Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/465

Rh Mechanik der Vorstellungen" have drawn the psychologist into numerous snares. But on the other hand it should be remembered that nearly all psychical terms (e. g. "psychical" itself) bear within them the history of the development of the concept for which they stand. If the sociologists give a new content to the conception of society it will not be difficult to put a new meaning into the term. Nor would this be so much putting a new meaning into the term as bringing out the implied significance of the word itself. For as Kant pointed out when alluding to the use of the term "organization" to denote the body politic, this is appropriately used for a state in which every member is both means and end to others and to the whole just because we can understand any organized structure of nature only by the aid of categories drawn from the mental life. Even though we may be obliged to say that our concept is an analogy merely, and not a constitutive category, it remains true that our only way of conceiving an organized and self-organizing being is by the idea of the reciprocal relation of parts and whole, and we can conceive the unity of a manifold only in terms of consciousness. The term then may well enough be retained if we are careful to recognize its implications.

But there are conceivable advantages from making a wider use in sociology than has been customary of another term more distinctly set apart for the psychological sphere, viz., the term person. This may at once suggest the objection that we are hypostatizing an abstraction if we speak of society as a person, since society is composed of individuals and has no distinct existence. But it should be scarcely necessary to explain that I use the word in its present psychological sense and not in its old metaphysical sense of "simple substance." The "person" exists in the various states, feelings, etc., not apart from them, and these in turn are no longer conceived as though independent entities, coming into association, inhibiting each other and