THE CONCEPT OF SOCIETY 31

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neither the cause nor the result of society; they are themselves
 immediately society. There is not an internally
self-contained, closed national or social unit which produces
 law, morals, religion, and language, but the social
elements induced by purpose, need, or force build these
social products, and this causes or rather means their unification.

The more important the interests which bring men
into mutual relationships, the more readily will they become
 fixed and objectified in institutions. But society
does not obtain its unity merely from these institutions
any more than the human organism consists merely of the
larger organs. There are innumerable varieties of reciprocal
 relations which never become institutionalized. Not
only the state and the labor union, the family and the
political party, but all the thousand minor relationships
playing from person to person, momentary or permanent,
conscious or unconscious, create the social unity out of the
individual elements. “That people gaze at one another
and are jealous of one another; that they exchange letters
and dine together; that, apart from all tangible interests,
they affect one another sympathetically or antipathetically;
 that gratitude gives to the altruistic act an aftereffect
 which is an inseparable bond of union between people;
 that one asks another to point out the way, and that
people dress and adorn themselves for one another’s benefit:
 all these relationships are incessantly binding men
together.”
That which constitutes society in the real sense of the
term is evidently the type of reciprocal influencing thus
indicated. A collection of human beings does not become
a society because specific impulses actuate the individuals

! Soz. Diff., p. 14; Soz., p. 11.
*Soz., p. 19.