Are the Social Sciences Answerable to Common Principles of Method?¹
I

American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Jul., 1907): 1-19

Dr. Hoxie's "Rejoinder" raises, directly or indirectly, questions which cover the whole field of sociological methodology. They are not to be disposed of in a single reply. Some of them indeed are incapable of decisive answer in the form of premise and conclusion. They depend upon mental attitudes analogous with the states of mind which on the one hand affirm and on the other deny that an impressionist picture truly reflects reality. I neither claim nor admit that there is any further parallel between the impressionist picture and the things in question between Dr. Hoxie and myself. The single point of the analogy is that, for better or for worse, the change which would have to occur in either of us, if one of us should adopt the view of the other, would be less like the change that an advocate produces when he succeeds in making the court reverse a previous ruling, than like the change which occurs in the mind of the artist through shifting of attention from one aspect to another of the objective world. One may decide that the aspect which a landscape presents when it is looked at through the interests of an engineer is more real than the aspect mirrored in the interests of a poet. To be convinced on either side, however, one must be controlled by a rather peremptory habit of looking at things in a certain way. In order for the poet to accept the engineer's picture, or the engineer the poet's, it will not be enough merely to assemble more of the things that either values. In addition to that, or apart from that, there must be more valuation of each other's things. I am likening neither Dr. Hoxie nor myself to engineer nor poet, except in the one particular that the questions between us concern primarily a process of selective attention and constructive valuation which formal reasoning cannot directly control. Each of us brings to scrutiny of the world a subjective habit which heightens certain values and depresses others. It is only as each of us may succeed in bringing the other's view into focus, and in holding it for a considerable period in unprejudiced comparison with his own, that we may set up the conditions in which it is possible for direct inspection to change our valuations. It may be too much to suppose that two such convinced advocates of contrasted views as Dr. Hoxie and myself are capable of sufficiently dispassionate consideration of a divergent view to modify our previous opinions. Be that as it may, though we fail to convince each other, the presentation of the alternatives may possibly afford to persons whose prepossessions are less invincible means of forming juster valuations than either of us has reached.

As a preliminary to restatement of the view which I represent, attention should be called to certain discriminations which are matters of course among sociologists, but which may easily escape the notice of others. These distinctions were assumed in the paper to which Dr. Hoxie replies,² and they were more explicitly formulated in a later paper, but they seem to have made little impression, and I hope presentation of them still more directly will promote mutual understanding.

In the first place, it must be admitted that the word "sociology"' is used in several senses. Both scholars and laymen are responsible for this confusion. The scholars recognize it and are trying to correct it. So far as it is necessary to analyze the ambiguity for our present purpose, the alternative uses of the term may be reduced to two general types. On the one hand "sociology"' is the name for a division of scientific problems unquestionably in the same order with the problems which present academic custom assigns without dispute to history and political economy and political science, etc. To cite a single class of illustrations, the problems to which we give the name "group psychology," including such widely contrasted species of problems as those of racial groups on the one hand, and those of fortuitous crowds on the other, obviously constitute a division of science which the older social sciences neglected. There can be no boundary-line disputes between sociology and the other social sciences, so far as such problems as these are concerned. Considering these alone, sociology could never have raised claims that would have provoked Dr. Hoxie's challenge. Professor Ross has put this side of the case in his usual picturesque fashion in this paragraph:

The empire of the czar is bounded on its western frontier by the clearly defined and well-explored territories of highly organized governments like Austria and Germany. On its eastern side, until recently at least, it melted vaguely into the little-known lands disputed among the Khanates of Central Asia. Economics likewise is bounded for the most part by regions that have been well defined and thoroughly explored by highly organized sciences. But on one side it is embarrassed by an uncertain and disputed frontier with a little known territory, subject to the conflicting and unreasonable claims of rival chieftains. Sociology is its Central Asia.³

Whether Professor Ross's figure is the most fortunate or not, it puts the one side of the case with sufficient vividness. There are practically no questions of principle between sociology so understood and the other social sciences. It is in this sense that sociology takes its place in academic organizations as one of the co-ordinate departments of the social sciences. As was expressly stated in the paper which Dr. Hoxie has criticized, the independence and autonomy of academic departments are in no sense under discussion. The boundaries of these departments are drawn by considerations of practical convenience, and no good purpose would be served by calling them in question.

