THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY 27 
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object for speculation, but not for scientific thought, which 
aims to investigate actuality. Society or the group could 
then be the subject-matter of a social science only in the 
same sense as the firmament is the subject-matter of as- 
tronomy. The concept of society has significance only 
when it stands in some kind of contrast to that of the sum 
of the individuals. 
This is no doubt the case. The group is more than 
a merely subjective synthesis. It is an objective unity, 
judged by the one valid objective criterion of unity, name- 
ly, reciprocal activity of parts. Unity in the empirical 
sense is nothing but reciprocity of elements. It is a func- 
tional, a dynamic, and a gradual concept. An organic 
body is a unity because its organs are in a more intimate 
interchange of energies with one another than with any 
outside agent. In the last analysis, even the unity of the 
individual mind is nothing but the dvnamic functional 
reciprocity of its energies. 
The group possesses a unity of the same nature. A 
social group consists, in the last analysis, in mental atti- 
tudes or psychological occurrences within the minds of the 
individuals; but the fact that these attitudes and occur- 
rences are the product of mutual determinations and recip- 
rocal influences creates a dynamic functional relationship 
between the individuals, and that dynamic functional re- 
lationship creates and is the unity of the group. The group 
is a unity because of this process or these processes of re- 
ciprocal influencing between the individuals. The state is 
a unity because between its citizens there is a more inti- 
mate exchange of reciprocal influences than between these 
citizens and those of other states. 
' Sox. Diff., pp. 10-11. 
' Soz., pp. 6-7; Soz. Diff., pp. 18-14. The group therefore does not consist 
of individuals, but only of so much of them as enters into the functional relation- 
ship. See also Book I, chapter vii, pp. 82-83. 103. and Book II. chapter vi.