[77] From Albert G. Keller, _Societal Evolution_, pp. 212-15. (Published by The Macmillan Co., 1915. Reprinted by permission.) [78] From Robert E. Park, "Education in Its Relation to the Conflict and Fusion of Cultures," in the _Publications of the American Sociological Society_, XIII (1918), 58-63. [79] Émile Zola, _The Experimental Novel_ (New York, 1893), pp. 8-9. Translated from the French by Belle M. Sherman. CHAPTER III SOCIETY AND THE GROUP I. INTRODUCTION 1. Society, the Community, and the Group Human nature and the person are products of society. This is the sum and substance of the readings in the preceding chapter. But what, then, is society--this web in which the lives of individuals are so inextricably interwoven, and which seems at the same time so external and in a sense alien to them? From the point of view of common sense, "society" is sometimes conceived as the sum total of social institutions. The family, the church, industry, the state, all taken together, constitute society. In this use of the word, society is identified with social structure, something more or less external to individuals. In accordance with another customary use of the term, "society" denotes a collection of persons. This is a vaguer notion but it at least identifies society with individuals instead of setting it apart from them. But this definition is manifestly superficial. Society is not a collection of persons in the sense that a brick pile is a collection of bricks. However we may conceive the relation of the parts of society to the whole, society is not a mere physical aggregation and not a mere mathematical or statistical unit.