Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/251

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 239

theories properly speaking. The theories are at once more com- plex and more special, and they assume besides a more or less personal character in harmony with the psychology of their authors. However, the most subjective theories always assume a social character in harmony with the environment which gives rise to them, and this is true even when the theories are opposed to the environment in order to criticise and reform it. In any case, theories and environment are inseparable.

All of the institutions relative to the frontiers that we observe outside of Europe, as well as the corresponding customs and beliefs, present remarkable similarities to the European institu- tions and ideas, as we shall see after having described and inter- preted the facts relative to the great extra-European civilizations which have not formulated their conception into a written body of doctrines.

In the Evolution of Beliefs and Political Doctrines I have described the organization of ancient Peru and Mexico which, as the most advanced states of America, should be considered as intermediary types of the spontaneous evolution of societies, and already partly analogous to the great empires of Egypt and Persia. Ancient Peru, by means of confederation and conquest, had attained a considerable degree of development. The empires of Peru and Mexico issued directly from the tribes of red- skins. Before the Spanish conquest, Peru had attained to the condition of a state at once communal and quite monarchically hierarchized and centralized. The old territorial divisions of tribes, always fluctuating, had given place to fixed symmetrical administrative districts, almost like the present territorial divi- sions of the United States. Cuzco, the capital, was itself divided into four circumscriptions, adjusted according to the cardinal points, and exclusively inhabited by people from the correspond- ing divisions of the empire and distinguished by their original costumes. The new character of these limits and distinctions has the more or less complete substitution of the administrative divi- sions for the old territorial divisions between the primitive hordes and tribes. Before the formation of this great empire the inter- social limits between the different tribes were above all determined