In Professor Giddings' yet more recent work, entitled Descriptive and Historical Sociology, he states it as his view "that all social bonds may be resolved into some common activity of individual minds," so that society is properly regarded "as a mode of mental activity" (Descriptive and Historical Sociology, 5).

It seems to be in doubtful accord with this true view, and a survival of the notion that the "group" is the social reality, when he formally announces his idea of "the unit of sociological investigation" and says:

The unit of investigation, then, in sociology is the socius-that is to say the individual who is not only an animal and a conscious mind, but also a companion, a learner, a teacher, and co-worker.15

Surely Professor Giddings cannot mean that the conduct of an individual, taken as a whole, is the unit of social activity, or the socius the unit of sociological investigation, in the sense that an individual person and his conduct is the final element reached by sociological analysis. For that, the socius is too complex and unique a concept. The ultimate units into which scientific investigation resolves the social reality must be singled out by a process far more analytic than that required to separate the individual from the crowd. The conduct of the individual is a complex and multifarious compound; each prevalent activity in which he participates is a separate object for investigation. To speak of the socius as the ultimate unit of investigation is somewhat as if a botanist should take a bouquet as his unit of investigation. As each particular flower in the bouquet is a representative of a botanical variety, so each belief or practice which the socius shares with such a number of others that this activity by its prevalence becomes socially significant is a specimen of a sociological variety. Each such variety of social activity is an object for investigation, and each individual's participation in such a prevalent activity is a unit of investigation.

The socius is not only too complex but also too unique to be taken as the ultimate unit of investigation. Socii in primitive societies are like bouquets all plucked in the same garden where

"Inductive Sociology, 10.

but few varieties grow, but in developed societies there is no such comprehensive similarity between associates. The unit of a scientific investigation which hopes to issue in the discovery of laws, or even of "established tendencies," must be a recurrent phenomenon. The socius in a developed society is not a recurrent phenomenon, and may be as unique as a historical event, and would afford proper subject-mattter for biography which is related to sociology as history is, rather than for sociology.

Professor Giddings is much engaged in analyzing the socius into traits which predispose men to similar or different participation in the social process, and this with special reference to the "affinity" of predisposition which results in "like response to stimulus" and "consciousness of kind." In this connection it is interesting to observe the contrast between Professor Giddings' treatment of the "consciousness of kind" as coterminous with social reality, and the essence of social reality wherever it exists, and the treatment of "sympathy" and "sociability" by Professor Ross, in chapters under those headings in his Social Control, where he relegates them to a comparatively insignificant rôle. It is also worth while noting that, in succeeding portions of his work, he shows how, in the absence of any special affinity, men of different races, incongruous creeds, opposing classes, and warring interests are held together by promptings from without and motives implanted within, which regulate conduct, the effects of which radiate into society far beyond the sphere of their acquaintance and sympathy.

I do not wish to be understood as objecting to the emphasis which Professor Giddings lays upon the socius, that is, the individual as a social phenomenon, provided there is kept in mind some clear and workable conception of the more ultimate elements of investigation to be reached by analysis, of the minute recurrent objects of explanation, and of the relation between them and all the conditions that modify and determine them. On the contrary it should be emphasized that sociology goes farther than any other science in explaining the individual life, considered as a stream of experience-activity. Psychology usually stops short of the individual. The contrast implied by the names

of social and individual psychology is an utterly false one. Socalled individual psychology is better termed "general" psychology. As a rule it has dealt with nothing that is individual, but rather with what is universal to man, the "typisch und allgemeingültig" as Wundt says. It is sociology that investigates the building-up of the content of consciousness which differs at different times and places, the individual's share in which constitutes his individual life, a life composed of activities which have been socially evolved, and which by each individual are socially derived. The individual is a concrete, complex, unanalyzed sample of the social reality.

