Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/654

 638 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

investigation, they are relatively unimportant. And while it is not inconceivable that there might be a study of organizations as such, which should investigate characteristics of organizations which are not peculiar to those studied by any one social science, but which belong to all organizations, yet such a study of organi- zations as forms of association does not promise to reveal their real significance, which is to be discovered only by studying the various forms of activity for the sake of which they exist. More- over, literary, religious, and other cultural activities, and social activities as a whole, are not embodied in organizations. In so far as they are organized at all, that fact is only an incident and not the essence, and the great mass of social interaction is not organized. The social activities that mold every man, as well as every group and organization, must escape the sociologist whose attention is riveted upon organizations. And, if it can be made to appear that a general science of sociology can grasp this far richer field, no one will be likely to content himself with the con- ception of sociology as a study of organizations. Likewise, if it be said that sociology should be a study of groups, which, whether organized or not, are at least united by political, creedal, or some other form of related activities, the same is to be said as has just been said concerning organizations, namely, that the impos- ing and important groups are already studied, as groups, by the special social sciences. And those which are neither important nor imposing as groups do carry on activities that are important and that should not escape the attention of the sociologist.

Similarly, of institutions it is to be said that they receive atten- tion from the existing special social sciences, and that a new gen- eral science of sociology should not set out either to make itself a hodge-podge of the study of institutions that are already receiving detailed, special treatment, or to devote itself to the least impor- tant and hitherto most neglected institutions. And whatever general truths there are concerning organizations, groups, or institutions truths which may not be discovered by any special social science, and, when once discovered, may pertain to them all they are to be sought, not by merely studying organizations. - as organizations, nor institutions as institutions, but by studying the activities of human association, of which institutions and