Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/445

Rh nature and accomplish the same result that natural selection has accomplished in making gregarious animals and social insects; but thus far society, which is the product of the collective reason working for its own interests, is still dependent upon the momentary exercise of that reason in preventing its own overthrow.

It is for these reasons that I am obliged to maintain that human society is generically distinct from all animal societies. It is essentially rational and artificial while animal association is essentially instinctive and natural. The adaptation in the former is incomplete, while in the latter it is practically complete. Hence the same principles do not apply to human and animal sociology. The latter is essentially a biological study, and while psychological considerations are potent in both, those that belong to animal sociology relate exclusively to feeling while those that belong to human sociology relate chiefly to the intellect. The facts of animal association therefore—the remarkable resemblances to man's ways displayed by insects and the curious imitations of human customs in various departments of the animal world—prove to be only analogies and not true homologies, and as such have much less value to the sociologist than they appear at first view to possess.