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CONCLUSION
259
ning of the biological as of the psychological school. Like
the holy books of the Christian and the Marxian gospels,
the holy books of the positivist gospel are catholic enough
to offer the most divergent sects a storehouse of infallible
dogma. Luckily, however, it is not necessary for an under-
standing of nineteenth-century social theory to trace all
of it back to Comte, and so we can be satisfied with a brief
sketch of its development.
The history of Continental social theory in the nine-
teenth century can be briefly summarized as the gradual
change from a philosophy of society to a science of associa-
tion. In that development certain well-defined steps can
be traced without difficulty. During the first two phases,
the old analogy between society and the individual con-
tinued to shape social theory. Its influence is manifest
both in the biological school and in the school of the folk
psychologists. This influence led to a pronounced socio-
logical realism. The first school saw society as an individ-
ual organism in biological terms, as body; the second saw
society as an individual organism in psychological terms,
as mind.
During the second two phases, the influence of the old
analogy was absent. One of these phases was expressed in
a school of sociological nominalism which finally found
shelter among social psychologists. The other found ex-
pression in a school of sociological relativism which laid the
foundations for our modern science. The first tried to un-
derstand society in terms of processes in the individual
minds. It was based on a point of view which avoided the
pitfalls of its predecessors, but it did not lead to a science
of society, as it neglected the essential sociological cate-
gory. The latter school, although fully admitting that in
the last instance social life rests on processes in individual
minds. turned its attention, not toward these processes, but
