Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/172

 1 58 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Proceeding along this line we should discover before long that the above distinction is not matched by a corresponding separation in fact between the human individual and, the associ- ated individual. We should find that all persons are associated persons. This discovery brings with it two results : first, to know the individual we shall have to follow him out of himself into his correlations with others ; second, to know the correla- tions which are constituted by associations of men we must know their elements, as these are located in the make-up of the individuals who produce the associations. That is, while we may distinguish the phases of knowledge needed by the stand- point whether individual or collective from which we begin a particular research, the knowledges always run into each other, and find themselves, at last, either as like parts of larger wholes, or as respectively less and more inclusive portions of the same whole. For instance, if we are studying the life of a town, we may deal in turn with its physiography, natural and artificial ; its industries ; its government ; its educational, charitable, artis- tic, social, or devotional institutions. Each of these portions of the whole called "the town" is meaningless or deceptive if held separate from the other parts. Then there may be more minute analysis of each of these segments or systems within the town, as, for example, the school system, the things so discov- ered being subordinate parts in one of the many large divisions of the group.

In pursuing this way of approach to the inside facts of society we should presently find ourselves asking in turn all the questions which the biologist asks about life in general, and which the physiologist and the physical anthropologist ask about human life in particular. We should also find ourselves asking all the questions which the psychologist asks about the mental facts of individual action. In other words, we should encounter the need of developing the same sciences of individ- ual life which have already started into existence without any help from sociology. Keeping up our artificial assumption of entirely unconventional jstudy, we should very likely act like an