Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/534

514 organization and evolution is the function of history—the history of particular social organizations, and, finally, the history of societies themselves in their ensemble as true institutions in the service of the great universal society. Thus in genetics the statistics of marriages and those of legitimate and illegitimate births initiate us perfectly into knowledge of the genetic elements of a given society in a given historical period; but the laws which we are able to derive by these observations are never applicable except to societies having the same institutions as those in connection with which the tabulated unions and births (some legitimate, others illegitimate) take place. Even the most general statistical facts, those relating to births and deaths, are comparable only in connection with institutions. In fact, what is the use of announcing pretended general and abstract laws if it is necessary to add all conditions being equal, and if these equal conditions do not exist? It is only by demonstrating the existence of a constant order of structure and evolution in the particular organs of the societies, and in the societies themselves, that it can be completely shown that there are laws of natality and mortality. It is, then, by studying genetics, not only in its elements, but also in its institutions, and as an integrating factor of societies, that we shall succeed in discovering constant and necessary relations, static and dynamic laws, common to all societies. Although sociology is given a first form by elementary statistics, it is, so to speak, the particular institutions and societies themselves that become the direct materials of sociology. For example, we shall show that a regular order of evolution exists among primitive promiscuity, polyandry, polygamy, the matriarchate, the patriarchate, and the androgynous couple who are politically equal, or rather equivalent, and who are recognized as such in the institutions. From these different special historical forms we shall be able, therefore, to deduce special laws, at first concrete, then abstract. Likewise, taking a further step, we shall advance to the consideration of the static and dynamic conditions of various co-ordinated institutions, at first in particular societies, and finally in societies considered as a whole. Thus we shall also succeed in discovering the general