Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/193

 DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGICAL OBJECTIVISM 175

some obscure passages of Durkheim's essay on the Mithode. When Durkheim emphasizes the antagonism between the concept of the individiial and that of society, he does not, of course, suppose the pos- sibility of a society without individuals, but only means that the aggre- gation of human beings termed "society" represents a reality of a dif- ferent order from that represented by every individual, separately and singly considered. Nothing is more scientific than such a position. The process of cosmical evolution would be really inexplicable if we should fail to find in a complex fact new properties, new qualifications, widely differing from those of its single elements. Social fact has undoubtedly properties of its own that make it quite dissimilar to the individuals producing it by their aggregation, just in the same way as the biological phenomenon shows peculiarities unknown to its vital elements. In other words, we find in collective or social life the pro- duction of forces or powers not given in the individual organism.

If Durkheim has read and understood the foregoing, how is it that he should accuse me of ignoring the question whether the syn- thesis realized in social phenomenon be of a purely mechanical or of a chemical character ? But this is not the question at issue in my criticism of Durkheim's theory. We both admit that society is a " compound " wholly different in character from its constituents. What I contest is the possibility of explaining the "compound " without analysis, i. e., without its reduction to elements, a pos- sibility logically presupposed by Durkheim when he lays down the fundamental law of sociological research :

(P. 135, Methode?) La cause d^terminante d'un fait social doit 6tre cherch^e parmi les faits sociaux antecedents, et non parmi les ^tats de la conscience individuelle. (P. 128). . . . toutes les fois qu'un ph^no- m^ne social est directement expliqu^ par un ph^nom^ne psychique, on peut etre assurd que I'explication est fausse.

According to this view, a "compound" (social fact) must be explained by tracing back the action which another "compound " (social fact) exerts on it. But how can a "compound" act upon another without giving birth to a new combination in which both disappear ? And how can this combination take place without a molecular arrangement, /. e., without a new arrangement of its constituent elements? Here again the "element appears to