Ferdinand Tönnies

“ At any rate, this is what I should call a purely biological aspect of collective human life, in so far as their conception is restricted to the mere existence of a human group, which, so to speak, is self-active in its maintenance of life. ”

“ Thus such an application of biological notions to the social life of mankind—as the organicist theories or methods set out to do—is not to be rejected on principle. We may, in fact, look upon any community of this kind—maintaining itself by receiving its parts—as being a living whole or unity. This view is the more plausible if the renewal itself is merely biological, as indeed is the case in the human family, and, as we think, to a still greater extent—because a family soon disperses itself—in certain larger groups: a tribe, a nation, or a race ”

“ It is clear that certain signs may easily be fixed or invented whereby the volitions and acts of a single individual may be differentiated from the rest as being representative. But how if there are more than one, who only occasionally have one will and act together, and who cannot be supposed to agree in their feelings as soon as they are required to represent their moral person? It is well known that these must be “constituted” as an assembly or as a whole capable by its constitution to deliberate and, what is more, to resolve and act. ”

“ But, though I myself lay considerable stress upon this general notion of society, in juxtaposition and opposition to the state or political society, I still regard it as more indispensable to a theory of social structure to inquire into the nature and causes of what may be called, from the present point of view, genuine corporations; that is, those conceived of as being capable of willing and acting like a single individual endowed with reason and self-consciousness. ”

“ I believe and assert that three distinct conceptions, the common object of which is social life in its broadest sense, are not sufficiently, or not at all, kept apart nor even recognized as being distinct, viz., the biological, the psychological, and the sociological in what I call the exclusive sense, the subject of this third conception only being entirely new, as compared with the subjects of other sciences or departments of philosophy. ”

“ If we justly call it a division of labor that England manufactures cotton and China produces tea, and that the two countries exchange their products, then there is not and has not been a common labor or function preceding this division and dividing itself, as in the case of an organism; no state of society being historically known where China and England were one whole, working in harmony upon the spinning-wheel and upon the tea plant. ”

“ As a matter of fact, it is the natural ripening of consciousness and thinking itself which makes reflection prevail over sentiment, and which manifests itself, first and foremost, in reflection upon a man’s own personal interest, in the weighing and measuring of costs and results; but, secondly, also in a similar reflection upon some common interest or business which a person, from whatever motive, selfish or not, has made his own affair ”

“ Of course, it is only as a tendency that this dissolving and revolutionary principle is always active, but its activity is manifest everywhere in social life, especially in modern society, and characterizes a considerable portion of the relations of individuals to each other and consequently to their corporations. As long as men think and regard “society”—that is to say, their clan or their polis, their church or their commonwealth—as real and as truly existing ”

“ If there is, it can, according to the present view, be only in this respect, that a corporation may be thought and felt as an organic whole, upon which the members think and feel themselves dependent in such a way that they consider their own individual existence as subservient to the life of the whole. The question whether a “society” is an organism must be kept apart from the question whether there are “societies” the relations of which to their members are so qualified as to imply thoughts and feelings of that kind on the part of their members. ”

“ Now the house will become identified with a family or perhaps with a clan. In the same manner a village community or a township will be imagined as a collective being, which—although not in all, yet in certain important respects—remains the same in essence, notwithstanding a shifting of matter; that is to say, an incessant elimination of waste portions—men who die—and a constant accretion of fresh elements—born children. Here the analogy with the essential characteristics of an organism is obvious. ”

“ Now, it cannot be doubted that they do not consider either society or the state as representing that early community which has always been supposed to be the original proprietor of the soil and of all its treasures, since this would imply that their own private property had only a derivative right—derived from the right and law of public property. It is just the opposite which they think and feel: the state has a derivative right of property by their allowance and their contributions ”

“ The first case appears in a stronger light, if they consider the social entity as really existing, and especially if they consider their corporation as a living being; for a real thing, and especially a living thing, has always some properties of its own. The latter has even something like a will of its own; it cannot be conceived as being disposable, divisible, applicable, and adaptable at pleasure to any purpose, as a means to any end—this being the notion of pure matter, as it exists only in our imagination ”

“ This nominalism also penetrates into men’s supposed collective realities (supernatural or not) , declaring them to be void and unreal, except in so far as individual and real men have consented to make such an artificial being, to construct it, and to build it up mentally. Knowledge and criticism oppose themselves to faith and intuition, in this as in most other respects, and try to supplant them. To know how a church or a state is created means the downfall of that belief in its supernatural essence and existence which manifestly is so natural to human feeling and intellect. ”

“ It seems to me to be our fundamental task as philosophical sociologists to deduce from this last conception, and others implied in it, a system of social structure which shall contain the different notions of collective entities in their mutual dependence and connection; and I firmly trust that out of such a system will be gained a better and more profound insight into the evolution of society at large, and into its historical phases, as the life of these collective entities. It is therefore in the struggles, first, between any of these groups and the individuals composing it ”

