232 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
however, is not the social interpretation itself. It is merely a convenience tributary to the end of social interpretation. If it does not serve that end in any case, it is to be brushed aside accordingly.
It would occupy more space than is available to pursue the discussion of social structure and function into particulars. We might begin with Spencer's primary classification of social struc- ture into the sustaining system, the distributing system, and the regulating system. We might show that the functions of produc- tion, transfer, and regulation go on, in some manner or other, in every group, from the parts of the animal body considered as a group, to the whole of the human race. We might show how the work performed by these great structural or functional sys- tems 1 varies indefinitely in content and proportions from time to time and from place to place, and that the same essential functions go on in social structures so different that only trained insight can discover the identity in the difference. We might show that much experience in analyzing social situations, so as to demonstrate the actual structure and functions concerned, is necessary to form mature and reliable sociological judgment. We might go through a critical analysis of the structure and functions of some selected society, as a sample of the work which every sociologist must be prepared to perform upon the situation with which he has especially to deal. In a conspectus of this sort, however, all this must be omitted.
One further consideration hinted at above may be added. One of the most frequent problems encountered in the practical affairs of social life is, in most general terms, a problem of the relations between social structure and function. It is a universal principle that function develops structure, and that structure limits function. For example, need of defense against men develops the military or police structures ; need of defense against fire develops the fire department ; per contra, the kind of a military, police, or fire department which a community possesses determines the sort of work which will be done in
1 They are the one or the other according as we think of them from the side of mechanism or from the side of the work that they perform.
