m
NORTHWESTERN ^
m
m
m
UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY
m
^ Jerome Hall Raymond
From the library of
N. U. Class of 1892
ESSAYS ON GENERAL SOCIOLOGY.
Concents:
Giciaings: The Province of Sociology.
GidcLings: The Theory of Sociology.
Small: Methods of Studying Society.
Small: The Relation of Sociology to Economics.
Ward: The Psychologic Basis of Social Economics.
Powers: Sociology in Schools and Colleges.
Pulcomer: Instruction in Sociology in Institu¬
tions of Lcarjiing.
Fulcomer: Chart to accompany Lectures on Social
Science.
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SEP 29 1942
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THE PROVINCE OF SOCIOLOGY.
No science is at this moment in greater need of descrip¬
tive definition than sociology. A rapidly-growing body of
coordinated knowledge is called by this name. An increas¬
ing number of earnest thinkers in England, Germany,
France, Belgium, Italy and the United States are known as
sociologists. What exactly is the province of this science ?
What are the underlying conceptions of sociological theory,
and what is the spirit of sociological investigation ?
To answer these questions we must inquire, first, how
sociology is related to other bodies of knowledge that are
concerned with phenomena of human society.
One group, known collectively as the political sciences,
includes political economy, the theory of the state and the
. philosophy of law. Another group includes the theories
of pauperism, crime and other social maladies. Yet another
^ group includes the comparative study of religions, compara-
^i^Xtive ethics, comparative philology and archaeology. Does
^sociology include these various departments of investigation ?
V If so, is it anything more than a collective name for the sum
^ of the social sciences? Assuming that it is more than a
^ collective name, does it discard the theoretical principles of
^ the special social sciences, or does it adopt and coordinate
- them?
If sociology deals by a method of its own with the same
subject matter that the special social sciences deal with, but
without including their generalizations, how does it differ
firom social statistics? Statistics professes to survey the
whole field of social relationships, investigating both uni¬
formities and details as far as this is possible by numerical
methods. In so far as there can be a comprehensive social
science that is not inclusive of special science, it is statistics.
2
The Province of Sociology.
If, on the other hand, sociology includes many or all of
the generalizations as well as the subject matter of the
special social sciences, and yet, having a unity of its own, is
more than their sum, how does it differ from history, as
history is now conceived by philosophical historians ?
History goes even farther than statistics in occupying itself
with all social phenomena whatsoever, because it is limited
to no one method. It uses any or all methods. It is con¬
cerned alike with the uniformities and the details of human
events. It studies them in their abstract relations and in
their concrete phases ; in their causes and in their effects.
It takes up into itself the scientific laws of economics and of
political science ; of jurisprudence ; of philanthropy and
penology ; of comparative religions, philology and art ; for
the life of nations must be interpreted from every point of
view. History as now pursued is a comprehensive social
science. If sociology also is such a science, wherein does it
differ from philosophical history ?
The answer to these questions is, that if the word be used
in the broadest sense, sociology comprehends all social
science, including statistics and history ; just as biology, in
the broadest sense of that word, comprehends all the sciences
of life, including botany and zoology, morphology and
physiology, embryology and histology. But there is a
narrower sense in which the word biology is used, and we
must give a restricted meaning to the word sociology to
accurately describe the particular division of knowledge that
we are here concerned with. Specifically, the word biology
is now understood to mean that description of the general
properties of living matter and those fundamental principles
of the phenomena of life that are the basis of subsequent
study in more special branches of biological science.' A
specific meaning precisely similar must be given to the word
sociology. An analysis of the general characteristics of
social phenomena, with a formulation of the general laws of
social evolution, must be made the basis of special study in
all departments of social science. It is upon just this work
Ï SedgTvick and Wilson's Biology, p. 7.
The Province of Sociology.
3
that sociologists are now concentrating their efforts, and for
their results there can be no other name than sociology.
In this narrower sense, then, sociology is not the inclu¬
sive, but the fundamental social science. It is not the sum
of the social sciences, but the groundwork, in which they
find a common basis. Its far-reaching principles are the
postulates of special sciences, and as such they coordinate
and bind together the whole body of social generalizations
in a large scientific unity. Not concerned with the detail
of social phenomena, sociology stands at the opposite end
of the scale of social science from history. It is the inter¬
mediate science between the organic sciences on the one
hand, and the politico-historical sciences on the other.
Sociology rests on biology and psychology. The special
social sciences rest on sociology.
The further definition of sociology consists in showing
how it is differentiated from the sciences below it, psychol¬
ogy, biology and sciences of inorganic aggregates. To do
this we must look somewhat carefully at the objects that it
attempts to study and explain.
Intermediate between biological and historical sciences,
sociology is concerned with phenomena that are at once
organic, in the physical sense of the word, psychological
and historical. There is but one class of objects in the
universe that exhibit such phenomena. The human popu¬
lation of the earth is distributed into ethnical groups, differ-
ing greatly in size and in the degree and complexity of
their activities, and variously known as hordes, tribes and
nations. In each there are certain essential activities of
reproduction, sustentation and defense. In many of the
small, and in all of the larger, groups the activities are dif¬
ferentiated into specialized labors and vocations, while cor¬
responding to the division of labor there is a complex social
structure of coordinated relationships. The more highly
specialized the activities and relationships are, the more
dependent becomes each kind of labor and each social rela¬
tion upon all of the others ; the more does the whole group
suffer when any activity or relation is impaired or disturbed.
4
The Province of Sociology.
Natural societies, so conceived, are the objects of sociological
study.
As an organic whole a natural society is, of course, in one
of its aspects a physical aggregate. Physically speaking,
its component units are ma.sses of living matter. If we
show how, merely as a physical aggregate, a society differs
from all other physical aggregates in the universe, we mark
off sociology on its physical side from other sciences. If,
then, we show how as an organic aggregate a society differs
from those aggregates of microscopic cells that compose
plant and animal organisms, we differentiate sociology from
biology.
The first task was accomplished by Tester F. Ward in his
" Dynamic Sociology." It is there pointed out that the
matter of the cosmos is found in three degrees of aggrega¬
tion. Inorganic bodies are products of a primary aggrega¬
tion, their unit being the molecule. Organic bodies are
products of a secondary aggregation,' their unit being the
cell, itself a product of a primary aggregation of molecules.
Societies differ from all other bodies in being the sole pro¬
ducts of a tertiary aggregation, their units—living beings—
being themselves products of a secondary aggregation.
As products of a tertiary aggregation, societies necessarily
differ from merely biostatic organisms in being what Mr.
Spencer has called superorganic. To show in detail just
what this difference involves is a large undertaking. It has
been fairly well accomplished in Mr. Spencer's " Principles
of Sociology," Schaffle's "Ban und Leben des Socialen
Körpers," and the " Introduction à la Sociologie," by Guil¬
laume de Greef."
But what of the differentiation of sociology from psy¬
chology ? Whatever else a society is, it is a phenomenon
of conscious association, and the field of sociology is certainly
1 Secondary, perhaps, in a rather broad sense. Late investigations point to the
recognition of a number of products intermediate between molecule and cell.
2This important work is in three parts; the first, published in i886, is on
Eléments; the second, which appeared in 1S89, is on Functions et Organes; the
third, now in preparation, will be on Structure Générale.
The Province of Sociology.
5
not marked out until we know whether there is any reason
in the nature of things for classifying the psychological
phenomena of society apart from those of individuals.
Right here, I think, has been the really serious gap in
sociological theory. So far as I have been able to discover,
no sociologist has distinctly stated this problem and tried to
solve it. Let me indicate in the briefest terms so much of
my own view on this point as is necessary to round out the
conception of sociological science.
Psychology is concerned with the associations and dis¬
sociations of the elements of conscious personality. How
sensations are associated and dissociated in perception, how
perceptions are associated and dissociated in imagination
and in thought, how thought, feeling and impulse are coordi¬
nated in that marvellous composite, the individual person¬
ality, are problems for psychology to state and, if it can, to
solve. But the phenomena of conscious association do not
end with the appearance of individual personality. They
are then only engendered. Individual personalities, as units,
become the elements of that vastly more extensive and intri¬
cate association of man with man and group with group,
which creates the varied relations of social life. A society
is, therefore, on its conscious side, a super-psychical product,
just as, on its physical side, it is super-organic and a product
of tertiary aggregation.
If we can discover the meaning of this fact, we shall get
at the essential characteristic of social phenomena and know
definitely what is the specific object of sociological study.
The conscious association of individuals, when it is delib¬
erate or of purpose, grows out of their thoughts and feel¬
ings. It is an objective result of inward states. The social
relations and activities built up by association are therefore
outward products of inward states. This fact is so related
to the accepted definitions of biology and psychology as to
afford us one of the distinguishing marks of sociology that
we seek. In biology we study an adjustment of the physi¬
cal changes within an organism to external relations that
are comparatively few, simple and constant.^ In psychol-
6
The Province of Sociology.
ogy we study an adjustment of the conscious changes within
an organism to external relations of wide extent in time and
space and of the utmost complexity. In both biology and
psychology we regard phenomena within the organism as
effects, and relations in the environment as causes. The
moment we turn to social phenomena we discover that
activities within the organism have become conspicuous as
causes. They have created a wonderful structure of external
relationships, and have even modified the fauna and flora
and the surface of the earth within their environment. The
progressive adjustment between internal and external rela¬
tions has become reciprocal.
By this fact sociology is broadly marked off from psy¬
chology. To make the distinction definite, however, we
must take note of an essential element in the scientific
conception of social relations not yet mentioned. That
element is a perception of the end subserved by social
organization.
' ' There can be no true conception of a structure, ' ' says
Mr. Spencer, "without a true conception of its function.
To understand how an organization originated and devel¬
oped it is requisite to understand the need subserved at the
outset and afterward." ^ Until we understand what has
been the need subserved, at the outset and afterward, by
social relations, there remains a fatal gap in sociological
theory. The only way to that understanding is through a
clear perception of the reciprocal determination of the
individual consciousness and its social environment. Indi¬
vidual thought and feeling are projected into social relations
because social relations react favorably on individual thought
and feeling. Not only are individual personalities—as con¬
stituted by that association of ideas and feelings that
psychology studies—the units of the wider conscious
association that we call social, but only through the wider
1 So general a definition miut leave much unexpressed—the phenomena of
heredity, for example.
' " Principles of Sociology," Vol. 11, § 583.
The Province of Sociology.
7
association, emotional, intellectual and volitional, is the
higher evolution of personality effected.'
It is conscious association with his fellows that develops
man's moral nature. To the exchange of thought and
feeling all literature and philosophy, all religious conscious¬
ness and public polity, are due, and it is the reaction of
literature and philosophy, of worship and polity, on the
mind of each new generation that develops its type of per¬
sonality. Accordingly, we may say that the function of
social organization, which the sociologist must keep per¬
sistently in view, is the evolution of personality, through
ever higher stages and broader ranges, into that wide inclu¬
sion and to that high ideal quality that we name humanity.
At every step the sociological task is the double one—to
know how social relations are evolved, and how, being
evolved, they react on the development of personality.^
It remains to describe sociology by its scientific motive
and characteristics. Tying between the organic and the
historical sciences and partaking of the nature of both,
sociology has a spirit of its own and a distinctive point of
view. It has been developed under peculiar conditions and
by men who have felt the full force of an impulse that, in
our day, has revolutionized the science of the world for all
time to come. The evolutionary doctrine has penetrated
the organic sciences through and through. The law of
natural selection and the conception of life as a process of
adjustment of the organism to its environment have become
the very core of the biology and psychology of to-day. It
was inevitable that the evolutionary philosophy should be
extended to embrace the phenomena of human life. The
science that had traced life from protoplasm to man could
not stop there. It must take cognizance of the ethnical
1 George Henry I,ewes claimed to be the first psychologist to distinctly recognize
and state the part played by the social factor in the evolution oí intellect and con¬
science. See " Problems of Ivife and Mind." First Series, Vol. I, p. 140, and "The
Study of Psychology," p. 71.
2 The work of interpreting thought, morals, art and religion from the sociologi
cal point of view had been hopefully begun by the lamented M. Guyau. His VArt
au Point de Vue Sociologique and Education ei Hérédité^ etude sociologique are
especially suggestive.
8
The Province of Sociology.
groups, the natural societies of men, and of all the phenomena
that they exhibit, and inquire whether these things also be
not products of the universal evolution. Accordingly, we
find not only in the earlier writings of Mr. Spencer—after¬
ward the real founder of true sociology—but also in those of
Darwin and Haeckel, suggestions of an evolutionist account
of social relations. These hints were not of themselves a
sociology. For this, other factors derived from history and
political science were needed.' But they sufficed to show
where the ground lines of the new science must lie ; to
reveal its fundamental conceptions, and to demonstrate that
the sociologist must be not only historian, economist and
statistician, but biologist and psychologist as well. It is, in
fact, on these lines and through the labors of such men, that
modern sociology has taken shape. It is an interpretation
of human society in terms of natural causation. It refuses
to think of humanity as outside of the cosmic process, and a
law unto itself. Sociology is an attempt to account for the
origin, growth, structure and activities of human society by
the operation of physical, biogenetic and psychogenetic
causes, working together in a process of evolution.
Unfortunately there is an impression, shared by many
students of the political sciences, that sociology underrates
the importance of the volitional factors in social causation
and misconceives their distinctive qualities. The part played
by these factors is so conspicuous that a student who
approaches the problem from one side only can easily fall
into the habit of thinking of them as underived, independent
causes, and it is out of this unscientific habit that miscon¬
ceptions of sociology have grown. The sociologist deals
with phenomena of volition at every step. In fact, as we
have seen, they are central points, about which all the other
phases of "social change are grouped. More than this ; the
sociologist deals not only with causes that are not merely
physical, but with many that are not merely psychical.
1 Systematic treatises in which the sociological rroblem has been approached
from the historical side, but in very different ways, are ; Der Rassenkampf, by Dr.
Ludwig Gumplowicz, Innsbruck, 1883, and Elements de Sociologie, by Combes de
Lestrade, Paris, 1889.
The Province of Sociology.
9
They are as much more complex than the merely psychical
as the psychical are more complex than the merely physical.
They are sociological—products of social evolution itself—
and the true sociologist wastes no time on attempts to
explain all that is human by environment apart from
history.
The real question, therefore, is not on the existence or the
importance of volitional and distinctively sociological causes.
It is whether these are underived from simpler phenomena
than themselves, and undetermined by processes of the phy¬
sical and organic world. To this question the answer of
sociology is an unqualified negative. Sociology is planted
squarely on those new conceptions of nature—natural causa¬
tion and natural law—that have grown up in scientific minds
in connection with doctrines of evolution and the conserva¬
tion of energy.^ These conceptions, as the working hypoth¬
eses of physical and organic science, are totally unlike those
old metempirical notions that made natural law an entity,
endowed it with omnipotence, and set it up in a world of
men and things to govern them. Natural laws are simply
unchanging relations among forces, be they physical,
psychical or social.
A natural cause is simply one that is at the same time
an effect. In the universe as known to science there
are no independent, unrelated, uncaused causes. By
natural causation, therefore, the scientific man means a
process in which every cause is itself an effect of antecedent
causes ; in which every action is at the same time a reaction.
Nature is but the totality of related things, in which every
change has been caused by antecedent change and will itself
cause subsequent change, and in which, among all changes,
there are relations of co-existence and sequence that are
themselves unchanging.
In this mighty but exquisite system man is indeed a
variable, but not an independent variable. He is a function
of innumerable variables. In a world of endless change he
1 Conceptions not all found even in so recent a work as the I^ogic of J. S. Mill ;
but set forth clearly by I^ewes, in ** Problems of I^ife and Mind," First Series.
10
The Province of Sociologv.
acts upon that world, but only because be is of that world.
His volition is a true cause, but only because it is a true
effect. Therefore, while affirming the reality of sociological
forces that are distinctly different from merely biological
and merely physical forces, the sociologist is careful to add
that they are different only as products are different from
factors ; only as protoplasm is different from certain quanti¬
ties of oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon ; only as an
organism and its coordinated activities are different from a
group of nucleated cells having activities that are unrelated.
Recognizing that society is an organism that acts in definite
ways upon its members, he looks beyond the superficial
aspect and finds that all social action is in fact a reaction,
and, as such, definitely limited and conditioned. He finds
nowhere a social force that has not been evolved in a
physical-organic process, nor one that is not at every moment
conditioned by physical facts. He sees in constant operation
that marvelous product of individual wills, the collective
or group will, in which Austin found the source of political
sovereignty ; but he sees also, what no jurist before Darwin's
day could know, how inexorably the sovereign will is con¬
ditioned by natural selection.
The group, like the individual, can will what it wills ;
but what it does will is determined by conditions that
man did not create, and whether the group will keep
on willing this thing or that thing, will depend on
whether the thing willed conduces to social survival. If
it does not, there is presently an end of social willing
along those lines. It is in this truth that the sociologist
discerns the essential significance of the much befogged
doctrine of natural rights.
Natural rights, as defined by Quesnay, have gone to the
limbo of outworn creeds ; not so those natural rights that
sociology is just beginning to disclose. Regal rights are
rights sanctioned by the law-making power ; moral rights
are rights sanctioned by the conscience of the community ;
natural rights are rights enforced by natural selection
operating in the sphere of social relations ; and in the
The Province of Sociology.
II
long run there can be neither legal nor moral rights not
grounded in natural rights as thus defined.'
If the social will is conditioned by natural selection, not
less is the power to convert will into deed conditioned by
the conservation of energy. Enormous as the social energy
is, it is at any moment a definite quantity. Every foot¬
pound of it has been taken up from the physical environ¬
ment, and no transmutations of form can increase the
amount. What is used in one way is absolutely withdrawn
from other modes of expenditure. Eet the available energies
of the environment be wasted or in any way diminished, the
social activity must diminish too. The evolution of new
relationships of conscious association, and the accompanying
development of personality, will be checked.
Thus our definition of sociology as an explanation of
social phenomena in terms of natural causation, becomes
somewhat more explicit. Specifically, it is an interpretation
in terms of psychical activity, organic adjustment, natural
selection and conservation of energy. As such, it may be
less than a demonstrative science, if the experimental
sciences be taken as the standard ; but we cannot admit that
it is only a descriptive science, as contended by those French
sociologists who hold closely to the philosophy of Comte'.
It is strictly an explanatory science, fortifying induction by
deduction, and referring effects to veritable causes.
