Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/745

 THE PRESENT STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN GERMANY 729

over to " psychic guidance," and "military and civil institutions" the same law which the physiologist may have discovered for the nervous tissue and muscular tissue. We have then nothing but an empty designation. We surely cannot lay serious claim to any scientific insight from having been taught that there are "devices for protection." Moreover, these hollow designa- tions are, as remarked, actually misleading. To uncover only a single harmful aspect, they encourage the thought that the "social body" is born with all these "tissues," and that it can as little do without them or provide substitutes for them as a man can in the case of his muscles or his skin. This ready- made theory surely has no room for a thought of development.

Hand in hand with a favoring biology and physiology Schaeffle seeks further component parts of the social body, and, as might be expected, he is fortunate enough to find them. "We recognize," he says, "the social connecting tissue in the ideally mediated, legally unformed coherences." Such are blood relationship, stock, nationality, race, compatriotism, party, estate, confession, etc." (p. 288 sq.). We might have thought that all these represented separate and independent organisms. Schaeffle teaches us, however, that they are mere "connecting tissue." In another passage he says, however, "The family is for the social body what the cell is for the organic body" (p. 213). But the family rests on relationship. Hence it follows that the family is a cell constructed from connecting tissue!

But this is far from being the most absurd conclusion to which Schaeffle's premises and definitions lead. In the second volume of his work he inquires after the " law of development." He starts with the thought that mechanical causality does not suffice for explanation and comprehension of the progress of civilization ; that causa finales arc rather to be assumed. The "goal-setting interworking of a divine world substance" must not be left out of account. In accordance with this presumption Schaeffle posits "adaptation" (Anf< as the moving force

in social development, which, however " is assured and mediated by the struggle for existence." He formulates the law of social