The second generic sense in which the term sociology is used gives it a content of a quite different order. Dr. Hoxie is entirely right when he declares, in a passage to which I shall return, that the sociology for which I am contending must be in a wholly different plane from the autonomous social sciences in whose name he protests. It is this second sense which gives this paper its title. It is a pure accident that sociology in this second sense is at present chiefly pursued by persons whose academic post falls within the academic department entitled "sociology." The essential interest of one academic department in a valid methodology is no more intimate than that of another. Every species of social scientist or of social philosopher has indeed taken a turn in times past at some phase of the same general methodological problem which at present apparently appeals more strongly to sociologists than to other types of social scientists. In the nature of the case, however, the present balance of interest is temporary. Whoever bears the brunt of the task of changing a more into a less crude methodology, the results must eventually be the common property of all the social sciences. Indeed, unless I am much mistaken, the main lines of methodology for which the sociologists are contending are really drawn with approximately equal precision by others who somewhat strenuously object either to the term sociology, or to many of the proposed sociological categories, or to emphases or methods, or to all combined. Not merely men of a younger generation like Sombart, but men of an older generation like Schmoller and Wagner, are jibing over into essentially the methodological course toward which the whole sociological movement tends. It was with this methodology in view that I said:

Sociology is no longer to our minds merely, or even principally, the particular phase of theory or practice which chiefly engages our individual attention. It is the correlated system of positive inquiry into human relations in which every variation of approach to real knowledge of social experience will ultimately find its place. ... . In the former aspect sociology is a muchto-be-desired organon of all the discoveries, and all the indications about social relations which are presumably within the reach of all the actual and hereafter to be differentiated sciences that relate to society. It is the "far-off divine event' at the terminus of the human pursuit of self-knowledge.⁴

In the paper to which Dr. Hoxie replies I attempted to make it clear that I was talking about sociology in the methodological not the academic sense. That the use of the same word for two distinct orders of ideas is unfortunate, I confess. The mistake is due, however, to the chaotic condition of the social sciences in general, not in a peculiar sense to the sociologists in particular. The whole matter at issue is not an inter-departmental contest over rights, privileges, and dignities. It is a question between an uncentered and a concentered conception of knowledge in general. It is a question which it is an antecedent fallacy even to discuss from the standpoint of departmental subdivisions. It should be approached as a problem of social knowledge in the large, for which our academic subdivisions are trivialities. All the answers which we can get to the underlying methodological question are necessarily base lines for one subdivision of social science as much as for another. To vary the figure, the issue is not a tribal feud but a contrast of civilizations.

Before presenting another version of my own case in reply to Dr. Hoxie, I propose to offer a series of comments on the more important of his objections to my views of the methodology of the social sciences.

My first reaction then, upon Dr. Hoxie's paper was surprise that men whose work is in such closely related fields, and who are interested in such similar things, can have such difficulty in understanding each other. The debate reminds me of two ships in distress, each trying to make its condition known to the other, each supposing that it is using the code strictly according to rule, but each conveying to the other a completely confused impression. I am disposed to assume my full share of responsibility for the state of things in the present instance, without attempting to decide the proportion which my share bears to Dr. Hoxie's. Between us we have mixed our signals badly. The worst of it is that the botch is merely a sample of what occurs whenever different kinds of social scientists try to come to terms with one another. The degree of common understanding which they can reach is narrowly limited. That these things ought not so to be was one of the commonplaces which I attempted to emphasize in the paper to which Dr. Hoxie takes such strenuous exception.

My second reaction was astonishment that Dr. Hoxie could interpret into the paper which he criticizes so much of the very thing which it was a deliberate effort to discredit. Attempting to reduce my defenses by bombardment with the tu quoque type of projectile (p. 744), Dr. Hoxie assumes that the fundamental weakness of my position is a conception that certain materials are the subject-matter of corresponding sciences. More than the first half of his rejoinder is dedicated to quotations from the offending paper, and to argument that this fault is at the bottom of it. Although, as he gently expresses it (loc. cit., p. 744), I "rail against' this notion in the document which he cites, yet Dr. Hoxie concludes that my whole reasoning rests upon the very error which I thought I was doing my best to expose.

