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SOCIOLOGY

bo.

at least by treating them as merely accidental. We gain a
science of language by abstracting language and its immediate
 psychological conditions from everything that lies
beyond, although, as a matter of fact, there would never
have been any utterance without concrete motives.
In the same manner we shall obtain a sociology by an
inquiry into the laws, forms, and developments of socializations.
 In reality they determine life only together with
other functions and forces, but they can nevertheless constitute
 the subject-matter of a special science only in abstraction
 from these factors.!
Sociology, then, is the study of the forms of socialization.
 It is to investigate all forms of socialization: not
merely those which have become objectified in social institutions,
 but also the minor and more ephemeral socializations
 which do not take objective form in permanent
social structures. Society does not consist merely of the
objective social structures which have obtained a certain
independence of the individual bearers; it also consists of
the thousand minor processes of socialization between
individuals which contribute to the functional unity of the
group.
[t seems at first as if economic, political, and military
organizations, castes, classes, and families, guilds, parishes,
 and similar great institutions actually constitute
the whole of society. If that were the case, a sociological
treatment of those institutions would cover the whole
field of the science of society. It is obvious that the greater,
the more significant a range of social interests and activities
 is, the more readily will the immediate interindividual
life and the direct reciprocities crystallize in objective
structures. But besides these prominent phenomena, imposing
 through their size and significance, there are innu-1

 “Superordination and Subordination,” 4. J. S., II, 415.