Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/220

 THE NATURE OF THE SOCIAL UNITY.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE THEORY THAT SOCIETY IS A

PSYCHIC UNITY.

THE fact that social processes are characterized by some sort of unity is generally recognized, but sociologists are not yet agreed as to the nature of this unity. Some of the earlier sociologists, including Comte, described society somewhat as a mechanical unity. Of course, this does not signify that they really failed to distinguish between the unity of a machine and the unity of society. They did practically make a distinction, but, not having thought it out clearly, they were not able to state it. In the absence of any well-defined notion of the peculiar nature of the social unity, they merely took the simplest notion of unity, the one which they had most clearly defined to themselves, generalized it, and then applied it to society. Now, in a practical sense this was not wholly wrong. It did serve to call attention to certain social relationships; and while the form of the state- ment was doubtless felt to be figurative or analogical, the relation- ships to which it called attention were real. Still the procedure was logically wrong, and the best thing to be said for it is that for a time it helped to stimulate the thinking that eventually created a demand for a more adequate statement.

The next and more adequate statement made much use of the biological analogy. Of some writers of this school it would be unfair to say that they did not distinguish between the social and the biological unity, but there is so much of biological termi- nology in their statements that they have helped to foster the habit of thinking of society after the biological analogy. Even Spencer, whose conception of the social unity is not fundamentally based upon the biological analogy, is to be criticised in that he does not make any adequate statement of a real basis at all. His super- structure implies a basis which is not merely analogical, but, in the absence of a clear statement of this, the reader is apt tojnis-

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