Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/409

 THE ORIGIN OF SOCIETY 395

is no more the result of the coming together of individuals de- veloped in isolation than the multicellular organism is the result of the coming together of cells so developed. Society, that is, the psychical interaction of individuals, is an expression of the original and continuing unity of the life-process of the associat- ing organisms. Looked at from the standpoint of the whole evolution of life, it is really the result of the breaking-up of the life-process into several relatively independent centers while the process itself remains a unity. The functional interdependence on the psychical side which constitutes a group of organisms a society is a mark at once of their original unity in a common life-process and of the fact that they now constitute a higher, more complex unity. In this view, the social process is strictly a phase of the life-process, even in the biological sense.

The social process, then, grows spontaneously out of the life- process. It grows out of both of the fundamental phases of the life-process — the food-process and the reproductive process. The food-process, or the activities connected with nutrition, seems to act chiefly in a negative way upon the earliest beginnings of association. As a rule, organisms of one species remain together as long as food is abundant, and they scatter only when the con- ditions of nutrition become unfavorable.

The thing to be explained in the organic world is not the living together of large numbers of one species, but rather the scattering and separation of individuals. As has already been said, separation usually takes place on account of lack of food supply, while where food supply is abundant and sufficiently concentrated the individuals of a species remain together in large numbers. Now, where living forms remain in close proximity to each other they tend to take on functional interrelations both in the food-process and in the reproductive process. The condi- tions of food supply thus become the physical basis of the inter- relations among organisms, interrelations which later become psychical. When the conditions of food supply become un- favorable, the tendency to scatter, moreover, may be overcome by new adaptations on the part of organisms which give rise to superior ways of co-operating, so that an adequate supply of