SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 47
That is, he would need to be the product of Japanese social rela- tionships.
These quotations are intended merely to illustrate the exist- ence of psychic contrasts due to social causation. It is by no means necessary to look chiefly for psychic contrasts that coin- cide with international boundaries a position that was suffi- ciently emphasized in our second section, while discussing the question, "What is a society?" The "national" sociologists and essayists who describe great populations as if each citizen of a country were of the same psychic type, are perhaps tempted to make interesting reading at the expense of scientific accuracy. The fact, however, remains that there are contrasting psychic types, and the question how nearly universal a single type may be throughout a whole population is insignificant at this point, compared with the fact that such psychic contrasts are not due to temperamental dissimilarities alone, but also to social condi- tions which tend both to give prominence, leadership, and power to set the model for conformity to dominant persons of this or that type, but also to elicit from given individuals moods, motives, and sentiments, as well as thoughts and ideals, of a certain type, instead of another type, of which in other sur- roundings the same individuals would have proved capable. This is the great truth that calls sociology into being, for the purpose of analyzing the social process into modes of activity, and giving account of the types of change, and especially of the forms of causation, elicitation, and conditioning, in accordance with which it is determined which modes of activity shall pre- dominate, continue, or succeed each other.
The significance of the view that social phenomena are psychic phenomena has by no means been made fully to appear, and sociologists may see objections and difficulties involved in the view thus badly affirmed. If sociology is thus psychological must it therefore be semi-metaphysical? How can it avoid con- fusion between sociology and psychology? Are not the physical
