Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/780

 764 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

activities that have been regarded as too ephemeral or insignifi- cant for serious study, but which illustrate the method of the social process, or contribute to the cumulative evolution which "cometh not with observation," but is of mightier significance than dramatic and eruptive events. But no such mere addition to the list of social sciences will constitute sociology. And the importance of the dynamic concept of society will not be confined to any such relatively new field of research; it already is dis- tinctly appearing in the study of economic, political, legal, and ethical phenomena and in the history of religion, language, art, and science. The temporary confusion as to the proper scope and method of study in some of these fields, a feeling of the inadequacy of results hitherto attained, which exists in some quarters, and an increase of attention to the psychologic, that is the active, aspect of these phenomena, all are due in part to the dawning of the dynamic concept. To those who adopt this view as the guide of their investigations, the obvious interweaving of the social activities will forbid mutilating abstraction, and pro- mote the growth of the realization that there is unity, or at any rate correlation, in the social process. And this realization may of itself suffice to create the need for the word " sociology " as a collective designation for the sciences that study this totality, which we indeed may analyze, in thought, for purposes of easier apprehension, but which, in fact, stubbornly retains its vast complexity.

The statement that the objects of sociological study are pro- cesses means that the students of the existing particular social sciences, as well as of branches of social investigation that may remain to be worked out, cannot find the objects of their most fruitful study in phenomena regarded as established, fixed, and static, be they never so monumental and institutional, but will find them rather in changes and the conditions of change which are often diffused, minute, and fleeting. It means also that which is yet more fundamental and significant, namely, that social phenomena are essentially activities, whether they are constant or whether they are changing, and that the most significant social causes are likewise activities. "Associating" is nothing apart