II. The Development of Sociological Method, cont.

Mar., 1900 entry in the serialized work

"The Scope of Sociology"

American Journal of Sociology 5(5):617-647.

Recapitulating our argument, we may say that all the students of society who properly belong in the gild of philosophers of history have virtually undertaken to interpret human life as too exclusively a function of some single influence, about which they have formed a priori conceptions. They have done their best to arrange all the knowledge about human life within their reach so that it would tally with this hypothesis of prevailing influence. Their method has exhibited only a minimum of positiveness or objectivity. In spite of this long-distance communication with reality the philosophers of history have bequeathed to present social science a perception of a complex problem, which may be stated in this form: “Given the fact of these influences, which are evidently real in some degree of force in human affairs; to discover when, how, in what proportions, under what conditions, and with what additional influences these factors operate in human associations.”

While the philosophers of history have been shaping study of society in such fashion that students of society must inevitably propose their problem at last in the above form, dissatisfaction with the method of gaining knowledge has been growing. A few men have been moved by a feeling rather than by a clear perception that there has been defective realism or objectivity in the treatment of human experience. They have virtually said to themselves: “Let us plan methods of research by which we may know actual facts, to take the place of the irresponsible fancies with which social philosophers have been content to speculate.” One outcome of this movement is modern sociology.

The implication is not intended that the sociologists have invariably been more scientific than the philosophers of history. On the contrary, they have been, as a rule, equally and sometimes more unscientific. They have, however, undertaken more deliberate attempts to construct plans of research that would conform to the principles of exact science. The consequence is that, while sociology up to date can show comparatively little in the way of absolutely new knowledge about society, it has accumulated a wealth of perception about the value of different portions of knowledge, and about ways in which knowledge of society must be tested and organized. Although these perceptions are not yet coordinated in any system which is generally accepted by sociologists, there is an unformulated consensus about standards of objectivity and correlation which is steadily reducing sociological speculation to the soberness of observational and experimental science.¹

Each of the chief types of sociological theory has contributed something to this result. Perhaps the largest contributions have been not direct, but indirect. There may be close parallelism here between the merit of the sociologists and that of the philosophers of history. The share of the sociologists in the result may be quite different from the spirit of their own premises. We may trace, however, in the progress of sociological theory, first, a reaction and a protest against speculative social philosophy; second, a struggle by men still wearing the shackles of speculative tradition to perfect a positive method; third, attrition among pseudo-positive methods. Reciprocal criticism of schools and programs of sociological inquiry is still the order of the day and unfortunately the chief employment of the sociologists. Out of all this preliminary maneuvering a sociological method is emerging. It is an organization of ways of knowing society as it is. This is a substitute for the ways in which people thought about society without knowing it as it is. We shall comment upon certain typical proposals of sociological method, for the purpose of illustrating this last proposition.

A. The Importance of Classification.

Disregarding earlier prophets of scientific method, we may consider Comte (1798-1857). It is worth while to emphasize the contribution of Comte to the method of sociology, not because his method in his own hands accomplished much that is in itself memorable, but because he made the inevitable problem more obvious. He defined it more precisely than it had been defined before. His point of departure is indicated in the following propositions:

It cannot be necessary to prove to anybody who reads this work that ideas govern the world or throw it into chaos; in other words, that all social mechanism rests upon opinion. The great political and moral crises that societies are now undergoing are shown by a rigid analysis to arise out of intellectual anarchy. While stability in fundamental maxims is the first condition of genuine social order, we are suffering from an utter disagreement which may be called universal. Till a certain number of general ideas can be acknowledged as a rallying-point of social doctrine, the nations will remain in a revolutionary state, whatever palliatives may be devised; and their institutions can only be provisional. But whenever the necessary agreement on first principles can be obtained, appropriate institutions will issue from them without shock or resistance; for the causes of disorder will have been arrested by the mere fact of the agreement. It is in this direction that those must look who desire a natural and regular, a normal state of society. (Pos Phil., Introd.)

Accordingly, Comte attempted to classify the sciences. His fundamental principle was described as follows:

We may derive encouragement from the example set by recent botanists and zoologists, whose philosophical labors have exhibited the true principle of classification, namely, that the classification must proceed from the study of the things to be classified, and must by no means be determined by a priori considerations. The real affinities and natural connections presented by objects being allowed to determine their order, the classification itself becomes the expression of the most general fact. (Idem, Book I, chap. ii.)

Upon this basis Comte classified the sciences in his well-known hierarchy: astronomy, physics, chemistry, physiology, and social physics; mathematics being treated as antecedent to all the sciences.

Comte’s ideas of method are further illustrated by his use of the distinction between statical and dynamical relations. On this point he says:

This division, necessary for purposes of exploration, must not be stretched beyond that use. The distinction becomes weaker with the advance of science. We shall see that, when the science of social physics is fully constituted, this division will remain, for analytical purposes, but not as a real separation of the science into two parts. The distinction is not between two classes of facts, but between two aspects of a theory. It corresponds with the double conception of order and progress; for order consists in a perfect harmony among the conditions of social existence; and progress consists in social development; and the conditions in the one case and the laws of movement in the other constitute the statics and dynamics of social physics.

Further peculiarities of Comte’s method are alluded to by Barth as follows:

We find in Comte’s proposal an antithesis, namely, on the one hand he insists that the social series is a continuation of the animal series, but it is impossible to deduce the one from the other. The development of society cannot be traced to the peculiarities of individuals. Sociology cannot be derived from physiology, however important biology may be in laying foundations for sociology. Biology furnishes only certain general notions; for example, that of evolution, the specialization of organs, solidarity, etc. On the other hand, the positive law of evolution, according to Comte, is that of the three states, namely, the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive. This, however, is not a biological, but an epistemological principle.

In view of this antinomy in Comte, the fact of value for our purpose is not the intrinsic merit or demerit of his theory of the three states. That theorem is not close enough to reality to deserve any attention except as a curious conceit long since discredited at the author’s valuation. The important point is that the conceit, although incorrect, posited a mental, not a physical, principle, as the clue to the social mystery. Comte had a rigidly mechanical conception of the forms in which the social principle works, but he still had a presentiment that the principle itself is not mechanical. Comte is therefore not a successful monist. In his scheme these two elements are left antithetical, as must always be the case so long as we confine ourselves to descriptions of phenomena. The physical and the spiritual aspects of phenomena may be assumed to be manifestations of one underlying reality, but no one has succeeded in making that unity visible.

