y societal or group phenomena are due.
The life of society consists in making folkways and applying them. The
science of society might be construed as the study of them. The
relations of men to each other, when they are carrying on the struggle
for existence near each other, consist in mutual reactions (antagonisms,
rivalries, alliances, coercions, and cooperations), from which result
societal concatenations and concretions, that is, more or less fixed
positions of individuals and subgroups towards each other, and more or
less established sequences and methods of interaction between them, by
which the interests of all members of the group are served. The same
might be said of all animals. The social insects especially show us
highly developed results of the adjustment of adjacent interests and
life acts into concatenations and concretions. The societal concretions
are due to the folkways in this way,--that the men, each struggling to
carry on existence, unconsciously cooperate to build up associations,
organization, customs, and institutions which, after a time, appear full
grown and actual, although no one intended, or planned, or understood
them in advance. They stand there as produced by "ancestors." These
concretions of relation and act in war, labor, religion, amusement,
family life, and civil institutions are attended by faiths, doctrines of
philosophy (myths, folklore), and by precepts of right conduct and duty
(taboos). The making of folkways is not trivial, although the acts are
minute. Every act of each man fixes an atom in a structure, both
fulfilling a duty derived from what preceded and conditioning what is to
come afterwards by the authority of traditional custom. The structure
thus built up is not physical, but societal and institutional, that is
to say, it belongs to a category which must be defined and studied by
itself. It is a category in which custom produces continuity, coherence,
and consistency, so that the word "structure" may properly be applied to
the fabric of relations and prescribed positions with which societal
functions are permanently connected. The process of making folkways is
never superseded or changed. It goes on now just as it did at the
beginning of civilization. "Use and wont" exert their force on all men
always. They produce familiarity, and mass acts become unconscious. The
same effect is produced by customary acts repeated at all recurring
occasions. The range of societal activit