be, dominated, at certain
moments and under certain circumstances, by the group as a whole. Worms
gives to this fact, and the phenomena which accompany it, the title
"collective consciousness." This gives the problem a name, to be sure,
but not a solution. What the purpose of sociology requires is a
description and an explanation. Under what conditions, precisely, does
this phenomenon of collective consciousness arise? What are the
mechanisms--physical, physiological, and social--by which the group
imposes its control, or what seems to be control, upon the individual
members of the group?

This question had arisen and been answered by political philosophers, in
terms of political philosophy, long before sociology attempted to give
an objective account of the matter. Two classic phrases, Aristotle's
"Man is a political animal" and Hobbes's "War of each against all,"
_omnes bellum omnium_, measure the range and divergence of the schools
upon this topic.

According to Hobbes, the existing moral and political order--that is to
say the organization of control--is in any community a mere artefact, a
control resting on consent, supported by a prudent calculation of
consequences, and enforced by an external power. Aristotle, on the other
hand, taught that man was made for life in society just as the bee is
made for life in the hive. The relations between the sexes, as well as
those between mother and child, are manifestly predetermined in the
physiological organization of the individual man and woman. Furthermore,
man is, by his instincts and his inherited dispositions, predestined to
a social existence beyond the intimate family circle. Society must be
conceived, therefore, as a part of nature, like a beaver's dam or the
nests of birds.

As a matter of fact, man and society present themselves in a double
aspect. They are at the same time products of nature and of human
artifice. Just as a stone hammer in the hand of a savage may be regarded
as an artificial extension of the natural man, so tools, machinery,
technical and administrative devices, including the formal organization
of government and the informal "political machine," may be regarded as
more or less artificial extensions of the natural social group.

So far as this is true, the conflict between Hobbes and Aristotle is not
absolute. Society is a product both of nature and of design, of instinct
and of reason. If, in its formal aspect, society is therefore an
art