Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/57

 SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 4 I

among the solicitations to activity that most affect him, the activi- ties evinced by the other members of his group. In other words, they are a society because their activities are elicited by a similar environment, and especially because the psychic activities of the group constitute the most important part of the environment of every member of the group.

There is a sense in which the words "subjective" and "psychic" are synomymous, for all psychic phenomena are for someone subjective. But in another sense, which is quite as accurate, there are for me no subjective phenomena but my own experiences, my own psychic activities ; and those of every other man, if I know them at all, are to me objective. Nothing is subjective to me but that which I know directly in my own con- sciousness; everything of which I become aware indirectly, by the intervention of the senses, is objective. The thoughts, deeds, and sentiments of others, in so far as I become aware of them, are then objective facts. My own patriotism is a subjective fact, but the patriotism of the other eighty million Americans cannot be, to me, a subjective fact; the patriotism of eighty million people cannot be a subjective fact to any one: it is a psychic fact, but it is an objective fact. It is a part of the objec- tive psychic world into which the American child is born a vast objective fact as real and pervasive as the climate.

Society is the objective psychic world; sociology is the explanation of the objective psychic world. In the physical world, some facts, like climate, are of great extent, and others are narrowly local, like the hillside on which one was born. Physical science in the person of the meteorologist tries to explain our climate, and in the person of the geologist it tries to explain hillsides. Likewise, in the objective psychic, or social, world some facts are of great extent, like patriotism, language, and religion; while others pertain to limited and local groups, like particular families and schools, each of which may have a character of its own, just as each hill and valley and lake has a character of its own; and social science tries to explain the being and becoming, both of the great and singular social facts, and of those that are local and multiple.