Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/215

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY 201

arts, and sciences. Not until these planes extend themselves by constraint is it proper to term them institutions.

Moreover, unless we include the uniformity among our units, we shall have no place for the phenomena of crowds, since the social nature of these agglomerations is too undetermined to leave a precipitate in the form of an imperative or institution. Durkheim, indeed, sets these crowd-unanimities apart as "social currents." It seems better, however, to bring them under the rubric of uniformities.

The five units so'far favorably considered groups, relations, institutions, imperatives, uniformities are products. They pre- cede the individual and they survive him. To the onlooker they appear as gods or fates, molding the lives and disposing over the destinies of ordinary men. Nevertheless, they have all arisen at some time out of the actions and interactions of men. To understand their genesis we must ascend to that primordial fact known as the social process.

Take, for instance, a social uniformity. In what ways may it originate ? It may arise through exposure to similar external influences, such as climate or occupation. It may come about through the propagation of an idea or a practice from person to person, from class to class. It may be due to transmission within the family, or to identity of instruction. It may come from the orientation of many minds by a common shock or experience. It may come from the fascination of the Many by the One, or from the intimidation of the One by the Many. At the beginning, then, of every uniformity may be found a process, which occurs according to law.

Certain influences have conspired to divert the attention of social investigators from processes. The product uprears itself like the mast of a ship or the steeple of a church. Here is the institution primogeniture, lex talionis, trial by jury huge, con- spicuous, enduring. We inspect it, handle it, describe it, but neglect the generative process, that which Emerson terms "the quick cause before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes."