Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/77

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 65

eral way by the physical conditions, as regards the structure of that species, is the point of view more adapted to the existence in the group than to existence outside of it, through the necessity of economic existence. This accounts for the conflict in case of the invasion of the habitat by individuals of the same or of a different species, and also the co-operation against invaders.

Suppose now, in the place of bears, some beings more or less capable of generalizing and abstracting, the same events will arouse in these the idea of right. The conflict with an exterior enemy and relations within the group will be the two forces initiative of right, the one negative, the other positive, but both in reality positive. Schmoller contrasted the right of the bears with the violence of the invaders, but if the bear has a conception of social order, what permits us to suppose that his aggressor does not have another as legitimate and perhaps even identical? Schmoller has, in his example, like a great number of his prede- cessors, interpreted the problem into a metaphysical idea of law, and not into an economical or sociological idea.

It is well to proceed with more prudence, and not introduce in the explanation of the primitive periods of humanity notions and conceptions peculiar to higher states of development, and which too often are beyond the artificial products of certain particular elaborations, with no or too little correspondence to the contemporary thought and practice. Let us examine the facts more closely.

" Among the Fuegians," according to Herbert Spencer, " the quantity of nourishment which an unfavorable habitat furnishes, does not permit more than twenty individuals to live in the same place." One sees perfectly here, among one of the most rudi- mentary peoples, the intimate relation existing between extent of occupied territory, the quantity of available nourishment, and the numerical size of the social group. One observes at the first in this example of a population organized in the most simple manner that the fundamental phenomenon, the first sociological phenomenon, to which the combination among peoples with a certain extent of territory gives birth, is a phenomenon of eco- nomic character the limitation of the population by subsistence.