Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/240

 228 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

come about, accordingly, that many sociologists have virtually made the treatment of social structures the whole of sociology. They have, moreover, interpreted social structure in such a dog- matic way that progress of social knowledge has been retarded by reaction against their methods. In refusing to accept unfor- tunate versions of social structure many people have placed themselves in an attitude of antagonism to the whole conception of social structure. This is an impossible war between words and realities. The latter must prevail. Men act in and through correlations with each other. This is the essential fact which the concept "social structure" recognizes. We are inevitably forced to find out at last what manner of social structure is con- cerned in any given portion of human experience which attracts our attention. This is as true of a district school, or of a country town, or of a local church, as it is of China or the " concert of the powers." " What are the customary, under- stood, accepted, and expected modes in which the individuals concerned get along with each other?" This is one of the first questions to which we must find an answer, if we are attempting to understand any portion of society.

For many reasons the most available help in reaching a working familiarity with the concept " social structure," as it is now held by all sociologists, is Spencer's Principles of Sociology, Vol. I, Part II, "The Inductions of Sociology." Spencer's account of social structure must be taken with many grains of salt. In the first place, whether Spencer himself was perfectly clear in his own mind about the matter or not, the biological analogies which he uses so liberally are to be taken as purely illustrative, good so far as they go, but not to be confounded with the literal relationships between persons which they are employed to symbolize. People who use biological figures most liberally in expressing social relations are most emphatic today in asserting that they use those forms of expression merely as the most convenient rhetorical device for making social relation- ships vivid. Society is not a big animal. There is no social stomach or brain or heart or eye or spinal cord. The digestive process for society is performed by the digestive organs of the