ape social organization. Cooley, on the other hand, in his work
_Social Organization_ conceived the structure of society to be "the
larger mind," or an outgrowth of human nature and human ideals.

The increasing number of studies of individual primitive communities has
furnished data for the comparative study of different kinds of social
organization. Schurtz, Vierkandt, Rivers, Lowie, and others in the last
twenty years have made important comparative studies in this field. The
work of these scholars has led to the abandonment of the earlier notions
of uniform evolutionary stages of culture in which all peoples,
primitive, ancient, and modern alike, might be classified. New light has
been thrown upon the actual accommodations in the small family, in the
larger family group, the clan, gens or sib, in the secret society, and
in the tribe which determined the patterns of life of primitive peoples
under different geographical and historical conditions.

At the present time, the investigations of social organization of
current and popular interest have to do with the problems of social work
and of community life. "Community organization," "community action,"
"know your own community" are phrases which express the practical
motives behind the attempts at community study. Such investigations as
have been made, with a few shining exceptions, the Pittsburgh Survey and
the community studies of the Russell Sage Foundation, have been
superficial. All, perhaps, have been tentative and experimental. The
community has not been studied from a fundamental standpoint. Indeed,
there was not available, as a background of method and of orientation,
any adequate analysis of social organization.

A penetrating analysis of the social structure of a community must quite
naturally be based upon studies of human geography. Plant and animal
geography has been studied, but slight attention has been given to human
geography, that is, to the local distribution of persons who constitute
a community and the accommodations that are made because of the
consequent physical distances and social relationships.

Ethnological and historical studies of individual communities furnish
valuable comparative materials for a treatise upon human ecology which
would serve as a guidebook for studies in community organization. C. J.
Galpin's _The Social Anatomy of an Agricultural Community_ is an example
of the recognition of ecological factors as basic in the study