Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/242

230 that we can adopt for literal facts in society. On the one hand, human life is a vast complex of work interchanged between all and each. In brief, men in association carry on a system of functions for each and all. To do this the associates arrange themselves in certain more or less permanent adjustments to each other. This is the fact indicated by the term "social structure." Wherever there is society there is social function and social structure. The closer we get to the real facts of society, the more specifically must we be able to answer the questions: Precisely what are the functions which the society is carrying on? and, Precisely what structure has the society adopted as its equipment for performing the functions?

It cannot be too often repeated that every person who is trying to exert an influence of any sort upon other people, whether for good or evil, is concerned to know, first, just what objects in life those people are pursuing, and, second, just what social adjustments they have adopted in pursuit of the objects. As we shall see presently, these two aspects of the situation are not only important in themselves, but they powerfully affect each other. It follows that ability to comprehend the particular society with which one is dealing, in terms of social structure and social function, is a part of the necessary outfit of both theoretical and practical sociologists.

We may return to Spencer for our illustrations of the ways in which these conceptions have been developed and applied. In the simplest terms, the sociologists long ago discovered that they must learn how to find out what communities are really doing and how they are doing it. That is, we must be able to go behind the visible and the conventional and discover the real aims and methods which the visible and the conventional often conceal. For example, Spencer divides social institutions, for certain purposes, into, first, domestic institutions; second, ceremonial institutions; third, political institutions; fourth, ecclesiastical institutions; fifth, professional institutions; sixth, industrial institutions. Now every society, except the most primitive, and quite minute portions of every society, may have some parts of each of these sorts of institutions. It is necessary to know