ABSTRACT
Henri Bergson published, in 1932, his Two Sources of Morality and Religion, sociology, as an independent branch of learning, was about a century old. The organic hypothesis claims that society is a natural phenomenon in the narrower sense of the word, a product of bio tic forces. The battle between organic and mechanistic sociology on the one hand, and the cultural school on the other, which is at present in full swing, must necessarily be fought out on the philosophical plane. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of this truth. The orthodox protagonists of the biological school have always been forced- forced by the very nature of their evolutionary philosophy,-to argue away the differences between human and animal societies, and even between societies and organisms. The mechanistic doctrine is not, in itself, one whit less problematic than the organic hypothesis, but it has proved vastly more attractive in the history of sociological thought.
