Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/317

 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY 303

bring socialization to pass as more strictly speaking are socializa- tion ( Vergesellschaftung) -^"^ "society," in the sense which sociol- ogy can apply, is consequently either the abstract general concept for these forms, the genus of which they are the species, or the sum of the same in operation at a given time. It follows further from this concept that a given assortment of individuals may be a society in a greater or a lesser d^ree. With each new growth of synthetic formations, with each construction of party groups, with each combination for common work, or in common feeling and thinking, with each more decisive assignment of serving and ruling, with each convivial meal, with each self-adornment to impress others, the same group becomes more "society" than it was before.^^ There is never in existence "society" in an abso- lute sense, i. e., of such a sort that all these particular phenomena would occur in accordance with "society" as a presupposition; for there is no such thing as reciprocal influencing in an absolute sense, but merely particular species of the same. With the occur- rence of these species society also puts in an appearance. They are, however, neither the cause nor the consequence of society. They are themselves immediately society. Only the unsearch- able richness and abundance of the reciprocal influences operative at every moment have given to the general concept "society" an apparently independent historical reality. Perhaps this hyposta- tizing of a mere abstraction is the secret of the peculiar inflation and uncertainty which have gone along with this concept, and with previous treatments of general sociology — just as there was no real progress with the concept life so long as science looked upon it as a unitary phenomenon of immediate reality. Only when the specific processes within organisms, the sum or the interweaving of which is life, were investigated, only when it was recognized that life consists alone in these peculiar occur-

" This is an obvious non sequitur. Why do the forms only remain, when Simmel makes it equally evident that the forces behind the forms have failed to receive scientific attention?

" And by the same token it marks an amateurish state of science to imagine that we are promoting precision by keeping in service a term "society," which confessedly has such an indefinitely sliding scale of meanings. We need an activity-concept in place of a status-concept to meet the requirements.