THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY 149
and thought. Tarde, for example, conceives a constant tendency toward larger social groups by means of ever-spreading waves of imitation. 13 This conception of an increasing unification of mankind is traceable in part to the evolutionary philosophy of the second half of the century, in part to the rapid extension of commerce and the closer international relations which this has involved, and in some degree to that idealism which Con- dorcet suggested, which Comte exalted, and which finds expres- sion in the dream of " a parliament of nations, the federation of the world."
Valuable as this philosophical idea of organic social unity and increasing centralization undoubtedly is, it has distinct limita- tions. The biological analogy is clearly recognized as having reached and often transgressed the limits of its usefulness. It is the descriptive philosophy of an observer from without rather than the science of the student at close quarters with the facts of association. Mallock has asserted that the Spencerian sociology, when tested by the practical demands of the times, utterly breaks down. It has no solution for the problems of the day because Spencer deals with society as a whole, while all so-called social problems arise from maladjustments and conflicts between the parts of society classes, parties, sects, and other groups. 14 It is further true that the concept of society as a whole is a vague notion at best, and on ultimate analysis is likely to resolve itself into the idea of a national group defined by geographical boun- daries and controlled by a single political system.
It was inevitable in the circumstances that to certain students 2T society should present a picture, not of harmony and unity, but of conflict and struggle. 15 Thus Gumplowicz sees in the history of mankind a never-ending conflict of hordes, tribes, races, classes, and other groups. These struggles may change their
"TARDE, Les lois de limitation (Paris, 1890), pp. 42 f.
14 MALLOCK, Aristocracy and Evolution (London, 1896), pp. 8-16.
15 Ross points out that Spencer and Tarde live in centralized and homo- geneous states, while the leaders of the " conflict " school, Gumplowicz, Ratzen- hofer, Loria, et al., have been reared among peoples characterized by racial and national antagonisms. Ross, " Recent Tendencies in Sociology," Quarterly Journal of Economics, August, 1902.
