Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/527

Rh In Part II, we have preceded to a similar classification of the organs and groups of organs: genetic, artistic, scientific, moral, juridic, and political. This classification is a second synthesis, at once subjective and objective, for it organizes our knowledge, and at the same time it rests upon observations conforming to concrete reality. One of the most constant laws which we have recognized at this point of our studies is that the social functions and organs thus considered by themselves assume a structure which is less rigid and despotic as their organization becomes more developed and perfect. With evolutionary progress, in the place of order resulting from commandment there is substituted order resulting from the perfecting of the organization itself.

A third positive synthesis, which is still special, shows that the numerous social functions and organs are only the result of sociological differentiation from a primitive homogeneous state, out of which they emerge by way of natural filiation. We have shown that, by the very fact of this filiation, the functions and the organs are related to each other in such a way that the highest forms in each class, and the highest forms of the ensemble of the classes of functions and organs, are interrelated as the divers branches of an immense genealogical tree. Thus the circulatory function, which is the simplest and most general economic function, not only gives rise to a whole series of organs which jointly perform the work of circulation, but it also gives rise to an uninterrupted line of functions and organs relating to consumption, such as private and public markets, wholesale and retail commercial houses, etc., and to an analogous line of functions and organs which participate in the work of production. Further, the economic functions and organs give rise to domestic, artistic, scientific, moral, juridic, and political institutions, all of which are related to the economic functions and organs, and to each other as direct and collateral descendants of common ancestors.

Let us recall, for example, that from the aesthetic point of view a natural classification arises, which is based at the same time upon the relations of the arts to our senses, to the exterior