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In other words, the social process, as we find it among men thus far, bears testimony that the inclusive aim which men should set up for themselves ought to be the perfecting of social co-op- eration, to the end that the lot of every person in the world may be to share, in a progressively widening proportion, in all the developing content of the most abundant life. The social pro- cess is not to be forever a consumption of men for the produc- tion of things. It must become more and more a consumption of things for the production of men. This human product must be perfected in all the qualities and dimensions of life. More and better life by more and better people, beyond any limit of time or quality that our minds can set, is the indicated content of the social process.
7. Social structure. 1 The concepts dealt with thus far in this paper have come into conscious use in sociology rather late. They have been forced upon our attention as analysis and inter- pretations have become more exact. They are rudimentary and necessary, from the logical point of view, but it took the sociolo- gists a long time to see the need of such concepts.
Under the present title, on the other hand, we encounter a concept which has had much more than its due share of influence upon sociology since Comte, and it would be easy to show that it has implicitly played an important role, though most of the time it was unexpressed in direct terms, throughout the whole range of thinking about human actions. The notion of social structure has certainly dominated all the social sciences during the past fifty years. So far as we can see, it is a concept which we must always use. It seems probable, on the other hand, that we shall reduce the ratio of its prominence below that which it has enjoyed during the formative period of sociology.
Every activity implies a formation of elements by means of which the activity takes place. In general this means a structure of parts concerned in the activity. 2
1 Vid. SMALL AND VINCENT, Introduction, pp. 87-96 ; AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. II, p. 311 ; Vol. IV, p. 411 ; Vol. V, pp. 276 and 626-31.
2 Thus the Century Dictionary has, among others, the following definition of the term : " In the widest sense, any production or piece of work artificially built up or composed of parts joined together in some definite manner ; any construction ....
