Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/449

Rh upward through mental philosophy, moral philosophy, and so connecting again with sociology through the religious organization, the church; 3. The Scientific course, commencing with mathematics and passing up through the hierarchy of science, as already given, and so connecting again with sociology through the industrial organization, the guild.

I have made only three fundamental corporations of the social organism. Friedrich Schlegel, the celebrated writer on philosophy of history, in a series of articles entitled "Characteristics of the Age," makes five essential corporations rising one above the other in the following order, viz., the family, the guild, the state, the school, the church. But the least reflection, I think, will show that the family and the school belong to a different order from the other three, being subordinate and preparatory to them, not coördinate with them. The former are internal, elaborative; the latter external, visible, public, final results. I am sure that the more we reflect upon this subject, the more we will be convinced that there are only three fundamental and strictly coördinate corporations.

We have seen that it is the guild which is most directly and closely connected with the scientific column, and with our material nature. In accordance with this fact we find that it is this sub-organism which is by far the most perfectly organized. It is in this that we see most perfectly carried out the law of differentiation and specialization of social functions and mutual dependence of parts; and the strongest tendency to identification of the individual life with the social function. In other words, it is precisely here, as we should expect, that we find the nearest approach to the ideal of material organization. In accordance with the same fact we also find that the corresponding department of social science, viz., political economy, is that which is by far the most perfectly developed.

There are three mistakes made by thinkers on the subject of sociology, all founded on a too limited view of the structure of the social organism, each consisting of an attempt to absorb the whole organism into one of the fundamental corporations—to regard the great field of sociology as connected with only one of the supporting columns mentioned above. Lawyers, politicians, statesmen, and indeed people generally, regard sociology as most closely connected with the history column, and would make the state paramount. The state is for them the social organism. Theologians and moralists, on the other hand, would make the church paramount in importance if not absolutely absorbing the others, and sociology as most closely connected with the psychology column. The modern materialist would make the guild the paramount corporation, and sociology as most closely connected through biology with the scientific column. The political philosopher is apt, therefore, to cling only to empirical laws and so-called practical methods, unaware of or denying the connection of sociology with any more fundamental departments of science, and especially its connection with