Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/590

 the next one; which will not happen unless it be done on purpose by teaching, and generally in the form of tradition. This evidently presupposes human reason and human will, marking off sharply this third genus from any kind of animal subhuman society.

We are now to give closer attention to this conception. For the most part, though not always, it is the conception of a unity different from the aggregate of members; the idea of a psychical or moral body, capable of willing and of acting like a single human being; the idea of a self or person. This person, of course, is an artificial or fictitious one. It represents indeed, as the former two conceptions did, a unity persisting through the change of its parts, but this unity and identity persisting in the multitude are neither biological nor directly and properly psychological, but must, in distinction from these, be considered as specifically sociological; that is to say, while the second is the social consciousness or social mind itself, this is the product of it, and can be understood only by looking into the human soul, and by perceiving thoughts and wills which not only have a common drift and tendency, but are creators of a common work.

The idea, however, of a body capable of willing and acting is, as said above, not always, and not necessarily, implied in the idea of a sociological unit. There is a conception preceding it, as protoplasm precedes individual bodies; namely, the general idea of a society (or a community, if this important distinction is adverted to), which is not essentially different from our second idea of a psychological unit, except in this one respect, accessory to it, that the idea of this unit be present somehow in the minds of the people who feel or know themselves as belonging to it. This conception is of far-reaching significance, being the basis of all conceptions of a social, as contrasted with a political, corporation. It therefore comprises especially those spheres of social life which are more or less independent of political organization, among which the economical activity of men is the most important, including, as it does, domestic life as well as the most remote international relations between those who are connected exclusively by the ties of commercial interest. But practically it is of little