Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/655

 SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 639

organizations are not the essence, but more or less incidental products and deposits, and which transcend the limits of group or institutional forms. This is not excluding the sociologist from the study of any of the products of association, but only asserting that the range of his attention cannot be defined in these terms. The truth of this assertion perhaps can be made evident only by disclosing some more satisfactory view of the sociologist's field of study.

A kind of social interaction that is of universal human signifi- cance may appear in transient relations, now of a few individuals here, now of a few individuals there. These interactions, like all association, involve a certain degree of togetherness, and for con- troversial purposes might be called, in a sense, group-phenomena. It makes little difference what they are called after they are recog- nized and understood. But to start out in search of group- phenomena is a good way to prevent adequate recognition or comprehension of them. Possibly a student of groups, as such, might recognize that an essential object of sociological study often may be present where two workmen sit on a doorstep smoking their evening pipe. But there is danger that he would think such fleeting phenomena negligible, and scorn the idea that they could be subjected to scientific study. Yet the kinds of interaction that go on in such transient meetings of twos and threes are of vast significance, and by no means to be omitted from any adequate account of the social process. The impossibility of enumerating such meetings is no more a rational ground for disregarding them than the impossibility of taking a census of microbes is a reason why the pathologist should cease to study microscopic life.

A kind of action that occurred but once, an experience or trait peculiar to a single individual, might be neglected. But a kind of experience that pertains to millions cannot be neglected by sociologists, even though it recurs in the transient meetings of twos and threes, and the millions by whom it is repeated never form a group. Transitions start from such microscopic phe- nomena, and when they become group-phenomena the transition is already accomplished. It is more important for the sociologist to distinguish kinds of activity that pass between man and man, than to distinguish established groups. And actions repeated