802 SOCIOLOGY 



sizing this idea. Step by step the mind is led up from physical and 

 chemical combinations to organic and thence to social unities. 

 This conception, familiar as it seems, was in Comte's time by no 

 means obvious, and to-day it is far from generally accepted. Persons 

 and small groups, not vast social wholes, are the striking surface 

 facts which hold the attention of the average observer. 



Biological sociology has elaborated the conception of social 

 unity and centralization. Comte merely outlined the idea of the 

 social organism. Spencer carried the analogy to a high degree of 

 definite detail, insisting especially upon parallels of structure. 

 Lilienfeld laid all the stress upon the nervous system, as does No- 

 vicow in his theory of the social elite. 1 So, too, Fouillee classifies 

 social organisms according to the degree of centralization they 

 have attained; i. e., according to their nervous organization. 2 

 Schaffle emphasized functional analogies rather than structural 

 correspondences, and made much of the integration of social activ- 

 ities in a complex common life. 3 Worms has carried the biological 

 analogy almost to the point of asserting an identity. 4 Beneath 

 all these variations in emphasis, underlying a mass of common- 

 place, fanciful, and even grotesque parallelisms, one discovers 

 always the fundamental idea of social unity, structural and func- 

 tional. If the biological sociologists have not always seen society 

 steadily, they have at least tried to see it whole. 



The so-called classificationalists who, following Comte's example, 

 have sought to solve the problems of sociology by classifying social 

 phenomena into hierarchical orders, have also contributed to the 

 idea of social unity. Thus Littre" discovers four social systems which 

 appear in this order: economic, political, artistic, and scientific. 5 

 De Greef increases the number to seven; 8 La Combe ,with his theory 

 of urgency in human motives, arranges these in an order practically 

 the same as De Greef 's. 7 Others still have made classifications, 

 although not of the hierarchical kind. A. Wagner classifies human 

 motives under five heads, 8 while Small discovers six typical demands 

 for satisfaction demands which work themselves out into social 

 activities and institutions. 9 It is to be noted that all these classi- 

 fications, whether of phenomena, systems, or motives, assume a 

 society which is unified by the dependence and interrelations of the 

 analyzed elements. 



1 Novicow, Conscience et volonte saddles (Paris, 1897), pp. 32 ff. 



2 Fouillee, La science sociale contemporaine (Paris, 1878), pp. 161-168. 



3 Schaffle, Ban und Leben des'socialen Korpers,\2d ed. (Tubingen, 1896). 



4 Worms, Organisme et societe (Paris, 1896), pp. 42 ff. 



' Littre 1 , La science au point de vue philosophique (Paris, 1873), pp. 367, 368. 

 1 DeGreef, Introduction a la sociologie, vol. i, pp. 46-65. 

 La Combe, De I'histoire considerce comme science, pp. 69 ff. 



8 Wagner, Grundlegung der politischen Oekonomie, 3d ed. pp. ff. 



9 Small and Vincent, An Introduction to the Study of Society, pp. 175 ff. 