It is accordingly not surprising that the followers of Comte took two divergent courses. Some of them pursued the spiritual clue; others worked in accordance with the mechanical or physiological conception. It would have been very natural if those followers of Comte who were most impressed by the spiritual conception in his doctrine had emphasized the idea which superficial readers have always fixed upon as the most important part of his teaching, namely, his division of human experience into the three stages. With more correct insight, or instinct, however, the tendency which we have now to notice followed rather the methodological clue in the doctrine than its material content.

We have noticed how important in Comte’s mind was the principle of classification. Beginning with the simpler sciences and continuing through the subject-matter of all science, including sociology, Comte insisted upon classification dictated by the peculiarities of the things classified. Thus classification with Comte is itself science. To know enough about objects or facts to arrange them in scientific classes, we must obviously have enough knowledge of their essential peculiarities to mark a good degree of scientific progress. Conversely, an attempt in the Comtean spirit to classify the subject-matter chosen as a scientific field amounts to a pledge that the things to be classifed will be duly investigated, so that their likenesses and differences may be known. For this reason those writers whom Barth calls the ” classifying sociologists” deserve sincere respect, whether the categories which they have proposed prove permanent or not. Their attempt has been to discover those essential attributes of social facts which constitute marks of likeness or unlikeness. So far as it goes, this search for the signs of similarity and dissimilarity is true science, provided it observes scientific principles in deciding what are the qualities attributed to the subject-matter in question. It is not an invention of the sociologists. It is merely a sign on the part of the sociologists that they have so far heeded the lessons taught by the maturer sciences.

Among the followers of Comte there has not been due observance of the limitation just suggested. Descriptive analysis is logically presupposed as a condition of validity in genetic classification, or in causal analysis, which is another aspect of the same thing. Social facts and forces have been arranged in classes by sociologists whose haste to reach genetic classification has made them neglect necessary descriptive analysis. This criticism may be applied at once to De Greef. His famous schedule of social phenomena involves a thesis about the order in which those phenomena emerge.² That hypothesis turns the schedule, to a certain extent at least, into a genetic classification. In that character De Greef’s proposition is more than questionable. As a descriptive analysis for certain purposes it has not been excelled. We may then at once set down to the credit of the sociologists of this group a commendable beginning of the process of grouping like social facts. This is a necessary preliminary in all science. The “classifying sociologists” have been criticised not so much because they did not do their part well as because the critics did not see that this part was worth doing at all. Such judgments condemn the critics rather than the criticised. Classification is not the whole of science, but it is an essential stage in the scientific process. The men who belittle it tend to disregard the authority of facts, and to claim scientific authority for their lucubrations independent of facts.

The processes that have given the group-name to the “classifying sociologists” have sometimes been called collectively “descriptive sociology.” This term stands for all that is involved in arranging the material facts in classified order, without attempt to enter upon the next step, namely, interpretation. Whether this designation is to be permanent experience alone can decide.

A passage from Barth is pertinent at this point:

According to Comte, sciences must be parallel with things. When we arrange the latter according to their decreasing generality, and their increasing complexity, we have at the same time their actual correlation. Just so, when we arrange the sciences according to the same principle, we have the sequence of their origin, that is, their history. Since the same logical motives which operate in humanity as a whole are in force also in the individual, he not only may but must repeat in himself the developmental course through which the knowledge of the race has passed. Otherwise his development is incomplete. He must, in other words, recapitulate in himself the history of science. Comte’s classification of the sciences, accordingly, purports to be, not merely descriptive, but at the same time genetic and reconstructive.

The idea was close at hand that the same should be done for society which Comte tried to do for the world at large and for general science. A subdivision of society, from its most general to its most complicated phenomena, was attempted by Comte only incidentally and imperfectly. Accordingly, he produced no classifications in sociology that satisfy his program of scientific division. If this omission could be supplied, it would mean, according to the presuppositions of the Comtean system, that we should have, not merely a division of social phenomena, but also the way in which society came into being and grew to its present state.

This idea is the clue to the significance of those ” classifying sociologists,“’ as they are named by Barth, who have attempted to complete Comte’s work. The best representative of this group is De Greef.³ His methodological merit in applying and developing the Comtean idea consists primarily in carrying the attempt to classify phenomena, and consequently sciences, into the societary realm. Some of his most characteristic work has been in connection with his proposal of a hierarchy of societary phenomena and of societary science. Selecting De Greef as a representative of the classifying tendency, we appropriate Barth’s account with certain variations.⁴ De Greef’s idea is that classification of the sciences has more than a merely subjective significance. If it is successfully objective, it reproduces the real interdependencies of things in particular and of reality as a whole. The universal is the least dependent. That which rests upon it is the more dependent, the more special it becomes. It is in the same degree more modifiable. For teleological theory this consideration is cardinal. It is useless to apply effort to the unchangeable. Effort is practical in proportion as it is applied to the changeable. Hence the desirability of finding out the degrees of generality among societary phenomena as a basis for programs of ameliorative action.

De Greef regards inattention to the foregoing principle as the reason for poverty of results in sociology since Comte. Society is not simplicity, but extreme complexity. Comte wanted society to be regarded as a whole. He wanted explanation of its parts to proceed from explanation of the whole, instead of procedure from the parts to the whole. He did not encourage study of the isolated parts. Referring possibly to Comte’s fourfold division of societary evolution in the modern world—namely, the industrial, the asthetic, the scientific, and the philosophical⁵ —De Greef seems to have attributed to Comte a classification which cannot be found in’ the Positive Philosophy. At all events, he argues that Comte did not draw the obvious practical conclusion from subdivisions of the phenomena.⁶ De Greef’s motive, then, is desire to furnish a scale of societary activity that will show decreasing orders of generality, increasing orders of complexity, and consequently relative susceptibility of artificial modification.

De Greef’s point of departure is selection of a psychical factor—contract—to mark the division line between the physical and the social. Upon the basis of conclusion that Spencer’s criteria of distinction between the physical and the social are merely quantitative and mechanical instead of qualitative (i.e., the greater distance between the elements and the distribution of consciousness among the elements), De Greef claims that neither Comte nor Spencer has adduced adequate reasons for separating sociology from biology.⁷ Throughout De Greef’s work the differentiating factor of human volition is insisted upon as marking a separate body of phenomena.