11 am not trying to rehabilitate an old idea in a new phraseology. I reject the
old idea, and with it that use of the word natural^ imposed on political philosophy
by Rousseau, which identifies the natural exclusively with thea use now
banished from biology and psychology, but inexcusably retained in the political
sciences by many German economists and jurists, as if natural were a word of no
broader meaning than natal. In scientific nomenclature natural has become much
more nearly identical with normal. In its absolute scientific sense the natural is
that which exists in virtue of its part in a cosmic system of mutually determining
activities ; hence, in a relative and narrower sense it is that which is, on the whole,
in harmony with the conditions of its existence. The unatural is on the way to
dissolution or extinction. I have been at some pains to make these points clear,
because I am sure that the social sciences will be seriously hampered in their pro¬
gress until they get rid of those mediaeval conceptions of nature that the organic
sciences threw over a good while ago.
t See especially de Roberty Lm Sociologie^ second edition. Paris,1886, Chapter II.
12
The Province of Sociology.
Moreover, when rightly apprehended, sociology has a
perfect scientific unity. The conceptions here presented
transcend the old Comtist division into two sharply defined
parts, one dealing with social statics, the other with social
dsmamics.'' Structure can no longer be studied in any
organic science apart firom function, nor function apart from
structure, for we know that at every stage activity determines
form ; and form, activity. The sociologist refuses to sunder
in theory what nature has joined in fact. He centres his
attention on a moving equilibrium.
Franklin H. Giddings.
Bryn Mawr College.
> A division carried out by de Roberty in the classification of the special social
sciences.—Sociologie, p. 113.
suppi,ement to the
Annaes of the American Academy of Poeiticae and Sociae Science.
JUEV, 1894.
The Theory of Sociology.
BY
Franklin H. Giddings, M. A.
Professor of Sociology
In the Faculty of Political Science of Columbia College.
PHILADELPHIA:
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SCIENCE.
1894.
CONTENTS.
PAGE.
Chapter l.—The Sociological Idea 7
Chapter 11.—The Province of Sociology 13
Chapter 111.—The Problems of Sociology 37
Chapter IV.—The Primary Problems : Social Growth
and Structure 43
Chapter V.—The Secondary Problems : Social Process, Law
and Cause 63
Chapter VI.—The Method of Sociology 76
PREFACE.
In the following pages I have sketched the theoretical
positions that will be more fully described and defended in a
work on the Principles of Sociology, which is now well
advanced towards completion. I have incorporated portions
of two papers previously published, namely, "The Province
of Sociology," which appeared in The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science,
Vol. I, No. I, July, 1890, and "Sociology as a University
Study," which appeared in The Political Science Quarterly,
Vol. VI, No. 4, December, 1891. The fundamental ideas
of the theory here offered were presented in the earlier
paper.
F. H. G.
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania,
May 23, 1894.
(5)
THE THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
THE SOCIOLOGICAI, IDEA.
No science is at this moment in greater need of theoretical
organization than sociology. A rapidly growing body of
co-ordinated knowledge is called by this name. An increas¬
ing number of earnest thinkers in England, Germany,
France, Belgium, Italy and the United States are known as
sociologists. Several universities in Europe and in America
have introduced courses in sociology. Yet there is no defin¬
ite agreement among scientific men as to what the word shall
be understood to mean.
In some of the university courses it stands for a philosophy
of society. In others it denominates a study of the institutions
of tribal communities. In yet others it is applied to highly
special studies of pauperism, crime and philanthropy. In
the literature of sociology, also, an equally varied usage
may be found. Special investigators employ the word in
senses that are unrecognized by the systematic writers.
It is necessary, therefore, to ask whether sociology can
make good its claim to be well-defined, positive science, and
whether it is, after all, available as a university discipline.
What, in general, is the sociological idea ; and what place
has it in the program of modem positive science ? What,
more exactly, is the province and what are the problems of
sociology ? What are the underlying conceptions and chief
propositions of sociological theory ? What is the spirit and
what are the methods of sociological investigation? In
attempting to answer these questions, it will be both logical
and convenient to take them up in the order in which they
have here been stated.
The word ' ' sociology ' ' was first used by Auguste Comte,
in the ' ' Cours de Philosophie Positive, " as a name for that
(7)
8
Annai3 of the American Academy.
part of a positive, or verifiable, philosophy, which should
attempt to explain the phenomena of human society. It was
exactly equivalent to "social physics," for the task of
sociology was to discover the nature, the natural causes, and
the natural laws of society, and to banish from history,
politics and economics, all appeals to the metaphysical and
the supernatural, as they had been banished from astronomy
and from chemistry. Comte believed that by following the
positive method sociology could become in good measure a
science of previsions, forecasting the course of progress
before the event.
Since Comte, sociology has been developed mainly by men
who have felt the full force of an impulse that, in our day,
has revolutionized scientific thinking for all time to come.
The evolutionist explanation of the natural world has made
its way into every department of knowledge. The law of
natural selection and the conception of life as a process of
adjustment of the organism to its environment, have become
the very core of the biology and the psychology of to-day.
It was inevitable that the evolutionary philosophy should be
extended to embrace the phenomena of human life. The
science that had traced life from protoplasm to man could
not stop there. It must take cognizance of the ethnical
groups, the natural societies of men, and of all the phenom¬
ena that they exhibit, and inquire whether these things also
be not products of the universal evolution. Accordingly,
we find not only in the earlier writings of Mr. Herbert
Spencer, but also in those of Darwin and Haeckel, sugges¬
tions of an evolutionist account of social relations. These
hints were not of themselves a sociology. For this, other
factors, derived directly by induction from social phenomena,
were needed.* But they sufficed to show where some of the
ground lines of the new science must lie ; to reveal some of
* Systematic treatises in which the sociological problem has been approached
from the historical side, but in very different ways, are : ''Der Rassenkampf " by
Dr. Ludwig Gumplowicz, Innsbruck, 1883 ; " Grundriss der Sociologie," by the
same author, Vienna, 1885, and "Elements de Sociologie," by Viscount Combes de
Lestrade, Paris, 1889.
The Sociological Idea. 9
its fundamental conceptions, and to demonstrate that the
sociologist must be not only historian, economist and statis¬
tician, but biologist and psychologist as well. On evolutional
lines then, and through the labors of evolutionist thinkers,
modem sociology has taken shape. It is an interpretation
of human society in terms of natural causation. It refuses
Îmmmm
00k upon humanity as outside of the cosmic process, and
a law unto itself. Sociology is an attempt to account for the
origin, growth, stmcture and activities of human society by
the operation of physical, vital and psychical causes, work¬
ing together in a process of evolution.
It is hardly necessary to say that the most important
endeavor in this direction is contained in Mr. Spencer's
system of "Synthetic Philosophy," but it maybe well to
observe that most of the writers who have passed judgment
on Mr. Spencer's sociological doctrines have failed to inform
themselves as to the underlying principles from which his con¬
clusions have been drawn. They have sought his sociologi¬
cal system in those of his books that bear sociologfical titles,
while, in fact, the basal theorems of his sociological thought
are scattered throughout the second half of the volume called
" First Principles," and must be put together by the reader
with some labor. These theorems, taken together, are an
interpretation of social changes in terms of those laws of the
persistence of force, the direction and rhythm of motion,
the integration of matter and the differentiation of form, that,
together, make up Mr. Spencer's well-known formula of
universal evolution. At bottom this is a physical explana¬
tion, and Spencerian sociology in general, whether formu¬
lated by Mr. Spencer or by other writers under the influence
of his thought, is essentially a physical philosophy of soci¬
ety, notwithstanding its liberal use of biological and psycho¬
logical data.
But from its origin in the mind of Comte down to the
the present moment, the sociological conception has in¬
volved a recognition, more or less reluctant perhaps, but
unmistakable, of another interpretation which must be
lo Annai^ of the American Academy.
reconciled with the physical explanation. Comte believed that,
scientifically-trained statesmen could reorganize society and
guide its progress. In Spencer the thought becomes par¬
tially negative. The statesman cannot make society better
by his art, but he can make it indefinitely worse. In Lester
F. Ward* the thought has again become wholly positive.
Society can convert the natural process of evolution into an.
artificial process. It can volitionally shape its own destiny.
It can become teleologically dynamic.
The detailed attempt to reconcile these two explanations-
has been made with great ability by Alfred Fouillée in his
critical work, "La Science Sociale Contemporaine Less-
elaborately it is made by Schaffle in the * ' Bau und Lebeii
des socialen Körpers "X and by Guillaume De Greef in his
"Introduction a la Sociologie."%
In truth the physical, or objective, and the volitional, or
subjective, interpretations of human society have contended
with each other from early times, for, apart from systematic-
sociology, many essays have been made to account in a
rational way for social origins and progress.
Beginning with the ' ' Politics ' ' of Aristotle, we trace-
through Montesquieu and the physiocrats an objective ex¬
planation in terms of race, soil, climate, heredity and histori¬
cal conditions. Through Hobbes, Locke, Hume, Bentham,
Berkeley, Kant and Hegel, we follow a subjective interpreta¬
tion in terms of human nature, utility, ethical imperatives
and ideals. Subj ective sociology is a theory of social choices.
Very recently, taking the form of a pure theory of utility, it
has undergone a remarkable development, begim by Jevons
and Walras, and continued by Austrian and American econo¬
mists, who have contended that the phenomena of motive-
and choice, and consequently the social activities and rela¬
tions that are determined by choice, can be formulated not
» "Dynamic Sociology," two vols., New York, 1S83, and "The Psychic Factors-
of Civilization," Boston, 1893.
t Paris, 1885.
X Tübingen, 1881.
§ Brussels and Paris, 1886 and 1889.
The Sociological Idea. ii
only scientifically in a qualitative sense, but even mathe¬
matically, Therefore it is not strange that objective expla¬
nations of society, which have been so long regarded as
peculiarly ' ' positive, ' ' should be looked upon by many
students at the present moment as descriptive merely, and
that the utilitarian, subjective interpretation should be
thought to be of superior depth and precision.
Is it not evident that a true science of society must recog¬
nize impartially the physical and the volitional aspects of
the phenomena ? Is it not evident that, if we are ever to
have a definite, coherent theoretical sociology, we must con¬
struct a theory that will unite in no merely artificial way, but
logically, as complementary parts of the whole, the objective
and the subjective explanations ?
Without answering these questions dogmatically, I may
say that I expect that further critical and constructive work
in sociology will answer them affirmatively. It will be
shown that either the objective or the subjective account is
hopelessly lame without the other.
The complete theory, I venture to think, will be some¬
thing like this:
Social aggregates are formed at first by external condi¬
tions, such as food supply, temperature and the contact or
conflict of individuals or stocks. So far the process is physical.
But presently social aggregation begins to react favorably
on the pleasure and on the life-chances of individuals. In¬
dividuals become aware of this fact, and the volitional
process begins. Thenceforward the associated individuals
seek deliberately to extend and to perfect their social rela¬
tions. Accordingly, individual and social choices become
important factors in social causation. Among scores of
social relations and activities that are accidentally estab¬
lished, tried, or thought of, some appeal to consciousness as
agreeable or desirable, while others arouse antagonism. The
associated individuals choose and select, endeavoring to
strengthen and perpetuate some relations, to make an end
of others.
12 Annals op the American Academy,
Now, however, the physical process reappears. Choices
have various consequences. Judged broadly, in their bear¬
ing on the vigor, development and welfare of the community,
choices may be ignorant, foolish and harmful, or enlightened,
wise and beneficial. Here, then, is a new and almost limit¬
less field for natural selection to work in. In the struggle
for existence, choices, no less than individuals, may or may
not survive. The choices and resulting activities and
relations that, on the whole and in the long run, are baneful
are terminated, perhaps through the extinction of indi¬
viduals, perhaps through the disappearance of whole socie¬
ties.
Thus the cycle of social causation begins and ends in the
physical process. Intermediate between beginning and com¬
pletion is the volitional process of artificial selection or of
conscious choosing. But this is by no means, as Mr. Ward
contends, a substitution of an artificial for a natural process.
It is merely an enormous multiplication of the variations on
which natural selection finally acts.
Accordingly the sociologist has three main quests. First,
he must try to discover the conditions that determine mere
aggregation and concourse. Secondly, he must try to dis¬
cover the law that governs social choices, the law, that is, of
the subjective process. Thirdly, he must try to discover also
the law that governs the natural selection and survival of
choices, the law, that is, of the objective process.
CHAPTER II.
THÊ PROVINCE OF SOCIOLOGY,
Such, in general, is the sociological idea. Of itself, how¬
ever, it is not a science. A living science, holding the
allegiance of practical investigators, is likely to be something
less or something more than an organic part of a philoso¬
pher's system of knowledge. Comte invented the word soci¬
ology and built up a sociological theory, because he felt that
the "philosophie positive" would be but a sorry fragment
if left without a body of humanist doctrine to supplement
biology. Mr. Spencer, with the results of a later and most
brilliant half-century of discovery at his command, adopted
the word and remoulded the doctrine, because he realized
that a complete account of universal evolution must explain
the origin and structure of human societies no less than the
genesis of species and the integration of star-dust. But the
question must now be raised—How much of this doctrine
belongs properly within any one science? A social phil¬
osophy of Comtist or Spencerian dimensions ought, first of
all, to determine its province by defining its relation to other
branches of knowledge, and especially to those narrower
sciences that have been dividing among themselves a patient
and ihiitful study of no small portion of observable social
phenomena. We ought not to assume, without further
analysis, that the natural interpretation of society is the
function of one single, all-embracing science. The particular
social sciences have not been altogether devoid of the posi¬
tive character.
One group of such studies, known collectively as the politi¬
cal sciences, includes political economy, the philosoph}»^ of
law and the theory of the State. Another includes archae¬
ology, comparative philology and the comparative study of
religions. Does sociology embrace these various departments
of investigation ? If so, is it anything more than a collective
(13)
14 Annals of thb American Academy.
name for the sum of the social sciences ? Assuming that it
is more than a collective name, does it set aside the theo¬
retical principles of the special social sciences or does it sub¬
stitute others for them, or does it adopt and co-ordinate
them?
According to the Spencerian conception, political economy,
jurisprudence, the theory of the State, and such disciplines
as comparative philology are differentiated parts of sociology,
and therefore suf&ciently distinct though co-ordinated
sciences. In the view of Comte they are not true sciences
at ^all. Comte's disparaging notion of political economy is
too well known to need quotation. The life of society he
conceived as indivisible; he believed that legitimate science
could study it only as a whole. It is the Spencerian view
that one encounters in modem discussions, yet accompanied
more often than not, by plain intimations that only the subdi¬
visions of sociology—the specialized social sciences—are of
much concern to serious scholars. Regarded as a whole of
which the parts are definitely organized sciences, grown
already to such magnitude that the best equipped student
can hardly hope to master any one of them in a lifetime,
sociology is too vast a subject for practical purposes. One
might as well apply to it at once Schopenhauer's epigram¬
matic description of history—' ' certainly rational knowledge,
but not a science."
Yet the word will not be put by. A writer no sooner
resolves that he will not take all social knowledge for his
province than he tries to find a substance for the disem¬
bodied name. So it turns out that every social philosopher
creates a sociology in the image of his professional specialty.
To the economist sociology is a penumbral political
economy—a scientific outer darkness—for inconvenient
problems and obstinate facts that will not live peaceably with
well-bred formulas. To the alienist and criminal anthro¬
pologist it is a social pathology. To the ethnologist it is
that subdivision of his own science which supplements the
account of racial traits by a description of social organization.
The Province of Socioeogv.
15
To the comparative mythologist and student of folklore
it is an account of the evolution of culture.
A living science is not created in this way. It grows
from a distinct nucleus. It becomes every decade more
clearly individuated. It makes for itself a plainly circum¬
scribed field. Its problems are unmistakably diflferent from
those of any other department of investigation.
These limitations seem to have been perceived more
•clearly by some other people than by the sociologists them¬
selves. A suggestive disagreement of opinion between two
eminent educators in the university of Brussels has put the
matter in the strongest possible light. M. Guillaume De
Greef, whose ' ' Introduction à la Sociologie " I have found to
be on the whole more valuable than any other general work
after Mr. Spencer's, made an earnest plea in the preface of
his " Première Partie,^' written in 1886, for the creation of
chairs and even faculties of sociology, which should impart
instruction in accordance with a certain classification of
social phenomena that M. De Greef makes very important
in his system. Now this classification is one of the all-
comprehending schemes. It includes everything, from the
husbanding of com and wine to electioneering contests in
the Institute of France. At the opening of the university
on October 15, 1888, the rector, M. Van der Rest, took
' ' La Sociologie ' ' as the theme of his discourse, which was
a keen and exceedingly plain-spoken argument against M.
De Greef's views, and a justification of refusal to institute the
special chair desired. Sociology was characterized as
a badly determined science, that presents no well-defined line of
demarcation from the moral and political sciences, and that touches
the most varied questions, all of which, nevertheless, are comprised
within the limits of the studies of existing chairs.
The rector's own view of sociology was summed up as
follows:
I adopt the word but simply as the name of a concept of the human
mind. Accepting the sense that has been given to it, I would mean
by it the science of social phenomena. But I would add that if we go
beyond the domain of abstraction, the science so defined can be
16 Annai<s of the American Academy.
understood in one of two ways only: either it will have for its object a
study of men united in society, including all the facts that it can find in
social life, disengaging their laws and connecting the social present
with the past and the future—in which case the science cannot be con¬
structed, and will be nothing more than the ensemble of our political
and moral sciences bound together in a chimerical unity; or it will
consist only of general views on social progress, and then it seems to
me impossible to make out the line of demarcation that separates
sociology from a much older science, the philosophy of history.*
We need not accept M. Van der Rest's conclusion that a
concrete sociology must be either the ensemble of the moral
and political sciences or a philosophy of history, but we may
agree with him that if it is an indefinite, badly determined
thing, it cannot be a university study. Sociology cannot be
taught as an organon of the social sciences, nor yet as a
mass of unrelated facts left over from other researches.
Clear thinking and a discriminating use of terms will
create order from the confusion and establish sociology in
its rightful position, where it can no longer encroach on the
territory of other sciences nor be crowded out of the field by
them. Sociology is a general social science, but a general
science is not necessarily a group of sciences. No doubt the
word will continue to be used as a short term for the social
sciences collectively, and there is no harm in that. Again,
in a synthetic philosophy like Mr. Spencer's it can always
be used legitimately to denote an explanation of social evo¬
lution in broad outlines of abstract truth. But the sociology
of the working sociologist, and of the university, will be a
definite and concrete body of knowledge that can be pre¬
sented in the class-room and worked over in the seminarium.
These last conditions are crucial for the existence of the
science; for when sociology has as distinct a place in the
working program of the university as political economy
or psychology, its scientific claims will be beyond cavil. But
that will be only when educated men have learned to con¬
ceive of sociology as distinctly and concretely as they con¬
ceive of other sciences. The word must instantly call to
*" La Sociologie," Bruxelles, 1888, p. 33.
The Province of Sociowgy.
17
mind a particular class of phenomena and a definite group
of co-ordinated problems.
