ABSTRACT

Although our last chapter was concerned primarily with definitions, a number of important conclusions have emerged from it. We have learnt to regard community as a complex of individuals, associations, institutions, and customs in varied and multiform relationships; we have learnt to regard society as a complex of associations and institutions expressing, not the whole of the communal life, but that part of it which is organized; and we have learnt to see in associations bodies created by the wills of individuals for the expression and fulfilment of purposes which they have in common. We have, in fact, already penetrated the essential and underlying structure of social life.