Up to this point we have practically no controversy with Barth as to the significance of the classifying tendency. It is, however, a mistake to seek in such a writer as De Greef important contributions to knowledge of the concrete. As in the case of the one-sided views of history, we get some methodological details from inspection of the method of approaching reality represented by De Greef. His classification is in essence a series of theses to be tested. In the classification the elements of social activity are made more distinct than in any previous classification. His claim with reference to the hierarchical order of the phenomena so arranged must stand or fall as a result of specific investigation of the activities and subactivities distinguished in the schedule. Sociological method is changed, however, by this scheme of categories, from a confused dumping together of miscellaneous information, as called for by Spencer’s famous catalogue of what history should teach,⁸ to an orderly arrangement of phenomena according to scientific principles of classification. This is not to assert that De Greef’s classification is final. It has, however, admirably served the purpose of tentative analysis of social activities, while criticism of the characteristics of the activities is proceeding.

Barth discusses under the present subtitle Lacombe⁹ and Wagner.¹⁰ Neither of these writers has added anything of value to the portion of methodology with which we are concerned, and we may allow De Greef to stand as the representative of the classifying tendency.

Recurring to the claim made above,¹¹ and in accordance with our argument upon the different philosophies of history, we repeat of the different emphases in sociological methodology: each has contributed something to be worked in some way or other into the final sociology. It is not in accordance with the facts to speak of a “classifying sociology.” Certain men have won recognition for the fact that classification is a necessary element in scientific method, but classification was not beginning and end of their conception of sociology. It was one of the means of developing a sociology. It would be as fair to describe the work of succeeding generations of farmers in this country by the phrases: “the tree-felling agriculture,” “the stump-pulling agriculture,” “the plowing agriculture,” “the rock-picking agriculture,” and “the rotation-of-crops agriculture.” The men who had to give most of their strength to the different partial processes respectively may have had all the other processes as clearly in mind as though circumstances permitted their use. The feller of trees functioned with reference to rotation of crops just as truly as the men who lived to practice it. So of the men who emphasized the need of sociological classification.

Classification is an arrangement of abstractions around selected centers of interest. No single classification can ever visualize the social reality, because that reality presents as many aspects as there are subjective centers of attention. The object cut up into abstractions has to be represented by combination of all the classifications which our alternative centers of interest incite us to make. These alternative classifications cannot be put together in any hierarchical order if faithfulness to reality is to be maintained. To visualize the social reality, it is necessary to learn how to think these classifications as they shoot through and through each other in objective fact, forming the most complicated plexus ever observed. If we try to symbolize or formulate this plexus in categories appropriate to any lesser order of complexity, we shall either give up in despair or we shall rest satisfied with a falsification of the reality.

B. The Use of Biological Figures

No scientific movement has been more misunderstood by both friends and foes than that phase of sociological thought to which the present title applies. Barth exemplifies radical misconception of the situation in using the title “the biological sociology.” The essential idea which has supplied impulse and suggestion to all the investigators in this group is that everything somehow hangs together with everything else, and that science is incomplete until it includes discovery of the forms and principles of this coherence. In other words, the emphasis here is upon the organic concept, not upon biological analogies in formulating the concept. Not merely in sociology, but in every department of knowledge, the organic concept is the most distinctive modern note. It has been a serious oversight and blunder to confound the organic concept with the nonessential device of employing biological analogies when using the concept. Accidents in connection with this merely mechanical detail have been magnified by some thinkers into essentials, and misrepresented by others as the substance of the subjectmatter in question, instead of merely means of finding out and reporting a certain portion of reality. The most intimate and complex and constructive coherence of elements that we discover previous to our study of society is the coworking of part with part in vital phenomena. Men who wanted to understand the social reality more precisely began, about a generation ago, to make systematic use of ascertained vital relationships as provisional symbols of societary relationships. In general it has been true from the beginning that the so-called biological sociology has not been biological at all except in its figurative modes of expression. Men have detected apparent analogies between better understood vital processes and less understood societary processes.¹² They have said virtually: “So long as terms of these vital processes put us in the way of approaching more truth about societary processes, let us use them as means to that end.” Following this clue, descriptive analyses and many interpretations of social relations have been worked out in biological terms. It is not absolutely certain that any single writer who has been taken seriously by the sociologists has ever been a “biological sociologist” in any other sense than the foregoing. There have been many lapses into linguistic usage that prima facie meant a very fantastic literalism. In general, however, the use of biological figures has amounted to about this: There are functional relationships between men in association that are analogous with functional relationships between parts of living bodies. No analogies seem to be closer on the whole to the societary facts than those in biological facts. We will, therefore, follow out these clues. We will discover all the biological analogies we can. We will test the closeness of the similarities. We will make them divulge all the truth possible about the literal terms of social relationships. We will report these discoveries in biological metaphor, if no better medium of expression is available. We will get nearer to the truth with some other medium of expression, whenever we can invent it.¹³

In order to deal properly with the actual use which has been made of biological analogies, it would be necessary to discuss at length Lilienfeld, Spencer, and Schaeffle. This would take us too far afield. For our present purpose we may assume such a review. After all the controversy about the organic concept, the gist of the whole matter is that knowledge of human associations involves knowledge of the most complex interdependence of function that has been discovered in the whole realm of reality. Precise formulas of the interrelations of functions among associated men are mostly desiderata for future social science to supply. Meanwhile, approximate statements of social relationships must employ the best available means of expression. At our present stage of knowledge our insights into the social mystery express themselves most adequately, in certain of their phases at least, in biological figures. In other words, there are vast reaches of societary fact our present apprehension of which falls into symbolical expression in biological forms more conveniently and satisfactorily than into any alternative mode of expression. This proposition recognizes the provisional and inexact character of such expression. The use of biological terms to symbolize societary relationships is, therefore, desirable only so long and so far as they are on the whole better vehicles of expression than any available substitutes. Beyond that the device is a snare and a delusion.

For these reasons we repeat, the title “biological sociology” is a misnomer.¹⁴ There is a method of presenting problems and of stating results in sociology by means of biological terms. That method does not make nor wish to make the subject-matter biological, any more than the graphic method of presenting statistics, makes the subject-matter geographical. To be sure, Lilienfeld, Spencer, Schaeffle, and a numerous host who have lighted their tapers from these flames, have sometimes appeared to carry symbolism into realism. They have some. times seemed to treat society as though it were the last term in the zoological series. Whatever faults of this sort may be on record, they do not lie along the trunk line of advance from Comte to securely scientific sociology. They are excursions which call for very little attention at present. Apart from the men, if there are any such, who actually think that society is a big animal, the investigators who have use for biological figures in connection with societary relationships no more convert their subject-matter into biology, by using organic metaphors, than use of Arabic notation in astronomy would convert the subject-matter into Semitic philology. The term “biological sociology” implies what is not and never has been true of that which is most essential in the method to which it applies. The assumption of the critics is that behind all .use of the biological terms there is a supposition contrary to fact; namely, that society is a zoological species. The truth is that the method thus misunderstood does not assume that human associations are anything at all except a plexus of relationships formed by the mingling together of many human beings. The method starts with the perception that has coined the sociological axiom: “All men are functions of each other.” Setting out with this perception of the complexity of associations between men, these particular sociologists, as we have said above, cast about for relationships of equal or like complexity. They found none apparently more similar in that respect than those between parts of animal organisms. Scientific study of animal organisms has progressed relatively farther than scientific study of human associations. It serves to spur the imagination and to sharpen

the curiosity of investigators who want to know the literal truth about the social reality. For these reasons biological science has been called to the assistance of sociologists, not merely in furnishing truth about the physiological substructure of human associations, but in furnishing thought-appliances for investigation of those relationships which are beyond the competence of biology. It is thus sheer muddle-headedness to confuse the tool of investigation and the medium of expression with the supposed nature of the portion of reality investigated.

