledge? If it stops with geographical facts alone, it is not worth having. Geography is worth studying because it helps to explain the lives of people, past and present, and the possibilities of people in the future. Or why is literature worth studying? Simply and solely because, in the first place, it shows us the inner explanations of the lives of people, past and present, and the internal resources upon which to build their future; then, in the second place, because it imparts to us some of those resources. In studying geography we are, or we ought to be, doing on a broader scale just what the immigrant does, when he scratches the ground where he halts his prairie schooner to see what sort of soil is under his feet. In studying literature we are doing, somewhat more dis- interestedly and calmly, just what the lover does when he studies the moods and tastes of his mistress, so as to know how to make successful suit. He is after deep facts of human 55:2 A GENERAL SOCIOLOGY nature, as betrayed in an individually interesting- specimen. We are after similar facts of human nature in general. In other words, we do not know anything until we know it in connection with the social process. The things that we think we know are merely waste scraps of information, until they find their setting in this reality, to which all knowledge belongs. To recapitulate : The social fact is the incessant reaction between three chief factors: (i) nature; (2) individuals; (3) institutions, or modes of association between individuals. Each of these factors is composite, but at this point we may disregard that phase of the situation. The social process is the incessant eiiolution of persons through the evolution of institutions, zvhich evolve completer persons, who evolve com- pleter institutions, and so on beyond any limit that we can fix. Sociology sets out to discover how all the details which anyone may learn, about things or about people, have to do with each other, and are parts of each other, in the social process. These two phases of reality are, therefore, the setting in which sociology places all detailed knowledge, in order to make it complete and true. It may add to the precision of our concept " the sociological point of view " to repeat the substance of an informal address to an audience of economists and historians.^ ^ A decade ago, at a meeting of the American Economic Association in New York, one of our most respected econo- mists frankly declared that, if he could have his way, no sociologist would ever be admitted to a university faculty without permission of the economists. Meanwhile, some of us have found the monotony of life not a little relieved by watching the process by which this genial dogmatist has triturated himself entirely into a most extreme form of soci- ology. I want to go on record with the prediction that, in the " Small, discussion of GiddinRs' paper, A Theory of Social Causation, published by the American Economic Association, Third Series, Vol. V, No. i, Part II, p. 1 75- THE SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 553 lifetime of children already born, it will become impossible for anyone to be appointed to the humanities division of the faculty of any first-rate university or college, unless he can creditably sustain an examination in general sociology. I fur- ther predict that men of my own age will live to use such terms as " ethnologist," " historian," " economist," " political scientist," " sociologist," without their present divisive and exclusive connotations. We shall perceive that, if we are thoroughly intelligent about our work, we find it to be concerned, not with different material, but with different relations of the same material. We are not one of these specialists to the exclusion of the other. We are one of them primarily and provisionally, but the nearer we get to the real meaning of our material, the more are we all of them ultimately and essentially, in pro- portions that reflect the real connections of the relations we try to interpret. The sociologists are actually reaching results that their colleagues in the other departments of human science cannot afford to neglect. These results are not yet to any consid- erable extent settled formulas of explanation. They are rather, as Professor Giddings has pointed out, apperceptive categories which mark greater or less removes of intelligence from naive conceptions in mere terms of time and space. To emphasize further what we mean by this, I may say it is simply an acci- dent that sociologists have been supposed to be merely a sect of economic schismatics. On the contrary, the relations between the sociologists and the historians are much more fundamental and significant than those with the economists. The sociologist regards the economic factor in the human process as only one strand in the cable of experience, while the task of the complete thinker is to run back all the strands to explain their sources and how they are woven together, with the use of the whole after it is woven. Now it may be said that, with the rise of the Austrian School, economic theory virtually came into line with the method demanded by the 554 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY sociologist. Carl Menger told me last summer that in his opinion the phrase " Austrian School " has no longer any- thing but a purely historical meaning. " All that I ever con- tended for," he said, " has virtually been assimilated by every progressive economist, and there is no longer any reason for distinctions on that line." The Austrian School really fought the decisive battle for the psychological factor among economic forces. The economic element in experience thus takes its place with all the other elements to which the psychologic interpretation is applicable. On the other hand, the historians do not seem to be agreed that their function involves any interpretation at all. To be sure, it is current idiom that all modern historical writing is from the " social point of view." Nevertheless, from the sociological standpoint, it is a constant question whether the historians have so much as heard that there be any social point of view. The social point of view is that every event in human life, whether the actors get a glimpse of its meaning or not, is really a part of a co-operative process, in which each detail has a meaning that comes from its connection with the whole. This viewing the incident, whatever it is, as a partial expression of the whole, with consequent discovery of the whole in the incident, and of the incident in the whole — this is the essence of the social point of view. Men who write history from any other outlook are simply newspaper reporters whose items are stale. But, beyond this fundamental difference, the charge of the sociologists against the historians is that the latter have learned so much about how to do it that they have forgotten what to do. They have become so skilled in finding facts that they have no use for the truths that would make the facts worth finding. They have exhausted their magnificent tech- nique in discovering things that are not worth knowing when they get through with them. These discoveries may be taken up by somebody else and brought into their meaning rela- tions ; but history, as it is mostly written today, does not come THE SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 555 within sight of those relations. The historians are locating cinders on the face of the glacier, but they overlook the mountain ranges that carry the glacier. To take an illustration from work that employs the highest order of historiographic technique, Gardiner's researches on the Stuart period have amounted, from the sociological point of view, merely to highly scientific quarrying of raw material. This is a first step toward interpretation of the social process, but it stops as far from interpretation itself as the stone- cutter from finishing the architect's work. Perhaps the parallel will overtax the academic imagina- tion, but for further illustration we may risk an extreme sup- position. Let us assume that, five hundred years hence, some historian will prove that the present American administration did or did not have a guilty foreknowledge of the Panama revolution. The find might entitle some hopeless young pedant to the doctor's degree, but what of it? In itself it is of no more account than any other bit of fugitive gossip. It has a hundred relations that are significant, but merely estab- lishing the fact may be nothing more than the pullet's cack- ling over the porcelain egg. Objectively, the important thing to make out is the concurrence of world-interests foreordain- ing the plowing of the furrow between the continents. Sub- jectively, the thing to make out is the reaction of feelings that made those objective conditions effective. Merely arriv- ing at a fact is simply ending in an intellectual cttl dc sac. It arrests development of knowledge at a point of no impor- tance, and rests satisfied with that lame and impotent result, instead of pressing on toward a conclusion. We have not covered the first stage of social self- knowledge until we have summed up historical experience in terms of the perpetual rhythm of development, accommoda- tion, and satisfaction of human interests; or, as Professor Giddings prefers to say, in terms of stimulus and response. The sociologists can do little toward this interpretation, that is, their perspective and range of induction would be viciously 556 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY incomplete, without calling on the historians; but the his- torians' results are abortions, if their growth is cut off before they pass into the stage of sociological generalization. So far as critical historians are concerned, the sociological point of view is conspicuous chiefly by its absence from their writings. The exceptions are as startling as they are gratify- ing. A sociologist who has given attention to this situation, experiences a distinct shock when he discovers an historical essay that proposes real search for social processes, as in the following instance : Few problems are more interesting to the sociologist than the mutual interaction of different civilizations. What are the conditions which assist fusion? What are the subtle causes that arrest it? What historical medium acts as a conductor? What medium again is non-conducting? What elements of national genius, taste, and character are capable of exportation ? What incapable, and why are some characteristics more easily assimilated or imitated than others? These and a host of other subsidiary questions will always arise when conquest, migration, or mere juxtaposition places two different races in a position where it is impossible for either to remain unaffected by the characteristics and ideals of the other." Whether the series of studies, of which this paragraph is the keynote, will justify generalizations upon the subjects sug- gested, does not yet appear. In any event the enterprise is as laudable as it is exceptional. All that has been said thus far in Part VI is a variation of the general argument to the effect that the chief value of sociology arises from its distinctive point of view, rather than from a subject-matter to which sociology can maintain an exclusive claim. Our thesis is that human life cannot be seen whole and real unless it is construed in terms like those which we have discussed. We do not know anything unless we know it in its relationships. The details of human experi- ence are as meaningless as a form of type knocked into pi, unless we have the clues which enable us to distribute and reset the events. We have called the terms treated in Part VI " H. A. I.. Fisher, Studies in Napoleonic Statesmanship, Germany, p. i. THE SOCIOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW 557 "the primary concepts of sociology." It is hardly worth while to offer here a justification of that designation. In brief, it will be found, after a little experience in studying society with the use of these concepts, that the other terms to which we now turn are either details which are met so soon as analysis grows precise, or they are notions necessarily implied by the larger conceptions. Indeed, we have used most of them already, whether they have been named or not. It is not necessary at this point to propose a general prin- ciple about the relative importance of the different concepts. It is sufficient to say that every one of those named in our schedule is actually present, in some degree or other, in every stage or part or episode of the social process large enough to be observed. Analysis of a given section of experience involves use of these categories, not in a mechanical way, as though they were equally prominent and equally significant; it involves their use just as the different phases of reaction known to chemistry are employed in analyses of physical sub- stances; i. e., in precisely the proportions in which they prove to have significance in the case in hand. Sociology is not a schematic forcing of the facts of life into these categories. On the contrary, the more we gener- alize the facts of life, the more they force us to think of them under these forms. Our thought in these forms may prove to be a passing stage in progress toward more complete and posi- tive knowledge. Meanwhile these concepts certainly stand for a stage, whether permanent or transient, in approach to apprehension of social fact and social law. Intelligent use of these concepts is the condition of attaining that measure of insight into social reality which sociology at present com- mands. As Part VI has implied throughout, it is a compara- tively simple matter to get a list of the important sociological concepts. It is quite another thing to get so used to applying them that they are the natural forms in which the ordinary facts of experience present themselves to the mind. On the other hand, merely filling one's sentences with terms from the 558 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY sociological vocabulary does not. in itself, give evidence of sociological insight. The state of mind which sociological study should produce is that in which the activities of society present to the mind simultaneously all these relationships. Then the mature sociological judgment will instinctively select the one or more of these relationships which may be peculiarly significant for the case in hand, and will take the others for granted. In other words, it is necessary to get so much experience in analyzing societies, in terms of these concepts, that we can readily tell which of them w^e must continue to consider, and w-hich of them we may throw out of the account. CHAPTER XXXVI SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS* The analysis of human experience which leads to the formation of such concepts as those described thus far in Part VI, leads also to generalizations which are similar, but which hold a slightly different rank as logical categories. In speaking of the terms in the schedule (chaps. 29-35) ^^ " sociological concepts," we put the emphasis on mental cate- gories as such ; notions needed as logical instruments for con- trolling the material of knowledge. We do not assume that these notions could have any validity if they did not repre- sent corresponding phases of objective reality, but the imme- diate purpose of presenting them is to put them on record as scientific categories, to be used in extending our knowledge of the social process. On the other hand, we have now to schedule certain traits which we observe in all human associations. It might be said that certain of the uniformities which we have put in the list of " concepts " belong more properly in the present list of " incidents," and vice versa. The more exact truth is that, in so far as the terms in either list justify themselves at all, each of them might appear in both lists, in the one case as symbols of subjective categories, and in the other case as names of objective phenomena. Whether we have in view the conjugal association of one man with one woman in the family, the casual association of buyer and seller in the market, the intermittent association of priest and layman in the religious assembly, or the permanent association of citizens in the nation, certain relationships are universal among the persons associated. The intensity of these relationships varies indefinitely. They are often dis- ^ For incidents in the structural aspects of association vide De Greef, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VIII, No. 5. 559 56o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY cernible only as tendencies. They might not be suspected, if other experience did not point to them. In a given association, many of them are rather potential than actual. With such qualifications, however, it is true that all human associations whatsoever betray characteristics in common. Enumeration of these characteristics is one way of presenting the problems which must be solved before there will be a science of soci- ology.^ When we assert, therefore, that certain incidents are com- mon to all human associations, and when we proceed to specify certain of these incidents, we are not proposing socio- logical solutions. We are not professing to exhibit the inci- dents as they will appear after criticism. We do not claim that this first enumeration shows the most precise or profound rela- tions between these incidents. Indeed, if sociology were more ripe, such protestations as these would be entirely superfluous. In point of fact, however, it is so nearly the rule among socio- logical writers to propose solutions before considering what is to be solved, that a different program requires tedious explana- tion. The problems of sociology are encountered when we arrive at the sort of generalizations which we are about to indicate. After the schedule that we present, an adequate theory of the problems may seem more distant than before. We need not presume that the incidents to be specified are the most important social groupings. We need not assume that they will be the final terms in sociological equations. All that we at present claim or imply is that when we survey human associations as such we discover certain incidents, attri- butes, properties, or qualities in them all. From this prelimi- nary perception we must proceed to verify, to analyze, to systematize, and to explain. Instead of proposing arbitrary definitions of the social process, we begin by putting together our observations that wherever we find individuals associat- ing we discover such incidents of the relationship as the fol- lowing, namely : ' Cf. chap. 6. SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 561 I. Plurality or Multiplicity of Individuals.^ — At first thought, this specification may seem too obvious for men- tion. Of course, it takes more than one person to make an association, and many persons to form a society. It should go without saying that our theories of association must be theories of conditions among which numerousness of persons is taken for granted. Be this as it may, we should seriously limit our perceptions of the facts within which the social process takes place if we failed to take notice of certain impli- cations of this primary fact of multiplicity.'* The Germans have the proverb, "One man is no man." Probably the fact which this aphorism expresses to most people is that without co-operation we fail to get the utmost use of ourselves. This is certainly true, but it is not the ele- mentary truth. The mere existence of other people beside self is a condition which qualifies the conduct of the self. DeFoe pictured one of the mainsprings of social action when he portrayed the workings of Crusoe's mind on discovering the footprints in the sand. Henceforth Crusoe was in contact once more, not merely with nature, but with nature plus man. The problem of life was now more involved, more uncertain, more formidable; but at the same time more hopeful and inspiring. There is now more to lose and more to gain, and more to stimulate personal effort to avoid the loss and secure the gain. The tradition referred to above,^ of the frontiersman who abandoned his claim, and moved on into the wilderness because he "wanted breathing-room," when another settler squatted within six miles of his location, is a piece of American humor ; it nevertheless rests on a permanent psychological basis. The mere presence of other people is in the first instance a con- * Cf. chap. 34, sec. i. * On the effect of the element of number see Giddings, " Exact Methods in Sociology," Popular Science Monthly, December, 1899, especially pp. 153 f. On quantity as quality see Ratzenhofer, Sociologische Erkenntniss, pp. 88, 90. »Pp. 145, 146. S62 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY straint. Whether or not all want the same piece of ground, or the same routes of travel, or the same material things, the fact that the many people exist is a bar to the free action of each. The Hebrew story of Cain, the tiller of the ground, unable to live comfortably by the side of Abel, the keeper of sheep, portrays a constant feature in human relationships. The popular saying, " No house was ever big enough for two families," is merely a partial report of the profounder fact that the world is not big enough for two persons, until a process of adjustment accommodates each to the other. If the per- sons number more than two, the adjusting process is much more imperative and more difficult. Multiplicity of persons, therefore, is a condition in which means of correlation have to be invented. Multiplicity of persons presents its own prob- lems to the persons. They vary from the primitive problems of shepherd and farmer, to the present reaction of the public opinion of the world upon Russian autocracy and Japanese strategy. Multiplicity of persons is, on -the other hand, at the same time an enlargement of self. There was good science in the Levitical promise : " And ye shall chase your enemies .... and five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight" (Lev. 26:8). Both for good and for evil, five men may have twenty times the resources of one, and one hundred may have, not twenty, but one hundred times the resources of five. To be sure, the question arises : " But why does it not work in the same way with the hundred and the ten thousand as with the five and the hundred?" It does; the one group manifests the working of the same laws which operate in the other. But the dominant forces evidently differ in the t\yo sides of the comparison. This simply serves to illustrate an element upon which stress is to be laid at every point in our analysis, namely : No single factor in association is sufficient to explain the general fea- tures of the social process. On the contrary, association is a function of the most complex variety of variables that science SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 563 has anywhere encountered. Our business is to detect as many of these variables, and to learn as much about them, as we can, qualitatively at all events; and not to allow our theories of proportions to outrun our knowledge of qualities. Moreover, we may find the division of the facts frequently remarked in the effects of the physical environment duplicated in the case of the personal environment, namely : The multi- plicity of persons has an effect, first, upon the bodily and mental structure of men; and, second, upon the thoughts, the actions, and the experiences of men. All the phenomena of sexual and social selection, in the physiological sense, would be evidence under the first head, and it is unnecessary to enlarge upon this phase of the facts. Multiplicity of persons is the sine qua non of that wide range of selection which pro- motes rapid and radical modification of individual type. The opposite condition — that is, paucity of persons — tends to produce rapid and radical degeneration. For example, inter- marriages, such as those of the Jukes (described by Dugdale), the tribe of Ishmael (described by McCulloch), the Smoky Pilgrims (described by Blackmar, American Journal of Soci- ology, January, 1897), the Bavarian royal family,® the Virginia poor whites, etc., etc. Groups like these abstract themselves from the larger world, and virtually live in a world of few people. Under the second head we may simply remark that the modifying effect of multiplicity of persons upon the thoughts, actions, and experiences of men is now so notorious that it has given rise to that section of social science which we name "mass-psychology." Very familiar facts betray to the most casual observation the subtle action of mere numbers. Such instances as " students' night" at the Y. M. C. A. furnish cases in point. Whatever may be our opinion of the individual characteristics of the members of the crowd, we know that certain of these traits would not come to expression without • Cf. F. A. Woods, " Mental and Moral Heredity in Royalty," Popttlar Science Monthly, August-September, 1902. 564 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the reinforcement of numbers. Again, it would be easy to fill a volume with observations upon the modifying effects of city life upon the manners and the characters of persons. This change is both positive and negative. There are stimu- lating and disciplinary results from mingling with large num- bers of people, and there are the opposite effects of being lost in the crowd, the sense of irresponsibility, the feeling of license, the repudiation of former standards of morality, etc. No one has attempted to fix the precise point of equilibrium between small and large numbers in their healthful and unhealthy effect on persons. The probability is that this point varies in relation to different factors; but that there is such a point, above and below which increasing or diminish- ing numbers exert rapidly changing influence, is familiar to every student of society. Accordingly, as we have argued before," when Durkheim, for instance, assigns to sociology the sphere in which there is the exercise of social constraint, and when De Greef makes the subject-matter of sociology the phenomena of contract, each arbitrarily limits the province of the science. The only permissible limitation is the boundary within which there is human contact. This is not, like constraint and contract, a supposed clue to the character of the social process, or a dic- tum about the content of the process. It is merely a recogni- tion of the formal scope of the process, and an assertion that we may not with scientific sanction restrict our science of human association to any limits narrower than the utmost iDOunds within which human contacts occur. Association is contact, and contact is association. This does not mean that contact and association are identical concepts, but that contact, physical or spiritual or both, is the absolute condition of asso- ciation, and that variations of contact are among the factors in the modification of all human association. 2. Attraction. — What we see, when we observe any human association whatever from a certain angle, is a group ^ Chap. 5. SOME INCIDEN-TS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 565 of phenomena that may be described as " attraction." This detail is not an attempt at speculative subtlety, but an expres- sion of the most familiar commonplace. It is nevertheless worthy of serious notice. Whenever two or more people asso- ciate, something in each draws them tow-ard the others. Each is a magnet acting upon the rest. However it may be explained, each finds himself better satisfied by joining him- self to the others than in isolation from them. The total reason for the association is probably not to be found, in a large proportion of instances, in the phenomena of attraction; or, at any rate, these latter are manifestations of deeper influ- ences. Conditions external to the person, and subjective con- ditions not included within this relation, are not overlooked when we concentrate attention upon attraction. Nor are we attempting to use the term " attraction " as a metaphysical explanation of associations. We are simply pointing out the objective fact that, wherever two or more persons associate, each exercises in some sort and degree an influence by which the others are drawn. In many cases the energy of this attract- ive force may not be apparent, or it may emerge only on rare occasions. These occasions reveal the relation that is qualita- tively constant, although it may be concealed by more efficient factors in the situation. The affinities that hold the horde together; the sexual impulse that stimulates the union of men and women in families ; the bond of proved prowess that unites the predatory band ; the profession of a common faith ; the betrayal of common impulse — the touch of nature that makes all men kin — consciousness of common need or com- mon fear or common hope ; the sense of good-fellowship ; the honor among thieves ; the discipline of the regiment ; the finesse of the salon ; the eloquence of the rostrum ; the pres- tige of the court; or, on the other hand, the discovery of uncommon traits ; the perception of superior strength or skill ; complementary elements, lacking in one party and present in the other — these may in turn be both sign and means of social attraction. Persons draw persons. There are affinities, sym- 566 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY pathies, by which one person supplements another. Whatever the ultimate reasons for associations, individuals are the chan- nels through which many of these reasons work. The gravita- tion of person to person throughout associations is as real as though it were the only movement involved in society. 3. Repulsion. — It is difficult to speak of the more obvious incidents of association without introducing prema- ture hypotheses or theories of their relations to each other. \Ve must presently refer to facts of association in which this inci- dent is involved, in which it may be resolved into more funda- mental forms. Our present purpose, however, is to schedule, not to explain. The schedule is to present the facts as they appear before we make serious attempts to interpret them, or to place them in their proper order. This setting forth of the data to be studied is, however, an important step in the scien- tific process. If it seems to ignore plain and obvious simplifi- cations, it may prove to estop many explanations that are more simple than true. The phenomena of social repulsion are worth tabulation as such, whatever may prove to be their relation to other phenomena. In every human association, from the monogamous family to international concerts, individuals and groups move cen- trifugally with reference to each other. The desires of which one individual is conscious set bounds to the conduct of others. Convergence is simultaneous with divergence, co-operation with competition, confidence with distrust, sympathy with antipathy, fidelity with treachery, allegiance with rebellion, loyalty with treason. So prominent is this phase of associa- tion that Tarde, for instance, was forced to abandon the origi- nal form of his thesis in explanation of social facts. Instead of relying upon " imitation " as the sole and sufficient clue to social truth, he reluctantly admitted the fact of "opposition" to equal consideration." The family is not wholly a sympathetic synthesis of father and mother, parents and children, brothers and sisters; it is at " Vide Social Lmvs, chap. 2. SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 567 the same time an unsympathetic antithesis of contrasted units. The clan is no more a closed circle against other clans than it is an arena of collisions between its members. The camp is one vast weapon against the enemy; at the same time it is a chaos of counter-ambitions and jealousies and conflicts and intrigues. The industrial community is a peaceful association of men disposed to live and let live; at the same time it is a collection of men keen to discover each other's weakness, alert to detect each other's selfishness, and intent upon defeating each other's aggression. The religious fellowship is a com- munion of spirit, to the limit of common belief; then it is a more or less intolerant and violent disunion at the points of inevitable variance of belief. The nation is an association in which the greatest good of the greatest number may be the alleged principle of cohesion; but the illusions of individual and group egotism incessantly confuse judgments of this greatest good, and the nation is always a thinly disguised anarchy of supposed interests asserting themselves in costly ignorance of fit policies of accommodation. The facts and laws of social repulsion contain phases of sociological problems co-ordinate with those of social attraction. 4. Interdependence.*^ — The phenomena represented by this title bring constantly to view the essential thesis of the organic concept of society, namely : " Every point in every man's life is related to every point in every other man's life." All the incidents and conditions to which this chapter calls attention are abstractions from the social fact. In reality they do not have separate existence. Each is in some fashion both cause and effect of all the rest. Consequently, we find that each of these incidents is in some sense a phase of each of the "Spencer asserts (Ethics, Vol. II, p. 184) that there is no mutual depend- ence among the Eskimos. If this is true, association is to that extent non- existent among them. The statement, however, is true only relatively. Indeed, Spencer implicitly contradicts himself, when he describes the use of satirical songs by the Eskimo to avenge insults. My colleague. Professor T. C. Chamberlin, describes Eskimos combining efforts in landing a whale, with remarkable results. 568 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY others. It is impossible to abstract them so completely that this partnership with the others is removed from view. Nor is it desirable that such falsification of reality should be possible. The desideratum in social analysis is ability to concentrate attention in turn upon thinkable phases of the social fact, while constantly remembering the surrounding phases to which this temporarily prominent phase is actually subordinate. Thus, when we have said that multiplicity of persons is a condition of association, we have said by implication that every form in which persons influence each other is also a condition of association. In other words, interdependence, for example, is merely an aspect of the reality present in the fact of multi- plicity. Conversely, multiplicity is merely a form in which the reality of interdependence is realized. Each is something more than a form of the other, because, as we are pointing out, each is a condition of the other as well as a consequent of the other. If this reciprocal relationship can be read out of reality in the case of any title in our schedule, it will be proof that it is erroneously listed as a universal incident of association. Each- of these incidents is in turn an aspect of the prevalence of cosmic law throughout the world of people. We shall find, therefore, that each of the incidents named is in turn an aspect of each other condition. This gives occasion for reiterating a fundamental proposition, namely : To think the social reality, or any incident zvithin the social reality, zue have to learn how to think together all the incidents and conditions, all the forces, all the forms of correlation of forces, and all the processes of action among the forces, that alzvays constitute association. The intellectual ideal for which sociological discipline strives is judgment so firm that whenever a social incident, issue, problem, or situation is encountered, the mind will hold that object before itself, first, as conditioned by all these universal influences which we are beginning to schedule, and. second, as a particular resultant of certain specially effective forces that have operated within these conditions. The greater part of this balancing process unquestionably is, and should be, sub- SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 569 conscious. But the sociologically intelligent mind will know how to bring any force or process concerned out of subcon- sciousness into active consciousness, so soon as the detail in question threatens to be treated in any doctrinaire or irrespon- sible fashion. To illustrate : It would be very crude and pedantic for every person who wants to improve the physical, industrial, political, educational, aesthetic, social, or religious conditions of a modern city to be constantly shuffling over in his mind the technical names of the different categories with which we are dealing in this argument. There is something more practical. At the same time, every person who exercises an influence upon forms of social amelioration will have a use for these categories incessantly. Suppose, for instance, the subject in hand is a proposed change in the public-school curriculum. A little coterie of a dozen persons might put their heads together and decide what they think is the best curriculum. Then they might start out upon a crusade to introduce that curriculum. It might contain, for instance, some religious catechism upon which the dozen might be unanimous. It is morally certain, however, that no group of twelve persons in any American city could agree upon a religious catechism that would be accepted by the majority of the voters in their community. The crusade would be a very naive campaign against the incidents already named. The wise people of the city would at once mobilize in their consciousness these conditions that exist, although scarcely one in a hundred thousand of them may ever have used the technical categories by which we designate the con- ditions. The point of emphasis is that the desideratum of theoretical sociology is familiarity with the mechanism of the social process. We need this abstract knowledge for practical use whenever it is called into requisition by the particular piece of work which we have in hand. The humor and the pathos of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza must be traced to precisely their innocence of this elementary insight into human condi- 570 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tions and proportions. There are both humor and pathos in some of the most ambitious sociological theories, as well as some of the most earnest social effort today, from like igno- rance of relations that foreordain disappointment all along the line of unsophisticated effort. These observations are equally applicable to each of the categories in the present schedule, and to (*thers that will follow. We return then to the particular category with which we are now concerned, namely, interdependence, although under the title "multiplicity" we have implied all that can be said in brief to emphasize the present detail. It is one of the commonplaces of physical science that if a stone be thrown into a mill-pond, the waves produced will beat on the outer rim of space. Nobody professes that science has means of tracing these weaves beyond very restricted limits. But the motion once started affects all matter, although, for the most part, in an inappreciable degree. Similarly, the pres- ence of each man in the w^orld is a force that conditions the life of each other man. Each man diminishes the amount of avail- able space in the world ; he increases the demand for food ; he augments the potential supply of labor; he multiplies the com- plexity of desires which must be co-ordinated if there is to be accommodated human action. Within the economic realm this relation has been made familiar by an enormous body of literature, and by the informal discussions of every interested group, whether of specialists or laymen. Beginning with the rudimentary facts of the division of labor, and enlarging the survey until it takes in theories of the reciprocal dependence of production, distribution, and con- sumption, economic doctrine has been the skirmish line of the perception which is still wider than the economic formulations. This perception is that every man is a contributing cause of every other contemporary and subsequent man ; and, con- versely, that every man is a composite product of every ante- cedent and contemporary man. Not only what we may do. but what we may think and what we may be, is partly decided for SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 571 US — not wholly by us. Still further, each elementary desire, shared and shaped by many persons, becomes a modifying factor in the activity of all other persons and in all other situa- tions. That is, the effective desires of people for the chief satisfactions — health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, rightness — are in turn modifying conditions which help to fix the directions, and prescribe the limits, of all activity aimed at satisfaction of either of these desires. We may concede without argument that the health and the wealth interests are essential, while the other interests are dependent. The most pressing problem of society is how to secure these essential conditions for all the members of society. We may, therefore, confine our elaboration of the present proposition to its relation with the industrial activities. We may repeat our theorem, then, in a more specific form, namely : The details of men's economic activities are fixed by the status of their own and other people's desires for health and socia- bility and knowledge and beauty and rightness, in combination with their desires for wealth. We will elaborate this proposi- tion, not chiefly for its own sake, but to illustrate the general fact of " interdependence." We may give full value to the environment condition ; we may admit that in the large the environment determines what the economic activity shall be. At the same time, the character of the man environed and the character of all other men also determine what this economic activity shall be. Our industry cannot vary beyond the limits that are set by the traits of the men who have lived before us and those who live round about us. It is too obvious and familiar for more than passing remark, that the physical labor force of any generation depends upon the degree of bodily capacity inherited from the preced- ing generation. What the bodily resources of our day shall accomplish is limited by the inherited capital of health and bodily development. Not pausing for illustration or further statement of this factor, we may turn to less familiar phases of the same condition. 572 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Let us assume, for instance, a certain intensity of the wealth desire. Operating in a vacuum, it would impel the peoples of Europe to labor until that desire is satisfied, or until they dropped down exhausted. But the sociability desire is to be reckoned with. This not only dictates customs in business, like the closing- of banks for three hours at noon ; it not only dictates family and group merrymakings on birthdays and other anniversaries; it causes whole populations to adjourn business on nunierous feast- and fast-days, thus making indus- try in a large measure impossible even for those who prefer to work. The notorious American intensity in pursuit of wealth is not proof that Americans want wealth more than other people, but merely that for the present we want other things less. If all of us cared for sociability as much as some French- men do, and in the same way, we should spend a couple of hours on the boulevards each afternoon, taking turns parading up and down the sidewalks, and sitting at the cafe tables com- menting on other paraders between our sips of cafe an cognac or absinthe. If we cared for sociability as much as the Italians do, and in the same way, we should have our St. Mark's squares, and spend our evenings listening to the music and exchanging gossip ; or, like some Neapolitans, we should haunt the streets half our days, and drive dull care away all our nights by wassail with our friends. If we cared for sociability as much as the English do, and in the same way, we should be more like them in making business tributary to sport and ix)li- tics and country life. If we had the quality of sociability that the Swiss and the Australasians have, we should be much farther advanced toward democratizing all our economies. The emphasis in these cases is on the fact that in the coun- tries named business is as certainly modified by certain qualities and tendencies of sociability as it is by the physical environ- ment or the desire for wealth. The intensity of effort that may go into business enterprise is limited by social instincts as truly as by material resources. That there must be economic effort SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 573 of some sort is decreed by the conditions which are antecedent to the social desires, and more persistent. But given a certain minimum of material resource, and the industrial activities at once encounter as real barriers and deflectors in the social char- acteristics of persons as seas and rivers encounter in dikes and levees and breakwaters. In a word, the quantity and energy and direction of economic action in a society depend, among other things, upon the social quality of that society. The fact that Carthage grew rich by commerce, while Rome did not, is due in part to the contrast in social conditions, not to the excessive greed of the Carthaginians. On the contrary, the rapacity of the Romans was more relentless than that of their rivals. The means which it adopted to satisfy itself were determined in part by different conceptions of the social worthiness of war as compared with production and peaceful exchange. Similar results have been seen in modern Europe from the operation of the aristocratic taboo upon business. Since capi- talistic business has risen to such unique importance, the Ger- man, French, and English aristocratic classes have been stricken with dismay at the rising powxr, commercial and political, of the class controlling money. The aristocrats have simply handicapped themselves in the commercial race by social tradi- tions that have proscribed business careers. They have improvidently bred business capacity out of their ranks. This is one clue to the anti-Semitic movement in France and Ger- many. The Jews have been forced into trade, commerce, and banking by the policy of the Christian nations since Chris- tianity came into political power. They have developed busi- ness instincts which were not originally peculiar marks of the race. They are the superiors of the social leaders in ability to carry on the kinds of business that predominate in our day, and they are consequently the objects of impotent jealousy on the part of the classes that demand artificial prestige. The chief reason why there is no anti-Semitic movement in England is that democracy is so much more intelligent and thorough there 574 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY than in France and Germany. The predominance of the aris- tocracy has been more or less a fiction for a long time, and the failures of the aristocracy to succeed in the capitalistic game do not move the nation to any strong sympathetic emotions in their behalf. The other elements have learned to stand on their own feet in business, and to acknowledge the rights of more capable men, whatever their race or religion. One of the ablest portions of Von Hoist's Constitutional History of the United States is that in which he shows the impossibility of combining the social ideas on which slave labor was founded with free industry in the same political society.