roup, in time
passes away. Yet the life of the group goes on.

Society exists through a process of transmission, quite as much as
biological life. This transmission occurs by means of communication of
habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.
Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards,
opinions from those members of society who are passing out of the group
life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive.

Society not only continues to exist _by_ transmission, _by_
communication, but it may fairly be said to exist _in_ transmission,
_in_ communication. There is more than a verbal tie between the words
common, community, and communication. Men live in a community in virtue
of the things which they have in common; and communication is the way in
which they come to possess things in common. What they must have in
common in order to form a community or society are aims, beliefs,
aspirations, knowledge--a common understanding--like-mindedness, as the
sociologists say. Such things cannot be passed physically from one to
another, like bricks; they cannot be shared as persons would share a pie
by dividing it into physical pieces. The communication which insures
participation in a common understanding is one which secures similar
emotional and intellectual dispositions--like ways of responding to
expectations and requirements.

Persons do not become a society by living in physical proximity any more
than a man ceases to be socially influenced by being so many feet or
miles removed from others. A book or a letter may institute a more
intimate association between human beings separated thousands of miles
from each other than exists between dwellers under the same roof.
Individuals do not even compose a social group because they all work for
a common end. The parts of a machine work with a maximum of
co-operativeness for a common result, but they do not form a community.
If, however, they were all cognizant of the common end and all
interested in it so that they regulated their specific activity in view
of it, then they would form a community. But this would involve
communication. Each would have to know what the other was about and
would have to have some way of keeping the other informed as to his own
purpose and progress. Consensus demands communications.

We are thus compelled to recognize that within even the most social
group there are many relations