THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME XXVI

NOVEMBER 1920

NUMBER 3

THE COMPARATIVE ROLE OF THE GROUP CONCEPT IN WARD'S DYNAMIC SOCIOLOGY AND CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SOCIOLOGY

WALTER B. BODENHAFER
Washington University

I. THE GROWTH OF GROUP CONSCIOUSNESS

A study in social theory cannot ignore the fundamental fact of the social life, which is the source of all sound theory as it is the test of all results of reflection. The attempt to separate social life from social theory is one that has resulted in disaster both for the theory and for the on-going life-stream. On the one hand it creates a theory which, like metaphysical philosophy, finally exhausts itself in fruitless evanescent speculations; and on the other hand, by failing to furnish the developing life a working and tested technique, it has allowed the social life to develop as an undirected and wasteful process. If one accepts the conclusion arrived at by Herbert Spencer in his Social Statics and developed

For one of the best illustrations both of the fact and the results of such separation one might call attention to Germany. Professor John Dewey, in his German Philosophy and Politics, makes this attempted separation on the part of German thinkers the key to his interpretation of the German nation. The German attempt to reconcile esoteric intellectual freedom, an ideal freedom, with an autocratically dominated social and industrial life was an impossible attempt, and one which led to German ruin and a shaken world.

by Sumner, namely, that the social process' goes on irrespective of social control or direction, then indeed, the second of the consequences of the separation of theory from social life is probably a desideratum, for it brings about the result aimed at, namely, noninterference in the workings of a process of natural laws. But society at large, social scientists in general, and sociologists in particular, have swung away from the laissez faire philosophy and are more and more given to a refinement of their technique of social control on the assumption that such tools will have an actual use in modifying the social process. The conclusion seems to be sound that social theory and the social process are somehow interrelated, and can never be wholly or to any extent separated if thought is to remain sound and instrumental, and if the activities of life are to be saved from the wasteful and costly results of uncontrolled movements. Whatever valuation may be put on the place of social theory, whether one regard it as performing the function of leadership in mediating group crises and as thus shaping and influencing social development, or whether one regard it as merely a rationalizing of, and speculation on, past events, and relatively ineffective and futile both as an academic pursuit and as a practicable matter, one must assume that there is some connection more or less vital between social theory and social life. We may take it for granted, then, that the development of social theory in general, or of any partial phase of social theory, has been more or less closely related to the actual social life which has developed. We should expect, if that were our present problem, to find that such

The concept "social process" is used here in the sense in which it has been largely standardized by Dr. Small in his General Sociology.

Dr. Small has called attention (American Journal of Sociology, XXI, 755) to the fact that L. F. Ward's most significant contribution to sociology in America is his emphasis on the psychic factor as a new and controlling factor in human development. On this Ward joined issue with Sumner and Spencer and became a pioneer in this respect in social science in the United States.

3 One might call attention here to the nature of thought and its function as described by that group of writers who are referred to by such terms as functionalists, behaviorists, pragmatists, instrumentalists. The essence of this view, I take it, is (in so far as this point is concerned) that thought is conduct, reflection is a type of conduct and arises in mediation of crises, i.e., conflict situations. On this assumption then social theory must be organically and functionally connected with the social process. They cannot be separated.