motives or tendencies, which served to give to the mere
temporal sequence of the events a significance which they did not
otherwise possess. These tendencies historians called "social forces."

From the point of view and for the purposes of reformers social forces
were conceived as embodied in institutions. For the purposes of the
historian they are merely tendencies which combine to define the general
trend of historical change. The logical motive, which has everywhere
guided science in formulating its conceptions, is here revealed in its
most naive and elementary form. Natural science invariably seeks to
describe change in terms of process, that is to say, in terms of
interaction of tendencies. These tendencies are what science calls
forces.

For the purposes of an adequate description, however, it is necessary
not merely to conceive change in terms of the interplay of forces, but
to think of these forces as somehow objectively embodied, as social
forces are conceived to be embodied in institutions, organizations, and
persons. These objects in which the forces are, or seem to be, resident
are not forces in any real or metaphysical sense, as the physicists tell
us. They are mere points of reference which enable us to visualize the
direction and measure the intensity of change.

Institutions and social organizations may, in any given situation, be
regarded as social forces, but they are not ultimate nor elementary
forces. One has but to carry the analysis of the community a little
farther to discover the fact that institutions and organizations may be
further resolved into factors of smaller and smaller denominations until
we have arrived at individual men and women. For common sense the
individual is quite evidently the ultimate factor in every community or
social organization.

Sociologists have carried the analysis a step farther. They have sought
to meet the problem raised by two facts: (1) the same individual may be
a member of different societies, communities, and social groups at the
same time; (2) under certain circumstances his interests as a member of
one group may conflict with his interests as a member of another group,
so that the conflict between different social groups will be reflected
in the mental and moral conflicts of the individual himself.
Furthermore, it is evident that the individual is, as we frequently say,
"not the same person" at different times and places. The phenomena of
moods and of