Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/213

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY 1 99

toward our goal. But social bonds appear in relations, as well as in groupings. Here are friends, comrades, partners determining one another. Here is a nexus between apostle and disciple, leader and follower, principal and agent, pastor and layman, liege and vassal. To set forth the content of the various typical relations that exist or have existed is surely a duty of the sociologist.

Even group and relation do not exhaust the aspects of social life. These are objective facts. They evince themselves in behavior, and there is no reason why our neigbors on Mars might not study them on this planet if their telescopes are strong enough. But there are subjective facts that solicit the attention of the sociologist. A rubric must be provided for the mythologies, sciences, and arts erected by the joint efforts of men, and for the conventions precipitated from their inter- action.

There are some who think to unite the subjective with the objective facts by adopting as their unit the institution. But this, too, is narrowing. Intent on the institution sociologists have neglected temporary groupings like the crowd, and so raised up a swarm of crowd psychologists, who make sport of their institu- tional lore. They have also neglected illicit social formations, such as have not received the baptism of social recognition and approval. To the scientific eye your Camorra or Mafia, your furtive gang of criminals or "combine" of boodlers, is as inter- esting and significant as a College of Cardinals or a Supreme Court. But the institutional bias scorns them, and so writers on government have enlarged on the parts and organs duly con- stituted and presented to the public view, and have ignored the veiled apparatus of parties, caucuses, rings, machines and bosses, that work the mechanism in front of the curtain. Only recently have political scientists shown a disposition to explore the real springs and forces behind the government.

There is, moreover, a distinction between institution and struc- ture the neglect of which has created much confusion. An insti- tution is a grouping or relation that is sanctioned or permitted by society. The actual may or may not conform to the sanctioned.