Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/591

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME VI MARCH, I QO I NUMBERS

THE ORGANIC THEORY OF SOCIETY.

PASSING OF THE CONTRACT THEORY.

THE organic theory of society is entertained by nearly every serious thinker of the present time. Everyone seems ready to declare, although often with some reservations, that society is an organism ; in other words, that man and nature are one, and so, among many other things, that no device or institution of human life is free from conditions of change. Indeed, not merely in political science, but in the thought of our time at large, the word "organism" is getting to be used as a key to all the mysteries. Simply, a new fetichism is in possession of us, but the forerunner perhaps of a thoroughly enlightened wor- ship ; and, in consequence, we have a stern, exacting duty to the thought which underlies it. Politically, we feel the need of knowing, as directly and as accurately as possible, just what the organic theory of society implies, what conditions and relations and activities, what natural or developed interests, it involves society in. Not, Is society an organism? for that is a ques- tion that looks only to some mere analogy but as more direct and as deeper, What is an organic society ?

Several approaches to this question are open. Thus it would be pertinent, not to say intensely interesting, to make a psycho- logical or sociological study of an organic society, dealing specifically with the nature of the social will and the social con- sciousness ; or to take the standpoint, not of psychology or

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