That such distinct, concrete conceptions will, in time, dis¬
place the vague notions now afloat, is beyond reasonable
doubt. If we adhere to methods of sound logic, and accept
guidance from the history of other sciences, we cannot find
it especially difidcult to mark off" sociology from the special
social sciences when once we apply ourselves seriously to
the task. Whenever phenomena belonging to a single
class, and therefore properly the subject-matter of a single
science, are so numerous and complicated that no one inves¬
tigator can hope to become acquainted with them all, they
will be partitioned among many particular sciences; yet
there may be a general science of the phenomena in their
entirety, as a class, on one condition, namely, the general
science must deal with attributes of the class that are com¬
mon to all of its sub-classes and not with the particular
attributes of any sub-class. Such common attributes are
elementary. General principles are fundamental. A gen¬
eral science, therefore, is a science of elements and first
principles.
Biology affords the most helpful analogy. The word
" biology " like "sociology," was proposed by Comte, and
he used both the one and the other for like reasons. He
believed in a science of life as a whole, as in a science of
society as a whole. But " biology," like " sociology," had
no vogue until Mr. Spencer took it up. All but the youngest
of our scientific men can remember when it began to creep
into college and university catalogues. Neither the word
nor the idea obtained recognition without a struggle. What
was there in biology, the objectors said, that was not already
taught as " natural history," or as botany and zoology, or
as anatomy and physiology ? The reply of the biologists
was that the essential phenomena of life—cellular structure,
nutrition and waste, growth and reproduction, adaptation to
environment, and natural selection—are common to animal
and plant; that structure and function are unintelligible
î8 Annai<s op the American Academy.
apart from each other; and that the student will therefore
get a false or distorted view of his subject unless he is made
to see the phenomena of life in their unity as well as in their
special phases. He should study botany and zoology, of
course, but he should be grounded first in biology, the
science of the essential and universal phenomena of life
under all its varied forms. This view of the matter wop its
way by mere inherent truthfulness and good sense. Gen¬
eral biology became a working laboratory science, conceived
and pursued as a groundwork of more special biological
sciences.
The question about sociology is precisely similar and
must be answered in the same way. Wh^t aspect of social
life is not already brought under scrutiny in one or more of
the economic, political, or historical courses already provided
in well-organized universities? Perhaps none, yet, as the
sociologist sees it, this is not the real question. Is society
after all a whole? Is social activity continuous? Are there
certain essential facts, causes or laws in society, which are
common to communities of all kinds, at all times, and which
underlie and explain the more special social forms ? If we
must answer ' ' yes, ' ' then these universal truths should be
taught. To teach ethnology, the philosophy of history,
political economy and the theory of the State, to men who
have not learned these first principles of sociology, is like
teaching astronomy or thermodynamics to men who have
not learned the Newtonian laws of motion. An analysis,
then, of the general characteristics of social phenomena and
a formulation of the general laws of social evolution, should
be made the basis of special study in all departments of
social science.
Sociology therefore may be defined as the science of soci^
elements and first principles. It is not the inclusive, but the
fundamental social science. It is not the sum of the social
sciences, but the groundwork, in which they find a common
basis. Its far-reaching principles are the postulates of spe¬
cial sciences, and as such they co-ordinate and bind together
Taß Province de Socioeogy.
19
the whole body of social generalizations into a large scientific
unity. Not concerned with the detail of social phenomena,
sociology is intermediate between the organic sciences on the
one hand, and the political and historical sciences on the
other. Sociology rests on biology and psychology. The
special social sciences rest on sociology.
Yet, after all, have we not overlooked an important possi¬
bility ? May it not be that our fundamental social science,
granting that there is and must be one, is no new and un¬
familiar knowledge, but simply one of those older social
sciences that we have called special; politics for example, or
political economy ?
The fundamental social science, whatever it is, must not
take for granted social data that admit of scientific explana¬
tion by reduction to simpler terms. If either political
economy or the theory of the State, or any other social sci¬
ence, builds on assumptions that are, demonstrably, induc¬
tions from more elementary social truths, such a science has
no claim to logical precedence. Whether its interpretations
are objective or subjective in form, the ultimate social science
must reduce its subject-matter to primary social phenomena,
or to incipient social niotives.
So far, then, as the objective interpretation is concerned,
neither political economy nor politics can pretend that it goes
back to primary facts in the social category.
Both frankly assume without explanation the phenomena
of human association.
It is true that systematic works on political economy have
usually included discussions of the Malthusian theory of
population, and of the hypothesis of the diminishing returns
of land, and have thereby put forward partial explanations
of the interaction between population and environment.
But of these discussions it is to be said, first, that they are
not logically parts of political economy proper. For political
oconomy in a strict sense, they are merely data, as many of the
text writers long since recognized, the constructive study of
which, on their own merits, must fall within sociology, if
20 Annaiä op the American Academy.
such a science is ever elaborated. In the second place, even
if we include them in political economy, they do not account
for association. Population may increase at any possible
rate, and unequal returns from land may distribute the
increase unequally, sparsely here and densely there, but
people do not therefore necessarily associate. As much as
this political economy admits by its procedure, for in all its
further discussions—as of co-operation and division of labor,
of combination and competition, of exchange and distribu¬
tion—^political economy at once takes the whole social milieu
for granted. The benefits fiowing from all these things
react favorably on association, but they are not the first
cause of association. They could not have come into exist¬
ence before association itself was established.
In the same way, in political science as it has been written,
there have been, since Aristotle's day, long prefatory
accoimts of the origins of human communities, usually
mere elaborations of the patriarchal theory. But the greatest
step forward that political science has made in recent years,
has been its discovery that its province is not co-extensive
with the investigation of society, and that the lines of
demarcation can be definitely drawn. In his great work on
"Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law,"
Professor Burgess has not only sharply distinguished the
government from the State, but for the first time in political
philosophy, he has clearly distinguished the State as it is
organized in the constitution from the State behind the con¬
stitution. "A population speaking a common language and
having common ideas as to the fundamental principles of
rights and wrongs, and resident upon a territory separated
by high mountain ranges or broad bodies of water or by
climatic differences from other territory,"* such is the State
behind the constitution. It " presents us with the natural
basis of a true and permanent political establishment. ' ' It
is ' ' the womb of constitutions and of revolutions. ' ' Political
*"The American Commonwealth," Political Science Quarterly, Vol. I, No. i,
March, 1886, page 13.
The Province of Socioeogy.
21
science studies the State within the constitution and shows
how it expresses its will in acts of government. It in¬
quires how this State within the constitution is created and
moulded by the State behind the constitution, but beyond
this political science proper does not go. The State behind
the constitution, or natural society as we should otherwise
call it, is for politics, as for political economy, a datum.
The detailed study of its origins and evolution falls within
the province of sociology.
If, now, we turn to subjective interpretations, or the
explanation of social phenomena in terms of motive, we
shall find that here, also, the political and other social sci¬
ences assume, to start with, certain premises, which, on
further examination, turn out to be sociological truths,
neither simple nor elementary.
We will begin, as before, with political economy. Econo¬
mists have lately gained new insight into the nature of the
premises of economic theory. They are no longer content to
describe their science as concerned merely about material
wealth. The psychological nomenclature that is finding its
way so rapidly into current economic discussion is significant
chiefly of new points of view and of an important change of
perspective. The purely mental phenomena of wants and
satisfactions are brought into the foreground. The produc¬
tion of material commodities is no longer placed first in
exposition; for it is seen that certain laws of consumption,
reigning deep down in human nature, govern the whole
process of production and exchange. Many years ago
President Walker described consumption as the dynamics of
wealth, and we are now just beginning to understand how
much the saying may mean. Desires, it is evident, are the
motive forces of the economic world. According to their
varying numbers, intensities and forms are shaped the out¬
ward activities of men and the myriad phases of industry
and trade.
But what, then, of the origin of desires themselves?
What conditions have determined their evolution, from those
22 Annals op the American Academy.
crude, primitive wants of a purely animal existence, that the
savage shares with baboons and wild gorillas, up to those of
the "good gorilla," as M. Reuan has called him, the man
of gentle instincts and cultivated tastes ? These are inter¬
esting questions, but the economist does not answer them.
He takes desires as he finds them, save in so far as he finds
it necessary, in working out the dynamic phases of his sub¬
ject, to observe the reactions of economic life itself upon
desire. But in general, desires are for him the premises of
an intrieate deductive scheme, and nothing more.
How is it with the theory of the State ? Political science,
too, finds its premises in facts of human nature. The motive
forces of political life, as of economic life, are the desires of
men, but under another aspect—desires no longer individual
merely, and no longer a craving for satisfactions that must
come for the most part in material forms. They are desires
massed and generalized; desires felt simultaneously and con¬
tinuously by thousands, or even bj* millions of men, who
are by them simultaneously moved to concerted action. They
are desires of what we may call the social mind in distinction
from the individual mind, and they are chiefly for such ideal
things as national power and renown, or conditions of liberty
and peace. Transmuted into will, they become the phenom¬
enon of sovereignty—the obedience-compelling power of the
State. Political science describes these gigantic forces of the
social mind and studies their action ; but it no more concerns
itself with their geneses than political economy concerns
itself with the genesis of individual desires. It simply
assumes for every nation a national character, and is content
that the political constitution of the State can be scientifically
deduced from the character assumed. It takes the fact of
sovereignty and builds upon it, and does not speculate how
sovereignty came to be, as did Hobbes and lyocke and Rous¬
seau. It starts exactly where Aristotle started, with the
dictum that man is a political animal, and does not attempt
to go farther back.
The Province ce Socioi,ogy.
23
There is a group of sciences that are concerned with vari¬
ous special phases of the social mind. The foundation of
these is comparative philology, which Renan, writing in
1848 of the future of science, with clear vision and happy
phrase described as ' ' the exact science of things intellectual.' '
On this science have been built the sciences of comparative
mythology and comparative religion, and materials are even
now accumulating for a science of comparative art. Of all
these sciences, as of economics and politics, the postulates,
not always distinctly stated but always implied, are human
desires ; for aspiration is but desire blending itself with belief
and rising into the ideal. Unlike economics and politics,^
however, these sciences of Culturgeschichte do to some extent
deal directly with the genesis of the mental states that are
their postulates. But they study them only in very special
phases and with a narrowly specific purpose. Upon the
broad question of the evolution and ultimate causation of
desires in general, they have no occasion to enter.
Thus it would appear that there is no one of the recognized
social sciences that takes for its peculiar problem the investi¬
gation of the origins of those motive forces that are every¬
where assumed to account for all that comes to pass in the
social life of mankind. Yet though not investigated, nor
taken up for patient scientific analysis, these origins are
by no means hidden. The manner of their causation is
everywhere taken for granted, as if so simple a thing
could not possibly be overlooked or stand in need of explana¬
tion. Association, comradeship, co-operation, have con¬
verted the wild gorilla into the good gorilla and brought it
to be that, in the quaint words of Bacon,
there is in man's nature a secret inclination and motion towards love
of others, which if it be not spent on some one or a few, doth naturally
spend itself towards many, and maketh men become humane and
charitable, as it is seen sometimes in friars.
Or to drop the figure—for it is nothing more, since the
human progenitor must have been a social and companion¬
able sort of ape, and no gorilla at all—it has been the
24 Annai^ of the American Academy.
rubbing of crude natures together that has made fine natures.
It has been the well-nigh infinite multiplication of sensa¬
tions, experiences, suggestions, due to the prolonged and
intimate gregariousness of human hordes in those favorable
environments where population could become relatively
dense, that has created the human mind and filled it with
those innumerable wants that impel to ceaseless effort and
tireless questioning of the unknown. That as " iron sharp-
eneth iron so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his
friend," was the earliest and the greatest discovery ever
made in sociology.
If the foregoing account is true to logic and fact, no one
of the particular social sciences is the primary science of
society, either as an objective or as a subjective explanation.
There remains, however, one further possibility. Admit¬
ting that political economy as usually defined and taught is
a particular social science, logically an off-shoot of sociology',
an objector may claim that we have now an abstract or
pure economics, preliminary to ' ' political " or " social ' '
economy, and consisting of theories of subjective utility,
cost and value, which, so far from being a part or branch
of sociology, is logically antecedent to all branches.
This objection is not only inherently plausible, but it may
seem to derive support from the claims already conceded in
behalf of subjective interpretations in the social sciences
generally. If choices are not capricious are they not gov¬
erned by considerations of utility, and is not subjective
utility therefore antecedent logically and developmentally to
society ? Would not the individual who lived in contact with
nature enjoy subjective utility every time he ate his food or
lay in the sun, though there were no society ? If so, is not
the theory of utility precedent to sociology ?
Without entering here upon the discussion of the utili¬
tarian theory of choices I am prepared to deny that, as far
as choice is determined by subjective utility, it is evolution-
ally antecedent to association. It can be shown that, apart
from association, there could never have been any such thing
The Province op Socioeogy.
25
-as subjective utility. Therefore there is no independent
science of utility. The theory of utility is merely a part of
theoretical sociology.
In demonstration of these propositions, the first step is to
■expose a fallacy of definition. A tendency has crept into
recent economic writing to use the term subjective utility as
if it meant merely any degree of pleasurable feeling, how¬
ever slight, and meant nothing whatever in addition to
pleasure, or in combination with it. If this usage is not
abandoned, economists will soon find themselves involved in
hopeless difiiculties. The pleasure element in subjective
utility must be more than infinitesimal. It must be of suf¬
ficient magnitude to have importance for consciousness, and
to admit of appreciable distinctions of more and less.
Besides, pleasure is not the only element. Subjective
utility is pleasurable feeling in combination with knowledge
that the pleasure is consequent upon an external condition
or thing, namely, an objective utility.* Unless this intel¬
lectual factor is included, the whole theory of utility, which
has been constructed with so much labor, falls into ruin, for
the theory has always tacitly assumed, as its minor premise,
that varying states of feeling are accompanied by some
measure of knowledge of the qualitative or quantitative
changes in external conditions to which the states of feeling
respond.
The next step, therefore, is to show that pleasurable feel¬
ing can become voluminous enough to admit of appreciable
•distinctions of more and less, only under social conditions,
and that, in like manner, it is only in social life that the
intellectual element can undergo a corresponding evolution.
Uet it be supposed that an organism owing nothing to
contact or association with its fellows is capable of pleasure
and pain. Feeling is none the less dependent on external
stimuli. The pleasure of eating is dependent on the objective
* For the technical distinction between subjective and objective utility the reader
is referred to the abstract in Vol. VI, Nos. i and 2, of the "Publications of the
American Economic Association," of a paper read by the author at the Washington
meeting of the Association, in December, 1890.
26 Ann ais op the American Academy.
utility, food. Unless the food is varied and abundant,,
and unless the activity of the organism in seeking and
securing food is varied and strenuous, the capacity for plea¬
sure will remain infinitesimal. What will cause its expan¬
sion ? The one possible reply is, concourse, suggestion and
imitation. The individual left to itself would find little prey
and develop little skill in capture. A thousand associated
individuals will among them find many kinds and sources
of supply, and will hit upon many arts of conquest. Through
imitation all will rush for the food discovered by each, and
all will acquire the skill of each. Thus, though food is the
primary objective utility, the secondary one, without which
the first could never have been of more than infinitesimal
importance for consciousness, is the suggestive conduct of a
fellow-creature.
In suggestion and imitation we have, beyond any doubt,
those most primary, most elementary, social facts, for which
we have been looking. They are the phenomena that dif¬
ferentiate association, in the true or social sense, from mere
physical association or concourse. It is because neither
political economy nor politics concerns itself with them that,
as was said a few paragraphs back, neither of those sciences
explains the human association which both are obliged to
assume as a datum. No more profound sociological study
has yet appeared than M. Tarde's fascinating volume, ''Les
Lois d VImitation," * in which imitation is described as the
characteristic social bond, antecedent to all mutual aid,
division of labor and contract, and is examined in detail, as
it appears in the complicated activities of modem civilization.
My immediate contention, however, includes more than
this. Not only are suggestion and imitation the primary
social facts, they are also, I affirm, among the most element¬
ary phenomena of utility, both objective and subjective.
They are precisely the phenomena that raise one factor of
subjective utility, namely, pleasurable feeling, to a sufficient
magnitude to make it of any importance for consciousness
»Paris, 1890.
The Province op Sociology. 27
or for conduct. Consequently, from their very beginnings,
pleasurable feeling within and association without are insep¬
arably bound together. Both are antecedent to true subjec¬
tive utility, to subjective cost and to subjective value. The
subjective interpretation of society in terms of these concep¬
tions cannot possibly take us all the way back to social
foundations in analysis, or to social beginnings in time.
Social evolution is antecedent to all subjective utility. When,.
in the course of social evolution subjective utility appears,
it enters as a new factor into the process, and is thenceforth
antecedent to many of the higher or more complicated social
developments. These latter, therefore, but these only, admit
of the subjective interpretation in terms of utilitarian theory.
How, then, are subjective utility, cost and value, evolved
in the social process? The trouble of looking into this ques¬
tion will be well repaid. We shall get not only a better
idea of elementary social phenomena, but a far clearer con¬
ception of the conditions on which every mode and degree
of utility depends.
Pleasurable feeling, we say, is conditioned by the objec¬
tive utility, food. But what, then, is food ? For the animal
world it is neither more nor less than a succession of van¬
quished organisms, which have been engaged, through their
little day, in a life and death struggle with other organ¬
isms, and have at last met the conqueror that is to devour
and assimilate them. Conflict, conquest and death are the
preliminary conditions of utility. Life continues but by
devouring life, and from this law there is no deliverance.
No more in organic than in inorganic nature can we pre¬
vent the ceaseless dissipation of energy and integration of
matter which constitutes the universal evolution. When
masses pf matter, whether lifeless or living, in their endlesa
moving to and fro come within range of each other's influ¬
ence, the less potent is absorbed by the more potent, or the
two become united as one.
For conscious creatures success in the struggle means
pleasure, but in the struggle itself there are experiences of
28 Annaiä op the American Academy.
pain, weariness, terror, and perhaps even of physical mutila¬
tion. These are elements of that subjective cost by which
all subjective utility is conditioned.
Now while there is no escape from the universal conflict,
and all our pleasure must be bought with pain, it is possible
to change the quantities of both pain and pleasure, and to
alter their ratio to each other. The highest conscious
organism, man, with an enormously greater capacity for
pleasure than any rival possesses, subsists mainly on organ¬
isms either devoid of sensation, as vegetation, or compara¬
tively low in the animal scale, and he appropriates them
with a minimum of effort. Pleasure admits of indefinite
increase, pain of indefinite decrease.
But no merely individual effort or experience could achieve
these desirable results. They are social products, conse¬
quences of social evolution, which become of ever greater
importance as social organization becomes more perfect.
The social condition on which they depend is next in gener¬
ality after imitation, and is that which shapes the majority
of positive social relations. Pleasure no less than pain is
bom of conflict, but the progressive evolution of pleasure
and its appreciable increase, both absolute and relative,
depend on the progressive limitation and regulation of con¬
quest and absorption by toleration and alliance.
