Integration

“ We have seen that any society selects some segment of the arc of possible human behaviour, and in so far as it achieves integration its institutions tend to further the expression of its selected segment and to inhibit the opposite expressions. ”

“ Progressive integration with the growing definiteness necessarily resulting from it, is of co-ordinate importance with the progressive differentiation before dwelt upon—nay, from one point of view, may be held of greater importance. For organization, in which what we call Evolution is most clearly and variously displayed, consists even more in the union of many parts into one whole, than in the formation of many parts. ”

“ POLITICAL integration is in some cases furthered, and in other cases hindered, by conditions, external and internal. There are the characters of the environment, and there are the characters of the men composing the society. ”

“ And then in the same essay the law of integration (previously recognized in 1855 in the "Principles of Psychology," Part III, chapter xiv) , is set forth as holding of organisms and societies—a law later recognized as holding of all evolving aggregates, and eventually recognized as the primary trait of all evolution. Are these conceptions to be found in the Positive Philosophy? ”

“ Of course, with units so complicated as those which constitute a society, and with forces so involved as those which move them, the resulting differentiations and integrations must be far more entangled, or far less definite, than those we have hitherto considered. But though there may be pointed out many anomalies which at first sight seem inconsistent with the alleged law, a closer study shows that they are but subtler illustrations of it. For men’s likenesses being of various kinds, lead to various order of integration. ”

“ As social integration advances, the increasing aggregates exercise increasing restraints over their units—a truth which is the obverse of the one just set forth, that the maintenance of its integrity by a larger aggregate implies greater cohesion. ”

“ The simple reason is, however, that we who promulgate this judgment of value are ourselves committed to a policy of progress; such progress being definable in technical language as an elaboration of society involving at once an ever fuller differentiation of the component units and an ever closer integration of the group as a whole. ”

“ The essay on the "Social Organism" appeared at the same time in the Westminster Review, in which it was maintained that society, consisting of an organized aggregate, follows the same course of Evolution with all other organized aggregates—increasing in mass and showing a higher integration not only in this respect but also in its growing solidarity ”

“ In the progress of human culture institutions are developed; new rights with their correlative duties arise from the new relations into which men are placed. For the maintenance of these rights and the enforcement of these duties, governments change in all their substantial characteristics, and the great laws of evolution in the processes of differentiation and integration are followed, as tribes integrate into nations and the functions of government are differentiated; communal industries change to individual and corporate industries ”

“ On the other hand, during the era in which the principle of individuality predominated, we should be prepared to see a preponderating manifestation of all those elements which tend to freedom, change, disintegration of interests, antagonistic or competitive effort, diversity in political and religious belief, intellectual activity; of all those drifts, in short, which relate to the individualizing of social power and interests, and to progress by antagonism; with corresponding absence of the elements active in the preceding epoch. ”

“ Reflect further on the countless millions of seeds of the same name, each more than numerically differenced from every other: and further yet, reflect on the requisite harmony of all surrounding things, each of which necessitates the same process of thought, and the coherence of all of which to a System, a World, demands its own adequate Antecedent Unity, which must therefore of necessity be present to all and in all, yet in no wise excluding or suspending the individual Law or Principle of Union in each. ”

“ There is a nexus between each leading group of social phenomena and other leading groups; if there is a change in one of them, that change is accompanied by a corresponding modification of all the rest. “Not only must political institutions and social manners, on the one hand, and manners and ideas, on the other, be always mutually connected; but further, this consolidated whole must be always connected by its nature with the corresponding state of the integral development of humanity, considered in all its aspects of intellectual, moral and physical activity.”—Comte. ”

“ It brings men together; it establishes relations. It is the wonderful institution [41] which, early in the history of the race, began as a loom to catch up the separate threads of individual life, to weave them into that marvelous fabric called humanity. Ends of an infinitely higher order are realized by the production and exchange of the elements of trade, than the satisfying of hunger with bread, or the furnishing man with clothing and shelter. The higher ends are the essential and ordained ends. ”

“ For individual life, while showing us this division of labor, this exchange of services, in many and varied ways, shows it in ways easily traced; because the structures and functions are presented in directly-perceivable forms. And only when multitudinous biological examples have stamped on the mind the conception of a growing interdependence that goes along with a growing specialization, and have thus induced a habit of thought, will its sociological applications be duly appreciated. ”

“ The progress of a community, as of an organism, is a process of adaptation—the continuous establishment of inner relations in conformity to outer relations. If we contemplate material civilization under its widest aspect, we discover its legitimate aim to be the attainment and maintenance of an equilibrium [Pg 82] between the wants of men and the outward means of satisfying them. And while approaching this goal, society is ever acquiring in its economic structure both greater heterogeneity and greater specialization. ”

“ Still more striking is the application to this case of another general principle, namely, that Progress is the development of Order; a principle which, as I showed in the second chapter, connects every dynamical question in Sociology with the corresponding statical conception. For with the growth of society, the modifying influence of moral force is always increasing, both by larger scope being given to each of its three elements specially, and also by the more perfect consolidation of their union. ”

