Any student of the sociology of civilization must turn from this
analysis of function with the conviction that whatever the advantages of
civilization as opposed to earlier phases of human association, the
pattern of civilization in action is workable only to a very limited
extent. Civilization is not an example of perpetual motion. Rather it is
a social life cycle, with a beginning and an end, and a peck of
troublesome contradictions and conflicts in between.
Civilization is an integrative process. During the course of its
competitive survival struggle, potential building units of an expanding
civilization are tested out and included or rejected in much the same
way that a stone-mason checks and tests the individual stones of which
his wall is being built. The analogy is not entirely accurate. A wall
becomes a completed part of a total structure. A civilization is a
process of existence from conception and birth to dissolution and death.
At any point in the process there is a delicate balance between
integration and disintegration. As a matter of fact, both integration
and disintegration exist and act, constantly, side by side. If the
integrative forces are in the ascendant, form is built and function is
accelerated. If the disintegrative forces are dominant, form breaks down
and function stagnates.
This shifting balance and/or imbalance with its resulting build-up
and/or break-down exists geographically, biologically, sociologically.
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