I have simply to say on this point that if Dr. Hoxie is right I am frankly grateful to him for saving me from myself. There has been no methodological error which I have more industriously and monotonously belabored for nearly twenty-five years than the idea that the material of knowledge can be distributed among the sciences like the different parts of steers or hogs in a packing-house. If my contempt for that idea had been charged to me as an obsession, I should have demurred to the form of the indictment but not to the substance. The paper which roused Dr. Hoxie was intended to be a variation of the theme that it is partial and provisional "science' at best which sets up partitions between parts of knowledge. On page 13 of that paper I tried to put the idea so distinctly that I could not possibly be misunderstood, and it still seems to me that I was reasonably explicit. Again, the next paper which I published contained the most unequivocal statement on the subject that I knew how to make.⁵ Yet, because I tried to point out that political economists, along with other particularists, have allowed this isolated-sphere-ofinfluence conception of their field unduly to influence their working conceptions of the scope and method of their division of labor, Dr. Hoxie interprets me as taking refuge in that perverted conception myself. This is accusing the policeman of larceny when he is in the very act of arresting the thief.

But while I protest against imputation of ideas which I am studiously doing all in my power to discredit, I sorrowfully acknowledge that I may have been supernaturally clumsy in expressing my thought, and that I may have left myself in appearance liable to the correction which Dr. Hoxie administers. If so I accept it with all the meekness I can command. In testimony whereof I hereby profess myself in complete accord with everything which he seems to have had in mind in this connection in the first eight clauses of his summary (p. 754).

My third reaction upon the rejoinder was wonder at the hypersensitiveness which could find in my argument so much else which I had taken extra precaution to disclaim. Dr. Hoxie feels bound to rebuke the supposed arrogance of the sociologists in desiring some sort of lordship over the social sciences. He gratuitously credits me with aiming to promote "a single all-inclusive social science" (p. 747). The evidence which he cites in support of this count is my elaboration of the proposition that "there is one great over-towering task" (not science) "of the human mind." I did not say that this task might, could, would, or should be covered by a single science. On the contrary, Dr. Hoxie continues the quotation while apparently overlooking its meaning, viz., to the effect that the task involves endless processes of analysis and synthesis. The main argument of the paper was that in the nature of the case we can make progress in performing the task only by intelligent co-operation. Innumerable divisions of labor in the field of social science must organize themselves into reciprocal helpfulness by means of their selfconsciousness of responsibility for parts of a common enterprise. As already pointed out, I even took the liberty of using the terms "sociology" and "sociologist"' in a sense which included each and every historian, economist, political scientist, or other specialist who does his work subject to this awareness that it is necessarily a detail in the whole task of interpreting human experience. I expressly disavowed use of the terms in the sense which would restrict discussion to the claims of conventional academic departments. The terms excluded simply those fragmentalists of whatever name, and applying to oneself the title "sociologist" by no means creates a particularly strong presumption that the person so designated will not be conspicuous in the excluded number, who are not effectively aware of what adequate correlation of social science involves. The proposition was that alleged social science of whatever name is merely provisional and tentative in the degree in which it remains unarticulated with all other analyses and syntheses which correspond with actual social relations. I said, "I distinctly do not intend to compare the sociologist to the architect, and other types of social scientists to the jobworkers on the building in any sense that would imply that the sociologist has any function in the way of managing the work of other scientists" (p. 12).

Dr. Hoxie accuses me of wanting all the social sciences to "recognize the suzerainty and all-inclusiveness of sociology" (p. 739). What I actually argued was and is that each alleged social science must choose between falling into its inevitable place in the whole process of interpreting reality, and the only logical alternative of falling out into the limbo of pseudo-sciences. That is, each science must accommodate itself to the inclusive methodology of all science, or it becomes no science.

My metaphor, "sociology is the attorney, etc.," was evidently misleading. Dr. Hoxie seems to have understood it in a sense which I did not intend, and it appears to him to occupy an important place in the argument. After quoting it he apparently carries it in mind through a considerable portion of his discussion, for he quotes it a second time. The meaning which I attached to the phrase, however, no more implied a claim of managerial or supervisory right for sociology over other sciences, than the office of general attorney for the United States Steel Co., would imply a claim that the legal department of the organization could subordinate and supersede the multitude of technical divisions which the operations of the company include. The attorney for the company represents its legal interests as a whole. My figure was perhaps ill-advised but my thought was and is merely that the sociologists are the only persons just at present who are alert for the corporate interests of social science, as contrasted with the specialized and abstracted interests of the subdivisions of social science. The essential methodological theorem amounts to a claim that there is frightful waste in attempting to interpret reality by means of inarticulate sciences only.

