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of conditions, is the largest justification there can be for any such science.
The kind of phenomena that arise in society do not arise except in society. Society affords a peculiar set of conditions that distinguish the social process. And while the issuing phe- nomena, besides being numerous and interesting, are so different among themselves as to be subdivided among a number of special sciences, yet the intricate causal complex from which they issue is, in an important sense, common to them all. The view just set forth of what constitutes the task of a science seems to make possible the following solution of our present problem : Explana- tion is thinking together, and society is the togetherness that must be thought, in order to explain the phenomena which we call social. This thinking society together is not the exclusive business of any of the separate social sciences, for society includes forms of causal relations that are not peculiar to any of the particular social sciences. These forms of causal relations are independent of the differences of content which characterize the activities that emerge from them. They are equally effective with respect to religious, ethical, economic, or political activities, etc. Therefore they do not belong to either of the special social sciences that correspond to these particular kinds of activities, and if the investigation of these causal relations can be elevated into a science, then it must be a general sociology underlying all of the special social sciences, as mathematics underlies the special physical sciences; or, at any rate, it must constitute a portion or phase of the work of general sociology.
Among the general forms of social causation which have been recognized are suggestion and imitation; "consciousness of kind;" coincidence, opposition, and reciprocity of interests; superiority and subordination, and other forms of relations, not only with associates, but also relations of associates to a common physical environment.
Some writers call " imitation " a process. But the essential significance of imitation for sociology does not appear until imita- tion is seen to be a relation between activities to be explained and similar occasioning activities. It is not so fundamentally viewed
