binary star is a solar system, or a molecule of two atoms a body.

Most helpful is Simmel's notion that the true matter of sociology is not the groups themselves, but the modes or forms of association into groups. In bodies the most diverse

a church or a guild, a trust or an art league-may be found identical modes of union. Despite their infinite variety of purpose, the groupings of men reduce to a few principles of association. Among such "forms" are equality, superiority and subordination, division of labor, imitation and opposition, secrecy, and hierarchy. To work out the various relations in which associates may stand to one another, and to discover what happens to groups in consequence of the more or less of each relation, is the task of the sociologist.

Nevertheless, I prefer to consider this attractive area, not the domain of sociology, but only one of its provinces, viz., that of social morphology. The partialness of a conception which focuses our gaze on the human interactions themselves is well brought out by comparing it with another conception which rivets attention on the results or products of these interactions. For Dr. Ward the subject-matter of sociology consists in human achievement. How do languages, sciences, and arts come into being? How does the coral reef of civilization rise? This is certainly one of the most fascinating and practical of studies, but, as Dr. Ward distinctly states, it does not cover all the ground. I should place his superb book, as (say) Vol. III, in a complete treatise on sociology. For how can you draw a firm line between those modes of human interaction which yield a permanent product, and those which leave behind them no lasting result? Mobs and panics, public opinion and social suggestion, are certainly worthy of study, albeit they contribute nothing to the sum of human achievement.

A widening circle of thinkers make sociology equivalent to the science of association. They would have it deal with the conditions, motives, modes, phases, and products of association, whether animal or human. Here is, indeed, a virgin field to till, and to it we all gladly retire when our neighbors stigmatize us

as poachers and claim-jumpers. But who contents himself with this territory? Professor Giddings so conceives sociology, yet he tells us a few pages farther on that it is concerned with “the constant elements in history." All sociologists are keen in their ambition to find out the springs of human progress, to lay bare the prime causes of social transformations, to trace the influence of environment on the character of population, and to correlate the various phenomena of social life. Yet none of these properly belong among the problems of association.

Social psychology, social morphology, social mechanics—all of them are, it seems to me, but convenient segments of a science, the subject-matter of which is social phenomena. I say "phenomena" in preference even to "activities," because it embraces beliefs and feelings as well as actions.

"But," it will be urged, "what phenomena are social? People yawn, sleep, mope, plan. Is this sort of thing social just because they are neighbors? The solitary ape behaves in the same way." This query cannot be better answered than in the words of Tarde: "What a man does without having learned from the example of another person, walking, crying, eating, mating, is purely vital; while walking with a certain step, singing a song, preferring at table one's national dishes and partaking of them in a well-bred way, courting a woman after the manner of the time, are social."

If the social is not the vital, neither is it the individual psychic. So we might add as supplement to Tarde: "When one fears the dark, delights in color, craves a mate, or draws an inference from his own observations, that is merely psychic. But when one dreads heresy, delights in 'good form,' craves the feminine type of his time, or embraces the dogmas of his people, that is social."

But we cannot go with Tarde when he says: "The social is the imitated." Psychologists recognize that one idea calls up another in virtue of contrast as well as in virtue of resemblance. Likewise a person's behavior may be determined in way of opposition as well as in way of imitation. "Contrary" children are controlled by telling them just the opposite of what you wish

them to do. Likewise non-conformists in going out of their way to flout conventions pay involuntary homage to the influence of society. Foemen, competitors, and disputants so determine one another that it is impossible to gauge them without invoking the external factor. "Social," then, are all phenomena which we cannot explain without bringing in the action of man on man.

If at first blush this calls for a "science of things human," let us remember that sociology is not bound to attend to phenomena that do not manifest themselves on a considerable scale. The individual case-David and Jonathan, Lear and his daughters-challenges only the artist. Let a case recur often enough to present a type of personal relations, let many lives receive the same standard or ideal from without, and there is room for the generalizer.

Practically one would not go far wrong in saying that sociology deals with the development, maintenance, and disappearance of social planes, classes, and groups, and of the structures, institutions, and cultures they produce. By planes I mean particular uniformities in belief and practice created by association. Classes are uniformities in character or mind which arise in consequence of social life. A more protracted play of the socializing forces creates groups, which are classes, the members of which, having become conscious of one another, draw together and so generate a group-will which reacts upon the individual wills.