^ *^ The dependence of economic activity on social conditions was never more clearly depicted. From the earliest details that the ethnologists collect of social decrees of the sex line in industry, down to the distinctions between wholesale and retail trade as passports to different strata of polite society, history bristles with illustrations of the present thesis^ namely : What eco- nomic activity may be is decided, not by economic interests alone, but invariably by conformity of economic action to internal and external social conditions. It was not our natural environment, but the colonial policy of Great Britain, that set limits to our industrial development before the War of Independence. Again, it was not our home resources, but the attitude of foreign nations toward our com- merce, that crippled our trade until after the War of 1812. If it be answered that this was really one industrial society pitting itself against another industrial society, that it was thus an industrial conflict pure and simple, and so not a case in point, we may concede that this is largely, but not wholly, true. We may then cite the clearer instances of our long knocking at the door of China and Japan for admission of our trade. The exclusion of foreign nations from these countries was not primarily economic; it was social. The objection to foreigners was not in the first instance opposition to foreign goods, but '"Vide 1856-59, chap. 6. SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 575 to foreign people.^ ^ There was social antipathy which refused to mix with Europeans. So long as that antipathy existed, trade relations were impossible. In China the barrier has been broken down to a considerable extent by force. In Japan it has been removed from within as well as from without. And since the new social atmosphere has existed, new possibilities of eco- nomic action have arisen. Our present relations with Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines are not determined by economic conditions alone, but by social conditions on both sides. The present status of the labor-and-capital question is an indication of our social conceptions much more than it is an exhibition of inevitable economic reactions. In short, the kind of eco- nomic activity that any society may carry on depends not alone on its physical habitat, and the economic quality of its mem- bers ; it depends upon the social wants of its members and of its neighbors. What it can do industrially depends upon what itself and the rest of the world want socially. It would be equally possible to treat the present division of our subject by showing various classes of interdependencies between a society as a whole and neighboring societies. The method followed thus far may, however, be continued with equal advantage through the discussion. We are considering, namely, the dependence of the business element in a society's activities upon the desires, either within or without the society, that are not primarily economic. We may repeat the thesis, then, in this form : The economic activities of individuals or groups are conditioned by the status of the knowledge interests in themselves and in their neighbors. In his Development of English Thought, Professor Patten has elaborated the thesis that national thinking is the product of the nation's economic activities. He is quite right if he organizes his generalization into harmony with its converse, namely: a nation's economic activity is a product of the nation's thinking. Otherwise the generalization is a half-truth that hardly needs to be exposed. The world was just the same essentially six thousand years " We might say, too, " not to foreign goods, but to foreign gods." 576 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY ago that it is today ; electricity would have run along a wire in Adam's time just as it does at present, if opportunity had offered; steam expanded just as forcibly in Noah's day as it does now; lyddite would have exploded just as terrifically while the Hebrews were making bricks in Egypt as it did on the Tugela or before Mukden ; the sun would have printed a picture on a plate just as distinctly in Solomon's palace as in a modern photographer's parlors. The reason why Adam did not talk to his wife and children over a telephone, the reason why the ark was not propelled by turbine engines and triple screws, why Moses did not shoot down Pharaoh's soldiers with rapid-fire guns, why we have no photographs of Solomon and his court, is primarily that these people had not sufficiently observed and thought through the facts of nature and the wants of men. We have ten thousand comforts that antiquity did not enjoy, simply because we have the result of ten thou- sand times as much knowledge of the resources of life as antiquity commanded. These truisms are indexes of the conditions we are now considering. Specifically, the economic actions of men are conditioned by the knowledge and the knowledge-desires of themselves and other men. Perhaps the illustration that most readily suggests itself to American minds is the case of Catholic Europe in the fifteenth century. Europeans were as greedy of gain and as eager for adventure as they have ever been. They were crowding upon each other, and were anxious to find new sources of wealth. Mexico and Peru were rich enough to create greed, if it had never existed. The ocean washed European shores just as it does now. The trade winds blew the same favoring gales. Sun and moon and stars were the same safe guides to the sailor's path. Why were this and that not put together? Pri- marily because the state of knowledge in Europe prohibited a breaking out of the l30unds of the known world. Men did not dare to trust the compass. They had not yet invented quad- rant or sextant. But, more than all, the theologians dominated men's minds with warnings that it was heresy to explore for SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 577 regions unknown to ecclesiastical cosmology. The Genoese sailor who at last summoned effrontery enough to believe in pushing farther west for a new way to the east, had to contend more desperately against biblical texts and monkish interpreta- tions than against economic obstructions. Indeed, in all the dealings between more and less enlightened peoples, from the beginning to the present moment, the status of knowledge in each party has conditioned the economic activities of the other. The aborigines' ignorance of relative values has been the temporary spur to adventure. Ignorance of natural resources, or of means of utilizing them, has in a thousand ways modified economic action. Ignorance of the traditions of peoples has resulted in ruinous policies of inter- course.^^ At present Americans hardly need to be informed that, between two societies which are in contact, the decisive factor may be the mental content of each group respecting the other. If the Americans had known the Filipinos, and the Filipinos the Americans, as well as Americans and any Euro- pean nation know each other, there would have been no blood- shed in the process of organizing a permanent government and restoring order and industry. Emerson's aphorism, " No man can be heroic except in an heroic world," is an overstatement of an underrated truth. No man can be his best in a world unappreciative of that best. No group can be its best in a world not correspondingly at its best. A worldly wise man shows some of his wisdom when he dilutes it with folly in dealing with fools. Societies must per- force conform their economic policies to the state of knowledge in the other societies that make up their area of contact. We repeat, then, our leading proposition in this section, namely: Interdependence is a constant condition zvithin which human association occurs. We are illustrating this proposition through one of the many series of ways in which it is exempli- fied. We are observing that the conduct of any society, with respect to either of its elementary desires, is conditioned by the " Cf. Macaulay's Essay on Warren Hastings. 578 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Status of that society, and of other societies, with reference to each of the other elementary desires. We come to the beauty- desire. It is, of course, impossible to show that the beauty- desire has exerted as strong inter-societary influence as some of the other factors, because it is not true. It is true, however, that this factor has always exerted a subtle and pervasive influ- ence, ever since there has been human intercourse. For a generation we have been pursuing in the United States a policy of tariff protection, ostensibly in the interest of home manu- factures. At the same time, the fact that the love of beauty, as applied to the arts, is so much more advanced in Europe than in America, has given to many kinds of European manufactured goods a prestige that carries them over our tariff obstructions. The reputation for finish that European goods enjoy, together with the reputation for taste that some Americans affect, gives foreign products a vogue that forces peculiar trade methods in our own markets. To sell a piece of Connecticut worsted in many an American tailor shop, it must bear a south-of-England or a west-of-France label. Parallel cases might be repeated indefinitely. In all trade relations between exporting and importing countries, the aesthetic standard is a prime factor. Even Italian and French art squints toward the taste of Ameri- can parvenus instead of aiming solely at aesthetic ideals. Every tourist in Europe today will be shown in England churches denuded of statuary, and otherwise mutilated, by the troops of Cromwell ; while at Versailles the desire for revanche does not prevent the keepers of the palace from praising the Germans for protecting the art treasures at their mercy during the occupation. Just as the state of aesthetic appreciation softens the rigors of war, so it modifies the economic process of nations in peace. The annual hegira of Americans to the Old World, saving thousands of complacent Europeans from poverty, and maintaining whole groups of occupations, must be attributed in part to the aesthetic interest of Americans. The crowding of people from country to city throughout tlie world is economic and social, but also, though unconsciously SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 579 and pervertedly, aesthetic. The recent Massachusetts law pro- hibiting building in Copley Square to a height alx^ve ninety feet, is a local illustration of the principle before us ; namely, in general, that all human conduct is dependent upon conditions extrinsic to the immediate motive of the conduct; and specifi- cally, that all economic conduct is subject to the limitation that cesthetic standards may enforce. Lastly, in this series of illustrations, we specify the particu- lar that economic action conforms in the final analysis to the group-conception of rightness. A German economist has said that " economic demand is a section of the moral standard of the community." The African slave trade lasted as long as Boston could keep its conscience quiet enough to accept a share of its profits. The early policy of our settlers toward the Indians tended to a level corresponding with the assumption that no Indian has any rights which a white man is bound to respect. The colonial policy of most European nations today, and of England until after the lesson of the American Revolu- tion was taken to heart, illustrates the conception that colonists are not only subjects of the government, but a species of com- mon slaves of the more favored subjects, to be exploited in the interest of the ruling people. It is needless to multiply instances. We are dealing with an element in the situation that has made its impression in various ways upon theories, and is already modifying deliberate programs. The discovery has been made too often to be any longer debatable, that one of the factors which fix the metes and bounds of economic action is the moral standard of the people who make the market. We repeat, then, the main thesis of this section, which the foregoing discussion has perhaps needlessly elaborated, namely : Every social incident zvhatevcr, be it the daily experience of an individual zvithin a restricted group, or the secidar career of a continental society, is determined by forces not wholly within itself. It is a function of a great number of variables, working within conditions that are constant in essence, but changeable in their manifestation in particulars. Every social situation is S8o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the product of everything else that exists in the world. To change the situation, it is necessary to break the equilibrium of forces that preserves the status, by setting free some new factor. The dependence of each and every social element, whether larger or smaller, upon outlying elements of which it is a part, requires this first step in every process of understand- ing the social situation, namely : the effort to determine pre- cisely what the particular conditions are that exert a significant influence upon the element in question. This program is instinctively adopted, after a fashion, by every man who tries to deal with concrete social questions. For instance, in all our current treatment of trusts we either seek or assume an explanation of their origin. How do trusts come to exist? One man says that they are brought about by the tariff; another, that they spring from competition; another, that they are produced by criminal collusion with the railroads; another, that they are the product of class legisla- tion; etc., etc. The least intelligent of these explanations implies recognition of the dependent and resultant character of trusts. Few agitators seem to realize how many and compli- cated are the elements which have conspired to produce trusts, and consequently how many influences must co-operate to change the equilibrium of forces represented in trusts. All the attention that men are paying to the subject today, however, enforces the sociologist's claim that scientific analysis of condi- tions in which each social problem has its setting is the sine qua non of practical social intelligence. We have to learn, in each particular case, not merely that interdependence, as an abstract concept, describes the situation; we must proceed to analyze and measure the particular elements upon which the situation in question depends. We then have the terms of our problem, with approximately known contents, and may proceed to deal with them accordingly. 5. Discreteness or Discontinuity of the Individuals. — The intervals in space and in time, between individuals that make up associations, have been commented upon in various SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 581 ways by different branches of social science. To the economist they have been interesting, for instance, as accounting for the diffusion of economic effects. The contrast between the effects of a blow upon a heap of grain and upon a soHd body has become a classic ilkistration in this connection. To the poHti- cal scientist the fact affords ckies to the phenomena of political inertia and momentum. To the psychologist it presents prob- lems concerning the distribution of mental stimuli. To soci- ology it early supplied an essential modifying term in the organic concept. Expressed psychologically, the incident now in question reveals the fact that there is no social sensorium. Stimuli actually reach, not society, but individuals. There is imperfect transference of impulse from one person to another, because persons who are closest to each other in space are always more or less distant, and often effectually insulated, in thought. All the processes of assimilation have to go on in many individuals before they can combine for any conduct. There is something analogous to involuntary muscular action in the phenomena of mass-movements, to be sure ; but it is long before any new impulse becomes a permanent stimulus in masses, and constantly influences their action. Intelligent reading of history, or observation of current events, should suffice to procure a proportionate place for this social incident in our theories. It is written large in every passage of human experience, and wisdom must recognize its importance. Among the commonplaces of experience that are partially accounted for by this incident, we may mention slow assimila- tion of modifying influence throughout human associations. As a rule, men move with what often seems to the theorist irrational sluggishness in assimilating progressive forces. The fact of the discreteness of the units makes this inertia of masses not only intelligible, but natural. It was six centuries before Englishmen realized in full on the investment they made when they wrested Magna Charta from King John. Baptists and Quakers, as well as Jews and Catholics, are still living who can 582 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY testify from personal knowledge how long it was, after the declaration of the principle, before there was security of reli- gious toleration. Our country was a nation on paper in 1 789 ; it only decided definitely to begin to be a nation in reality in 1865. Two million inferior human beings were made the legal equals of fifty million superiors in this country a generation ago; but legal fictions cannot work miracles, and the race problem in America is in some respects more difficult than ever. For a hundred years we have had the right in America to be a self-governing people; but when we weigh our muni- cipal administrations in the balance, we are tempted to believe that we have accepted the ballot, a symbol of liberty, in substi- tution for the actual exercise of civic liberty. Here, then, is a constant condition of human relationship, to be placed in cal- culation most carefully when we are most convinced of the illimitable possibilities of human improvement. The enormous time necessary to secure a single item of social gain is per- petual prophecy aganst doctrinaire programism. The contribution of social analysis to the overcoming of this inertia must be made through due appreciation of the fact now before us, viz., the distance, moral and intellectual more significant than physical, between the elements that make up society. How this distance may be bridged, how channels of intercommunication may be opened and kept open, is one of the foremost problems of social technology. 6. Solidarity or Community. — In distinction from the incident " interdependence," the fact in view, when we make note of ''solidarity" or "community," is not primarily the dependence of one part of an association upon other parts, but the common relation of all parts to certain conditions zvhich may at first appear to be zvholly external, or to inftuence only a certain select few ivithin the association. Thus, not alone the individuals who must coast our Atlantic seaboard, or the Great Lakes, or the Gulf, or the Pacific, are affected bv the storms from year to year ; those storms limit the life-conditions of the whole population of the continent. We are in a common lot, SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 583 SO far as we are affected by climate, by the health of the world at large, by its industrial system, its political institutions, its moral ideas, etc., etc. The temporary curtailment of the out- put of gold in the Transvaal does not affect the brokers of South Africa and London alone; it does not confine its influ- ence to the banking or the business world. It distributes its influence over the whole of every civilized country. The world's demand for gold changes the conditions of life for every factory, shop, and farm in the United States. The particular fact to be impressed here is that, whatever be the effect of an external influence upon an association, and whatever counter-influences may operate within the associa- tion, an influence bearing upon that association, as for instance depression of the national credit, is not an impersonal affair; it presently comes home in some way to all the individuals in the association. The machinery by which this is accomplished has been suggested in part in our discussion of interdependence, but this incident of community, or solidarity, is separable in thought from the antecedent incident of interdependence by virtue of which community becomes more specific. It is this fact of community which has most enforced the organic concept in its essential features.^ ^ The universality and intimacy of relations between men is a fundamental ele- ment in social theory. It is not a fact completely distinct from the facts already pointed out, but it is a distinguishable aspect of those facts. Whatever be the relations that press upon some men, those relations are a part of the lot of all men. The oppression of the Jews in Russia, and of the Armenians in Turkey, becomes a make-weight in the politics of England and America. The difficulties of farmers in East Prussia help make the "eastern question" in China, and threaten the Monroe Doctrine in South America. The local politics in Ireland may hold the balance between parties in the United " We have shown reasons why our thinking about human life must always retain something of the idea emphasized by this crude conception. (Parts II and III.) S84 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY States. The state of crops in Russia is reflected in prices on the Chicago board of trade. It would be possible to rewrite history in terms of this single condition. Of course, it would be a one-sided view of history, but it would correctly report one of the correlations of facts that are involved in history. We might urge the thesis: History is the incessant distributioti of conditions from centers where they are evident, to the rest of society in which they are gradually assimilated and lost from viezv. The classic illustra- tion would be the political absolutism of the eighteenth century, as affected by the French Revolution. The Revolution was in one sense local to France; in another sense it re-created the world. It is doubtful if the spirit of French administration has been changed more than that of Germany by the assimila- tion of the Revolution by each. Again, we might review the different classes of satisfac- tions, and the activities which appetite for them stimulates, and we should find that the desires of one part of the world, and the means of satisfying them, presently become equated with the same class of desires and satisfactions in all the rest of the world. The health of Calcutta and the Arabian peninsula is presently the health of London and New York. The commer- cial system of Asia, Africa, and South America is both cause and effect of the commercial and fiscal system of England and America. The social customs of Bushmen and Fuegians may not supplant those of European nations, but they supply material for revision of our ideas and for broadening our conceptions of social utility. The knowledge gained by rude races, and that derived by the keenest science, are interchanged, and the culture of the world tends to become one. When the fashion of our chief cities sets apart a week for devotion to the chrysanthemum, we need look no farther for proof that the jesthetic life of alien civilizations coalesces and harmonizes. The Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 was merely a symptom of a condition that is as old as human intercourse. Religion is not a local nor a racial but a human want, and the SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 585 want will not be satisfied until it has reached a universal expression. Every movement of men to satisfy the religious yearning has been a vicarious sacrifice for all humanity, in expressing its want and in experimenting with means for achieving its desire. The transfusion of religious conceptions has been going on since the first human consciousness of awe and fear. We need not argue that one religion is the product of another, but, assuming the independent origin of several families of religions, there has been progressive modification of religion by religion, parallel with the progress of intercourse between peoples. The Buddhist and the Jew, the Mussulman and the Christian, each has a different actual religion today from that which would have been his religion if the other faiths had not contributed to the content of his consciousness. In other words, the world has gone on realizing what was partially but fundamentally expressed by St. Paul in his famous sociological lectures to the Roman and Corinthian Christians (Rom. 12:4, and i Cor., chap. 12). He may not have intended to carry his proposition, " We are members one of another," beyond its application to membership in Christian communities. At all events, the truth turns out to be as broad as the most liberal interpretation of his language suggests. As intercourse, and means of communication, and exchange of goods and thoughts, have become developed, world-wide com- munity has become more intimate and obvious. The peculiar consequence of this fact today is that there are no local ques- tions; every social problem is a general problem. We cannot make wise programs without adjusting their relations with the affairs of the world. There are no social solutions which do not rest upon settled relations in society at large. 7. Co-ordination or Correlation. — Disregarding its relationships to the other incidents in our schedule, and con- sidering it in itself, we encounter in the fact of co-ordination that aspect of reality which has thus far furnished more material to political economy than to any other branch of soci- ology. Indeed, if we are to become as familiar as our present S86 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY means of knowledge make possible with the phenomena thus designated, economic science is an indispensable interpreter. Not even in political science is the fact of co-ordination so minutely analyzed. Yet we are left with a partial and unbal- anced conception of human associations, on the whole, if we stop with knowledge of co-ordination as it is displayed by the industrial or the civic department of human activities. Desire to avoid the extravagances and trivialities of the so-called " biological sociologists " has caused a reaction among cautious students of society, to the extent that they are shy about employing the most obvious organic metaphors in reporting the more general facts of human co-ordination. We cannot adequately express the results of already accomplished analysis of human association, however, unless we take advan- tage of terms filled with meaning from lower orders of co-ordination. There is articulation of parts, there is interla- cing of structure, there is intercommunication of persons and of products, between activities that proceed within an association. All this complexity is due to various correlating principles, the study of which is perhaps both the " immediate " and the " paramount " task of sociology. We are observing at this stage merely that what we see in other aspects of associations depends upon facts of another order, which are distinguishable in thought by abstraction, whether we have made the remaining generalizations or not. These facts are both structural and functional. The whole sys- tem by which communication of thought and influence takes • place in association is a combination of material and spiritual devices, which gives to human associations a coherence and regularity of a unique sort.^'* Objective description of this incident of association is still an unsatisfied demand. Attempts to accomplish it have resulted in much clarifying analysis, along with vast waste of energy in debate over physiological analogies. Tn the absence of agree- ^* Vide Small and Vincent, Introduction to the Study of Society, pp. 215- 36 and 237-66, and above, chaps. 8, 9, 10. SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 587 ment about the terms in which the fact and the means of co-ordination in association shall be described, one is liable to irrelevant and confusing criticism when using the readiest and simplest explanation. Without wishing to raise any of the mooted questions about the terms which will best apply to the facts here in view, we have to note that what men do indus- trially, for instance, is not merely conditioned by what they do artistically, scientifically, politically, and religiously; but it is controlled by a network of interrelations that are a part of association. Social co-ordination is not like a mechanical co-ordination of grains of sand dumped in a heap; it is the operation of interacting spiritual energies and material devices, as consistent and constant after their kind as the principles of military tactics. We see the fact illustrated in different degrees in the case of Chicago industries after the fire, the industries of the south- ern states after the war, and the industries of France after the Revolution. In each case, both the form and the volume of the industries were determined, first and foremost, by immediate local circumstances and by essential personal wants. They were determined, secondly, by larger connections extending to the whole form and spirit of the world-association of which these groups were parts. Thus Chicago could not start afresh on the basis of communism of land, for the laws of Illinois would not permit it, even supposing that the people of Chicago wanted it. Chicago could not build a city without streets, or depend on the moon for light at night, or revert to the house- hold system of industry, because the whole commercial system, as illustrated forcibly, for instance, in the insurance factor, would have vetoed such irregularity. The same fact of traditional and contemporary social deter- mination of activity might be illustrated at length in the other cases just named. What goes on among associated men is partly a consequence of physical conditions which are primarily outside the category "social." It is partly individual action. It is, however, in great part a function also of the association 588 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY in which it occurs. Thus our economic conduct is a function of the domestic, artistic, scientific, ethical, poHtical, legal, and theological order and tradition, organized in the association of which we are parts. So of each of our activities in turn ; they are all functions of each other. The means by which this co-ordination is procured are both natural and artificial. They have partly gravitated into operation, partly come to have their present efficiency by voluntary adaptation of devices invented without far-reaching purpose, and partly grown out of deliberate intention to organize association. They have been expounded in part by Professor Ross in his notable book, Social Control. The single fact to be insisted on here is that hitman associations of all grades are contacts of individuals correlated by a system of co-ordinating agencies, not a jumble of individuals free to transform their association by extempo- rary volition. The correlation of the units is a phase of associa- tion as distinct and significant as any incident in our schedule. CHAPTER XXXVII SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS (continued) I. Individualization, — In dealing with this schedule of incidents, our method is to state and illustrate in each case the fact that the incident exists, not to enter upon discussion of reasons for its existence. Upon mention of the present detail there is at once provocation to join issues with the collectivistic or the individualistic philosophy, and to struggle for mastery in the name of one of these conceptions. That, however, would be far from our present program. Our concern in this analy- sis is not with individualism or collectivism as an idea, but with individualization as a fact. There are views of human association which make it the same sort of resultant that occurs when the fat of a herd of swine is boiled down and cooled off as a mass of lard. But human associations are not homo- geneous masses ; they are heterogeneous collections. Diversity of individuals is no less actual than community of relation of individuals to the universal conditions. Human associations are invariably composed of unlike individuals. It is true that, in the ideal monogamous family, man and wife are one; it is more literally and evidently true that, whether the family is ideal or not, man and wife are two. So also in a rising scale in other, more complex associations. We are, of course, repeating a commonplace, with the modifica- tion that it is not commonplace. We shall lay further empha- sis presently, under another rubric, upon the fact that indi- viduals are different and remain different. The specification upon which we now insist is rather that the associated state is a process of making them different. Association diversifies personalities. It puts premiums upon special developments. It encourages a trait in one, it represses a trait in another. It rewards this man's performance, it penalizes that man's pro- 589 590 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY pensity. It gives more scope to each of the activities normal to all individuals, and to the rare activities peculiar to excep- tional individuals. // zve take the genetic view of the social process, we may describe it in this aspect as a progressive production of more and more dissimilar men. Each change in the social situation affords a new outlet for personal idiosyncrasy, and presents new incitements to variation of conduct and character. The proverb that " it takes all sorts of people to make a world " is only one side of the reality. It takes a zvorld to make all sorts of people, is equally true of the same reality. The limits of the possibilities latent in people will not be discovered until the social world has reached the limits of its development. The social movement takes place through propagation of untold varieties of persons. Production of personal differentiations might be fixed upon as an approximate expression for the whole output of the social process. Our whole schedule is cumulative warning that such a view is partial. Human asso- ciation is a process made up of processes, of which the present detail is a sample, each of which seems to cover the whole range; all of which together, however, are necessary to the completeness of each. 2. Socialization.^ — The same facts, otherwise viewed, yield the apparently antithetical proposition that association not only fits the units into accommodation with each other, but that association is essentially assimilation of the individual * " The setting free, in the modern world, of the activities of the individual, as against all the absolutisms that would otherwise have enthralled them, is, in its ultimate meaning, only a process of progress towards a more advanced and complete stage of social subordination than has ever prevailed in the world before. All the steps towards a free conflict of forces — towards ecjuality of conditions, of rights, and of opportunities, and towards the liberty and freedom of the individual under all forms — are simply stages of progress in an increasing process of social subordination. It is upon none of these things, regarded by themselves, that we must fix attention in considering the future. It is upon the meaning of the evolutionary process as a whole that the mind must continue to be concentrated." (Kidd, Western Civilication, p. 412.) SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 591 life-process to the social life-process. It is integration of the process in the units with the process in the whole. The social process is the fact in which individuals, on the one hand, become more distinguishable from each other ; while the same individuals, on the other hand, get their distinctive individu- ality by becoming more intimately merged into each other. Socialization is, accordingly, not in opposition to individualiza- tion, except in words. It is the condition and the means of individualization, and vice versa. An analogy may possibly indicate the truth at this point better than literal description : When the prairie schooner is the only vehicle owned by the family, the social activities of the family are rude and undeveloped. Specialization of activity on the part of the family goes on pari passu with more highly individualized means of travel and transportation. When the prairie schooner has become half a dozen different kinds of farm wagon, and half a dozen different sorts of conveyance for persons, each of the dozen vehicles is not merely different from the rest, but it is different by virtue of its nicer con- formity at some point than the prairie schooner could reach with some specific detail of the life-process maintained by the family. The family life becomes more diversified by com- manding the service of more highly specialized implements. The implements are more highly specialized by virtue of more intimate and exclusive connection with the whole of the family life. The case is similar in form with men. If a young man comes from the farm tO' the city, he may bring a wealth of invisible social qualifications ; but for the moment they are not available, because they are not sufficiently individualized; and they are not individualized because they are not socialized in the way and the degree suited to his new conditions. The city has no room for farmers, but it has abundant work for the resources that accumulate in men on the farm, if these resources can be geared to the proper adjustments for which the city has uses. Presently the young man finds a place 592 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY where he is permitted to show what is in him. He learns to do new work. All that is common to him and the sorts and conditions of men of whom he is a specimen remains as before, but the specialist begins to appear in him; and when he has reached the limit of his opportunity, or of his power, he is no longer recognizable as a child of the soil. He is the manu- factured product of urban conditions. His apparent person- ality is that of an actor almost lost to view on the world's stage; but if it is closely scrutinized, it appears to be a per- sonality formed for and formed by some minute division of the city's labor. The farmer has become the city man, not alone by virtue of changing his location ; he remains the farmer still, until he specializes his individuality. He accomplishes this change by adjusting his individuality more exactly with some minutiae of the social process. Indeed, objective morality is socialization. The unmoral or the immoral man is the social unfit or misfit. The moral man is the man so nicely adjusted to the social conditions that the life-process proceeds within and by means of him zvith relatively high precision. Association may again be described, truly but partially, as the integration of distinct individuals into the common process. 3. ViCARiousNESS. — So much has been said, during the sociological half-century just closing, about interdependence of one upon another in society, that it is scarcely possible to present this constant aspect of universal social conditions in a new light. The theorem to be emphasized, however, under this title, is that the social process, as we find it, involves not merely constant reactions of unit upon unit, and part upon part, but beyond that, incessant interchange of service between the associated individuals and groups that thus react upon each other. The social process cannot continue unless there is unimpeded give-and-take between the elements. With the reservation, as before, that it is the expression of an element temporarily viewed as the whole, we may express the fact even more strongly. Since the condition here alleged is posited as general and universal, we may formulate all the SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 593 reality of which it is a condition in terms of the condition itself. Thus : The social fact is perpetual vicariousness. When the amount of vicarious action is small, the social process is embryonic; there is merely the dormant potency of society ; association is realized only in a minimum degree. When vicarious action is interrupted or disordered, associa- tion by so much ceases, or becomes negative (antipathetic). As vicarious action diversifies itself, the social process corre- spondingly evolves. Again, this being the case, it would be possible to rewrite history in terms of this condition, and the version would be much truer than many of the pretentious attempts to read the deepest lessons of human experience. The career of human industries is merely the story of one man learning to do something which makes it possible for another to do some- thing else, and for each to get some of the results of the w^ork of both. Differentiation of the non-industrial pursuits and classes — warriors, rulers, artists, priests, scientists — is merely a higher elaboration of this economy of reciprocity. No human vocation has existed as a tolerated institution, with- out apparent justification in its supposed utility to others besides those who pursue the vocation. There is no clearer illustration of this than in the recipro- cal feudal incidents of "commendation" and "protection." The feudal relation was a balancing of services, and was mutu- ally advantageous so long as the exchange was real and pro- portional. Revolutions haye been upheavals due to interrup- tion of the vicarious function, or to tardy or premature belief that the function was arrested. At one point there has been excess of advantage; at another point, defect of advantage. The exchange process that would normally equalize levels of advantage has been somehow clogged, and the consequence has been that normal human interests have asserted them- selves by breaking through an abnormal order. We should have a juster account than has ever been rendered of every episode in history, if we could get a correct answer in each 594 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY case to the question : Who performed or shirked the vica- rious function called for at that point? When we approach the problem of present society, we must sooner or later confront the question of the state of vicariousness in our society, namely : Who depends upon zvhom for zvhat service, in order that the interests represented by the members of present society may be satisfied^ Is the responsibility discharged with a reasonable degree of successf These questions propose the inevitable test of our present social aims, and of the structure of society by which we are trying to reach those aims. Who fails in performing what service? is the question which calls for exhibit of the whole social unbalance, whether in judgment of past or present society.