Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/557

 REVIEWS 537

upon descent. If the motive of association arises among those of transient relationships, the maintenance of which can have a propor- tional significance for the fate of the individual, indeed, but does not absolutely decide it, then the individual can also change his associa- tion. This social mobility is related to the transitoriness of the thoughts of our conscious organism. But this mobility is limited through the individual's innate interest ; for, if he undervalues any material part of this latter, he perishes through the biological law according to which the dependent cell dies, if it leaves that organic complex which has developed it Because man, in his highly devel- oped conscious state, recognizes that the social development is able to guard his individual interest, even in political struggle, the social part of his innate interest is strengthened more and more. Thus indi- vidualistic differentiation loses, in the natural course of evolution, a part of its anti-social effect. In its stead social evolution appears with a growing perfection of the conscious organism. A systematic pene- tration into the social nature of men will increase insight into the unity of law of all phenomena; and, with constant reliance on the assured teachings of the natural sciences, we shall obtain the certainty of the genetic agreement of social with all other phenomena of life." In order to characterize completely Ratzenhofer's conception of the relation of social to physiological phenomena, it seems fitting to present further from Division V the following passage. This passage seems to us to be, in another relation also, one of the most significant and pregnant which the book contains, particularly as it presents more clearly Ratzenhofer's peculiar theory of interest. The author remarks (p. 221): "The agreement of the organic life-process with the social process is no figurative comparison, but it is causal. That hitherto the science of society has not been able to demonstrate this connection- through-natural law is the essential cause of its poor success. The older method of biological analogy ought, moreover, to have set the critique of former sociological speculation on its guard, because every science works with comparison, and even astronomy bases its most important discoveries upon geometrical similarity. When, for exam- ple, a well-known scholar (Wundt, Logik, II, 576) says : ' Presumptively the method of biological analysis will find application also in the future as a means of exposition, where it is suitable to give expression to that view which places value upon the connection of societary systems united in the state ; on the other hand, those views which give prefer ence in politics and economics to individual interest will intentionally