Similarly there is no objection to any emphasis that Professor Giddings or Professor Ross or any other sociologist may lay upon the notion of groups or groupings as social phenomena, provided it be kept in mind that groups have their significance and even their existence as social phenomena, by virtue of the interrelated activities which constitute their unity and character as societies, or else they are merely space and time relations, which are conditions favorable to the existence of society, but not society itself. Near the close of his Inductive Sociology (pp. 266-67) Professor Giddings says: "The association of men may be an association mainly of presence or mainly of activity either presence or activity is at any given time the relatively important fact." Now an association "of activity" and one "of presence" are not equally societies. The fact that people who are united by the similarity and mutual conditioning of their activities are usually in each other's presence, simply means that togetherness in time and space is the condition most favorable to the prevalence of similar and mutually conditioning activities. The grouping of persons is moreover overt to the most superficial observer, and being the usual and patent condition of social reality, by a metonymy of thought it comes to be regarded as the very essence and true definition of that reality. Presence in time and space, so far from being the essence of the social reality, is not even an essential condition of it; post and telegraph and telephone may replace presence and make it

unnecessary as a condition of associated activity;17 the newspaper and Associated Press make one "public" of multitudes who never see each other or hear each other's voices, and give rise to phenomena which, if not identical with those conditioned by physical presence in a crowd, are enough like them to receive the name of "mob mind." The printed page relates our activities even with those of Aristotle, Cicero, and Jeremiah. Prevalent interrelated activities which go on in human consciousness are the essential social realities, and the interrelation of these activities requires only that a thought of the activities of B have a place among the activities of A,18 and that the thought of B's thoughts and sentiments and deeds elicits or represses elements in the current of A's activity. It is true that "the mere association of presence has played an important part in the mental and social evolution of man," but so also has climate, and "association of presence," and all "grouping," however much more important to sociology than climate, is like a temperate climate, fertile soil, and rivers and harbors, in being a condition favorable to the essential social reality, and not that reality itself. Instead of saying "either presence or activity is at any given time the relatively important fact" let it be said rather that "activities" are always the problem facts and "presence" when it plays a rôle is a conditioning fact.

If natural physical environment is important enough to call for a special division of sociology, called geographic sociology, then groups and groupings may, on the same ground, deserve to be the subject of another subdivision of sociology; but I prefer to treat them under the heads of technic and psychologic sociology. Mere togetherness in time and space is a technic condition, a work of man as much as stock breeding or agriculture or transportation of commodities. A crowd or a dense population, in this aspect, is a modification of the environment, to be classed with the building of roads and development of means of transportation and communication. Indeed, density for sociology means facility of communication; and travel, mi

"Ross on "Mob Mind," Social Psychology, chap. iv, especially pp. 63-64.

18 Cf. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order.

gration, and transportation of goods, that is the rearrangement of special relations, all belong in the same class as one subdivision of technic sociology. Group relationships other than spacial are similarities and conditioning relations between activities. They may be independent of spacial togetherness, and are facts of quite another order, so that the two should not be classed together and confused. The relations between activities are subject-matter for psychic sociology. The two sorts of conditioning are brought together but not confused when we consider the effect of spacial togetherness in the crowd in heightening certain phenomena of imitation. In such an explanation the physical and psychic elements need no more to be confused than they are when we consider the telegraph and the mail and the newspaper in heightening suggestion and imitation and in the creation of public opinion. Even organization is a special form of the interrelating of activities, purposely designed to serve practical ends, a special form of that conditioning of activities by activities which falls within the scope of psychologic sociology. Organization is distinctly a correlation of activities so that they condition each other. It usually includes "superiority" and "subordination," and integration of functional groups by similar activities, and a union of interests or aims including all the persons who engage in the organized activity, and it always includes differentiated activities which are correlated in the service of an end. In this view, then, mere "presence" groups are among those conditions favorable to social phenomena which are studied by technic sociology, while organizations are true. activity groups in which the mutual conditioning of activities is to be unraveled by psychologic sociology.

The classification of Professor Giddings is divided into four parts. Part I is entitled "The Social Population." Under this heading he first enumerates items in the description of the geographic and technic conditions surrounding a population, including the climate and topography of the country occupied, its flora and fauna, and the varieties of country and city buildings; then particulars as to the number and density of the population.