Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/754

 740 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

recognize that the substance of social organization consists of activities as well as of thoughts and feelings ; in brief, that society organized is life organized.

To sum up: Our criticisms of the theory that imitation is the method of social organization and progress are, in detail : (i) it cannot sufficiently explain the manifest limitations in the process of imitation without introducing other factors in the method of development; (2) it creates a gulf between human society and the societies of the animal world which are organized upon a basis of instinct; (3) it makes no allowance for the process of natural selection to bring about gradual changes in human society; (4) it rests upon no sufficient basis of ascertained facts, but has apparently been built up by a fallacious method of reasoning. In general, our criticism of the imitation theory is that it makes the social process something apart from the life-process. It does not link, in any definite way, the forces which are molding human society today with the forces which have shaped evolution in the past. Both as M. Tarde and as Professor Baldwin conceive it, the social process is a process which might very well go on in a company of disembodied spirits in a vacuum! In this sense the imitation theory of the social process is abstract ; it makes no sufficient reference to the concrete conditions of human life to give a faithful description of the social reality. In this sense, also, the theory is mechanical ; men might be copying machines and still repro- duce the social process. For these reasons, finally, the theory is impractical ; the economist, the political scientist, and the moralist, on the one hand, can make but little use of the imi- tation theory in explaining the phases of the social life with which they deal ; and, on the other hand, the practical worker, the legislator, the social reformer, and the philanthropist can find but little help in their work from a knowledge of the theory. Only the recognition of the fact that life is the subject-matter of social theory, and that human society is an outcome of the entire process of life from its beginning to the present, can create a sound, sane, helpful social philosophy ; and to this end social psychology exists.