Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/267

 THE CLAIMS OF SOCIOLOGY 253

pattern in common but a specific differentiation has taken place, marked in the community bee by certain distinctive organs and organic proclivities, which he owes to his place and function in the hive as a member of the community. The solitary bee is a monad; the community bee is a particle, and he attains his special individuality by the very fact that he is not a monad but a par- ticle. If Darwin is right, man is man and not a simian brute because he has been formed not as an individualistic monad, but as a community particle. It follows that the attempt must needs be futile to interpret human nature and its institutions as a study in the groupings of monads; the clue must be sought in the transformations of the community that is the matrix of the himian nature. If man is a monad, the sociological hypothesis is correct; that is the proper starting-point in interpreting human life and destiny; there is then a solid basis for a science of asso- ciation. If man is a community particle, then the proper subject- matter for a science dealing with his nature and proclivities, is the whole of which he is a part — that is to say, the state. The starting-point is then Aristotle's famous affirmation: "It is clearly evident that the state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. The state is by nature clearly prior to the family and the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part."

IV

I am well aware that the Aristotle-Darwin theory of human origins is accepted by many sociologists. My point is that they fail to appreciate its methodological importance. Professor Gid- dings is a good example of this class of sociologists. He remarks: "There is hardly a single fact in the whole range of sociological knowledge that does not support the conclusion that the race was social before it was human, and that its social qualities were the chief means of developing its human nature."® Omitting the word "sociological" I accept this statement as cor- rect. A proper inference would be that the individual of the human species is not an original but a derivative factor in the

' Elements of Sociology, p. 232.