338 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
and all-inclusive, single and organic, embracing all that live and breathe, however far away and however "impossible;" but practi- cally a very convenient antithesis to theory how can it be, and who wants it to be ? To this there is just one reply, and a very decisive reply. Theory responsible theory is only a syno- nym for candor, and at least in the long run candor is practical. But let the word "organism" go, and with it also its defense and the consequences of it, whether theoretical or practical. Enough if we get an idea this idea, which possibly, in the fol- lowing way of expressing it, will be recognized as one of the deepest convictions of current thinking : society, whatever else is to be said of it, whether describable or not describable as an organism, is immanent in individuality. Not individuals make society or enter into society; individuals as such forgive the mark are society. In evidence, were evidence necessary, I might appeal to psychology or biology or even theology, but I waste no time with familiar arguments. Moreover, even popular conceptions of today about personal individuality, or about the individuality of social classes, are thoroughly imbued with the idea of immanence. Simply in questions of good and bad con- duct, of labor and capital, of learning and ignorance, even of genius and stolidity, social relation is recognized, indirectly when not directly, as an intrinsic part of individuality; not, I say, with danger of tedious repetition, as something that is external to and at times, perhaps, imposed upon individuals, nor yet as something that in any way really conflicts with and may even wholly suppress or destroy individuals, but as something that belongs to individuals and always has a part in their self- realization. The great man is at the acme of individuality; but was there ever political or religious or ethical or intellectual leadership that was not adaptation ? or revelation in any field that was not inference ? or invention however origi- nal that was not discovery ? This is a world in which some- how everything participates in its own making ; in which, then, everything the falling stone perhaps, or the revolving planet, your life or mine, motherhood or kingship, the career of Caesar or the thought of Immanuel Kant, the victory of Washington or