^ The world is not a gift enterprise; it is not constructed on the free-lunch plan. The world owes nobody a living. It is true that no one can earn the kind of living that all civilized men want today, because the best of us have to be pensioners on the past to an extent which no one can com- pensate. The most skilful " architect of his own fortune " in spite of himself comes into the greater part of his fortune by inheritance from other men. On the other hand, it is true that, as against the other persons of his own generation, nobody has any socially valid claim to good things, except in proportion to the utility which his personal service in the world bears to the service performed by all other men. Wher- ever this proportion is disarranged, there is in some way a disturbance of normal vicarious relations. Accordingly, we may say of the present as of the past : It may be formulated in terms of vicariousness. The present social order is normal and permanent to the degree in which it secures natural vicarious interaction between all the asso- ciated persons. Present social order is provisional and inse- cure in proportion to its toleration of partial reciprocity, or repudiation of the dues of vicariousness, on the part of any ' Cf. above, p. 148. SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 595 of the associated persons. Thus the labor problem, the cur- rency problem, the tariff problem, the civil-service problem, the expansion problem, the liquor problem, the social-evil problem, the re\'enue problem, the trust problem, and so on through the whole list — each may be analyzed in terms of partially realized vicariousness. In so far as reciprocity is approximately normal, we have corresponding social equilib- rium. In so far as a false balance of reciprocity is involved in social programs, there is unstable equilibrium. While this is merely, in the first instance, another of our technical abstrac- tions, it is at the same time a category w'ithout the aid of which there can be no adequate penetration into the essential social situation in its most practical aspects. 4. Persistence of the Individuals. — The fact to which w^e now refer may be symbolized by what goes on in a mix- ture of chemical elements. Let us suppose a case of a mixture containing five or more elements. The volumes of the ele- ments are in various proportions. One of the elements is present in such small quantities that it may be discoverable only after the last refinement of analysis. Yet when that obscure element is found, it is itself; it exercises its own reaction; it is not forced to abdicate its peculiarity; it is equal with each of the other elements in reacting wath each of its own essential properties at their actual value w^ithin the mixture. Hydrogen and oxygen have the same affinities wdien immersed in nitrogen as when they are undisturbed by a third party. In a mixture of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitro- gen with other elements, each retains its proportional force and its own peculiarities, subject only to the preponderating force and quality of the other constituents of the mixture. Oxygen does not become nitrogen, though it may be lost in the volume of nitrogen. Hydrogen does not become chlorine, though in almost pure nitrogen it may be unable to join with enough oxygen to distinguish itself from chlorine in its rela- tion to combustion. Such force and value as each element has, however, it retains in the mixture, and whenever the 596 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY conditions of the mixture are such that the several elements are called to show themselves, the known characteristics of all alike reappear. There is similar permanency of character, or similar retention of identity, even when that identity is concealed in the mass of other elements. In the social process, under normal conditions, the state of the individual is analo- gous with that of portions of matter in a mechanical mixture, rather than with atoms of the same element in a chemical com- pound. In the social reality we have discovered the like interest of all individuals in the means of satisfaction symbolized by the terms health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, Tight- ness. We do not find that persons have equal intensity of desire for these satisfactions, nor that the distribution of these desires is uniform, nor that they present to themselves the same specific objects or experiences as satisfactions of the desires. What we do find is that when any man or class of men arrives at the stage of development at which these desires, any or all, emerge, the individuality of the man or the class is like the individuality of every other man or class in demanding the object of desire as the satisfaction of want. Brief inspection of this detail leads to the suspicion that, though its universality in observable associations is no less demonstrable than that of the other incidents in our schedule, it is nevertheless an incident of a different order from most of those of which we have spoken. However this may be, we are at present able to make out the reality of this incident rather as a statical principle, as a condition of equihbrium in a relatively developed association, than as a fully actualized condition in all associations. Perhaps we have here a clue to the consummation foreshadowed in the mystical term "equality." Major Powell finds the essence of the equality that is indicated as a condition of a stable civic situation, in " Equality of voice or vote in the council .... The law of equality in demotic bodies is the law of equality to assert SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 597 judgments."^ We would extend the concept somewhat. We would say that individuality has normal scope in an associa- tion only when each individual is the equal of every other indi- vidual in liberty to find expression for his whole personality. Stable equilibrium, the permanence of order, is secured in pro- portion as each man's consciousness of interest is on an equality with each other man's consciousness of interest in freedom from arbitrary restraints upon attempts to get satis- faction. The semblance or degree of order in a society depends upon the approximation of that society to the practical realiza- tion of this equality. In other words, social order rests upon the feeling among members of the society that they enjoy approximate equality of freedom to realize each his own indi- viduality. The condition of equality, and likewise the order of society, is disturbed when consciousness of interest in any one class is permitted to suppress the like interest of another class. For instance, the priestly conception of religion as mani- fested in the theory represented by Gregory VII and Innocent III put a fantastic fiction of religious authority, residing in one class of men, in place of the inborn religious need of all men, and the indicated equality of all men in adjusting them- selves to that need. So long as men do not actually recognize their religious needs, but take them on credit from others, hierarchical suppression of religion in the laity is possible; but so soon as the religious interest begins to become conscious and reflective in the laity, then the imposition of priestly authority becomes such a violation of equality that the pre- vailing order is presently overthrown. The same formula expresses what takes place in the realm of the sociability-desires, w^hen the governing class fails to perceive that political consciousness has dawned in the gov- erned classes, and that the desire of self-determination has emerged in opposition to the desire of the rulers to be masters. When the policy, if not the spoken words, of Louis XIV 'American Anthropologist, July, 1899, pp. 498, 499. 598 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY said, "L'etat, c'est moi/' the social or political existence of Frenchmen outside the administration was by implication denied. The peasant in the Vendee and the sans-culottc in Paris had not the knowledge of statecraft that the king pos- sessed, but each was beginning to feel himself a political per- son. A century later each thought himself a political person in the same class with the king; and perhaps he was. At all events, the dogma of his political nonentity was the spark in the explosive sense of equality. The reaction shattered the artificial order which the dogma had made precarious for generations. Men actually have social interests. When these interests come to consciousness in political desires, they are real forces in the world as much as the affinities of chemical elements. They are not to be read out of the ranks of recog- nized forces without consequences as fatal to order as those which occur in the laboratory when the properties of chemical elements are ignored. Still again, in the realm of the wealth-interests, each man is a potential economist. Each man has not only wealth- interests and wealth-desires, but economic ideas. When class- consciousness becomes definite, as in modern groups of wage- earners, the ideas of the group may be crude and unwise, but they exist; they are the ideas of persons desiring to count as persons, and actually counting as persons, in the social reaction, just as surely as other persons count whose ideas are more mature. Social order involves accommodation of all other factors to this factor of the workingman's individual and class-consciousness. If other social elements presume to push the workingman back into the status of constructive infancy; if the attempt is made to place the workingman under the tutoring or governoring of other industrial classes; if it is assumed that the workingman docs not know what makes for his own good, and should, therefore, be restrained from manifesting his own feelings about what is for his good, and should be compelled to accept, as a substitute for his own thoughts and feelings, the thoughts and feelings which other SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 599 classes want him to have — personal persistence is ignored and vetoed, equality is denied, and order is endangered. It is extremely difficult to discuss this incident "persist- ence," with its corollary "equality," without confusing it with the condition scheduled next in order. The two abstractions, though necessarily so intimately associated, must, however, be kept apart for purposes of clear thinking, even if the process of keeping them apart is somewhat arbitrary. The equal freedom of every man to be himself, such as he is, must be regarded not merely as a specification of ideal order; it must be recognized as in some degree a postulate of all order, and an incipient element of all order. The fatalism of India, the acquiescence in the decrees of caste, the calm assumption of superiority by the brahmin, and- the equally unruffled accept- ance of inferiority by sudrah or pariah — each expresses a certain legal-tender conception of valuation. Castes visualize the class-consciousness of their members, and the system approximately represents the judgments of personal valuation in the people as a whole. The same psychological phenomenon appears in the United States in the popular fiction that each man is a sovereign. So long as each man believes that he is exercising his sovereignty, this appraisal of individuality is compatible with the existence of a social order which actually nullifies the appraisal. Wherever men begin to believe that the social order actually deprives them of equal privilege to be themselves, at that time and place social stability and equilibrium are forthwith in danger. Accordingly, as in the case of each condition in our sched- ule, we have in this specification a test of all past and present societies. That flash of precocity which we call Hellenic cul- ture, for instance, begins to be more accountable when we consider that it was the concentration of excellence of a frag^ mentary sort in a fraction of the people, while the mass of the people merely furnished material support for its premature and disproportionate development. On the other hand, Russian nihilism, German socialism, French and Italian anar- €oo GENERAL SOCIOLOGY chism, and English and American trade-unionism, are symp- toms of dawning mass-consciousness, often proceeding to senseless extremes in demands for deferred payments of the dues of partially comprehended equality. Neither social philosophy nor social practice is yet able to take this fact of persistence of individuals for granted, and to make consistent use of it. Human associations are collections of individuals with certain common traits, but with different and differentiating forms and intensities and combi- nations of these traits. Human associations are, accordingly, different sorts of adjustments accomplished between indi- viduals who always remain diverse, no matter how intimate the adjustment. It is possible for an apparently individualistic philosophy to ignore this incident, although that provincialism is more char- acteristic of collectivistic philosophies. When we bring the concept " society " to the front, the individualist is likely to challenge us with the claim that " ' society ' is only a mental image ; ' society ' is merely a conception. The individual alone exists." This apparently innocent dogma sometimes means, however, a conceptual ism quite as artificial as that which it challenges. It has to be brought down to reality by the perception that " the individual " is only a mental image; "the individual'* is merely a conception. Individuals alone exist. Human societies are diversified adjustments of unlike individuals. The play of individuality is as constant among them as the play of cosmic law. As in the case of the other incidents of association, this element in the situation is both fact and force; it is both reality and tendency. It in turn furnishes, first, its own material for study, in the analytical stages of the sociological process, and it presents a problem of accommodation in the telic division of social or sociological activity. The sociological theory of Gumplowicz reads the indi- vidual out of the list of meaning terms in the societary equa- tion. His thesis is that the individual is so assimilated by the SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 6oi group as to be no longer significant; and the social process is consequently a process of the determination of resultants between conflicting group-energies. His mistake is one of the most familiar in all discursive thinking. He generalizes a single factor into the place of all factors. The "group- individuality," as Ratzenhofer phrases it, is a real and mighty force in the social reaction, but it is impossible to find an asso- ciation in which the individuality of the members is an entirely negligible quantity. Even in such an artificial and abnormal association as that of a body of prisoners in a penitentiary, among whom the power of individual initiative is reduced close to the minimum, the reaction of the group upon the offi- cials and upon the outside world often betrays the peculiar quality of some individuals. In normal associations, larger or smaller, conventionality is no more actual than heightened individuality. In this connection we have then one of the groups of marks of a stable or unstable association, of greater or less permanence in the social order, of a healthy or unhealthy state in its organization. We have discovered as yet no abso- lute ratio between the elements of individuality and of col- lectivity in associations. It is not a part of the present argu- ment to propose a theorem to establish such a ratio. In this primary division of our subject, we have merely to register the observation that just as interdependence and community are general facts of associations, so the persistence, the dif- ferentiation, the accentuation of the separateness and variety of individuals are also universal in associations. Those asso- ciations in which individuality is least encouraged, such as the army, are merely functional devices that serve certain purposes of larger associations of which they are organs. They do not monopolize the life of the individuals in their member- ship. On the other hand, all schemes of society and human life are evidently passed upon by the world's ultimate tri- bunal, experience, according as they furnish scope for the elemental and final factor, the individual. The incident of 6q2 general sociology the persistence of individuals in association is accordingly an element never to be eliminated from formulas of societary reactions. 5. Justice. — It may be impossible to give so clear an account of this incident that its distinctness from the fore- going will be apparent; but the following is a first step toward that end: Equality, as zve used the term under the last head, is a concept of absolute values. Justice is a concept of pro- portion among absolutes, or, to be more exact, among values previously treated by abstraction as absolute. Crusoe and Friday are equal in actuality of conscious interests. Both want to live, to eat, to keep warm, to sleep, to escape pain, to rejoin kinsmen, to satisfy curiosity, and to profit by each other's co-operation. They are unequal in diversity of desires, and in perception of means likely to satisfy them. It would be a violation of the condition of equality on Crusoe's part, if he should wantonly inflict bodily pain on Friday. It would also violate justice, but not for the same reason. It would be no violation of the condition of equality, if Crusoe inflicted enough bodily pain on Friday to compel him to do his share in defending both against enemies. On the contrary, if Friday persisted in wasting the supply of gunpowder for the sake of amusement, while Crusoe's prudence foresaw that Friday's amusement would cost both their lives, justice would demand an equation of desires. Without denying to Friday the right to be Friday, to think Friday's thoughts, to want Friday's wants, Crusoe may assert his right to be Crusoe, to think Crusoe's thoughts, to want Crusoe's wants. So far equality is satisfied. But if there comes to be a conflict of thought and of want between Crusoe and Friday, it at once appears that there are relativities among interests and among conceptions of ways to satisfy interests. It appears also that there are dependencies l)etween Crusoe and Friday. Fach not only needs the other, but each may so act as to sacrifice the other's welfare entirely. Assuming, then, an "absolute" value in each contending SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 603 person, how shall the conflict be reconciled? The equation between persons, so as to respect their equality of right to be persons, so as to adjust the proportionality of their individual desires, is justice. In other words, justice is the condition in zvliich there is a balanced proportion between the interests of different persons zvho are equally entitled to the possession of interests. Equality is a conception corresponding to each one's right to be himself. Justice is a conception corresponding to each one's duty to be no more than himself. Equality is a concept of individualization; justice is a concept of co-ordination. In this light the formula of justice, or of "equal freedom," which Spencer so egregiously overworked, is available, namely: "Every man is free to do that zvhich he zvills, pro- vided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." * Taken together with our formula of equality, this formula of freedom or justice would not require the author's subse- quent explanation that it does not permit policies of perpetual aggressiveness on the rights of others, provided the others are free to resent in kind. A part of individuality is initiative, self-choice of the direction which the activities of self shall take. Aggression violates equality, whether it violates justice or not, because it takes away from the man who wants to be peaceable the privilege of choosing to be peaceable, and com- pels him to repel aggression. Even if he proves better able than the aggressor to maintain himself, he has meanwhile been deprived of the use of his right of choice by the aggres- sion. That is, the condition of equality has been disturbed. We might add, therefore, to Spencer's formula of justice, " provided also that he infringes not the equality of any other man." Whatever be the content which our theories put into the term ''justice," some vague valuation of the term is a too common element of all social theory to need vindication in this connection. However questionable any other term in our * Ethics, Vol. II, p. 46. 6o4 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY schedule of incidents may be, a dispute about the term "jus- tice " as a necessary condition of stable social order could at this late date scarcely be provoked. All social order has presumed that justice is behind and beneath the laws defend- ing and the sanctions sustaining the order. All questions of social institutions have been heralded in terms of justice vio- lated and justice demanded. All disintegration and reintegra- tion of societies may be described in terms of less and greater approximation to justice. The patria pot est as at the basis of Roman law was the expression of the Roman sense of just balance and proportion between the paterfamilias and the members of his household. The gradual limitation in practice of the right thus recognized in theory, and then the elimination of certain elements of the patria potestas from other codes, illustrate the same prevalence of the sentiment of justice on the one hand, together with the companion fact of change in the idea of justice on the other hand. The mediaeval con- tract between lord and vassal, ratifying and including sub- contracts between vassal and minor vassal, and then the status outside of and beneath contract forced upon the non-feudal masses, were in the same sense theorems of justice. They represented the estimate of proportion between interests and classes of persons that the mediaeval intellect had been able to form. The English system of primogeniture and entail, as contrasted with the French system of division of estates, is an exhibit again of justice in unlike forms, as it is conceived in two neighboring societies. It goes without saying that all our contemporary social problems may be stated in terms of justice. Not only is this true as an academic proposition, but it is further true that all our social problems are arraignments l)Oth of our abstract ideas of justice and of the social order which is supposed to embody justice. We have social i)roblems because the con- ditions of order and progress are partially unsatisfied. This must be reiterated at every step, lest we seem, in dealing with one of the conditions of order, to forget that there are other SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 605 equally essential conditions of order. Reserving for this quali- fication full force, we may maintain that every system of cus- toms and laws by which the social order is controlled is a pro- visional theorem of justice. It formulates at least a sort of rule-of-thumb standard of justice. It is an hypothesis of jus- tice. Experience tests the correctness of the hypothesis. If the assumption is measurably close to the reality, the customs and the laws remain elements of order. If the assumption is wide of the reality, the customs and the laws presently prove to be factors of disorder. These general propositions are not affected in principle by the fact that changes of circumstances, rather than original misconception of justice, may produce incongruity between regulative customs and laws and the interests w^hich they essay to control. Nobody can foresee all the shiftings of advantage and disadvantage which a given legal rule may permit or promote. Its purpose may be just; its immediate effects may be just; its remote effects may be unjust. For instance, the present Illinois law of workmen's liens is prima facie calculated to protect the weak against the strong. " The law provides that all debts or claims for materials furnished or labor expended shall constitute a lien on the ownership of the land, a lien on the fee. If a workman has a claim for services, or a steel manufacturer a claim for material provided, he has a right upon the fee itself, and not merely as against the contractor who .employed him or who used his steel." ^ The effect of the law is said to have been, among other things, to throw a large part of the building busi- ness in Chicago into the hands of irresponsible contractors, and this fact doubtless has had much to do with disorders in the building trades, involving many sorts of injustice to many classes of people. In contemplating a society writhing in disorder to break the fetters of the constraining order, one of the lenses through which we must look is furnished, then, by the idea of justice. ' Henry Ives Cobb, in Chicago Times-Herald, November 20, 1899. 6o6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY If we attempt to understand the disorder as a theory and a feehng in men's minds, then our task is to make out what objective facts fail to correspond with the standards of justice which the men in question entertain. If we attempt to under- stand the disorder as a somewhat unconscious outburst of the social forces, as a natural, but not necessarily as a deliberate, phenomenon, then our task is to find objective disarrange- ments of justice. And in this case, of course, our own stand- ard of justice has to serve as a temporary criterion. In all cases the incident that we term justice is a tendency, a gravi- tation, an outcropping of persistent moral quality, the full force of which has yet to appear. 6. Security. — It is one of the boasts of popular social science that we have passed the stage of status and have entered upon the stage of contract. The fact referred to is substantially that we no longer doom a man to stay in the social rank, or the economic vocation, or the political class of his parents. A man is not foreordained from birth, by the mere accident of birth, to a certain artificial rating in the social order. We have broken from these arbitrary designa- tions, and a man may place himself, by voluntary disposal of himself, wherever his merits entitle him to belong. There is freedom to contract without conventional veto of the con- tract. The landless man may become a landlord, if he can work and save and find a landowner who prefers dollars to acres. The peasant, the Catholic, the Protestant, the Jew, may become a civil or military officer, a lawyer, a teacher, a preacher, a banker, an editor, if he can gain the necessary personal qualifications. No social ban now vetoes his efforts toward change of status. This is in itself something to be very highly esteemed. It is an immeasurable social gain. But it is not an unqualified gain, and it is not a gain that is indicated with perfect accuracy in the popular antithesis between status and contract. The rejoicings of theorists over abandonment of the regime of status have tended to fix the impression that status SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 607 itself is an unsocial and inequitable element in human condi- tions. The fact is that, while fixity of status is a violation of certain essential conditions, security of status is in turn itself one of those essential conditions. We cannot think human associations without the category of status, although human associations are in constant movement, and status is thus a moving equilibrium at most; yet in actual associations certain precision of status among the members is universal. If it should be eliminated in any case, there would at once be con- fusion and danger, if not anarchy. The social end is not abolition of status, but, first, security of status, and, second, flexibility or exchangeability of status. Comte, Le Play, Schaffle, De Greef, and, indeed, all the modern sociologists, have either expressly or by implication insisted on the function of order in the achievement of prog- ress.® Now status in one phase is merely order recognized and secured. If it is secured so rigidly that the order cannot resolve itself into a different status, there is evidently an arrest of function in the social process. Perhaps we may sug- gest the reality by use of the analogy of the governor on the safety-valve on an engine. There is a certain statical relation between the steam-pressure, the weight of the balls on the arms of the governor, the speed of revolution, and the fric- tion of the parts. If, however, the valve or the bearings of the governor be rusted into fixity, the entire functional value of the device is lost. It is useless, both as an end unto itself and as a structural element of the engine. The like is true of the social elements. On the other hand, if there are no statical relations, no proportional values, no functional assignments among men, the whole social process is by so much reduced to what Spencer phrases as " indefinite, incoherent homogeneity." It is the absence of order and the negation of progress. This condi- tion might be symbolized to a certain extent by pieces of metal sufficient to make the parts of an engine, but scattered pro- ^ Vide Ward, Dynamic Sociology, Vol. I, pp. 125 f. 6o8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY miscuously, instead of being manufactured and assembled in a working machine. The bearing of all this upon the present term in our schedule may not be perfectly evident. The point is this : Assured constancy of the conditions involved in association, and assured safety of individual and social accomplishments, is the concept symbolised by the term "security." This set of relations among men is another universal incident of asso- ciation. It is, primarily, a condition of order. It is, sec- ondarily, like all static conditions up to a certain point, tribu- tary to progress. Reduced to more concrete expression, the present theorem is that human association not only furnishes, but is a guarantee of, relative security — on the one hand to the association, on the other hand to the individuals assimi- lated in the association. Primitive association, say in the horde, realizes little more than security of the species-interest, as in the case of any other animal association. Changes in type of associations, from less to more civilized, are both effect and cause of security in a more complete sense. Presently association becomes to such a degree psychical that the security is more and more conven- tional — that is, artificial — and consequently weak with the defects of human knowledge and feeling. From that time forward the social problem may be stated in terms of security, namely : How may that security for the individual and for the association, without which the individual cannot remain satisfied in the association, be so sanctioned and safeguarded that it will not destroy itself? Let our first concrete illustration be the institution of political sovereignty. Sovereignty, in fact, is ix)wer to claim obedience from the persons comi)osing the society, and to be free from liability to render obedience in turn to any other persons. Sovereignty in its workings is a realization of security. There are gradations in amounts of goods secured, and of degrees of certainty with which they are assured, marked by transit from the fist-law of the horde to the blood- SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 609 feud of the tribal State, and to the legal sanction of the civic State. The attainment of sovereignty, however, by any sort of ruling power, marks the realization of security for some things in higher degrees, and henceforth there is order of some sort. There is some certainty in the place of total uncer- tainty; some conventionality in place of complete arbitrari- ness; some uniformity instead of utter irregularity. With all this, and in virtue of all this, there is heightened intensive- ness of association. In his Study of Sociology, Herbert Spencer has insisted on the necessity of becoming familiar with the concept of the certainty of relations in the real world. In the social section of the real world there is a tendency to realize in practice certainty of objective relations, and to develop corresponding consciousness of that certainty. This certainty of relations in its lowest forms is merely an aspect of the general cosmic law. Human association tends to establish relations of an order peculiar to itself, and these pbjective relations, with the corresponding subjective facts in view of them, are first demonstrations that society exists, then essentials of associa- tion, then conditions of improved association. We have the permanent paradox, with the terms changing their content at every step : Without association no security; zvithout security no association. The principle underlying the institution of sovereignty is visible again in all the phenomena of authority of other types. In matters of belief, social security is found in a prescribed consensus of creed, until the associated persons learn to find more security in each other's " will to believe " than in a per- functory formula of what to believe. Modern liberalism is not a surrender of intellectual and moral security; it is dis- covery of more security in voluntary loyalty to truth than in forced obedience to authority. We are not living without security of intellectual and moral sanctions ; we are testing the virtues of different sanctions from those that were relied upon in former times. Today we say that " Truth is mighty and it 6io GENERAL SOCIOLOGY will prevail," instead of saying, " Such and such is the truth, therefore our brute force shall make it prevail." Today our social security in matters of belief is found in the affinity of all men for truth, and their gravitation toward agreement about truth, rather than in the power of some men to force concep- tions of truth upon others. The same principle may be illustrated in the case of our industrial order. Whatever indictments we may bring against modern industrial systems, they secure certain definite things and relationships to all members of industrial society. The balance may be unjust and temporary, but while it lasts it is a recourse even for those who want to substitute a different order at the earliest moment. The anarchist agitates for a society in which there will be no police; meanwhile his agita- tion has the security of police protection. The socialist cru- sades for a society in which there will be no private owner- ship of land ; but he is guaranteed protection of the courts in using the products of his own piece of land to maintain his campaign for the socialization of other people's property. Security is a fact, a static principle, a dynamic factor, and a developing ideal in human association. It is not quantita- tively nor qualitatively constant, but in some form and degree it is universal. It is both order and a condition of order; and, for reasons already noticed, it is consequently both prog- ress and a condition of progress. 7. Continuity of Influence. — The fact that this inci- dent has repeatedly been suggested, and is implied in those aspects of association already discussed, would not justify its exclusion from separate mention in our analysis. No associa- tion is eternal. Associations vary incalculably in permanence. Every association whatsoever is a channel through which some part of the social tradition is perpetuated. Association is projection of the earlier moment into the later. Associa- tion is preservation of the past in the present and its pro- duction in the future. Association is the means by which continuity of human action is realized and guaranteed. Asso- SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 6ii ciation is the reagent that makes successive social situations parts of each other. There is a story that during the early summer of 1898, when there was great excitement throughout the country over a possible descent of the Spanish fleet upon our Atlantic coast, a western man asked a Boston citizen what he thought about the danger of Cervera's bombarding the city. " Bombard Boston!" was the response. "You talk as though Boston were a locality. Boston is not a place; Boston is a state of mind. You can no more shoot it with a gun than you could shoot wisdom, or justice, or magnanimity." Whether the tale is fact or fiction, there is profound truth underneath its humor. Boston is essentially a state of mind. Destroy the custom-house, and the city hall, and the state house, and the art museum, and the public library; and Boston will not be touched. Level Beacon Hill, and plow up the Common, and close historic Cornhill and Brattle Street; yet Boston will remain. Remove the storied tower of old South Church, and tear down Fanueil Hall, and topple over Bunker Hill monu- ment; yet Boston will be left. Increase and Cotton Mather, Governor Winthrop and Sam Adams, John Hancock, Gar- rison, Phillips, and Sumner, Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, and Emerson, are more of today's Boston than its geographic site, and its material structures, and its mayor, and its com- missioner of public works, and its superintendent of schools, and its editors and its teachers and its ministers. Boston is a standard of thinking, a set of conceptions and emotions, a body of conclusions about the conduct of life. The same, however, is the fact about every community that has not forfeited its birthright in the human family. Our generation is a parliament of timeless persons of whom we, the living, are the least. By the fiction of death, those are sup- posed to be absent who actually hold the balance of power. This immortality of personal influence is mediated within and through association. Social effects vary in visible force with the character and constancy of the associations which are 6i2 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY their vehicles. The fortuitous association of the matinee audience merely scatters a few impressions that are presently diffused beyond trace in the multitude. The association that maintains certain forms of religious worship at a given point, may for generations affect the community with a philosophy of life radically opposed to the conception prevalent in the population at large. The State may so extend the time- consciousness of the citizens that the nozv of their thought may include many centuries of national life. In this incident we have another of those insights into the social process which are symbolized by that pregnant phrase "the organic concept." The implications of this detail are too extensive even for preliminary suggestion within our present limits. It must suffice merely to reserve for the item of " con- tinuity" its proper place in social analysis. 8. Mobility of Type. — Any change marks a difference of social type which consists of (a) reorgani^atioji of the con- stituent parts of the association, or (b) redistribution of poii'cr among the different elements of the association, or (c) shifting of the prevailing principles in the association, or (d) substitution of qualitatively different aims of the association. The social state, that is, the fact of human beings in contact with each other, is inseparable from constant procession of these changes. They are going on while men wake or sleep. If men imagine that social order is fixed, they deceive them- selves. If they imagine that by taking thought they can arrest variation of balance and of type, they show their igno- rance of the terms with which they theorize. The very opposi- tion of a person or a group to a social tendency is in itself an accomplished change of greater or less importance in the equilibrium or type of the group in which the effort occurs. Altogether apart from judgments of the actors primarily concerned, or from our own judgments of the desirability or undesirability of changes, there is the elemental fact of per- petual transition from one order of association to another. Possibly the phrase " redistribution of the elements " would SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 613 better describe this condition than the term we have selected. We might enHst the term " evokition," if that had not come to be so closely associated with theories of method of change, rather than with the fact of change itself. We might partially paraphrase Spencer's famous formula of evolution J and say that one of the dynamic conditions of society is " integration of persons, and concomitant dissipation of motion." We might simply say that change is incessantly taking place in the types of association which men compose. Making the letters from A to Z represent the members of an association, we may say that the order of the letters is never long constant. Even if the association is in the savage state, the facts of sex and age always produce among the individuals a certain rhythm, although the type of the society itself may remain constant. With every development of individual needs beyond the crude animal interest, the impulse to movement presently becomes differentiation of employments. The priest, the war- rior, the artist, the food-procurer, visualize the previously latent tendency to move individuals into other balance, or into other relation of forces in the combination. Type after type of arrangements of persons have suc- ceeded each other throughout human experience. No sooner are persons adjusted to each other in any form whatever — as, for example, in the matriarchate — than interests begin to push and pull them toward other arrangements — as, for instance, the patriarchate. Perhaps, if we simply say that there has been ceaseless variation of types of association, we shall sufficiently indicate the reality for our present purpose.* We may single out, by way of illustration, those sorts of rearrangements which we are disposed to call progressive. The word "progress" is the fifth term in Lester F. Ward's ''First Principles, ist ed., p. 396. 'Cf. Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, Part II, chap. 11, "Social Metamorphoses." 6i4 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY famous series of social means and ends,^ namely : ( i ) educa- tion, (2) knowledge, (3) dynamic opinion, (4) dynamic action, (5) progress, (6) happiness. It need not be said that in this series the term "progress" has implications which are not necessarily involved in the abstraction with which we are now dealing, but our illustration calls attention merely to one group of such changes. We are not thinking of progress as a term in a dynamic series, but rather as a phase of the whole social fact, itself conditioned in turn by all the other traits of the reality of which it is an aspect. To vary our expression, we may say that a universal phase of association is instability of the relationships of the associates. Reformation, readjust- ment, readaptation, abandonment of forms of association less fitted to changed circumstances, is one of the general and constant incidents of the social process. To proceed farther in description of this incident would involve entrance upon analy- sis of the causes and forces maintaining this and the other incidents which we have discovered in the social process. We accordingly close our schedule at this point, with repetition of the remark that among generalizations such as these we have provisional data for the larger problems of sociology. Ratzenhofer has said that the fundamental phenomena of the social process are (a) sustenance and propagation; (b) perfecting {Vervollkommming) ; (c) variation of individual and social types; {d) struggle for existence; {c) absolute hostility; (/) distribution in space and racial differentiation; {g) mastery and subjection; (/i) alternate individualization and socialization of structures; (1) variation of interests; (/) social necessity; {k) the State; (/) general society.