Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/367

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 353

the social life-process. It is integration of the process in the units with the process in the whole. Association is the fact in which individuals, on the one hand, become more distinguishable from each other ; while the same individuals, on the other hand, get their distinctive individuality by becoming more intimately merged into each other. Socialization is, accordingly, not in opposition to individualization, except in words. It is the con- dition and the means of individualization, and vice versa.

An analogy may possibly indicate the truth at this point bet- ter than literal description : When the prairie schooner is the only vehicle owned by the family, the social activities of the family are rude and undeveloped. Specialization of activity on the part of the family goes on. pan passu with more highly indi- vidualized means of travel and transportation. When the prairie schooner has become half a dozen different kinds of farm wagon, and half a dozen different sorts of conveyance for per- sons, each of the dozen vehicles is not merely different from the rest, but it is different by virtue of its nicer conformity at some point than the prairie schooner could reach with some specific detail of the life-process maintained by the family. The family life becomes more diversified by commanding the service of more highly specialized implements. The implements are more highly specialized by virtue of more intimate and exclusive connection with the whole of the family life.

The case is similar in form with men. If a young man comes from the farm to the city, he may bring a wealth of invisible social qualifications, but for the moment they are not available because they are not sufficiently individualized, and they are not individualized because they are not socialized in the way and the degree suited to his new conditions. The city has no room for farmers, but it has abundant work for the resources that accumu- late in men on the farm, if these resources can be geared to the proper adjustments for which the city has uses. Presently the young man finds a place where he is permitted to show what is in him. He learns to do new work. All that is common to him and the sorts and conditions of men of whom he is a speci- men remains as before, but the specialist begins to appear in him ;