Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/324

 3IO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the first time definitely propose the question as to the actions and reactions between the individuals, the aggregate of which reci- procities transmutes that coherence into society, there will at once appear a series, we might even say a world of such forms of relationship, which have hitherto not been included in social science at all, or if included have not been seen in their essential and vital significance. On the whole, sociology has virtually con- fined itself to those social phenomena in the cases in which the reciprocating forces are fonned, at least into conceptual unities, by crystallization of their immediate bearers. States and labor unions, priesthoods and types of families, economic and military organizations, guilds and parishes, class stratification and division of labor, these and similar great organs and systems seem to con- stitute society, and to fill out the scope of the science of society. ^^ It is obvious that the greater, the more significant, the more dominant a range of social interest and action is, the more readily such exaltation of the immediate inter-individual living and work- ing to the character of an objective structure, to an abstract existence over and above the several and primary processes, will take place. Yet this calls for important completion in two direc- tions. Besides these far-visible phenomena, imposing in their extent and external impressiveness, there are innumerable minor forms of relationship and types of reciprocation between persons, apparently trivial in their separate instances, but constituting an aggregate which may not be despised, especially since they are the factors which, inserting themselves into the comprehensive, official formations, so to speak, bring society as we know it into existence. Limitation of science to the formal relationships is analogous with the older gross anatomy, which confined itself to the major, definitely circumscribed organs — heart, liver, lungs, stomach, etc. — and neglected the innumerable, vulgarly unnamed and unknown tissues, without which those more obvious organs would never have become a living body. From the structures of the sort named, which constitute the traditional subject-matter of the social sciences, the actual life of society as we encounter it

sition still more in justice to the social psychologists.
 * In spite of his explanations below, Simmel will have to qualify this propo-