Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/228

 2l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL Ob' SOCIOLOGY

The social process is circuitous and self- reinstating. Each part of the process conditions and is conditioned by every other part. The process returns upon itself, and so goes on continu- ously. In this respect the social unity differs from the unity of the pebble and the machine, and is similar to that of the plant and to that of reflective consciousness. The pebble passes through a series of changes is worn by wind and wave and driving sand but it returns not to the form of a pebble again; its series of changes give birth to no new pebble to pass through a similar series of changes. Similarly with the machine. Through wear and rust and breakage the machine ceases to be a machine, and these changes call no similar machine into being. In the case of the plant there is a round of changes. The seed germinates, the plant grows, passes through a series of changes, produces seed; and the whole process is repeated continuously. Each series of changes returns to the point of beginning makes a complete circle. Each part of the process is both cause and effect to every other part. So it is in society. There are the various processes \\hich have to do with sustentation, the processes which have to do with control, and the processes that serve to perpetuate the traditions, customs, laws, etc., from generation to generation. Each of these partial processes conditions the others and is con- ditioned by them. The moral and governmental control which a society exercises over its members is essential to the going on of the industrial processes. Likewise the industrial processes con- dition the processes of moral and governmental control. Both of these would fail were it not that the traditions, customs, knowledge, laws, beliefs, etc., of the people of one generation were perpetuated in the next; and the perpetuation of these depends upon the processes of sustentation and control. The social series repeats itself in its essential characteristics. Par- ticular social groupings come and go, but each resembles its predecessors in type. Society, then, in virtue of this interdepend- ence of parts, this circuitousness of process, is organic. It remains yet to say in what sense it is organic. Is it subjectively organic? Or is it objectively organic?

Society has no end for itself, no end in consciousness. Society