Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/598

 substantial element of the theory. And yet the obvious criticism of that pseudo-element has been the most powerful argument against the whole theory, which consequently has seldom met with an intelligent and just appreciation in these latter days. And it is in opposition to it that, apart from a revival of theological interpretations, the recent doctrine of society or state as an organism has become so popular for a time. This doctrine, of course, was an old one. Not to speak of the ancients, in the so-called Middle Ages it had preceded the contract theory, as it has supplemented it in more modern times. It was, indeed, coupled with the theological conceptions and religious ideals so universally accepted in those days although it was not dependent upon them. The doctrine of St. Thomas and of Dante, however, contains a theory of the universal state; that is to say, of the empire, not a theory of society, of which the conception had not yet been formed, as we may safely say that a consciousness of it did not exist. This traditional organicism—applied as well to the church, the mystic body, of which Christ was the supposed head—has been transferred of late to “society,” after it had regained fresh authority as a political doctrine. However, the conception of a “society,” as distinguished from political or religious bodies, is much more vague and indefinite. Either it is to be taken in the first and second sense, which I have pointed out as a biological or a psychological aspect of collective life, in which case organic analogies hold, but the whole consideration is not properly sociological; or it may be taken in our third, or sociological, sense, in which case it implies much less than any corporation the idea of what may be called an organization. It is well known that a lively controversy has been aroused about the new organicist theory, as proposed by Mr. Spencer and others, chiefly among those sociologists who center about the Institut international of Paris, where the late lamented M. Tarde played so prominent a part. M. Tarde has been among the foremost combatants against the vague analogies of organicism; and I fully agree with most of his arguments as set forth in the third sociological congress of 1897. I even flatter myself on having anticipated some of them, in an early paper of mine upon Mr. Spencer’s sociological work; which