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SOCIOLOGY 
1.9 
Sociology, then, will have to investigate the whole 
range of socializations from the most simple to the most 
complex, from the most fleeting to the most permanent. 
It will have to deal with all the relationships and inter- 
actions which constitute human association: with imita- 
tion, representation, the creation of parties, the forma- 
tion of classes and secondary subdivisions, and the incor- 
poration of social reciprocities in special structures. It will 
have to investigate specialized problems, such as the social 
relations of the non-partisan and the poor, the effects of 
numerical limitation on the form of the group, and the 
sociological significance of the primus inter pares and the 
tertius gaudens. It will have to examine the more complex 
phenomena, such as the intersection of social circles, and 
study the more intricate modifications of social forms due 
to local concentration or spatial dispersion of elements. 
The task of sociology is to investigate the pure forms 
of socialization in abstraction from their material content, 
to give their psychological explanation, and to trace their 
historical development. Sociology is to determine what is 
really socialization in society, just as geometry determines 
what is really spatial extension in material objects. Both 
geometry and sociology resign to other sciences the inves- 
tigation of the contents which manifest themselves in their 
respective forms and the examination of the totality of phe- 
nomena whose mere formal aspect they observe.! 
The historical development of the forms of socializa- 
tion does not, of course, occur in actuality in that clear- 
cut form nor in strict accordance with the sociological 
scheme of explanation, but always in devious courses and 
obscured by all sorts of collateral phenomena. The soci- 
ological type is always an abstraction, even if not different 
from that at the basis of every other science. The object 
1 Soz., pp. 12-14.