venport, East, and Tower, _Heredity and Eugenics_, pp.
269-87. (The University of Chicago Press, 1912.)

[77] From Albert G. Keller, _Societal Evolution_, pp. 212-15. (Published
by The Macmillan Co., 1915. Reprinted by permission.)

[78] From Robert E. Park, "Education in Its Relation to the Conflict and
Fusion of Cultures," in the _Publications of the American Sociological
Society_, XIII (1918), 58-63.

[79] Emile Zola, _The Experimental Novel_ (New York, 1893), pp. 8-9.
Translated from the French by Belle M. Sherman.

CHAPTER III

SOCIETY AND THE GROUP

I. INTRODUCTION

1. Society, the Community, and the Group

Human nature and the person are products of society. This is the sum and
substance of the readings in the preceding chapter. But what, then, is
society--this web in which the lives of individuals are so inextricably
interwoven, and which seems at the same time so external and in a sense
alien to them? From the point of view of common sense, "society" is
sometimes conceived as the sum total of social institutions. The family,
the church, industry, the state, all taken together, constitute society.
In this use of the word, society is identified with social structure,
something more or less external to individuals.

In accordance with another customary use of the term, "society" denotes
a collection of persons. This is a vaguer notion but it at least
identifies society with individuals instead of setting it apart from
them. But this definition is manifestly superficial. Society is not a
collection of persons in the sense that a brick pile is a collection of
bricks. However we may conceive the relation of the parts of society to
the whole, society is not a mere physical aggregation and not a mere
mathematical or statistical unit.

Various explanations that strike deeper than surface observation have
been proposed as solutions for this cardinal problem of the social one
and the social many; of the relation of society to the individual.
Society has been described as a tool, an instrument, as it were, an
extension of the individual organism. The argument runs something like
this: The human hand, though indeed a part of the physical organism, may
be regarded as an instrument of the body as a whole. If, as by accident
it be lost, it is conceivable that a mechanical hand might be
substituted for it, which, though not a part of the body, would function
for all practical purposes as a hand of flesh an