It must be admitted that some of the most perspicuous thinking on this subject has uttered itself in language that encourages this confusion. It has doubtless been a mistake to allow the terminology of sociological inquiry to seem to overshadow in importance the subjects of inquiry themselves. Sociologists who are perfectly free from uncertainty about the above distinction have frequently used terms in a way that has prevented less discerning persons from reaching the distinction. The phrase “biological sociology,” whether used with correct or incorrect connotations, has always been unfortunate in this respect. It seems to imply what has been denied above. Hence it is to be pronounced a misnomer, whether adopted by friends or applied invidiously by foes.

It must be admitted, too, that use of biological figures is worth only what it is worth. Its utility depends largely upon the temper, training, and taste of the investigator, or, in the case of teachers, upon the mental content of their pupils. Doubtless much discovery among social relationships may be made by men whose method of approach and whose form of expression are predominantly mathematical, or mechanical, or philosophical. Whatever may be claimed to the contrary, the prevailing note in sociology, from Comte down to the present time, has been belief in a psychical something and somehow, marking a sphere of societary reality distinct in thought from physical reality. This proposition is not intended in a dualistic sense, although it may have been true in that sense of some men. It is used here in a sense in which the stoutest monist might employ the terms, namely: sociologists actually distinguish orders of fact and process which we cannot yet reduce to terms of a single unity, no matter how sure we may be that the underlying unity exists. Though we may be monistic in our theory of reality, we are necessarily dualistic in our apprehension of phenomena.¹⁵ Accordingly, every form of expression whatever which tends to obliterate the distinction in consciousness between the physical and the psychical in societary relationships must be regarded as a crudity in our symbolism. We all regard the social reality as something that cannot be reported accurately in terms of factors more elementary than the attributes of human individuals. Whether we shall symbolize what we can find out about associations of individuals in terms of quantity, or quality, or form, or function, or ideal conception; or how much of each sort of symbol we shall employ, is purely a question of technique, not to be settled by any stereotyped formula. With all the dangers of abuse, the device of physiological symbolism has very considerable advantages at certain points, although it is a stumbling-block to men who lack “the analogical imagination.” The use of the device for what it is worth will not be discouraged by dogmatism or misrepresentation or ridicule. It has a quite incomparable pedagogical value within wise limits, and it is likely to be more or less useful, even to investigators, for a long time to come. Indeed, there is not a sociologist in the world who can write upon any part of sociology today, even if his subject be the total depravity of “the biological method,” without framing some of his own arguments in tropical use of biological terms.¹⁶ We cannot think the social complexity to the limit of our ability to apprehend it without assistance from the next lower degree of complexity that we know. The extent of our use of this aid is a mere matter of detail, and must be determined by expediency.

C. The Investigation of Dynamic Laws

In the case of the philosophers of history we saw that any characterization is inaccurate which purports to distinguish all that their conceptions contain. Not merely in such an instance as that of Herder, bu. likewise, though in less degree, in case of the most contracted view, each philosophy of history leaves some room for factor: not thrown into prominence in its formulations. The like is true of the sociologists. Each group manifests something of all the tendencies which peculiarly mark the other groups. Under the present head we are to consider a portion of the group in which Barth places Lester F. Ward, J. S. Mackenzie, Hauriou, and Franklin H. Giddings. Barth’s title for the group is “The Dualistic Sociology.”Except in the case of Professor Giddings, we may waive the question whether the most significant resemblances and differences of method justify classification of these men in the same group. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that their methods are sufficiently alike to place the first three in a group by themselves, we must insist that the group is neither adequately nor fairly classified by the phrase “the dualistic sociology.” We may concede that Comte was predominantly materialistic and mechanical in his conceptions, though we have seen that even among his views an insistent spiritualism had a place, and that he had no self-consistent synthesis of the two phases of reality. Whether we count Comte as an example or an exception, there is nobody in the whole series of men who have made an impression upon sociology to whom the epithet ” dualistic” would not apply as properly in the last analysis as to the men here named. In point of fact, all the philosophers in the world today are dualists in the sense indicated above. The fact that a few will not admit the impotence of their formal monism does not affect the proposition. That is to say, no matter how prominent the assertion of fundamental unity may be in our philosophy today, there is practically no difference of opinion as to the methodological necessity of recognizing a phenomenal duality.¹⁷ The diversity of matter and spirit must be admitted by all to this extent, namely: whether we assert an underlying unity or not, we cannot successfully express what we see in the objective world without describing elements that seem distinct in quality. That which is phenomenally psychic is not reducible by any means at our disposal to terms of physics.

On the other hand, it may be said with equal truth that there are today no philosophers of any influence who are not in the last analysis monists. However vigorously they may insist upon the phenomenal distinction between the spiritual and the psychical, they assume sooner or later that underneath the duality of appearance there is an inscrutable unity of reality. It is accordingly a mark of inferior rather than of superior insight to characterize philosophers as monistic or dualistic. Practically all philosophy today is monistic in its ontological presumption; it is dualistic or pluralistic in its analytical methods and in its classification of phenomena. In the case of the sociologists the epithet is of very doubtful utility in any instance.¹⁸ It is certainly so in the case of the men named by Barth in this group. Ward makes the physical element, which must be taken account of by the sociologist, so prominent in the scale that he has more than once been denounced as a materialist. On the other hand, his distinctive effort has been to get for the psychic factors in social reactions due recognition and adequate formulation. If we use the term “dualistic” as a mark of commendation, it is appropriate to this group. The men named deserve praise for their efforts to show that a psychic as well as a physical phase of the underlying unity is wrought into, and must be recognized in, the social complexity.

