The term "voluntary association" is here used to designate that form of social coSperation in which the conscious choice of each member determines his membership. It is true that all organizations, even those which are most free, are influenced by the fixed material conditions and the established customs and laws of a given community. But in these associations the self-determining element is most conspicuous and characteristic. Such a social organization is usually less permanent and rigid, and its membership more fluctuating and unstable than is true of the great and recognized institutions, such as the family, state and church.
They are created to serve many and varied ends. They may be organized in order to gain some special object or in order to change and direct the workings of the established institutions. They may be compared to the tenders which ply between the port and the great ships which are more at home on the deep sea than in the shallow harbor; or to the skirmish lines which are thrown out in advance of the main army.
It is bewildering to contemplate the clubs, societies, guilds, associations, unions, companies, congresses, fraternities, sodalities and lodges which figure in city directories and in the society columns of newspapers. In order to understand them we must seek some rational principles of classification and of judgment.
One mode of classification is based on the status of persons whose welfare is to be promoted. Thus we might have three groups of associations, philanthropic, mutual benefit and public. Goethe has given us the allegory of the Three Reverences, reverence for our peers, for the objects of our pity and for our superiors. But it seems better to employ this distinction to fix the boundaries of subgroups or species of association whose genera are otherwise marked.
Societies which cooperate with domestic, economic, educational, political and ecclesiastical bodies have the generic characters of the institutions to which they are most nearly related. But any method of classification must come short of representing the complexity of social relations. There are advantages in treating the same phenomena under different heads, because in