In an exhaustive treatise on the forms and limitations
of conflict in human society, Les Luttes entre Sociétés
Humaines'''^ M. J. Novicow has inquired deeply into the
mutual reactions of conflict and alliance. He has directed
attention to the universality of conflict, and has reminded
us that victory always creates subordination, which may
vary in degree between the widest extremes. M. Novicow
seems not to have perceived the bearing of his observations
upon the theory of utility, and he is interested, therefore,
chiefly in the relation of conflict and alliance to social group¬
ing. Whatever the degree of subordination resulting from
conflict and conquest, some grouping or other is modified.
• Paris, 1893.
Thb Province of Socioi^ogy.
29
If subordination is not pushed to the point of annihilation
and absorption, conquest is limited by alliance, and a new-
corporate individuality is created. Here is the suggestion
of an interesting generalization. The higher types of asso¬
ciation come into existence only as a partial subordination
displaces that which is total. If the amoeba had always
devoured other amoebae there never would have been poly-
cellular organisms. If every horde had massacred all its
enemies there never woiild have been tribe nor city.
This is an important principle in the objective explanation
of society. The corresponding subjective principle, which
M. Novicow has not formulated, is not of less consequence.
Only as the absolute subordination of ruthless conquest is
displaced by the mild and partial subordination of alliance,
can there be either an absolute or a relative increase of
pleasure, progressively and on a large scale. On the other
hand, where alliance does limit conquest, as we have now to
observe, the absolute and the relative increase of pleasure are
assured.
Intermediate between conflict and alliance is a stage that
M. Novicow has not mentioned, that of toleration. The
struggle for food discloses the fact that creatures of the same
kind or species are usually too nearly equal in strength and
skill for any large number of them to depend habitually on
conquests over their fellows for subsistence. They are forced
to tolerate each other and to convert their struggle against
one another into a war on lesser creatures.
The necessary consequence is an increase of the pleasure
element of subjective utility. No longer warring against each
other, their relatively rapid multiplication is assured. They
are compelled, therefore, to explore their environment to dis¬
cover its possibilities and incidentally to perfect their adjust¬
ment to a wider range of conditions. Two consequences,
among others, follow: First, the larger experience in food-
getting and the greater variety of food, make the food supply
more certain. The pains of privation will be less often felt.
Secondly, beyond certain limits varied food aflbrds more
30 Annai<s o? the American Academy.
pleasure, quantity for quantity, than food of one kind. This
is merely a corollary of the familiar law of subjective utility,
that the pleasure derived from the consumption of successive
increments of a given commodity, within the same brief
time period, is of decreasing intensity, moving always toward
the zero of satiety.
Toleration once established, more positive relations are at
any time possible. Besides refraining from aggressions upon
one another the individuals of a social group begin to aid
each other in active v^ays. They unite to defend each other
against enemies. Thej^ co-operate in procuring and prepar¬
ing food and in finding and making shelter. Antagonism
and struggle, first checked by toleration, have now been suc¬
ceeded by alliance. The possibilities of pleasure are enor¬
mously increased, for alliance is an auxiliary objective utility
of immense power. It makes possible conquests over nature
and lower organisms that would be wholly impossible by
individual effort.
It is probable that all modes of alliance begin accidentally
and unconsciously. By mere chance, perhaps, simple forms
of co-operation are hit upon, and perhaps by natural selec¬
tion and survival the creatures which thus do aid each other,
even without consciously formulated plan, get ahead of
others which do not even fortuitously combine.
But by this time conscious planning has become possible.
True subjective utility has now at last come into existence,
and so has true subjective cost. Pleasure and pain have
become sufficient in magnitude to admit of appreciable dis¬
tinctions of more and less. A great variety of experiences
has developed also the intellectual factor, which is pre¬
eminently a product of social life, for attention, memory and
judgment are developed mainly by observation and imitation
of fellow creatures. Pleasure, therefore, has become defin¬
itely associated in consciousness with the perception of
external conditions on which it depends. The feeling and
the perception together are subjective utility. Pain has
become associated in like manner with a perception of other
Thií Province of Sociology. 31
external conditions and with a perception of its relation to
pleasure. This feeling and these perceptions together are
subjective cost.
When subjective utility and subjective cost have become
well established phenomena of consciousness, and when
intellectual development, consequent upon association, has
gone far enough to render possible rather complex com¬
parisons of quantities, another economic idea, that of sub¬
jective value, can emerge. By no possibility can it appear
sooner. More absurd even than the identification of sub¬
jective utility with mere pleasure has been the identification
•of subjective value with pleasure. Subjective value is a
highly complex notion.
Only the briefest account of it can be given here.* When
a variety of objective utilities has been attained, and a range
of choice is thereby presented to each individual conscious¬
ness, a comparison of utilities with one another, and with
their respective costs, is made. Utilities and costs are
pictured in imagination before they are actually experienced,
and different judgments are formed about them. The
effective utilities, in particular, are estimated. By these
are meant the relative capabilities of like kinds and quanti¬
ties of commodity to afford satisfaction imder varying condi¬
tions of want. The effective utility of a ton of coal is not
the same in July as in February. For comparative judg¬
ments or estimations of effective utilities we use the term
valuations. Subjective value is an estimate of an effective
utility that is still prospective. It results from a com¬
parison of different utilities and different costs.
Such are the origins of subjective utility, cost and value.
They are social products. We can, if we choose, study
them as pure abstractions, ignoring their sociological antece¬
dents. But we cannot set up a pure science of utility and
say that it is logically antecedent to a science of society.
♦ For the technical presentation of this subject, see an abstract of a paper by the
author, read before the American Economic Association at Chautauqua, August,
1892. '* Publications of the American Economic Association," Vol. VIII, No. i.
32 Annai^s ok the American Academy.
Neither can we hope by studying utility as an abstraction:
merely, to arrive at particularly fruitful conclusions. Utility
no more exists apart from society than vitality apart from
living matter. The attempt to study utility independently
has been like the attempt of mediaeval physiologists to study
vitality as a principle or entity.*
On the other hand, the theory of utñity, with its concrete
affiliations, is not one of the particular social sciences. It is
antecedent to them all. It is not only the basis of modem
political economy; long before its economic importance was
perceived it was made by Bentham the basis of political
theory and of jurispradence. Just in so far as politics and
jurispradence are analytical and deductive, they derive their
principles from the theory of utility.
The theory of utility therefore is not an independent sci¬
ence. It is an integral part of sociology.
Nor can any other science or subdivision of science that
concerns itself with social phenomena establish against soci¬
ology a better claim to precedence. No investigation within
these fields can be more ftmdamental than a study of confiict
and imitation, toleration and alliance, in their relations to
utility and value and to each other. Dealing with these
subjects, sociology has the best possible right to describe
itself as the science of social elements and first principles.
It may be well to indicate briefly how, if this view of
sociology is accepted, the sciences of political economy,
jurispradence and politics, at once assume definite relations
toward one another as complementary parts of that detailed
study of society in its advanced evolution, upon which soci¬
ology does not enter.
When alliances and subjective values have emerged in
conscious experience, the individual has begun to react pur-
posively upon his environment. But, also, by this time the
communication of abstract ideas through speech has begun.
» For an able defence of a different doctrine from that which I have been pre¬
senting in the foregoing pages, the reader should consult " The Failure of Biologic
Sociology," by Professor Simon N. Fatten in the Annals of thb American
Acasemt of Pouticax, and Social Science, of May, 1894, Vol. IV, p. 919.
The Province of Sociology.
33
The language of imitative signs has developed into con¬
ventionalized sounds, conveying thought as well as feeling.*
Ideas and purposes may now be consciously shared by many
individuals simultaneously. Knowledge may be communi¬
cated to an entire community, and handed down from one
generation to another as tradition. The community as a
whole may consciously direct its common conduct. It may
exercise a common will.
Among the concerns that will engross attention, individual
and collective, and which will call forth consciously pm-
posive action, will be, obviously, the objective conditions of
utility, as effort and food; the practice and rules of tolera¬
tion; and the possibilities of alliance on a large scale, with
obedience-compelling power, for protection against enemies
without and violence within.
It is with ^ese three classes of interests, respectively,
that the sciences of political economy, jurisprudence and
politics have to do. Political economy ought not to trouble
itself about the social and psychical beginnings of utility.
The study of these falls within sociology. Political econ¬
omy should limit itself to a scientific examination of the
conscious calculation and pursuit of utility through the
development and use of objective means, within the condi¬
tions set by social organization. Jurisprudence has no
occasion to inquire into the origins of toleration. Sociology
will do that. Jurisprudence should study the conscious
development and formulation of toleration in custom and
positive law, in rights and sanctions. Politics need not go
back to the unconscious pnmitive forms of alliance. Soci¬
ology will investigate them. Politics has a field quite large
enough in its study of the conscious application of principles
of utility and rules of custom to and through alliance, on a
large scale, by the general will, and with obedience-com¬
pelling power.
In final delimitation of the province of sociology, it is neces¬
sary to show its differentiation from psychology. Whatever
* Romanes, " Mental Evolution in Man,'' Chapters
34 Annals op the American Academy.
else a society is, it is a phenomenon of conscious asso¬
ciation, and the field of sociology is certainly not marked
out until we know whether there is any reason in the nature
of things for classifying the psychological phenomena of
society apart fi-om those of individuals.
Psychology is concerned with associations and dissociations
of the elements of conscious personality. How sensations
are associated and dissociated in perception; how perceptions
are associated and dissociated in imagination and in thought;
how thought, feeling and impulse are co-ordinated in that
marvelous composite, the individual personality, are problems
for psychology to state, and, if it can, to solve. But the
phenomena of conscious association do not end with the
appearance of individual personality. They are then only
engendered. Individual personalities, as units, become the
elements of that vastly more extensive and intricate associa¬
tion of man with man and group with group which creates
the varied relations of social life. Obviously, the individual
and the social phases of consciousness are most intimately
blended. The same phenomena, apparently, are the subject-
matter of two difierent sciences.
To some extent undoubtedly they are, and, as every
investigator knows, the same thing is true throughout the
whole realm of knowledge. But a partial and sufficient
distribution can nevertheless be made.
According to accepted views, biology and psychology are
studies of life as influenced by environment. In biology we
study an adjustment of the physical changes within an
organism to external relations that are comparatively few,
simple and constant. In psychology we study an adjustment
of the conscious changes within an organism to external
relations of wide extent in time and space and of the utmost
complexity.*
For a time possibly, at the very dawning of consciousness,
the environment of sentiency is physical and organic, but
not social. At all times, certainly, a great part of the
♦ spencer, " Principles of Psychology," Vol. I, Chap, vu, g 54.
The Province ce Socioeogy.
35
outward world to which consciousness must adapt itself, is
physical and organic, rather than social. Moreover, while
social conditions are complex and variable, physical condi¬
tions, comparatively simple, are constant and universal. It
is through contact with them that permanent associations of
ideas are established, and that the mind arrives at notions
of cosmic law. Psychology, accordmgly, deals with phe¬
nomena that are, on the whole, more general than the phe¬
nomena of society, and it is, therefore, as a science, precedent
to sociology.
Yet, sooner or later, social environment becomes the im¬
mediate environment, a medium lying between consciousness
and external nature. Directly adjustment is to society,
indirectly, through society, it is to the wider world beyond.
Society has become, in short, a special and most important
part of the ' ' outward states. ' ' More rapidly and thoroughly
than any other part of the environment it produces favor¬
able "inward states" in the associated individuals. It
creates the capacity for pleasure, the power of abstract
thought and of speech, sympathy and the moral nature
Psychology, therefore, in explaining these developments of
mind, must take account of sociological phenomena.* But
its direct concern is with mental development as such; it
studies society only as milieu, whereas sociology, on the con¬
trary, is interested in the development of mind as a product
of social activity, as a social function, and as an evolution
of social nature.
But now at length mind, social nature, begins to react
on society. Conscious that their social relations are their
most important means of defence, succor, pleasure and
development, individuals endeavor to conserve and perfect
them. Society becomes a consciously cherished thing, and
to an increasing extent a product of conscious planning.
Out of thoughts and feelings grow those forms of association
* George Henry Lewes claimed to be the first psychologist distinctly to recognize
and state the part played by the social factor in the evolution of intellect and con¬
science. See " Problems of Life and Mind," First Series, Vol. I, p. 140, and " The
Study of Psychology,'» p. 71.
36 Annals op the American Academy.
that are deliberate or of purpose. More aud more, there¬
fore, social activities and relations come to be outward pro¬
ducts of inward states.
It is here that we find the broad distinction that, for pur¬
poses of scientific investigation, and therefore for a classifica¬
tion of the sciences, we should observe between a study of
conscious phenomena that is properly psychological and one
that is properly sociological. In both biology and psychol¬
ogy we regard phenomena within the organism as effects, and
relations in the environment as causes. The moment we
turn to social phenomena we discover that activities within
the organism have become conspicuous as causes. They
have created a wonderful structure of external relationships,
and have even modified the fauna and flora and the surface
of the earth within their environment. The progressive
adjustment between internal and external relations has
become reciprocal. Psychology therefore is the science of
mental phenomena as caused, partly by society but largely
also by organic and physical relations. Philosophically
speaking it is a highly special, differentiated branch of biol¬
ogy. Sociologfy, in like manner is a special, differentiated
branch of psychology. It is the science of mental pheno¬
mena as a social product and function, and as a cause react¬
ing on the outer world through its constructive evolution of
the social medium.
CHAPTER III.
THE PROBEEMS OF SOCIOLOGY.
We have now to inquire just what particular investigations
or problems the student will have to take up as work of
detail in sociology if he accepts that conception of the science
which has been explained and defended in the foregoing
pages. From the mere fact that we can mark the bounda¬
ries of sociology so as to distinguish it from other depart¬
ments of scientific inquiry, it does not follow, necessarily,
that within the territory so inclosed we shall find that multi¬
tude of logically related subjects of research which make up
the content of a complete science. Are the social elements
and first principles numerous and intellectually fruitful?
Are our would-be inquiries about them tangible, and of the
manageable kind ?
Any fear that the detail of sociology is either intangible or
unmanageable will disappear on examination. Our problems
are perfectly definite. Our facts and inquiries are innumera¬
ble, they admit of close classification, and a scientific investi¬
gation of them will be rewarded with large additions to
knowledge.
In sociology, as in psychology and biology, it is impossible
to study with profit the general questions of law and cause
until we have learned much about the concrete and particular
aspects of our subject. Before we generalize we must be
familiar with the constituent elements of our phenomena,
with the manner of their action, with the forms that they
assume in combination, and with the conditions under which
the combinations occur. It is good scientific method, there¬
fore, to group our problems as primary and secondary. In
the one group we put the questions about social elements,
growth and structure; in the other we put the problems of
social process, law and cause.
(37)
38
Annaiä of the American Academy.
In the primary group there are first of all problems of
the social population. These include problems (i) of
aggregation, (2) of association, (3) of the social character
of the population, (4) of the classes into which population
differentiates, and(5) of its co-operative activity or mutual
aid.
Conflict modified by toleration and the consequent emer¬
gence of utility, presuppose an actual coming together of the
individual elements of a social aggregate. So far from being
a simple phenomenon, however, concourse depends very
strictly upon definite conditions, and it assumes a variety of
forms, which are related to each other in curious and intimate
ways that are of great significance for social theory. Con¬
course runs into intercourse, the chief aspect of which is the
interchange of thought and feeling by means of language,
and the chief consequence of which is the evolution of a
nature that is intellectually and morally fitted for social life.
The development is very unequally accomplished in different
individuals, and we get, accordingly, a number of classes in
the population. These are, namely, the productive, includ¬
ing directing and directed workers, and the unproductive,
including paupers and criminals. We get also, very unequal
capabilities for mutual aid.
Thus the influences that determine the aggregation and
the intermingling of population-elements, their mutual modi¬
fication and resulting characteristics, their differentiation
and their co-operative activities, present many interesting
points for study, on their own account, and in their relation
to other features of the social system.
Next in order come problems of the social consciousness,
or social mind, including its content of common memories
and ideas, its aspirations and volition. The sociologist will
not follow these into the details of archaeology, mythology
and comparative religion, nor into those of law and institu¬
tions, in all of which the social mind finds expression. But
he should understand the make-up, genesis and activity of
the social mind itself.
The Problems of Sociology. 39
Following these, finally, are problems of the social struc¬
ture. In the various attempts that have been made to' organize
a "systematic sociology, the problems of social structure, or
organization, have received the larger share of attention.
There are several ambitious works that deal with little else.
Much, however, remains to be done, not only in minute
examination, but in the broader grouping of parts. Many
writers mean by social structure the ethnographic grouping
of population into tribes and nations. Others understand
by the term the organization of State and church and the
innumerable minor associations for particular purposes. Both
views are right, within their range, but neither is complete.
Social structure includes both ethnographic grouping and
purposive organization. What, then, is the essential differ¬
ence between them; and does the one in any way limit or
determine the other ?
The answer is that the social mind, acting upon spon¬
taneous, unconscious, or accidental combinations of indi¬
viduals, evolves two different forms of alliance, which may
be called, respectively, the social composition and the social
constitution.
By social composition is to be understood a combination
of small groups into a larger aggregate, where each of the
smaller groups is so far complete as a social organism that,
if necessary, it could lead an independent life for a time.
Family, clan, tribe and folk, or family, township, common¬
wealth and nation, are names that stand for both elements
and stages in social composition.
By social constitution, on the other hand, is to be under¬
stood a differentiation of the social aggregate into mutually
dependent classes or organizations, among which there is a
division of labor.
The social composition is like the composition of living cells
into a large organism. The social constitution is like the dif¬
ferentiation of an organism into specialized tissues and organs.
Aggregation, association, and resulting changes in the
character and activity of the population, are the first stage
40 Annai^ op the American Academy,
in a synthesis of social phenomena. The evolution of the
social mind is the second stage. The third and fourth stages
are the social composition and the social constitution, respec¬
tively.
Roughly corresponding to the four stages of synthesis are
four stages of sequence.
Most of the forms of concourse, intercourse and mutual
aid have their beginnings in animal society. By means of
them animal life is developed into its various types. This
stage, therefore, may be characterized as zoogenic, and the
study of it, as exhibited in animal communities, is zoogenic
sociology.
The development of the social mind as self-conscious, and
the genesis of a varied tradition, mark the transition from
animal to man. It is the anthropogenic stage of association,
and its investigation is anthropogenic sociology.
The social mind acting on spontaneous forms of alliance
creates the family, the clan and the tribe, later the folk and
the nation. This is the ethnogenic stage, and to it corre¬
sponds ethnogenic sociology.
Finally, the integration of tribes and petty nations into
territorial and national States makes possible a high utiliza¬
tion of resources, a rapid multiplication of population, a
wonderful extension of the division of labor, a magnificent
development of the social constitution and a democratic evo¬
lution of the social mind. This, then, is the demogenic stage
of social evolution and its study is demogenic sociology.
