Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/812

 782 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

instructive as any other, seeing that order can always be consid- ered apart from movement. In point of fact, however, such a society would not present a system of mutually determining parts and interdependent activities, i. e., an "order," but would be full of incongruities. Statical laws can be discovered only where there is an equilibrium which permits the inner affinities and repugnances of institutions to. disclose themselves. But a society that keeps in balance is ruled by forces and activities quite different from those that prevail in a highly progressive community. The distinction, therefore, between social statics and social dynamics, far from being one of "mere logic, reaches deep into the subject-matter of sociology.

In every society are certain factors, such as religion, govern- ment, custom, law, and ceremony, which are actively static, inas- much as they resist structural change of every sort. Language, literature, art, industry, education, and opinion are passively static or shall I say neutral? lending themselves indifferently to the agencies of stagnation and to those of change. In strong con- trast are the dynamic factors, such as domestication, geographical discovery, exploration, migration, acclimatization, war, conquest, race- crossing, commerce, travel, invention, scientific discovery, prophetism, and free thought. The professionals of law, government, and religion are apt to hate and belittle these dynamic factors and processes. Nor are they beloved of the masses, as are the great conservative institutions. Popular affections do not twine about them as about church and state. Race intermarriage, foreign influence, science, free thought, and prophetism have usually been looked at askance. Men always consider religion and gov- ernment as infinitely more precious than discovery and inven- tion. This division into statics and dynamics is, then, grounded not simply on the distinction between order and movement, rela- tions of coexistence and those of succession, but as well on the broad contrast between the forces and activities that make for equilibrium and those which make for change.

The point needs to be emphasized that social dynamics is concerned with change rather than evolution. The term "evolu-