Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/241

Rh individuals who compose society. The thinking of society is done in the minds of the individual members of society, and so on. Yet all the individuals in a society are, as we have seen, in association. The feeding and thinking and other primarily individual activities which they perform all have a positive or negative effect on the maintenance and activities of the association. It comes about, therefore, that we are practically justified in speaking as though society itself had these parts or organs which are literally located in individuals only. This will be more evident if we combine with further discussion of the present subject the closely related subject of the next section.

8. Social functions. —Men in association have common work to do. Because they have this common work to do they associate, and because they associate they find more occasions for common work. Everybody has to eat, but, after people have associated a little while, they find that some of their number are not producing food. They are doing other things, like singing patriotic songs, or decorating weapons, or performing religious rites. Their activities would not feed them if the association did not exist. In fact, however, the interests of the members of the association have become so specialized that there is a demand for these activities which are only indirectly connected with the food-producing activities. We may express this fact in terms of social function in this way: some persons become set apart in the course of the social process for the social function of supplying food; other persons are gradually permitted or required by the interests of all to perform other functions less essential to the sustaining of life than the function of food-getting. Each of these kinds of work involves some detail of social structure, and, on the other hand, all social structures are assortments of persons incidental to the supply of incessant general wants, i. e., the performance of social functions.

There is nothing mystical or arbitrary about these two concepts, social structure and social function, as they are held by all sociologists. They are merely the most convenient