Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/255

 THE MECHANICS OF SOCIETY 241

Society itself, which includes all the structures and institu- tions that may exist at any given time together with a certain vague but general psychic integration, may be regarded as a great structure in which the social forces have to a certain extent been brought into a state of equilibrium. It is only the most general aspects of the will that are thus equilibrated, and within this great social structure there are others which in advanced societies may be classified into a sort of subordinate hierarchy of structures, along with many that are more or less coordinate.

In general it may be said that society as a whole, including all its structures and institutions, both general and special, constitutes a mecJianism. The structures are not chaotic and haphazard, but symmetrical and systematic. They conform to the universal law of evolution which creates the spheres of space and the adapted forms of organic life. Although all this is believed to go on spontaneously and to be the normal result of purely genetic causes, in the great poverty of language to express this process, it is almost necessary to resort to the language of teleology, which will convey no false implications to the well- informed. We may therefore say that society constitutes a mechanism for the production of results. Every social structure or institution exists for a purpose. It is necessary to guard against the mistake of confounding social statics with social stagnation. The social mechanism, taken as a whole, constitutes the social order, and social statics is simply the science of social order.

To regard social structures as mechanisms is a luminous point of view for the treatment of social mechanics. A machine, properly understood, is simply a device for reducing the forces it is designed to utilize to a state of equilibrium. Without the machine these forces would run to waste so far as the user of the machine is concerned. The machine checks their natural flow, and, temporarily at least and theoretically, equilibrates them. In other words the energy of nature is stored by the machine for the purpose of being utilized to far greater advantage and at the will of the user. Tim U clearly seen in the principle of the