Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/587



When we speak of a house, a village, or a city, the idea immediately arising in our minds is that of a visible building, or of larger or smaller groups of buildings; but soon we also recollect the visible contents of these buildings, such as rooms and cellars and their furniture; or, when groups of buildings are concerned, the roads and streets between them. The words “house,” “village,” and “city” are, however, used in a different sense when we have in mind the particular contents of buildings which we call their inhabitants, especially their human occupants. Very often, at least in many languages, people are not only conceived of as the inhabitants of, but as identical with, the buildings. We say, for instance, “the entire house,” “the whole village”—meaning a lot of people the idea of whom is closely connected with the idea of their usual dwelling-place. We think of them as being one with their common habitation. Nevertheless it is still a visible union of individuals which we have in mind. This visible union, however, changes into an invisible one, when it is conceived of as lasting through several generations. Now the house will become identified with a family or perhaps with a clan. In the same manner a village community or a township will be imagined as a collective being, which—although not in all, yet in certain important respects—remains the same in essence, notwithstanding a shifting of matter; that is to say, an incessant elimination of waste portions—men who die—and a constant accretion of fresh elements—born children. Here the analogy with the essential characteristics of an organism is obvious. Vegetable and animal organisms likewise are only represented by such elements as are visible at any time, and the law of life consists in this, that the remaining portions always predominate over the eliminated and the reproduced ones, and that the latter by and by move and fill up the vacant spaces, while the relations of parts—e.g., the co-operation of cells as tissues, or of tissues as organs—do not undergo a substantial change. Thus such an application of biological notions to the social life of mankind—as the organicist theories or methods set out to do—is not to be rejected on principle. We may, in fact, look upon any community of this