Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/548

 534 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

society as a pure becoming as a strictly genetic product as much so as the vegetable and animal forms on the earth's sur- face, or even as the world systems of space. Still, as society is an exclusive product of mind, the influence of mind cannot be omitted, and the only part of the psychic factor that can really be thought away is the social mind the conscious agency of society itself intentionally modifying its own condition.

Dynamic sociology is the homologue in human society of development in biology. The modus operandi is not widely dif- ferent from that of natural selection, and is, in fact, a sort of social selection. In it, however, the Lamarckian principle of individual effort is more prominent, only, as pointed out, instead of modifying to any great extent man's bodily structures, these efforts modify his environment. But the principal resemblance to which it is proposed to call attention in this paper is the common character of both processes of going on spontaneously, or without design or thought on the part of the beings that put forth these exertions and produce the effects. This is the qual- ity which I distinguish by the term genetic, and the social prog- ress that takes place in this manner does not differ from any of the other forms of evolution, not even from inorganic evolution. For although, as in animal development, psychic forces are the chief agents, these act spontaneously and in a sense uncon- sciously.

The treatment of this form of social progress I formerly denominated "passive or negative," as distinguished from "active or positive" dynamic sociology, which latter, instead of being genetic, I recognized as teleological, for which I now prefer the shorter form telic. The following is the definition which I then gave:

" Passive, or negative, progress contemplates the forces of society as operating in their natural freedom, subject only to the laws of evolution in general. Here society is regarded as passive in the sense of being simply acted upon by the forces that surround it and operate within it. It is conceived as neg- ative from the absence of any force extraneous to these regular