Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/744

 728 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

successful expression. " What is common to all can be only the possession of him who has the least," says Simmel.

Yet the important thing after all is rather that society whether we think of it in the broadest sense as humanity, or in a more restricted sense somewhat as a club, is something entirely different from the individual per se, and furthermore something generically different. Still more : for science the primary thing is not properly the individual that sometime enters into society, but rather society itself. The individual is only an abstraction It is therefore an entire inversion to take as the point of depar- ture of sociological investigation the individual, who, so far as we know him in history and life, is merely a member of a group

to use Simmel's phrase, "a point of intersection of social threads" (Schmttpunkt socialer Fdden). Rather were it to be recommended that individual psychology take its departure from social psychology. And further ; supposing the view were admissible that the social body is -analogous in structure and life with the organism of the individual man ; what addition would that bring to positive knowledge and understanding of this pecul- iar organism ? None whatever, except mere, and at that almost always misleading, or at any rate irrelevant, designations of the particular members of society designations taken bodily, with- out criticism, and only for sake of the sounding name, from anatomy, biology, etc. Thus Schaeffle busies himself with rebap- tizing groups or members of the social body with names of members of the animal body. There are, he says, five "social tissues" corresponding to the organic tissues (a) osseous, tegumentary, (c) vascular, (d) muscular, (e) nervous. The social tissues are (i) locative,/, e., settlements, roads and build- ings (attaching the social body to the soil); (2) protective; (3) commercial (i. e., devoted to exchange of materials, including "production" trade, etc.); (4) for administrative technique

(civil and military); (5) for psychic guidance (planning, book- keeping, control, etc.).

Apart now from all errors of fact, I raise the one practical question : Of what good is all this ? We certainly cannot carry