The American Journal of Sociology

The following investigations constitute a chapter of a Sociology to be published by me in the future, the prolegomena to which have already appeared in this JOURNAL.”

In respect to the fundamental problem which appears to me solely to form the basis of a sociology as a distinct science, I refer to the introduction of these two monographs. I repeat here merely that this problem rests upon the distinction between the content or purpose of socializations, and the form of the same. The content is economic or religious, domestic or political, intellectual or volitional, pedagogic or convivial. That these purposes and interests, however, attain to realization in the form of a society, of the companionship and the reciprocity of individuals, is the subject-matter of special scientific consideration. That men build a society means that they live for the attainment of those purposes in definitely formed interactions. If there is to be a science of society as such, it must therefore abstract those forms from the complex phenomena of societary life, and it must make them the subject of determination and explanation. Those contents are already treated by special sciences, historical and systematic; the relationships, however, of men to each

*Translated by A. W. SMALL.

"Superiority and Subordination as Subject-Matter of Sociology," Vol. II, Nos. 2 and 3; “The Persistence of Social Groups,” Vol. III, Nos. 5 and 7.

other, which in the case of the most diverse purposes may be the same, and in the case of like purposes may be most various— these have not as yet been the subject-matter of a particular science; and yet such a science, when constituted, would for the first time make manifest what it is which makes the societythat is, the totality of historical life-into society.

I deny myself at this point all further explanation and justification of this program, since it is, after all, less important to propose a program than to show by carrying it out its significance and its fruitfulness; and I proceed at once to the special problem, namely, how the form and the inner life of a societary group are determined by the numerical relationships of the same:

It will be conceded at the first glance, without hesitation, that the sociological structure of a group is essentially modified by the number of the individuals that are united in it. It is an everyday experience - yes, it is almost to be construed from the most general social-psychological presuppositions—that a group of a certain extent and beyond a certain stage in its increase of numbers must develop for its maintenance certain forms and organization which it did not previously need; and that, on the other hand, more restricted groups manifest qualities and reciprocal activities which, in the case of their numerical extension, inevitably disappear. A double significance attaches itself to the quantitative determination: first, the negative significance that certain forms which are necessary or possible from the contents or the conditions of life can come to realization only before or after a certain numerical extension of the elements; the positive significance that other forms are promoted directly through definite and purely quantitative modifications of the group. As a matter of course, these do not emerge in every case, but they depend upon other social circumstances in the group.

The decisive matter, however, is that the forms in question never spring from these latter conditions alone, but are produced from them only through the accompanying numerical factor. Thus it may be demonstrated that quite or nearly communistic formations have up to the present day been possible only in relatively small circles, while they have always failed in large groups.

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The American Journal of Sociology, Volume 8