that the police are always in evidence
where there are large congregations of people at church or theatre,
where a prominent man is to be seen or a procession is to pass. But
the popular mass is a volatile thing, and in proportion to its size it
expends little useful energy. It is never to be reckoned as equal in
importance to the organized company, however small it may be, that has
a definite purpose guiding its regular action, and that persists in
its purpose for years together. It is the fixed group, the social
institution, that does the work of the world and carries society
forward from lower to higher levels of civilization. Social efficiency
belongs to the organized type.

READING REFERENCES

COOLEY: _Social Organization_, pages 149-156.

GIDDINGS: _Elements of Sociology_, pages 129-140.

ROSS: _Foundations of Sociology_, pages 120-138.

ROSS: _Social Psychology_, pages 43-82.

MUeNSTERBERG: _Psychology, General and Applied_, pages 269-273.

DAVENPORT: _Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals_, pages 25-31.

PART II--LIFE IN THE FAMILY GROUP

CHAPTER III

FOUNDATIONS OF THE FAMILY

28. =The Fundamental Importance of the Family.=--Social life can be
understood best by taking the simplest organized group of human beings
and analyzing its activities, its organization, and its development.
The family is such a group and is, therefore, a natural basis for
study. It illustrates most of the phases of social activity, it is
simple in its organization, its history goes back to primitive times,
and it is rapidly changing in the present. Family life is made up of
the interactions of individual life, and, therefore, the individual in
his social relations and not the family is the unit of sociological
investigation, but until recent years the family group has been
regarded as of greater importance than the individual, and in the
Orient the family still occupies the place of importance. Out of the
family have developed such institutions as property, law, and
government, and on the maintenance of the family rests the future
welfare of society. It has been claimed that "the study of the single
family on its homestead would yield richer scientific knowledge and
more practical results in the great social sciences than almost any
other single object in the social world. Pursued historically, the
student would find himself at the roots of property, separate
ownership of land, inheritance, taxatio