More precisely, the significance of Ward is historically this: He first published (1883) when the influence of Herbert Spencer was probably at its height. In sociology that influence amounted to obscuration of the psychic element, and exaggeration of the physical factors concerned in shaping social combinations. Whatever be the fair estimate of Spencer’s total influence upon sociology, it certainly operated for a time to concentrate attention upon the mechanical and vital elements in social combinations, and to obscure the psychic elements which are in excess of the physical. While the Spencerian influence was uppermost, the tendency was to regard social progress as a sort of mechanically determined redistribution of energy which thought could neither accelerate nor retard. Against this tendency Ward, a most energetic monist, opened a crusade. He undertook to show that mind can control the conditions of human life to such an extent that it is possible to inaugurate a new and better era of progress. According to Ward there is a difference between the progress of the past and the progress to be anticipated when mind shall have applied itself to the problem, so great that we may speak of the latter as artificial progress and the former as accidental progress.

At the time of its publication (189o) Mackenzie’s book, An Introduction to Social Philosophy, was the ablest survey that had been made of the whole field properly so designated. Nothing that has since appeared has made the book obsolete, although the strategic points in sociological inquiry have shifted greatly, and have become in many respects more salient since he wrote. It is a mistake on Barth’s part to represent Mackenzie as the exponent of any particular type of sociology. He did most successfully what he attempted. In his preface he says:

Little, if anything, of what is now published can be claimed as original .. It is scarcely necessary to add that this work is not intended as a systematic treatise on the subject with which it deals, but only as a slight contribution to the discussion of it. It is, indeed, not so much a book as an indication of the lines on which a book might be written. The only merit which I can hope it may be found to possess is that it has brought into close relation to each other a number of questions which are usually, at least in England, treated in a more disconnected way. (P. viii.)

Mackenzie’s work has been appraised by the sociologists generally at a higher valuation than the author’s modest estimate claims. It not only furnished a conspectus of relationships which had frequently been confused or ignored, but by so doing it promoted systematic sociological inquiry. It thus deserves a high place among the factors that have developed sociological method. It tried to make real the subject-matter of sociological inquiry, and to indicate in large outline the manner in which approach must be made to knowledge of this reality. This is plain from the author’s own summary.¹⁹ Professor Mackenzie carefully guards against calling himself a sociologist at all.

That he is an exponent of a special type of sociology in Barth’s sense is, we repeat, a mistake. He has certainly contributed a large share toward the introduction of sanity into thought about social relations. He has not attempted, however, to influence sociological method except in the general way above indicated.

Hauriou is for our purposes a wholly negligible quantity.²⁰ Professor Giddings stands for certain tendencies which deserve distinct mention under another head. We accordingly return to Ward as the proper representative of the phase of methodology to which the title of this section refers.

We must observe once more that none of the methods with which we are dealing entirely lacks or entirely monopolizes any factor of scientific process. Ward, for instance, did not invent the quest for formative social influences. Men had been searching for them since the world began. When Ward wrote Dynamic Sociology, however, the sociological fashion set by Spencer was to treat social forces as though they were mills of the gods which men could at most learn to describe: which they might not presume to organize and control. Ward did not declare independence of the natural conditions within which the human problem has to be worked out. He declared that we may learn physical conditions, and at the same time mental conditions, to such purpose that we may eventually make human progress a scientific program. His emphasis, then, was upon knowledge of the effective forces in social conditions, with ultimate reference to deliberate telic application.²¹

Altogether apart, then, from any specific theorems to which Ward committed himself, his work has a secure place as a force making for modification of the aims of sociological theory. It is Comte, to be sure, from whom Ward takes his cue, but Comte had no scientific standing-ground broad and firm enough to permit clear prevision. Spencer was virtually training prevision backward. The primary meaning of Ward’s appearance in the sociological field was that a bold campaign of advance was proclaimed. He virtually said: “It is possible to know enough about the conditions of the conduct of life to guide society in a deliberate program of progress. Let us proceed, then, to organize knowledge and research, with the definite purpose of applying it to social progress. Let us not be content longer merely to analyze and describe what has taken place in the past without the assistance of knowledge at its best. Let us get familiar with the factors of human progress, and when we have learned to understand them let us use them to the utmost for human improvement.”

Ward is by profession a biologist (paleontological botany). He would naturally give full faith and credit to all those elements in human conditions which the physical sciences must explore. With this taken for granted, he proposed to learn particularly the conditions of psychic cause and effect in society. He demanded inquiry into the laws of psychic action, for the purpose of molding society; just as we learn the laws of physics in order to build houses or bridges or engines. While the emphasis of other sociologists at the time was upon the ways in which non-sentient nature works, Ward demanded knowledge of how mind combines its work with that of the non-sentient factors of human conditions. Thus Ward called for knowledge of that neglected factor of reality which is the differentiating element when phenomena emerge from the stage of unconsciousness and become conscious.²²

Without attempting to weigh the specific results of Professor Ward’s effort, we must, in the interest of clear thinking, do justice to his aim and to his general conception of method. He demands investigation of the psychic element of societary facts that shall be in all respects comparable with the investigations of the physical basis of life which the appropriate sciences are pursuing. It would be extraordinary if he had succeeded in completing the task which he undertook. It is also extraordinary to demand of any class of scholars that they shall say the final word upon all the inquiries which they suggest, or be denied appreciation.

The work of Ward made an era in American sociology, and the fact will be admitted in the future even by men whose methods are very different from those which Ward proposed.

The animating conception of Ward’s work is that dynamic sociology must be the application of all available forces, physical, industrial, spiritual,²³ to the attainment of rational social ends. It may be said that this is a platitude. On the contrary, compared with certain very firmly entrenched views of society it is practically a paradox. For instance, Gumplowicz’ Grundriss der Sociologie appeared two years later than Dynamic Sociology. In the chapter on class structure and the aristocratic order (p. 133) the author browbeats those bold democrats who presume to question the desirability of priests and lords. While he very properly shows that each of these classes corresponds to a social need, and that the merit of each is to be determined by its discharge of the indicated function, he adds: ” Besides, sociology must refrain from all such criticism of nature. For sociology only the facts and their conformity to laws have an interest.”’ According to him the question, “Could things not be different and better ?” is not permissible from the sociological standpoint, for “social phenomena follow necessarily from the nature of men and from the nature of their relationships.” In other words, Gumplowicz assumes that what is is nature. Ward assumes that what is may be nature partially realized, and that the destiny of nature is to realize itself completely through action by its conscious parts upon its unconscious parts. This ” artificial progress” will not nullify nature, but will make potential nature actual.

