Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/784

 764 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

as poachers and claim-jumpers. But who contents himself with this territory ? Professor Giddings so conceives sociology, yet he tells us a few pages farther on that it is concerned with " the constant elements in history." All sociologists are keen in their ambition to find out the springs of human progress, to lay bare the prime causes of social transformations, to trace the influence of environment on the character of population, and to correlate the various phenomena of social life. Yet none of these prop- erly belong among the problems of association.

Social psychology, social morphology, social mechanics all of them are, it seems to me, but convenient segments of a sci- ence, the subject-matter of which is social phenomena. I say "phenomena" in preference even to "activities," because it embraces beliefs and feelings as well as actions.

" But," it will be urged, " what phenomena are social ? People yawn, sleep, mope, plan. Is this sort of thing social just because they are neighbors ? The solitary ape behaves in the same way." This query cannot be better answered than in the words of Tarde : "What a man does without having learned from the example of another person, walking, crying, eating, mating, is purely vital ; while walking with a certain step, singing a song, preferring at table one's national dishes and partaking of them in a well-bred way, courting a woman after the manner of the time, are social."

If the social is not the vital, neither is it the individual psychic. So we might add as supplement to Tarde: "When one fears the dark, delights in color, craves a mate, or draws an inference from his own observations, that is merely psychic. But when one dreads heresy, delights in 'good form,' craves the feminine type of his time, or embraces the dogmas of his people, that is social"

But we cannot go with Tarde when he says: "The social is the imitated." Psychologists recognize that one idea calls up another in virtue of contrast as well as in virtue of resemblance. Likewise a person's behavior may be determined in way of oppo- sition as well as in way of imitation. "Contrary" children are controlled by telling them just the opposite of what you wish