The study of the concrete, which is the study of the whole, is made more readily, is more interesting and furnishes more explanations in the sphere of sociology than the study of the abstract.

The aim and principle of sociology is to observe and understand the whole group in its total behavior.

All societies with the exception of European socities are segmentary. Rules of friendship and contract are present to ensure the peace of markets and villages.

Societies have progressed in the meausre in which they have been able to stablizie, their contracts adn to give, receive and repay. In order to trade, man must first lay down his spear. When that is done he can succeed in exchanging goods and persons not only between clan and clan but between tribe and tribe and nations and nation, and above all between individuals. It is only then that people can create, can satisfy their interests mutually and define them without recourse to arms. It is in this way that the clan, the tribe and nation have learnt - just as in the future the classes and nations and individuals will learn - how to oppose one another without slaughter and to give without sacrificing themselves to others. That is one of teh secrets of their wisdom and solidarity.

Thus we see how it is possible under certain circumstances to study total human behaviour; and how that concrete study leads not only to a science of manners, a partial social science, but even to ethical conclusions - 'civility', or 'civics' as we say today. Through studies of this sort we can find, measure and assess the various determinants, aesthetic, moral religious and economic, and the material and demographic factors, whose sums is the basis of society and constitutes the common life, and whose conscious direction is the supreme art - politics in the Socratic sense of the word.