The antithesis between Ward and sociologists like Gumplowicz, or even Spencer, appears in his belief that mind can work natural laws to more splendid demonstration of the laws. He therefore demands more knowledge of all the laws concerned. ” The attitude of man toward nature should be twofold: first, that of a student; second, that of a master²⁴ In a word Ward’s fundamental proposition is: we must learn the quality and modes of action of the efficient social forces. Regardless of debatable details of applications and conclusions, Ward’s central idea is unassailable.

D. Assumption of Psychological Universals.

All thinking strives toward a final stage in which the object may be represented, not as it seems to any partial perception, but as it is in reality. Many sociologists have been so eager for their science to reach this degree of maturity that they have entertained the idea of a method capable of conducting directly to the desired end. Zeal for discovery of universals has prompted some of the best work, and has betrayed into some of the most serious mistakes, in sociology. Nothing more sharply distinguishes the sociologists, as a class, from the specialists whose fragmentary programs promise nothing conclusive, than the explicit aim of sociology to reach knowledge which shall have a setting for all details of fact about human associations, in a complete view of human associations as a whole. Demand for the universal is thus the very reason for the existence of sociology, and it is perhaps small wonder that men who are able keenly to feel the demand are allured by the notion of a method peculiarly related to the supply.

It is in this connection that it is most just to speak of the fourth writer, whom Barth dismisses with a brief reference in his group of “the dualistic sociologists.” All that has been said above about the inappropriateness of the phrase is applicable to Professor Giddings. It would be superfluous to volunteer any additional disclaimers in his behalf. He is a monist and a dualist in precisely the same sense in which all modern thinkers are both and neither.

Professor Giddings deserves recognition for earnest championship of an element in method without which the other elements are abortive. His mistake, however, seems to consist in the assumption that the intellectual end toward which all valid methods converge may be anticipated and made a means for securing the end. The cabalistic sign of this potent method is the phrase ” subjective interpretation.’’²⁵ This phrase may mean in practice either of two things: First, the reading of the interpreter’s personal equation into the thing in question. In this case it deserves no further notice. Second, an image of the thing as it is in its essence, in all its qualities and dimensions and relations. In this case “subjective interpretation” is without question the goal to be reached, but it ought to be equally self-evident that it cannot meanwhile be the method by which it is reached.

Sociology, as it appears in its confused literature up to date, is one in the implicit or explicit purpose to make out the details of relationships involved in human associations, and to reconstruct them in thought in such a way that each element will be credited with its true value within the whole. This is the psychological universal. But there is no plenary indulgence in favor of sociology to dispense with the purgatory of all the necessary logical stages between the specific and the universal. Sociology has escaped the provincialism of less ambitious social sciences in proportion as it has kept ultimate universals in view. Hypothetical universals serve the same uses and lend themselves to the same abuses in sociology as elsewhere. Nothing is added to their authority by the title “subjective interpretation.” The phrase is merely a name for the same reconstructive synthesis which every philosopher, from the Sophists down, has aimed to achieve. It stands for the mind’s effort to represent details of a whole in their adjustments to each other within the whole. Mental organization of parts into wholes, or analysis of wholes into parts, is a constant reaction between the objective and the subjective.²⁶ The history of thought teems with examples of the dangers of giving excessive credit to the subjective element. It usually results in reading into objective reality undue proportions of premature impression about reality. All formation of concepts is “subjective interpretation.” All descriptive analysis, all classification, all explanation is ” subjective interpretation” in the only sense admissible in science.²⁷ It cannot be anything else. The fault of ” subjective interpretation” as an arbiter of method is that it is likely to be too little the mind’s organization of elements observed in the object. It will consequently be too much the mind’s fiction stimulated by certain impressions received from the object, but completed by extraneous material. The report of the object proves, then, to have in it relatively too little of the object and relatively too much of the subject. This danger is inevitable in the long process of deriving universals. It may be averted only by curbing the impertinences of the subjective presumption.

Sociology is essentially an effort to find more adequate categories with which to conceptualize social details, and to organize the contents of these categories into a universal conception. It is dangerous, however, to think anything in categories which cannot be observed, but have to be imputed. In applying such categories we are likely to interpret by deduction from unauthorized impressions that fill the mind in the absence of adequate analysis of the object.

The whole argument of these papers is virtually upon the problem here presented. As the essentials involved will be discussed in various relations, further detail may for the present be postponed.

E. The desirable combination of methods.²⁸

It may be said in general that men who have tried to explain social life have tended to vibrate between two extremes. On the one hand they have exaggerated fragments, sections, phases, abstractions, disjecta membra of human activities and conditions, and have neglected the containing whole; or they have adopted a presumption of the whole which took away their freedom so to investigate the parts that more appropriate conceptions of the whole might result. Our thought about human affairs has consequently been a farrago of snap judgments, partial formulations, and promotions of narrow generalizations to the rank of universals. In order that worthy beginnings of societary science might be made there must needs have been developed a sense, first of societary continuity, second of societary integrity; i. e., of societary wholeness, both consecutive and contemporary. More especially this conception makes of human association a whole, developing without break of continuity from origins. It is a whole which exists at any given moment as a reciprocity between all its parts. It projects itself into the future in the form determined by the ratio of effectiveness between the elements and conditions that mold its character. This view requires a corresponding methodological conception. Such a conception involves the view that human association is a congruity, an integrity, a unity. Knowledge of such a reality accordingly implies comprehension of the parts, of the whole which they compose, and of the relationships by virtue of which parts and whole are one. This means that, however study of human affairs may be divided for convenience, the division is only provisional and partial and temporary. This knowledge is not reached until that conceptual division has been resolved again into conceptual unification, in which part and whole are more accurately apprehended than before as phases of one.

The view to which our survey leads is, therefore, that we need a scheme of inquiry into societary fact which, as a scheme, will provide in form for all the phases of reality that the societary unity presents. Then the task of determining and expressing these various phases of reality imposes a network of problems. We may call them primarily, if we will, problems of anthropology, ethnology, history, politics, economics, or whatever. That is, we may group certain classes of problems, and call the processes and results in connection with them “sciences.” In fact, however, each of these problems, or groups of problems, or “sciences,” sooner or later involves all the rest. Our hierarchy of sciences then proves to be, like the unity which it tries to interpret, one instead of many. The social sciences are merely methodological divisions of societary science in general.

In different parts of the world authorities of various sorts have created more or less arbitrary classifications of the social sciences. This occurs chiefly in the universities. It would not require a long argument to show that at best these divisions are likely to become obstructive, in spite of their adoption for scientific and academic convenience. Whether inquiry into the principles of human association be conducted by use of a traditional or an extemporized division of labor, it is all virtually one search into one reality. The divisions exist in our minds, not in the object. The aim of science is to comprehend these apparent diversities as members of the unity of which they are aspects.

