Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/829

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 809

mitted to the formative centers of consciousness and transforms itself into a perception, that is to say, in the establishment of a relationship of coexistence between the muscular sensation itself and that particular state of consciousness which we call volition. In the act of perception this relationship is classified with relationships previously known. This classification once affected, the subject gains more and more, in proportion to the frequency of his experiences and perceptions, special knowledge of miscu- lar combinations of adjustments, and of the degree of energy to be used in each situation where his will is put in motion for the sake of realizing an adaptation. Thus psychism in general runs back to the primal laws of movement which govern matter and force in time and in space. General philosophy receives a monistic interpretation which extends, as we shall see, to social phenomena.

SECTION VIII. RELATIONS AND LIMITS OF PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGY AND OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY.

The collective life of societies is subjected to laws, not abso- lutely identical to those of animals, but in part analogous. The first consciousness of a collective life in a society arises through the impression of external resistances from other societies or from physical obstacles impeding its activity and its movements. The reiterated experience of these resistances gradually brings societies to the consciousness that their structure and activity are limited. It teaches them that they must adjust their institutions and actions to external and internal conditions ; that is to say, to equilibrate their forms and movements according to the most exact relations possible. Here is one of the primordial psychical origins of the theory of limits. The collective consciousness becomes more or less clear as the voluntary activity of the whole society is limited by the physical and social forces of the envi- ronment. Thus the consciousness of that which resists is, either from the individual or social point of view, the point of departure of the consciousness of existence, whether individual or distinctly social, but dependent precisely because distinct. Among indi- viduals this consciousness arises from the intra-uterine life, from muscular tension, and subsequently from pressure exercised in