While every special sociological science deals with a determinate species of social phenomena, the role of general sociology might be to reconstitute the unity of all that is dissected by analysis in this way. The problems to which it should address itself with this aim in view are in no way vague or indecisive; they can be formulated in perfectly well-defined terms and are capable of being treated methodically.
From this viewpoint, one should particularly ask how a society, which is however only a composite of relatively independent parts and differentiated organs, can nevertheless form an individuality endowed with a unity which is analogous to that of individual personalities. Very possibly one of the factors which most contributes to this result is that poorly analyzed complex which is termed the civilization appropriate to each social type and even, more especially, to each society. This is because there is in every civilization a kind of tonality sui generis which is to be found in all the details of collective life...
The character of peoples is another factor of the same kind. In a society, as in an individual, the character is the central and permanent nucleus which joins together the various moments of an existence and which gives succession and continuity to life...
--Emile Durkheim, "Civilization in General and Types of Civilization" (1902).
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