Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/259

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 247

is the most general and colorless term used in sociology for combinations of persons. A family, a mob, a picnic party, a trade union, a city precinct or ward, a corporation, a state, a nation, the civilized or the uncivilized population of the world, may be treated as a group. Thus a "group " for sociology is a number of persons whose relations to each other are sufficiently impressive to demand attention. The term is merely a common- place tool. It contains no mystery. It is merely a handle with which to grasp the innumerable varieties of arrangements into which people are drawn by their variations of interest. The universal condition of association may be expressed in the same commonplace way : people always live in groups, and the same persons are likely to be members of many groups. All the illustrations that we need suggest may be assembled around the schedule of interests in the last paragraph.

14. Form of the group, This conception has been pushed to the front by one of the keenest thinkers in Europe Professor Simmel, of Berlin.

Simmel distinguishes two senses of the term "society": " first, the broader sense, in which the term includes the sum of all the individuals concerned in reciprocal relations, together with all the interests which unite these interacting persons ; second, a narrower sense, in which the term designates the society or association as such ; that is, the interaction itself which consti- tutes the bond of association, in abstraction from its material content " (AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. II, p. 167).

Using his own explanation :

Thus, for illustration, we designate as a cube, on the one hand, any natu- ral object in cubical form ; on the other hand, the simple form alone, which made the material contents into a " cube," in the former sense, constitutes of itself, independently and abstractly considered, an object for geometry. The significance of geometry appears in the fact that the formal relations which it determines hold good for all possible objects formed in space. In like manner, it is the purpose of sociology to determine the forms and modes of the relations between men, which, although constituted of entirely different contents, material, and interests, nevertheless take shape in formally similar social structures. If we could exhibit the totality of possible forms of social relationship in their gradations and variations, we should have in such exhibit complete knowledge of "society "as such. We gain knowledge of