Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/818

 802 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

i. e., so many somewhat distinct modes of manifestation of the universal force. Each science deals with a particular one of these forces, or, at least, with a group or class of more or less similar ones. Sociology, as I understand it, differs in no essen- tial respect from other sciences except that it deals with the social forces. The telic progress of society, as reviewed in the last paper, does not to any marked extent involve the control of the social forces. In so far as it does* relate to them it is only from the standpoint of the individual who seeks to subject everything to his purposes. It was seen that the progress thus attained resulted from the intelligent direction by man of the various natural forces. This does not exclude the social forces, but the efforts described were chiefly expended upon physical, biotic, and psychic forces, the last mainly in relation to animal domestication. The phenomena were all social in the sense of their mutual utility to the members of society, but the acts were mainly individual, each member or small group seeking personal satisfaction. They were only in a limited degree collective.

Now while, in so far as even individual action really utilizes the social forces, this constitutes an application of sociological principles, still this is not what I have intended to include under the head of collective telesis. I propose to restrict that term to the collective action of society in the direction of restraining, controlling, directing, and utilizing in any manner the natural forces of society. It is obvious, therefore, that, however much we may dislike the term (and it is a very offensive one to me), we are essentially dealing with the phenomena of government, since this word in a philosophical sense simply implies the organization through which society expresses and enforces its collective will. It is true that, owing to the great differences that exist among human races, due to differences of language and the vicissitudes of human history, the population of the world is now, and is long destined to remain, divided into a great number of distinct nations (not to speak of savage and barbaric tribes), each with a government of its own, so that collective social action cannot generally extend beyond the territorial limits