There should be a name to cover all study, of whatever sort, which contributes to knowledge of the societary reality, or associated human life, just as the name “biology” designates no specific field of research, but the whole realm of inquiry into the conditions and processes of vegetable and animal life. It is theoretically of very slight importance in itself what name is chosen for that whole organ of knowledge about society. The tendency among sociologists, at least, seems to be toward reassertion of the judgment that the name “sociology” is, on the whole, most suitable and convenient.²⁹ This tendency is parallel with gravitation in use of the name “biology.” The latter is now understood as the comprehensive term for the whole of vital science. Similar use of the term “sociology” would, of course, give it a much broader application than belongs to it as the designation of a university chair, or of a specific division of social science. Every investigation of a phase of societary reality would in this sense be a chapter of sociology, just as vegetable and animal embryology, morphology, physiology, ecology, zoology, etc., are each and all chapters of biology. The persons now known as sociologists are no more sociologists in the proposed sense than the ethnologists, historians, economists, political scientists, etc. In parallel fashion there are no biologists today who are not more specifically botanists, physiologists, zoologists, neurologists, etc.³⁰

In other words, the outcome of thought about men in association amounts to dawning perception that human association is not a mere academic conventionality. It is the objective reality which is the setting for the ultimate human problem of the conduct of life. Knowledge of this reality depends upon organization of the results of a multitude of investigations, many of which have not yet been proposed, and few, if any, of which have been completed. Sociology then, in the large sense, or the organon of knowledge about human associations, is today a vast system of problems concerning the essential elements and correlations of human association. This being the case, all the ways and means thus far devised for investigating human associations have their uses at the proper time and place, but it is evident that the conventional “sciences” are at best rudimentary means for advancing knowledge of association in general. There must be diminishing regard for the lines drawn by “sciences, and increasing attention to the direct import of problems.

For example, it has been said by Herbert Spencer, with prescience far in advance of his science, that “the question of questions for the politician should ever be: ’ What type of social structure am I tending to produce?’”³¹ There is no difference of opinion among social theorists as to the abstract desirability of knowledge about the relation of different sorts of acts to social structure. One at least of the large problems of social science is accordingly this: ” How do different sorts of acts affect social structure ?” Now there is no conventional academic “department” or social science to which such a problem belongs. On the contrary, there is no department or science to which it does not belong. It is a real problem, just as truly as the question of the effect of electrolysis upon steel construction is a real problem. The anthropologist, the psychologist, the ethnologist, the historian, the political economist, the political scientist, and an indefinite number of subsidiary specialists, must necessarily cooperate in the solution of the problem.

Again, it is equally important to know what individual type any social arrangement tends to produce. In this case the same proposition holds. The concrete truth about the effect of human conduct is not the preserve of any abstract science. We might schedule in turn all the genera and species of problems that we encounter when we search for the meaning elements in society. They are threads in a tapestry. There can be no such thing as a self-sufficient science of the separate threads. The meaning of the threads depends upon knowledge of the complete design of the whole fabric.

Accordingly, over and above the multitude of more concrete sociological tasks for which a place is conceded without much opposition, there are two distinguishable procedures of a general character for which thorough and comprehensive societary science must provide. The former of these is the division of labor appropriate to that species of sociologist who may be called the methodologist. It is the task of making out and exhibiting in the most general way the forms and interrelations of societary facts, and the consequent interdependencies of processes which undertake scientific formulation of these facts. The familiar De Greef schedule of societary activities may serve as an illustration of the beginning of this procedure. A classification of associations under the forms called for by Simmel’s method would represent a much more advanced stage of the procedure. A classification according to the functional utilities of various associations would be a still closer approach to the desirable universal.

The general genetic question about all associations is: Through what course of differentiation did these activities come into existence? This question demands the researches of all species of historical science. The general statical question about associations is: What forms and qualities of forces, in what proportions, maintain social structures in equilibrium ? This question demands organization of the results of the systematizing abstract sciences of society, i. e., sciences of abstracted phases of social activity; e.g., economics, aesthetics, demography, comparative law, comparative politics, comparative philosophy, and comparative religion. These too are largely, of course, dependent upon historical processes. The general kinetic³² question about societies is: What influences operate, and in accordance with what formulas, to change the equilibrium or type of societary status? The general teleological question about associations is: ” What ends or systems of ends are indicated by the foregoing exhibits of human resources ? What is the apparent goal toward which human cooperation tends, and toward which it may be directed?” This is a question of valuations, to be answered in accordance with logical and psychological principles which have a competence of their own in sociology, but always dependent upon recognition of principles of knowledge involved in the antecedent stages of analysis and synthesis. The methodologist consequently has to detect the relations between problems that arise, primarily in one of these divisions of inquiry, and evidence which other divisions of investigation are alone competent to furnish. The methodologist has to show the fundamental relations of one portion of societary inquiry with other portions, and so far as possible to organize corresponding cooperation among sociologists.

The second procedure is not logically coordinate with nor entirely separable from the first. Its practical value is so great, however, that it deserves distinct and prominent rank. It is determination of the relative significance of different orders of knowledge about society, and also of the proportionate stress to be laid at a given time upon different lines of inquiry. No knowledge is trivial that helps to complete the whole system of knowledge, yet untold energies are wasted in the name of science upon minutia that are morally certain to remain so unrelated to the developing organon of knowledge about society that they are, and will remain, in effect trifles. A notorious case is much of the work done by certain disciples of Le Play upon the budgets of workingmen’s families.³³ At every stage in the advancement of sociology there is need of signals from observers on the high places about the kind of knowledge most in demand at that moment to reinforce the system of knowledge at its weakest points. This second procedure, like the other, is of the philosophical rather than of the scientific order of generality. It may be said to belong to the social philosopher rather than to the methodologist; yet the connections between the two must be so close, even if there is an actual division of labor at this point, that we may, without serious inaccuracy, speak of this second procedure as belonging to general methodology.

It will be seen from the foregoing that the growth of sociological method tends to undermine the walls of division that have been constructed between the social sciences, and indeed between those sciences and psychology and general philosophy. It tends to call for restatements of social problems in terms of their relations to the whole social reality. It tends to repudiation of pedantic academic statements of problems, merely in terms of their interest for the isolated division of research in which they have been considered. It tends to subordinate all the valid means of investigation and report, that have been perfected within the field of societary research, to any uses that may arise anywhere, at any time, in the solution of any species of societary problem.