Another of Dr. Hoxie's phrases reiterates the same misunderstanding of my argument. His language is a variation of the principal effort to which the rejoinder is dedicated, viz., to magnify the principle of the "independence and authority of existing social sciences" (p. 739), as against the principle of scientific correlation. My suspicion is that the difference between Dr. Hoxie and myself at this point will turn out to be very largely verbal. There is apparently also a minor difference of emphasis, and then at last a possible irreconcilable remainder of difference as to plain reality.

The phrase to which I refer is casual in Dr. Hoxie's reply, but it is an important index to open questions of sociological method. In asserting incidentally (p. 449) that "there seems to be no scientific ground for any hierarchical arrangement of social sciences," Dr. Hoxie implies that I am contending for a "hierarchical" arrangement. Whether the term "hierarchical" fits anything that I claim, depends entirely upon the meaning which is put into the word. In one sense science must always be hierarchical. In another sense science can never be hierarchical. Everything depends therefore upon controlling the ambiguities of the term.

For illustration: By analogy in the former sense, every trade concerned in building a house is a member of a hierarchy. From the foundation up, the work has to be carried on in turn by specialized trades. The skill of none of these comes to its full result except as it is organized into the work of the others. In that sense the building trades are a hierarchy, and in the same sense the sciences, both physical and social, must always constitute a hierarchy in the precise degree in which they construct a body of knowledge which coherently reflects reality.

On the other hand, no bricklayers' union can maintain a right to boss a carpenters' union, nor vice versa. Continuing the analogy, the trades are no more independent of one another, so far as government is concerned, than are the sciences. In the former case technical necessity sets the bounds of the liberty which the several occupations may enjoy. In the latter case objective reality decrees at last the extent to which one science may detach itself from all science. In this sense, and within these limits, trades and sciences are independent, not hierarchical.

More abstractly expressed, genuine science is necessarily a hierarchy, not in the administrative but in the functional sense. The methodology for which I am contending does not attempt to establish one science as a papacy over the rest of sciences. I meant to say, and I repeat, that the sociologists are just now more zealous than anybody else in calling attention to the utter futility of hoping to get the last attainable interpretation of social facts so long as we view them in detachment from the whole plexus of social relations.

I am not trying to take a change of venue in order to improve my standing in court. I am arguing in substance exactly what I urged in the paper with which Dr. Hoxie disagrees. In order to free my brief from a part of its ambiguity, however, I am putting the case in terms of "methodology" in place of "sociology." In short, then, valid science is dependent upon a valid methodology which correlates science. In one phase, methodology is to technique what architecture is to artisanship. Through valid methodology the last criterion is found which the mind can apply in distinguishing between true and false science, in appraising the comparative values of sciences, and in organizing the sciences into a basis for the conduct of life.

With this proposition in mind, I may again express entire agreement with Dr. Hoxie when he says (p. 450) :

There seems to be no case where one social science can be said to be elevated above others, as being a classification of their classifications, or as bringing together for examination the results of their individual examinations. Where such a relationship appears to exist, careful examination will show, I think, that the sciences are not hierarchically arranged, but lie, so to speak, in different planes.

It will, I hope, tend to clear the atmosphere to repeat what I expressed above in a different way, viz.: that sociology as an investigation of particular problems of social relations, has no more right than any other social science to pose as a classifier of the social sciences. On the other hand, the methodology which some of the sociologists are trying to represent, because it has received such stepmotherly treatment by other social scientists, "lies in a different plane' from the social sciences of a more concrete order, and by virtue of its generality is entitled to pass judgment upon the adjustment of the special sciences to one another.

What sociology may be a hundred or a thousand years from now does not distress me in the least. There are problems now waiting for solution in the methodology of the social sciences, and men who call themselves sociologists are accepting them as their division of labor. It is quite conceivable—indeed it is my fondest ambition as a scholar to promote progress toward this very event—that everything for which I am now pleading as an imperative need in social methodology may some time be absorbed into the common tradition and practice of all the sciences that deal with human relations. That consummation will arrive, however, only through radical transformation of the spirit of separatism in those sciences. This change will have given to them breadth which is not now one of their dimensions, and it will have organized them into a coherence which they now conspicuously lack.

