By association[1] we mean, in the most general sense, activity[1] conceived either as incited in, or put forth by, one thing[1] in virtue of the existence of another; activity conceived as the expression,[2] and as the possible occasion, of the apparent constitution," of the relations of one thing with another.
No dogmatic attempt is here made to fix the content of the term "association." It is far too early in the sociologic day for such an attempt to appear other than ill-timed. Usage, guided by the results of further research and by certain practical considerations, will probably determine in the end what this content shall be. But until usage shall have attained years of discretion and authority, it will be allowable for each writer to state for himself what meaning he will attach to the term. In the proper place the reasons will be given which have led the present writer to the use indicated in the text. Since this use is for the larger part one of the latest results, rather than the earliest presupposition, of the work which it is the task of these articles to outline, the end rather than the beginning of the account will manifestly be the most appropriate point at which to mass, and discuss in detail, these reasons. The only excuse for giving, thus early in the study, a tentative definition of the term is that the reader may have from the start a clue to what is meant when the word "association" is used in a given connection.
Now, this association, composed of the activities of the associating beings, is, in part at least, a function of what these beings are, and the complexity of this varies directly as does the complexity of the beings themselves.[3] And if those sciences, some of which were enumerated above, which have as their task the comprehension and interpretation of what man is, are driven by the complexity of their subject-matter to consider what man was, how he evolved, what he was in that evolution, it seems a likely hypothesis that those sciences whose task is the analysis
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 It is to be noted that "association" is here used in the sense of association and that "activity" has a meaning far broader than would be covered by the expression "movement which has, or has had, psychic concomitants." The word "thing" is also used in the most general and inclusive sense.
- ↑ It is not intended to assert that we first have unrelated things which afterward become related in some mysterious manner. Things and their relations grow up together; but the fact of this growth seems to make it necessary to suppose an entering-in to the series of "an element of the new" (whatever that may mean) at appropriate points. To embrace both these facts we allude to the "expression " and to the "apparent constitution" of relations.
- ↑ See Herbert Spencer, Principles of Biology, edition of 1884, Vol. I, p. 156.
