NOVEMBEE 11, 1904.] 



SCIENCE. 



625 



to the highly complex sciences of life and 

 of mind. And when we come to the phe- 

 nomena presented by aggregations of liv- 

 ing beings — phenomena of the interaction 

 of mind with mind, phenomena of the con- 

 certed activity of many individuals work- 

 ing out together a common destiny — we 

 have a subject for scientific study too 

 many-sided, too intricate, for description 

 in a few comprehensive phrases, and the 

 scientific study itself arrives at funda- 

 mental conceptions only after a long and 

 extensive process of elimination. Funda- 

 mental conceptions in such a field are 

 necessarily general truths, expressing the 

 relations that endless facts of detail bear 

 to one another, or to underlying groupings, 

 processes or causes. A brief account, 

 therefore, of the fundamental conceptions 

 of sociology, and of the methods available 

 for the scientific study of society, must 

 remorselessly exclude those concrete partic- 

 ulars that lend to our Imowledge of collect- 

 ive life its preeminently real— its human 

 — interest. It must be restricted to con- 

 ceptions that are elemental, general and in 

 a degree abstract. 



Conforming to this necessity, I shall 

 group the fundamental conceptions of 

 sociology in three divisions, namely: (1) 

 Concepts of the subject-matter of sociolog- 

 ical study, that is to say, of society; (2) 

 concepts pertaining to the analysis and 

 classification of social facts, and incident- 

 ally to the corresponding subdivisions of 

 sociological science; (3) concepts of the 

 chief processes entering into social evolu- 

 tion, and of the inferred causes. 



The word 'society' has three legitimate 

 significations. The first is that of the 

 Latin word societas, meaning 'companion- 

 ship,' 'good-fellowship,' 'pleasurable con- 

 sorting together,' or meaning the individ- 

 uals collectively regarded that consort. 

 Examples of society in this original sense 

 are afforded by the commingling of fa- 



miliar spirits at the tavern or the club, the 

 casual association of chance acquaintances 

 at the summer resort, the numberless more 

 formal ' functions ' of ' the season. ' In the 

 second signification of the word, 'society' 

 is a group of individuals cooperating for 

 the achievement of any object of common 

 interest or utility, as, for example, a mer- 

 chant guild, an industrial corporation, a 

 church, a congress of arts and science. 

 Finally, in the third signification of the 

 word, 'society' is a group of individuals 

 dwelling together and sharing many in- 

 terests of life in common. A nest of ants, 

 a savage horde, a confederation of bar- 

 barian tribes, a hamlet or village, a city- 

 state, a national state, a federal empire- 

 all these are societies within the third and 

 comprehensive definition of the term. A 

 scientific conception of society must lie 

 within the boundaries fixed by these three 

 familiar meanings, but it must seize upon 

 and make explicit the essential fact, what- 

 ever it may be, that is a common element in 

 all social relations. 



At the present time we find in sociolog- 

 ical literature two competing conceptions 

 of the essential nature of society. They 

 are known respectively as the organic and 

 the psychological conception. 



The organic conception assumes that the 

 group of individuals dwelling and working 

 together is the true, or typical, society, 

 and that it is as much a unity, although 

 made up of individuals, as is the animal or 

 the vegetal body, composed of cells and 

 differentiated into mutually dependent 

 tissues and organs. Sketched in bold out- 

 lines by Herbert Spencer in his essay on 

 'The Social Organism' in 1860, the organic 

 conception has been elaborated by Schaffle 

 and Lilienfeld, and is to-day accepted as 

 the working hypothesis of an able group of 

 French sociologists, whose work appears in 

 the proceedings of L'Institut international 

 de Sociologie. 



