Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/213

No. 2.] The difficulty, of course, is that these abstractions based on false analogy lead to utterly false antitheses between the individual and society, which in their turn lead to needless and to false efforts at reconciliation. When we cast aside the abstractions and look at the social facts, we discover a law which is the "key to the whole process of social development," the law, namely, that "socialization and individualization are the two sides of a single process."

It is impossible in brief space to discuss the very careful and illuminating exposition of personality in its individual and social aspects which is the subject matter of Chapter III. The philosopher will find here matter worth while.

Apart from the Introduction, which is concerned with general matters of definition and demarcation of the sociological task, the book is divided into two parts: (1) An Analysis of Community; and (2) Primary Laws of the Development of Community. The first part is concerned in the main with the dissipation of fallacies and with the distinction between and correlation of community, associations and institutions. The second part is interesting to the philosopher, particularly for its penetrating discussion of the criteria of social development. "Evolutionary science," says the author, "is concerned not with the history of the world but with the history of selected elements of the world. Take away the idea of development, leave only the idea of process, and evolutionary science would become a mere reflection of the myriad inchoate contradictory processes of nature." What then, he asks, shall we call the development of community? Examining various criteria more or less widely supported (complexity, differentiation of structure, etc.), he rejects them. "We are thus driven from structure to life in our search for criteria of development. Differentiation that furthers life is development." But what does it mean to further life? The answer must be, he answers, in terms of psychology. We omit here the interesting steps of the argument and give only the significant conclusion: "Our concern is with the directly social criteria; and of these the most important discoverable by the application of these [psychological] methods are perhaps the following: the power to understand and estimate the claims of others in comparison with our own; the power to enter into more and more complex relations, the autonomy attained by the individual in these relations with his fellows, and his sense of responsibility towards others within these relations. These are all qualities entirely absent in the earliest stages and activities of conscious life, and slowly acquired in some degree by all educable beings. They are