Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/871

Rh ality in so far as their feelings agree and call forth effort toward a mutual furtherance. But in order to call forth such a mutual furtherance, knowledge of the agreement of feelings does not suffice ; there must still enter the insight that such mutual furtherance of feelings can take place through external actions. So long as the common cooperation is left to chance or instinct, so long there are no common ends and no society in the human sense. Common purpose must yet be added, and this can proceed only from common insight into the advantageousness of cooperation. In other words, mutually recognized and pursued ends make a human society out of the animal world.

If a narrower society becomes a part of a wider society (voluntarily or through force), some ends (Ziele) must remain to the narrower society, otherwise it ceases to be a society and is entirely swallowed up in the wider society. Only in so far as every society possesses its own ends can it be a society distinct from others.

There is no entity, society, which possesses its own ideas, feelings, or will, or leads an independent life over and above its individuals; society has no separate body. It is not a visible but an ideal community. For this reason it can have no ends apart from the ends of its individuals. By this I do not mean to deny that the human organism and society can be placed in justifiable analogy. But this view is very different from that which ascribes to society a soul which is superior to individuals, guides and governs them, has and pursues its own ends. The existence of such a soul not only can never be established, it even contradicts the analogy between the human body and the state or the nation. No physiologist explains the functions of the body from a soul guiding and moving it; from his standpoint he dare not assume such a soul as the ground of explanation, for the object of his observation is only the body itself, and his ideal must be to derive the function of the body from the function of its cells. For him the brain cells are what set the body in motion, guide it and lead it to definite ends.- So, too, what leads a nation is not a soul, but individuals.

Society as such not only cannot think, feel, will, it also cannot act, for it possesses no body of its ow-n. Every expression of a common thought can only occur individually. No single action can be executed by a society, but only a system or sum of actions. In the first case different actions of individuals harmonize in a common end; in the second case all the actions are of the same sort, and the result is only a sum of the results of the single actions.

No society lives with agreement among all its members; every society hides oppositions within itself, without which it could not come to a consciousness nor to a further development of itself. If every member of a society were in exact agreement with all the other members, such a society would be automatic. A society which shows no individual varieties would also almost entirely lose its capacity for adaptation to new circumstances. A species which shows no varieties would be changed through external circumstances much more slowly and with more difficulty than a variable species. The case is the same with human societies : the more numerous the oppositions among their members, the easier they are able to adapt themselves to new circumstances, if the oppositions are not so great as to make impossible common thinking, willing, and acting.

Because society is no independent entity, it can experience no welfare of its own. Its w-elfare must be sought in the welfare of the individual. The general welfare cannot be separated from the welfare of individuals, but nevertheless is not identical with it, because well-being cannot be distributed, but only the means to well-being.— , Individuum und Gemeinschaft," in Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, I, 1899.

Among Women.—The number of men in France belonging to societies for mutual aid number 1,142,000; of women, only 418,000. One reason for this disproportion is that the small salaries of women do not permit them to add to their expenses that of the payment of dues. Societies for mutual aid are divided by law into three groups: (1) those recognized to be of public utility, comprising but a small number; (2) those whose statutes are submitted to the minister of the interior; (3) those authorized by the local prefect of police. I have to do in this article only with the second class. There are 5,326 such societies for men, 2,143 for men and women, and 227 for