^" It is impossible to discuss at present the divergencies between this schedule and our own, or to inquire whether they might be harmonized. The point of immediate interest is that sociolo- gists are everywhere pressing toward discovery of the social 'Dynamic Sociology, Vol. II, p. io8. " Sociologisclic Erkctuttuiss, pp. 244-50. SOME INCIDENTS OF THE SOCIAL PROCESS 615 essentials. There is growing- ambition to arrive at generaliza- tions of the relationships which are most universal and most characteristic in human conditions. There is progressive per- ception that supposed knowledge of society is pitiful dallying with incoherent details, until we learn how to construe these fragments in their functional relations. As we have tried to make evident throughout Part VI, the terms in our schedule are merely tentative formulations of social facts which it is the task of sociology to make more exact. These incidents are merely partially criticised data which certain types of sociologists recognize the need of test- ing. Having these syntheses of many observations, we are in a position analogous with that of the physicists when they had gone far enough to describe " matter " as " that which has extension, density, specific gravity, cohesion, adhesion, inertia, momentum, etc." The science of physics was not completed in such formulas. It was virtually just proposed. The gen- eralizations which we have brought together are not scheduled as a closed system of social science. They are statements of apparent and approximate truths, in the region of which earnest efforts to develop tenable sociology are in progress. PART VII THE SOCIAL PROCESS CONSIDERED AS A SYSTEM OF PSYCHICAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER XXXVIII THE RELATION OF PART VII TO THE PREVIOUS ARGUMENT Thomas, "The Province of Social Psychology," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. X, p. 445. Ross, " The Present Problems of Social Psychology," ibid., p. 456. In the foregoing analysis we have run a preliminary sur- vey over the whole range of human experience. We set out with the problem of finding a way so to look at all the facts of human experience that we may reduce their seeming confusion to order, and detect clues to their essential meaning. With the help of leading attempts to solve this problem (Spencer, Schaffle, Ratzenhofer), we have arrived at a theorem of solu- tion which may be summed up as follows : Human experience composes an associational process. The elements of that process are interests lodged in individuals. These interests may he reduced to least common denominators containing rela- tively simple essentials, hut in the conditions of actual life, even at the most primitive stages, the interests express them- selves in ivants capahle of infinite variation and comhination. The individuals thus stimulated seek satisfactions of their wants, and efforts to this end hring them into contact with each other. At first these contacts are most evidently collisions; interest clashes with interest. The immediate result is forma- tion of groups for offensive and defensive purposes. These groups in time vary more and more from the primitive animal type. As the variation increases, association becomes an acceler- ated process of differentiation or permutation of interests within the individuals, of contacts hetween individuals, of con- flict and of co-operation among individuals and the groups into which they comhine. Incidental to this pursuit of purposes, and to the process of adjustment hetween persons which results, individuals enter into certain more or less persistent structural relationships with each other, known in general as " institu- 619 620 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tions/' and into certain more or less permanent directions of effort, zi'liich we may call the social functions. These social structures and functions are, in the first instance, results of the previous associational process; but they no sooner pass out of the Hiiid state, into a relatively stable condition, than they become in turn causes of subsequent stages of the associational process, or at least conditions affecting details of the process. There comes a time zvhen some of the individuals in association begin to reflect upon the association itself in a fragmentary zvay. They think of their family, their clan, their tribe, their nation, as having interests of its ozun, instead of confining themselves to impulsive action stimulated merely by their indi- vidual interests. These men coin and utter thoughts and feel- ings and purposes zvhich become current in their group. There are thenceforzvard more or less distijict group-programs, co-ordinating the instinctive endeavors of the individuals, and producing a certain mass-movement, in addition to the molec- ular motions, in the associational process. That is, the groups, as such, entertain purposes, and combine their efforts zvith some degree of reference to them. With this consummation the associational process is in full szving. All that follozvs is merely differentiated in detail. Interpretation of specific stages or areas of human experience is consequently a matter of qualitative and quantitative analysis of the experience in terms of these primary factors. History, or our ozvn current experi- ence, records its meaning in the degree in zuliich it discloses the form, the quality, the force, and the proportions zvith zvhich these various pozvers of the different elements and conditions of association participate in the given action. But these last propositions connote a division of sociological theory virtually untouched hy our discussion up to this point. Everything so far has been simply what Wundt calls " descrip- tive analysis," with corresponding synthesis and a minimum of explanation. Description alone is not science, it merely pre- sents the raw material of science, and proposes the serious problems of science. Description of phenomena is merely RELATION OF PART VII TO PREVIOUS ARGUMENT 621 visualized demand for interpretation of the phenomena. Science is reached in the degree in which interpretation is complete. In the case of the associational process, it would be easy to show that demand for explanation has outrun description of the phenomena to be explained. Much of the vagueness of sociology at present is due to the high ratio of abstract interpre- tation which has been proposed, while neither the interpreters nor the public they address can clearly picture the precise phenomena which they are trying to understand. It is as though men with very limited knowledge of languages should attempt to teach laws of comparative grammar to people who knew no language well, and had never discovered that there is such a reality as linguistic structure or growth. We have had much theorizing about society, with little analysis of actual associations. It is not too much to say that, until Ratzenhofer, no one had proposed a fairly adequate scheme of objective description of human associations, in terms of the interests that are the irreducible elements of association.^ The standard of description which he adopted will of course be improved upon in detail, but in principle we may regard it as final. Henceforth we shall appraise the scientific value of social description, whether historical or contemporary, according to the qualitative and quantitative precision of its account of all the human interests concerned in shaping the situation in ques- tion. In other words, we are only at the beginning of the demands which must be made upon historical and contemporary social analysis, if they are to yield necessary data for social interpretation. Meanwhile, as was said above, ambitious attempts have been made to interpret the social process, despite the fact that it has never been adequately described. All the so-called philosophies of history, for example, are attempts after their kind to unravel the mysteries of human experience. Since these a priori schemes have fallen into disrepute, sociologists * Quite in the spirit of this proposition is Sombart, Der moderne Kapitalis- mus. Vol. II, chap. i. 622 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY have taken up the quest for explanation. We need not here review the types of explanation that have been proposed. It is enough to say in general that at present the promising attempts to interpret the social process are all based on the presumption that interchange of psychical influences is some- how the decisive fact in human association. Tlie assumption is not that men live in a vacuum, nor that the associational process is an intercourse between disembodied spirits. On the contrary, all the physical and biological conditions to which men are subject are taken for granted at their full value; but the variant that at last separates human association from the associations of other animals, and which is trusted to account for the peculiar features of the human process, is the influence of mind upon mind. In other words, the interpretation of the social process which has been projected is what we know as "social psy- chology." Men and groups are what they are because they are influ- enced by other men and groups. Description of human asso- ciations, after the plan that we have outlined, displays this general reality in detail. Interpretation of this reality, so as to constitute a social psychology, must involve discovery of the whole method, and the laws of the method, by which impulse is transmitted from one mind to another. This is obviously the point at which practical interest in sociological theory begins for teacher, reformer, and leader. If the asso- ciational process is .distinctively a play of mind upon mind, and if we are ambitious to exert a molding influence on society, it goes without saying that we must try to master the mystery of the influence of mind upon mind. This influence is not merely the tool which we must use. but it is the force against which we must contend. Social influence is the sub- stitution of one mental state for another. Not merely for the sake of pure science therefore, but for the further sake of practical application, the radical problem is : By virtue of what laws of psychical action docs it come about that one man RELATION OF PART VII TO PREVIOUS ARGUMENT 623 inUuerices another; that thoughts, feelings, and purposes pass current among many men at the same time; that individuals act now as though they existed alone, and again as '^ members one of another;" that the common currency of thought, feel- ing, and purpose fluctuates both in volume and in kind; that the rate of this change is sometimes sluggish and sometimes rapid; that the structures and functions which men's associa- tions maintain undergo differentiation, and thus from time to time exert changed sorts of reactions upon individuals? In short, descriptive knowledge of the social process passes into science of the social process, properly so called, only in the degree in which we become able to restate all that we have found in the way of phenomena of human experience, in terms of the mental influences which are the causal nexus of the whole process. That is, we find that science of the social process involves, sooner or later, science of "the social forces."^ Throughout descriptive analysis of the social process, the con- crete fact and the abstract generalization " social forces " have been thrust upon our attention.^ We must now locate the decisive problems of sociology in the region of these social forces. Professor Romanzo Adams concludes a vigorous discus- sion of " The Nature of the Social Unity " with this formula : A social group is composed of persons who are conscious individuals, and all real social ends are to be found in these individuals. The social unity, then, is an objectively organic unity whose constituent parts are psychic individuals.* Provided they were assured that the phrase "objectively organic" did not carry along a vicious taint of "biological sociology," few sociologists would find occasion for dissent from Mr. Adams' theorem.^ * Vide Ward, " The Mechanics of Society," Outlines of Sociology, chap. 8 ; of. Ross, The Foundations of Sociology, chaps. 7 and 8. 'Chap. 35, sec. 3. * American Journal of Sociology, Vol. X, p. 227. * Professors Ellwood and Hayes have challenged this argument with a good deal of force, but rather on account of certain negations by which Mr. Adams approached the formula than because of serious disagreement with the terms of the conclusion itself. (Ibid., Vol. X, pp. 634 and 666.) 624 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Our argument thus far has been to the effect that the problem of knowledge, so far as human experience is con- cerned, is to discover what goes on in human association in terms of process. In so far as we become aware that the units of the social process are "psychic individuals," there is no escape from the conviction that the final terms in the social process are the psychic facts which occur in the individuals that carry on the process. This is by no means equivalent to the conclusion that at last sociological and psychological problems are identical. On the contrary, there is a very obvious line of division between the fundamental laws of relation between stimulus, attention, valuation, and volition on the one hand, which is the undis- puted preserve of psychology, and application of those laws in accounting for the particular situations with respect to valua- tions and choices in actual association. It is entirely con- ceivable that the psychologists, rather than the sociologists, will apply the key to unlock the mysteries which it is the busi- ness of the sociologists to state. However this may be, the sort of analysis and synthesis of social phenomena which we have outlined, brings us at last face to face with questions that have relations to our previous argument much like those which the theory of the legal and financial sides of railroading have to the engineering and operating sides of the railroad business. That is, we have provided for analysis and correlation of the objective facts of the social process, up to certain limits. It remains to push inquiry into the subjective facts, viz., those relations between social situations and the choices of indi- viduals which contain the last explanations discoverable of the concerted activities of individuals. We may imagine that a visitor from Mars might inspect the plant and equipment of the New York Central Railroad, for instance, before he developed any curiosity about mundane legislation or industrial order. He might get a good idea of the road as an engineering and mechanical system, with very little notion of its relation to the pheiiomena of human pur- RELATION OF PART VII TO PREVIOUS ARGUMENT 625 poses, which after all account for the existence and operation of the road. To understand what the road means, he would need to get acquainted with our whole body of legal and indus- trial institutions. The analogy is not between the laws and industries, on the one hand, and psychical processes, on the other; because the psychical processes that we now have in mind are to be found in part, of course, in laws and industries. The analogy is rather between the more and less external in two cases. The problem is : What can be found out about the pri- mary psychical reactions between individuals which register themselves in social adjustments? The significance of all that we have done by way of tracing the character of the social process is that the process as thus analyzed is the location of this final psychical problem. In this complicated social process we have the infinitely diversified phenomena of personal choice. The general question is : What are the lazvs of choice in accordance zvith which men's conduct takes the directions which zve observe in the process that zve have analyzed? CHAPTER XXXIX THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION Among pioneers in the field of social psychology no one attracts more attention at present than Gabriel Tarde. Dur- ing the past decade his theories have provoked increasing inter- est among both sociologists and psychologists. His recent death (December, 1903) has stimulated study of his books. While I am obliged to dissent from his most characteristic views, it is convenient to make his chief theorems an occasion for formulating certain elementary considerations to be respected in carrying on investigation in social psychology.^ Tarde's theory may be epitomized as follows : First : Human association is a species under the genus animal association.^ Second: The process in animal association in general, and in human association in particular, is the imitation of invention.^ The social being, in the degree that he is social, is essentially imitative.'* To innovate, to discover, to awake for an instant from his dream of home and country, the indi- vidual must escape, for the time being, from his social sur- roundings. Such unusual audacity makes him super-social rather than social.^ Every act of imitation is preceded by hesi- tation on the part of the individual. Now, as long as a man hesitates in this way, he refrains from imitation, whereas it is only as an imitator that he is a part of society." Society ' In the order of publication, his most important books for our purpose are : (i) Les lois de limitation (1890-95); (2) La logique sociale (1895); (3) L'opposition universelle (1897) ; (4) Les lois socialcs (1898). In this chapter the references, with a single exception, are to the American translation of the first work. ^ Laws of Imitation, p. 3. * Ibid., p. 11. 'Ibid., p. 165. 'Ibid., p. 4- '/6id., p. 88. 626 THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION (fZj is imitation.^ This body of " simian " proclivities constitutes the potential energy of a society.* The theory thus epitomized is more generally under con- sideration today than any other as a basis for social psy- chology. Before proposing an alternative theorem, we must expose two cardinal weaknesses in Tarde's system. In the first place, Tarde acknowledges that he has taken the liberty of using the term " imitation " in a sense peculiar to himself. What that sense is he describes in the statement: "By imitation I mean every impression of an inter-psychical photography, so to speak, zvilled or not willed, passive or active/'^ A moment's reflection will impeach the term, if this is its content, of incapacity to explain anything. When we have said that a given act is a social act, if the above formula is to be taken as our guide, we have simply said that it is one of the innu- merable varieties of acts in which any sort of "impression of an inter-psychical photography " plays a part. That is, we have not explained the act at all, beyond placing it in the whole class of acts which we distinguish from non-social acts. I will not now ask whether Tarde's line between the social and the non-social is correctly drawn, but will assume so much, for the sake of the more important part of the argument. As distinguished, then, from a mechanical act, like falling from a precipice, or a physiological act, like taking refuge from the sun's rays under the shade of a tree, a social act, we will agree for the nonce, is one in which there is some real or constructive exchange of mental impressions. But Tarde takes that much for granted before he begins to offer explana- tions. Accordingly, giving the name " imitation " to all the acts in the class so constituted simply provides a term for an identical proposition. That is, the formula " a social act is an act of imitation " turns out to mean simply " a social act ''Ibid., p. 74. ^ Ibid., p. 107. 'Ibid., Preface to second edition, pp. xiii, xiv. 628 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY is a social act;" it is one of the acts which have the marks that we have by definition identified with the concept " social." But Tarde was too acute a thinker to be satisfied with such an obvious fallacy. This definition of " imitation " was an afterthought, in reply to objections; but unfortunately it cannot be made to cover his use of the term. On the con- trary, it is very plain that the word has not merely one, but several specific shades of meaning in different parts of his argument, and it is never clear which of them is in his mind at a given stage of the discussion.^" In general, the word is used, first, as a term of sociological description. For instance, a given portion of a religious ritual is an " imita- tion;" i. e., it is identical with ritual acts that have been per- formed up the line of ancestry for a long time. Then the word is used, second, as a term of psychological explanation ; i. e., the reason why the ritual act recurs again and again is because the mental process of imitation is supposed to be per- formed. This latter is pure hypothesis, and the strength of the hypothesis appears to be derived chiefly from the fallacy of the ambiguous middle in the use of the key-term " imita- tion." Thus, there are recurrences in society. We will call them imitations. But imitation is the name of a psychologi- cal process. Hence, presto! this name that we have applied to objective fact must be taken without further inquiry as fixing on the fact a meaning which the name elsewhere signifies as a subjective process! In the second place, Tarde entangles himself, and his readers still more, in an abstraction, and in an essentially dia- lectic argument, viz., in his use of the different forms of the term "social." He confesses at one point that his definition of "society" is properly a definition of " sociality." ^^ Now, it is one thing to describe the area of social phenomena as *" For instance, in the preface to La logiquc socialc he says : " In my view, imitation is the social memory." The two terms " social memory " and "any inter-mental photography" are surely not interchangeable! ^ Laws of Imitation, p. 69. THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 629 that circumference within which inter-mental photography occurs, and it is quite another thing to allege that the acts performed within that area are essentially imitative. The one statement is merely an attempt to locate phenomena to be explained. The other is an attempt to explain the phe- nomena. But in the second case the reference is to acts, not to an abstracted quality of acts ("sociality"). There is there- fore a double non scquitur involved in assuming that the term of description applied to an abstraction furnishes the psycho- logical explanation of a concrete process. The dilemma amounts to this: If Tarde meant to offer the clue " imitation " in the psychological sense, as an explana- tion of the essential element in the process of human associa- tion, the case rests simply upon his dictum. If he did not mean to use the term " imitation " in the psychological sense, but simply transferred it to descriptive uses, his system does not even purport to be what it has been accepted as being, viz., an adventure in social psychology. It is merely a variation of descriptive sociology, and a very attenuated variation at that. From the amount of analogical and metaphorical expres- sion in his argument I infer that Tarde at first used the term " imitation " in a sense loosely distributed between the ordi- nary psychological meaning and the peculiar descriptive con- tent in the definition above cited. He seems almost to have persuaded himself that his favorite term was fatally vague, and he almost exchanged it for " suggestion " when he wanted a term for the original act of social psychology.^ ^ Whether this surmise is correct or not, it would be nearer the truth to formulate the relations with which Tarde deals, along these lines : First: So far as the elements of the subjective process are concerned, there is no line to be drawn between acts that are social and those that are non-social in their origin. It makes no difference whether it is the burned child dreading the fire, with which he has had no occasion to associate any ^- Ibid., pp. 79, 204, 205. 630 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Other human being, or a workman carrying out the directions of his boss. In either case the sentient series begins with a mental image induced by the stimuhis. We may trace back every sentient act, whether the immediate occasion is a con- dition of the agent's own body, or some communication set up between his body and the inanimate world, or some stimu- lation of his senses by another person, to the elementary experience, which is essentially the same in all cases, viz., the formation of an image. What the mind does with the image in different cases depends upon a great many circumstances.^^ Tested by the mind's capability of proceeding from a mere passive experience into a complete active experience — i. e., through the combined processes of knowing, feeling, and willing — no distinction need be made between stimuli arising from experience with inanimate nature and those that come from contact with persons. We might name the whole process of calling up a mental image, whether the occasion be animate or inanimate, "suggestion." The primary forms of mental action do not vary with the origin of the stimuli which occa- sion the action. If we thought the classification 'necessary or useful, we might express more correctly what Tarde seems to have tried to formulate, by saying that society is the realm in which suggestion originates in persons, as distinguished from the realm in ivhich suggestion is originated by things. Whether such a formula would be worth making, for any other purpose than to correct a false step in Tarde's reason- ing, need not be argued. At all events, our substitute for his formula leaves us without any share of his illusion that our mere delimitation of society explains anything which takes ])lace in society. We have simply narrowed the field of inquiry from the whole range of experience to that portion of experi- ence in which suggestion comes from persons rather than from things. Second : Within the range of experience in general, the act that follows a suggestion does not necessarily bear any "Cf. Roycc, Outlines of Psychology, chaps. $ and 6. THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 631 resemblance to the source of the suggestion; nor, if it does, is it necessarily an act of imitation. Today I suddenly become aware that an angry cloud covers the sky, I run for shelter. Yesterday I saw a man with an umbrella in his hand, and I returned to my house for my umbrella. The two acts were psychologically similar. Each was an act the motive of which was self-protection. Each is to be accounted for as a use of the most available means to an end, not as essentially marked by the fact that the same means may have been used before. In the former case, the running had no resemblance to the cloud. In the latter case, my carrying an umbrella was like the other man's carrying the umbrella ; yet under another sky the sight of a man carrying an umbrella would not have been followed by my carrying an umbrella, but by my guying the man for taking needless trouble. Whether in the case of animate or inanimate suggestion, the possible variation of the act following the suggestion, from the occurrence stimulating the suggestion, points to an entirely different interpretation from Tarde's of the relation between social experiences. The alternative explanation fol- lows this clue : A sentient act does not necessarily have any essential reference to the occurrence as such which suggested it — the cloud, or the man carrying the umbrella. This occur- rence may be merely a means of starting a stream of associa- tion with some object of attention — the threatened rain — with reference to which the person concerned is interested in order- ing his conduct. The consequent acts are therefore not willed with reference to the stimulus, but with reference to a situa- tion quite independent of the stimulus. In a word, we do not imitate when we duplicate the act of carrying an umbrella ; we judge a relation of means to ends, and act accordingly. If the reverse were the case, the act w^hich stimulates would be the Alpha and the Omega of the suggested act. This is impos- sible in the case of many suggestions, and probable in merely a few. In the real cases the stimulus may have all degrees of remoteness from the end suggested. The consequent action 632 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY will have a resemblance to the stimulus only in the degree in which the range of choice is limited between acts similar to the one that conveyed the suggestion, and alternative means for attaining the corresponding ends. Accordingly, we may substitute for Tarde's theorem, " Society is imitation," the formula : The social process, psy- chologically considered, is, in the first instance, cumulative experience in deriving knowledge of means Hi to serve ends. Knowledge of such means, once derived, is passed from indi- vidual to individual, and from generation to generation, by various processes which may be reduced to some common denominator, say, ''tradition." Action upon a stimulus, zvhether social or non-social in origin, zvhether the action is the first or the nth of its kind, is not necessarily imitation at all, in the psychological sense. It is rather the sign of a judg- ment, perhaps original, perhaps borrowed, recapitulated or abbreviated, of the value of conduct zvith reference to an implicit purpose. Our variation from Tarde avoids both of the ambiguities that we pointed out above. We talk, not about the abstrac- tion " sociality," but about the concrete social process ; and we avoid confounding the objective similarity of means with the subjective process which determined choice of the means. For instance, take the case of buying a hat. Why buy it at all? First, for the sake of comfort; second, to satisfy pre- vailing conventional standards. I should be " queer " if I did not wear one, and to be " queer " is to lose my personal rating, which would be inconvenient. My end, with refer- ence to that class of transactions, is to be both comfortable and not-queer. I ask the dealer to show me the hats that are " in style." Why do I buy one of these? The explanation "to imitate other people " is too simple. The mere fact that ten thousand other people wear such hats is not the irreducible factor that impels me to join the number. Belief that this is the hat that, THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 633 at least inconvenience to me, will attain the double end for which I am considering hats, is the more ultimate explanation. My implied reasoning during the transaction is this : First (assuming that the comfort element is negligible), it is expedi- ent to " fix " public opinion, by showing that I am up to date in clothes; second, I have reason to believe that this is the up-to-date hat; ergo, this is the hat with which I can gain my end,^^ That there is a large element of reasoning in the supposed cases of imitation — even in case of the most slavish con- formity to fashion — must be inferred from such considera- tions as the following: No dictator of fashion, not even the King, could get people to duplicate his pattern by an open and direct: "Here, imitate me!" If he attempts anything bizarre, like the double-creased trousers or the bell-crowned white silk hat, a few professional imitators will follow his example. The rest of the world will demand: "Cut bono? Is there any sense in the innovation ? " Unless it appears that the proposition meets some sense of utility, there will be rejec- tion rather than adoption of it. In short, objective repetition of acts does not prove the subjective phenomena of imitation as their cause. The more general cause is a judgment of utility pointing to choice of the external act as a means to an end. Psychologically the process is essentially the same, zvhether the particular judg- ment involved is immediate and original and conscious, or whether the act follows acquiescence in the judgment of inter- mediate authorities. For example, when I use the multiplication table, the pre- sumptions prompting me to the action are not exhausted by the mere cumulation of precedent. I do not use it simply because other people before me have used it, but because it has been sufficiently tested so that I can afford to assume that it " It would seem that Tarde himself would have reached this same explana- tion, if he had not been held back by allegiance to the imitation hypothesis (e. g., ibid., pp. 193-212). 634 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY serves its purpose of summing up accurate calculations. I may rest assured once for all that the truth of the multiplica- tion table has been irrefutably established; and it would be a waste of time for me to treat it as an open question. I use the multiplication table as a means of getting results. It is a logical rather than a " simian " procedure, as distinctly as it would be if I should find myself in the heart of China, and should be obliged to invent a sign-language to express my wants. The code that I might hit upon would be a rational adaptation of means to ends, no less than the devices were by which northern and southern prisoners, during our Civil War, exploited unheard-of methods of escape. Tarde has not merely failed to find the distinctively social phenomenon, but in attempting to do so he has introduced confusion into the elements of psychology. So far as the mere mechanism of mental action is concerned, it makes no difference whether the object of attention is a mountain range or a court of law. The ground-plan of the mind's action is one and the same, whether the suggestion that rouses the action comes from things or persons. The variations in the mind's action are due to variations of relation, of which the mind is conscious, between itself and the objects of attention. If Crusoe had landed on his solitary island without retaining a memory of his fellow-men, but with his mental traits other- wise unchanged, his mind, in knowing and feeling and willing in adjustment to his surroundings, would have gone through the elements of all the processes that the Kaiser's mind goes through in adjusting himself to his social environment. The knowing and feeling and willing that we do in the social process differ in their content, not in their method, from our mental actions when stimulated solely by things. Accordingly, it is a mistake to base social psychology upon a supposed antithesis between the forms of mental process con- cerned in social and non-social actions. Psychical reactions incident to the social process are radically the same reactions that occur in the purely individual process, so far as the latter THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 635 ever occurs. Permutation of the prime factors of mental action occurs, both in the individual and in association of indi- viduals, through the conflict or conjunction of valuations and of purposes. The social process is a co-operative formation of judgments of value, and a continuous reckoning between persons whose purposes, because of similar or dissimilar judg- ments of value, more or less conflict. The questions of social psychology begin therefore with the phenomena of actual judgments. What judgments about their situation are passed by the persons in a given association; i, e., what are the standards of value that are held? How does it come about that such judgments exist? What alternative or modifying judgments are represented in the association? What do the actions of the members of the association show about these judgments, both as causes and effects? What conditions, either physical or psychical, are tending to confirm or to weaken these judgments? Why do some of the members of the association entertain exceptional judgments of value? What are the comparative effects of the similar and the dis- similar standards held by different members of the associa- tion? How, and to what extent, are the standards of value prevalent in this association affected by the standards of other associations ? In one respect Tarde has performed an invaluable work. He has shown, more clearly than anyone else, that the social process assimilates enormous quantities of valuations passed by predecessors, and acted upon as fixed conclusions and pre- scriptions while experience sufficient to warrant other con- clusions is being gathered. The name which he has given to this universal fact — "imitation" — is an impertinence, so far as" it purports to be a psychological explanation. The real explanation must be found in the laws of human judgment with reference to relations, not in a prevalence of some single mental process. The beginnings of this real explanation have hardly been made. We are fairly stating the problems, and it is to be expected that the immediate future will show more 636 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY progress toward solutions than has been made in the whole previous history of the social sciences. We have given so much time to Tarde, not because he is destined to hold the permanent place in sociological theory which premature admiration has assigned, but because his most original hypothesis is a first-rate case of a type of inter- pretation to be shunned, and because it may be used as a foil to set off the principle which we have to suggest as a base-line in social interpretation. The mistake of Tarde in locating the essential social fac- tor in a single form of mental action, instead of in some total assertion of personality, is sufficiently conspicuous to serve as a perpetual injunction upon similar ventures. There is no visible sanction for the hope that a clue to the social process will ever be found in a simple mental reaction. Doubtless both things and persons sometimes stimulate consciousness so imperfectly that no complete mental action follows, but the experience of men in society is not bounded by occurrences of that abortive type. Men do not, as a rule, tread the stage of life in a dream. If they are not socially con- scious, they are at least self-conscious. They act for reasons, although not necessarily for good reasons, socially consid- ered, nor with far-reaching vision of the scope of the reasons. In contrast with Tarde's hypothesis, and with the whole genus of single-reaction explanations of which it is a type, we urge that the characteristic factor in the psychological element of the social process, as distinguished from the bio- logical element, is selection of ends. Every effort to locate the distinctively social factor in a state or motion of conscious- ness less complex and complete than acts of combined atten- tion, valuation, and choice, foolishly tempts fate. Sentient action is action directed toward ends. Explana- tion of the social process in terms of stimulus alone, or of reflex action alone, or of subjective change alone, without ref- erence to purpose and volition in view of a purpose, is irre- sponsible speculation. The observable actions of men are THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 637 exhibits of their choices, and circumstantial evidence of the purposes behind the choices. The metaphysical question, Why do men posit purposes ? is beyond the scope both of soci- ology and of psychology. Without attempting to go behind the apparent purposes which observed men cherish, a division of labor between sociology and psychology may succeed in assigning sufficient reasons for choices related to those pur- poses. At all events, this is the interpretation of the social process toward which positive analysis presses. Our knowl- edge converges in the direction of the questions: What pur- poses are in the minds of the persons concerned? and, What is the meaning of the choices they make zvith reference to those purposes? The social process is not an automatic response to stimu- lus. It is a perpetual adjustment of persons to each other incidental to their choices of means to promote their individual purposes. Since we cannot answer the question. Why do persons have purposes at all? our limit in explaining the social process is generalization of regularities in the phe- nomena of human choice. When we talk of social psy- chology, then, we do not refer to supposed facts of mind, the elements of which escape the ken of psychology proper. We refer to observed uniformities of objective choices in typical concrete situations. In other words, the only conceivable function for social psychology, in distitiction from psychology proper, is calctdus of variations of ultimate purposes, and of specific choices, in the actual conditions of human life. The problem of social psychology is to generalise the situations in which choices have to be made, and to generalise the cor- responding choices. That is, after human experience is formu- lated in terms of structure, and of function, and of process, we have only formulations of effects. The causes of these effects, so far as we can trace them, are the volitions that register the resultant of purpose and feeling and choice. The restatement of the social process in terms of purpose and choice is social psychology. ^^ "Cf. chap. 14. 638 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY A passage occurs in Professor Miinsterberg's latest book which seems to imply precisely the view that we are try- ing to express. It is an account of a talk with a man not named, but apparently the speaker was John Fiske. We quote : I remember still every word of a fine talk which he and I had last June on a beautiful summer evening at the seashore. He had just been reading much of Buckle and Spencer and Comte and of the more modern positivists and sociologists. He had needed the material for an address he wanted to deliver on the task of the historian, and he came to me to talk it all over. Oh, he felt so wearied, he said, as if he had walked through a desert into which the flourishing landscape of history had been transformed. No doubt, he exclaimed, we can treat the whole world's history, and the struggles of the nations, and the development of individual great men, as if it were all nothing but a big causal mechanism, wherein everything is understoood when it is explained, and wherein the natural factors of race-disposition and climate, of market and food, determine fate. Of course, for certain purposes we must do so, and must demand of dry, stubborn laws that they express the richness of five thousand years of history. Then it is necessity which turns the crank of the historical machine to produce ever new repetitions. But all this is after all merely natural science; the spark of history is quenched. To the eye of history man is not a thing which is moved, but a creator in freedom, and the whole world's history is a story of mutual will- influences. If I study history, I am doing it to understand what the will- demands of living men mean. I stand before an endless manifoldness of political and legal and social and intellectual will-demands from the people with whom I come in contact. Each one compels acknowledgment, each one demands agreement or disagreement, obedience or combat; and my whole historical life is just the chain of my attitudes toward those will- demands. I have to respect the laws of my country, the political existence of other nations, the customs and convictions of my time ; I have to choose between political parties and scientific theories and aesthetic schools and religious denominations ; I have to sympathize with reforms and to fight crimes. And yet those individuals who represent the claims of the country, or the rights of other people, or the theories of the schools, have not invented the demands with which they approach one. Each one of their demands refers again to the demands of their predecessors and their ancestors. The whole historic configuration of our politics and law and science and art and religion is thus a system of will-demands which asks for our free decision, but which in itself points backward at every point to THE ELEMENTS OF SOCIAL CAUSATION 639 other subjecis of will, and these others again refer to others. This whole mighty system of will-reference is what we call human history. Thus we talked it over for hours, and it was a delight to listen to his enthusiasm for the thoughts of such men as Carlyle and Emerson, and above all of the great Fichte, as he contrasted it with the positivistic super- ficiality which he had found in the sociological books. I remember how he, late that night, left my piazza with the laughing words : " Believe me, from the pair in Paradise of old to the eighty millions in our new Paradise, the world's history means the will-connections of free personalities." " We do not by any means admit that the interpretation of recent sociology, imphed in the depreciating epithets in the passage, is just. On the whole, the sociologists have done their part to show that the most significant factors of life are the work of mind, not the grinding of machinery. At the same time, we must protest against the tendency to accept interpretations in terms of mental action which is merely a process analogous with a mechanical process. The real explanation must be found in the spiritual initiative which is superior to mechanical causation. " The Eternal Life, p. 30. CHAPTER XL THE INITIAL PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY' On the basis of the propositions in chap. 39, we proceed to point out that the task of scholars zvho undertake to explain the social process as a system of psychical causes and effects is to restate the social process as an evolving hierarchy of purposes. Assuming a fairly complete descriptive analysis of the social process, along the lines drawn in Parts IV and V, prog- ress toward causal interpretation of the same phenomena must depend on success in making out the purposes entertained by the individuals at each stage of the process. The task of explanation in this sense may be likened to that of an expert in general physics, set down in the town of Essen with the problem of accounting for the evolution of the Krupp plant as an organization of mechanical forces. Why physical agents, whose universal properties physics explains, should have become correlated as they appear in the Krupp establishment, is a question that physics alone cannot solve. Physics can speak merely of the phenomena that are fundamental to one prime factor in the operation. The ques- tion of the purposes in the minds of the men who made the plant goes back to the causes which, for our present use, must be regarded as ultimate. The whole explanation turns then upon ability to understand the scale of specific desires in the minds of the different persons who contribute to the result. From the setting up of the first forge in Essen, to the turn- ing out of the last propeller shaft or monster gun, the psychic element of the explanation must begin with the reactions, in the form of purpose, which occurred in the minds of indi- * Cf. Ellwood, " Prolegomena to Social Psychology," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. IV, pp. 656, 807 ; Vol. V, pp. 98-220. 