Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/260

 246 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

society, is a superior combination of the constituent elements of the whole of nature. Men and their environments can differ, change, but societies are always inseparable from their environ- ments. Sociological monism is the most advanced phase of the philosophy of history. The doctrine ought to formulate itself naturally when, as today, the unity of structure and life is imposed upon the collective conscience by its worldly nature.

The philosophy of history, the first form of sociology, began as a legitimate and natural reaction against the spiritual and anthropomorphic conceptions of religions, and notably against the Graeco-Roman polytheism, during, and even before, its monotheistic evolution. Its progress coincides with that of the natural sciences, though the latter had not fully comprehended man, and the societies in particular were always interpreted as distinct from the environment which they dominate or through which they are dominated.

Hippocrates of Cos, the great doctor of the fifth century before our era, and Herodotus, his contemporary, contributed to the European world the bases of social mesology. According to the principle of Hippocrates,

Everything that the earth produces is comformable to the earth itself. [That is why] elevated countries produce beings of high stature and low countries beings of little height. In regions where the seasons are not extreme all of the men resemble each other, but where the differences between the seasons are considerable one observes great differences in the

forms of the individuals In Scythia the seasons undergo only slight

variations and depart little from uniformity, and hence arise the resemblances

that the Scythians bear to each other In Europe the vicissitudes of

seasons are considerable and frequent, the heat severe, the winters rigorous, and the rains abundant ; there intervene prolonged drought and winds, which multiply and diversify the atmospheric variations. It is natural that these influences should make themselves felt among the people, and that the con- formation of the embryo should vary and not be the same for each person, in summer and winter, and during the rainy and dry seasons. It is on this account, speaking for myself, that Europeans differ more among themselves than the Scythians in form, and that in each city one observes among the inhabitants such irregularities of stature. 1

1 Traitl des eaux, des airs et des lieux (edited and translated by DE LITTRE), Vol. II, pp. 53 ff.