Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/366

* SOCIOLOGY. 312 SOCIOLOGY. Each consists of individuals boimd together by habitual intercourse, mutual interests, and cooper- ation, emphasizing their mental and practical re- semblance, and giving little heed to their blood relationships. Ethnic societies may be metro- nymic or patronymic. A metronymic group is one in which all relationships are traced through mothers. A patronymic group is one in which all relationships are traced in the male line through the fathers. The series of com- ponent groups in ethnic society is: family, horde, tribe, confederation. The horde is a small aggregation of families, usually a wan- dering camp, comprising twenty-five to a hundred persons in all. The tribe is a comnnmity cre- ated by the consolidation of hordes, or by the growth and difl'erentiation of a single horde, occu- pying a defined territory, speaking one language or dialect, and conscious of its unity. The con- federation is a number of tribes united for war or other purposes, but maintaining a social or- ganization on the basis of kinship, and therefore not developed into a true civil State. In civil so- ciety the composition series is: families, hamlets. villag»s or parishes, towns, communes or cities, counties or departments, kingdoms, repviblics or other commonwealths, federal States or empires. The combination of small into large groups is made possible by the broadening consciousness of kind and the passion to perfect a mental and moral homogeneity throughout a widening area. This passion has both a sentimental and a prac- tical aspect, the latter being found in a rela- tively greater security and the diminution of con- flict through the extension of mental agreement. The social constitution embraces all those spe- cialized and correlated associations which carry on diversified .social activities. Each has a de- fined object in view, and its members are selected with reference to their interest in its purpose and their ability to contribute to its realization. The social constitution is made possible by the dif- ferentiation of ideas and habits. Constituent societies, like component, are eth- nic or civil. In tribal communities the con.stitu- ent society is usually not entirely dilTerentiated from the component. The family, or the tribe, or a segment of one or the other, does duty in discharging some special function which, in civil society, might be performed by an association quite separate from the component group and spe- cially organized for the purpose. The most in- teresting partially difTerentiated organization in tribal society is the clan. The clan is constituted of those persons who are descended from a com- mon ancestor or ancestral group in a single line, through the mother or through the father. It is therefore only half of a natural group of con- sanguinii. Its functions are cultural, economic, and juridical. It preserves traditions, it owns common property, and enforces rights and obliga- tions among its members, especially in matters of marriage and vengeance. The clan is known by various names in ethnology and in history, more familiarly by its Eoman name ijens (q.v.). Often in tribal society is found a brotherhood of related clans which is called, from its Greek form, the phratry. The tribe, primarily a com- ponent group, is a military organization, and the confederation is a political organization. Besides these component-constituent groups there are in tribal society certain special asso- ciations, almost always secret in their organiza- tion and functions. The most important are re- ligious secret societies. In civil society the household, the incorporated village, the nuuiieipality, the county, and the State are all component-constituent groups. They are purposive associations with definite functions, each appro.ximately but not completely identical with a compound group. The State, for ex- ample, the supreme political organization, is never precisely identical with the commonwealth or the nation regarded as a component society, since the latter always includes inhabitants who are neither voters nor even citizens in the State. As in ethnic, so in civil society, the associations which are completely differentiated from the so- cial composition are voluntary organizations. They include cultural associations, the most im- portant of which is the Church ; economic asso- ciations, the most important of which are busi- ness corporations: moral and juristic associa- tions, the most important of which are philan- thropic organizations, and voluntary boards of arbitration: and political associations, the most important of which are the great political parties. The stability of organization depends upon a recognition by the community that organization must benefit the organized, and that in a highly specialized social constitution expert knowledge is of vital importance. (4) The (Social Welfare. — In studying the social welfare we investigate the social function- ing. The sum of the ends for which society ex- ists is social warfare. Such ends are approximate or ultimate. The immediate results of efficient social organization are certain general conditions of well-being, in which all members of the com- mimity may share. They inchide the security of life and property which the political system maintains: the liberty and the justice which it is the business of the legal system to maintain : the material well-being which is created by the economic system : and the knowledge and the command over nature which are created by the cultural system. Collectively these proximate ends are public utilities. The ultimate end of society, as Plato and Aristotle so clearly recog- nized, is the perfection of personality, the crea- tion of the social man. In the evolution of the social personality all phases of the life of the individial are affected. Vitality, mentality, mo- rality, and that special aspect of morality which may be called sociality, are broadened and strengthened, or they are diminished, by the rela- tions which man bears to his fellows. No two individuals are affected by social conditions in quite the same way or degree, and therefore the population is differentiated, in respect of these matters, into classes. The primary distribution of the population according to vitality is into physically normal persons and defectives, and the normal are con- veniently graded into the high, the medium, and the low vitality classes. In the high vitality class are those individuals who have a high birth rate, a low death rate, and a high degree of bodily vigor and mental power. This class is found chiefly in the well-to-do agricultural sections of the population. The medium vitality class roughly corresponds to the business and professional men of the large to^vns and cjreat cities. The low vitality class is created chiefly