Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/622

 602 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

George Simmel also very correctly expresses the principle that "the sociological structure of a group is essentially modi- fied by the number of the individuals that are united in it," in such a manner that, on the one hand, "certain forms which are necessary or possible from the contents or conditions of life can come to realization only before or after a certain numerical extension of the elements," and from the positive point of view "that other forms are promoted directly through definite and purely quantitative modifications of the group." 1 Thus, according to Simmel, the past and contemporaneous communistic forms have been possible only in relatively restricted circles, and have always failed in the extended groups. Although, in my opinion, true socialistic forms appear at the present time in the large capitalistic societies, and even in world-wide relations an important phenomenon which has escaped the observation of Simmel his principle is relatively correct, and we ourselves have indicated that quantitative development is generally a factor in variations, in qualitative differentiations. However, Simmel, like Herbert Spencer, takes into consideration only the human units in the texture of societies, and not the other equally essential factor, from which results the inorganic, organic, and psychic combination which is indispensable to every social form. From the quantitative point of view, this other factor has likewise influence upon the qualitative social structure.

CHAPTER IV. THE SOCIAL LIMITS.

Auguste Comte devotes the seventh and last chapter of the second volume of the Systeme de politique positive or Traite" de sociologie instituant la religion de Phumanite", in which he sets forth social statics or the abstract theory of human order, to the positive theory of the general limits of variation characteristic of the human order.

This problem of the limits of social variations is one whose preliminary solution is indispensable to a clear distinction between social statics and social dynamics ; it is the frontier line where statics and dynamics meet and become intermingled.

1 "The Number of Members as Determining the Sociological Form of the Group," AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, July, 1902.