e contrast and the opposition,
already referred to, between the nominalistic and realistic conceptions
of society. Nominalism represented by social psychology emphasizes, or
seems to emphasize, the independence of the individual. Realism,
represented by collective psychology, emphasizes the control of the
group over the individual, of the whole over the part.

While it is true that society has this double aspect, the individual and
the collective, it is the assumption of this volume that the touchstone
of society, the thing that distinguishes a mere collection of
individuals from a society is not like-mindedness, but corporate action.
We may apply the term social to any group of individuals which is
capable of consistent action, that is to say, action, consciously or
unconsciously, directed to a common end. This existence of a common end
is perhaps all that can be legitimately included in the conception
"organic" as applied to society.

From this point of view social control is the central fact and the
central problem of society. Just as psychology may be regarded as an
account of the manner in which the individual organism, as a whole,
exercises control over its parts or rather of the manner in which the
parts co-operate together to carry on the corporate existence of the
whole, so sociology, speaking strictly, is a point of view and a method
for investigating the processes by which individuals are inducted into
and induced to co-operate in some sort of permanent corporate existence
which we call society.

To put this emphasis on corporate action is not to overlook the fact
that through this corporate action the individual member of society is
largely formed, not to say created. It recognized, however, that if
corporate action tends to make of the individual an instrument, as well
as an organic part, of the social group, it does not do this by making
him "like" merely; it may do so by making him "different." The division
of labor, in making possible an ever larger and wider co-operation among
men, has indirectly multiplied individual diversities. What
like-mindedness must eventually mean, if it is to mean anything, is the
existence of so much of a consensus among the individuals of a group as
will permit the group to act. This, then, is what is meant here by
society, the social organism and the social group.

Sociology, so far as it can be regarded as a fundamental science and not
mere congeries of social-welfare p