366 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
societies. That flash of precocity which we call Hellenic cul- ture, for instance, begins to be more accountable when we consider that it was the concentration of excellence of a frag- mentary sort in a fraction of the people, while the mass of the people merely furnish material support for its premature and disproportionate development. On the other hand, Russian nihilism, German socialism, French and Italian anarchism, and English and American trade-unionism, are symptoms of dawn- ing mass-consciousness, often proceeding to senseless extremes in demands for deferred payments of the dues of partially com- prehended equality.
Neither social philosophy nor social practice is yet able to take this fact of persistence of individuals for granted and to make consistent use of it. Human associations are collections of individuals with certain common traits, but with different and differentiating forms and intensities and combinations of these traits. Human associations are, accordingly, different sorts of adjustments accomplished between individuals who always remain diverse, no matter how intimate the adjustment.
It is possible for an apparently individualistic philosophy to ignore this incident, although that provincialism is more charac- teristic of collectivism. When we bring the concept "society" to the front, the individualist is likely to challenge us with the claim that " ' society ' is only a mental image ; ' society ' is merely a conception. The individual alone exists." This most seem- ing harmless dogma sometimes means, however, a conceptual- ism quite as artificial as that which it challenges. It has to be brought down to reality by the perception that "the individual" is only a mental image ; "the individual" is merely a concep- tion. Individuals alone exist. Human societies are diversified adjustments of unlike individuals. The play of individuality is as constant among them as the play of cosmic law.
As in the case of the other incidents of association, this element in the situation is both fact and force ; it is both reality and tendency. It in turn furnishes, first, its own material for study in the analytical stages of the sociological process, and it presents a problem of accommodation in the telic division of social or sociological activity.
