Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/89

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 77

the social sense is especially a seat of general and special sensi- bility, an organ indispensable to the life of adjustment, the very condition of individualism, whether of persons or of groups. Social consciousness can be expressed only by the co-ordination of all the members of the group, and this co-ordination is realiz- able only through the limitation of the members of the group among themselves and in their reaction to their surroundings. Even peaceful societies have limits, territorial and otherwise, determined by the extent of their needs; and to some extent corresponding to their activity. Furthermore, these limits are partly determined by the presence of neighboring groups. But if there had been only a single human group, it would still have had its interior and its exterior limits. The highest group- consciousness presupposes the highest co-ordination of the most numerous differences, and as a result the existence of an infinite number of limits between groups. Witness our most developed societies, where increasing division of function goes on parallel with the increase in organs, collective and individual, by which these functions are exercised and their activity as a system is regulated.

In peaceful societies, favorable conditions, resulting either from the abundance of food resources, or from analogous condi- tions in neighboring tribes, or from the simultaneous existence of these advantageous conditions in all the neighboring groups, tend to maintain the reciprocal stability of the groups, and there- fore also that of the existing boundaries. Under these condi- tions boundaries tend to remain fixed. In reality, although they are not displaced, they tend toward a transformation even more radical, in this sense that their military function essentially negative and in general accessory, tends to be more and more sub- ordinated to the positive function already indicated, and which serves the inter-group life. However great may be the inter- course between groups, it will nevertheless be limited. To con- ceive of the progressive evolution of these inter-group relations as parallel with the diminution of the individual groups is an illusion; the contrary is true. The development of lines of rail- road does not at all mean the decrease of the intermediate