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 SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 637

of society," even when accompanied by a truthful definition of society, does not necessarily constitute an adequate definition of sociology. The formal definition of society cannot be filled out with its content, nor the conception of sociology receive its signifi- cance, until an answer has been given to the question, What are social phenomena? What are the phenomena of which it is true that similarity with respect to these indicates social unity of a kind far more significant than mere relation in space and time, the phenomena that constitute social character in the most impor- tant sense, and which are conditioned by social causes? The answer to this query is the supreme element in a true and adequate conception of sociology.

SECTION III. TWO ANSWERS TO THE QUESTION, WHAT ARE THE SOCIAL PHENOMENA?

The aim of the last section was not only to answer the ques- tion, What is a Society? but also, by a process of elimination, to draw one step nearer to an answer to the question, What are the characteristic objects of attention for a science of sociology? It was attempted to remove from the list of tentative answers to that question, the imposing but semi-imaginary notion of the great, distinct society of highly complex integration. The defini- tion of society which was substituted for it, however true and important, is not an adequate answer to the query, What are the social phenomena?

Next after the nation-state society, either other "organiza- tions" and "groups" or else "institutions" have claimed the attention of sociologists, because they are relatively conspicuous, permanent, static, and also because they are recognized as means to social ends; and means are nearer than ends and wont to press closer upon the attention and get themselves treated as the be-all and end-all of the process in which they play a part.

Organizations do not furnish the object-matter for a new general science of "sociology." They are studied by the already existing special social sciences. Legal, political, economic, reli- gious, and domestic organizations have not escaped painstaking investigation, and if any forms of organization have escaped such