Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/585

 THE PRESENT STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN GERMANY 5/1

existence. The determination of societary forms depends essen tially upon whether, for example, children come together for play, or the members of a primitive village community are the persons in question, or the case in hand is that of persons upon an advanced plane of culture, forming a political party held together by an elaborately thought-out social programme. In the sociological form the element of consciousness is manifest, and this relates sociology unequivocally to psychology.

Moreover it is not feasible to treat forms of association in complete abstraction from their content. As a matter of fact, Simmel himself, in his own sociological investigations, by no means conceives the problem in a purely formal way. On the contrary his strength is in profound and acute psychological inter- pretations. In the monograph already cited psychology comes at last to its rights. Psychology is involved in the definition. Simmel defines sociology as "the investigation of the forces, forms, and developments of socialization." That is, when we examine the definition closely it is precisely what I mean by psychical motivation. The "forces of socialization" are none other than psychical forces, and the investigation of them is psychological investigation ; not properly individual psychology, to be sure, but rather social psychology.

On the other hand, Simmel represents this part of sociolog- ical procedure merely as a methodological point of view. He says "the methods according to which the problems of sociali- zation are investigated are the same as in all comparative psy- chological sciences." We may grant that certain primary pre- sumptions of individual psychology are to be understood in sociology primarily only as methodological conditions ; social psychology, however, is not to be entirely separated in its sub- stance from sociology ; it is rather by far the most important constituent of sociology. Sociology can only regard its task as performed when it has discovered the psychical motivation of the phenomena of association.

Too broad and, therefore, too inexact is the definition of sociology given by Ferdinand Tunnies (Jiihresberiekt iiber die