Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/537

Rh any thing like the same definiteness or the same constancy, but nevertheless having likenesses and differences which justify the putting of them into major groups most markedly contrasted, and, within these, arranging them in minor groups less markedly contrasted. And just as Biology discovers certain general traits of development, structure, and function, holding throughout all organisms, others holding throughout certain great groups, others throughout certain sub-groups these contain; so Sociology has to recognize truths of social development, structure, and function, that are some of them universal, some of them general, some of them special.

For, recalling the conclusion previously reached, it is manifest that, in so far as human beings, considered as social units, have properties in common, the social aggregates they form will have properties in common; that likenesses of nature holding throughout certain of the human races, will originate likenesses of nature, in the nations arising out of them; and that such peculiar traits as are possessed by the highest varieties of men must result in distinctive characters possessed in common by the communities into which they organize themselves.

So that, whether we look at the matter in the abstract or in the concrete, we reach the same conclusion. We need but to glance, on the one hand, at the varieties of uncivilized men and the structures of their tribes, and, on the other hand, at the varieties of civilized men and the structures of their nations, to see inference verified by fact. And thus recognizing, both a priori and a posteriori, these relations between the phenomena of individual human nature and the phenomena of incorporated human nature, we cannot fail to see that the phenomena of incorporated human nature form the subject-matter of a science.

And now to make more definite the conception of a Social Science thus shadowed forth in a general way, let me set down a few truths of the kind indicated. Some that I propose to name are very familiar; and others I add, not because of their interest or importance, but because they are easy of exposition. The aim is simply to convey a clear idea of the nature of sociological truths.

Take, first, the general fact that along with social aggregation there always goes some kind of organization. In the very lowest stages, where the assemblages are very small and very incoherent, there is no established subordination—no centre of control. Chieftainships of settled kinds come only along with larger and more coherent aggregates. The evolution of a governmental structure, having some strength and permanence, is the condition under which alone any considerable growth of a society can take place. A differentiation of the originally homogeneous mass of units, into a coordinating part and coordinated part, is the indispensable initial step.