Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/459

443 represents Gemeinschaft. In the other case the ideas of end and means exclude each other, and it becomes necessary to unite them. End and means act upon each other with mechanical necessity; the means are willed only for the sake of the end. This relation between end and means is exemplified in barter. It represents Gesellschaft, and indicates that ideas have become more individual and abstract. The mechanical form thus arises out of and coexists with the organic form of society. There is no individualism except as it proceeds from and is conditioned by Gemeinschaft, or as it produces and maintains Gesellschaft.

The great question of the day for sociologists, says M. Bouglé, is whether society is or is not an organism. If it is, how great a light will biology throw upon sociology? To test the proposition let us apply the organic theory to some particular sociological problem, and see if it will enable us to reach a definite conclusion. Take, for instance, the question of the probable consequences of democracy: are they likely to be good or evil? Now, what are the laws biology has found true for animal organisms? First and foremost, that one may measure the perfection of the organism by the differentiation of its functions. But, as a corollary, it is added that the elements composing the varied organs in becoming thus organized, give up their individual freedom. Work is specialized, each cell does one thing and no more. Is this true of society? Is it not rather the case that in the highest society individuality most abounds? Biological laws half apply to sociological facts, but men are animals differing from others, not only in complexity of organization, but in the possession of consciousness. This is the decisive fact which explains why differentiation produces opposite effects in the social and in the organic world. Arguing from biological data, the inevitable conclusion would seem to be that a strict caste system was the ideal for society. All experience contradicts this, however, and makes it evident that society is more than a mere organism, to which biological laws apply. So that if one wishes to discover the normal effects of different social systems, aristocratic or democratic, they must not be compared with animal organisms but with each other. Sociology is not biology transposed, but an analytic history of different social forms.

The social aggregate is only a system of points in perpetual movement, approaching or receding from one another. The first cause of this movement is, by analogy with physical mechanics, the force of attraction