Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/346

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332 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

contain phases of sociological problems coordinate with those of social attraction.

IV. Interdependence. The phenomena represented by this title bring constantly to view the essential thesis of the organic concept of society, namely: " Every point in every man's life is related to every point in every other man's life."

All the incidents and conditions to which this chapter calls attention are abstractions from the social fact. In reality they do not have separate existence. Each is in some fashion both cause and effect of all the rest. Consequently we find that each of these incidents is in some sense a phase of each of the others. It is impossible to abstract them so completely that this partner- ship with the others is removed from view. Nor is it desirable that such falsification of reality should be possible. The desid- eratum in social analysis is ability to concentrate attention in turn upon thinkable phases of the social fact, while constantly remembering the surrounding phases to which this temporarily prominent phase is actually subordinate.

Thus when we have said that multiplicity of persons is a con- dition of association, we have said by implication that every form in which persons influence each other is also a condition of association. In other words, interdependence, for example, is merely an aspect of the reality present in the fact of multiplicity. Conversely, multiplicity is merely a form in which the reality of interdependence is realized. Each is something more than a form of the other, because, as we are pointing out, each is a con- dition of the other as well as a consequent of the other. If this reciprocal relationship can be read out of reality in the case of any title in our schedule, it will be proof that it is erroneously listed as a universal incident of association. Each of these inci- dents is in turn an aspect of the prevalence of cosmic law through- out the world of people. We shall find, therefore, that each of the incidents named is in turn an aspect of each other condition. This gives occasion for reiterating a fundamental proposition, namely : To think the social reality, or any incident within the social reality, we have to learn how to think together all the inci- dents and conditions, all the forces, all the forms of correlation