What I still wish to add upon the question of independence vs. correlation of the social sciences may be combined with comments upon a fourth reaction produced by Dr. Hoxie's paper, viz., an impulse to accuse it of the fault which the Germans have taught us to describe as "defective objectivity." The question which it is pertinent to discuss is, What is the thing to do, in order to carry research into the meaning of human experience to the limit? The question which Dr. Hoxie raises is, in effect, How may we guard the dignity of the particular programme of research in which we are primarily interested, and how may we restrain the excessive pretensions of alternative programmes? The mental attitude connoted by the latter question is not sufficiently cleared of self-interest to be severely scientific. It retains so much of the vocational bias, so much jealousy for the status of our own occupation, so much subconscious solicitude for the permanence of our own craft, that in proposing a question in this form we virtually confess judgment on the charge of disqualifying prepossession.

It is as though, on the eve of modern inventions, the producers of the various devices employed by the eighteenth century type of industries had held up the inventors while they discussed the question, What are the respective preserves of the wooden plough, and the spinning-wheel, and the stage coach? There is and was no prescriptive right of any technical device to any permanent preserve. The implicit problem always has been, and always must be, What are the conscious needs of mankind, and what technical resources are within our control for serving the needs? If wooden plough and spinning-wheel and stage coach are losing competitors in the struggle to satisfy human demands, they have no rights which rational men are bound to respect. They must disappear, and more adequate devices must take their place.

From the methodologist's point of view, the guiding questions in formulating the problems of knowledge about human experience are, first, What do we need to discover about human experience? second, By what processes shall we be able to approach nearest to the desired discoveries? It is neither inconceivable nor improbable, indeed I consider it altogether likely, that the social sciences which we know today are, one and all, compared with the social sciences of tomorrow, as wooden plough and spinning-wheel and stage coach to steam plough and power loom and locomotive. We are not competent judges of methodological values until we have so abstracted ourselves from our vocational interests that we can analyze alternative schemes of scientific procedure with as much freedom from heat or irritation or partisanship as we expect of an engineer when he is calculating the relative economy of types of construction.

The only perfectly fair way of putting the main problem of sociological methodology is this: If we could have our own way, if we could apply the best methods, with the best division of labor that we can imagine, to present problems of knowledge about human experience, would we be satisfied with the present neglect of "team work" in the social sciences, or would we move for improvements upon current methods? The moment we make the answer depend upon the conditions of the problems to be solved, rather than upon the supposed rights, dignities, and privileges of the incoherent conventions which we now call sciences charged with the duty of solving them, that moment we become aware that it is an obstruction of knowledge to permit predilection for any structural arrangement of the sciences whatsoever to prejudice our conclusions.

Dr. Hoxie's way of putting the question, viz., not, What are the problems to be solved in social science? but, What are the rights of the various social sciences? is a handicap that no scholar can afford to accept. It is, however, a typical incident of our stage of scientific experience. We are pausing "with timid feet"' at the point of indecision where scientific youth and childhood meet. It is quite characteristic to plead for local sovereignty in science against federation. Whether in abstract science, however, or in concrete policy, it is always a false move to set up such an arbitrary antithesis. Both principles are always necessary, like force and resistance in mechanics. The real question always is: Upon which of these principles is it timely to increase or diminish the traditional emphasis?

Taking him literally, and without qualification, the "independence of the sciences"' for which Dr. Hoxie contends, and the supposed right to establish that independence upon the alleged autocracy of interests, is merely a little more sophisticated form of the same under-interpretation of reality which produced alchemy and astrology.

Alchemy was in part an expression of one of the original getrich-quick interests. The interest in getting gold as cheaply as possible cannot dignify alchemy with the rank of a science, nor can any other interest whatsoever give any procedure the rank of a science except in the sort and degree in which the interest concerned is in active partnership with the whole system of rational interests. It is this capability of correlation with the nental products of all other interests, not the bare fact that it is the projection of any interest whatsoever, which makes the difference between vagary and science.

