In other words, the social process, as we find it among men thus far, bears testimony that the inclusive aim which men should set up for themselves ought to be the perfecting of social co-operation, to the end that the lot of every person in the world may be to share, in a progressively widening proportion, in all the developing content of the most abundant life. The social process is not to be forever a consumption of men for the production of things. It must become more and more a consumption of things for the production of men. This human product must be perfected in all the qualities and dimensions of life. More and better life by more and better people, beyond any limit of time or quality that our minds can set, is the indicated content of the social process.

7. Social structure.'-The concepts dealt with thus far in this paper have come into conscious use in sociology rather late. They have been forced upon our attention as analysis and interpretations have become more exact. They are rudimentary and necessary, from the logical point of view, but it took the sociologists a long time to see the need of such concepts.

Under the present title, on the other hand, we encounter a concept which has had much more than its due share of influence upon sociology since Comte, and it would be easy to show that it has implicitly played an important rôle, though most of the time it was unexpressed in direct terms, throughout the whole range of thinking about human actions. The notion of social structure has certainly dominated all the social sciences during the past fifty years. So far as we can see, it is a concept which we must always use. It seems probable, on the other hand, that we shall reduce the ratio of its prominence below that which it has enjoyed during the formative period of sociology.

Every activity implies a formation of elements by means of which the activity takes place. In general this means a structure of parts concerned in the activity.

1 Vid. SMALL ANd Vincent, Introduction, pp. 87-96; AMERICAn Journal of SOCIOLOGY, Vol. II, p. 311; Vol. IV, p. 411; Vol. V, pp. 276 and 626–31.

Thus the Century Dictionary has, among others, the following definition of the term: "In the widest sense, any production or piece of work artificially built up or composed of parts joined together in some definite manner; any construction

In

It is not intended that the term "social structure," as here used, shall cover any questions that are in dispute about the sense in which the concept is applicable to society. The notion has been overworked, abused, distorted, misrepresented, and misunderstood. Many sociologists have accordingly felt obliged to protest against the notion altogether; or, at least, they have so strongly objected to certain versions of the notion that they have virtually argued against the validity of the fundamental category itself. At the same time, everyone who has attempted to interpret men's activities has been obliged to use the concept in some generic form. The essential fact is that, when men act together, whether in pairs or in multitudes, there is always an adjustment of some sort between them. Thus in a matriarchal family the woman has a certain conceded prestige and influence, with reference to which the man and the children are subordinate. the patriarchal family there is similar subordination, but the man is the center of power. In every group of boys or girls at play, the arrangement of leaders and led is sure to develop in some degree or other, sooner or later. In a gang of men at work, there will always be a gravitation toward definite arrangement of leaders and led, or boss and bossed. So in every larger and more developed human activity. The adaptations of the individuals to each other may be entirely fluid and flexible and transitory, as in a crowd accidentally assembled by curiosity; or they may become definite, rigid, and relatively permanent, as in the legal institutions of civilized society. Wherever social activities occur, however, this manner of adjustment between the actors, this structure of the parts, is just as real as the existence of the parts themselves. This structure into which persons arrange themselves whenever they act together is both effect and cause of their actions. The activities cannot be fully or truly known, therefore, without knowledge of the social structure within which and by means of which they take place. It has

....

An organic form; the combination of parts in any natural production; an organization of parts or elements. . . . . Mode of building, construction, or organization; arrangement of parts, elements, or constituents; form; make:-use of both natural and artificial productions."

come about, accordingly, that many sociologists have virtually made the treatment of social structures the whole of sociology. They have, moreover, interpreted social structure in such a dogmatic way that progress of social knowledge has been retarded by reaction against their methods. In refusing to accept unfortunate versions of social structure many people have placed themselves in an attitude of antagonism to the whole conception of social structure. This is an impossible war between words and realities. The latter must prevail. Men act in and through correlations with each other. This is the essential fact which the concept "social structure" recognizes. We are inevitably forced to find out at last what manner of social structure is concerned in any given portion of human experience which attracts our attention. This is as true of a district school, or of a country town, or of a local church, as it is of China or the "concert of the powers." "What are the customary, understood, accepted, and expected modes in which the individuals concerned get along with each other?" This is one of the first questions to which we must find an answer, if we are attempting to understand any portion of society.