Such are the primary sociological problems, which must
be thoroughly worked over before the secondary problems,
more complex, and in every respect more difiBcult, can be
mastered. Yet the secondary problems have more often than
otherwise been attacked first, without the slightest perception
of their scientific relation to the sort of inquiries that have
just now been outlined. They are more momentous, and
involve a relatively large proportion of pure theory. On
this account, perhaps, they have received the larger share of
attention.
The Probeems of Socioeogy. 41
First among them are problems of progress. A survey of
social growth and structure will probably have convinced the
investigator who has completed it of the reality of social
evolution. But whether evolution is in any sense a progress,
and, if it is, then in what sense, are questions remaining to
be answered. The idea of progress has to be examined.
"What does the word legitimately mean ? If it has a rational
meaning, are there any facts and generalizations, disclosed
by sociology, that correspond to the idea ? If this question,
again, is affirmatively answered, we must go on to look into
the nature of progress. Can we resolve it into simpler
terms and, in so far, explain it ?
If in the course of such inquiries we are led to affirm the
reality of progress, we shall inevitably find that it involves
some continuing change in the magnitude of the psychical
factor in society, and of its relative importance, as compared
with the physical factor, in the forward social movement.
We shall find ourselves, accordingly, obliged next to
examine the social process. By this term we must be care¬
ful to understand not the successive phases of social growth
■or evolution, which present primary problems of sociology, t
but rather the process itself, from which the phases of evo¬
lution result. The problems of social process are concerned
with successive steps in the interaction of physical and con¬
scious forces. They involve a study of the nature and
forms of volitional association, and of its reactions upon
social character and activity.
Obviously the sociologist has come by this time to prob¬
lems of law and cause. The question over which contro-
T^ersy has so long been waged, whether there are any true
natural or cosmic laws of social phenomena, cannot be
avoided, but it is not to be answered by mere argument
about the possibility or impossibility of law in the world of
•conscious human affairs. It must be met by showing that
social laws exist, and by demonstrating their operation.
The law of social choices which, I have claimed, is one of the
sociologist's main quests, must be formulated, and likewise
42 Annaxs of the American Academy.
the law of social survivals. When this has been done,
attention must be given to the further questions of cause.
Volition having been recognized as one cause of social
changes, the sociologist must decide whether he should regard
it as an independent, original cause, or as secondary and-
derived. He must decide, further, whether or not he finds
in physical natiure the sole original source of social energy.
After all these studies have been made, and not before,
will the sociologist be qualified to deal with those final ques¬
tions that have been placed so often at the very beginning
of sociological exposition. What is a society? Is it an
organism ? Or is it organic and something more ? Is it
essentially a physical thing, or is it a complex of psychical
relations ? Has it a function or purpose, has it an intelli¬
gible destiny or end ? In answers to questions like these, if
answers can be made that will carry weight because derived
from a patient examination of all the data and of all possible
hypotheses, will be found the true scientific conception of
society and, as well, the rational social ideal.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PRIMARY PROBLEMS: SOCIAL GROWTH AND STRUCTURE.
Within that broad grouping of animal species, which is
known as geographical distribution, there is a minor group¬
ing of animals into swarms, herds or bands, and of human,
population into hordes, clans, tribes and nations. It is to
such comparatively definite groups that we apply the term
society or the term community.
That animals generally as well as men do thus live in
aggregations, rather than in separation as isolated indi¬
viduals or as simple families, may be a consequence of either
of two circumstances, or of both together. The band or
horde may be made up of those descendants of a single indi¬
vidual, pair, or family, which have not yet separated. Or it
may have assembled from many quarters near and far, an
aggregation at first of strangers, drawn or driven together
by some powerful attraction or pressure. For many cen¬
turies the first of these two possibilities found expression in
political philosophy in the patriarchal theory. The second
might have been made the basis of the doctrine of the social
contract, but was not. Neither Hobbes, nor Eocke, nor
Rousseau seems to have doubted that the ' ' state of nature ' '
in which men were presumed to have lived before political
covenants were thought of, was an abiding in propinquity,
though not in love, of the descendants of a first father.
Nor has social theory in later years been much disposed to
question the sufiSciency of a genealogical explanation of
social origins. This is not remarkable. The tribes and
nations of men have commonly accounted for their own
beginnings in that way. The myth of the ancient omni¬
presence of the patriarchal family has been dissolved, to be
sure, by the discoveries of Bachofen, Morgan, McEennan
and others, but for the purposes of a genealogical account
of society, a first ancestress, or a feminine clan, is quite as
good as a first father.
(43)
44 Annai3 op thp American Academy.
Yet the sociologist has but to look about him to see that
a community often begins as an aggregátion of strangers.
The commonwealth of California, for example, does not
revere a progenitor, male or female. It has been too. hastily
assumed that the sort of social genesis which has been wit¬
nessed in our Western States since the first great waves of
.migration swept over the Alleghanies, and been witnessed
later in the European colonies of Africa and Australia, is
something peculiarly modem. Probably it is on the contrary
more ancient than man himself, for it is certainly not
peculiar to human communities in contrast to animal bands.
The forces that distributed a white population over the Mis¬
sissippi valley were essentially the same that had been at work
for unnumbered ages upon the teeming animal life of its
mighty forests and prairies. The pioneer hunters found broad
Toads through the wilderness, worn by countless generations
■of bison. At the salt licks they saw the ground about them
so trodden by herds of bison, elk, deer and wolves, that
" there was not as much grass left as would feed a sheep,"
and ' ' the game trails were like streets or the beaten roads
TOimd a city." * They observed the black and gray squir¬
rels gathering in immense companies to migrate over mount¬
ain and river, and saw clouds of pigeons ' ' that hid the sun
and broke down the branches on their roosting grounds as
if a whirlwind had passed, "f
External physical conditions were the causes of social
aggregation in these instances, as in the European settle¬
ment of this continent. Nor is there reason to doubt that
they have been original causes of aggregation since con¬
scious life began in the world. Both animals and men,
whether kindred or strangers at the outset, come together
and dwell together where the food supply exists. Other
physical circumstances of the environment, as temperature
and exposure, surface and altitude, always exert an infiuence
not to be overlooked. In that swarming of men westward
* Theodore Roosevelt, " The Winning of the West," Vol. I, p. 156.
t p. 123.
SociAi. Growth and Structure. 45
which has home the centre of population from a point east
of Baltimore in 1790 to a point midway between Cincinnati
and Indianapolis in 1890 there has been no indiscriminate
scattering. Certain centres of attraction have dominated the
movement. On a magnificent scale it has but repeated what
occurred in the Nile valley and in Babylonia at the dawning
of civilization. What occurred there, again, was but a re¬
fined form of such hmnan concourse as the traveler witnesses
in northwestern Australia when a dead whale is cast upon the
sea shore and signal fires bring together from every direction
the half-starved bands for an unwonted feast.* Finally,
the savage congregation, in its turn, has its prototype in the
formation of enormous bands of sea creatures, like polycis-
tines, medusas, ctenophores, nautilli and molluscs, by the
temperature of the water, the direction of the currents, and
the abundance of their aliments, f
That the resources and other circumstances of the physical
environment must be regarded as the true cause of social
aggregation, notwithstanding the scientific place so long
held by genealogical relationship, is plainly shown by a
single consideration. A bountiful environment may bring
together entire strangers or it may hold together a body of
kinsmen; but no body of kinsmen, howev.er strong the ties
of relationship may be, can hold together and grow into a
society, if the physical environment is unfavorable.
The subject may be presented now in another light. An
assembling of individuals without regard to blood-relation¬
ship, and on account of some pressure or advantage, we may
call congregate association. The association of descendants
of a single ancestor or family may be called genetic associa¬
tion. Using these convenient terms, we can state without
further preliminary an elementar}' inductive truth of sociol¬
ogy, namely: congregate and genetic association must
develop together. Neither form can long be maintained
without running into the other.
»Grey, "Explorations in Western and Northwestern Australia," p. 36¡.
t Espinas, " ¿Jes Societies Animales," p. 461.
46
Annals of the American Academy.
Let aggregation have begun in either way, as a concourse
of individuals originally strangers, or by the multiplication
of descendants of a single family. The energy evolved
within the group from its consumption of food will be ex¬
pended in three chief ways, namely: maintaining the food
supply, locomotion, and procreation. The latter two expendi¬
tures depend on a surplus of energy above the amount neces¬
sary to maintain individual life in a given place. Movement
limits association by dispersion and variation. Individuals,
families or bands detach themselves from the parent group
and form new alliances. The student of sociology should
get a firm grasp of this fact, that detachment and migration are
as common and as inevitable effects of an increase of animal
energy in social groups as are procreation and the increase
of numbers. Every group, therefore, loses members that
were bom within it, and acquires members that were bora
elsewhere. At the same time, every group that is more than
a very brief cong^regation and in which both sexes are in¬
cluded, is perpetuated in part by its birth-rate. Normally,
therefore, a social aggregation is a product of both congre¬
gate and genetic association.
We are in sight now of a true conception of natural so¬
ciety. An enlarged family, including no adopted members,
is not properly to be called a society. Neither is a tempo¬
rary association of unrelated individuals. In the true society
we may expect to find always a composition of the popula¬
tion, and, at the same time, a self-perpetuating power. The
United States has received since 1820, 15,427,657 immi¬
grants, drawn hither from England, Ireland, Scotland, Ger¬
many, Norway and Sweden, Italy and other countries, by
the life-opportunities that are here offered. The resulting
heterogeneity of population is a conspicuous example of
what I would call the demotic composition. The same
phenomenon of intermixture, though on a smaller scale, has
entered into the evolution of every society that has existed.
Such a thing as a purely homogeneous population was never
known. And yet, by far the larger proportion of our
Social Growth and Structure.
47
63,000,000 persons have been born within our territorial
limits. By far the greater proportion of them have in their
veins some admixture, at least, of the blood of the colonists
and of those Europeans who came to America before 1821.
In like manner, while there is an increasing mobility of popu¬
lation from State to State, from country to city and from
town to town, each local community is perpetuated mainly
by its own birth-rate. The same thing is true of other coim-
tries. It is true of barbarous and savage tribes and of
animal herds. Such self-perpetuation of a society we may
call autogeny. A true natural society then has a demotic
composition, but it is at the same time autogenous.
So much for the conditions and forms of social aggrega¬
tion. True association, I have argued, is something more.
It is a psychical activity, beginning in suggestion and imita¬
tion and developing into mutual sympathy and comprehen¬
sion. These latter, obviously, could not grow out of any¬
thing so purely negative as that self-limitation of conflict
which brings about a state of toleration. Neither do they
emerge necessarily from mere aggregation. Their begin¬
nings must be sought in relations of activity that are char¬
acteristically social and yet so pleasurable that a powerful
stimulation of purely individual gratiflcations would be
necessary to overcome the counter attraction of the social
excitement.
It is in activities hitherto but little studied that the genesis
of social pleasure, and, through social pleasure, of the higher
forms of association, is to be understood. When the group,
however it has originated, holds together for successive gene¬
rations, the modes of expenditure of energy are multiplied.
In both adults and young, but to a much greater extent
in the young, expenditure takes the form of play. Festivity,
or the combination of amusement with the gratification of
appetite, comes later, and is perhaps enjoyed more often
by adults. In play and festivity, which are at first the
spontaneous overflow of surplus energies, there come into
existence true social forces, products of a social condition.
48
Annals of the American Academy.
which, in tum, contribute to the evolution of a higher social
condition ; which are powerful enough to mould individual
nature; which begin to operate on the individual at the most
impressionable age, and which continue to act long enough
to accomplish permanent results. Play has been the chief
educational agency in animal communities. Young birds
bom and reared within each other's sight and hearing, and
many kinds of young mammals, spend literally all their days
until maturity in ceaseless frolics, often so ingenious in their
forms as to captivate the human beholder. It is in these
social pleasures that the social instinct is strengthened, and
that the art of living in community is acquired. In like
manner, among human beings, it is in the play-day of child¬
hood that social sympathy, a social sense, a social habit, are
evolved. Later, periodical festivities and more or less
elaborate amusements become important supplementary
means of social education. Take'out of savage life its
feasts and dances, and the remaining social activity would
be slight indeed. Our Western settlements became com¬
munities when they began to fiddle.* If the heterogeneous
masses of population in the tenement house wards of our
great cities are ever socially organized, it will be after they
have been brought under the power of social pleasure.
Festivity was probably the parent of speech, f as at a later
time it was the parent of literature. The most constant
elements of festal celebrations are bodily play movements in
imitation of actions, rhythmic beating, and some approach
to song. Under the mental exaltation of such occasions,
• "A few of the settlers still kept some of the Presbyterian austerity of char¬
acter as regards amusements; but, as a rule, they were fond of horse^racing,
drinking, dancing and fiddling. The corn-shuckings, flax-pullings, log-rollings
(when the felled timber was rolled off the clearings), house-raisings, maple-
sugar-boilings, and the like were scenes of boisterous and light-hearted merriment,
to which the whole neighborhood came, for it was accounted an insult if a man
was not asked in to help on such occasions, and none but a base churl would refuse
his assistance. The backwoods people had to front peril and hardship without
stint, and they loved for the moment to leap out of the bounds of their narrow
lives aAl taste the coarse pleasures that are always dear to a strong, simple and
primitive race."—Roosevelt, "The Winning of the West," Vol. I, p. 176.
tj. Donovan, "The Festal Origin of Human Speech," Mind, October, 1891,
P- 499-
SociAi. Growth aiíd Structure. 49
if ever, the association of vocal sounds with actions and
things would be established and conventionalized into signs,
thereby making possible the perfect communication of
thought and feeling through which the higher modes of
association are maintained.
Social pleasure, then, is the foundation of association in
its higher forms, and association, with the aid of the stimu¬
lus pleasure, acts on the mental and moral natures of indi¬
viduals, moulding them into a more perfect adaptation [to
social life. The social nature regarded as a product of past
association and as a cause working in the further develop¬
ment of society should be studied by the sociologist with
reference to the following essential traits:
The true social nature is first of all one that has become
so far susceptible to suggestion and so far imitative in
respect of all matters of material well-being (in which, as
was shown in a previous chapter, suggestion and imitation
first come into effect) that it will desire and endeavor to live
as well, at least, as the average, fairly successful, fairly well-
to-do members of the community. The desire to enjoy what
others enjoy, and the imitative tendency to act as others act,
will together be strong enough to overcome laziness, as much,
at least, as it is overcome in the average case, and will lead
the individual whose nature is social to follow up his mate¬
rial interest as diligently as most other individuals follow up
their interests. This is the basis of what economists call a
standard of living. It is the foundation of wealth and of all
social as of all individual advancement.
A second trait of the social nature, of course, is a suffi¬
cient degree of that tolerance, of which so much has been
said already, to restrain the individual from active interfer¬
ence with his fellows in their life-struggle. It is only after
the practice of toleration has become confirmed and certain
corresponding tastes have been established, that the tolerant
nature can be said to exist. The members of the commu¬
nity must have gotten beyond the first discovery that, after
the exceptionally weak have been killed off by the strong,
50 Annai3 of the American Academy.
and the exceptionally strong killed off by their own rashness
or by a mutual resistance of individuals of average power,
further conflict, among individuals nearly equal in strengt,
is u,seless. They must have lost the appetite for each other's
flesh, and have become satisfied with kinds of food and other
material means of life that are sufficiently abundant to meet
the requirements of the whole society. Antagonism within
the community can disappear only as fast as tastes that are
exclusive make way for tastes that can be enjoyed by many,
a Jtruth ¡which the sociologist can cordially recommend to
those social reformers who expect to make the world better
by rearrangements of industry irrespective of human desires.
Still other changes in consciousness are necessary before the
tolerant nature is perfect. Toleration must be not only endur¬
able but agreeable. There must be a growth of association
of presence as an habitual phase of feeling. There must be
a feeling of pleasure in the mere presence of a fellow-
creature.
Remaining traits of the social nature, quite as essential to
social as to individual conduct of an advanced type, are the
intellectual powers of attention, generalization, abstract
thought and invention, and the moral qualities of love of
approbation, sympathy, fortitude, courage, truthfulness and
good faith. I shall not take the space here to demonstrate
the social origin, or to point out the social functions, of all
these qualities and powers. Spencer, in Part VIII, of the
" Principles of Psychology," and Lewes in his "Problems
of Life and Mind," have presented such demonstrations at
length, but no one has ever gone more directly to the heart
of the matter than Adam Smith in " The Theory of Moral
Sentiments. " "As nature teaches the spectators to assume
the circumstances of the person principally concerned,"
wrote Smith, ' ' so she teaches this last in some measure to
assume those of the spectators. ' ' On these two efforts (that
of the spectators to enter into the feelings of the principal
and that of the principal to enter into the feelings of the
spectators) are founded two sets of virtues, one the soft.
SociAt Growth and Structure. 51
gentle and humane, the other the great, the awful, the respec¬
table—^virtues of self-denial and self-government.*
The mental and moral results of association, and certain
physical changes which result from social conditions and
contribute to social success, are by no means shared equally,
however, by all individuals. It is impossible that all should
participate equally in improved nutrition, or that all should
have an equally good heredity. The processes of selection
go on by reason of these differences. Quite as impossible is
it that all should share equally in the mental growth and
moral modification that takes place. Inequality, therefore,
in physical, mental and moral power, and varieties of ^dispo¬
sition, are among the inevitable characteristics of a social
population.
All such inequalities and variations will be manifested in
the relations which the imequally endowed individuals of
the same aggregation will maintain toward the facts of sub¬
sistence and toward each other. In the same • group there
will be different standards of living, different degrees Of tol¬
eration and of mutual good-will, different degrees of ability
and, corresponding to these things, different types of char¬
acter. Individuals of the true social type will exhibit the sort
of desires and dispositions that are compatible with an ex¬
panding social life; that is to say, a taste for easily appro¬
priable food, a disposition to seek it with system and diligence,
and tolerant and sympathetic feelings. They will have also
the physical, intellectual and moral ability to live as their
social nature prompts. The other types, lacking in some or
all of these endowments, will be more or less antisocial,
unsocial or defectively social. The social type depends
necessarily and naturally upon the original and inexhaus¬
tible source of subsistence, namely, the vegetable and
animal life of other species. The antisocial and unsocial
types are criminal and pauper respectively. By means of
theft and beggary they depend on secondary somrces of sub¬
sistence, namely, the supplies obtained from nature, through
» " xhe Theory of Moral Sentiments." Thii* edition, pp. 28 and 30.
52 Annai^ of the American Academy.
diligent industry, by the social part of the population. The
defectively social type has the social disposition in a meas¬
ure, or perhaps in a high degree, but it lacks ability. It
would be glad to adapt itself to social conditions, but never
fully succeeds in doing so. Accordingly this type, too, is
partly or wholly dependent on the secondary sources of sub¬
sistence.
