Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/815

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 799

sorts of scientific problems that do not need to go beyond this fact to satisfy their particular terms. Whether the individual can ever be abstracted from his conditions and leave him himself is not a question that we need to discuss at this point. At all events, the individual known to our experience is not isolated. He is connected in various ways with one or more individuals. The different ways in which individuals are connected with each other are indicated by the inclusive term " contact." We will not now extend the meaning of this term to other contacts of persons than those with other persons. The reason is that, if we did, we should thereby take ourselves into a still more general field, within which the laws of the social are subordinate orders. Starting from the person, to measure him in all his dimensions and to represent him in all his phases, we find that each person is what he is by virtue of the existence of other persons, and by virtue of an alternating current of influence between each per- son and all the other persons previously or at the same time in existence. The last native of central Africa around whom we throw the dragnet of civilization, and whom we inoculate with a desire for whisky, adds an increment to the demand for our dis- tillery products and affects the internal revenue of the United States, and so the life-conditions of every member of our popu- lation. This is what we mean by "contact." So long as that African tribe is unknown to the outside world, and the world to it, so far as the European world is concerned the tribe might as well not exist. The moment the tribe comes within touch of the rest of the world, the aggregate of the world's contacts is by so much enlarged. The social world is by so much extended. In other words, the realm of the social is the realm of circuits of reciprocal influence between individuals and the groups which individuals compose. The general term "contact" is proposed to stand for this realm, because it is a colorless word that may mark boundaries without prejudging contents. Wherever there is physical or spiritual contact between persons, there is inevi- tably a circuit of exchange of influence. The realm of the social is the realm constituted by such exchanges. It extends from the producing of the baby by the mother and the simultaneous