Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/122

108 a whole to become so organized as to constitute in a very real sense a low type of organism; and this is exactly what we find. Again, the organic nature of the life of the species is conceded by all biological thinkers; yet the arguments which are used to support this truth could be used with double their force in defense of the theory of the organic nature of societary life. And it is safe to say that no more is meant in principle in the one case than in the other. The organic nature of society is, indeed, the presupposition upon which all social science rests. A science of societary activities, as distinct from a science of individual activities, is absurd if society does not constitute an organic unity. The opposition to the organic theory of society comes from those who are anxious to emphasize the psychical side of the social process. They fail to see that that process could have no psychical side if it were not fundamentally an organic process; that society as a psychical fact presupposes society as an organic fact. The answer to those who wish to regard society merely as a "psychological organization" is, then, that all psychological organization presupposes biological organization.

While social psychology must rest upon the organic nature of society as the presupposition of all its investigations, it must distinguish carefully between the fact of the organic nature of society and analogies with biological organisms which may as often be misleading as helpful. The differences between social groups and biological organisms are obvious, and fundamental. Not only are the latter more highly unified, both structurally and functionally, than the former, but there is also a qualitative difference. In the biological organism consciousness is resident in the organism as a whole, while in the social group consciousness is resident in the individual elements, giving these a large degree of autonomy. The result is that, while in the biological organism the principle of organization is entirely physiological, in social groups the principle of organization tends to become more and more psychological as we pass from lower to higher stages of development. In the lowest societies of the animal world only the physiological principle of organization is visible,