Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/716

 692 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

is precisely for the purpose of filling up the gaps of his static bases that Comte has supposed that the direct modifications of the social state were spontaneous, while they also are the result of actions and reactions which are brought about in the very bosom of the social body by reason of the several modalities of its structure, of its functions, organs, apparatus, and systems. Altogether the statics and dynamics of Comte transgress through too much simplicity, and consequently he ended in the very error that has caused M. de Roberty to say that the classifica- tion of social phenomena is impossible, their complexity render- ing them indivisible and inseparable. That might be true only in concrete sociology. As to the objection in regard to the complexity, it does not bear examination. For the very reason that the social phenomena are the most modifiable because so complex, they are the most divisible and susceptible of classifi- cation. In this, I believe, I have better developed the idea which confuses Comte as well as the most orthodox sociologists of his school. Comte, applying his principles to the human order, adds that there are two necessary modes of the latter the one collective, the other individual ; the first constituting his social existence, the second his moral existence. He happens therefore to make of morality a seventh complementary degree in his encyclopaedic scale of sciences: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, and morality. His dual- istic conception of the individual and of society compels him, at least logically, to make morality an offshoot of biology. Con- trarily to Comte, I think that the social organism embraces at once all of the elements of nature called inorganic and biologi- cal, including the human beings. These latter, considered sepa- rately, arise exclusively from biology. They are one zoological species. Sociologically they form an integral part of the social superorganism, for the reason that every individual of the spe- cies homo is social, i. e., has no absolutely real and independent existence. To our mind, there is no double morality, one indi- vidual and the other collective. The morality of the zoological species homo would be only a complete adjustment of its organic being in more or less perfect connection with the rest of nature,