Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/214

 202 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

dictum, "man is a social animal." It has been asserted and denied that Aristotle was right. Whether Aristotle meant to express what we now see to be the truth or not may be left to those who care for such trifles. That there is a sense, and an important one, in which man is a social animal is a primary sociological datum. Man cannot be man without acting and reacting with man. The presence of others is necessary in order that I may be myself. The self that is in me cannot become aware of itself, and display itself, except by means of contacts with other people. Just as the mind needs the body in order to be a force in the world ; just as the hand needs the eye, and both need the nerves, and all need the heart, in order that either may be its peculiar self by doing a peculiar work in partnership with other organs ; so a person is not a person with- out the reaction and the reinforcement which partnerships with other persons permit. It may be that men begin to occupy their place, a little above the anthropoid ape and a little lower than the angels, by perpetually fighting with each other. Whether this is the case or not, we know that the fighting which men have done with each other has been among the means of developing the individual and the social type. Using the term " social," not as an expression of moral quality, but as an index of reactions between conscious beings, it is as literally true, and first of all in the same sense true, that man is a social animal, as that the eagle is a bird of flight. The latter proposition does not mean that the eagle is born flying. It simply means that the eagle does not get to be an eagle except through learning to fly, and in the practice of flying. So men are social animals in the sense that they do not get to be men except through learning and practicing the arts of contact with other men.

All this is so simple, to be sure, that it might well go without saying, if different kinds of philosophy had not made the seem- ingly obvious fact a matter of doubt, dispute, and confusion. The sociologist needs to make the fact clear to himself at the outset of his attempts to understand society. The personal units that are the integers in all social combinations are not of themselves, apart from such combinations, integers at all. A