Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/322

 3o8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

concept of the ideal geometrical figure is known and effective, and is now regarded as the only essential significance of the chalk or ink marks. In the sociological case, however, the correspond- ing presumption may not be made. The disentanglement of that which is actually the pure socialization from the complex of mass phenomena cannot be accomplished by logical means.

We must here assume the odium of alluding to intuitive processes — far as the thing now in mind is from the intuition presupposed by speculative metaphysics. We must speak of a special direction of insight by means of which the discrimination in question is accomplished, and to which approach may be made only by use of examples, until the discrimination can later be composed into methods that are capable of expression in precise concepts, and that are sure guides. This difficulty is enhanced by the facts, first, that no unquestioned technique is conceivable for the application of the fundamental sociological concept; and second, that, even where this concept is really a working device in the case of many factors of the occurrences, classification of cases under the concept, or under the concept of definiteness of the content of the occurrences, often remains arbitrary. To what extent, for example, the phenomenon of the "poor" is of a sociological nature, that is, an outcome of the formal relationship within a group, determined by the general currents and disloca- tions necessarily produced in contacts of human beings; or whether poverty is to be regarded as a merely material condition of certain separate existences, is an alternative about which con- tradictory opinions are possible. The historical phenomena as a whole may be looked at with reference to three principal stand- points; viz., first, with reference to the individual existences that are the real bearers of the conditions; second, with reference to the former types of reaction, which, to be sure, are actualized only in the person of individuals, but now are contemplated not with reference to these individual existences, but only with reference to their relationships of together, with, and for one another; third, with reference to the conceptually formulable contents, of conditions and occurrences, in the case of which the question is not now as to their bearers, or the circumstances of their bearers,