640 THE INITIAL PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 641 viduals, in view of the relation between conditions and desires in the experience of the individuals from situation to situation. We have no present concern with the question : Why are valuations followed by volitions in the general direction of the valuations? This is a sub-sociological problem which we need not undertake. We begin with the fact of valuations, and the certainty that choices of some degree of energy cor- respond to them. Serious interpretation of any social occur- rence, or of a great combination of social occurrences, must therefore consist primarily of formulation of the individual purposes, or of the socialized concert of purposes, of which the occurrences are the expression. For instance, to explain why members of the French Chamber of Deputies fight alleged duels, and members of the American House of Representatives do not, we must go back at last to a comparison of those things which the two types of men hold to be worth doing, and of the means which they respectively believe to be adequate to accomplish those things. To explain why Americans will the separation of Church and State, while Englishmen will the persistence of the Establish- ment, we have the problem of making out two complex sys- tems of valuations, one of which requires a voluntary system, and the other a governmental system of means for attaining its end. The two widely different orders of illustration just used are indexes of the universal problem of social explanation. Whether we are seeking the reason for a custom in a savage tribe, for an institution in Greece or Rome, for one of the great historic revolutions, or for the conflict of interests in a modern State, in so far as we assume that a sentient factor was involved at all, our primary task is to make out how the persons concerned represented their situation to themselves, what purposes they formed with respect to their situation, and what means seemed to them available for accomplishing their purposes. It is true that every writer of history, from Herodotus 642 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY down, has in a way acted upon this assumption. Everybody who tries to explain human actions tries to account for the actions by motives. At the same time, it is true that, until a quarter-century ago, the idea of stating problems of regu- larity in the operation of motives in form for inductive inves- tigation is not known to have presented itself distinctly to anybody's mind. We have therefore as yet no accepted gen- eralizations of the operations of motives in concrete situations. It would be presumptuous to claim that we shall ever have such generalizations, supported by a sufficient induction to make them convincing. A respectable number of men, however, who have earned the right to an opinion by diligent study of the social process, think it is not Quixotic to believe that important generalizations in this field may gradually be reached; i. e., that, by following valid methods of research, we may advance from everyday knowledge of human nature to theorems of regularities in human choice which will be approximately exact, and will cover large areas of social action.^ When ive attempt to explain the social process — i. e., to go back one step beyond the statement of human experience in terms of process, to restatement of it in terms of purpose — our problem is, in a word, to generalize the purpose-reactions that occur in typical situations. The most general classifica- tion of cases is into two groups; i. e., first, cases in which mass-valuations are adopted by the individual ; second, cases ' Professor Durkheim's studies of suicide may be noted as strictly legiti- mate projects of research in this direction. The method which he illustrates may well be set down as calculated to yield important material for social psychology. The same may be said of Professor Giddings' attempts to make out marks of social classes {Inductive Sociology, Part IV, chap. 3), As this classification stands, it looks entirely static. The classification would not have been made, however, without some calculation of dynamic factors, and th« more it is analyzed, the more certainly will it pass into measurement of the functional action of purposes. Eijually important in application to another kind of material are the studies of the savage mind, primarily from the stand- point of occupation, by Professors Dewey and Thomas. J THE INITIAL PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 643 in which iudividual valuations are communicated to the mass.^ We have accordingly the main questions : Through what appeal to interest does a group-purpose come to be adopted as an individual purpose? and, Through what appeal to interest does an individual purpose come to be adopted as a group- purpose ? '* As we have intimated above, the task of working out a psychological restatement of the social process inductively calls for isolation of actual cases of individual modification by the group, and of group-modification by the individual. If generalization of what actually takes place in such cases proves to be possible, it will give to the phrase " social psychology " a real content. Professor Giddings has published a series of brilliant gen- eralizations in social psychology.^ Whether they are valid or not, they do not purport to be formulas in terms of purpose, which we assert to be necessary to satisfy the demand for psychological explanation. They are formulas of sequences to be explained. That is, they are all expressions of social regularities about which our present aim is to know, not what occurs — this is stated in the formulas — but why it occurs, in terms of the purposes that account for regularities. Our comment does not challenge the value in principle of the gen- eralizations cited. We simply urge that, supposing they stand, and many more are added to them, they after all merely pre- sent the problem of interpretation; they contain nothing that expressly alleges an explanation, although several of them ' Cf. Kistiakowski, Gesellschaft und Einselwesen, pp. 144 f. * Professor Ross's Social Control is a first-rate contribution to analysis of the former situation. Each of the forms of social control which he discusses presents its own type of problems in social psychology. In the American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XI, p. 49, Professor Ellwood deals with a typical problem of this order, under the title " A Psychological Theory of Revolutions." The most ambitious attempt at psychological interpretation of actual modifi- cations of institutions is Tarde's Les transformations du pouvoir, ^Elements of Sociology, pp. 128, 137, 139, 140, 154, 168, 171, 192, 215, 219, 221, 230, 352. 644 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY suggest a thesis that might be proposed in terms of purpose by way of interpretation.^ Not to go so far afield as GaHleo's swinging lamp, or Newton's apple, or Franklin's kite, or Stephenson's tea-kettle, the analogy of most of the productive work in the exact sciences should warn us that progress in social psychology is likely to appear after we are humble enough to learn from the trivial and the commonplace. The clue to the whole range of psychological interpretation may be found, for instance, in such a homely occurrence as the change of a country boy into a city man, or of an Oxford master of arts into an Arizona cowboy. Through what succession of situations, and what variation of choices in view of the situations, did the one type merge into the other? So of a preacher becoming a gambler, and vice versa; a college professor ending as a farmer; a lawyer graduating into the practice of medicine; a capitalist turning into a socialist, and vice versa. In each case successive alternatives presented themselves for choice. What is the formula of the choices which each individual made, and toward what more general formula of the relation of situation to choice do these cases point? We may illustrate the other class of cases in equally com- monplace instances. Through what combinations of appeals to interest does a free-rum town or state adopt high license or prohibition, or vice versa? How, in terms of converging choices, does it come to pass that a teamsters' union assimi- lates some thousands of isolated drivers? How does a town decide to admit or exclude Sunday theaters or baseball games? How does a town resolve upon definite change of group-action with reference to sanitary, or artistic, or educa- tional, or economic, or political improvement? Toward what formulas of relations between the different objective and sub- jective factors involved in the consensus of many individuals do such cases point? It would be worse than useless to claim that precise answers to such questions are in sight. Social • E. g., pp. i68, 215, 219, 221, 352. THE INITIAL PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 645 psychology is at present a desideratum rather than a reahty. It is by no means certain that it can ever be more than a formal expression of relations between individual and social ends, on the one hand, and choices, on the other. Possibly the relations can never be reduced to formulas of approximate regularity, or to theorems that will be of value in judging probabilities of conduct, or lines of least resistance in applying social forces. On the other hand, it would be a confession of unfaith in the universality of cause and effect in the world, if we doubted that every human choice has an explanation, as an effort to adapt means to ends. It does not seem altogether chimerical to hope that regularities in human choice may, in time, be sufficiently made out to constitute approximate explanations and predictions of considerable fractions of social action. Meanwhile, it would tend to clear needless obstacles from the path of this progress, if common consent could be gained to co-operate, so far as feasible, in dispelling the mistiness that surrounds the phrase " social psychology." Sociologists and psychologists have thus far failed to reach the sort of understanding about border problems, and division of labor, which would best economize the work of both. As in every such case, approximate statements of marginal problems between psychology and sociology have been made, and ambitious explanations have been offered, by thinkers who may not have had the confidence of trained investigators in either field. The situation might be described by the unconvinced as an attempt to make something out of nothing. On the one hand is unauthorized sociology; on the other hand, amateur psychology. The fusion of the two is sup- posed to deserve scientific recognition as the superior of both. The situation is hardly improved in the cases in which scholars competent on one or the other side of the line have seemed to attempt to stretch their credit so as to cover claims beyond their proper competence. While the psychologists have rightly enough declined to respect apparent attempts to 646 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY make sociological evidence answer psychological questions, and while the sociologists have been right in saying that there is a whole range of psychical relations in the social process which the psychologists do not seem to have discovered, co-operation between psychologists and sociologists in work- ing this border territory has been postponed. The ambiguity of the phrase "social psychology" has doubtless had something to do with this arrest of develop- ment. On the one hand, it has been suspected of standing for a misdirected ambition to create a quasi-psychological some- thing to occupy a place which psychology alone could fill. On the other hand, it has beguiled some men into contentment with mere description, in terms of mental processes, while the phenomena described threw no new light upon psychological analysis of the processes, nor, on the other hand, did the processes referred to do much toward explaining the phe- nomena. A mere name may easily be rated either above or below its actual significance. Use or disuse of a phrase does not solve a scientific problem. If, however, a phrase in any way embarrasses formulation of problems, or employment of the most appropriate methods for approaching solutions, the phrase cannot be too soon dropped from use. If this proves to be the case with the phrase '* social psy- chology," there is no sufficient reason for insisting upon retaining it. The main thing is the progress of knowledge, not the vindication of a label. If it would in any way pro- mote positive investigation of social cause and effect to aban- don the term " social psychology," there should be no hesita- tion between the substance and the shadow. Suppose we should go back to Lester F. Ward's phrase, and, without attempting to delimit and name a science before it exists, should say that, when we undertake explanation of the social process, we encounter the task of making out " the psychic factors " in the process. This statement of the situa- tion involves no prejudgment of the method or of the division I THE INITIAL PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 647 of labor that will be involved in solving the problems pre- sented. Phenomena of the transmission and transformation of psychic force are to be observed throughout the social process. Work for both psychologist and sociologist is evi- dently ahead, and the technical problems encountered in the task, not squatter sovereignty over the territory in which the tasks are found, will at last determine the actual division of labor in reaching explanations. In either type of social reaction referred to above/ two distinct factors are present. When, for instance. Count Tolstoi exchanges his career of an aristocratic soldier for that of a democratic doctrinaire, or when the American people turn from isolation to expansion, the occasion is a social situa- tion confronting one mind or many minds; and choices are made by the one mind or the many minds with reference to the situation. It is perfectly clear that these two elements in the phenomena are not of co-ordinate interest to psycholo- gist and sociologist. Social situations as such do not interest the psychologist; and the mental series, as such, between the image of reality which the mind forms, and the choice or volition which presently follows, does not interest the sociolo- gist. But everybody, irrespective of label, has at least a latent interest in knowing, if possible, why a particular choice, either of one person or of many persons, occurs in view of a par- ticular situation. How much of the explanation will ulti- mately be found on the side of the external situation, and how much on the side of the subjective reaction, nobody can fore- tell. What ratio of contribution to the explanation will be made respectively by psychologist and sociologist, it would be impertinent to guess. At all events, is should be perfectly plain that the present frontier of sociological inquiry reaches this problem: What are the laivs of cause and effect betzvecn social situations and the minds that encounter the situations? The sociologist takes it for granted that consciousness of an interest, of any sort, is presently followed by a choice that ' Pp. 642, 643. 64^ GENERAL SOCIOLOGY has reference to that interest. He does not concern himself with the process of transmutation in consciousness from the perceptive to the volitional attitude. He does not care, pro- fessionally, whether the consciousness series is one and the same or widely different in the cases of a burned child dread- ing the fire, and of an oppressed nation uniting- for revolution. He starts rather with the assumption that perception of con- ditions is always followed by choices of some sort; and his interest is in discovering what variations in social situations have to do with human choices. The sociological interest at this point, then, is in the con- tent rather than the subjective process of choice. The ques- tion why there is any choice at all in view of a social situation would lead far beyond sociological competence. Since men do choose and will, however, the sociologist confronts the task of generalizing social situations in such a way that observed phenomena of choice may be expressed in terms of the human interests in reaction with the situations. Thus the question which the sociologist raises is, on the one hand, strictly sociological ; on the other hand, it involves the teleology of the actors in social situations, and this is really the undivided middle ground which might or might not with advantage be turned over to a sub-science not yet proposed; while at the other end the problem necessarily becomes at last purely psychological, when it calls for com- parison of reactions in different persons under similar con- ditions. Causal explanation of the social process, as far back as the sociologist tries to carry it, would consist of supplying concrete values for the symbolic terms in a projjosition of this form : The effective interests (purposes) of the actors being such and such, and the situation, as they viewed it, l)eing so and so. their action was this and that, because, in their belief, it would tend to modify the situation thus and thus. We might avoid some of the vagueness for which the phrase "social psychology" has been in part responsible, if we could be content to formulate our problems of causal explana- THE INITIAL PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 649 tion in accordance with this schematic proposition, and let questions of scientific privilege take care of themselves. At all events, the appropriate order of procedure, from the socio- logical point of approach, is analysis of social situations, in connection with analysis of purposes of the persons involved in the situations, to the end of arriving at generalizations of regularities and uniformities of sequence between types of social situations and types of human volitions. PART VIII THE SOCIAL PROCESS CONSIDERED AS A SYSTEM OF ETHICAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER XLI CURRENT CONFUSION OF MORAL STANDARDS Modern men are puzzled and perplexed and baffled by the incidents of their own activities. Political and industrial facts are the best illustrations, but in using them we must insist that they are illustrative merely. They are not the whole or the most of life. The production of wealth in prodigious quanti- ties, the machine-like integration of the industries, the syndi- cated control of capital and the syndicated organization of labor, the conjunction of interests in production and the col- lision of interests in distribution, the widening chasm between luxury and poverty, the security of the economically strong and the insecurity of the economically weak, the domination of politics by pecuniary interests, the growth of capitalistic world-politics, the absence of commanding moral authority, the well-nigh universal instinct that there is something wrong in our social machinery and that society is gravitating toward a crisis, the thousand and one demands for reform, the futility or fractionality of most ameliorative programs — all these are making men wonder how long we can go on in a fashion that no one quite understands and that everyone feels at liberty to condemn. We live in the most self-conscious period "of the world's history. At the same time, the people who think about society were never more widely at variance. "What is your life?" is the old question which every item of social activity throws back upon us with an insistence that grows more irritating at every iteration. Never has there been so much use for a key to the cipher that the incidents of human life compose. If sociology ever succeeds in establishing itself as the peer of traditional departments of knowledge, it will be through success in reading the larger meanings of life. There are few 6S3 654 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY fractions of life to which some science is not already dedi- cated. The knowledge which these sciences gain may so oppress us with detail that life as a whole may seem more inex- plicable with each discovery. Are we destined to know so many things that deep insight and wide outlook will be impos- sible? The sociologists believe that a positive philosophy of society may be built up which will indicate the value of each detail of life. The laws of social growth, the meaning of social events, the direction of social tendencies, the relative worth of various social activities, the technique of social adjustments, the sources of social impulse, the direction of rational social effort, are assumed to be within the realm of the knowable. They are to be discovered in past and present human experience. They will be made out, in part, by fur- ther elaboration of the same material upon which more special social sciences labor. The knowledge of which the sociologists have discovered the lack will not be a mechanical assembling of parts produced by other divisions of labor. It will be a generalization and organization of insight into detail, in which at last the details will get a credible meaning as parts of a whole, and in which the whole will not be an abstraction, but a correlation of all the parts. As we observed in chap. 3, the impulse of sociology has come chiefly from instinct or perception of this demand. The sociologists believe that the most worthy work of men is effort to improve human conditions. They believe that an adequate theory of life is needed in order that endeavors for improve- ment may be intelligent. They consecrate themselves to the work of constructing a general science of society, not from desire to shirk concrete social problems, but from conviction that they will contribute most to the solution of practical problems in the end if they hold these concrete interests as completely as possible in suspense, and work as long as neces- sary upon general theory without regard to its immediate use. Like all work which is scientific in this sense, good work in sociology will seem to the multitude "a vain thing." It is CURRENT CONFUSION OF MORAL STANDARDS 655 useless to plead in its behalf to the general public, or even to a large fraction of the thinking public. Middlemen must work over sociology, as fast as it is developed, in order to devote it to practical things. Meanwhile, no apology is due for the sociologists' claim. It amounts to this : We need a genetic, static, and teleologic account of associated human life; a state- ment which will explain what it is, how it is, and why it is; a statement which can be relied upon as the basis of a philoso- phy of conduct. In order to derive such a statement, it will be necessary to complete a program of analyzing and synthe- sizing the social process in all its phases. This is the task which the sociologists have discovered, and their work is pri- marily to develop a method of performing the task.^ As we have said, the original impulse of modern sociology was intensely practical. Not how the world came to be what it is, but how to make it what it should be, was the problem that it confronted. In such men as Saint-Simon and Owen and the English mid-century idealists the impulse to change the world was more in evidence than the sense of duty to know the world. Presently reaction from sociological senti- mentalism diverted attention from present and future to the past. We have of late been concentrating our interest rather disproportionately upon social beginnings and the process of social development. We have thus become shamefaced about betraying interest in the forward look. The facts about social evolution are not worth investigating, however, except as guides to action. Comparatively little progress has been made as yet toward final formulation of social activities, but they have been prospected enough to warrant some of the sociolo- gists, at least, in returning to their first love. We have not established premises from which deductions of sociological precepts may be drawn directly. We have, nevertheless, found a perspective within which we may safely begin to rearrange our judgments of social values. * Yet I agree fully with Professor Henderson's estimate of the scientific rank of social technology, when correlated, as he indicates, with a compre- hensive sociology. Vide Monographs cited below, chap. 49. 656 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY The two most influential protests in the nineteenth cen- tury against the moral sterilities of metaphysical ethics and of orthodox economics were those of Mill and Spencer. They impeached all the traditional forms of absolute ethics, but they made a sorry mess of the attempt to furnish a substitute. Spencer's failure is the more notable, because, on the one hand, his ethical criteria "pleasure" and the "law of equal free- dom " prove to be merely two distinct modes of assorting judgments of ethical goods, and of stating the equities of dis- tributing these goods; not principles, and certainly not a sin- gle principle, for the discovery of the goods. On the other hand, Spencer's whole philosophy might have been summed up in a theorem which would have served as a clue, at any rate, to a constructive principle for positive ethics. At the close of his First Principles Spencer observes : " The utmost possi- bility for us is an interpretation of the process of things as it presents itself to our limited consciousness."^ We might say that the substance of Spencer's philosophy is contained in the formula : " The end and explanation of the world-process is the process itself." That is, the process must be its own interpreter. The whole of the process must be the reason for all of it that we can see, and all of it that we can see must serve as tentative explanation of each part of the process which confronts us with a problem. Instead of following this working clue to positive ethics, Spencer chased logical sunbeams. Our genetic and structural and functional sociology has gone far enough to put us on the positive scent again. We have not made out the mysteries of the social process very minutely, but we have become conscious that there is a process. We have made some approximate analysis of its content and of its method. We are able to form rather confident judg- ments for practical purposes about conduct within this process. The next step for our intelligence to take is recognition that these practical judgments of conduct within the actual life- ^ First Principles, sec. 194. * CURRENT CONFUSION OF MORAL STANDARDS 657 process are the raw material of the only ethics that promises to gain general assent. These judgments enlarged, criticised, and systematized are the best that we can know about what is worth doing. They are the real appraisals of conduct, which are the only credible indexes of the concrete content fit to fill the categories of formal ethics. Society is ethically bankrupt. We have some ethical assets, but they are a small percentage of our liabilities. Speaking generally, our ethical capital consists of a hetero- geneous collection of provincial moralities. They work together with that degree of success which we observe in the conduct of society. By means of them society keeps in motion, but in spite of enormous waste consumed upon the frictions which retard the motion. We have no universal ethical stand- ard to which one class may appeal against another class and get a verdict which the defeated litigant feels bound to accept. For instance, all of us have the concepts " right " and "wrong." The majority of us believe that, so far as it goes, and until society sees reasons for revising it, what the civil law demands is right and what it forbids is wrong. But a minority of us do not admit even that. We are thus divided at the outset into the class that rejects and the class that accepts the general obligations of the law. At one extreme of the former class is the species known as the law-breakers; yet even this left wing of the less social division of society has still its own ethics, its peculiar standards of right and wrong. It is right to conceal a fellow-criminal from the offi- cers of the law. It is wrong to "peach on one's pal." Within the law-abiding class there is a permanent world's exposition of clashing moral standards. They fall into mechanical adjust- ments with each other in obedience to social influences which we need not schedule, but constantly recurring conflicts of ethical standard display abundant evidence that assumption of a common criterion is unwarranted. We are not now referring to immorality itself, however defined, but to ethical confusion. Our thesis is that in cases of 658 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY moral conflict individuals of not very dissimilar types will be found to assume quite dissimilar principles for settlement of the conflict. If we pry into the ethical ideas behind our conduct, we find confusion, not only between different men, but the same man has one standard for his business, another for his politics, another for his amusements, another for his religion. The proposition is not that men are conscious and intentional hypocrites, but that if we should put Socratic questions to ourselves we should find that our purposes in life are not morally concentric, and that we are constantly refer- ring certain parts of our conduct to one kind of principle, and other parts of our conduct to principles which do not belong in the same system. We all know, for instance, that there is one code of pro- fessional ethics for the lawyer, another for the doctor, another for the editor, another for the employer, another for the employee, another for the teacher, and another for the minis- ter. These vocational codes do not necessarily stand upon different ethical planes, but they consist of judgments of dif- ferent orders of utility, and it is not at all certain that the persons who accept and apply one of these codes are able to reach corresponding judgments of utility in activities more remotely related to their peculiar vocations. All of us see certain bearings of action within our peculiar sphere, while we have comparatively little insight into the peculiar situation of the other spheres, or of the relativity of conduct in the dif- ferent spheres. We need not claim that the different provin- cial moralities are not reconcilable with each other. We simply cite the fact that in the minds of most of us they are not reconciled with each other. The doctor lives within the dic- tates of the medical code, the merchant of the commercial code, the preacher of the ministerial code, and so on. Each might be conspicuously helpless if obU^^^d to solve the moral prob- lems that occur in the spheres distant from his own. The preacher, for instance, often lays the flattering unction to his soul that when he puts his finger on what he thinks CURRENT CONFUSION OF MORAL STANDARDS 659 the sore spots of society, and prescribes treatment for their cure, the opj^osition which he provokes is caused by the prick- ings of guilty conscience. It is quite as Hkely to be the con- tempt of insulted intelligence. He does not understand the situation as it looks to the people most concerned, and his ignorance of the facts makes his judgment of relations worth- less. On the other hand, the minister who ventures into the field of commercial speculation is quite apt to exhibit phases of moral obtuseness which men of commercial training would denounce as beneath the standards of honesty which business requires. Men of one class take serious risks of arousing hostility to ethics in general when they attempt to carry the moral precepts proper to their own sphere over into the sphere of others. The reason is^ in brief, that each of us works under the code peculiar to his calling as a means to a certain end. For instance, the legal profession tends to confine its func- tion to " practice of law " in a strict sense, with slight atten- tion to reaction upon the law so as to affect it from the stand- point of society at large outside the profession. Few of us have so generalized our calling, or thought out the relation of its end to all the ends proper to all the members of society, that we can adapt the principles appropriate to the calling to the activities of people at other points in the social process. In other words, society is divided into more or less visible groups, each with a regulating tradition of its own. These codes together imply an endless variety of recognized or unrecognized ethical assumptions, between which there are countless degrees of non-correspondence, often reaching utter contradiction. Suppose, for example, w^e are in the midst of a labor con- flict. It is proposed to arbitrate the difficulty. Representa- tives of the conflicting parties meet. A looker-on, if he happen to be a philosopher, soon discovers that the issue cannot be decided upon ethical grounds, for the conflicting parties, and perhaps the arbitrating board, have each a different standard of ethics. The employers' ethics are founded upon concep- 66o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY tions of the rights of property. The employees' ethics take as their standard certain conceptions of the rights of labor. The arbitrators' ethics may vary from the lawyer's interpreta- tion of the civil code to the speculative philosopher's concep- tion of the ideal rights of the generic man. There is no com- mon ethical appeal. Neither litigants nor referees can con- vince the others that they must recognize a paramount stand- ard of right. The decision has to be reached either by resort to force or by a compromise of claims, each of which con- tinues to assert its full title in spite of the pressure of circum- stances. To be sure, our habits are molded by a complex social restraint which limits the scope of our moral choice, but when we encounter conflicting claims of right and wrong we find ourselves betraying belief in fundamental ethical postu- lates which we are unable to reconcile. Outside the beaten track of necessary conformity to social requirement, our ideas of right and wrong are variations of conceptions which we are powerless to harmonize. Some of us think that the last measure of right is what physical law permits ; some of us think it is what statute law permits ; some again think it is what divine law demands, and still others what individual preference suggests. More than this, there is infinite variety in the rendering which the believers in physi- cal law, statute law, divine law, and individual choice give to the standards they assume. To many people so-called ethical standards are only the private opinions of persons who take their own moral judgments seriously. To others there seem to be ethical standards with neither variableness nor shadow of turning. To still others ethical standards constitute a sliding scale toward which individuals have mysteriously adjustable relations. The absence of a central tribunal of moral judgment is the most radical fact in our present social situation. It will appear presently that this state of things reflects the fragmentary and incoherent sociolog\'' in our minds. That is, moral judgments are necessarily judgments as to CURRENT CONFUSION OF MORAL STANDARDS 66l the effects produced by actions operating as causes. In order to know how social actions operate as causes and produce effects, it is necessary to have description and explanation of the social process, and of the structures and functions involved ; for it is with reference to these that our moral judg- ments assume knowledge of cause and effect. We are guess- ing at the premises of our moral judgments unless we know how causes act in the situation in which they operate. Each conflicting idea of moral standards implies a philosophy of life more or less developed, a sociology more or less complete. There can be no agreement about these moral standards until there is agreement about the presupposed view of life that gives the morality its sanction. CHAPTER XLII THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY IN MORAL PROBLEMS Human life is a plexus of relationships which we may formulate technically as the interplay of psycho-physical mechanisms that are installed in the individuals. Those phases of human activity to which the concept " ethical " is applicable have to be analyzed at last in terms of this psycho- physical mechanism, and of the conditions in which it oper- ates. Indeed, for our purposes we may define psychology and sociology by the same formula, merely shifting the empha- sis to indicate the peculiar problem of each. Psychology is the science of the mechanism of the social process. Sociology is the science of the mechanism of the social process} Using the term "psychology" for both process and results of analyz- ing the social mechanism, we may claim to have learned to distinguish very sharply between that knowledge of sentient activity which traces the causal series from condition and stimulus to that discharge of motor energy which we call the act; and, on the other hand, that quite different order of knowledge which consists in the valuation of the act itself. Thus we may have the psychology of the taboo, of the suttee, of play, of war, of social distinctions, of institutional charity, of partisanship, of patriotism, of religion. Analysis of the activities so classified may be, and in proportion as it is per- fectly abstracted it is, as independent of ethical valuation of them as psychological and pathological examinations of the effects of a blow, a stab, or a gun-shot wound are of judg- ments about the morality of homicide. Sociology is concerned characteristically less with the mechanism of the process, and more with the process and the worth of the process. Science is sterile unless it contributes at last to knowledge of what is worth doing. Ethical science is fruitful in the exact degree ' yide p. 431. 662 THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY IN MORAL PROBLEMS (6z in which it promotes this knowledge. Sociology would have no sufficient reason for existence if it did not contribute at last to knowledge of what is worth doing. As it is hardly worth while to challenge the traditional concession of the whole field of conduct-valuation to ethics, we may frankly rank sociology as tributary to ethics. The ultimate value of sociology as pure science will be its use as an index and a test and a measure of what is worth doing. The general thesis of this part of the argument may be restated therefore in this way : Ethics must consist of empty forms until sociology can indicate the substance to which the forms apply. Every ethical judgment with an actual content has at least tacitly presupposed a sociology. Every individual or social estimate of good and bad, of right and wrong, cur- rent today assumes a sociology. No code of morals can be adopted in the future without implying a sociology as part of its premises. To those who are acquainted with both the history of ethics and the scope of sociology these propositions are almost self-evident. They may be left, therefore, at this point, without the support of argument or illustration. We return to them later for further elaboration. The details of human life cannot be divided up among sciences, as a hoard of coins might be distributed among inheritors. The problems which life presents call rather for intellectual effort in the course of which the different methods of procedure appropriate to different divisions of science are in turn undermost and uppermost and foremost. The ultimate problem on the side of pure science is : What is worth doing? The ultimate practical problem is : Hozv may the thing worth doing he done? The former is the most general form of the constructive problem of ethics ; the latter is the most general form of the technical problem of life. General sociology, as the science of moral content rather than of ethical forms, finds its strategic base midway between psychology, on the one hand, and social technology, on the other. Its first busi- ness is to make out the connections between the different 664 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY details of activity which make up the hfe-process as a whole, so that these connections will indicate a positive content for the ethical categories. More concretely expressed, the fruit- fulness of sociological procedure begins to be visible after we have observed the phenomena of the taboo, of the suttee, of play, of war, of social distinctions, of institutional charity, of partisanship, of patriotism, of religion, and of the countless other social relationships of which these may serve as samples. The problem of sociology properly begins after we have accounted for these phenomena, in terms of psycho-physical causation. It begins after we have taken account, it may be, of the judgments that the persons taking part in them enter- tained of the value of these activities. The sociological prob- lem is primarily to visualize all human activities in a per- spective corresponding with reality; it is, second, to discover whether there is any principle of correlation between these activities, by means of which it may be possible to decide, from the standpoint of humanity in general, that any selected act in the series, or any class of acts, was or was not worth doing; that is, in harmony or disharmony with the principle of correlation. The problem of sociology is, third, to gener- alize those means of valuing past conduct into means of deciding whether this or that in the present is worth doing; or, more specifically: What is the activity indicated by a social situation, both to the society itself and to the persons who compose the society? While the psychological problem, therefore, is the state- ment of the mechanism of conduct; and while the ethical problem is the classification of conduct in formal categories based upon some criterion of worth, in the act, or actor, or consequences of the action, or transcendental relationships of action; the sociological problem is objective analysis and reconstruction of human activities in their actual connections as mutually related facts, and discovery of the marks by which wc may assign each of these activities to its proper ethical category. Accordingly, disregarding traditional academic dis- THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY IN MORAL PROBLEMS 665 tinctions, we may say that the sociological problem is, first, the psychological problem as it is presented, not by the phe- nomena of the psycho-physical process in the individual, but as it is encountered in the process of the same mechanism when individuals are in contact with each other. The socio- logical problem is, second, the positive or concrete side of the ethical problem, namely, the determination of actual values as distinguished from the logic of the categories of valuation. Or, once more, the sociological problem is to express objec- tively situations between persons, and the interchange of influ- ence between person and person in the situations, and then to determine the positive or negative effects of those reactions upon some relationship of the situation taken as a norm. In this way we divide the sociological from the psychological problem, which is to express what occurs within the individuals as such, and from the ethical problem, which is to indicate the place of these activities abstractly considered in a system of logically related facts. CHAPTER XLIII THE LOGICAL FORM OF MORAL JUDGMENTS While we have in the last chapter partially stated the dis- tinctions to which our present title refers, a further delimita- tion remains. Two distinct problems seem everywhere hope- lessly entangled when people discuss moral theory. The first is: What process is involved in arriving at the judgments " good " and " bad " ? The second is : What is the final cri- terion of the validity of our judgments of "good" and "bad"? Whenever the former problem has forced itself to the front, what purported to be ethical theory has consisted largely of mental philosophy, or more recently of psychology. When the latter problem has claimed chief attention, the hypotheses proposed for solution of it ranged from ethical metaphysics to frank empirics. Properly considered, each of these two problems helps to solve the other, but, confused, each helps to make the solution of the other impossible. The question nearest to the actual conduct of life is: How may I know that a judgment of good or bad is worth following? It may turn out that this question cannot be answered until we have an answer to the previous question, how a judgment of good or bad is reached. None the less, the plain man, not a specialist in psychology, does not care how the judgment is reached psychologically, provided he is sure of the logical soundness of the judgment itself. Now psychology cannot of itself classify valuations as valid or invalid. By one and the same psychological process we arrive at contradictory judgments of value. The process by which one group of persons comes to regard polygamy as good is precisely the same psychologically as that by which another group pronounces it bad. We judge vivisection, vac- cination, faith-healing to be good or bad according to our 666 THE LOGICAL FORM OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 667 point of view, but the process by which we array ourselves in contradictory judgments is in each case psychologically one and the same. It does not follow that the analysis of the process has no value for ethics. It does follow that we must not permit ourselves to mistake the results of this psychologi- cal analysis for a solution of the ethical problem. It will assist us to make this distinction clear if we review somewhat in detail the process of reaching valuations of conduct. This is a necessary preliminary to further criticism of the criteria of conduct. As we observed above, there is utter confusion about the sociology of ethics. Nevertheless there is in one respect remarkable uniformity in the psychology of our moral judg- ments. This uniformity is not a matter of reason or of choice, but it is evident in connection with all choices, reasonable and unreasonable alike. However diverse the subject-matter of our judgments, we invariably pronounce anything good or right which is good for something, and other things bad or wrong which are not good for the same thing. In the spring of 1893 the weather in Chicago was unusually severe. The little people who were to represent Javanese civilization on the Midway arrived a month before the Fair was opened. They used to frequent the streets in the vicinity of Jackson Park, and the residents learned to pity the little people who came clothed in a way that was no protection against the fickle climate. Toward the end of August a clump of visitors were gathered around one of the huts in the Javanese village. One of them tried to draw the man of the establishment into conversation. He inquired : " How do you like Chicago ? " The little fellow thought a moment, then, summoning all the resources of his vocabulary, together with more expressive pantomime, replied: "Chicago warm, good! Chicago cold, no good ! " There was the rudimentary moral judgment. This man's personal comfort being the standard, things are good and bad according to their physical reaction on himself. Psychologically this is the whole of every determination of right and wrong, good and bad. 668 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY In other words, we cannot pronounce an estimate of value without implicitly setting up a conception of some desirable end. We then say the things are good that make for this end. To Czolgosz anarchy is an end to be desired. The murder of the President seems to his deluded mind likely to promote anarchy. Because it is supposed to be the means to an end assumed to be good, the assassination of the President is good also. Or again, a generation ago millions of men north and south believed that a certain constitutional order was good. The men of the South believed in state sovereignty. The men of the North believed in a federal union paramount to the states. Each section held its conception of government so dear that, to realize it, the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives was deemed good. The logic is quite different, but the psychology of the three cases is fundamentally one and the same. Each held in view an end assumed to be desirable. Each found a means believed to be tributary to that end. Each rendered the same form of judgment, namely : This means, being tributary to that end, is good. What is true of these instances illustrates what is universally true about moral judgments. They are invariably appraisals of things as good or bad because they are believed to make, or not to make, for things supposed to be good. Of course, we do not often go through the conscious process of carrying out these steps, when we say, for instance, a blanket, a drink of water, a football victory, or an inter- national treaty is good. If, however, we analyze the process that clown and sage alike perform, it involves these psycho- logical factors. It is a gauging of the value of things in ques- tion by their relation to other things whose value is not in question. If it were permissible to use an old term in a new sense, we might give to a familiar word a content more in accordance with its etymological implications l)y saying that all ethical judgments are iitilitarian in form ; that is, they are judgments of uses. To avoid misconception, we may say that all moral judgments are telic in form; that is, they are esti- THE LOGICAL FORM OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 669 mates of the relations of actions to ends. The last recourse in practice, for testing the finality of moral judgments, has to be an appeal to the relative value of the ends which in turn are held to sanction or condemn conduct. This is not utili- tarianism in the historic sense. It is the larger generalization toward which utilitarianism was a contribution.