Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/463

Rh imitation of natural science, especially biology, and (b) absolute opposition to subjective (psychological) sociology under all its forms, in particular the refusal to attribute any role to the reflective will of the members of society. These two characteristics are sources of fundamental errors. To make sociology purely "objective " is to deprive it of its essential character. The common fault of both subjective and objective sociology is to identify the subjective with the individual, whereas by looking within we may pass the bounds of individuality as truly as by looking without. The society of which we form a part is within us as truly as we are within it. Sociability, more or less conscious, is as truly an element in the social reality of the present as is any objective social phenominon. Society is a "becoming," as well as a thing. In proportion as it more nearly approaches coordinate, conscious action and corresponds better to its definition—in proportion, that is, as it creates itself—it becomes more completely an object of science; but a science whose laws are at once objective and ideal.

M. Tarde's Logique Sociale is too important a work for adequate notice here. I may mention, however, its relation to his former work and its general purpose. As indicated by its title it aims to discover the necessary conditions of society. As Kant's logic asked "How is knowledge possible?" so social logic asks "How is society possible?" and finds its social categories, permanent, necessary conditions of stable equilibrium of society. These are either (a) logical, viz., language and the deity, or (b) teleological, conceptions of good and evil. We study, then, the judgment and will at work in society. Society began when the judgments and wills of individuals came consciously into contact in agreement or discord. Beliefs and desires constitute the body of our conscious life and so the sources of social phenomena. Imitation is but the social memory, an indispensable condition, but not the most prominent feature of social consciousness. After a preliminary chapter on individual logic the categories cited above are studied as conditions of society, various analogies are discovered (or in some cases one is tempted to say invented) between the