Astrology was a product of an interest not yet wholly eliminated, even from the most rational men. It was an attempt to meet the demand for an occult key to the mysteries of past, present, and future. If the whole world were united as one man upon this interest, astrology could not be made into a science. The reason is that, so far as our intelligence testifies at all, the connections between portions of experience are not occult but causal. Whether or not we can push back to the ultimate or even quasi-ultimate causes in a given case, we get to the last interpretation of reality of which we are capable through discovery of regularities in types of relation between antecedents and consequents. There is no penetration of the mysteries of the universe except in the degree in which we are able to report the whole interplay of antecedents and consequents which make up the universe. The fundamental difference between astrology and geology, for instance, which makes the latter a science and the former no science, is not that the one is a reflection of interest in the influence of the heavenly bodies or in the mysteries of the universe, while the other is not. So far as such a difference seems to exist it is apparent rather than real. The difference is rather that the one is essentially the licensing of a human interest to construct a universe that does not exist, while the other disciplines its prompting interest into recognition of the universe that is. However an alchemist or a geologist might define or describe his cult, the decisive difference between them is not to be found in a contrast between the interests that initiate them, but in the antithesis of procedures which they employ. Astrologer and geologist may be equally eager to unravel the mysteries of the universe. The one can preserve the semblance of verisimilitude for his occupation only in the degree in which he can keep his methods isolated from those of all the other interests that seek knowledge of the universe. The other gains sanction for his pursuit in direct proportion as he articulates his initial interest with every other interest that interrogates reality.

In a word, an interest is scientific only as it is a function of all interests. A mere interest in the crust of the earth would be as unscientific as an interest in the philosopher's stone. The interest in the crust of the earth that is validly scientific is an interest that articulates itself with the whole sweep of the cosmic process between the point where the explorer's hammer strikes and the most elemental vapor of world-stuff on the shores of space and time.

To use an illustration within the field of the social sciences, an "independent science of wealth"' is objectively, though not as obviously, as indefensible as an independent science of birds' eggs or even of birds' nests. Knowledge of these latter subjects can have scientific quality only as a fragment worth what it is worth in a science of ornithology running back into zoology and thus into general biology. Birds' nests or birds' eggs are relatively unexplained phenomena until they are expressed in terms of the general life-process. In the same way, wealth is merely a distorted mental concept until it is construed in its actual genetic and dynamic relations with the whole social process.

We have to discover the difference between genuine and spurious knowledge, between less real and more real knowledge, by long and laborious experience. Sooner or later, pursuits stimulated by futile or fragmentary interests reach their limitations, and then the way has to be retraced back to their point of divergence from the trunk line of real investigation and a new departure has to be taken. The inclusive social reality, so far as we are able to fathom it at present, is the immemorial and illimitable process of human beings developing their personality. All social science is worth what it is worth as a contribution to knowledge of this prodigious process. Whoever commands freedom to employ his mind according to his own caprice may exercise himself in constructing more or less artificial systems of thought out of incidents in this process which any interest whatever, from the most frivolous to the most serious, may select. There is no adequate provision, for instance, in law, morals, or logic, to prevent a considerable section of the population from making the judicious grieve by a senseless cossetting of Teddy-bears. There happily remains, however, in the minds of a few, an obdurate objection against ranking that fad as an expression of the rational factor in human nature. It would be difficult to convince the French Academy, for example, or the British Association, that an interest in classifying all phenomena from the standpoint of the Teddy-bear cult would be entitled to enrolment in the list of sciences. But why not? If one interest may found an independent science why not another? Surely Dr. Hoxie is estopped from claiming that the relative importance of the subject-matter selected by different interests settles their right to scientific rank. That would be merely a recourse to the "material' or "subject-matter" criterion which he has repudiated. Unless Dr. Hoxie is willing frankly to accept the anarchistic horn of the dilemma, and to assert that sciences are simply and solely the projection of irresponsible subjective preference, he must cling in some way to the other horn of the dilemma, viz., an appeal to some sort of objective criterion to distinguish between the essentially scientific and the essentially capricious. Unfortunately for his complete freedom in forensic exercise,Dr. Hoxie is handicapped by an established reputation for sanity. He could not be taken seriously if he should choose the former alternative for the sake of argument. It makes no difference to me how he states the other alternative. It must be an admission of my main contention, to which I shall return in the second part of this paper, viz., Whatever independence may be asserted for parts of social science is merely relative, not absolute. The measure of the dependence of different parts of social science upon each other is not the interest of the mind in excluding or including aspects of reality at pleasure. Objectively valid science is knowledge of reality as it is articulated with all other reality. Snap shots at passages of experience caught at the impulse of desultory interests do not make objectively valid science. They are merely arbitrary collections of curiosities.

