s fact to satisfy their particular
terms. Whether the individual can ever be abstracted from his conditions
and remain himself is not a question that we need here discuss. At all
events, the individual known to our experience is not isolated. He is
connected in various ways with one or more individuals. The different
ways in which individuals are connected with each other are indicated by
the inclusive term "contact." Starting, then, from the individual, to
measure him in all his dimensions and to represent him in all his
phases, we find that each person is what he is by virtue of the
existence of other persons, and by virtue of an alternating current of
influence between each person and all the other persons previously or at
the same time in existence. The last native of Central Africa around
whom we throw the dragnet of civilization, and whom we inoculate with a
desire for whiskey, adds an increment to the demand for our distillery
products, and affects the internal revenue of the United States, and so
the life-conditions of every member of our population. This is what we
mean by "contact." So long as that African tribe is unknown to the
outside world, and the world to it, so far as the European world is
concerned, the tribe might as well not exist. The moment the tribe comes
within touch of the rest of the world, the aggregate of the world's
contacts is by so much enlarged; the social world is by so much
extended. In other words, the realm of the social is the realm of
circuits of reciprocal influence between individuals and the groups
which individuals compose. The general term "contact" is proposed to
stand for this realm, because it is a colorless word that may mark
boundaries without prejudging contents. Wherever there is physical or
spiritual contact between persons, there is inevitably a circuit of
exchange of influence. The realm of the social is the realm constituted
by such exchange. It extends from the producing of the baby by the
mother, and the simultaneous producing of the mother by the baby, to the
producing of merchant and soldier by the world-powers, and the producing
of the world-powers by merchant and soldier.

The most general and inclusive way in which to designate all the
phenomena that sociology proper considers, without importing into the
term premature hypotheses by way of explanation, is to assert that they
are the phenomena of "contact" between persons.

In accordance with what was said abo