“ We may nevertheless look in the direction of improvement by taking account of any neglected factor in the problem of social arrangement.
Without inquiring now what further tests are necessary, I shall point out two principles which men must learn to apply more precisely before there can be approximately stable social order. The present social system, or the reorganizations that may follow each other in its place, will be justified or condemned according to their success in providing for at least these two postulates of human association. ”

“ But the universal, that is to say the state, government, and law, is the permanent underlying mean in which the individuals and their satisfaction have and receive their fulfilled reality, inter-mediation, and persistence. Each of the functions of the notion, as it is brought by intermediation to coalesce with the other extreme, is brought into union with itself and produces itself: which production is self-preservation.—It is only by the nature of this triple coupling, by this triad of syllogisms with the name termini, that a whole is thoroughly understood in its organisation. ”

“ The gradation in the changes that mark the social man justifies a corresponding gradation in the traits that distinguish the social aggregate from other aggregates.
The organic concept of society has taught us to look upon mutual aid, division of labor, formation of industrial groups, specialization and exchange with its facilities for communicating and transporting, as the underlying features of society, corresponding to the growing unlikeness of organs and functions, interdependence of parts and unity seen in living bodies. ”

“ Culture and civilization are the wonderfully complicated results of the co-operation of many individuals united in society. By the manifolding of their relations and their combinations, men in society have brought about a higher complexity than man, left by himself, ever would have been able to develop from his own individual properties—a [Pg 137] complexity that has arisen by the interaction of the same characters of many men in co-operation. ”

“ Into such a reconstruction the branch of sociology that relates to production and use, or labor and capital, will enter largely, and must be the portion of it to be first entered upon, because all things which are built upon earth must have a material foundation until there shall be such a harmony and unity of interests, and such co-operation among mankind as would proceed from a universal brotherhood, in which each would have his special part to perform to contribute to the common result. ”

“ In considering now the political estate of the human social organism it will be evident that I hold that this must be contingent on many elements that reveal themselves in a contributory industrial system, in the principles that are embodied in social relationships, and in the general scheme of such a working philosophy of life as may predominate amongst the component parts of the synthetic society which is the product of all these varied energies and the organic forms through which they operate. ”

“ In a word, even in the language of the simple logic indicated above, the unity of experience is only the all-inclusive whole, but here without regard to any distinction between what is actual or explicit and what is potential or implicit, out of which has sprung the differential operation that has made human society and human history, that has given rise to a manifest [p.161] social life, to the social class or faction and to the individual person. ”

“ This structure, which adapts a society for combined action against other societies, is associated with the belief that its members exist for the benefit of the whole, and not the whole for the benefit of its members. ”

“ But we find it to prevail in compound and doubly-compound societies, as throughout the semi-civilized states of Africa, those of Polynesia, those of ancient America, etc., where the presence of stable headships, primary and secondary, gives both the opportunity and the motive; and, recognizing this truth, we are led to recognize the deeper truth that present-making, while but indirectly related to the social type as simple or compound, is directly related to it as more or less militant in organization. ”

“ Finally, there are certain principles of human nature which are peculiarly connected with the ideas and feelings generated in man by living in a state of society, that is, by forming part of a union or aggregation of human beings for a common purpose or purposes. Few, indeed, of the elementary laws of the human mind are peculiar to this state, almost all being called into action in the two other states. ”

“ The exigencies of life render it necessary that the different elements and forms of society should coöperate together for common interests. They strengthen the desire for social order, they quicken the spirit of organization. ”

“ The sciences, the literature, the customs, the lessons of experience, the skill, the spirit of every country, exercise an influence upon every other. In this peaceful interchange of the products of the intellect, in this constant passing to and fro of the people of different countries of the civilized world, we find in each land a system of law peculiar to the country itself, and answering to what I believe to be a just description of all laws which regulate the relations of individuals to each other, in being a formulation of the custom of the [Pg 190] civil community. ”

“ But human societies, although providing for the expression of original tendencies, are organized about tradition, mores, collective representations, in short, consensus. And consensus represents, not biological adaptations, but social accommodations.
Social organization, with the exception of the order based on competition and adaptation, is essentially an accommodation of differences through conflicts. ”

“ The first branch of the science ascertains the conditions of stability in the social union: the second, the laws of progress. Social Dynamics is the theory of Society considered in a state of progressive movement; while Social Statics is the theory of the consensus already spoken of as existing among the different parts of the social organism; in other words, the theory of the mutual actions and reactions of contemporaneous social phenomena ”

“ The condition most favourable to increase of social heterogeneity, is a medium coherence among the parts—a moderate facility of change in the relations of citizens, joined with a moderate resistance to such change—a considerable freedom of individual actions, qualified by a considerable restraint over individual actions—a certain attachment to pre-established arrangements, and a certain readiness to be impelled by new influences into new arrangements—a compromise between fixity and unfixity such as that which we, perhaps as much as any nation, exhibit. ”

“ A system which, in opposition to the competitive system at present prevailing, seeks to reorganize society on the basis, in the main, of a certain secularism in religion, of community of interest, and in co-operation in labor for the common good. ”

“ And, if there can be recognized any such primitive unity, recognition of it will help us to interpret the ultimate diversity. We shall understand better how in each society the several components of the political agency have come to be what we now see them, and how those of one society are related to those of another. ”