^ In other words, all particular moral judgments are implied estimates of the usefulness of the actions concerned with reference to ends contemplated as desirable. This is a psychological fact which is not affected by any theory that we may hold about the ultimate sanction of moral distinctions. As already hinted, the common fault of traditional ethics of every school has been illusion about the standard actually employed. The systems which are in form most absolute prove upon inspection to be in application alike relative. The fallacy of every scheme of categorical ethics is that, in dia- lectic form^ a fixed criterion is adopted. It seems to be an invariable standard by which details of conduct may be meas- ured. Practically, the criterion when in use is a variable. It is made up of quantities or qualities derived from the things to be measured. Thus the actual standard is not absolute, but relative after all.^ For example, if the "will of God" be taken as the absolute standard of conduct, each judgment about a specific act will be referred to some assumed expres- sion of the will of God. Accordingly, we have in practice, instead of an invariable norm of conduct corresponding to the alleged norm, the divine will, innumerable accommodations or versions of the norm. Thus the divine will according to Moses, the divine will according to Mahomet, the divine will according to Paul, the divine will according to Rome, or Constantinople, or Geneva, or Westminster, or Massachusetts Bay. Again, if our philosophy posits "well-being" as the * For the reason here hinted at, we have proposed the term telicism as a title for the ethical system which sociology tends to derive. See p. 684, below. " Our dissent from Spencer's ethical philosophy as a whole does not obscure the fact that he has conclusively shown the above to be true, especially in chap. 15 of The Data of Ethics. 670 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY criterion of conduct, we no sooner attempt to apply the cri- terion than we accept some particular phase or features of human condition as the concrete equivalent of our formal abso- lute; thus, as before, employing after all an accommodating relative standard instead of an inflexible absolute standard. This fault has not been confined to speculative schools of ethics, Positivists, like Herbert Spencer, have not only com- mitted the traditional fault, but their lapse has been the more notable because they have so distinctly defined the fault. They have first denounced absolute standards of conduct. They have then proposed a " rational " positive test. But presently, just like men of other schools, they have made this test an absolute criterion of conduct, and then in practice they have applied the criterion by shifting adjustments to concrete con- ditions.^ We must borrow further psychological commonplaces in order to establish a point of departure for our sociological argument. A. The judgment of good and had is involuntary. The standard of good and had is derived. This is the extent of the basis in fact for the intuitional philosophy. The act of judging a thing or an act good or bad is beyond our control. So far as we know, the genus homo sapiens has always performed this process spontaneously, if the necessary stimuli were present. Neither the process of judging nor the result of the judgment is directly dependent upon the will. In this sense only is moral judgment " intui- tive." On the other hand, the standard with which the thing or act pronounced good or bad is implicitly compared, in order to perform the judgment, is the product of experience. Jonathan Edwards taught a most terrific doctrine of good and evil. His formal morality was many degrees severer than that of most men in the line of intellectual succession from him today. Yet his working standard permitted him to conduct himself ' Thus " pleasure " throughout Spencer's Principles of Ethics. THE LOGICAL FORM OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 671 with reference to intoxicating liquors in a way which the work- ing standards of his successors today forbid. The Continental Congress of the American Colonies voted to raise money for defraying the expenses of the war with Great Britain by a lottery. A century later the Congress of the United States pronounces lotteries immoral, and applies the machinery of government to their suppression. The judgment of good and bad is probably no more immediate and no more inexorable in the later than in the earlier cases. The standard in accord- ance with which the later judgment is passed is the resultant of general moral ideas varied by experiences which have inter- vened between the earlier and the later dates. The sense of obligation which accompanies acts of moral valuation, and which we perhaps think of as the distinctive or characteristic contribution of conscience to moral processes, may or may not have been aboriginal. Whether the feeling of obligation is intuitive or derived is one question. Whether its psychological basis is different from that of an economic judgment of good and bad, for example, in connection with which no such feeling arises, is quite another question. The former of these problems does not enter into our present dis- cussion. It is enough for the purposes of this argument to distinguish the three facts : Hrst, each person has a more or less vague standard of what is on the whole to be desired or deplored; second, classification of objects or acts as good or bad according as they are desirable or deplorable occurs spon- taneously zvhenever particulars become objects of attention; third, the standard of the desirable or deplorable, that is, of the good or the bad, varies zvith race, historical epoch, and- individual conditions. B. The highest thinkable good is a variable condition. This proposition is not a repetition of the third clause in the last formula. It does not mean simply " subjective con- ceptions of the highest good vary." It means that, if we represent to ourselves any good whatever as a complete and closed finality, we do so by suspending the thought-process.. 672 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Every good that we can think is a relation of sentient persons in adjustment with situations. The conception of terminated activity may conceivably be inviting to some intelligences beyond our knowledge, but it is repugnant to us. Continued activity involves continuance of adaptation. Our conception of good may advance to specifications of condition to which we can add no concrete particulars; but, with our utmost thought of ourselves, we conceive of ourselves as conscious, as active, as having feelings, as reacting upon our conditions, as thereby changing the conditions, and consequently as requiring new adjustments to the altered conditions. In other words, our definitions of good may not go beyond the statical form, but the implications of all our conceptions of good are virtually dynamic."* Suppose we analyze the situation in which a thing once pronounced good has its place; suppose we reach the con- clusion that the thing no longer procures the adjustment which the needs of the situation require; our judgment of the good- ness of that thing is immediately suspended. We do not at once reverse the judgment in terms, because, as we are point- ing out, our standards of judgment are less automatic than the act of judgment. Our feelings reverse the judgment of good, but our intelligence may not reaffirm the verdict of the feel- ings. Under other circumstances the judgment may lead in revolt, while the feelings remain constant to the traditional standard. In either case, however, we have virtually aban- doned our former valuation, so soon as conflict appears between the detail in question and the conditions of the situa- tion. The good is at last the good of adjustment. It is the good of activity which can take its place with the other activi- ties that together constitute the situation upon which moral value depends. That is, as life is process, the good for the individual is motion in conformity with the stage of the process in which he belongs. As we shall argue presently, the * The history of the ideas " nirvana " and " heaven " at first sight contra- dicts, but actually confirms, these propositions. THE LOGICAL FORM OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 673 good for society in any stage is the good fit to assure advance toward the next stage. C. The only intelligible measure of good is human con- dition. That is always held by men to be good for men which promises to procure the most desirable results for men. It is unnecessary to show in detail that the content of this unit of measure is indefinitely variable. All that is necessary for our present argument is to recur to this fact, that the standard of valuation which we are psychologically compelled to employ is one in which the objects judged are related to the conditions of the persons judging. They can have no meaning for us unless they present some aspect to us which evokes favorable or unfavorable feeling. It may be sense of physical desire or dislike, or the loftiest moral approbation; but it is always a verdict based upon some grounds upon which human feelings can find footing. D. The existing body of perceptions about human facts and possibilities must fix the limits of our working judgments of the highest good. If men agree with Schopenhauer that existence is an evil, they will tend to agree with him that diminution of evil will be achieved only when the death-rate permanently exceeds the birth-rate. If men agree that maxi- mum productivity of material goods is the final criterion of civilization, they will accordingly incline to rate mind, con- science, aesthetic sensibility, family, school, Church, State, solely as related to economic ends ; and they will obstruct any consideration of material products as means to intellectual, social, aesthetic, and moral ends. Present conceptions of the rational aims of life, and of the adaptability of possible means to attainable ends, must necessarily constitute the w'orking standard of individual and social good. Accordingly, we must learn the virtue which is in the psychological necessity of employing relative standards of ethical value. We must learn to determine that relative standard which involves the nearest approach to absoluteness which our intelligence can achieve. CHAPTER XLIV THE RELATION OF THE PROCESS-CONCEPTION OF LIFE TO MORAL JUDGMENTS The whole argument converges at this point upon two propositions : 1. Every ethical system with a concrete content virtuully presupposes a sociology. 2. There can he no generally recognised ethical standards until there is a generally accepted sociology. We have seen that the mind refuses to stop with knowl- edge of what is. There is constant valuation of what is. The inevitable corollary of the valuation is further judgment of what may be or ought to be. As each judgment of this sort implies a sociology after its kind, so each sociology involves a methodology of ethical valuation. We have now to point out the form in which a sociology developed from the process- conception of life must distinguish between the good and the bad, the right and the wrong. Whether we are aware of it or not, whether we approve of it or not, the human race is visibly gravitating toward appli- cation of the criterion which the process-conception of life indicates. That which positive sociology arrives at as the result of analysis at the same time comes progressively to be the unconscious assumption of everyday men. Though the process-conception be pronounced a snare, and the tendency of popular judgment a delusion, both are realities, and they must have their reckoning. It should be said at once that, so far as the essential virtues are concerned, the process-conception of life has no revelation that would tend to revise the list. It rescues them, however, from the limbo of purely static classifications, and exhibits them in their working relations as necessities of social adjust- ment. The process-conception reaffirms the Ten Command- 674 PROCESS-CONCEPTION AND MORAL JUDGMENTS 675 ments, not as statutes, but as principles of social economy, given in the necessities of the human situation. The process- conception gives no license to play fast and loose with moral principles. On the other hand, it challenges the authority of every dogmatic assertion of a moral principle, unless it can be justified by ascertained moral economies. In no period has it been as evident as it is today that valua- tions of good and bad, of right and wrong, came into exist- ence by growth, and that they are now, in our own minds and before our own eyes, in full course of growth. Not only are we calling some things ''good" or "bad" to which people once applied the opposite label, but within one lifetime com- plete reversals occur in the formulas by which tests of good and bad are applied. Men hardly past middle life remember when persons who had declared slavery to be an ordinance of God, changed their minds, and declared that abolition of slavery was an ordinance of God. In less important matters similar changes are familiar. Within a half-century, men of the same general moral and religious type have, in certain instances, passed through two distinct reversals of judgment about the use of alcoholic drinks. They were first good, then bad, and in many cases the same types of men are now rating them as good again, with certain qualifications. For better or for worse, temporarily or permanently, many similar instances have occurred, and they are increasing in number. The ethics of the family, of political and financial trusteeship, of international relations, are in course of con- scious or unconscious re-examination. The ethical norms for each of these relations are in a process of transition. As a single illustration of change in the philosophical pos- tulates underlying ethical judgments, we may cite the shift- ing of standpoint in a generation among certain theological thinkers. They used to say : " This or that is right because it is commanded in the Bible." They now say: "This or that is commanded in the Bible because it is right." Another important factor, already alluded to (chap. 41), (n(i GENERAL SOCIOLOGY in our present situation is that our period is peculiar in its witness to the need of a common criterion of moral values. In no period have more concrete questions waited for the application of a conclusive moral standard. The struggle in society has never been more miscellaneous. Each of us is demanding of every other that he shall do some " right " in place of some "wrong;" and each of us is replying to the demand : " On what authority do you affirm that your ' right ' should be my ' right ' ? " Never were there so many agitations for moral reform, and never has there been such evident lack of a recognized tribunal of final appeal, to pass on the justice of the programs. In the rarest instances only can the representatives of reform, and of the condition or institution to be reformed, be brought to recognize the same ethical postulates as arbitrators of their differences. There is nothing in the process-conception of life that can act directly upon men's moral attitude. So far, however, as our social difficulties have their roots in mental confusion, the view of human experience as a process promises to yield not only a valid explanation of evolution of moral judgments, but the most convincing premises for constructive ethical theory. We venture a thesis, therefore, which must be answerable to the whole history of morality and of ethics, viz. : All the systems of ethics, and all the codes of morals, have been men's gro pings toivard ability to express this basic judgment: That is good, for me or for the world around me, which promotes the on-going of the social process. That is had, for me or for the world around me, zvhich retards the on-going of the social process. Review of ethical valuations, or study of moral problems, from the standpoint of the process-conception, will bring to light the enormous difference between the mental attitude cor- responding to this innocent formula, and that represented by any of the categorical systems of ethics. Of this more must be said in a later chapter. In a word, however, the process- conception of life finds little place, within the range of finite PROCESS-CONCEPTION AND MORAL JUDGMENTS 677 intelligence, for absolute distinctions of good and bad between types of concrete acts. The human situation being always and everywhere! either actually or potentially, a becoming, human conduct is always good or bad according to the demands of the particular stage of the process to which it is referred, or in which it must function. In finite conditions, and for finite intelligence, there is hardly more possibility of discovering an absolute good or bad in concrete acts, than there is in determining an absolute up or down in space. Our acts are all relative to a process which, so far as we know, may be infinite in all its dimensions. Our judgments have to be relative to so much of the process as we can make out. So soon as we clearly understand this condition, we realize the vanity of all the absolute or categorical systems of ethics. Men have entertained many variations of belief that reve- lations of absolute morality have come from supernatural sources. This can never have been the case in the sense vul- garly imagined. The method of deriving moral judgments in the past is relatively clear. The same method must be fol- lowed in principle in the future. In the chapters to follow we shall outline further implications of the method. CHAPTER XLV THE SOCIOLOGICAL CONTENT OF MORAL JUDGMENTS We have thus, in the first place (chaps. 43, 44), recalled rudimentary psychological facts about the form, the process, and the working criteria of ethical valuation. In the second place (Parts II-VI), we have reviewed the program of soci- ology in its attempt to see all human activities, so far as they can be visualized at all, in their real interdependencies with each other. All this is in effect incidental to our present argument that the task which sociology has undertaken must be per- formed before there is a secure intellectual criterion of moral judgments. Otherwise expressed, in proportion as the task of sociology is performed, and in proportion as the work of sociology is accepted by society, will the intellectual conditions for consensus of ethical judgments be satisfied. Assuming then our statement of the psychological and of the sociological factors, in organizing interpretations of life, we have not yet reached the most important clue to criticism of conduct- judgments. What has been said may be restated in more general form, and the judgments which make up our body of ethics will at once appear to have a place within this general setting, viz. : All ethical judgments are virtually esti- mates of the relation of subordinate parts of conduct to the largest wholes brought into calculation. All ethical judg- ments are not only telic in form ; they are not only compari- sons of concrete particulars with a generalized standard ; that standard is not merely a version of human conditions ; but all these facts are parts of the more comprehensive fact that conduct-valuations are always appraisals of the ratio between the particular conduct in question and the largest complex of human conditions that the mind at the moment of judging is able to consider. For illustration, let us take a case in the field of so-called 678 THE SOCIOLOGICAL CONTENT OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 679 individual ethics. Let us assume that we are able in the hypo- thetical case to exclude all social considerations. Suppose then the conduct in question is the eating of a given dinner. That conduct has absolutely no value for me until I connect it in consciousness with myself as an end. If, then, I con- sider my hunger purely as a sensation, and the eating purely as a means of substituting another sensation, I at once have a criterion in accordance with which I pronounce the eating good. Myself in a state of satisfaction is more than myself in a state of want, and the conduct that contributes to that increase of myself I at once call good. But suppose I think of myself, not merely as capable of enjoying the pleasures of eating, but as capable of winning an athletic contest, and suppose I am convinced that putting a limit on the quantity or quality of my eating is a condition of my winning. Myself as eating the food which affords less satisfaction to the taste, but which may fit me to win the event, is rated as a larger self than the self eating to the exclusion of winning. Again, I may think of myself as capable, not merely of agreeable bodily sensations and of athletic prowess, but also of mental achievement. I may estimate myself as more of a man when doing certain thinking than when performing certain physical feats. I may discover that the athletic winning may be a bar to the contemplated thinking. I may find that less win- ning and different eating will promote my mental activity. Thereupon myself as the thinking man towers up in com- parison with myself as less than the thinker, and I perhaps once more reverse my judgment about that particular dinner. It is good for the sensuous part of me, it is bad for the ath- letic, it is good for the intellectual, possibly it might again be judged as bad relatively to myself considered as spiritual in the pietistic sense. Whenever we form an estimate of value in the realm of individual ethics, it is always implicitly in this mold. Con- duct of a lesser self comes into comparison with conduct of a self held to be more or greater. The conduct is pronounced 68o GENERAL SOCIOLOGY good or bad according as it tends to promote the ends of the one or the other. The fact that we differ interminably as to what is the greater and the lesser self does not affect the main proposition. Before we can have a generally accepted system of individual ethics, we must have a generally accepted philosophy of the individual. Our judgment of specific indi- vidual acts or programs inevitably depends upon our percep- tion of the scope and balance of individual life in general. For example, certain good people hold that it is immoral to play whist or to visit the theater. Other people, who claim equal authority for their judgment, hold that it is sometimes immoral not to play whist or visit the theater. They say that there is no moral law for whist or the theater which is not equally valid in principle for dominoes or the lawn party; namely, the law of utility for the purpose of the whole man. Here, then, is a specific opposition that betrays a deeper antithesis of the implied philosophies. The one view presup- poses a conception of life as a discipline of renunciation. The other regards life as an economy of appropriation. The one view tends to regard that life as largest which foregoes the most. The other view tends to appraise that life as largest which assimilates the most. Between two such contradictory philosophies there can be only accidental agreement on par- ticular issues. To arrive at harmonious judgments of good, we must reach common ground in our general conceptions of life. The universal fact displayed in all cases of the most con- tradictory valuation is that ethical judgments are always implicit estimates of the value of mediate ends as tributary to larger ends. Our conception of these larger ends must be fixed before there can be a rational ground for identity of minor judgments. What is true of conduct thought of as purely individual is true of all conduct upon which we pass valuations. We have all sorts of conventional and arbitrary standards of greater and less. In a situation in which the fighting man is the greatest man, the things that tend to make more fighters are THE SOCIOLOGICAL CONTENT OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 68i good, while the things that divert possible fighting strength into industry or discovery or other activities of non-militant morality are bad. Tliis does not affect the underlying prin- ciple that our conduct- judgments are alw^ays verdicts in approval of those things which make for what we think is more and bigger, and of disapproval of those things which make for that which we estimate as lesser and smaller. In the case of individual estimates, as we have just seen, the alterna- tives are a less and a more complete condition of the indi- vidual; that is, the individual as partial, in comparison with the individual contemplated as more fully realized. When we come to value conduct as a social phenomenon, our judgment always proceeds in the same form. We always have some sort of a major premise of the group as greater than the indi- vidual. We consequently always pronounce that conduct good which promises to make for the ends of the group as against the conflicting ends of the individual.^ The only limit to this judgment is encountered when we contemplate conduct which not merely subordinates the individual to the group, but which suppresses manifestations of the individual which are essential to our conceptions of the absolute worth of the individual; e. g., slavery, the suttee, etc.^ We have thus proposed a formal statement of all conduct- problems. Men are implicitly deciding which self is the greater, and whether in a given instance there is anything greater than self. When we deal with conduct- judgments disinterestedly, our problem always is to decide which of two or more contrasted societary activities is most and biggest, and then whether they must be rated as mutually exclusive, or as principal and subordinate. Our statement of conduct-problems in terms of quantity is of course highly elliptical, but it visualizes the essential form of the problem. It also serves to introduce our application of * Cf. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretation, pp. 29-32. 'Cf. Bosanquet, The Philosophy of the State; on the Conception of Liberty, pp. 124-50. 682 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the formal statement to the social division of conduct-problems, namely : Our judgment of conduct in association akvays tends to appraisal of it as good or bad according to its assumed effects iipon the largest range of associations that zve can take into account. This statement is also elliptical, but it would distract attention from the main point if we should attempt here to make it more precise. Recurring now to our analysis of the social process as a whole, we may restate the reality in which the sociologist finds the working criterion of moral values as follows : The life of the individual, according to the view of the indizddual which we have proposed, is to he considered as a process of achieving the self given in the interests which prompt the health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and Tightness desires, but this process produces and is produced by the social process. Fol- lowing the same line of analysis, we have as our conception of the social process : Association is a continuous process of real- izing an increased aggregate and juster proportions of the health, zvealth, sociability, knoidedge, beauty, and Tightness satisfactions in the persons associating. This is the end visible as interpretation and justification of the whole social process. All that goes on among men actually is valued by them with conscious or unconscious reference to its bearings upon some conception of these goods, either severally or collectively. We have no other real measure to apply in a theory of conduct- value. Institutions, or social activities, as distinguished from activities regarded as purely individual, have their meaning as better or worse methods of promoting achievement and dis- tribution of these satisfactions. The very fact of association, however, displays a relatively advanced stage of the process of gaining these satisfactions. Associations, their means, and their methods, arc media by which already complicated com- binations of these satisfactions and of means of gaining them are guarded and developed. An association or an institution (which is merely a method of activity in association) may not THE SOCIOLOGICAL CONTENT OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 683 be judged, therefore, with reference to a single sort of satis- faction abstracted from the rest. Government, for instance, is not a means of regulating men merely as seekers of the socia- bility satisfaction. It would, indeed, be possible to make out a good case for abstract classification of government as pre- dominantly a function of sociability. In practice, however, government is chiefly an activity within the wealth realm, and only secondarily within each of the other realms of interest. So of the content, as distinguished from the form, in the case of every other institution of society. In elaborating a working theory of social ethics, therefore, we find ourselves practically concerned not directly with the ends of human life themselves. Our problems are, in the first instance, the secondary ones presented by the subsidiary means which associations have developed as their ways of promoting the ends of life. In other words, our problem is : " The ultimate end that gives value to all conduct being the social process as above formulated, what is the value of each and every mode of associated activity, con- sidered as a positive or negative means to that end?"^ This makes the whole process of judging conduct a process of discovering social functions and relativities. We may recapitulate the argument as follows : 1. The essential ethical question in all cases is: What is the value of each alternative course of conduct possible in a given situation in connection with the whole system of relations within which it must function? 2. The ultimate social end which we can discover is pro- gressive improvement in so accommodating ourselves to each other that increasing proportions of the world's population will share in a constant approach toward more and better satis- faction of the health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness desires. 3. That must count with us as morally good which seems to us on the whole to make toward the end so formulated. ' For elaboration of this department of the subject vide Professor C. R. Henderson's articles cited on p. 705. 684 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Our conclusion as to the content of moral conduct, rather than our method of reaching it, has been expressed in many- variations, from Plato down. Thus: "What are the things that severally profit us ? Health and strength, and beauty and wealth." " Next let us consider the goods of the soul ; these are temperance, justice, courage, quickness of apprehension, memory, magnificence, and the like." * A like view is implied by Bowne's formula : " The aim of conduct is not abstract virtue, but fulness and richness of life." 5 Hoffding indicates a similar conclusion in a negative form of expression : " A society of human personalities can be perfect only when none of its members uses others as mere means, and when no portion of the personality of any indi- vidual member is unsymmetrically favored or repressed." ® We have thus found that, so far as the psychological process of ethical valuation is concerned, all judgments of conduct are telic. " The adjustment of habits to ends, through the medium of the problematic, doubtful, precarious situation, is the struc- tural form upon which present intelligence and emotion are built. It remains the ground pattern."^ Our conduct- valuations implicitly assert : The act in question does or does not make for such and such an end expressly or impliedly assumed to be desirable. Accordingly, we may hope that the name prqposed above for the ethical system which the process-conception of life tends to construct m3y prove to be serviceable as more than a mere label. We make use of the term tclici'sm as the title for our method of reaching ethical valuations, because we discover that the method which is actual, and actual because it is psy- chologically necessary, consists in determining the relations of each and every activity to more and more remote ends, until * Meno ; Jowett's translation, I, 263. For Plato's recognition of religion cf. p. 276. • Principles of Ethics, Preface, p. iv. • Ethik, p. 200. ^ Professor John Dewey, Psychological Review, Vol. IX, p. 229. THE SOCIOLOGICAL CONTENT OF MORAL JUDGMENTS 685 the last end or combination of ends is brought into considera- tion which the mind can contemplate.^ This system promises, on the one hand, to furnish a definite content, in place of the merely formal conception " evolutionary ethics," and, on the other hand, its calculation of ends is inclusive, instead of stopping with the small arc of the horizon contemplated by nineteenth-century utilitarianism. ' For an important note on derivatives from the verb reX^w, and the adjective reXi/cij, vide Ward, Outlines of Sociology, p. 180. It should, be added that if there is any merit in the present suggestion, either as to form or content, it is largely due to Dr. Ward rather than to myself. The case is not altered by the fact that he will hardly be able to accept all that the present argument involves. CHAPTER XLVI WORKING TESTS OF ETHICAL VALUATIONS In our rapid outline of the argument, we have referred to three distinct groups of phenomena in which the process of conduct-valuation may be traced : first, the ordinary mental activities of the average man ; second, the systems of the philosophers; and, third, critical psychological analysis. If appeal be taken to either of these sources of evidence, the result will be the same. Men's judgments are in the form which we have stated. The ordinary man does not become aware of the general ends to which his conduct must be referred in order to give it adequate explanation. The philosopher, as we have seen, deceives himself with abstract terms, and conse- quently is often able to imagine that his judgments of ethical value are applications of utterly transcendental criteria. The psychologist, reducing all activity to terms of stimulus and attention and choice, confirms our claim that sentient activity, whether the plain man's practice or the philosopher's theory, always proceeds with implied, if not conscious, reference to some conception of the social process within which that activity derives its meaning. By way of parenthesis, we may reiterate our earlier observation, that the methods of treating history latterly in vogue leave very much to be desired in the way of exhibiting the functional values of the activities which have filled up the life of men in the past. The perspective of our ethical judgments will be confused and vague, until history shall have been so reorganized as to exhibit the reality of the social process, under the categories of content and function which we are beginning to find most significant. We shall not pass correct judgments upon the value of past actions until we can see, of every period worth considering, just how it co-operated with previous periods with respect to this process of unfolding, adjusting, and satisfying the cardinal human 686 WORKING TESTS OF ETHICAL VALUATIONS 687 desires. Nor shall we be very expert in appraising alternatives of conduct in our own time until we can state to ourselves the problems of our time in terms of relation to this process. We recur to the claim already urged, that the best prospect in sight for a basis of common ethical belief is in connection with theoretical and practical gravitation toward adoption of the fundamental sociology and ethics above outlined. It is not merely a theory of the sociologist that we should adopt this standard. It is a demonstrable psychological fact that men have always tended toward the use of this standard in all their ethical judgments. In the last resort we are forced to value as good whatever seems to us on the whole to promote the life- process ; we are compelled to rate that as bad which seems to us on the whole to retard the process ; that is, the sociological criterion of all conduct is identical in form with the psychology of conduct- judgments in general, namely, a measurement or estimate of its use in the life-process. The sociological criterion is merely an extension and generalization of the common man's way of judging whether a given effort is worth while or not. The narrowest individual judgment of conduct amounts to this : Will the effort give me more agreeable feeling? The socio- logical criterion amounts to this : Will the effort give more agreeable feeling to those who can trace its results farthest in the whole social process, and whose feeling harmonizes with the utmost that can be learned about promoting the process? This is the sense in which .Herbert Spencer's remark is true: " Ethics becomes nothing else than a definite account of the forms of conduct fitted to the associated state." ^ Mr. Spencer made the mistake of assuming a statical idea which the logic of the evolutionary conception properly excludes, namely, that a theory of an absolutely perfect condi- tion is possible. Under the stimulus of the evolutionary con- ception, on the contrary, the psychologists and the sociologists are converging upon the interpretation that movement is the irreducible substance of everything. Status is only a con- ^ Principles of Ethics, sec. 48. 688 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY venient form of visualizing the changing. Permanent status is something of which we have no knowledge. Mr. Spencer partially realized his mistake, and The Data of Ethics may be regarded as a virtual recantation of the essential error in Social Statics. The first book of the Principles of Ethics was an important contribution to ethical theory, but, after all, it did not get rid of the mischievous assumption. The revolution which we have above predicted, as the effect of continued application of the psychological and sociological interpreta- tion of life, is likely to be earliest manifest in disrepute of the systems of theory and practice which presume upon the statical conception. Until very recently, for example, practically all ethical systems have assumed, first, persons as fixed quantities, and, second, human relations as conditions which could be treated for ethical purposes as statical. These systems have then designated that man or that act as good that had such and such a relation to the stereotyped order of the world. In other words, our ethical theorists have assumed that life is like a bicycle of a standard model. It is made up of individual parts which may be displaced by duplicate parts that will fit as well as the originals into the machine. The duplicate parts are good when they are capable of such adjustment. Parts that refuse to assemble in the standard model are bad. It is a platitude, however, to declare that life is not like a machine of any type. It is somewhat more like the progression from the clumsiest velocipede to the latest type of bicycle; but this is also an extremely defective analogy, because the life-process is immanent, not mechanical. It is not a process that is put together as the machinist assembles parts of a machine from many sources; but movement as opposed to status is the idea for the illustration to convey. Again, the good man or the good act is the one that facili- tates human development at the precise point of contact with the main process. The same man or act might be bad at an earlier or later stage of the process, because incapable of adjust- WORKING TESTS OF ETHICAL VALUATIONS 689 ment with that stage. In brief, as we saw above, human good is not the good of rest in a permanent status, but of adaptation in a moving process. This being the case, our only hope of agreement about moral standards depends upon getting a soci- ology that will give us common insight into the details of the life-process. The question in point, when we try to gauge moral value is : Does this retard or promote the precise stage of the life-process in which it must function? This question must remain an enigma in the precise degree in which we lack a sociology adequate to interpret the life-process. At all events, the net result of psychological and sociological analysis for ethical purposes up to date is a certain quantum of detail in specification of this insight that the main situation is inces- sant movement, having no quality of rest, but consisting of a constant process, not in a straight line, but, taking large periods of time into the field of view, consistently toward something more of the process, which to our ken is interminable. This is the most far-sighted view of the main fact that we have reached, and it furnishes the positive basis of ethical presump- tion, in contrast with the speculative premises that have been accepted hitherto. This is the quasi-absolute standard of ethical value, which is the nearest practical approach to finality. CHAPTER XLVII SOCIOLOGICAL PREREQUISITES FOR ETHICAL VALUATION What has been said so far reduces to this : If we are to reach moral judgments that may appeal to science for sanction, we must first arrive at a tenable view of life in general. This will include, if our interpretation is correct, the reading of life in accordance with the categories which the sociologists find given in the social reality. We must have, second, as a kind of minor premise, an adequate survey of the social process in the concrete. The schedule below exhibits the groups of par- ticulars which are necessary in order that we may form such an adequate conception of any past situation. Ability to survey a sufficient series of past situations in this completeness is not only requisite to comprehension of the situations themselves, but it is the necessary presumption of all generalizations of laws alleged to be exemplified in the passage of these situations into each other. That is, the ideal of history, on its descriptive side, would require that it should constitute an uninterrupted dissolving view of one situation following another, with constantly varied distribution of effort, both in quantity and quality, in the departments of activity to be specified. Then we must learn to interpret the existing situation in terms of the same cate- gories. If we omit one or more of these phases of activity, our picture is a distorted account of the situation, whether past or present. The claims of the historians since Green, that they all occupy the sociological point of view, seem to the sociologists peculiarly naive. The sociological point of view is something essentially different from a mere shifting of attention from the trifling doings of courts and camps to unassorted or uncritically assorted commonplaces about the masses.