Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/610

 590 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

respect to the conceptions of the biological and psychological schools, as the latter are merely one-sided, being monistic only in appearance.

Here, then, are the irreducible elements of societies ; socie- ties are the transformed products of these elements. Thus socie- ties not only continue, but also contain, all nature, and sociology is the true daughter of the other sciences, uniting their heredi- tary characteristics with its own acquired qualities.

CHAPTER III. THE SOCIAL AGGREGATES.

In sociology, as in the other sciences, we do not generally know the aggregates in their inmost composition, in their simple ele- ments. At first they present themselves to us in the composite, concrete state. Previous to our analysis, the social superorgan- ism appeared to us as a complex whole. It is still so even afterward, but with this enormous difference, that this vast, mysterious body has revealed to us the elements which enter into its nature, the properties which its tissues manifest, the functions, the organs, the groups of organs, the systems which regulate the activity of these properties, and even that related knowledge, especially of descendance and of filiation, which shows how these many parts are devoted to the service of the structure and the life of the ensemble of societies. We are able, therefore, to define the social aggregates. In general, following the definition of Littre, an aggregate is "the mass produced by the union of different substances which have become united from the moment of their formation." In the same way, a social aggregate is the mass produced by the union of different sub- stances, land and population, united together from the time of their formation. Any mass of social matter which is united together here is the first general condition of all social struc- ture; and this matter is indissolubly composed of human units and an environment no longer unconnected and antithetical, but combined and aggregated, forming a unified whole. It is therefore a cardinal principle, the neglect of which vitiates all the 'sociologies, that man is not sufficient to constitute a society. Society must include a correlative part of the rest of nature.