Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/612

 59 2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

simple general structure. All known facts prove that the juxta- position, in any part whatsoever of space and at any point what- soever in time, of these two elements, land and population, necessarily and constantly produces a social structure character- ized by the preceding conditions. Nothing proves better that societies are formations which are neither exclusively biologic, exclusively psychic, nor yet merely physical and mechanical. The formation and conformation of societies may be explained in an entirely natural manner without implying the intervention of a mysterious theological or metaphysical force; the non-formation or the different conformation of societies would be miraculous and incomprehensible under the conditions which we know. Sociology has also this advantage over the other natural sciences, of being able to show, either historically or by observation of the present, social forms in process of differentiation, and therefore reduced to the simplest, most general conditions. Without tak- ing into account prehistoric populations, Australia, Africa, Asia, America, and even the lower strata of certain of our European populations, present specimens of this rudimentary social exist- ence, resulting from the single fact of the meeting of a certain number of human beings in a definite environment, and of their social fusion with this environment.

The point of view of the mesological school and that of the anthropological school, in which I include the psychological branch, are equally true, but they are only in a state of uniting and merging into a broader interpretation. In sociology, man and the environment, the actor and the theater, the subject and the object, the agent and the recipient, are only one; they are the indissoluble parts of a single aggregate; their dissociation implies the dissolution, the death, of the social structure.

We have already stated that the inorganic as well as the organic structures prepare us for the appearance of societary structures. Molecular aggregates are also masses of atoms united together. Organized beings are associations of cells. The same is true of the nervous systems, from which arise our states of consciousness, our combinations of desires, emotions, sentiments, and ideas. In the same way the concourse of indi-