Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/530

 510 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

In the social psychism I include oral and written language, which, as I have shown, serves as a means of transition between art and science. But, as we shall see later in the general struc- ture of societies, every phenomenon implies all the others ; thus an economic phenomenon always has a genetic, aesthetic, scien- tific, moral, juridic, or political character. Now, although Comte's law of the three stages may be applicable to the last four classes or phenomena, it is particularly necessary to recog- nize that it cannot be applied either to economics or genetics or art, which are of a superior generality. We are obliged, then, to reject at once not only what is called historic material- ism, but also all biologic sociology ; and in particular psychic sociology. Beliefs, morals, law, and politics are material, as are all other social phenomena ; the contrary is conceivable only in the abstract, analytical part of sociology; but in the real social struc- tures, that is to say, in so far as the phenomena are incorporated in organized aggregates, each social fact is at the same time economic, genetic, aesthetic, moral, juridic, and political. This composite character, already apparent in special social organog- raphy, will appear to us as a fundamental law, especially in the study of the structure of societies as a whole.

The recognition that social organs are co-ordinated into groups of organs having a common function is, then, a further step in synthesis. Thus, the means of transportation, the banks of deposit, of issue, of credit, and of payment, money, etc., form the circulatory apparatus ; the latter combines with the organs of the apparatus of consumption and those of production to con- stitute the economic system. The last, in its turn, will appear to us in the general synthesis as one of the grand subdivisions of the social structure as a whole.

Thus, in proportion as we advance from the elementary study of social phenomena to their organic co-ordination, which increases in extent and complexity, the hierarchic character of the primary analytical classification gives place to a correlation, and therefore to an equivalence, so that all idea of superiority, and even of anteriority, becomes very attenuated. This is true in the sense that in reality the highest forms may claim a certain