Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/511

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 49 l

Yet it is necessary never to lose sight of the fact that in real- ity no society is in a state of repose, that is to say, a state of fixed, absolute equilibrium ; absolute repose would be the cessa- tion of social life, absolute death. But, whatever the movements may be, there always exist constant and necessary conditions of equilibrium for these movements. The term " structure" is also more appropriate in this connection than the term "statics," because the former takes account in a more obvious manner of this continued equilibrium of organized bodies in movement. It is the investigation of these constant and necessary condi- tions of equilibrium, which are common to all social states, that constitutes the domain of abstract social statics, or, to use a better term, of the general structure of societies.

Just as concrete sociology is always relatively abstract, so likewise abstract social statics is in part descriptive and con- crete, since its bases necessarily present these latter characteris- tics. It is therefore apparent that sociology, and consequently abstract statics, are a regular development of the inductive method.

Again, abstract social statics is in part descriptive for another capital reason ; it embraces in its domain, not merely a study of elementary phenomena considered independently of the social tissues, organs, and bodies in whose formation they unite, accord- ing to the analysis that we made of them in part I, but it likewise includes the study of these tissues, organs, groups of organs, systems, etc. Now, the study of these aggregates is, in reality, necessarily descriptive. Thus, observation of the social elements will give rise especially to the consideration of quantitative rela- tions and quantitative laws founded upon statistical data, while observation of forms, of special as well as general social struc- tures, will in the main furnish the material for qualitative rela- tions and laws. This distinction supports another consideration, namely, that quantity is itself one of the first constituent ele- ments of qualitative differentiations ; an increase of mass is not only favorable to differentiations, but it, by itself, constitutes the simplest of differentiations. The sociological laws are, then, abstract or concrete; the quantitative laws are naturally more