Of course it is a far cry from the sciences which provoked this discussion, viz., history, and civics, and political economy as we know them today, and these extreme cases which I have used for analogies. Of course Dr. Hoxie has no intention of promoting any mental construction which would be as abhorrent to reality as the historical and hypothetical samples to which I have referred. My argument is in a word that he must choose in principle between an intellectual anarchism which may easily be confuted by reductio ad absurdum, and an intellectual responsibility which requires of all pretenders to scientific rank credentials which satisfy certain objective conditions. The "anarchy of fundamental ideas" to which Comte traced all our social woes three-quarters of a century ago may be described in terms of the dilemma which Dr. Hoxie's contention has advertised. We have not yet decided whether reality is something to which our minds must in the end accommodate themselves, whether they like it or not, or merely a reflex of our own mental operations.

In this part of the paper I will refer to but one more of Dr. Hoxie's counts against me, namely, his accusation that through ignorance and otherwise I have misrepresented political economy. Whether the charge is just or not is a question of judgment, and I will not attempt to argue it, but will simply redefine my position. In brief my proposition is that the problem first formulated by classical political economy was an impossible abstraction. The question of ways and means to increase the output of wealth is a relatively clear problem of industrial technology. The question of the proportional influence which problems of wealth production deserve to exert upon the whole programme of national activities is incomparably larger than any mere problem of wealth. Economic science is bound to face the alternatives, and definitely to choose between them, viz., to be a technology of wealth production, and nothing more, or to be a term in the problem of human conduct, in which case knowledge of the conditions under which wealth may be produced is always a mere preliminary to the question, What ratio does the wealth factor bear, in the given situation, to the other human needs which are factors of the same social problems?

My diagnosis of economic theory as we have had it for more than a century, and particularly of English and American forms of the theory, since the facts are somewhat different in Germany and even in France, is first, that current political economy is relatively materialistic rather than humanistic; second, that it is relatively particularistic, rather than co-ordinated with the rest of knowledge. To the former of these criticisms Dr. Hoxie's answer is virtually the protest of Hamlet's player, "I hope we have reformed that indifferently with us, sir!" To my implied exhortation, "Oh! Reform it altogether! Dr. Hoxie responds by professing that political economy does not deal with wealth, but with "Men making choices in the market'! Behold the difference! The platforms of the parties in the next presidential campaign will also not refer to politics, but to men making choices at the polls! Fortunately for the requiescat in pace of the proposed substitutionary sacrifice, Dr. Hoxie's wit is retained for its defense, not for its arraignment. What a ragtime requiem he might have composed if he had come to bury this Caesar, not to praise him!

But seriously, disregarding the classical political economy, which I do not understand that Dr. Hoxie would attempt to defend against this charge, is it true that current political economy has transferred its center of attention from wealth to persons? This is a question of fact. A brief of the evidence would make a separate monograph. It is not practicable to include such a monograph in this paper. I merely note Dr. Hoxie's objection, therefore, with reassertion of my original position in these two propositions; first, I discover no sufficient ground for concluding that there is a consensus among economists to transfer the center of their science from wealth to people; second, if that transfer has been made, or if it ever shall be made, it will be merely a step toward that recognition of the evolution of human personality, as the correlating center for all the social sciences, which I claim to be inevitable..

To my second count against economics Dr. Hoxie sets up the reply that the particularism of any science is its glory and its crown. I have already expressed myself at length on this view, and shall discuss it further in the second part of this paper. Of course it reduces the whole difference between us to the lowest terms. As I said in substance in the beginning, that there can be such a difference of judgment between people of similar mental type and of closely related professional activities is itself the underlying problem. The principal factors of the problem are not objective data assembled in evidence, but contrasted reactions of different persons upon the same data. For that reason I have attempted nothing in the way of refutation or rebuttal, but have simply tried to remove possible doubt about my own views upon the points to which Dr. Hoxie objects. Having taken notice of these objections I shall devote the second part of the paper to a more constructive statement of my position.

[To be concluded.]

Notes