Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/782

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY. I. THE SCOPE AND TASK OF SOCIOLOGY.

So THE subject-matter of sociology is the social aggregate ! But what is meant by the social aggregate ? Where does it begin, where end? Is it humanity, the race, the nation, the community, the class, or the voluntary association ? " Study the social organism," they bid us, but nowhere do we perceive a social body complete in itself, with head and members, periphery and viscera. We see extending everywhere a web of human beings, woven now close, now loose ; binding men together sometimes with many threads, sometimes with few ; uniting them at times directly, oftener indirectly, through other men, or through centers of attachment such as common interests, ideals, or institutions. Where in this continuous tissue shall we find a social cadaver to dissect ?

In another quarter it is held that sociology is concerned only with the action of human groups on one another social phe- nomena and the influence of the group on its individual mem- bers psycho-social phenomena. According to Gumplowicz and Bauer, not social wholes, but the hundred interlacing groups into which men combine, are the proper subject of study. This, no doubt, is an enticing conception, for it excuses us from showing how groups form and how a group-type or a group-will arises out of the play of mind on mind. It is not clear, how- ever, that the sociologist may ignore the genesis of the group any more than the biologist may ignore the genesis of the organism. Then, too, quite aside from the group, there are man-to-man relations, which are well worth studying. How the social mystery begins to clear when we have made out such typical relations as those between model and imitator, apostle and disciple, leader and follower, or between two dissentients, two consentients, two competitors, or two persons with common interests ! Yet such a couple is not a group any more than a

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