Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/706

 692 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

We now come to the point where certain of everybody's com- monplaces appeal to some of us as worth special notice. Thus, without venturing to tender our friendly offices in presence of the perplexed philosophy in Bernheim's methodology of history; without presuming to propose a formula to reconcile the dilemma which seems to be growing more pathetic with the sequence of his editions, namely, the singular occurence versus the collective movement as the Holy Grail of the historian; without daring to utter ourselves on that profoundly intelligent question of the ages whether history repeats itself; we may summon the ninth com- monplace, that similar groupings of people reappear from tirne to time, and from place to place. These groupings exhibit recurrent forms and qualities of reciprocal influence between the individuals within them and groupings of other individuals outside of them. These groupings are evidently the deposit of certain antecedent conditions, and as evidently they become in turn factors in the creation of subsequent conditions. There is evidently a differ- entiation of species in these groupings, and corresponding diversi- fication of functions in and between the groupings. What these groupings are, and what the phenomena of their permutations, is immaterial for our present purpose. Enough that for objective science nothing actual is insignificant. If these recurrent human groupings have not been made out to the limit of possible analysis, if their part in human experience has not been finally explained, whether they have ranked before as worthy of attention or not, whoever turns the searchlight upon these unobserved factors of the human reality is evidently doing something toward completing the function of the social sciences as interpreters of human experi- ence.

It is impossible to word so much insight into the human reality without implying a tenth commonplace, namely, these obtrusively recurrent groupings of persons are deposits, effects, machineries, causes of processes that are taking place between persons. The groupings promote and stimulate and expand the purposes that gave them being, or they handicap and obstruct and choke those purposes. Thus government, school, church, each now enlarges, liberates, endows men's functions, and again each represses, con-