Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/516

 49 6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

1. Economics.

2. Genetics.

3. Esthetics.

4. Collective psychology.

- T.'tl,,",-,-

5. Ethics.

6. Law.

7. Politics.

>- Sociology.

The natural character of this classification appears especially in social embryology and in organography, in which we treated of the formation of societies and of their organs or institutions by means of differentiations. All the phenomena relating to the social sciences enter into this classification. Not only are they superior in mass, complexity, and plasticity to the analo- gous phenomena which we may encounter even in the most advanced antecedent sciences, such as biology and psychology, but they manifest a superiority which we may call qualitative, in contrast with the differences enumerated by Herbert Spencer, which are mainly quantitative. This characteristic peculiar to sociological phenomena, especially in its clearly conscious and well-developed forms, is encountered nowhere excepting in social bodies, although it appears in germ in certain animal soci- eties. It is this quality which enables societies to organize collectively and to function according to contractual modes, with the result that contractualism becomes a special and supe- rior form of social adaptation, a true method of common struc- ture and common life. Although these forms and modes of social activity are met with in all societies, even in the simplest and most primitive, they are naturally to be observed mainly in the higher social types of humanity. They are transformed continually into an unconscious organization and activity, which in turn become the point of departure of new contractual rela- tions. Neither in general psychology nor in biology do we find contractual phenomena, but only spontaneous cellular associa- tions and combinations. Nowhere except in societies are aggre- gates, organs, groups of organs, systems of groups, associations or colonies made, unmade, dissolved, and transformed according to contractual modes, until it seems, when the more and more