Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/506

 49 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

better understood than when they were treated by Comte in terms of mechanics. We have progressed from the assumption of a mechanical or physiological principle, as the bond of human associations, to the assumption of an evolutionary principle, operating through means partly vital, partly psychical. In accordance with this principle, whatever it may prove to be, men arrange themselves in correlated groups, the whole forming a system of activities which is organic in a higher sense than that of biology. There is no consensus about definition of this prin- ciple, but description of what actually occurs among associations is gradually narrowing down the limits of definition, just as description of what occurs in the animal world first resulted in the formula of natural selection, and then haled that formula before the scientific courts of review, where it is now having a second hearing.

With something of this idea in mind, a large number of men have proposed more or less exhaustive classifications of associa- tions, or of "society," or of what occurs in society. The pres- ent discussion will not review these in detail, but references to them will lead rather to certain methodological eliminations and substitutions as a result of dealing with them in principle.

All the schemes hitherto proposed for classifying men in association have somehow fallen short, by narrower or wider margins, of satisfying instant demands. All descriptions of objects merely as objects leave them undescribed at last. The objects of our knowledge are related to each other. Our knowl- edge of the objects becomes real in proportion as it discovers their relations. All objects of knowledge are functioning parts in the whole cosmic reality. Within the world of people each man and each association of men has a functional meaning. Human associations are created by persons in the course of their efforts to attain ends. These associations all have their mean- ing, as well as their being, in connection with their implicit personal purposes. The associations are incidental to the attain- ment of purposes by individuals. More than this, they are the partial attainment of the purposes pursued by individuals. The suggestion is natural that, if we knew the purposes of individuals,,