Thus sociological method has developed into demand for concentration of mediate methodological resources. Sociology indicates that the fragmentary problems of the “sciences” are to be made real by restatement in their objective relations as problems of association. Sociology is a symptom that points to restoration of the “sciences” from the effort to live unto themselves. Sociology points to discharge, by each of the partial sciences, of the function of furnishing appropriate parts of the knowledge needed to construct a rational basis for the conduct of life.³⁴

Few scholars are ready to accept the foregoing analysis. This is partly cause and partly effect of rejecting the term “sociology” in the proposed sense; or worse, of denying the existence of the thing for which the name is proposed. It is contended by many that everything here outlined is implied in traditional divisions of knowledge, and is actually provided for by them. In one sense it is, but the same thing is true over and over again of every portion of our knowledge. If we were to refuse license to new forms of reflection upon perceptive material simply because, either in fact or by implication, it had been in consciousness before, we should directly reduce thought to the idiot’s reaction upon sensations.

The essential question is: Do all these things need to be done by somebody, and under some designation or other? Is the social fact encountered in all its dimensions if it is less comprehensively conceived? Can a less intensive and extensive examination of the social reality arrive at the body of knowledge of which we are beginning to perceive the need? Can all this be realized and not be one at last? If the correct answer were given to these questions, and if all thought about society were correlated accordingly, sociology and sociologists might be read out of separate existence, so far as a name goes, and the indicated scientific and philosophic processes might go on as before. The names are non-essentials. Complete conception of societary relationships, and corresponding investigation and arrangement of facts about those relationships, are the essentials upon which the sociological methodologist insists.

Albion W. Small.

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.

[To be continued.]

Notes

1. ”Unfortunately, the relation of facts is always less simple than we think; the demand of our intellect for unity is often a little too strong, especially in the realm of social science. Hasty conclusions are still the order of the day. One assumes something, not because it is so, because one has actually so observed it, but because it would agree so finely with something else. This is all very unscientific, but it suits our best thinkers not seldom. Really, we proceed still from the theory and seek facts merely for illustration. If one does otherwise, starts from the facts and goes no farther than they permit, then people are astonished that his result is not so beautifully rounded off, not so faultless, as their own fancies. That the latter, even if ever so consistent, harmonious, complete, are yet absolutely worthless-that does not appear to such people.” (Steinmetz, Zeitschrift für Socialwissenschaft, August, 1898.)↩
2. Introduction d la sociologie, Vol. I, p. 217.↩
3. Introduction à la sociologie, 2 vols., Paris, I886-89; Les lois sociologiques, Paris, 1893; Le transformisme social, Paris, I895; L'évolution des croyances et des doctrines politiques, Paris, I895.↩
4. Pp. 67 sq. ↩
5. Pos. Phil., Vol: V1, pp. 51, 53, 54, 56.↩
6. Introduction, Vol. I, p. 228.↩
7. Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 19-23.↩
8. The Study of Sociology, Am. ed., Introduction.↩
9. De I’histoire consideree comme science, Paris, 1894.↩
10. Grundlegung der pol. Econ., 3te Auflage, Leipzig, 1892↩
11. 4P. 617.↩
12. The converse was for a time the case. Vide Ann.of Am. Acad.,March, 1895, p. 745.↩
13. For the most recent discussion of the biological method of expression vide Annales de l’institut international de sociologie, Tomes IV and V.↩
14. In his paper, ” The Failure of Biologic Sociology,” Ann. of Am. Acad., May, 1894, Professor Patten has disposed of certain real errors, but his blows are delivered chiefly at straw men, so far as the epithet “biologic” is concerned.↩
15. Cf. below, p. 632.↩
16. How it would have scandalized the critics of "biological sociology" if anyone outside of their own number had suggested "social anastomosis" or "social inosculation"! Vide Tarde, Les transformations du pourvoir↩
17. Cf. above, p. 631.↩
18. Particularly as it is a term without meaning unless it bears the tag of the particular doctrine from whose viewpoint the fault is alleged.↩
19. First edition, pp. 369 sq.↩
20. La science sociale traditionelle, Paris, 1896.↩
21. Vide first ed., Preface, p. vii; Vol. I, p. 81; and Vol. II, p. 159. For Spencer's unlike views vide Social Statics, American ed. of 1892, pp. 233 sq. also De Greef, Introduction, Vol. II, p. 13. ↩
22. ↩Cf. The Psychic Factors of Civilization, pp. v and vi.
23. Of course, this use of popular terms does not imply that Ward classifies social forces under these categories.↩
24. Dyn. Soc., II, II.↩
25. Prin. of Sociol., pp. 11 and 36.↩
26. The terms are at this point relative to the consciousness of the individual organizer.↩
27. Viz., the second above, mediated by progressive correction of the first.↩
28. Among recent contributions to this subject the following deserve special notice: Bosanquer, “Relation of Sociology to Philosophy,” Mind, January, 1898; CALDWELL, “Philosophy and the Newer Sociology,’ Contem. Rev., September, 1898; BALDwin (F. S.),” Present Position of Sociology,” Pop. Sci. Monthly, October, 1899; Giopings, ” Exact Methods in Sociology,” Pop. Sci. Monthly, December, 1899.↩
29. Thus TARDE (Les transformations du pouvoir, p. v): “S’il n’est pas vrai que les diverses sciences sociales doivent se confondre desormais en une seule, qui serait la sociologie, il est certain qu’elles doivent toutes s’y plonger l’une apres l’autre, pour en sortir soit retrempees et rajeunies, soit glaciales et inanimees. Cela depend de la qualite du bain.”’↩
30. Vide above, p. 508.↩
31. Social Statics and Man vs. the State, Am. ed. of 1892, p. 312.↩
32. In a later paper additional reasons will appear for following the physicists in use of the terms ” dynamics,““statics, and”kinetics.” Although the present application of the terms is not precisely parallel with their use in physics, they may be made more serviceable than any alternatives in sight; i. e.,” dynamics” including the theory of the social forces in general, while “statics” is the theory of the correlating, and “kinetics” of the evolving activities; or of “order” and “progress.” This variation from the usage which Ward has so forcibly recommended (Outlines of Sociology, pp. 167sq., and elsewhere) is merely a difference in terms, but it seems better adapted to the demand for clear discrimination than the’ usage which has prevailed of late.↩
33. It is only necessary to compare the sort of information referred to with the standards of Le Play himself and his more intelligent followers to expose its futility.↩
34. Allowing for the physical bias noted above (p. 633), Spencer seems to have had nearly this conception in mind when he said: “That which is really needed is a systematic study of natural causation as displayed among beings socially aggregated” (Social Statics and Man vs. the State, Am. ed. of 1892, p. 355).↩