SOCIAL AND INDIVIDUAL EXPANSION 363 



abode — gradually acquires greater dimensions and greater 

 stability. The primitive social group undergoes fission, breaks 

 up into a munber of separate groups ; and the conflicts of these, 

 resulting in the extinction of some and the growth and further 

 division of others, gradually bring about the formation of a 

 larger society, formed by the union of a number of smaller ones. 

 Such compound societies having been consolidated, repetition 

 of the process on a larger scale brings doubly compound societies ; 

 and in the course of time, after various combinations, com- 

 poundiag and recompounding, we come to the aggregation of 

 small feudal territories into provinces, and a subsequent aggrega- 

 tion of these into kingdoms. But this whole process of social 

 growth, which is still going on before our eyes, is necessitated by 

 the law of life, by the law of expansion. Society, since its primi- 

 tive days, has done nothing but expand. As fast as society 

 expanded and extended its limit of growth, so in proportion 

 was the individual power of expansion augmented. And this 

 will appear doubly clear to us when we reflect that the activity 

 of every society is, in a sense, but the activity of its component 

 individuals. Yet it would, we think, be a serious error to regard 

 the social organism as a mere aggregate of individuals, and not 

 as a body possessing its own laws, and living, to a certain extent, 

 its own life. Our consideration of the question of suicide has 

 illustrated how society may, even in regard to a phenomenon 

 which at first sight appears to depend solely on the laws of 

 individual psychology, lead an existence obeying laws sui 

 generis. If we are to accept sociology as a science, then we must 

 emphatically convince ourselves of the fact that social pheno- 

 mena are not merely individual phenomena ; they are to a 

 certaia extent individual phenomena, but they are individual 

 phenomena multiplied by x, so to speak. Thus, to take the 

 question of suicide, we find a constancy in the rate of suicide 

 which would be impossible were suicide a mere individual 

 phenomenon, dependent solely on individual neurosis. Social 



