THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL STRUCTURE 



BY FERDINAND TONNIES 



[Ferdinand J. Tonnies, Privat-docent and Professor, Kiel University, b. Riep, 

 Oldenswort Parish, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, July 26, 1855. Ph.D. 1877; 

 Professor, 1891. Member of International Institute of Sociology; Society of 

 Social Politics; corresponding member of Sociological Society, London. Author 

 of Community and Society; Hobbes's Life and Doctrines; The Nietzsche Cult; 

 Schiller as a Citizen; and a large number of articles and papers in German and 

 foreign periodicals, philosophical, sociologic, economic, and general.] 



THE problems of social structure we find in a rather confused 

 state at the present moment. In an earlier stage of sociological 

 thinking considerable expectations were attached to the interpret- 

 ation of social phenomena by means of biological analogies, or 

 what was called the organic theory of society. These expectations 

 may now be said to have been disappointed. The organic theory 

 has almost universally been abandoned. Yet even its severest 

 critics are likely to admit that there is some truth in or behind it, 

 although they seem to be at a loss to explain properly what kind of 

 truth it is. 



By a curious coincidence, the three most notable representatives 

 of that doctrine the Russian, Paul von Lilienfeld, a man of high 

 social standing; the German, Albert Schaffle, with a reputation 

 as a political economist; and the Englishman, Herbert Spencer, 

 whose fame needs not to be emphasized all departed from life 

 in the year 1903, the two latter in the month of December, all in 

 advanced old age. To these three men sociology owes a debt of grati- 

 tude, because, after Comte, they were the first at least in Europe 

 to formulate a theory of social life in large outline. From all, but 

 especially from Schaffle and Spencer, we receive, and shall continue 

 to receive, constant and fertile impulses or suggestions. But I feel 

 safe in predicting that it will soon be universally acknowledged 

 that the foundations of their theories were not laid firmly enough 

 for permanently supporting those boldly planned structures of 

 thought. 



For a longtime past I have cherished the opinion that these authors, 

 as well as nearly all their successors and critics, are hampered by 

 a fundamental lack of clearness as to the subject of their inquiries 

 a subject which they are in the habit of designating by the very 

 indefinite name of "a society/' or, as Schaffle puts it, "the social 

 body." Confusion of ideas invariably proceeds from a defect of 

 analytical reasoning; that is to say, of proper distinction. 



I believe and assert that three distinct conceptions, the common 

 object of which is social life in its broadest sense, are not sufficiently, 



