Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/643

 SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 627

is suggested and typified by the nation-state. This has been regarded as the social group par excellence, and as being not only a political unit, but a distinct and unitary combination of the total tide of associated activity.

It is necessary for sociologists to form the habit of thinking that it is enough to constitute a society when people are united in any one of the significant forms of collective action. Besides political societies, there are economic societies, creedal societies, intellectual societies many and various, ethical societies each with a distinct conscience code of its own, and aesthetic societies each with its own conventionality, etc. But hitherto the habit has been to think that the most important and only adequate meaning attached to the term "a society" is that of a population unified by political, and usually by racial, ties, and also by its manifold non-political institutions and customs, and by constant communi- cation and interaction, each modifying the whole and modified by the whole, while this highly integrated society is distinct from other societies and from the rest of the world.

This, of course, was the position of sociologists as long as they regarded society as a great organism, almost as if it were a higher type of animal. And it is by no means confined to such sociolo- gists. It dominates the discussions of men who do not state it, and it is stated and advocated by men whose thought it no longer dominates. It should cause no wonder if the true and heuristic definition of society is reached only after society has been exten- sively studied. First discoveries must be made without the aid of construction lines which facilitate later exploration. And if, as in this case, a false idea is once formed, either of the shape of a new land, or of the object of study for a new science, the discoveries that will rectify it must be made in spite of the early misconception. In that case the notes of the explorer will contra- dict the map with which he set out, and such contradictions may accumulate before he modifies his map. And the true observa- tions of the scientist may indicate the erroneousness of the academic definitions from which he starts for some time before he attends to the inconsistency and remedies it.

Thus even Professor Tarde was at pains to defend the notion