For many reasons the most available help in reaching a working familiarity with the concept "social structure," as it is now held by all sociologists, is Spencer's Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, Part II, "The Inductions of Sociology." Spencer's account of social structure must be taken with many grains of salt. In the first place, whether Spencer himself was perfectly clear in his own mind about the matter or not, the biological analogies which he uses so liberally are to be taken as purely illustrative, good so far as they go, but not to be confounded with the literal relationships between persons which they are employed to symbolize. People who use biological figures most liberally in expressing social relations are most emphatic today in asserting that they use those forms of expression merely as the most convenient rhetorical device for making social relationships vivid. Society is not a big animal. There is no social stomach or brain or heart or eye or spinal cord. The digestive process for society is performed by the digestive organs of the

on.

individuals who compose society. The thinking of society is done in the minds of the individual members of society, and so Yet all the individuals in a society are, as we have seen, in association. The feeding and thinking and other primarily individual activities which they perform all have a positive or negative effect on the maintenance and activities of the association. It comes about, therefore, that we are practically justified in speaking as though society itself had these parts or organs which are literally located in individuals only. This will be more evident if we combine with further discussion of the present subject the closely related subject of the next section.

8. Social functions.— Men in association have common work to do. Because they have this common work to do they associate, and because they associate they find more occasions for common work. Everybody has to eat, but, after people have associated a little while, they find that some of their number are not producing food. They are doing other things, like singing patriotic songs, or decorating weapons, or performing religious rites. Their activities would not feed them if the association did not exist. In fact, however, the interests of the members of the association have become so specialized that there is a demand for these activities which are only indirectly connected with the food-producing activities. We may express this fact in terms of social function in this way: some persons become set apart in the course of the social process for the social function of supplying food; other persons are gradually permitted or required by the interests of all to perform other functions less essential to the sustaining of life than the function of foodgetting. Each of these kinds of work involves some detail of social structure, and, on the other hand, all social structures are assortments of persons incidental to the supply of incessant general wants, i. e., the performance of social functions.

There is nothing mystical or arbitrary about these two concepts, social structure and social function, as they are held by all sociologists. They are merely the most convenient sym

1 Vid. Small and Vincent, Book IV, “Social Physiology and Pathology," and SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, Book II, chap. v, “ Social Functions.”

bols that we can adopt for literal facts in society. On the one hand, human life is a vast complex of work interchanged between all and each. In brief, men in association carry on a system of functions for each and all. To do this the associates arrange themselves in certain more or less permanent adjustments to each other. This is the fact indicated by the term "social structure." Wherever there is society there is social function and social structure. The closer we get to the real facts of society, the more specifically must we be able to answer the questions: Precisely what are the functions which the society is carrying on? and, Precisely what structure has the society adopted as its equipment for performing the functions?

It cannot be too often repeated that every person who is trying to exert an influence of any sort upon other people, whether for good or evil, is concerned to know, first, just what objects in life those people are pursuing, and, second, just what social adjustments they have adopted in pursuit of the objects. As we shall see presently, these two aspects of the situation are not only important in themselves, but they powerfully affect each other. It follows that ability to comprehend the particular society with which one is dealing, in terms of social structure and social function, is a part of the necessary outfit of both theoretical and practical sociologists.

We may return to Spencer for our illustrations of the ways in which these conceptions have been developed and applied. In the simplest terms, the sociologists long ago discovered that they must learn how to find out what communities are really doing and how they are doing it. That is, we must be able to go behind the visible and the conventional and discover the real aims and methods which the visible and the conventional often conceal. For example, Spencer divides social institutions, for certain purposes, into, first, domestic institutions; second, ceremonial institutions; third, political institutions; fourth, ecclesiastical institutions; fifth, professional institutions; sixth, industrial institutions. Now every society, except the most primitive, and quite minute portions of every society, may have some parts of each of these sorts of institutions. It is necessary to know