forth applicable to our own
educational practice, it is, therefore, necessary to come to closer
quarters with the nature of present social life.

1. The Implications of Human Association. Society is one word, but many
things. Men associate together in all kinds of ways and for all kinds
of purposes. One man is concerned in a multitude of diverse groups, in
which his associates may be quite different. It often seems as if they
had nothing in common except that they are modes of associated life.
Within every larger social organization there are numerous minor groups:
not only political subdivisions, but industrial, scientific, religious,
associations. There are political parties with differing aims, social
sets, cliques, gangs, corporations, partnerships, groups bound closely
together by ties of blood, and so on in endless variety. In many modern
states and in some ancient, there is great diversity of populations,
of varying languages, religions, moral codes, and traditions. From this
standpoint, many a minor political unit, one of our large cities, for
example, is a congeries of loosely associated societies, rather than an
inclusive and permeating community of action and thought. (See ante, p.
20.)

The terms society, community, are thus ambiguous. They have both a
eulogistic or normative sense, and a descriptive sense; a meaning
de jure and a meaning de facto. In social philosophy, the former
connotation is almost always uppermost. Society is conceived as one by
its very nature. The qualities which accompany this unity, praiseworthy
community of purpose and welfare, loyalty to public ends, mutuality of
sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at the facts which the term
denotes instead of confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation,
we find not unity, but a plurality of societies, good and bad. Men
banded together in a criminal conspiracy, business aggregations that
prey upon the public while serving it, political machines held together
by the interest of plunder, are included. If it is said that such
organizations are not societies because they do not meet the ideal
requirements of the notion of society, the answer, in part, is that the
conception of society is then made so "ideal" as to be of no use, having
no reference to facts; and in part, that each of these organizations,
no matter how opposed to the interests of other groups, has something of
the praiseworthy qualities of "Society" which hold it toget