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 astronomy.
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, namely,
reciprocal activity of parts. Unity in the empirical
sense is nothing but reciprocity of elements. It is a functional,
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 attitudes
or psychological occurrences within the minds of the
individuals; but the fact that these attitudes and occurrences
are the product of mutual determinations and reciprocal
influences creates a dynamic functional relationship
between the individuals, and that dynamic functional relationship
creates and is the unity of the group. The group
is a unity because of this process or these processes of reciprocal
influencing between the individuals. The state is
a unity because between its citizens there is a more intimate
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 relationship.
See also Book I, chapter vii, pp. 82-83. 103. and Book II. chapter vi.
