James Hayden Tufts

“ There is no individual man for ethics, for psychology, for logic, or for sociology, except by abstraction,—that is if by individual man we mean a being not influenced by social forces,—nor are there any feelings, thoughts or volitions in any man which are independent of such forces. On the other hand, there is no social or collective sentiment which exists except in the medium of individual consciousness. ”

“ If we are to refer every conscious activity other than imitation to the mental and this in turn to the physiological constitution, why is it not equally true that imitation is itself to be biologically explained? We cannot escape biology in this way. There are many inventions necessary for the existence of society and due to the influence of the social group. These are the true subjects for investigation by a "pure" sociology, and should form the content of social logic. Imitation comes into the sphere of sociology just so far as it is thus necessary. ”

“ Taking such a conception of personality as an analogy or guiding clue, many fruitful suggestions, it seems to me, may come to the sociologist. True it is that in individual and in society the early life is impulsive, unrelated, with little conscious unity of purpose, [8] yet with language and religion and art, with industrial and intellectual coöperation, many a people has come to "know what it wants," and to act unitedly in order to get it. ”

“ Just in proportion as man individually or collectively comes to consciousness must we use the category [9] of purpose or end in explaining his activity. Just in so far can we look for voluntary change of activity. Society, like the individual, can move forward, if it will, but to "will" means for society, as for the individual, a completely intelligent and "mediated" desire, not a mere impulse nor a blind though intense feeling. ”

“ We are to study the special forms of subordination, concurrence, imitation, opposition, division of labor, found in the various types of social groups. But we must bear in mind that phenomena are not social merely because they are parallel, nor do similarities and regularities established by statistics belong to our science if each has an individual cause. Not what takes place iti society but what takes by society is the field of sociology. ”

“ A statement like that of Durkheim's, quoted above, that a "collective sentiment which flashes into life in an assembly is something quite other than the common element of all the individual sentiments," seems to be aimed at such statements as those of Mill, "men are not, when brought together, converted into another kind of substance;" "human beings in society have no properties but those which are derived from and may be resolved into the laws of the nature of individual man." ”

“ The criticism which Berthelot applies to Tarde above might also be applied to the criterion for social facts propounded by Durkheim. According to the latter a social fact comprises every kind of action, whether fixed in definite law or not, which is capable of exercising an external constraint upon the individual, or it may be otherwise defined as one which is general throughout a given society and has a proper existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations. Language, laws both statute and moral, religious beliefs, financial systems impose themselves upon the individual. ”

“ It should be subordinate to social logic, not the first principle under which social logic is ranged as a minor part. To make imitation the sole principle is to use it as the Ionic philosophers used water, air, etc.
Simmel also attempts to delimit the sociological from the social in a broad sense. If sociology embraces all that happens in society and simply reduces the individual to the social, it would be merely a general method as, e. g., induction—not a special science. ”

“ But there are conceivable advantages from making a wider use in sociology than has been customary of another term more distinctly set apart for the psychological sphere, viz., the term person. This may at once suggest the objection that we are hypostatizing an abstraction if we speak of society as a person, since society is composed of individuals and has no distinct existence. ”

“ Social psychology will not then look for an entirely different set of psychical states from those which individual psychology studies (of course it may be interested in some more than in others) ; it will rather study a different aspect of the concrete facts of life of which other aspects are studied by individual psychology, [11] just as social logic may study the same concrete facts as the philosophy of law or political science. ”

“ Society corresponds better to its definition in proportion as it creates itself." This consideration of the developing social consciousness will determine the categories which we are to apply to the explanation of its movements. ”

“ If we do not adopt this plan we are reduced to explain social progress by "tendencies" instead of by real causes; and further we are forced to treat all as one species in greater or less stages of advancement. ”

“ For making the classification into social types the objective principle to be adopted as our standard is that of simplicity, i. e., we ask whether a given group is made up of units which enclose other units more simple than itself. ”

“ Personality, regarded as the purposive, interrelated and unified activity of various desires may thus be of all grades according to the degree to which impulses have passed into conscious desires, and desires in turn have become systematized into unity of steadfast purpose. With this in mind Wundt [7] urges, that the social person is as "real" as the individual person ”

“ As Bernès puts it, "Every collective aspiration which by its realization results in consolidating the group, in making it more complex, more plastic, more conscious of itself, becomes thereby a cause of progress. ”

“ The most valuable of the inductive methods for our purpose is that of concomitant variations, for which we may draw our facts either from a single unique society at different times, or from several societies of the same kind, or from several of different kinds. ”

“ The "person" exists in the various states, feelings, etc., not apart from them, and these in turn are no longer conceived as though independent entities, coming into association, inhibiting each other and so on, but rather as phases of a continuous activity, isolated for convenience in treatment. ”

“ This is shown (a) in the growing dissatisfaction with the word "organism," (b) in the definition of social facts and (c) in the views as to what constitutes explanation of social facts.
It is objected that the word "organism" is a biological term which has exercised a seductive but unfortunate influence on sociological thought, nor is the objection met entirely by prefixing the adjective "social." Societies are rather êtres spirituels. ”

“ We examine, of course, the reactions of structure and function, we observe the influence of natural selection upon choices (Giddings) , but we bear in mind that "response to environment" in the case of conscious intelligence may mean a response which transforms the environment as well as a response which is modified by it. ”

“ But just as in psychology we separate out the content of the mental states and consider only the form, so sociology must isolate the distinctively social, and consider the form of association as such, leaving the content, i. ”