Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/611

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 59 1

Union of these two different elements, land and population, into a whole this is a primary, universal law of every society, the basis of all social statics.

Any social aggregate, however simple it may be, is, then, in itself a combination of different elements implying a con- stitutional differentiation. It includes a certain extent and quantity of inorganic and organic nature and a certain number of human units. This social aggregate may be partial ; that is to say, limited to a group of human beings and lands. It may even go so far as to include the whole of humanity and the planet. Its conditions will be the same in the two cases, with this difference, that, in the first, the social aggregate will be limited either by other social aggregates or by an external territorial environment not yet socialized; that is to say, not yet combined with constitutive human units into an aggregate. The bees do not constitute a society without the hives. It is the nest which is at the basis of every society of insects.

The phenomenon called society is, then, a relationship. It implies a constant, necessary, combination of the following con- ditions : (a) a social mass composed of, first, land; second, popu- ulation; the union of the two different elements of this mass into a whole; (c) a certain differentiation of this latter from the other social aggregates, or from the rest of the land, unless the entire planet has been organized into a superior social aggre- gate, binding together, in the same condition, the particular social aggregates. Wherever these conditions are found united, the phenomenon society appears. Here is the most general static law, the most general law of existence, the primary, fun- damental condition of all social structure.

We find here the two permanent factors of every organic equilibrium: (i) a certain internal arrangement in harmony with (2) a certain arrangement of the external environment; an internal arrangement of parts united together, or internal equili- brium; harmony of this arrangement with external environment, external equilibrium; combination of these two equilibriums into a single, complete equilibrium. All the most extended and "the most complex social structures will be only special cases of this