in the case of most of the sociologists of our epoch, who have not hesitated to approach general sociology with an insufficient preparation in the special social sciences. As a consequence, they have fatally neglected the essential and original characteristics of social phenomena, and have deduced the laws of these phenomena from the laws of the antecedent sciences, especially in recent times from the laws of biology and psychology, which are themselves imperfectly understood by the literati of this class. Yet it is necessary, in spite of the defect which they have in common with these other writers, to render full justice to the works of Lilienfield, Tarde, G. Lebon, and others, whose biologic and psychic deductions have very usefully, and even brilliantly, pointed out the relations and analogies—that is to say, the real similarities—which unite sociology to the two directly antecedent sciences; integral sociology will always have to take account of their points of view.

The empirical method is just the opposite of the scientific method. The latter starts with the consideration of the simplest and most general facts in order to advance methodically to the more complex and more special. Empiricism proceeds from the consideration of the external and superficial ensemble to the consideration of the deeper elements. It is only then that it works its transformation into science and, retracing in an inverse direction the first route traversed, advances methodically to knowledge, properly speaking. At the most, one may say that empiricism, by proceeding from the whole to the elements, opens the way to science, and that in this respect, by placing itself at a very broad point of view, it is a natural process in the advance of the human mind. In fact, the empirical method was employed in the infancy of all the sciences; but in no science is the whole known before the elements and the parts. As well say that a person upon another planet who distinguishes the earth knows our earth; he does not know it, in reality, any more than we know the planet Mars, for example.

In the first part of our Introduction à la sociologie, we proceeded to the most complete analysis possible of the constituent elements of social bodies; we have shown that all these elements

can be reduced to two factors, which we may consider as simple to the extent that they are sociological facts: land and population. In the first we have included the entire environment, the inorganic as well as the vegetable and the animal, excepting the human species; the latter constitutes the second element of every society.

Land and population are both composite. However, the analysis of their elements is not within the domain of sociology, but belongs to that of the psychical sciences, the biological sciences, or the physical sciences in general. Sociology rests upon all of these sciences; societies themselves are the combined products of the phenomena corresponding to these sciences; but sociology has precisely for its subject only the results of these combinations; it is neither physics, biology, nor psychology; it is a science whose domain extends to particular combinations and even to all these combinations added together; it is a combination of their combinations.

Thus, by constituting itself a new foundation outside of its direct subordination to psychology and biology, sociology connects itself with the ensemble of inorganic philosophy. In the sociology of Comte, man and his environment are considered as if one were the author and the other were the theater of the social drama; in our sociology, the environment and man enter into a superior mélange, whose product is society; in our view, without the theater, no humanity; without humanity, no theater. The dualistic conception of social structure and social life advanced by Auguste Comte has resulted necessarily in a persistent antagonism between two principal schools, one of which accords more importance to environment, the other to man, especially to intellectual man. It is thus that the distinction between body and soul as a continuation of the distinction between nature and man tends to the consideration of man as the king of creation and the soul as the sovereign of the body. Our sociology is different in this respect from that of Comte; it is essentially monistic.

Societies are, then, the product of a higher combination of these two elements: land and population. This combination,

this intimate blending of inorganic and organic factors into structures which are necessarily larger and more complex than organisms properly speaking, permits us to confer upon even the smallest and simplest societies the name superorganisms. Yet this appellation need not imply, a priori, any absolute identity, either quantitative or qualitative, with organisms. The question of resemblances and differences is answered by direct observation of social facts, and by their comparison with organisms. It would be a capital error to proceed by simple assimilation and to seek thereby to deduce the laws of sociology from those of biology and psychology; sociology has its own characteristics and its own laws. It is only by making an abstraction of these special characteristics that sociology can perhaps be correlated gradually with the simpler and more general laws of the antecedent sciences. This operation is not within the proper domain of sociology, but belongs to that of the general philosophy of the sciences; the single philosophic ambition of sociology should be to reduce its own laws to a single sociological law, if it is possible to do so. Nevertheless, this most general sociological law, by its very nature, will be in direct contact with those of the antecedent sciences, and therefore with the most general law of philosophy as a whole.

We have recognized that the combination of the two elementary factors constitutive of every society (land and population) reveals itself, upon analysis, in phenomena, or, if one prefers, in properties or in forces, sui generis. We have classified these phenomena on the basis of their common and distinctive characteristics, and we have drawn up this classification in a serial and hierarchic order, according to the increasing complexity and speciality of the phenomena, just as Comte classified the phenomena relative to the antecedent sciences.

In conformity with this methodical classification of social phenomena, which is at once logical and dogmatic, natural and historical, we have constructed a hierarchic series of the special social sciences, concrete as well as abstract, of which sociology represents the general philosophy:

The natural character of this classification appears especially in social embryology and in organography, in which we treated of the formation of societies and of their organs or institutions by means of differentiations. All the phenomena relating to the social sciences enter into this classification. Not only are they superior in mass, complexity, and plasticity to the analogous phenomena which we may encounter even in the most advanced antecedent sciences, such as biology and psychology, but they manifest a superiority which we may call qualitative, in contrast with the differences enumerated by Herbert Spencer, which are mainly quantitative. This characteristic peculiar to sociological phenomena, especially in its clearly conscious and well-developed forms, is encountered nowhere excepting in social bodies, although it appears in germ in certain animal societies. It is this quality which enables societies to organize collectively and to function according to contractual modes, with the result that contractualism becomes a special and superior form of social adaptation, a true method of common structure and common life. Although these forms and modes of social activity are met with in all societies, even in the simplest and most primitive, they are naturally to be observed mainly in the higher social types of humanity. They are transformed continually into an unconscious organization and activity, which in turn become the point of departure of new contractual relations. Neither in general psychology nor in biology do we find contractual phenomena, but only spontaneous cellular associations and combinations. Nowhere except in societies are aggregates, organs, groups of organs, systems of groups, associations or colonies made, unmade, dissolved, and transformed according to contractual modes, until it seems, when the more and more

regular relations which are established between the divers particular societies tend to the establishment of a vast, world-wide internationality, that contractualism becomes at a certain point the principal connective bond between the divers members of the humanitarian superorganism. Not only is contractualism the basis of the system of political federations and confederations, but it will be especially prominent in the economic federations and confederations of the future. It is the process par excellence of collective co-operation, which is the positive aspect of the division of social labor. In fact, this division of labor is applicable, not only to individuals, but also to the social forms in which they are incorporated.

Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer have observed in an imperfect manner the essential characteristic of societies. According to the former, this characteristic is that they are conscious. Herbert Spencer explained this fact by saying that they are conscious because the units composing social bodies — that is to say, men· are conscious. But these are only analogies with organisms rather than differences; at most, they are only quantitative differences. Societies are more conscious than organisms, but by what property, by what new force, does this superior degree of consciousness manifest itself? Our response is: By the contractual force or property.

Accordingly, by virtue of the principle that the distinctive characteristics of divers orders of phenomena are clearly apparent, especially in the highest forms of the phenomena, although they appear in the lowest, we can proclaim that contractualism constitutes the distinguishing characteristic of society, both from the structural and the functional point of view; it is their superior and special mode of adaptation and life. In brief, it is the original characteristic which alone justifies the formation of the social sciences into distinct sciences and the organization of sociology into a general philosophy of these sciences.

This contractualism appears in all the stages of social history; it first manifested itself in the phenomena relating to representation, deliberation, and the execution of the collective will in political affairs; today it tends to predominate even in