Page:American Anthropologist NS vol. 1.djvu/542

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powell] SOCIOLOGY, OR THE SCIENCE OF INSTITUTIONS 483

incorporated into one body by mechanical or physical bonds. The man is composed of actually coherent parts, but a society is composed of individuals who do not physically cohere. They may be together at one moment but apart at another, and members of the social corporation may wander about at will independent of one another; they cohere only in purpose, that is, they have a common purpose which is that for which the body politic is incorporated. There is thus coherence in purpose, but not coher- ence in mechanical structure. Purpose is something which exists only in the mind. We may therefore say that social bodies are ideally incorporated, while natural bodies are physically incorporated.

Having noted that incorporation is integration, and that dif- ferentiation is specialization of parts, we have further to note that this organization and specialization is accomplished to control the conduct of the members of the incorporation in relation to the purposes for which the society is organized. This control of the conduct is control of the activities of the members ; the control of the activities is the control of the motility of the mem- bers in bringing them together and in speaking at their delibera- tions, but the control of their motility is effected by controlling their judgments. The individual members, every one for himself, controls his motility, or, which is the same thing, his activity, by controlling the metabolism or affinity of his several members, so that pairs of muscles which are set in operation, one against the other, are made the one to contract and the other to relax. Thus, a physical control of the several persons who constitute a body corporate is ultimately resolved into the control of metab- olism, which is the control of affinity. There is a physical con- trol of the conduct of the members through appeal to their purposes, which may be resolved into the control of affinity of particles. With this introduction we are prepared to consider the science of economics.

Economics is sometimes called the science of wealth and its

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