Out of these types are developed great population-classes
as soon as the secondary source of subsistence is sufficient
and permanent, in other words, as soon as the society has
surplus food and clothing—in brief, wealth. Animal societies
have criminal members. They have also their pauper indi¬
viduals, following the band in its food quests, but living on
the fragments and leavings of the prey or vegetation that
the stronger majority capture or discover; but they have no
pauper class, as human societies have, because surplus food
in the former is too inadequate in amount and the conditions
of life in general are too severe for pauper endurance.
As social aggregation begins where natural supplies of
food are found, so criminal and pauper aggregation begin
and continue where the artificial surplus supply is accumu¬
lated. I have already illustrated several phases of social
genesis by examples drawn from the settlement of the
Western States, and I may as well illustrate this one by
another. " The frontier," says Roosevelt, "in spite of the
outward imiformity of means and manners is pre-eminently
the place of sharp contrasts. The two extremes of society,
the strongest, best and most adventurous, and the weakest,
most shiftless and vicious, are those which seem naturally
to drift to the border. Most of the men who came to the
backwoods to hew out homes and rear families were stem,
manly and honest; but there was also a large influx of
people drawn from the worst immigrants that perhaps ever
were brought to America—the mass of convict servants,
redemptioners and the like, who formed such an excessively
undesirable substratum to the otherwise excellent population
of the tide-water regions in Virginia and the Carolinas.
SociAt Growth and Structure. 53
Many of the Southern crackers or poor whites spring from
this class, which also in the backwoods gave birth to gene¬
rations of violent and hardened criminals, and to an even
greater niunber of shiftless, lazy, cowardly cumberers of
the earth's surface. They had in many places a perma¬
nently bad effect upon the tone of the whole community.
In the backwoods the lawless led lives of
abandoned wickedness; they hated good for good's sake,
and did their utmost to destroy it. Where the bad element
was large, gangs of horse thieves, highwaymen and other
criminals often united with the uncontrollable young men
of vicious tastes who were given to gambling, fighting and
the like. They then formed half-secret organizations, often
of great extent and with wide ramifications, and if they
could control a community they established a reign of ter¬
ror, driving out both ministers and magistrates, and killing
without scruple those who interfered with them." *
At the present time the great centres of secondary sources
of subsistence are the cities, and it is there that the aggrega¬
tion of pauper and criminal population is going on most
rapidly. From the city of New York there were convicted
in the courts dvuring the year ending October 31, 1892, no
less than 45,777 criminals and misdemeanants. The same
city, with a population, in 1890, of 1,515,301 (as given by
the Federal census), relieved in that year through its munici¬
pal outdoor poor department, not to mention private charity,
25,212 adults and 1324 children, and provided 8340 families
with coal. The same department buried 2042 paupers.
The almshouse at Blackwells' island in the course of the year
cared for 5337 indoor paupers.
Not all the people relieved by charity in our modern cities
and elsewhere are paupers, however. Many of them belong
in a third class, developed, with increasing wealth to support
it, and an increasing population to recruit it, out of the third
type that was mentioned, namely, the defectively social.
In animal communities and in a primitive state of human
»Roosevelt, "The Winning of the West," pp, 130-131.
54 Annals of the American Academy.
society, the well-meaning but unsuccessful fare no better
than the would-be paupers. In modem society tbey can
survive and increase because of an abundance which they
can share. I,ike paupers and criminals, therefore, they
naturally congregate in great cities. Their defects are of
every imaginable kind, physical, mental and moral, but
they may be roughly grouped into three sub-classes, namely;
First, those whose ancestors came so little under the disci¬
pline of social life, and who themselves have had so little
opportunity, that they are nearly destitute of natural or
acquired ability to look after their own well-being. They
are willing to work, but must always be aided. Second,
those who get on fairly well until displaced by some evolu¬
tionary change in the social system, but find themselves
quite witless and powerless to adapt themselves to a new
order of things. Third, those who are unable to endure
the strain of emulation to maintain a high standard of
living, and, in one or another way, drop out of the con¬
test.
In the study of the genesis of the population-classes we
have the key to the scientific arrangement of those most
interesting questions that are often spoken of as the prob¬
lems of practical sociology. Just how the study of crime,
pauperism and vice, of poverty, insanity and suicide, could
be connected in any logical way with the propositions of
theoretical sociology, has been a puzzling question to many
students, and sociological writers generally have fallen back
upon the familiar expedient of dividing their subject into
theoretical and practical, or theoretical and applied, or the
science and the art. I confess that I have never had much
respect for this expedient. It is the easy device of incom¬
plete or baffled thinking. Some of the facts that a science
deals with are more practical than others because our daily
lives are in more immediate contact with them; but as
knowable facts they admit of explanation; the explanation
is a theory, and if we do not see it to be a co-ordinate part
of the larger theory of our subject in its entirety, the reason
SociAi, Growth and Structure. 55
is that we have not yet fully worked out the logical sub¬
ordination of its particular theorems. More adequate views
of the great issues of practical sociology may be looked for
if we can effect a scientific arrangement of the problems.
If association necessarily modifies the physical, mental and
moral nature, but not in all individuals equally, and if
unequal degrees of adjustment to the social conditions of
life are therefore inevitable, we have an explanation of the
differentiation of the population into classes, with fairly
well^arked differences of physical, economic and moral
condition. Therefore it may be that in a true theory of
social evolution we shall yet find an interpretation that will i
create a scientific order in the maze of facts of practical |
sociology.
The criminal, pauper, and non-successful classes that live
on the surplus wealth of society, but contribute nothing to
it, are collectively an unproductive class. The classes that
create wealth directly from nature, and those that, engaged
in commercial or professional occupations, draw their subsis¬
tence from secondary rather than from primary sources, but
add to the wealth of society as much as they take from it, are
collectively the productive class. This industrious, self-sup¬
porting majority undergoes a further differentiation. Many
individuals remain merely passive and tolerant in their rela¬
tions to each other. They look after their own affairs and
attempt nothing more. Others become increasingly conscious
of the power that there is in association and develop positive
ability for mutual aid or co-operation. Mutual aid at first,
whether in animal or in human communities, is an extremely
simple and momentary direct-co-op^ation* of which the fish¬
ing bands of pelicans that form a half circle across a bay and
drive the fish in-shore, the hunting parties of savages, and
the log-rollings, house-raisings and com-huskings of back¬
woodsmen are equally good examples. Such co-operation
becomes in time more perfect through a development of
♦ For the most interesting contribution to animal sociology ever written, the
reader is referred to Prince Krapotkin's articles on " Mutual Aid Among Animals,"
in the Nineteenth Century of September and November, 1890.
56
Annals of the American Academy.
co-ordination and subordination. Co-ordination at first is
merely the simultaneous performance of like acts in like
ways. I,ike creatures similarly placed are afiected by com¬
mon experiences in like manner and respond in like action.
There may be a good degree of harmonious action due to
this wholly unconscious co-ordination. A more definite
and conscious co-ordination is effected through emula¬
tion and imitation. But the co-ordination that admits
of a relatively wide extension, under a great variety of
forms, is that through leadership, which involves also sub¬
ordination. The mental and physical inequality already
described as the basis of population-classes is the basis also
of this form of co-ordination. The inferior naturally defer
to the superior, follow their gfuidance and confer upon them
special favors.
The phenomena so far examined in this chapter have been
phenomena of the social population. We will go on now
to the phenomena of the social mind, the appearance of
which is the second g^eat stage in social evolution.
The society in which there is much intercourse and mutual
aid presently enters upon a further development which estab¬
lishes its unity and enables it in a measure to shape its own
career. It becomes conscious of itself as a society. A com-
mon or group consciousness is evolved. An example of the
simplest case in which this phenomenon appears is perhaps
the behavior of an animal community when a stranger is
introduced into the band. Whether his treatment be good
or ill, it is such as to show that the members of the society
are well aware that he has not been one of their number.
Social consciousness may have the various phases exhibited
by the individual consciousness, ranging from reflex action
and common feeling to a reasoned judgment.* It is doubtful
if animal societies ever attain to self-consciousness. By social
consciousness in any form we do not mean a consciousness
distinct from that which appears in individuals, except in so
* For a full discussion of this subject, see De Greef, "Introduction à la Sociolo¬
gie," deuxième partie, Chapters I and XIII.
SociAiv Growth and Structure. 57
far as it appears at the same moment in all individuals, or is
propagated from one to another through the whole assembly.
Acted on by influences that affect all its members in the same
way, and under proper stimulation, a whole social group may
perform a purely reflex act. Again, a wave of feeling may
sweep through the community; or yet again, perceiving the
same facts, feeling about them in the same way, and each ob¬
serving in all his fellows the same outward signs of identical
inward states, all the members of a community may come sim-
idtaneously to the same judgment. It must be by some such
process that bands of hundreds, or perhaps thousands of
individual birds, or squirrels, or buffaloes, or horses come
together and conduct an orderly migration. In a true social
self-consciousness, which probably does not appear earlier
than the ethnogenic stage of the evolution of human society,
the distinctive peculiarity is that each individual makes his
neighbor's consciousness, feeling or judgment an object of
his own thought at the same instant that he makes his own
feeling or thought such an object, judges the two to be
identical, and then acts with a full consciousness that his
fellows have come to like conclusions and will act in like
ways.
In its social consciousness a community has a living bond
of union. The mutual aid and protection of individuals,
operating in an unconscious way, are no longer the only
means that preserve social cohesion: the community feels
and perceives its unity. This feeling must be destroyed be¬
fore rupture can occur.
But even social consciousness is of course at any instant
but a momentary bond. In this respect it is inferior to the
bond of mutual aid. It acquires continuity, however,
through the development of another phase—^the social tradi¬
tion which, with the active modes of consciousness, makes
up the social mind. By tradition results are conserved and
handed on. The relations, the ideas and the usages that
have sprung up, perhaps accidentally and unconsciously,
and have survived thus far because of their intrinsic
58 Annals of the American Academy.
usefulness, are carefully formulated, defined and memor¬
ized. They become the common mental possession of all
individuals.
Tradition differentiates into three great primary forms,
namely, the economic, the jural and the political, and from
these branch off, later, secondary forms.
The earliest and most fundamental is the tradition of
subjective and objective utilities, of costs and values, and
of the methods of increasing utilities. There is, of course,
no conscious analysis of these things. The tradition is con¬
crete, not abstract. But in the concrete there is a scale of
comparative values. Food, shelter, sexual pleasure, orna¬
ments, offspring, are its earliest elements. Then come such
things as implements, clothing, gifts, trade, labor, co-opera¬
tion, methods of producing and using objective utilities. All
this tradition has its centre im the family and household, but
it extends to relations beyond the household.
Step by step with the utilitarian tradition develops the
tradition of teleration.
Toleration and fnendly social intercovirse are at all timea
balanced by frequent acts of aggression and revenge within
the community. It is by these means that the substantial
equilibrium of strength among the individual members of a
society is maintained and demonstrated. So aided by inter¬
course and sanctioned by vengeance, toleration is developed
and differentiated into rules of custom which formulate
those enjoyments, immunities and opportunities that are
habitually permitted and observed without molestation.
These collectively are the jural tradition, the tradition, that
is, of objective and sanctioned right.
The third differentiation of tradition is the tradition of
alliance in its political form.
Alliance as a fact simply presupposes some of the elements;
of subjective utility and some actual toleration. On the
other hand, the traditions of utility and of toleration, as dis¬
tinguished from their respective phenomena, presuppose
actual alliance in simple and perhaps unconscious forms.-
SociAi. Growth and Structure. 59
But again, the conscious and purposive development of
alliance within the community, or its extension, to bring
two or more bands, hordes, or tribes into one larger aggre¬
gate, presupposes traditions of utility and of toleration.
Alliance in either of these purposive forms, intensive or
extensive, is the elementary political fact. It is the germ
of all political activity and tradition. Its motive is the
desire to strengthen the traditions of utility and of toleration
by an obedience-compelling power, and to extend their range
or application. Thg political tradition, therefore, is wrought
out of the economic and jural traditions, and in its evolution
is closely interwoven with them.
The economic, jural and political traditions are the funda¬
mental and imperative ones. Surplus objective utility, or
wealth, when it begins to appear as a consequence of alliance,
becomes an efficient cause of new modes of activity, which
are conserved in a number of secondary traditions. Strictly
speaking all of these ac^vities are differentiations of funda¬
mental utilitarian actions, and the secondary traditions grow
out of the primary traditions.
First, out of the activities directly related to the satisfac¬
tions of the most elementary wants, of food, sexual pleasure
and clothing, grow attempts to adorn, and, with them, the
aesthetic tradition. Its chief roots are doubtless in the
sexual instincts, as Darwin argues, and the tradition is
developed through sexual selection.
Secondly, out of the social pleasures and festivities grow
the impulse and the need to express and interchange emotions
and ideas. The traditions of spoken and of written language
result.
Thirdly, the dose observation and interrogation of the
natural and animate world, which is stimulated by the quest
of food, suggest many crude interpretations of natural phe¬
nomena, and these are believed to be intimately connected
with success or failure in the practical affairs of life. The
world is thought to be peopled with mysterious spirits. The
knowledge of these is cherished. [Appealed to for aid in.
6o Annals op the American Academy.
human affairs, some spirits seem to help, others to be indif-
erent, or hostile. Through selection the tradition of the
friendly spirits becomes more firmly fixed. The alliance
which holds together the family, or that which holds together
the community is extended by covenant to ally the good
spirits to the family or to the community. They become
its most important members, its gods. In this way the tra¬
ditions of animism and of religion are established.
Fourthly, as knowledge increases, the beliefs of earlier
times are subjected to rational criticism. The tradition of
science and philosophy displaces the tradition of animism,
and religion is transformed.
Fifthly, philosophy transforms the ideals and standards of
life and conduct, and we get the tradition of ethics.
It is only in a very general way, of course, that the devel¬
opment of tradition corresponds to this serial order. The
different modes of tradition act and react on one another.
Long before the economic tradition is developed beyond its
crude beginnings, the philosophical and ethical traditions, not
to mention intermediate ones, must have come into existence.
Of the problems of social structure, properly so-called, or
the questions pertaining to social composition and social con¬
stitution, I piupose to say but little in these page^ They
have been more adequately treated in existing works on
sociology than have been some of the other topics that I have
here discussed. Moreover, I expect in a larger work to give
them full consideration. All that I wish to do now is to
emphasize the assertion that, though social composition and
constitution have beginnings in unconscious processes of
social evolution, they are, properly speaking, creations of
the social mind.
Human society truly begins when social consciousness and
tradition are so far developed that all social relations exist
not only objectively, as physical facts of association, but sub¬
jectively also, in the thought, feeling and purpose of the
associated individuals. It is this subjective fact that differ¬
entiates human from animal communities. For when the
Social Growth and Structure. 6r
society exists in idea, no less than in physical aggregation,
the idea begins to react upon all the objective relations. The
social idea, at first only a perception or a conception, becomes
an ideal, which the community endeavors to realize. From
this time on, the forms of association and of associated
activity, determined in part by direct physical causation, are
determined also in part by the social mind.
In the earliest and simplest forms of human society the
social constitution is not differentiated from the social com¬
position. The group, as a whole, is for some purposes the
co-operating body. For other ptirposes the co-operating
body is some component group. There is no division of
labor which is wholly irrespective of the Composition of self-
sufficing, self-perpetuating social groups, like the family and
the horde. At a later time the social constitution is seen to
be partially differentiated within itself and slowly undergoing
further differentiation from the social composition.
Therefore, through a long succession of periods, the actiotr
of the social mind upon social structure is primarily and
chiefly a moulding of the social composition. Or, when it
acts directly upon the social constitution, it is at the same
time still modifying the social composition, in important ways
and to a great degree. Working conjointly with tmconscious
forces, it is creating definite forms of the family, the tribe,
and the nation. Only when the ethnos is established does
the social mind begin to act chiefly and powerfully on the
social constitution, and thereby to organize and develop the
demos.
It follows, as was pointed out in an earlier chapter, that a
study of social composition is nearly co-extensive with eth-
nogenic sociology, and that ethnogenic sociology is mainly a
^dy of the evolution of the social composition, though
incidentally it is necessary to follow many associated develop¬
ments of the social constitution.
I shall not at this time go further into the detail of the
study of the social composition, the most important ques¬
tions of which are those of the origins and early forms of
62 Annals of the American Academy.
the family and of the clan, and of their relations to each,
other and to the tribe. Much less shall I enter here upon a
particular study of the social constitution. I wish, how¬
ever, to say a further word in regard to the limits of this
part of sociological theory.
In the study of institutions, more than anywhere else,
general sociology has been confotmded with the special social
sciences. Nearly every writer on sociology makes the mis¬
take of thinking that symmetry and completeness are to be
secured by taking up for separate discussion each group of
social institutions in turn. By this erroneous judgment,
or more truly this lack of insight, he not only places himself
in a position where he must be either omniscient or super¬
ficial, but he disintegrates his science. Instead of unfolding
an organic sociology he binds together in the covers of one
book the elements of several social sciences. The general
sociologist has nothing to do with the details of the evolu¬
tion of institutions of any kind, domestic, political or ecclesi¬
astical. His business is to lay a firm foundation in social
psychology on which the students of institutions can build.
He should show how the social mind works in creating
institutions of any kind or of all kinds. He should show in
what order the different kinds of institutions appear, as
determined by their genetic relationships, and how all insti¬
tutions vary in their vigor and characteristics with varying
aspects of the social mind. These are fundamental studies,
the results of which the student of any particular group of
institutions should have at command without being obliged
to work them out for himself, just as the anatomist or the
physiologist depends on general biology for such postulates
as the laws of selection, adaptation and heredity. They are
also quite numerous enough for one division of one science.
To add to them the details of several others is to miscon¬
ceive the theoretical structure no less than the practical
limits of sociology.
CHAPTER V.
THE SECONDARY PROBLEMS: SOCIAL PROCESS, LAW AND
CAUSE.
My present account of the secondary sociologfical prob¬
lems will be even more summary and more merely-indica-
ative than that of the primary problems has been. The full
discussion I reserve for a larger work. I shall only state the
problems and barely suggest the answers that I expect fur¬
ther study to establish. The questions are those of the fact
and nature of progress, of the nature of the social procesg,
of the reality of social law and the character of social causa¬
tion, and of the organic nature and function of society.
