Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/400

 382 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

p. 380) depends upon our view of " institutions." The term " institu- tions " covers recognized and sanctioned forms of human conduct. Thus institutions include —

1. Forms of thought (mythology, folk-lore, superstitions).

2. Forms of expression (gesture, language, ceremonial, art).

3. Forms of personal action (methods of hunting, fishing, tillage, neighborhood intercourse).

4. Forms of cooperation (in worship, war, industry, government).

Institutions are, therefore, as concerns the nature of their sanc- tions, (a) customary, (b) contractual, (c) prescriptive. There is no single classification of institutions which will serve as a constantly satisfactory analysis. For our present purpose we may adopt, by way of illustration, DeGreef's z\z.i,i,\hcz.X\ovi oi phenomena as a tentative classification of institutions.

Let us represent institutions in general by the letters g, h, i,j, k, I, m, denoting the several columns in the De Greef chart (above, p. 139), starting on the left. Now we may repeat in more specific terms our original thesis about the implications of the social problem, viz. : The social problem involves the task :

(?) Of discovering the general laws of interrelationship between the individual element in society, represented in terms of desire by the product a b c d e f, and the institutional element, represented collectively by the product g h i j k I m.

This general task of sociology may be represented graphically as follows (see opposite page).

That is, we may suppose the cube whose base '\% A B C D to represent the total experience of the human race. The base represents contemporary human activities at the initial period of their existence. Each plane parallel with the base represents a " civilization," i. e., the plexus of human activities filling up a period. The irregular lines traversing these planes (from each of the letters g, h, i, J, k, I, m) denote departments of activity. Each activity (as symbolized by the line^) becomes more involved in successive planes up to that which represents the latest stage of civilization (F G HP). The points which constitute these lines make parts of several of the lines at more than one point. These points may symbolize the indi- viduals carrying on the activities. Having this figure in mind, we may further vary the first formula of this chapter thus :

(/) The social problem is the problem of knowing the laws of the forces whose resultants appear both in the plexus of motions represented in the