Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/600

 580 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

living creature. According to him, this body is subject to a law of evolution similar to that of individuals : birth, youth, matu- rity, old age, and death. He investigated the distinction, so important from the static and dynamic point of view, between the constant causes, variable causes, and accidental causes. This distinction enabled him to show that the most variable factors are the social factors. He connected himself with socialism, as well as with positive sociology, by observing that the economic factors are the most general, those whose varia- tions have the most direct influence upon all the other social phenomena. Thus variations in the price of rye and wheat influence natality, mortality, and criminality.

The conclusions are : first, that governments ought to dimin- ish all the causes which produce great variations in the price of grain, consequently to reform institutions ; second, that crimi- nality in particular is a regular effect of our social organization. "It is society that prepares the crime, and the criminal is only the instrument that executes it."

Kant, the metaphysician most nearly approaching positive philosophy, held this physico-mechanical conception of soci- eties. Moreover, all social economy, aside from the socialistic schools, still remained individualistic. Aside from the state, there were only individuals, molecules, a human dust. This dust the state prepares and combines in its laboratories, except that, with the liberal school, the social chemistry has no other law than liberty ; no other order than its natural order.

An intermediate group between the latter school and the biologic school is that which no longer emphasizes the individ- ual, but the group, the race, etc.; basing its studies wholly upon statistics. In fact, this point of view appears in the work of Quetelet, is developed in the school of Le Play, and is empha- sized by Gumplowiez in a way that is unhappily too narrow.

The third current of positive sociology is represented by the different schools whose social conception is mainly biologic and organic. With Turgot, Condorcet, Cabanis, Dr. Burdin, Saint- Simon, Auguste Comte, Schaffle, and Worms, we see the idea of a social structure gradually superseding the static and dynamic