THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 239
Take, for example, the family, either primitive or modern. From a variety of motives a man and a woman unite to form a family. They thus secure certain reciprocal services. They assure to themselves certain comforts, conveniences, safeguards, dignities, which unattached persons lack. To each of these per- sons individually independence is a desired end. These other goods are also desired, and for the sake of them the individuals exchange a certain kind of independence for that kind of interdependence which the family relationship involves. That very interdependence now becomes an end for the persons united in the family. The continued existence of the family is an end in itself. Both man and woman may shortly become aware that this end, which is decisive for them as a family, comes into sharp collision with ends that are dear to them as individuals. Each says in his heart, "I would like to do so and so;" but each is restrained by the thought, "That would break up the family." Whether the conflict between the individual ends and the family ends becomes sharp enough to be thus realized by the members of the family, or not, it is always there in prin- ciple. Each society, large or small, has ends which may have every degree of harmonious or inharmonious relation with the interests and desires of the individual members.
For our present purposes it is not worth while to dwell upon the relation of social ends to individual ends. The present proposition is that social ends exist. Societies exist for pur- poses that are distinctive. Accordingly, the first end of every society, as of every individual, is self-preservation. Whether it is one of the most permanent species of association, like the family or the state, or an accidental and unimportant association, like a bicycle club or a reading circle, every human society has its peculiar degree of tenacity of life. The end of perpetuating its existence asserts itself with corresponding force against the reac- tions of its individual members, on the one hand, and against collisions with the rest of the world, on the other.
This fact of social ends, more or less at variance with the ends that the individuals who compose the society might, could,' would, or should pursue if they were outside of the soci-