In the rag-carpet times of our grandmothers each housewife got her warp from the store, but provided the woof from her own rag-bag. Now the woof of each human being's life is supplied by that which is individual to him; his heredity, temperament, situation, history. But the warp is supplied from without, sometimes from a very slender stock, allowing little range of selection. Whence and how commonplace people get the knowledge, convictions, tastes, and standards that constitute the warp of their lives is explained by social psychology-and although some regard it as the top story of psychology, I prefer to make it the lower story of sociology.

The running of boundary lines acceptable to the biologist and

the psychologist is not the worst of our task. There remains the harder problem of coming to terms with the special social sciences, such as economics, jurisprudence, and politics.

Sociology, as I have described it, does not meekly sidle in among the established sciences dealing with the various aspects of social life. It does not content itself with clearing and tilling some neglected tract. It has, indeed, reclaimed certain stretches of wilderness and made them its own. With this modest rôle, however, it is not satisfied. It aspires to nothing less than the suzerainty of the special social sciences. It expects them to surrender their autonomy and become dependencies, nay even provinces, of sociology. The claim is bold, and we may be sure the workers in long-cultivated fields will resist such pretensions, unless there are the best of reasons for founding a single comprehensive science of social phenomena.

Such a reason is certainly not furnished by "the unity of the social aggregate.' As we have seen, there is no well-defined social aggregate. The nation is the nearest to it, but the actual distinctness and oneness of the nation is a historical incident

due to past wars. Every step in the peaceful assimilation of peoples brings us nearer the time when the globe will be enmeshed in an unending plexus of interpenetrating free associations, no one of which will arrogate to itself the title of "society."

Nor is a good reason furnished by that constant reciprocal action between socii which is expressed in the "social organism" concept. As division of labor, exchange, and competition, these interactions have long formed part of the stock in trade of economics. As communication, they are the staple of linguistics. As party activity and civic co-operation, they have been set forth by the science of politics. Wherefore, then, a new science to teach that "no man liveth unto himself"?

Some would justify a unitary treatment of society by making one species of social phenomena the cause of all the rest. However varied the aspects of social life, if there is but one causal center, one fountain head of change, there can be but one science. To Loria's eye all the non-economic factors running through the

social system—such as law, politics, and morality-derive from underlying economic conditions. The desire for wealth is the sole architect of ethical standards, legal norms, and the constitution of the state. As Loria takes the economic régime, so Vico and Fustel de Coulanges and Mr. Kidd take religion, Condorcet, Buckle, and Du Bois Reymond take science, as the primum mobile of the social world. All this, however, reads into human events a unity and simplicity that is not really there. There is more than one desire operating in society. The endeavor to reduce all kinds of social facts to a single cause is vain.

An adequate ground for creating an inclusive science lies in none of the foregoing considerations. Let us, then, attack the problem from another side. Let us consider under what conditions the established social sciences might vindicate the sacredness of their ancient boundaries and successfully withstand any scheme of merger into a more general science.

Suppose that the desires that constitute the springs of human action and the causes of social phenomena resolved into certain basic cravings, each distinct from the others in its object, and each stimulating men to a particular mode of activity in order to satisfy it. Suppose, furthermore, these specific desires never crossed or modified one another and were intractable to the unifying control of any world-view or ideal of life. Suppose, finally, that each craving, or set of cravings, operating on a large scale, generated in society certain appropriate dogmas, creeds, activities, and institutions, which remained separate from and unmixed with the collective manifestations of other cravings. Religious phenomena would then be unalloyed by ethical or political considerations. The forms of the family would be unaffected by industrial changes. The fine arts would run their course heedless of revolutions in the sphere of ideas.

Under these conditions there might exist for each set of cravings at work in social life an independent body of knowledge. The craving for wealth would mark out a sphere for economics. The sex and parental cravings would do the same for genetics or the science of the family. The lust for power would define politics. The sentiment of the wronged would fix the scope of juris