What have we to say about progress ? Comte identified
progress with social dynamics, and set it over against social
statics. Social statics was a theory of social order; social
dynamics he conceived to be a theory of stages of human
development, and his discussion of progress,therefore, became
merely a philosophy of history. The theories of organic
evolution have thrown discredit on that way of conceiving
the world which led to a sharp separation of static and
dynamic in exposition, and Mr. Spencer, after having in his
younger days published a book on ' ' Social Statics, ' ' has in his
later writings avoided any such line of division. Structures
and forces are exhibited together, structure giving lines of
direction to motion, motion, nevertheless, modifying struc¬
ture. Yet without abandoning the organic conception, one
may give his attention chiefly to the structural relations, or
chiefly to the modifying forces as Mr. Ward has done in his
treatise on ' ' Dynamic Sociology. ' ' It follows that if prog¬
ress be identifled with the dynamic aspect of social life, a
work on sociology will either contain no separate discussion
of progress, or be little else than such a discussion, according
to the author's personal bias. But the identity must not be
uncritically assumed. A complete theory of social dynamics
(63)
64 Annals of the American Academy.
would be an account of all social forces and of all possible
social changes. Does our idea of progress include all social
changes ? Does it not rather exclude very rigorously all ex¬
cept changes of certain definable kinds, or in certain well-
marked directions? If so, a doctrine of progress ig far
enough from being co-extensive, or in any other way ident¬
ical, with social dynamics. It is rather a theory of the con¬
ditions under which social elements and forces emerge in a
particular result, and therefore, also, of the limits to that kind
or mode of change which the conditions impose. Otherwise
stated, a philosophy of progress is primarily a theory of con¬
ditions and only incidentally of the forces that act subject
to the conditions, while social dynamics is primarily a theory
of forces and only incidentally of conditions. The point is
technical, but helpful for clear thinking.
It would appear, therefore, that the first task in the study
of progress must be to ascertain in what sense there is any
such thing. What is the fact of progress ? In what does it
consist ? If it is a group of changes of a particular and
verifiable kind, its conditions can be known and its limits
determined, at least approximately.
The answer of sociology will be that progress includes an
increase of material well-being, a development of the social
nature,' and an increasingly perfect organization of social
structure, but that, essentially, it is none of these things.
Essentially it is a conversion of lower modes of energy into
higher, that is, more complexly organized modes, and a
substitution of the psychical for the physical process in social
phenomena. It is an evolution of intelligence and sym¬
pathy, not merely as qualities or states of individual con¬
sciousness, but as gigantic social forces which more and
more dominate social development, subordinating the rela¬
tions of physical compulsion, in which society begins, to a
voluntary co-operation. Society does not begin in contract
but it tends progressively towards contract.* So conceiving
* This topic is admirably handled by Fouillée, ** La Science Socialt Contempo^
raineJ^*
The Secondary Probeems. 65
progress, the sociologist will prove that it has certain rather
definite limits. The conversion of physical into psychical
energy cannot proceed beyond a definite degree of rapidity
without endangering social organization.*
If such are the nature and conditions of progress we have
discovered the significant characteristic of the social process.
It is the progressively important part played by the psychi¬
cal forces. If it is chiefly, though not altogether, the physical
aspect of social phenomena and a process of physical causa¬
tion that we study when we look at the origins of social
structure and growth, it is the conscious phenomena and a
psychical process to which we pass when we turn to the later
evolution. In all the higher forms of association and con¬
certed action human wills are a factor. Association is no
longer fortuitous, it is volitional. It follows that in studying
volitional association we have to do especially with the con¬
nection between social forms and various sorts of co-opera¬
tion, and the purposes that they fulfill, since men do not, of
deliberate will, maintain and perfect their social relations
unless they are conscious of an end to be subserved. That
end is the development of their own psychical life, in scope
and power and happiness. So the questions of volitional
association are immediately concerned with the relation
between social evolution and the development of personality.
They include an analysis of the phases that volitional associa¬
tion presents for examination, such as its cohesive strength,
its duration and the manner of its co-ordination. They
include all inquiries that may be made as to the functional
or purposive side of association, that is to say, the ways in
which association acts favorably on individual personality
and on the social mind, and likewise all inquiries as to the
action of the social mind in creating custom, institutions and
positive law. Inexhaustible materials are at hand for the
student pursuing these inquiries. To exhibit the phases
♦I have examined this phase of the question more fully in an article on " The
Ethics of Social Progress,*'published first in the International Journal of Ethics,
Vol. ni, No. 2, January, 1893, and reprinted in a volume of essays by various
writers, on "Philanthropy and Social Progress," Boston, 1893,
66 Annans op the American Academy.
of association, for example, the phenomena of political ma¬
jorities alone would be sufficient, showing, as they do,
every degree of cohesion,—from the rigorous party discipline
that is able to defy independent movements and to sneer at
all reformers, down to alliances that vanish at the first
breath of dissension,—and every agency of co-ordination,
from the "pull" of a district "boss" to the welding heat
of moral indignation.
Conscious personality acts upon society through choice,
and if there is a law of the volitional process in society it
must be, as was shown in the first chapter, a law of social
choices. We have come now to the point where an attempt
to formulate the law must be made.
That it has not been made before this; that the very pos¬
sibility of sueh a law has hardly been suspected, is in no
way remarkable, because the sociologists who have been
more interested in the volitional than in the physical aspect
of social evolution have not been familiar, apparently, with
the theory of individual choice that has been elaborated
in modem economics. That the construction of this theory,
the first scientific attempt to explain choice that has been
made at all, in any department of knowledge, should have
been the work of economists rather than of psychologists
is perhaps remarkable, but no well-informed person will deny
the fact.
Individual choices are determined by the subjective values
previously described. Now in making subjective valuations
for practical purposes we cannot estimate each source or
means of satisfaction by itself alone; we can do that only in
theory, for the sake of analysis. In real life we have to
ask how each possible enjoyment will combine with other
possible enjo3mients to make up a total of happiness. We
have to tone down or modify some indulgences to make
them combine well with others, or, failing to do that, we
have to sacrifice some pleasures altogether. As a rale many
moderate pleasures that combine well, each heightening the
others, will make up a larger total of satisfaction than a few
The Secondary Problems.
67
pleasures each of which is more intense. It is necessary
therefore to correct each subjective value, as individually
considered, by reference to its probable relation to other
values.
Again, in subjective value immediate pleasure is not
necessarily the only element considered. Further corrections
may be made for probable future pleasures and pains, result¬
ing from the choice contemplated, and for reactions on the
personality, the self-development and the self-activity, of the
chooser.
As soon as intellectual power sufficient to make such correc¬
tions has been acquired, the individual wiU attempt to bring
his subjective values into a consistent whole, but the com¬
position of the whole, and his success in making it harmoni¬
ous throughout, will depend very much upon his own
experiences. If his experiences have been limited and
narrow and his pleasures few, but often repeated, his con¬
sciousness will have become identified with a total of sub¬
jective values that is thoroughly self-consistent, as far as it
goes, but is very simple in its make-up. His few pleasures
will be relatively intense; he will carry the consumption of
each sort of goods that he uses to a further limit than he
would carry it to if his pleasures were varied.
Suppose, now, that some wholly new pleasure, more in¬
tense than any that he has enjoyed hitherto, is introduced
into his life, or that suddenly he sees opened to him possi¬
bilities of many new pleasures, which are, however, more or
less incompatible with those to which he has been used.
His group of subjective values becomes at once larger and
more complex than before, but also less well-organized.
It will be a long time before the readjustment is made. It
will involve many sacrifices and self-denials. Meanwhile,
the chances are that he will choose crudely and in a radical
fashion. He will substitute oftener than he will combine.
He will destroy when he might conserve. He will go
wholly over to the new way of life, enjoying as before a few
pleasures intensely instead of learning that he might get a
68
Annates of the American Academy.
greater total of satisfaction from a large number of lesser
pleasures harmoniously put together.*
Apply these principles now to a pqpulation. Make a
population-map of a country like the United States, showing
the distribution of the people according to their habitual
pleasures. In one region you will find a marked predomi¬
nance of those who have lived for generations in a circum¬
scribed way, the people of narrow experiences and of few
enjoyments. In another region you will find in large num¬
bers those who have suddenly found themselves face to face
with possibilities of which they had not dreamed. Else¬
where you will find those who have so long epgoyed varied
experiences and manifold pleasures that their subjective
values make up totals which are highly complex and yet,
at the same .time, harmonious. Can predictions be made
as to how these diSerent regions will choose, -select, or
decide in their industry, their law-making, their educational
and religious undertakings, their organization of institu¬
tions ? I think that, beyond any doubt, prediction is possi¬
ble, and that the law of social choice can be formulated, as
follows :
A population enjoying few and relatively intense pleas¬
ures, harmoniously combined, will be conservative in its
choices. A population having varied, but as yet inharmoni-
ously combined, pleasures, will be radical in its choices.
Only the population that enjoys many, varied, not over-
intense, but harmoniously combined pleasures, will be con¬
sistently progressive in its choices, f
If this is the law of social choices, what determines the
persistence of choices? The social arrangements that we
♦ For the most complete discussion of these topics, the reader is referred to the
writings of Professor Simon N. Patten; especially, " The Consumption of Wealth,"
Philadelphia, 1889; "The Theory of Dynamic Economics," Philadelphia, 1892; and
" The Economic Causes of Moral Progress," Annals of the American Academy
op Political and Social Science, Vol. Ill, p. 129, September, 1892.
11 believe that this law can be successfully applied to political prediction as soon
as we have detailed sociological descriptions of populations. I have indicated
some of the possibilities in an article on " The Nature and Conduct of Political
Majorities," published in the Political Science Quarierly^^oX, VII, No. i, March»
1892.
The Secondary Probeems.
69
know at present are survivals. Thousands of different
arrangements have disappeared because their usefulness to
man was transient or feeble. They did not sufl&ciently
profit the tribes or peoples that used them to save either
people or institutions from extinction. The social arrange¬
ments that live as a part of the life of virile communities
are arrangements that make communities virile. Directly
or indirectly they help to make a better social man, keener
in mind and more adept in co-operation. But among all
possible social choices in law and institution-making, what
ones will contribute to these results ? What choices, merely
as choices, will natural selection prefer ?
' The answer that sociology will give, I think, is very cer¬
tain. The law is unmistakable. Those subjective values
will survive, which are component parts in a total, or whole,
of subjective values that is becoming ever more complex
through the inclusion of new tastes and new pleasures and,
at the same time, more thoroughly harmonious and coherent.
This law does not express a psychical process, as does the
law of social choices. It formulates objective, physical con¬
ditions, to which choice must in the long rtm conform.
When once the conditions are clearly perceived the law
becomes entirely comprehensible.
Society, like the individual, must adjust itself to a physi¬
cal environment. Its pleasures, laws and institutions must
be a part of the adjustment, and thoroughly consistent with
it, as a whole. But the environment is no constant or
unchanging group of relations. It is undergoing ceaseless
evolution, though the changes are often too slow to be per¬
ceptible at the moment. It is becoming more and more
diversified through differentiation. Society may increase
the diversification, but cannot prevent it. It cannot make
the conditions to which life must adapt itself more simple.
On the contrary, life must become more complex, by adapta¬
tion to more complex conditions, or it must cease. This,
then, is the reason why tastes must become more varied. It
is the reason why pleasures must be many, and contributory
70 Annals of the American Academy.
to one another, each heightening, softening, or coloring the
others, till all are like musical notes in accord. It is the
reason further, why our principal and familiar enjoyments
must not be so intense, individually, as to exclude those
weaker, rarer, and more refined pleasures that are necessary
constituents in a perfect whole of maximum satisfaction.
Therefore it is in the physical nature of things that ultra-
conservative and ultra-radical social choices must in the long
run get extinguished, and that only the moderately but con¬
stantly progressive choices can survive.
Are we then to conclude that, in the last analysis, social
causation is an objective or physical process, notwithstand¬
ing the important part that has been assigned to volition ?
If by this question is meant the metaphysical inquiry
whether mind is merely a manifestation of matter, the soci¬
ologist as such has no opinion about it to offer. As sociolo¬
gist that troublesome puzzle does not concern him. But if
the question is whether the, volitional process in society is
conditioned by the physical, and is in no way independent,
or underived, the sociologist must make an affirmative
reply.
The part played by the volitional factors in social evolu¬
tion is so conspicuous that a student who approaches the
problem from one side only can easily fall into the habit of
thinking of them as underived, independent causes, and out
of this unscientific habit many misconceptions have grown.
The sociologist deals with phenomena of volition at every
step. In fact, as we have seen, they are central points,
about which all the other phases of social change are
grouped. More than this; the sociologist deals not only
with causes that are not merely physical, but with many
that are not merely psychical. They are as much more com¬
plex than the merely psychical as the psychical are more
complex than the merely physical. They are sociological—
products of social evolution itself-—and the true sociologist
wastes no time on attempts to explain all that is human by
environment apart from history.
The Secondary Probeems.
71
The real question, therefore, ^is not on the existence or
the importance of volitional and distinctively sociological
causes. It is whether these are underived from simpler
phenomena than themselves, and undetermined by processes
of the physical and organic world. To this question the
answer of sociology is an unqualified negative. Sociology
is planted squarely on those new conceptions of nature—
natural causation and natural law—that have grown up in
scientific minds in connection with doctrines of evolution
and the conservation of energy.* T^lese conceptions, as
the working hypotheses of physical and organic science,
are totally unlike those old metempirical notions that made
natural law an entity, endowed it with omnipotence, and
set it up in a world of men and things to govern them.
Natural laws are simply unchanging relations among forces,
be they, physical, .psychical or,social. A natural cause is
simply one that is at the same time an effect. In the uni¬
verse as known to science there are no independent, unre¬
lated, uncaused causes. By natural causation, therefore,
the scientific man means a process in which every cause is
itself an effect of antecedent causes; in which every action
is at the same time a reaction. Nature is but the totality
of related things, in which every change has been caused
by antecedent change and will itself cause subsequent
change, and in which, among all changes, there are relations
of coexistence and sequence that are themselves unchang¬
ing.
In this mighty but exquisite system man is indeed a vari¬
able, but not an independent variable. He is a function of
innumerable variables. In a world of endless change he
acts upon that world, but only because he is of that world.
His volition is a true cause, but only because it is a true
effect. Therefore, while affirming the reality of sociological
forces that are distinctly different from merely biological and
merely physical forces, the sociologist is careful to add that
* Conceptions not all found even in so recent a work as the Logic " of J. S. Mill,
but set forth clearly by Lewes, in '* Problems of Life and Mind.'* First Series,
72 Annai^ op the American Academy.
they are different only as products are different from factors;
only as protoplasm is different from certain quantities of
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon; only as an organ¬
ism and its co-ordinated activities are different from a group
of nucleated cells having activities that are unrelated.
Recognizing that society is an organization that acts in defi¬
nite ways upon its members, he looks beyond the superficial
aspect and finds that all social action is in fact a reaction,
and, as such, definitely limited and conditioned. He finds
nowhere a social force that has not been evolved in a physi¬
cal-organic process, nor one that is not at every moment con¬
ditioned by physical facts. He sees in constant operation
that marvelous product of individual wills, the collective or
group will, in which Austin found the source of political
sovereignty; but he sees also, what no jurist before Darwin's
day could know, how inexorably the sovereign will is con¬
ditioned by natural selection. The group, like the individ¬
ual, can will what it wills; but what it does will is deter¬
mined by conditions that man did not create, and whether
the group will keep on willing this thing or that thing, will
depend on whether the thing willed conduces to social sur¬
vival. If it does not, there is presently an end of social
willing along those lines.
It is in this truth that the sociologist discerns the essential
significance of the much-befogged doctrine of natural rights.
Natural rights, as the term was once understood, have gone
to the limbo of outworn creeds; not so those natural norms
of positive right that sociology is just beginning to disclose.
Legal rights are rights sanctioned by the law-making power;
moral rights are rules of right sanctioned by the conscience
of the community; natural rights are socially-necessary norms
of right, enforced by natural selection operating in the
sphere of social relations; and in the long run there can be
neither legal nor moral rights not grounded in natural rights,
as thus defined.
I am not trying here to rehabilitate an old idea in a new
phraseology. I reject the old idea, and with it that use of the
The Secondary Probeems.
73
word natural, imposed on political philosophy by Rousseau,
which identifies the natural exclusively with the primitive; a
use now banished from biology and psychology, but inex¬
cusably retained in the political sciences by many economists
and jurists, as if natural were a word of no broader mean¬
ing than natal. In scientific nomenclature natural has be¬
come much more nearly identical with normal. In its abso¬
lute scientific sense the natural is that which exists in virtue
of its part in a cosmic system of mutually-determining activi¬
ties; hence, in a relative and narrower sense it is that which
is, on the whole, in harmony with the conditions of its exist¬
ence. The unnatural is on the way to dissolution or extinction.
If the social will is conditioned by natural selection, not
less is the power to convert will into deed conditioned by
the conservation of energy. Enormous as the social energy
is, it is at any moment a definite quantity. Every unit
of it has been taken up from the physical environment, and
no transmutations of form can increase the amount. What
is used in one way is absolutely withdrawn from other modes
of expenditure. Eet the available energies of the environ¬
ment be wasted or in any way diminished, the social activity
must diminish too. The evolution of new relationships of
conscious association, and the accompanying development of
personality, will be checked.
Thus our definition of sociology as an explanation of social
phenomena in terms of natural causation, becomes somewhat
more explicit. Specifically, it is an interpretation in terms
of psychical activity, organic adjustment, natural selection
and conservation of energy. Äs such, it may be less than a
demonstrative science, if the experimental sciences be taken
as the standard; but we cannot admit that it is only a descrip¬
tive science, as contended by those French sociologists who
hold closely to the philosophy of Comte.* It is strictly an
explanatory science, fortifying induction by deduction, and
referring efiects to veritable causes.
* See especially M. de Roberty"ZÄÄ>«ö/o^2>,*'second edition. Paris, z88ô, Chap«
ter II.
74 Annai^ of the American Academy.
Moreover, when rightly apprehended, sociology has a per¬
fect scientific unity. The conceptions here presented tran¬
scend the old Comtist division into two sharply defined parts,
before mentioned, one dealing with social statics, the other
with social dynamics.* Structure can no longer be studied
in any organic science apart from function, nor function apart
from structure, for we know that at every stage activity
determines form; and form, activity. The sociologist refuses
to sunder in theory what nature has joined in fact. He
centres his attention on a moving equilibrium.
The final question remains. What is the nature of this
concrete group of phenomena that we have been studying ?
To what class of natural objects does it belong ? Is it, as
Mr. Spencer and others have said, an organism?
Certainly it is not a physical organism. Its parts, if parts
it has, are psychical relations. They are not held together
by material bonds, but by comprehension, sympathy and
interest. If society is an organism at all it must be descried
as physio-psychic — a psychical organism essentially, but
having a physical basis. But the reader who has followed
these pages thus far will be disposed to agree with me, I
think, that a society is more than an organism—something
as much higher and more complex as an organism is higher
than non-living matter. A society is an organization^ Partly
a product of unconscious evolution, partly a result of con¬
scious planning. An organization is a complex of psychical
relations. í,ike an organism, however, it may exhibit every
phase of evolution—of differentiation with increasing cohe¬
sion or unity.
