Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/609

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 589

Here it is appropriate again to point out an almost universal error of sociologists, which consists in considering societies as the result of merely biological and psychic combinations, espe- cially the latter. 1

Every sociological phenomenon assumes and implies the two elements, land and population, in sociology ; these elements are inseparable. Thus, to borrow an example from the simplest and most general social phenomena, the economic, there are among the factors of production, besides labor and capital, the natural agents, earth, water, solar heat ; the economic phenomenon of land rent is closely connected with these natural agents. This factor is as constant as the human factor. This blending of the natural agents is universal in sociology ; no social phenomenon is purely psychic or ideologic.

In his work upon positive philosophy (Tome, IV, XLIX e Lecon), Auguste Comte, after stating the necessary relationships of social physics with the other fundamental branches of positive philosophy, very properly said that social physics is hierarchically subordinate to the latter, and he added :

The positive study of social development necessarily implies the continued correlation of these two indispensable ideas : humanity which accomplishes the phenomenon and the constant ensemble of exterior influences, the scientific environment properly speaking, which governs this partial, secondary evolu- tion of one of the animal species.

However, this thought of Comte's is only a defective approxi- mation to reality. In the first place, humanity is only a deriva- tive conception ; it does not accomplish the social phenomenon ; it is itself the highest accomplished social phenomenon, and this phenomenon is realized by the combination and the fusion of the two general, elementary factors, land and population. In no society do we find an agent and a passive recipient, an actor and a theater. The agent is at the same time the recipient ; the actor forms an integral part of the theater. For Comte's dualistic con- ception we substitute, then, a monistic conception. We may observe, however, that Comte's conception is superior in every

1 Especially M. Tarde, who has very well summarized this false point of view in the Scuola positiva of September 15 and 30, 1893, PP- 7^o ff.