Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/523

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY

509

the facts to be grouped are parts. As we have said (chap, v, p. 202) : "Human association is a continuous process of realizing a larger aggregate and better proportions of the health, wealth, soci- ability, knowledge, beauty, and tightness desires," Accordingly the classification of associations that we seem to want is one in accordance with the parts of this process which the different associations accomplish.

With this as our express requisition it is at once probable that an adequate scheme of classification will be highly complex. Association is a fact that is at any given time merely a passing phase of an immeasurable process. What association is accom- plishing at a given moment can be seen only by setting the process of that moment in its appropriate place in the genetic series which the moment continues. On the other hand, human aims are constantly differentiating, and associations &re pari passu changing the form and force and quality of their internal and external reactions. That is, the classification of associations as parts of a static order is one thing at one stage of evolution and a quite different thing at another. In this connection we hit upon one of the most obvious crudities in many familiar attempts to classify societies ; viz., they start with categories which, for the sake of argument, we may assume to be adequate for rudi- mentary societies. Then, however, they stop short and fail to differentiate the categories to keep pace with the evolving char- acteristics of the associations to which they are applied. This is as though one should collect and classify birds' eggs, and then attempt to make the groups into which they fall suffice as a complete scheme of classification in ornithology ; or it is as though, without the concept "transportation," one should attempt to classify all vehicles in accordance with we will say some absolute aesthetic preconception. The dugout and the " Deutschland," the drag of poles and the limited express, with all the types of vehicle that have intervened, might be grouped according to variations from the assumed aesthetic norm. It is certain, however, that in either case the classifications would not go far toward fixing the real significance of the specimen parts in the process concerned, particularly in its more evolved stages.