Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/561

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REVIEIVS 541

which for a later "doctrinal structure of sociology" will scarcely be authoritative. However, we would not fail to bring to notice two single conceptions, with one of which we disagree, with the other we agree. I refer to Ratzenhofer's " nation " and "sphere of civilization." Con- cerning the origin of the nation, Ratzenhofer's opinion is : " While a people, conceived as a mass of subjecting and subjected tribes, is effec- tuating differentiation, the blending of tribal oppositions advances, and there is developed an organization of guiding, operating, and adminis- tered social structures, which finally, despite inner struggles, become a social unity called a nation. The nation is the completion of the pro- cess which was introduced through the founding of the conquering state." That is not the whole truth, however, about the origin and nature of the " nation." On the other hand, noteworthy suggestions are found in Ratzenhofer's chapter on the " Sphere of Civilization " {Kuliurkreis) as the " territory of cooperative social evolution." Polit- ical science, perhaps, has occasion to consider more important than hitherto Ratzenhofer's " sphere of civilization " as the material foun- dation of consonant and dissonant political organization. Ratzenhofer remarks : " All the phenomena of interest, which with differentiation become effective within the state, spread beyond the state to seek within kindred civilization support and satisfaction. On this account many social structures will have adherents also beyond the limits of the state, and there will result, notwithstanding the state, a social differ- entiation of the sphere of civilization. The social differentiation of the sphere of civilization has always been dangerous to the state as an organization of power. It dissolves the inner necessity of its exclusive- ness, and points through social relations to the widening of political barriers and relations of authority. Even if the instinct of conquest was generally the visible motive for widening the domain of the state and for creating great empires, nevertheless the fact of a homogeneous civilization, and even more the fact of social relationships with outside territories, has been the inner cause of the expansion of state domain. To this effort is to be ascribed the fact that a state should attain the leadership inside a sphere of civilization, through political superiority — as Athens or Sparta in the Greek sphere of civilization — or that a state should extend its sovereignty over the whole respective sphere of civili- zation — as Rome, the Frankish empire, or the empire of the Caliphs. In order to escape the menace of peoples of kindred civilization, states have endeavored to shut off also socially their political individuality, or at least to prevent the loosening of their social condition through