Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/391

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 379

on probability rather than on demonstration; and its test of certitude is no longer a purely factual one, but one that rests on rational probability. This is all the more the case when M. Rene Worms, in his Organism? el societe, argues that in the world of social facts the individual is not the only real ; for the individual is an aggregation of cells and still has reality; and so he argues that the social organism is an individual and has reality. Now, this is essentially a metaphysical discussion and involves a meta- physical method. Mr. Spencer holds that the elements in a biological organism are concrete, but those of the social organism are discrete. But M. Worms holds that the continuity of the elements in the biological organism has less of continuity than have the elements of the social organism; since, when the bio- logical elements are separated, the organism perishes; but when the elements of social structure are separated, they tend to be reunited, as e. g., the unification of Italy. In comparison, the spaces between the cells of the biological organism are no farther separated than the individuals in the social organism. He says finally that society is a supra-organism which possesses all the characteristics of the individual organism, and more than that. This point helps to give the foregoing discussion a more general application, as it shows that the metaphysical side is not confined to a particular sort of sociological investigation, since we have shown that the more psychological type of sociologists, like Pro- fessor Giddings, Mr. Ward, and others, are involved in meta- physical conceptions, and here we see that the biological sociologists are also involved in them. All these theories, espe- cially those resting on individual and collective will or social will, etc., are supra-scientific in that they seek the inner meaning and ultimate nature of societary phenomena rather than tracing merely causal relationships.

So our conclusion thus far might be roughly stated by saying that the two disciplines are directly related in that the causality and evolution in sociology are different from that involved in the physical sciences, and so require different treatment. They are related more particularly since, in order to understand the units and the interaction in social phenomena, we are directly led into