This extraordinary prescient work by Ferdinand Toennies was written in 1887 for a small coterie of scholars, and over the next fifty years continued to grow in importance and adherents. Its translator into English, Charles P. Loomis, well described it as a volume which pointed back into the Middle Ages and ahead into the future in its attempt to answer the questions: "What are we? Where are we? Whence did we come? Where are we going?" If the questions seem portentous in the extreme, the answers Toennies provides are modest and compelling.

Ferdinand Tonnies, C.P. Loomis

Introduction: Tönnies and His Relation to Sociology; The Application of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft As Related to Other Typologies *; One: General Statement of the Main Concepts; Two: Natural Will and Rational Will; Three: The Sociological Basis of Natural Law; Four: Conclusions and Outlook; Five: The Summing Up