“ Now, since place and region, air and climate, have a very considerable effect upon the intelligence and sentiment of the inhabitants, and seeing that a considerable change may not justly be expected with respect to this, except when the minds as well as the external conditions of the newcomers are totally different from those of the older strata, we may consider the identity of a place, in so far as it is founded upon the social connection of men with a part of the soil, as a psychological identity, and call this aspect of social life a psychological aspect. ”

“ They are, howsoever men may boast of their patriotism, generally of a calm and calculating character. We look upon the state, represented as it is by its government, as upon a person who stands in contractual rather than in sentimental relations to ourselves. ”

“ It represents indeed, as the former two conceptions did, a unity persisting through the change of its parts, but this unity and identity persisting in the multitude are neither biological nor directly and properly psychological, but must, in distinction from these, be considered as specifically sociological; that is to say, while the second is the social consciousness or social mind itself, this is the product of it, and can be understood only by looking into the human soul, and by perceiving thoughts and wills which not only have a common drift and tendency, but are creators of a common work. ”

“ The problem, we should confess, is an overwhelming one; and I for one do not feel at all sure that this splendid and transcendent constitution of ours will overcome its difficulties; that there will be sufficient moral power even if intelligence should rise to a sufficient height, for solving in a truly rational way the “social question” as a question of social structure. ”

“ Religious faith makes some of the most important corporations appear as real, organic, mystic, and even supernatural beings. Philosophical criticism is right in discovering and explaining that all are creations of man, and that they have no existence except in so far as human intellect and human will are embodied in them.
3. But nominalism is not the last word of a scientific philosophy. The existence of a corporation is fictitious indeed, but still is sometimes more than nominal. ”

“ They would thus be contrasted with modern society, which is more adequately conceived of as a mere aggregate of individual households, each pursuing its own interest, maybe at the cost of all the others. This is my own objection, and this view is contained in my own theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, meaning the dualism of that primitive economical condition, surviving in many respects down to our own days, on the one hand, and “commercial” or “capitalistic” society, of which the germs are traceable in any form of what, with an abstract term, may be called communism, on the other. ”

“ The first question is whether individuals feel and think themselves as founders or authors or at least as representative ideal authors of their own corporation. Let us take an obvious example. Suppose a man and a woman contract a marriage (we waive here all questions of church or state regulations for making the marriage tie public) . They are said to found a family. Now, the children springing from this union and growing up in this family cannot justly feel and think themselves as the creators or authors of it, as long as they are dependent upon their parents. ”

“ On the other hand, to think of an ideal thing as being ideal is not the same as to think of it as imaginary matter; but if one aims at a certain object, if one follows out one’s designs, one is constrained by a psychological necessity to break resistances and to subject things as well as wills to one’s own will ”

“ It is therefore the constitution of a multitude into a unity which we propose as a fourth mode, and as a necessary consequence of the third one, unless the moral person be represented exclusively by a single man or woman as a natural person. The Many constitute themselves or are constituted as a body, which is, as far as it may be, similar to a natural person in such relations as are essential precisely for the notion of a person. ”

“ The more we should try to follow out the admirable attempt which Herbert Spencer has made in this direction of employing the organicist view as a working hypothesis, the more we should become convinced that our real insight into the lines along which social evolution travels is more hampered than promoted by that method of biological analogies. ”

“ We may metaphorically call the civilized nations the “brain” of humanity, and we may say that the United States has become an independent lobe of the cortex in the course of the last forty years. In the same way it was only lately, I understand, that your President spoke of railways as the arteries through which the blood of trade is circulating. ”

“ All reflection is, in the first instance, analytical. I have spoken already of the dissolving principle which lies in the pursuing of one’s own personal affairs, of which the chase after profit is but the most characteristic form. But the same individualistic standpoint is the standpoint, or at least the prevailing tendency, of science also. It is nominalism which pervades science and opposes itself to all confused and obscure conceptions, closely connected, as it is, with a striving after distinctness and clearness and mathematical reasoning. ”

“ And, in consequence of feelings of this kind, they even forget their own authorship—which, as a rule, will indeed be an ideal one only; they will feel and think themselves, not creators, but creatures of their own corporations. ”

“ The force of this metaphor will, I believe, not be impaired by the fact that several theorists point in more than a figurative sense to money, or credit, as the social fluid into which all substances of commodities are changed, and which nourishes again the social brain and social muscles; that is to say, men and women who perform mental and physical work; in consequence of which analogy banks, and their correspondence by letters and bills and checks, would, more than railways, resemble arteries and veins. ”

“ A feeling of brotherhood and fellowship, of which in ordinary times the traces are as sadly scarce among compatriots as those who are foreigners to each other, rises, in moments of public danger, from the bottoms of our souls in effervescent bubbles. ”