^ Having an ade- quate conception of the social process in general, the knowledge ' Cf. above, chap. 35, sec. 7. 690 SOCIOLOGICAL PREREQUISITES 691 which we need in order to understand a particular situation includes the following : 1. A schedule of the sanitary and hygienic achievements and needs of the civilization; that is, the situation so far as it primarily concerns physical well-being. 2. A schedule of the economic achievements and needs of the period ; that is, the situation so far as it primarily concerns human control of the resources of nature. 3. A schedule of the socializing achievements and needs of the period; that is, the situation so far as it primarily concerns the adjustment of social relations ; in other words, the current apportionment among individuals of access to the opportunities of nature and society. 4. A schedule of the scientific achievements and needs of the period ; that is, the situation so far as it primarily concerns discovery of truth and degree of its dissemination among the people. 5. A schedule of the aesthetic achievements and needs of the civilization ; that is, the situation so far as it primarily con^ cerns artistic creation and appropriation. 6. A schedule of the ethical achievements and needs of the period ; that is, the situation so far as it primarily concerns the intellectual and moral development of the population.^ History is useful as science in proportion as it gives us these classes of facts in their actual concurrence and correla- tion. Most of this service is conspicuously not performed by history as yet. Until history renders this service it will con- tinue to be a much overrated factor in human knowledge. Until we have an account of the present also, which will give to us the situation under the same heads, so that we can see the phenomena in their co-operation with each other, we cannot understand our own time and place. One of the immediate tasks of the sociologists is to make people, and especially the historians, see that they are dealing with meaningless scraps of ^ These schedules are elaborated in chaps. 49 and 50. 692 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY social information, until they co-operate to put all the scraps into an exhibit which will present to us the actual whole. Our present "scientific" social writers do not do this. One deals with the aesthetic element, and, while he had in mind something of the general facts of society when he started, he is soon lost in the artistic idea, and the rest is gone. So with the economist. Adam Smith had in mind nearly, if not quite, all this, but his successors have spent their time on the economic fragment, and have forgotten the remaining contents of life. Like a great many disciples, they have learned only one fragment of their master, which practically vitiates the teaching of the master. He wanted to investigate all the divisions of life just as thoroughly as he investigated the economic division. Our social sciences in the nineteenth century have been provincial because they have not sufficiently looked at the other divisions of life, all of which are taken for granted, and are always involved in the conclusions of each. The sociologists today are sounding the alarm, and they demand that, while we continue to specialize, we must keep our vision from being so microscopic that we cannot see the whole. Our judgments of social morality always presuppose an assumption about the whole social situation. We have need of a generally accepted assumption, conformed to the actual social fact, as the basis of a common ethic. The schedules just suggested would constitute a general survey of the real human process at the point where we have to deal with it, whether in the past or in the present. If we do not command these two preliminaries, our working moral judgments are merely mechanical applications of tradition, or they are wild guesses at relations which we do not understand. Assuming, however, a general sociology, and a fairly ade- quate survey of the present situation, the third process involved in a valid moral judgment is an estimate of uses; that is, we have to decide the functional value of this or that possible action in the working balance of the human process which the foregoing survey discovers. SOCIOLOGICAL PREREQUISITES 693 No wonder that there is so Httle in common between the social agitator and the academic sociologist. The former is cocksure what things are going to the devil, and what things must be done this minute for social salvation. The latter realizes that the most intricate problem which the human mind ever confronts is the problem of antecedent and conse- quent, of cause and effect, in human society. It is impossible for him to be as sure about anything as the irresponsible ranter is about everything. The demands upon moral courage increase with every advance in our apprehension of the chances for error in human judgment. Life calls for decisions. It is sometimes the most fatal action not to act. In spite of the awful complexity of each problem, the sociologist must accept the responsibility at last of definite judgments about the conduct of life. The wider the field of his vision, the fewer people will he satisfy with his specific judgments, because he can convince himself only about general lines of effort. He knows that details must be worked out by others. Between the agitator and the academic theorist is the great social body. The mission of the thinker is so to work on the popular mind that everyday judgments of values will tend to correct them- selves by ultimate standards. No sociological perspective is correct unless it turns out at last to have a place for the angle of vision which belongs to people at different posts in the social process. The distinct work of the philosophical sociolo- gist is to organize the elements of social knowledge into a common property of social philosophy. The test of that phi- losophy must ultimately be its adequacy as the common pre- sumption of all special theory. Possibly wef may have seemed to base our reasoning on a preposterous supposition. We may have appeared to assume that the average man may be expected to exploit the tech- nique of psychology and ethics and sociology, and to reach his judgments of good and bad by rigidly scientific and logical methods. Nothing of the sOrt has been connoted by our thesisj but it has not been practicable so " rightly to divide 694 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the word of truth " that the phases of its appHcation to special- ists and laymen respectively could be sharply discriminated. In brief, however, the main proposition is this : The stand- ard psychological form of all moral valuations, whether passed by babes or philosophers, is telic : when we pronounce a thing " good," we all alike do so because we believe it is good for something, it works well toward ends that we desire; psy- chological analysis of the content of supposed absolute criteria of moral values shows that this content necessarily consists of some reconstruction of human conditions; i. e., the nearest we can get to a working absolute is our organization of what we know about the activities going forward in human experi- ence ; in other words, however imposing the names with which we baptize our ultimate ethical standards, they cannot rise out of the same psychological rank with the standard of the plain man, viz. : How does it work in the conditions which I can consider ? This being the case, the obligation rests upon the men whose function is to generalize methods of moral valua- tion, to stop juggling with absolute standards that are not absolute, and frankly to undertake the work of organizing knowledge of relative utilities into the largest philosophy of ends which our intelligence can construct. This is simply another way of saying that the psychology o-f moral judgment indicates the sociological interpretation of human activities as the ultimate available criterion of ethical goods. The universal adoption of this criterion would not at once introduce unanimity of moral judgments. If we agreed as to the standa.rd of cfljligation, we should still disagree as to whether the standard required the American government to declare its ultimate policy toward the Philippines, or whether the United States should cdntrol the isthmian canal, or whether the Bible should 1)e read in the public schools, or whether our nation should enter into political alliances with other nations, or whether the church should become " insti- tutional," or whether individuals should adventure this, that, or the other secession from the conventional order. The SOCIOLOGICAL PREREQUISITES 695 immediate change following such consensus would be essen- tially the adoption of a uniform intellectual attitude toward evidence pertinent to questions of ethical value. We are advertising no specific for the manifold moral maladies which betray themselves when we know the good and choose the bad. How knowledge of the good may be turned into choice of the good is a question quite independent of our present problem. We have been trying to show the general direction which our science must take in order better to satisfy the psychological conditions of progress toward agreement about the essential marks of ethical value. The process of human life as men know it is the implicit criterion of the good which all men tend to apply. The ethics that has the promise of final authority over the human mind is the ethics of all of the human process which men can know. The only main- tainable scale of moral permissions and prohibitions is the scale of well- or ill-working of conduct in question, in larger and larger reaches of the human process. But does not this statement itself assume that the ordinary man will have a social horizon and a degree of critical power which are impossible? Not at all. The methods of social pedagogy will doubtless remain for many generations sub- stantially as they are now. The average man will get his moral judgments through conventional channels, but when the social criterion of ethical goods prevails, the average man will merely have to choose between alleged statements of fact, not between apparently irreconcilable principles for determin- ing the value of the facts. If the average man today finds it to his advantage to join a secret society, and if the priest tells him it is the will of God that he should not join a secret society, the reconciliation is a problem of two unknown quan- tities. If the social criterion were frankly and directly applied by both, instead of vaguely and unconsciously, the man and the priest might disagree as sharply as before, but the prob- lem of arranging an agreement would now be an affair of only one unknown quantity instead of two. 696 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Comparatively few of us understand the construction or the operation of the locomotive, or the telephone, or the dynamo. It is not at all certain that, if left to our own devices, we should always act in accordance with the best of our knowledge about these machines. This much, however, is certain : Practically everybody in civilized countries has a working conception that the principle of these machines is mechanical, not magical, nor miraculous, nor mystical. Every- body knows that, if an expert tells us we must act so and so toward the machines in order to get them to do their work, we should be very foolish not to follow his directions. This intellectual attitude toward machinery and mechanical authori- ties does not insure us against occasional silly behavior in handling machines; but we are surely better off, we act with more general consistency, we are more intelligent and docile about machinery, than we should be if some of us supposed, and all of us sometimes supposed, that machinery is a matter of magic or miracle or arbitrary supernatural decree. Our contention is that the like would be the case with reference to social conditions, if the largest attainable conception of the social process, and of the discoverable laws of the social process, were made the universal norm of moral valuation. Another objection may be anticipated, viz. : Is not all this merely another agnosticism? Our answer is most emphatically in the negative. The more comprehensive and circumstantial our knowledge of the finite, the more inevitably shall we need to rest our knowledge upon the postulate of the infinite. After individuals or societies have passed a certain stage of intellectual development, however, there occurs an irrevocable transposition of the infinite in their scheme of thought. The function of the infinite can no longer be either to reveal or to manipulate finite relations. It is henceforward to magnify the value of those relations. The real agnosticism is assumption that finite experiences have merely finite values. CHAPTER XLVIII CATEGORICAL AND TELIC VALUATIONS CONTRASTED IN THE CASE OF TEMPERANCE The brief of our argument for the relation of the process- conception of Hfe to determination of moral values may be regarded as complete at this point. We add a single illustra- tion of its bearings in a concrete case. The system of telic ethics which the process-conception of life involves might with propriety be described as a new sanc- tion for old virtues. Many cardinal obligations which have been inculcated, time out of mind, by moral teachers, have been predicated by tradition upon grounds which cannot be main- tained, but they are reaffirmed by analysis of life as a process of adaptation. In the social pedagogy of the past, supersti- tious, arbitrary, fraudulent, or stupidly conventional reasons often became the sanctions relied upon to enforce virtue. Conduct good in its place has notoriously been insisted upon as good in itself, regardless of its place. Types of conduct have thus come to be regarded as ends in themselves, whereas their real worth consisted in their service as means to some sort of human attainment. That service performed, or no longer required in the same sense or degree, the tributary conduct in reality loses its former ratio of value. Conduct is good for what it can accomplish. Given types of conduct have differ- ent values, therefore, according to the circumstances under which they are performed. A single illustration will serve the purposes of the present argument. Let us take the relations that have been general- ized in the term "temperance." Let us consider, as exclu- sively as possiblCj merely the individual aspect of the rela- tions concerned, or rather simply the health element in the individual fraction of conduct-relations. It would be incon- sistent with our whole analysis if we should assume that a 697 698 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY complete statement is possible when attention is confined to such a minute abstraction. We are not proposing a formula of conduct, but merely illustrating, in the case of one part of a problem, the form of judgment by which a valid formula is to be derived. Our illustration should be compared with Spencer's chapter on "Temperance."^ // life is regarded as a process of suiting means to ends, it becomes axiomatic that invariable abstinence froni anything that has value as a means is not temperance, but intemperance. As we have observed above,^ the agreeable sensations that accompany the exercise of a function of the body are parts of the economy of the life-process. Satisfaction incidental to eating and drinking is a factor in the order of nature that insures well-fed and well-toned bodies. The most intimate question concerned when we ask whether our dinner shall include caviar, and terrapin, and pate de foie gras, and cham- pagne, is (the cost item being disregarded in our illustration) : Will these things build up our bodies? Assuming that an article of food or drink has nutritive value, directly or indi- rectly, the questions primarily concerned are, first, as to the relative food-value of this and other material, and, second, as to the quantity of the material in question that will best promote the vital processes. What we shall eat and drink, and how much of it, is primarily a question of physiology. If arse- nic is the substance that my body needs at the present moment, it is good for me to swallow arsenic. If there are any pleas- urable sensations connected with consumption of arsenic under those conditions, I should enjoy them to the limit, and thank God for them. On the other hand, as every pain is a sign of some disorder of bodily function, so every pleasure is a solicitation to excess that forthwith becomes disorder. The virtue of temperance ^Principles of Ethics, Part II, chap. 12. The contrast between this argu- ment and that of Spencer is not evident until we reach problems of social ethics. It is then easy to show radical differences. ^Pp. 447. 448. CATEGORICAL AND TELIC VALUATIONS 699 is indicated, not in the merits of abstinence, but in the demerits of overindulgence. Asceticism is to morals what the old prac- tice of bleeding was to hygiene. As an exceptional resort it has its uses. As a rule it is deadening. Accordingly, any formula of temperance which tests the use of beer or wine or rum by any principle not equally appli- cable to tea or coffee or milk or ice-water is unenlightened and indefensible. As a matter of pure individual ethics, and spe- cifically as a matter of purely health ethics, the bad thing for me to do at this moment might be to swallow a glass of milk, while the good thing for me to do might be to swallow a glass of whiskey. We must emphasize the caution that our argument is not to be understood as in any sense a plea for or against the use or disuse of either milk or whiskey. We are arguing for a method of arriving at decisions about principles of use and disuse, in accordance with the process-conception of life. There may be occasions when the best conduct discoverable is use of alcohol, or arsenic, or morphine, or chloral. It is temperance, physiologically measured, to use the means at a given time demanded by the real interests of the body. An ethical code that grants plenary indulgence for use of ice- water, and decrees absolute excommunication of alcohol, is as superstitious at one extreme as at the other. The use of either means is a question of circumstances. After I have swallowed a glass of wine, I shal] have occa- sion to show more moral strength than after I swallow a glass of milk. The evil of drinking wane might be less than the good, in a given instance, if it were not for the difficulty of satisfying this after-condition. The wine, even used when it is good, may stimulate cravings for more wine when it is bad. After once drinking the wine, I have need to be morally stronger than before to restrain myself from indulgence in wine when abstinence is the adjustment that my life-process demands. This, however, is merely a look into the larger relations of a problem of which we are considering merely a 700 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY primary factor. Our argument is that the process-conception of Hfe requires consideration of each of the factors in turn, and of all of them combined, in accordance with the same telic principle. Illustrating the logic and the ethics of all conduct by this physiological abstraction, we have the elementary prin- ciple of temperance, viz. : What and hoiv much we shall eat and drink is, in the first instance, a problem of physical ways and means, like questions of the zveight and quality of under- clothes, or the thickness of sole-leather. In short, all moral questions are questions of uses, not of conformity to categories. No element of conduct is good or bad in itself. It is only when choices are seen in relations, when they appear as factors of the whole in which they react, when they are considered in their functioning processes, that an intelligent judgment of their goodness or badness is possible. Throughout the whole range of moral relations, from most narrowly individual to most generally social, valua- tions of conduct are conclusive in the degree in which they represent a valid calculus of uses throughout the whole social process. From the standpoint of the categorical philosophies, this whole conception of social logic seems negative and destruc- tive. It is accused of weakening the demands of morality and of encouraging license. This is undoubtedly the effect upon certain types of mind, when they are emancipated from the control of arbitrary authority. Yet it is a confession of unfaith in the constitution of the world to insist, for pruden- tial reasons, upon fictitious versions of moral order in place of real analysis of the human process. Strong precepts must prove to be weak in the end if their support is an unsound philosophy. Analysis of the life-process does not discover that gluttony is good, nor that drunkenness is right. It does not advertise that it is good to take risks with our appetites. It distinguishes, however, between ele- ments of conduct that are frcf|uently found together, and between effects of the same conduct in drfferent times and CATEGORICAL AND TELIC VALUATIONS 701 places. It does not vacate any valid precept against intem- perance. It vindicates all the virtues of temperance. Taboo is a law of man, not of nature. Temperance is not taboo. Temperance is use regulated by occasions. Tem- perance is not a state of mind which consists in maintaining a rogues' gallery of things mala per se. Temperance is steady perception that "all things are lawful, but all things are not expedient," and it is customary use of things in the ratio of their expediency. The fact that the practical program indicated by the expe- diences of eating and drinking must be merely an item in the whole schedule of individual and social good, makes our use of temperance, for illustrative purposes, merely a fragment. As we pointed out in the beginning of this chapter, we are purposely dealing with the simplest possible abstractions, in order to explain the method of judgment which the process- conception of life requires throughout the whole range of moral relations. When we pass from consideration of eating and drinking in the abstract, to the specific problem of the duty of the individual A. B. as a social factor, the whole range of social cause and effect to which St. Paul referred, in his pro- gram concerning meat offered to idols, at once requires pro- portionate consideration. The problem of community of action with reference to liberty of eating and drinking and catering is likewise a problem, not merely of public hygiene, but of public morals. Nevertheless, this larger view of conduct-relations does not affect the principle which we have illustrated. In any case, from least to greatest, the process- conception of life calls for appraisal of all conduct by the standard of its uses in the widest ranges of the process in which its consequences can be traced. With the illustration before us, we may repeat that the process-conception of life contains the only credible promise in sight of sanctioning an ethical method which the general judgment of men must accept. In a word, from the standpoint of the process-conception 702 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY of life, every moral act, from the most individual to the most social, is to be valued according to its positive or negative share in an inclusive program of organizing mediate ends for co-operative promotion of more ultimate individual and social ends. All conduct intelligently appraisable as good, from sleeping and ivaking and eating and thinking and speaking, to legislating and warring and treaty-making, is conduct which so adapts means to ends that the net result is a gain in the total realization of life. PART IX THE SOCIAL PROCESS CONSIDERED AS A SYSTEM OF TECHNICAL PROBLEMS CHAPTER XLIX THE PREMISES OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY Henderson, " The Scope of Social Technology," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VI, p. 465. Idem, " Practical Sociology in Service of Social Ethics," Decennial Publications of the University of Chicago, Vol. III. The process-conception of life, which our argument has developed, necessarily passes, sooner or later, from the char- acter of abstract theory into that of a constructive policy. It tries to bring into view, and to explain, all the sorts of facts that take place in men's lives, in such a way that they will tell the most about what to do, and how to do it, here and now. In spite of something like chaos among the sociologists, so far as apparent consensus about abstract theory is con- cerned, the time is at hand for atttempts to bring pure soci- ology to application. At least, it is safe and desirable to begin to mark out the procedure which will become more and more precise and profitable as sociology matures. Sociology has passed through two stages since the begin- ning of the nineteenth century : ( i ) A stage of dilettantism, both in theory and in practice. This stage was prolific of fanciful social philosophies and of Utopian schemes of social improvement. (2) A stage of criticism. It is impossible to draw precise boundaries between the.se stages. Indeed, the two phases of development have overlapped in the same per- sons. When Herbert Spencer wrote his Social Statics, for example, he was dominated by the former impulse. Although he never entirely shook ofif the traditions of that stage of think- ing, he was of course eminent in promoting critical study of society. It would be a task for the historian of sociology to assign due credit for the later attitude of the sociologists. We need not stop for that. The point is that, under the influence of 705 7o6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY the critical spirit, the reaction against sociological sentimental- ism has well-nigh paralyzed the progressive and constructive impulses which did credit to the zeal, if not the discretion, of the older doctrinaires and agitators. The latter felt a " woe is me " if they did not act for the immediate benefit of society. The later critical sociologists successfully discouraged the active impulse. In some cases it is hard to believe that the impulse existed. They held that we must know the facts about society before we can reconstruct society by artificial means. Some of them even asserted that there could be no reconstruction at all. They accordingly worked without much organization, but with a division of labor which has pretty closely covered the ground, in spite of the fact that the co-operation was accidental and unconscious. Taking the results of all the critical sociologists together, we nevertheless have fairly good preliminary surveys of all the activities of society. These are sufficient guides to justify resumption of attempts to look ahead. That is, we have not reached any conclusions which have much value as premises for social dogmas, but we have some pretty distinct outline maps of social activities in all their stages and correlations. We have no formulas that are worth anything for quantitative measurement of social influences, past, present, or future ; but we have such means of qualitative social analysis that we may feel fairly well acquainted with society in principle, while we lack knowledge of less general details. This abstract and general knowledge, moreover, with much knowledge of details that may safely be taken as guides in further experiment, is at our disposal for practical work. If it is valid science, it forms a secure basis, so far as it goes, for progress such as the early sentimentalists desired. If our present sociological knowledge is of a kind capable of sup- porting more practical activities, there is also enough of it to give those activities strong impulse. In other words, the sociologists have served a sufficiently long apprenticeship in pure science, or in attempts to perfect THE PREMISES OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY 707 the methodology of pure science, to acquit them of the charge of sentimentaHsm when they attempt to calculate the lines of action which the conduct of society ought to take. As I have argued at length in Part VIII, the latest word of sociology is with reference to the end which gives to social activities their meaning. After all our analysis of the origin and evolution and mechanism of the social process, we are conscious that the final use of the whole complex procedure is what it can avail us in estimating the values of different activities. We have concluded that the whole social process, so far as we can anticipate it, is comprehended in the formula derived from survey of all of the process which we can observe ; viz. : The social process is continuous advance in the development, adjustment, and satisfaction of the health, zvealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness desires. Those activities are good which promote this process, and those are bad that retard it. Virtually the same thought is expressed by Professor Ludwig Stein, of Bern, in these words; The veil is gradually lifting from the meaning of history. That mean- ing is and can be nothing else than progressive ennobling of the human type, the upbuilding of the human species into social persons, the final sub- jugation of the bete huntaine through social institutions in the realms of law and custom, of religion and morality, of art and science.' With the same emphasis that Stein places, throughout his argument, on the element of organization and co-operation among men, as a factor of progress equally essential with improvement of the individual type, I accept this description as an expansion of mine. Of course, I cannot claim that these propositions com- mand general assent among the sociologists, any more than elsewhere. They are the result of a long course of construct- ive analysis, which is the best that I have been able to do toward getting at the final criterion of life. I am bound to use it, therefore, till clearer light appears. I cite it now, not for the purpose of further defending it, but in order to show its bearings upon programs of social action. ^ An der Wende des Jahrhunderts, p. 414. 7o8 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Assuming, for the sake of argument, that our conclusions thus far are unchallenged, I see only one radical obstacle in the way of a positive principle of social guidance. It is this : We have not proved that the operation of this process must extend to any definite proportion of the human race. It is possible to contend, somewhat in the spirit of Aristotle, that the conditions of life do not permit many of us to have much share in the higher ranges of the social process, and that our social program must necessarily contemplate, as the working end, the increasing satisfactions of the few, while the many must always furnish the means by which the few realize the increased quantity and quality of satisfaction. It is indeed claimed that modern science, and especially the mass of evi- dence from which evolutionary generalizations are reached, distinctly reinforces Aristotle's opinion. We find that nature perfects a few of the lower types, by wasting millions of unfor- tunate specimens of the type. Is it not probable that human myriads must always be miserable in order that a few may progress? Is not a social program indicated by the facts of life which contemplates the greater good of the few at the expense of the many? It would be pure pretense to claim that we have a con- clusive scientific refutation of the views implied in these ques- tions. There is no visible demonstration that the social process in which we are included does not converge upon excellences in a few at the cost of the rest. That is, the philosophy of Nietzsche, for example, and the working policy of the unsocial fraction of society that would monojx)lize opportunity so long as there is anything left for the unsocial individual to desire, cannot be absolutely proved to lack sanction in the laws of nature. Nevertheless, if we hold that the social process involves progressive satisfaction of all the interests, and not merely of some of them, we are obliged to infer that the process must include enough people to satisfy the conditions of its own operation. That is^ if we find that the social process, as we THE PREMISES OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY 709 know it, indicates continuance of higher powers of health, weahh, sociabiHty, knowledge, beauty, and Tightness satis- faction for so^nebody, we are bound to conclude that the popu- lation concerned in that process must be great enough to main- tain the complicated activities upon which these enlarged sat- isfactions depend. Accepting 5 per cent, of the population of the United States as a liberal estimate of the class which we call the unemployed, it might be possible to make a plausible argument to the effect that these 5 per cent, of our population have no claim to an equity in the social process.^ " There is no use for them. They ought not to have been born. No theory of life can find a rightful place for such a social surplus." Without attempting to construct a brief for the benefit of this 5 per cent., the only reply necessary seems to be that this is really a negligible quantity. The life-process, as we under- stand it, requires, at any rate, the other 95 per cent. In order that any of us may get on in the higher developments of our interests, whether the essential material interests, or the derived spiritual interests, all this mass of people is neces- sary. The requisite division of labor and variety of situation are not otherwise possible. There must be so many hundred farmers and artisans in order that there may be one scholar and artist and moral leader. And there must be so many more farmers and artisans in order that scholarship and art and moral leadership may ascend to higher planes. The social process is not carried on by the few only who may be called the pinnacles of society. It is carried on by all who maintain the conditions upon which the pinnacles rest. It may be that too many people are born in a given part of the world, and that diminution of the birth-rate becomes to that extent a part of the social problem. It is conceivable that the 5 per cent, which we have just conceded, for the sake of argument, ' This is merely a guess at the number of unemployable plus the average number of employable out of work. The force of the argument does not depend on the accuracy of the guess. 710 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY may represent an excessive accession-rate in the United States. But, on the other hand, it may also be that organization of Hfe in accordance with the best that we know would absorb that 5 per cent, and create a demand for more sharers in the social process. It may be that the existence of the 5 per cent, is an index of abnormality in our social arrangements, or of invincible perversity in individuals, which much be charged to profit and loss. Not pressing this point, however, no way is visible by which any portion of the 95 per cent, of our social population can advance toward all-around satisfaction without needing each other in the process. If the process needs all the persons, each of the persons must be entitled to a share in the process. Practically the same thing might be stated in this way : The type of life that civilization has developed calls for a type of persons capable of the most intensely refined and many-sided co-operation. Ability to lit into an infinitely refined and complex system of co-operation is the mark of fitness for the present social environment. At the same time democracy has given to the individual both demand and capacity for a share in consumption of all the achievements of civilization. Unless this demand is measurably satisfied, the fitness of the individual for his part in co-operation is reduced toward the point of obstruction. That is : On the most cynical basis of calculation which could be adopted, the pro- gram of civilization is a system of inevitable co-operation. If control of the co-operation were in the hands of one despot, he would be obliged, in order to keep the system from break- ing down, to run it in the interest of all the persons necessary for the co-operation. To do this, he would be obliged to run it on a plan which would admit all the persons necessary to the co-operation to progressive participation in all the advantages of the co-operation. The reason for this is in the fact that they are persons, not things. This conclusion is no more demonstrative than its oppo- site, but it is more probable, more morally convincing. The 1 THE PREMISES OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY 711 plausibility of the special-privilege hypothesis grows out of failure to remember the facts which make the exceptional indi- viduals possible. Without social partnership no man could improve himself enough to exhibit any marked difference from other men. The more extensive the social partnership, the greater the possibility of making particular talents dis- tinguish their possessors from others. But that distinction comes from co-operation, and the co-operators are at least entitled to such terms of co-operation that each may move forward in the general direction which the whole social process pursues. This means that, with such conceptions of justice as we now hold, with our present concepts also of human individuals, there can be no tolerable program of life which does not admit practically all persons to the franchise of all the interests represented by any person. The problem, then, which general sociology reaches at last is this, to put it in the concrete : In the actual present situa- tion of the American people, for instance, what general pur- poses and ivhai special programs are necessary, in order to satisfy the conditions of that stage of the process in zvhich we find ourselves? As we have seen, the indicated end of the process is ynore of the process, i. e., more intensive and exten- sive satisfaction of all the interests; and the condition wdiich we have just discussed is that all the individuals sharing in the mechanism of the process shall share in the benefits of the process in proportion to their contribution to the process. In other words, normal continuance of the social process requires that each person sharing in the process shall be secure in opportunity to get on, in realisation of each of the interests to zvhich the process contributes; or to make gains toward a more harmonious balance of the desires satisfied. But we must now turn back upon the track of our argu- ment far enough to recognize that we have jumped over a very wide chasm in our survey of social activities. Before we can have a standard of action appropriate to the actual 712 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY social situation, we must have a thoroughly adequate analysis of the situation. The most serious and the most astonishing omission thus far in sociological theory is the failure to carry out the work of generalizing sociological notions far enough to furnish the schedules necessary for working knowledge of the actual situation. The things that are worth doing are the things that will promote the social process ; but to know what those things are we must know accurately the situation at which the process has arrived. A homely analogy may illustrate the point. Everybody knows in general the science of running a steam engine. There must first be the properly constructed engine itself; it must have a supply of water in the boiler; a supply of fuel in the fire-box; that fuel must be so consumed as to make steam; the steam must be let into the cylinders in volume enough to exert the pressure necessary for the work which the machinery must do. So far the program is plain. These are general principles of mechanical wisdom. But what is scientific for Engineer John Smith at this moment in handling his engine? Shall he order more fuel into the fire-box, or more water into the boiler, or more steam into the cylinders? These things depend entirely upon the situation at this moment. If more power is needed, and the boiler can generate more steam, and the driving-gear has been working below its capacity, then it is scientific to pile in the fuel as fast as forced draft can con- sume it, to turn on water to keep it at the most economical steaming level, and to crowd pressure on the cylinders as fast as it can be produced. But if the water has fallen below the safety level, if the pipes are overheated, if more water would be likely to crack them, then the scientific thing may be to exhaust the steam left in the pipes, dump the fire altogether, cool the boiler to a temperature at which cold water is safe, then fill the boiler, rekindle the fire, watch the steam gauge, and wait for orders. Now, the goal of sociological method may be described as such insight into the precise situation, at one's own moment THE PREMISES OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY 713 of sharing in the social process, that one may be able to decide, just as the well-posted engineer in the supposed case would do, what is the right line of action. The desideratum is to be able to say, for instance: The American people are in such and such a situation; such and such are the chief issues nozv pending; the other issues fall into such and such subordinate relations; in vieiv of these facts, the conduct of the American people should be turned in such and such directions, so as to procure such and such residts. An adaptation of the same formula must express the real problem in any minor portion of the social situation. This is by no means such an academic and Utopian con- ception as it may seem. It is simply a somewhat more gen- eralized expression of the thing that men of affairs, no less than philosophers, have been doing, in a way, time out of mind. Not to go back beyond our own national traditions, the signers of the Declaration of Independence did precisely this. After years of increasing tension, the situation of the colonies had become more and more intolerable. The colo- nists at large, and particularly their representatives in the Continental Congress, had studied the situation, so far as they were able, in all its bearings. They tried to take into account everything that concerned their welfare in the largest sense. Whether they were correct or not is beside the point now in question. The simple fact is that they made up their minds about the demands of the situation and formulated a program accordingly. They first said that the thing for America to do was to resist oppression. When that was not enough, they said the only thing left for America is to win its independence from Great Britain. All things else must yield to that. They accordingly adopted a program that con- trolled them for the following seven years. Meanwhile another situation, demanding another survey and another program, gradually superseded the one to which that program was appropriate. Independence became prob- able, and at last actual. But before it was reached, and still 714 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY more after it had been recognized, independence in a new sense became almost as great a problem as the former tyranny of Great Britain. Each colony wanted to be independent of all the rest. This fact jeopardized all that had been gained by the Revolution. The process of comprehending the situa- tion had to be performed over again. A new program had to be decided ujx^n. The Constitutional Convention again represented the whole people in attempting to estimate all the factors of the general welfare which required attention, in order rightly to decide upon lines of action. The draft of the Constitution was the resultant of this survey and calcula- tion. To be sure, the governmental element of welfare was almost exclusively considered, but that was the factor which seemed at the time decisive. The subsequent campaign in the several states, for ratification of the Constitution, was another stage of the same process of group-attention to the situation, and the final adoption of the Constitution completed the acceptance of a standard of social action.^ Every four years since that time two or more political parties have more or less thoroughly, more or less conscien- tiously, repeated the same process. If we wish to be cynical, we may say that the real process is that of opposing politicians saying to themselves, "We want the offices," and then casting about for the kind of promises most likely to get votes. Even if reduced to this moral minimum, the process of a political campaign involves a serious study of the social situation and its chief needs. The results have been summed up in the party platforms with which as their credentials candidates have appealed to the country. The most conscienceless poli- tician that ever helped to frame a party policy did form an estimate, after its kind, of the situation to which the policy must apply. Whether the process is performed with intelli- gence and public spirit, or in ignorance and selfishness, does not affect the main point. In some fashion or other, the most practical men are performing the process incessantly. The ' Cf. use of the same period to illustrate other relations, pp. 245 et passim. THE PREMISES OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY 715 masses are accepting the results, such as they are, of these estimates of the situation. Now, the essential sociological problem in this connection is : What ought zve to consider, and zvhat means will enable lis to consider it, in order to do with the utmost possible wis- dom and justice zvhat is being done less wisely and' less justly every day? We have had to confront repeatedly and in turn, in the century and a quarter of our national existence, situations which enforced the question : Shall we adopt a program of localism or of nationalism, of militarism or of commercialism ; of national isolation or of international alliances; of protec- tion or of free trade ; of emphasis upon industry, or politics, or public improvements, or education, or morals, or religion, or territorial expansion ? We have faced these questions with such wisdom as we had. The function of sociology is to assist in making our methods of approaching such questions more nearly adequate to this task which incessantly recurs. We confront today in the United States the most prodi- gious technical problems which any people ever had to solve, — i. e., in the largest sense of the term "technical"'* — and almost everybody is so impressed with the importance, to him- self or others, of one or more of these technical questions, that few are left to know or care that each and all of them are phases of a complex situation. Few of us see that the impor- tance of the technical results, and even the possibility of getting results, depends in a considerable degree upon correct percep- tions, or at least instincts, of the relation of these details to the whole situation within which they must be adjusted. In order to insure broader outlook and more steady vision, we need to work upon general surveys of the situation, and to chart their significant features in a way that will exhibit their relative prominence in the social process. Then there must be a quota of thinkers who will help us to take our bearings from these chief landmarks. * Vide Professor Henderson's papers cited at beginning of this chapter. 7i6 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY As a hint of the sort of results we shall reach, it may be said that the strategic point in our present situation is that at which interests and opinions collide upon the theory and practice of dividing social opportunity. The distinctive fea- ture about our present situation is its exposure of the poverty of our concept democracy. The problems of today are not, in the strictest sense, economic. The economic problems proper are in principle solved. The economic theorists are simply more perplexed than ever over the correct way to formulate what has been accomplished. The sciences by appli- cation of which the resources of the earth are to be appro- priated are in our possession. The rest of the subjugation of nature is merely more and more detail in applying what we already know. But the unsolved problem is : How shall these resources be shared ? Who shall have them, and on what terms? What part shall these material goods play in deter- mining individual men's relative opportunity to get on in gaining health, wealth, sociability, knowledge, beauty, and Tightness satisfaction ? To anticipate still further, it may be predicted that the next principal stage in the social process will be essentially intellectual and ethical. It will come about through assimi- lation of more positive ethical perceptions, and through adop- tion of technical social devices in accordance with the same.^ In particular, we are already far advanced in challenging, if not already in revising, crudities in prevalent conceptions of property rights. The principal factors producing this change are not a priori notions. They are elements of the social situation. There is intolerable maladjustment, and the social pain goads us to find and remove its cause. But this is getting far ahead of our argument, yet not too far ahead, if we are effectively reminded by the survey that the ultimate object of sociology is not mere pedantic trifling with academic abstractions. Its object is intensely and funda- mentally practical. * Another aspect of this proposition has been presented above, chap. 27. THE PREMISES OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY 717 After all the generalizing- that sociology has done, and with the organized results of this work as a background, the most difficult task that sociologists have ever encountered is waiting to be undertaken, and it is immediately in order. It is the task of working out plans and specifications for an exhibit which will be the most complete demonstration human intelli- gence can reach, of the exact social situation in which we find ourselves. What are the meaning terms in our actual condi- tion, and what do they mean? To express it less abstractly: At what have we arrived, and in ivhat direction lies progress? The best beginning I have been able to make toward pro- posing an answer is in the outline contained in the following chapter. It is an epitome hy title only of the dififerent sorts of thing that must be weighed and balanced in passing a com- prehensive judgment upon the accomplished facts and the indicated needs in our social situation. Dr. Lester F. Ward has proposed the thesis : " The subject-matter of sociology is human achievement."^ Without passing upon abstract questions which the formula provokes, we are safe in saying that human achievement is surely included in the subject- matter of sociology. I have, therefore, acted upon Dr. Ward's suggestion, and have made the outline in terms of achievement. In the schedule no attempt is made to indicate degrees of importance of the dififerent specifications. Many of the titles stand for complex groups of activities, which must be analyzed and appraised. Other titles, w^hich stand in this catalogue as co-ordinate with those just referred to, represent details that are trifling in comparison with the chief factors. *Pure Sociology, p. 15 ^* passim. CHAPTER L SOCIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES The main point is that human welfare is a compound of achievement in each of these divisions and subdivisions of effort, and that no estimate of a social situation is complete that leaves any portion of either division of achievement out of the account. It is thus assumed that the whole exhibit presents a series of problems of proportion and correlation. No claim is made that the conspectus is itself a sufficient correlation of the topics suggested. They are presented merely as a tentative catalogue, as a preliminary survey, not as a theory of relative values. CONSPECTUS OF THE SOCIAL SITUATION AS GIVEN IN THE PRESENT STATE OF ACHIEVEMENT AND IN UNSOLVED TECHNICAL PROBLEMS GRAND DIVISIONS I. Achievement in Promoting Health. II. Achievement in Producing Wealth. III. Achievement in Harmonizing Human Relations. IV. Achievement in Discovery and Spread of Knowledge. V. Achievement in the Fine Arts. VI. Achievement in Religion. DIVISION I. ACHIEVEMENT IN PROMOTING HEALTH 1. Public sanitation and hygiene, including systems of quarantine, isola- tion and colonization (for lepers, epileptics, etc.). 2. Preventive and curative medicine and surgery, including the apparatus of hospitals, dispensaries, ambulances, " first aid " instruction to police, etc. 3. Safeguards against accidents and protection in dangerous occupations. 4. Fire and police protection in general. 5. Development of dietetics and prevention of adulteration of food. 6. Protection against disease germs in food. 7. Improved dwellings and workshops. 8. Topographical arrangements of cities, especially extension of work- men's dwellings into suburbs. 718 SOCIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 719 9. Water, light, and transportation supply. 10. Parks, playgrounds, sewerage, baths, outings. 11. Promotion of temperance. 12. Control of sexual vice, and treatment of its consequences. 13. Shortening the labor day. 14. Dress reform. 15. Cooking schools. 16. Disposal of the dead. 17. Disposal of garbage and sewage. 18. Physical culture, gymnastics, health resorts. 19. Athletic sports. DIVISION II. ACHIEVEMENT IN PRODUCING WEALTH A. Two Points of View . 1. Achievement in each industry. 2. Achievement in each country. I. e., the composite view must include total achievement in all indus- tries in all countries. Another double view-point is : 1. Achievement in production merely. 2. Achievement in accumulation. B. Certain Forms of Achievement Common to All Industries. 1. Improved tools and machinery. 2. In use of waste and by-products. 3. Increase in amount of capital invested in machinery. 4. Greater skill in laborers. 5. Improved managerial ability. 6. Improved processes of production. 7. Standardizing of weights and measures. 8. Improved industrial organizations. a) In division of labor. b) In size of plant. c) In co-ordination with other industries ; e. g., fuel, ore, trans- portation, and factory in hands of one organization. 9. Localization of industry. a) With respect to nearness of raw material. b) With respect to nearness of labor. c) With respect to nearness to market. 10. Increased regularity of production. 11. New uses for materials and products. 12. Improved means of storing and preserving products. 13. Achievement in the development of motor power. 14. Bounties, tariffs, subsidies, patents, etc., as stimuli of production. 720 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY C. Achievement in the Principal Industries. 1. Extractive industry. a) Agriculture and grazing. b) Stock-breeding. c) Fisheries. d) Forestry. e) Exploitation of mineral resources, including oil and gas. /) Quarrying. g) Irrigation. h) Work of agricultural experiment stations, (i) Extent of each crop or output. (2) Achievement in preserving sources of supply. (3) Achievement in the peculiar technique of the industry. 2. Manufactures. a) Food. (1) Milk. (2) Breakfast foods. (3) Slaughtering and meat-packing. (4) Butter, cheese, and oleo. (5) Canning and preserving. (6) Sah. (7) Beet sugar. (8) Rice. (9) Cottonseed products. (10) Alcoholic liquors. (11) Malt liquors. (12) Tobacco. (13) Ice. (14) Glucose. b) Textiles. c) Wood. ) Including metallurgical progress and new uses for d) Metals, f mineral products. e) Chemicals. /) Vehicles. g) Clay, glass, and stone products. h) Explosives and firearms. 3. Achievement in all branches of engineering, except as more properly discussed in Division I. 4. Achievement in the building arts. 5. Achievement in the handicrafts. SOCIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 721 6. Transportation. a) Marine. (i) Structure of vessels. (2) Charts, lighthouses, life-saving stations, and other protec- tions of navigation. (3) The Weather Bureau. b) Land. (i) Jlailroads. (2) Urban transit. (3) Autos and other vehicles. (4) Improved highways. (5) Improved water-ways. 7. Means of communication. a) Postal systems. b) Telegraph and telephone systems. c) Minor improvements ; e. g., tubular posts, messenger service, organization of news service, etc. 8. Achievement in the art of printing and in methods of publication. 9. Achievement in trade and commerce. a) Improvement in machinery for bringing buyer and seller together; produce exchanges, etc. b) Commercial banking and credit. c) Savings institutions. d) Insurance. e) International commerce. f) Domestic commerce. 10. Shipbuilding. DIVISION III. ACHIEVEMENT IN HARMONIZING HUMAN RELATIONS I. e., in adjusting relations of groups to groups and of individuals to individuals in the process of securing proportional shares in political, industrial, and social opportunity ; i. e., achievement in harmonizing claims respecting primarily — A. Political Rights. B. Industry and Property. C. Opportunities for Culture.' These may be indicated more in detail as follows, viz. : A. Political Achievement. I. Between nations within the international-law group. ^ In this schedule the term " culture " is used in the more popular sense ; not in contrast with " civilization," as above, p. 59 et passim. 722 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY a) Achievement in definition of rights through alliances, treaties, spheres of interest, mediation, arbitration, etc. b) Achievement in securing international peace, and in improving articles of war. 2. Between the international-law group and other peoples. a) Administration of dependencies. b) International status of non-civilized peoples. 3. Adjustment of political balance between minor political units and the central power (local self-government). 4. Achievement in admission of individuals and classes to civic rights. 5. Achievement in civic organization. a) Responsibilities of ministries. b) Enhanced representative character of parliaments. c) Enlistment of expert service in administration (including all branches civil and military). d) Improvements in fiscal systems. e) Improvements in currency systems. 6. Improvements in status of aliens and in naturalization laws. 7. Movements aimed at further civic progress largely by voluntary initiative. 0) Agitation for extension of constitutional guarantees (in various countries of the world). b) Organization of political parties. c) Agitation for minor political reforms. (i) In principle of representation, e. g., minority representation. (2) In control of nominations and elections. (3) In popular check upon legislation (initiative and refer- endum). {4) Enlargement of areas of uniform regulations (in conti- nental Europe imperial federation, in Great Britain colonial federation, in the United States uniform legislation of states, etc.). (5) In extension of the merit system. (6) Good-government clubs of the various types. (7) Associations for promoting international peace. B. Achievement in Harmonizing Industrial and Property Interests. I. Primarily by law . a) Improved legal status of various kinds of property; partnerships, corporations, franchises, etc. b) Removal of artificial barriers to enterprise (international and domestic) ; i. e., increased freedom of industry and migration. c) Labor laws. SOCIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 723 d) Homestead laws. e) Laws protecting seamen. /) Arbitration laws. g) Simplification of procedure. h) Checks on oppressive power of capitalistic or labor organiza- tions. i) Governmental pensions and insurance. y) Governmental supervision of industrial and commercial enter- prise, including departments of agriculture, commerce, trans- portation, bureaus of labor, etc. k) State ownership of industries. /) Improvements in status of married women and of children, both as to property and as to industry. m) Municipal pawn-shops. «) Asset banking. 0) Improvement in legal status of professional and personal service, (i) Clergymen. (2) Lawyers. (3) Teachers. (4) Physicians. (5) Dentists. (6) Pharmacists. (7) Artists. (8) Clerks and other salaried employees. (9) Domestic servants. 2. By voluntary action. a) Capitalistic and labor organizations. b) Organizations among farmers. c) Same among farm laborers. d) Profit-sharing and other forms of partnership between labor and capital. e) Improved forms of labor contract — the sliding scale, etc. f) Private pension systems. g) Private insurance systems. h) Organization in other occupations; i. e., forestry, mining, fish- eries, etc. t) Progress in apprentice systems. /) Organizations of professional and other occupations. C. Achievement in Harmonizing Culture Interests. (Using the term " culture " to include all interests not more con- veniently classified under political rights, property, or industry.) I. Primarily legal. 724 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY o) Marriage and divorce laws. b) Laws affecting freedom of thought, research, speech, publication, teaching, and worship. c) Laws removing culture disabilities from individuals and classes. d) Public institutions for culture, (i) Churches. (2) Schools of all grades and types scheduled in Division IV, Part II. (3) Libraries and reading-rooms. (4) Art galleries. (5) Theaters. (6) Concerts. (7) Recreation halls and grounds. (8) Baths. e) Laws aimed at improvement of rural social conditions. 2. Primarily voluntary. a) Organizations for protection of the family. b) Private foundations for the different cultural purposes scheduled above. c) Women's clubs. d) Municipal, national, and international missions. e) Social settlements. /) Neighborhood guilds. g) Municipal improvement associations. h) Child-saving. j) Children's aid societies. /) Forms of social intercourse and recreation. In addition to the three main divisions of human relations thus out- lined we must schedule : D. Achievement in Treatment of the Subsocial Classes. 1. Dependents. 2. Defectives. 3. Delinquents: In this case, as with A, B, and C above, we must examine, first, the legal, second, the voluntary systems and efforts which aim to prevent, to restrain, and to cure the development of these classes. DIVISION IV. ACHIEVEMENT IN KNOWLEDGE PART I. ACHIEVEMENT IN DISCOVERY A. General Questions. 1. What discoveries and inventions have been made? 2. What improvements have been made in the methods of research ? 3. What improvements have been made in the apparatus of research? SOCIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES 725 4. What improvements have been made in the organization of research ? 5. What gains have been made in providing financial means for research ? 6. What rewards and other incentires are available for discovery and invention ? B. Achievement in the Sciences. 1. The inorganic sciences. 2. The organic sciences. 3. The psychological sciences, including child-study and pedagogy. 4. The linguistic sciences. 5. Literary criticism and interpretation. 6. The archseological sciences. 7. The historical sciences. 8. The economic sciences. 9. The statistical sciences. 10. The administrative sciences. 11. The sociological sciences. 12. Philosophy. 13. Ethics. 14. Theology. 15. The technological sciences. PART II. ACHIEVEMENT IN MAKING KNOWLEDGE ACCESSIBLE A. Education, Public and Private. 1. Achievement in the different forms of education. a) Intellectual education. (i) Kindergarten and primary. (2) Secondary. (3) Higher. (4) Professional. b) Moral education. c) Religious education. d) ^Esthetic education. e) Physical education. f) Manual training. g) Trade and craft education. h) Education of defectives. 2. Achievement of different educational institutions, o) Universities and professional schools. b) Colleges. c) Secondary schools. 726 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY d) Chautauquas. e) Primary schools, including kindergartens. /) University extension. g) Trade schools. h) Evening schools. i) Sunday schools. y) Literary clubs. k) Schools for defectives. B. Other Means of Education. 1. Museums. 2. Art galleries. 3. Libraries. 4. Lecture platform. 5. Expositions. 6. The press. a) The periodical press. (i) Achievement of different classes of periodicals: news- papers, magazines, including periodical scientific publica- tions, trade journals, fraternal periodicals, including labor papers, religious papers. (2) Progress toward low-priced periodicals. (3) Improvement in the quality of periodical literature. b) Books and pamphlets. 7. The learned societies. 8. The pulpit as an educational force. 9. Improved postal, telegraph, and telephone facilities as factors in the spread of knowledge. 10. Governmental bureaus for the collection and spread of knowledge. 11. International commerce in knowledge. 12. Comparison of educational institutions of different nations. C. Achievement in Educational Technique. 1. In pedagogical methods. 2. In pedagogical apparatus, textbooks, etc. 3. In co-ordination of educational institutions. 4. In progress toward rational co-ordination of studies. 5. In educational finances. 6. In administration of educational institutions. 7. In compulsory education. DIVISION V. ACHIEVEMENT IN ESTHETIC CREATION AND IN POPULAR APPRECIATION OF ART PRODUCTS A. Literature. B. Sculpture. C. Painting. SOCIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES Tzy D. Music. E. Architecture. F. Landscape Architecture. G. The Minor Arts. DIVISON VI. ACHIEVEMENT IN RELIGION A. In defining standards of religious authority. B. In shifting center of rehgious interests from another life to present life. C. In enlarged religious tolerance, with distinction between religion and theology. D. In definite religious tendencies, promoted by the example of eminent religious men of the century; e. g., Pope Leo XIII, Cardinal Newman, Phillips Brooks, Spurgeon, Moody, General Booth, etc., etc. E. In federation of religious effort. F. In religious extension. G. In local, national, and international enlargement of the sphere of reli- gious activities. The problem of understanding our social situation may be expressed as the problem of making a better outline than the above of the facts that have a bearing upon individual and social welfare at the present moment. The problems of social technology are presented by the several situations discovered in such survey, and considered as partially realized satisfactions of human interests. CHAPTER LI CONCLUSION One cannot have made the foregoing argument in igno- rance that to most minds it must seem a mere churning of words. It affects even rather mature students of social science, and almost invariably specialists in other departments, as a species of speculation for which one can have no serious respect without incurring suspicion of mental unbalance. Men attached to the traditions of the older social sciences, and still more men who have no use for any social doctrine except schemes of immediate reform, honestly believe that sociology is profitless refinement of academic trifles. To this state of mind we must cheerfully respond: If sociology is profitless, by all means let it alone. Wisdom is justified of her children, but she is always compromised when the unwise claim her maternity. It would be a delightful clearing of the atmos- phere if fewer people would call themselves sociologists, and more would absorb a very little of the sociological spirit. Each man who has intelligence enough to deal with any por- tion of social science rationally, or with any part of social amelioration sanely, would be more rational, and more sane, and more effective, if he would learn to place what he does within the larger perspective that sociology affords. There is always danger, to be sure, that reflection will turn Hotspurs into Hamlets. The philosopher may find so many things to think of that he can choose nothing to do. To that extent and in that sense, sociology, like all science and all philosophy, is a possible hindrance to action. On the other hand, action not sanctioned by science and philosophy is blind, and thought that stops short of the utmost comprehension of its object is impotent. The people who are content with such thought and action invite the penalties of both weakness and vice. The 728 CONCLUSION 729 profoundest and most comprehensive thoug-ht is not for every- body at first hand. But, while the world does not need many professional sociologists, it does need sociology. For weal or for woe, we have arrived at a stage of life in which social gravitation is more and more arrested and deflected, and per- haps reversed by social theory. Men think today about social relations, and in the spirit of their thought they act. To do the right thing, except by accident, in any social situation, we must rightly think the situation. We must think it not merely in itself, but in all its connections. Sociology aims to become the lens through which such insight may 'be possible. There must be credible sociologists in order that there may be far- seeing economists and statesmen and moralists, and that each of us may be an intelligent specialist at his particular post. INDEX INDEX Absolute hostility, 190, 195, 204, 244, 290. Absolute vs. constitutional State, 297. Achievement: as subject-matter of sociology, 717; collective, 188; in art, 726; in health, 718; in knowl- edge, 724 ; in religion, 727 ; in so- ciability, 721 ; in wealth, 719. Achievement, social, in the United States, 718 flf. Adams, R., 623. Adler, G., 337. Administrations as parties in conflict, 293- Alexander, S., 430. Ambiguity as means of struggle, 313. Amnion, O., 419. Anerkennung, 459. Anthropo-geographical view of his- tory, SI ff. Aristocracies, partnerships of, 299. Aristotle, 61, 474. Arunta, 210. Ascendency, social, 485. Assimilation, social, 255. Association, 501 ff . ; defined, 505 ; human, 27 ; unity of, 103 ; vs. "society," 184, 185, 504, 508. Associations, human : considered as processes, 217 ; considered as func- tions, 217. Atkinson, J. J., 208. Attraction, 564 ff. Austrian school, 553, 554. Authority, social, 212. Baldwin, F. S., 90. Baldwin, J. M., 416, 429 ff., 432, 443, 476, 506, 681. Barbarism, described, 215, 331, 333, 345- Barth, P., 44 ff., 47. 51, 53, SS, 59. 60, 61, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 74, 80, 82, 87. Bastian, A., 224. Beauty-interest, 198, 465. Biological figures, use of, 74, 157. " Biological sociology," 75, 76, 77, 78, 79- Biological vs. social process, 208. Biology and sociology, 7, 43, 67, 92, 209. Blackmar, F. W., 563. Blood-bond, 190. Bluntschli, J. K., 226. Boardman, G. D., 75. Bosanquet, B., 87, 90, 681. Bossuet, J. B., 40. Bowne, B. P., 684. Branford, V. V., 4, 90. Brinton, D. G., 56. Brooks, P., 240, 3S3. Bryce, J., 298, 311. Buckle, H. T., 40, 53, 417. Caldwell, W., 90. Capital, social meaning of, 268. Carlyle, T., 410. Causation, social, elements of, 626. Chamberlin, T. C, 52, 567. Chemistry and sociology, 6. Choices, as differentia of human as- sociation, 207. Civilization, 215 ; described, 248, 331, 333. 344. 345, 363. 368, 374 ; logic of, 358 ; Ratzenhofer's analysis of stages, 216; Schaffle's analysis of stages, 166 ; vs. culture, 59. Civilizing forces, direct effects of, 363. Civilizing program : demands of, 346 ; Ratzenhofer's series, 355. Classes : industrial, political power of, 267 ; stratification of, as social symptom, 379. Classification in sociology, 65, 73. Cobb, H. I., 60s. Collectivism vs. individualism, 473, 474. 478. Community, 582. Compromise : political reasons for, 307 ; subordinate reasons for, 308. Comte, A., 3, 35, 36, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69. 70. 71. 72, 77, 78, 81, 84, 524, 607. Conditions of the social process (ex- ternal), 164 ; (social), ibid. Conflict, 499 ff. ; modern, formulated, 390-94 ; of interests in State, 281, 304 ff._ Conjunction and opposition, simul- taneous existence of, 205. — ^^..^^^ Conquest-State vs. culture-State, i9?^| Constitutional vs. absolute State, 297. 733 734 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Consciousness : of kind, 368, 369 ; social, 546. Constitutions, social, 124. Constraint, civic, types of represented by States, 242 ff. Contact, 486. Control, system of, 191. Cooley, C. H., 443. Co-operation: compulsory, 126; out- come of struggle, 357 ff. ; social, 123, 124; test of civilization, 710; voluntary, 127. Co-ordination, social, 585. Corporate interests, 278. Corporations as supermen, 517. Correlation, functional, 150. Creedal interest, 258. Culture : defined, 344, 345 ; de- scribed, 368, 374; function of, 191, 193- Culture-history, 59 ff. Culture-State z's. conquest-State, 195. Culture vs. civilization, 59. Cummings, J., 56. "Data" of sociology (Spencer), 99. Davidson, T., 478. De Greef, G., 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 83, 90, 94, 234, 23s, 236, 486, 542, 564, 607. Demand, economic, a moral factor, 579- Democracy, experiences of, 389. Deniker, J., 12. Description, telic element in, 32 ff. Descriptive sociology, 69, 11 1, 447. Desire, vs. " interest " and " want," 436, 445- Desperates vs. radicals, 290. Despotism : reaction of popular in- terests upon, 294 ; veto of politics, 294. Dewey, J., 99, 365, 433, 480, 486, 506, 642, 684. Dietzel, H., 45, 92, 97, 443, 488. Differentiation, 491 ; of interests, 233- Differentiations, social, 118, 121, 129, 134, 146, 147, 190, 191, 192, 193. Discreteness, social, 580. Discontinuity, social, 140. Distributing system, 121, 151. Domestic institutions, afterthought in Spencer's philosophy, 112, 113. Dooley, on the Irish question, 289. ^raper, J. W., 53. ^Dualism, real and apparent, 55, 79, 81. " Dualistic " sociology, 80, 81, 82. Dubois-Reymond, E., 60. Dugdale, R. L., 563. Durkheim, £., 4, 215, 361, 412, 512, 564, 642. Dynamic law, investigation of, 80. Dynamic question in sociology, 95. Dynamic sociology, 86. Dynastic interest, 277. Economic classes, partnerships of, 299. Economic man, fallacy of, 41 ff. Economic view of history, 61. Egoism, psychological value of, 365. Ellwood, C. A., 623, 640, 643. Emerson, R. W., 416, 469, 577. Empirical sociology, 129. Ends: vs. functions, 174-76, 233 ff. ; social, 537 ff. Entity, social, analysis of, 115, 132, 143. Environment : physical, 405 ; spirit- ual, 482 ; subjective, 544 ff. Equality : functional, 348 ; need of defining, 250. Equilibration of persons, 348. Equilibrium of interests, 263. Espinas, A., 59. Ethical law of the world, 321. Ethics and sociology, 663. Ethnological view of history, 55. Evolution, social, 129, 160. Explanation, social, in excess of de- scription, 621. Failure, tactical results of, 317. Fashion, as means of social struggle, 277. Feuerbach, L. A., '415. Fichte, J. G., 460. Fisher, H. A. L., 556. Fiske, J., 70, 248, 416, 638. Flint, R., 46. Fogel, P. H., 88. Food-interest, 189, 196. Forces : social, 532 ff. ; social vs. non-social, 419. Fourier, F. M. C, 36. Freedom, need of defining, 250. Function > social, relation to struc- ture, 531 ; value of concept, 176. Functional view of social process, 217. Functions: social, 119, 135, 147, 148, 167-69, 172, 173, 176, 2H, 527; vs. ends, 174-76, 233 ff. Gaming instinct, 484. Gardiner, S. R., 555. Geddcs, P., 53. Genetio question in sociology, 94. INDEX 735 Gibbons, Cardinal, 409. Gidings, F. H., 4.., 69, 80, 84, 88, 90, 313, 368, 369, 399, 402, 484, SI I, 513. 552. 553, 555, 561, 642, 643. Gierke O., 24, 281. Gillen, F. J., 210. Gilman, D. C, 53. Government : political significance of, 292 ; z's. State, 226, 244, 292. Governments : partnerships of, 297 ; varieties of, Ratzenhofer's analysis, 297. Green, J. R., iii, 690. Groppali, A., 82. Group, form of, 498. Group-individuality, 601. Groups, 495. Growth, social, 115, 117, 134, 144, 145. Gumplowicz, L., 86, 87, 287, 422, 498, 499, 600. Hadley, A. T., 394. Harrington, R. M., 225. Haurion, M., 80, 84. Hawthorne, N., 448. Hayes, E. C., 3, 623. Headship, social, stability of, 125. Health-interest, 198, 426, 447. Hegel, G. W. F., 3, 40. Henderson, C. R., 655, 683, 705, 715. Herder, J. G., 40, 53, 54, 80. Herodotus, 53. Hippocrates, 53, 417. Historiology, as name for a section of sociology, 16. History : and sociology, 46 ; an- thropo-geographical view of, 51 ff.; economic view of, 61 ; ethnological view of, 55 ; ideological view of, 61 ; individualistic view of, 47 ff. ; materialistic interpretation of, 283 ; of culture, 59 ff. ; political view, of, 61. Hoffding, H., 430, 684. Hostility: absolute, 190, 195, 204, 244, 290 ; relative, 244. Ideological view of history, 61. Individual : analyzed, 443 ff. ; con- cept of, 185 ; psychological vs. so- ciological interest in, 431 ; social meanings of, 470. Individualism vs. collectivism, 473, 474, 478. Individualistic view of history, 47 ff. Individualization, 191, 192, 589, 590. Individuals: described, 480; as dif- ferentiations of groups, 208 ; mul- tiple functions of, 151 ; persistence of, 595 ff. ; sense in which inde- pendent, 138. Industrial type, 125, 126. Influence, continuity of, 611 ff. Imitation defined, 627. Ingram, J. K., 225. Innovating principle, 237, 239, 240, 241. Integration, social, 117, 129, 145. Interdependence, 567 ff. ; social, il- lustrated, 136. Interest: conflict of, in State, 281 ; defined, 433 ; of class vs. indi- viduals, 265 ; public, 245 ; univer- sal, 253 ; vs. " desire " and " want," 436, 445- Interests, i86, 194, 196, 198, 208, 213, 214, 219, 237, 425 ff., 435, 43(5 ff. ; conflict of, 203, 372 ff. ; conjunc- tion of, 203 ; differentiation of, 233 ; equilibrium of, 263 ; exclu- siveness of, 201, 281 ; integration of, 305, 306 ; mixed, in enforcing law, 438 ; moral criterion of, 280 ; ideological implications of, 446 ; vs. social forms, as criteria of progress, 219. Iroquois Confederacy, 222. James, W., 478. Judgments, moral : logical form of, 666 ff. ; relation of process-concep- tion to, 674 ff. ; sociological con- tent of, 678 ff. Justice, 602 ff. Kant, I., 321, 337, 351. Kidd, B., 354, 590. Kingsley, C, 36. Kinship-interest, 254. Kistiakowski, T., 643. Knowledge : social, problem of, 624 ; vs. assumption, 387 ; what is of most worth? 109. Knowledge-interest, 198, 461 ; con- tradictory appraisals of, 383, 384. Lacombe, P., 72. Lang, J. D., 208. Law : and morality, 295 ; as equilib- rium of interests, 296 ; as stimulus of civic power, 295 ; function of, 358. Leadership, political, 311. Lecky, W. E. H., 410. Le Play, P. F., 96, 607. m l.ibby, O. G., 283. Lilienfeld, P., 76, 77. Loria, A., 419. 736 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY Longfellow, H. W., 521. "Lordship of things," 451 fT. Lotze, H., 40, 416. Lowell, J. R., m. Macaulay, T. B., no, 577. Mackenzie, J. S., 80, 83. Maine, Sir H., 113. Marx, K., 40, 283. Masaryk, T. G., 16, 284. Materialistic interpretation of history, 283. Maurice, J. F. D., 36. McCarthy. C, 282. McCullough, J. E., 563. McGilvary, E. B., 443. Mead, G. H., 472. Menger, C., 554. Metamorphoses, social, 127, 128. Method, the desirable, in sociology, 90. Methodological tasks, 94, 95. Militant type, 125, 126. Mill, J. S., 36, 225, 410, 656. Mommsen, T., 317. Money, as means of social contact, 267. Monism vs. dualism, 55, 79, 81, 82. Montesquieu, C. de S., 40, 225. Morality : and law, 295 ; of barbar- ism vs. civilization, 333 ; objective, defined, 592. Moralization vs. struggle, 327. Morgan, L. H., 215, 222. Morphology, social, 158. Mougeolle, P., 54. Multiple working hypothesis, 52. Multiplicity, of individuals, 561. Mumford, E., 212, 312. Miinsterberg, H., 638. National interest, 255. National interests in the United States, Ratzenhofer's forecast, 256. Nationalitdtsgefiihl, 548. Necessity, social, 193. Nietzsche, F., 512. Opportunity, as test of social condi- tion, 376 ff. Opposition and conjunction, simul- taneous existence of, 205. Order, social, 195. Organic concept, 74, 75. Organism, social, 75, 115, 116, 120, 122, 123, 124, 185; psychic nature of, 141. T)rgans, social, 118, 119. Ostrogorski, M., 291. Owen, R., 36. Pais, E., 317, Parties: as fulcrum of interests, 291 ; composition of, 287 ; degrees of attachment to, 308 ; dynamic rela- tions of, 305 ; factional influence in, 309 ; fighting strength of, 289 ; fundamental antagonism of, 290 ; molecular changes in, 287 ; open vs. secret, 291 ; stability of, 290. Party afllinities 287. Patten, S. N., 60, 76, 419, 544, 575. Pearson, K., 280. Pecuniary interests, 260. Personality, composition of, 454. Phillips, N. B., 282. Philosophy of history and sociology, 44 ff-, 62, 63. Physics and sociology, 5. Plato, 54, 684. Plurality of individuals, 561. Political groups, governing idea of, 312. Political veiw of history, 61. Politics : nature of, Ratzenhofer's summary, 318; social, described, 318. Powell, J. W., 596. Power, ultimate sources of, 293. Principles, political, Ratzenhofer's definition of, 237, 287, 288. Proal, L., 410. Problem : of socialization, 389, 390 ; the social, 279 ; the sociological, 330, 594- Problems : moral, unknown quantity in, 662 ff. ; of sociology, 98 ff., 104, 105, 183 ff., 373; social, in terms of personal units, 40 1. Process, social, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 18, 104, 105, 191, 193, 196, 199, 200, 201, 203, 205, 208, 209, 212, 215, 216, 217. 234. 513. 519. 621, 637 ; a per- petual becoming, 240 ; animus of, 318; content of, 344; described, 20s, 242, 284, 327, 331, 339. 552; difficulty of understanding, 200 ; elements of, 196 ; final force in, 339 ; incidents of, 559 ff. ; indi- cated end of, 240 ; nature of, 201 ff. ; primitive, 207 ; prognosis of, 522 ; Ratzenhofer's analysis, 284 ; rhythm of differentiations and inte- grations, 227, 228 ; stages of ; 202, 213 ; summary of, 619 ; vs. biologi- cal, 208 ■ 7>s. repair of structure, 214. Process, socializing, 325. Processes, social, 176, 188. I INDEX 737 Progress, implications of, 374. Prilgeljunge, 460. Pseudo-classes, 268. Psychogenesis, social, 163. Psychological universals, 87, 89. Psychology, social, 158, 159; func- tion of, 637 ; initial problems of, 640 ; problems of, 622 ff., 625 ; two types of cases, 642. Psychology vs. sociology, 447, 488, 535, 624, 645. Purposes : collective, 370 ; social, determining historical categories, no, 188, 199; social, enlarging concept of function, 170; social, 149, 170, 173. Qualitative analysis, social, 281. Radicals vs. desperates, 290. Rank interests, 274 fif. Ratzenhofer, G., 80, 188, 189 ff., 416, 432, 467, 491, 492, 499, 513, 541, 561, 601, 614, 619; estimate of, 286, 371 ; epitome of his theory, 189. Regularity of reaction, 369. Regulating system, 122, 152. Reich, £., 16. Relationships, social, 194. Religious bodies, partnership of, 298.' Renan, E., 410. Repulsion, 566 ff. Restraint, social, 238. Revolution, French, in terms of pro- cess, 515. Rightness-interest, 198, 465. Ripley, W. Z., 53. Ritter, Karl, 53, 54. Robertson, F. W., 36. Roosevelt, T., 298. Ross, E. A., 3, 16, 80, 198, 312, 329, 399, 401, 485, 498, 500, 514, 532, 619, 643. Rousseau, J. J., 225. Royce, J., 185, 443, 630. Ruskin, J., 36. Savagery, 215. Schaffle, A., 75, 76, 77, 157-79. 619; contrasted with Spencer, 148, 167, 173; value of method of, 167 f . ; conspectus of scheme of, 157. Schafer, W. A., 282. Schiller, J. C. F., 462, 465- Schopenhauer, A., 673. Schmoller, G., 19, 97- Science : practical, ultimate problem of, 663 ; pure, ultimate problem of, 663. Security, 606 ff. ; the universal inter- est, 253. Selbstgefiihl, 459. Sex-interest, 189. Simmel, G., 94, 229, 291, 361, 491, 498, 503. Simons, S. E., 255, 402. Situations, social, 500. ( Small, A. W., 23, 35, 75, 102, 157, X 313, 354, 403, 486, 492, 524. 552, 586. Smith, A., 224, 692. Smith, T. C, 282, 283. Sociability-interest, 198, 457, 458. Sociability, relative, 244. Social organism, 75, 115, 116. Social psychology as true ethnology, 57- Social, the, 458, 510 ff. Social type, supposable, 127. Sociality, 628, Socialization, 191, 192, 195, 342, 363, 389, 390, 499, 590 ff. ; as end of struggle, 335 ; by external pres- sure, 366 ; by popular interests, 366 ; defined, 592 ; morality of, 334 ; tendency of, 336, 337 ; vs. struggle, 327. Socializing process, 325. Society : concept of, 405 ; conditions of, 404; defined, 115; elements of, 404 ; vagueness of term, 183. "Society" vs. association, 184, 185, 504- 508. Sociological point of view, 549 ff. Sociologists : implicit consensus among, 4, 177 ; task of, 303. Sociology : analogy with biology, 7, 43 ; analogy with chemistry, 6 ; analogy with physics, 5 ; and biol- ogy, 7, 43, 67, 92 ; and classifica- tion, 65, 73 ; and ethics, 663 ; and history, 13 ff., 46 ; and nature peoples, 100, loi ; and philosophy of history, 44 ff., 62, 63 ; as alterna- tive with provincial sciences, 8, 9 ; as highest generalization of social facts, 29 ; as historiology, 16 ; as point of view, 9 ; " biological," 75, 76, 77, 78, 79 ; confusing develop- ment of, 43 ; constructive purpose of, 38, 39 ; contrasted with certain types of ethnology, 12 ; contrasted with economics, 18; "data" of (Spencer), 99; defined, 3, 23 ff. ; described, 7, 8, 22, 52, 93, 100, 177- 79, 186, 198, 442, 557, 558; de- scriptive, 69, in; desideratum of. 738 GENERAL SOCIOLOGY 469 ; " dualistic," 80, 81 ; dynamic, 86; empirical, 129; general prob- lem of, 711 ; goal of, 130, 712, 713 ; history of, 40 ff. ; impulse of, 36 ff. ; latest word of, 282 ; not " so- ciologies," 63 ; of the individual, 163; pedagogical end of, 568; positive results of, 200 ; practical premises of, 705 ; practical worth of, 28; problems of, 98 ff., 105, 183, 304, 367, 505, 664, 665, 711; proper influence of, 311; subject- matter of, 3 ; task of, 586 ; vs. psy- chology, 447, 488, 535. 624, 645. Sociologists, division of labor among, 25 ff. Solidarity, 582. Sombart, W., 20, 621. Spencer, B., 210. Spencer, H., 37, 70, 72, 75, 76, 77, 82, 84. 87, 93, 97, 98, loi, 104, 109-53, 200, 212, 213, 233, 403, 414, 416, 422, 423, 468, 491, 526, 527, 529, 567, 603, 607, 613, 619, 656, 669, 687, 688, 698, 705 ; contrasted with Schaffle, 148, 167, 173. Spencer's method, decreasing ratio of importance, 153 ; essential idea of, 153; value of. III ff., 130 ff. St. Simon, C. H., 36. Stages, social: criteria of, 217, 221; formula of, 218 ; Morgan's scheme of, 215 ; Ratzenhofer's scheme of, 216, 219 ; series of, 325, 328. Standards, moral, confusion of, 653. State : a perpetual becoming, 240 ; absolute vs. constitutionalj 297 ; analogy with orchestra, 239 ; and special interests, 270 ; as epitome of the social process, 226 ; con- flicts of interest in, 281 ff. ; cri- terion of strength in, 292 ; defined, 226, 244, 292 ; described, 252, 253 ; elementary interest of, 245 ; indi- viduality of, 249 ; interests in [(Ratzenhofer's schedule), 252; in- tolerance of, 244, 247, 249, 251 ; latent antagonisms in, 242 ff. ; meaning of, 239, 240 ; not merely political, 226; origin of, 191, 250; represents types of civic constraint, 242 ff. ; role of, 242, 250, 347 ; SchJiffle's analysis of. 166 ; social process in, 224, f. ; test of its nor- mality, 280 ; tripartite organization of, 306 ; two primary elements in, 229. States, antagonistic interests in, 265 ff. Statical (jucstion in sociology, 94. Status as condition of welfare, 607. Stead, W. T., 232. Stein, L., 434, 707. Steinmetz, S. R., 44, 65, 215, 412. Stephen, L., 430. Stereotyping process, social, 230 ff., 237, 241. Structure, social, iii, 112, 117, 131, 144, 159, 167-69, 172, 176, 211, 524; as means, 214; relation to struc- ture, 531. Structure, value of concept, 132, 176. Structures, multiple functions of, 151. Struggle : by-products of, 359 ; civic, main tendency of, 332 ; implicit in modern States, 300, 301 ; social, 190, 193 ; vs. moralization and so- cialization, 327, Stubbs, W., 14, 16. Subjective interpretation, 88, 89. Subjective life (social), 165. Success, tactical results of, 317. Suggestion z's. imitation, 630. Sustaining system, 120, 151. Systems, political, Ratzenhofer's def- inition of, 287, 288. Taboo, 701. Tactical results of success or failure, 317- Tactics, political, 316. Tarde, G., 17, 43. 44, 59, 80, 92, 183, 228, 312, 329, 430, 512, 546, 566, 626, 627, 628, 631, 643 ; theorem of, substitute for, 632-36. Taylor, G., 420. Technology, social, described, 34. Teleological question in sociology, 95. Telicism, 669. Tennyson, A., 512. Terrorism as campaign device, 315. Tcrtius gaudcns, 229. Thomas, W. J., 211, 470, 484, 619, 642. Thucydides, 53. Time-element in struggle, 315. Tocfjueville, A. C. H. de, 214, 410. Tonnies, F., 77, 402, 524. Topinard, P., 56. Tribal conditions described, 209-11 Turner, F. J., 282, 283. Tylor, E. B., 56. Type, mobility of, 612. Types, social, 124; changes of, 4^2. Unity: of association, 103, 133, 137, 158, 185 ; social, psychic nature of, 141. Universal interest, 253. Universals, assumption of, 87. INDEX 739 Valuations : categorical and telic con- trasted in re temperance, 697 fF. ; clue to sociological explanation, 641 ; sociological prerequisites for, 690 ; ethical/ working tests of, 686 ; social, i6s, r349- Veblen, T., 277, 451. Vicariousness^ 592 ff. Vicious circle in social valuation, 350. Vincent, G. E., 40, 75, 157, 486, 492, 524. 586. Von Hoist, H., 574. Wagner, A., 61, 73. Wallis, L., 403. Want vs. " interest " and " desire," 436, 445- Ward, L. F., 23, 37, 40, 60, 75, 80, 82, 84, 8s, 86, 87, 125, 129, 3", 354, 381, 399-403. 413. 416, 474, 512, 524, 532, 534, 636, 544, 607, 608, 613, 623, 646, 717. Warramunga, 210. Wealth-interest, 198, 450. Weismann, 414. Welfare, social, vs. individual, 142. Woods, F. A., 563. Work-interests, 197. World-population as social body, 166. Wundt, W., 620. Zeitgeist, as political factor, 309 ; function of, 373. |W1U£?^?i^i! UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 8ENEWAlBitfiOT-^^fe 1918 DISCHAHGE-URi: lyniij^ OCT S^ 11 .^f-^ <^ ^ RENDWAl .-ft 2 6 19 ' J/INU1980 JAN 3 1980 4 RC URL iriTZRLIDRARY LOAN$ DUE TWOTvttKii TKuTvi DATE ui- i<^;t: 91975 »AV Furiii L9-Scries 444 at-\JRt 11S79 UC SOUTHERM REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 972 223 1 lllllll iliiilli nil ilii mill Inil 1^^ ' "3 i 158 00435 1507 DRMU.