Like an organism, too, an organization may have a func-
tion_, and society unmistakably has one. It has developed
conscious life; it is creating human personality, and to that
end it now exists. It is conscious association with his
fellows that develops man's moral nature. To the exchange
of thought and feeling all literature and philosophy, all
* A division carried out by M. de Roberty in the classification of the special social
sciences.—"/.a Sociologie," p. 113.
The Secondary Probeems.
75
religious consciousness and public polity, are due, and it is the
reaction of literature and philosophy, of worship and polity,
on the mind of each new generation that develops its type
of personality. Accordingly, we may say that the function
of social organization, which the sociologist must keep persist¬
ently in view, is the evolution of personality, through ever
higher stages and broader ranges, into that wide inclusion
and to that high ideal quality that we name humanity.
Therefore, at every step the sociological task is the double
one—to know how social relations are evolved, and how,
being evolved, they react on the development of person¬
ality.* Put in yet another way we may say that one object
of sociology is to learn all that can be learned about the
creation of the sodal man. The bearing of this learning
upon the studies of the economist and the political theorist
will be well understood by all who have followed the recent
progress of political philosophy. The ' ' economic man ' ' of
the Ricardians still lives and has his useful work to do;
pace our scientific lagos, who aver that they have looked
upon the world these four times seven years, and have never
yet "found man that knew how to love himself." Not so
the natural man of Hobbes, whose singular state, as de¬
scribed in the Leviathan, " was a condition of war of every¬
one against every one, ' ' but who nevertheless ' ' covenanted ' '
with his neighbor. That whole class of ideas, and all the
theories built upon them, in which man was lifted out of
his social relations—in which the individual was conceived
as an uncompromising egoist, existing prior to society and
reluctantly bringing himself to join a social combination as
a necessary evil—are giving way before a sounder knowl¬
edge. Instead of those notions, a conception of man as
essentially and naturally social, as created by his social rela¬
tionships and existing çua man only in virtue of them, will be
the starting-point of the political theorizing of coming years.
* The work of interpreting thought, morals, art and religion from the sociological
point of view had been hopefully begun by the lamented M. Guyau. His " L'Art
au Point de Vue Sociologique^^ and Éducation eiHeredité, étude sociologique^^ are
especially suggestive.
CHAPTER VI.
THE METHODS^ OE SOCIOEOGY.
We come now, finally, to the question of the methods and
mental habits that are required in sociological research. Is
it possible to find under the actual conditions of university
life, the mental qualities and to develop the methods that
must be relied on ? Indeed, are we not confronted here with
a very serious, perhaps an insuperable difficulty ? The
specializing tendencies of modern research are due quite as
much to mental limitations as to the distinctness of the
inquiries pursued. I am not sure that this subjective fact,
rather than any objective feature, is not more and more
determining the grouping or classification of the sciences for
university purposes. Subjects are grouped together in
schools or departments that call for the same or similar apti¬
tudes, and are pursued by the same or similar methods. If,
then, a science is allied by its subject-matter with knowl¬
edge of one kind while its method is necessarily one by
which we discover knowledge of a very different kind, its
chances of winning the favor of students are small. If
sociology is of interest chiefly to students of the economic,
political and moral sciences, but must be developed by
methods with which they are little familiar, any hope of
establishing it securely as a university study might as well
be abandoned. Of course we may premise that the success¬
ful pursuit of any modem science requires a fairly broad
range of intellectual sympathies. Every science is in some
measure dependent on many other sciences for both concepts
and methods. Its devotees cannot be wholly unfamiliar
with the instruments or modes of reasoning employed by
their co-workers in other fields. Yet every science has also
a method or methods that are peculiarly its own and are
mastered only through systematic training. Sociology is
no exception. It draws largely from biology, largely also
(76)
The Methods ce Sociology.
77
from history. Statistics it uses so freely that many writers
hold it to be an open question whether sociology and statis¬
tics are anything else than different names for the same
science, or, at the most, slightly different forms of what is
practically the same body of knowledge. Yet if I have
rightly stated the problems of sociology, all these means of
research are subordinate. The chief dependence must be on
a skillful employment of psychological synthesis. Using the
fáculty of scientific imagination, the sociologist must ideally
put together the various elements, forces, laws, of psychical
life; and then bring the whole result, as an organic unity,
to the test of comparison with historical facts and statistical
tabulations. His procedure must not only reverse the pro¬
cesses of ordinary psychology, by which that concrete whole,
the individual ego, is resolved into hypothetical elements
and modes of activity; it must likewise reverse a radically
unscientific procedure that for years has obtained in the
political sciences. After resolving human nature into
abstractions, we have attempted to verify, singly and
severally, all manner of deductions therefrom by a direct
comparison with statistics and history, as if these concretes
could by any possibility correspond to deductive truths
tmtil the latter had been wrought together into complex
wholes. Of a score of illustrations that might be cited, take
the once familiar economic dogma,« that if a laborer does not
pursue his interest, his interest will none the less pursue
him, against which President Walker has so effectively mar¬
shaled the concrete facts of industrial life. Filled with
indignation at the mischief which that dogma has done, we
have said too hastily that all deductive economics is a lie.
For that very dogma, as a single abstract truth, was a valid
scientific conclusion; because it is certainly legitimate to
separate an abstract principle of human nature from all
other abstract principles and to draw logical deductions
from it. The fallacy entered when the single truth was
taken for a synthesis of truths; when the part was made to do
duty for the whole. If besides the premise that man may
78 Annals op the American Academy.
be abstractly conceived as a competitor with his fellow-men
for economic advantage, the economists had made use of
the further premise that we may also abstractly conceive of
him as an instinctive combiner with his fellow-man for
maintaining class power and privilege, they would have
drawn not only the deduction that employers must compete
with one another in building up industries, but the further
deduction that, as far as possible, they will refrain from
competing against one another in buying labor, and will
never fail to stand together in shaping the social and legal
conditions under which laborers must sell their work. The
two deductions put together would have afforded a resultant
truth not very unlike the concrete facts of history and sta¬
tistics. Working by the method of psychological synthesis,
the sociologist is constantly on the watch for neglected or
unperceived factors in human action, as the chemist for
undiscovered elements, and by putting them together in
every imaginable way he tries to discover the conditions and
laws of their combination. Regarded on its disciplinary
side, sociology is pre-eminently the science that may be
expected to train its students in habits of constant attention
to the psychical possibilities of the great world of human
struggle, in which we act and suffer and enjoy.
Viewing the science and its method in this way, I do not
hesitate now to give an affirmative answer to the question
whether students of the political sciences can be expected to
master the method that has been described. I am prepared
even to go further, and to affirm that there is no other one
thing in the whole range of their possible studies which it is
so imperatively necessary that they should master. The
young man who is to-day entering upon the special researches
of economics or public law will quickly discover that he must
become a very critical observer of the psychological assump¬
tions underlying those sciences if he expects to keep
pace with their future progress. The prolonged contro¬
versy over the respective merits of deductive and his¬
torical methods is approaching an issue that no one
The Methods ge Socioeogy.
79
foresaw. I think no one will contradict me if I say that
the men who, a dozen or fifteen years ago, expected
almost unlimited additions to knowledge from the appli¬
cation of historical researches to political and economic
questions, have been not a little disappointed. There is an
unmistakable reaction all along the line toward the freer
employment of analysis and deduction. But these methods
can never again be used in quite the old^way. It is seen by
everybody that the basis of investigation must be widened;
that innumerable facts must be taken into account that were
once ignored. Is it not significant that whi^ this conclusion
has been slowly forcing itself upon scientific attention, a new
life has been actually infused into theoretical studies by men
who have approached them from the psychological side?
Without raising any question of the final value of the con¬
tributions made to economic theory by Jevons and Menger
and their followers, I think we must all admit that we owe
to their re-examination of the psychological premises of
political economy the fresh impulse that is making itself felt
in everj^ department of economic speculation. Much the
same sort of thing may be affirmed of comparative jurispru¬
dence. Five years ago one would have said that the doc¬
trine of natural rights was buried beyond resurrection. Yet
of late it has been again discussed on both sides of the
Atlantic with more originality and more vigor than at any
previous time since the closing days of the eighteenth cen¬
tury. But here again the new view is not like the old.
Historical researches having shown the essential relativity
of all systems of right, the inquiry is now as to the subjec¬
tive or psychological basis of the historical systems. No doubt
the doctrine that will emerge will be very unlike the eight¬
eenth century notions, but, be that as it may, the conviction
is gaining ground that the further progress of the sciences of
public law will depend greatly on a more thorough study of
the psychology of law. And public law and economics are
but two out of many sciences that are grounded in social psy¬
chology. They all build on psychological assumptions, and
8o
Annals of the American Academy.
the assumptions are either true or imaginary. The phan¬
tasms and symbols of an imaginary psychology have ruled
the social sciences long enough. Whether we like it or not
we must now throw over our illusions and learn to substi¬
tute for them the truths of a rational sociology.
REPRINTED FROM " THE CHAUTAUQUAN" FOR APRIL, rSqj.
METHODS OF STUDYING SOCIETY.
BY PROFESSOR ALBION \V. SMALL, Ph.D.
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
SOCIOLOGY might have been the
name given to the social philosophy
of each period in which attempts
have been made to organize the facts of as¬
sociated human life into systems of thought.
The system to which the name actually re¬
fers is new in method, and to a certain de¬
gree new in content ; but on the other hand
the new name must not be understood to im¬
ply that the thing for which it stands is es¬
sentially new. Sociology is, in the simplest
terms, knowledge of social facts brought
down to date and unified into the best pos¬
sible exhibit of the most significant features
of human relationships. It" would accord¬
ingly be patent usurpation to set up a claim
that interest in social phenomena is due to
sociology. This would invert the actual or¬
der of cause and effect. Sociology is the
latest expression of intelligent interest in so¬
cial phenomena.
We are nevertheless just reaching an ap¬
proximately adequate apprehension of the
requirements to be satisfied in order to per¬
fect a program of investigation which shall
gather knowledge of social relations that
may be at once precise in detail and co-exten¬
sive with the range of human interests. F rom
the Greek philosophers to the modern soci¬
ologists observations have been accumula¬
ting, and processes have been developing, by
the use of which the proper study of man
is easier than ever before. Until a very re¬
cent day the study of society has been so
fragmentary, and its results have been left
so unrelated to each other, that the conclu¬
sions derived from them have had feeble
authority. Sociology now takes up the task
of making the study of society systematic,
and of combining special knowledge into
available social wisdom.
Until political economy developed inde-
METHODS OF STUDYING SOCIETY.
pendence, and we may say that this achieve¬
ment was simultaneous with the declaration
of American independence, thought about
society was divided between history and
philosophy, using each of these terms in a
liberal sense. The study of society tended
either to the narration of events, or to re¬
flections which purported to disclose the
principles controlling events. Each genus
of study included various species, so that the
statements which follow apply with unequal
strictness to different phases of the kind of
inquiry to which they refer.
Historical writing, in which sociology has
one of its roots, has betrayed in turn most
of the vices to which mind is liable. Credu¬
lity, for example, has set down as true many
things which fancy, conjecture, or rumor af¬
firmed. Thus the Roman myths became
part of Livy's history.
Speculative history has represented as facts
additions that the imagination of the scribe
held to be probable in view of other things
which were supposed to be known about the
facts. The name Herodotus is the classic
symbol for this sort of history. Its readers
are in the plight of those who try to de¬
cide from Goethe's accounts of himself which
parts are " Wahrheit " and which are " Dich¬
tung." History written under the protec¬
tion of despots has either frankly pandered
to the prevalent power, as in the case of the
chronicles preserved upon Assyrian or
Egyptian monuments ; or it has artfully ideal¬
ized alien social conditions, as in the case of
the Germania of Tacitus; or it has treated
topics of its time so diplomatically, as in the
case of Machiavelli's " Prince," which may
by accommodation be called history, that
the despot might read one thing out of it
and the critic another ; or it has indirectly
flattered the monarch by writing of the
past in the spirit of a retained advocate, as
in the case of Lord Bacon's Life of Henry
VIL In either instance the result is a mass
of assertion which is useful to seekers after
truth at present only after it has been sifted
by scholars who have the skill of detectives.
Our purpose will be more directly served
by pointing out deficiencies than by attempt¬
ing to enumerate or estimate the services of
this department of social exposition. His¬
tory has at best but partially satisfied men's
demand for knowledge of the past. In default
of adequate analysis of human activities his¬
tory has left out of view large sections of
knowledge which are of no less importance
than those studied and recorded. Sociology
is at present laying upon future historians
obligations far more comprehensive than
those discharged by the historians of the
past.
Of philosophy, as explanation of human
relations, similar assertions are true. The
most flagrant vice of philosophy has been
its inversion of the order in which the ac¬
quisition of real knowledge is possible. In¬
stead of building up knowledge by patient
accumulation of facts, the philosophers have
constructed pretentious conceptions of com¬
prehensive truth, and then they have pre¬
sumed that these liberal assumptions could
supply sufficient details of fact about nearer
elements of knowledge. They have thus
turned knowable facts into a masquerade of
artificial notions. They have taught men
that the shortest route to knowledge of hu¬
man affairs is by way of those remote con¬
ceptions which they have treated as abso¬
lute truth. They have consequently made
their disciples so helplessly far-sighted that
from disuse their mental vision well nigh
lost its power to bring near realities into
focus.
Adam Smith's "inquiry into the nature
and causes of the wealth of nations " marks
the beginning of the era in which history
and philosophy are adjusting themselves
\\ ith entirely new efficiency to social service.
It is by no means improbable that in the
future Adam Smith, rather than Comte, will
be regarded as the founder of sociology. In
the spirit of both historian and philosopher
the Glasgow professor confronted a specific
social problem, and attempted to solve it in
the only way in which solution is possible.
He asked, " What are the principles in ac¬
cordance with which national wealth is in¬
creased, and in violation of which nations
remain poor ?" The answer must necessarily
be both history and philosophy. It must be
a collection of facts, in which the nhennm-
METHODS OF STUDYING SOCIETY.
ena of national wealth or poverty appear,
and it must be a system of generalizations in
which the phenomena are interpreted. From
this time, when political economy may be
said to have reached its majority, history has
had new tasks, and philosophy new materi¬
als. In these two changes we must recog¬
nize the beginnings of modern sociology.
The development of sociology from this
beginning has been through differentiation
of new inquiries about society, and corre¬
sponding diversification of the tasks which
historians and philosophers have had to per¬
form. This process has not been concerted,
nor even until lately, to a high degree con¬
scious. On the contrary the immemorial in¬
terest in the mysteries of human life has
prompted many men to pursue isolated in¬
quiries into special phases of human experi¬
ence, and for reasons above suggested these
labors would have had comparatively little
value, unless the necessity of organizing di¬
vided efforts had appeared to other men. If
we use the name historian for all the peo¬
ple who are trying to discover facts relating
to men in the past, and if we apply the name
philosopher to all those who are trying to
combine these facts so that they will reveal
the most truth about human affairs in all
time, we may say that in the last century
history and philosophy have become organ¬
ized through a division of labor so minute
that no department of human activity is
wholly omitted from the attention of histo¬
rians and philosophers.
In this development it has became evident
that the subjects worth attention, as tributary
to human advantage, are more distinct and
numerous than men had realized. We have
found out that "universal history" which
traces a certain select sequence, or group of
sequences, of events through the centuries,
necessarily omits a thousand times more
than it reports. Such omissions might pre¬
sumably be due solely to the necessary limi¬
tations of an epitome. The perception to
which the sociologists are calling attention,
in this connection, is on the contrary that
the different departments of human experi¬
ence have not yet received such equitably
proportioned attention that it is possible to
decide justly which classes of facts about the
past are worth emphasis, and which classes
may be omitted or minimized in synopsis.
History and philosophy, that is, the dem¬
onstration of past facts and the interpreta¬
tion of past facts, are thus no longer respec¬
tively simple unities, but they are highly com¬
plex unities. This will appear from refer¬
ence to the course of development in eco¬
nomic knowledge. The men of the so-called
"historical school" of political economy
have at last found their proper place, not as
the founders of a distinct system of econom¬
ics, but as the investigators of a distinct body
of evidence which must have its place among
the premises of all valid economic theory.
But economic action is not the only action
which has had a history that implicitly con¬
tains a section of philosophy. For every dis¬
tinct department of human development the
history is therefore to be traced, in order that
its philosophy may be derived. If the men
who use the historical method had learned
nothing from the example of political econ¬
omy, some of them would be engaged in
organizing a " historical school " of an¬
thropology, others of politics, of psychol¬
ogy, of esthetics, of ethics.
But the lesson has been of service
for students in every other department
of social investigation. Instead of repeating
the error, men are engaged in discovering
the facts and the laws of human develop¬
ment in its distinct physical, economic,
social, intellectual, esthetic and moral di¬
visions. We have accordingly, within the
scope of sociology, parallel inquiries, each
with its historical and its philosophical as¬
pect, which may be designated generally as
anthropology, economics, social history,
folk-psychology, politics, esthetics, and
comparative ethics. The development of
each element of reality thus recognized
must be traced separately, and the method
of its development, or its philosophy, must
be discovered in its special history ; but the
complex development, and not a single part
of it, is history proper, and the method of
co-operation between the various lines of
development is the substance of social phi¬
losophy.
METHODS OF ST
Sociology has thus accomplished an ad¬
justment of a few men's thoughts to the
fact that associated human life is a totality
made up of distinguishable parts, each with
a history, each with an influence upon the
other parts, each unintelligible unless in¬
terpreted in its correlations with the rest.
But sociology is more than a combination
of history and philosophy. The historical
habit involves contemplation of social facts
in two particular aspects ; flrst as products
of something antecedent, second as factors
in the production of something subsequent.
When scrutiny of society comes down to
date, contemporary conditions necessarily
come into the field of view in this double
aspect. There is accordingly set for the
sociologist the task of knowing the facts of
contemporary society so intimately that he
may not only anticipate the action of visible
tendencies, but still further that he may be
able to justify methods of interference with
perverse tendencies, in order to procure
more desirable results.
Modern sociology is accordingly develop¬
ing a new species of scholar, whose function
it is to do philosophically what the reporter
of the daily press does superficially, viz.:
to set in order the significant elements of
contemporary life. The material addition
which the new sociology makes to history
is classified and related knowledge of
meaning terms in the present social
equation.
The sociologists confront the fact that
human beings, whose characteristics and
whose needs have been exhibited with a
large degree of definiteness during trace¬
able human history, now find themselves in
peculiar social conditions, within which
they have to work out their own solution of
the problem of happiness. It is the
ambition of the sociologists to comprehend
and expound the facts of human conditions
so completely that their own generation
may get a larger proportion of the possible
goods of life than would be obtainable
without the help of social philosophy. In
other words, knowledge of present soci¬
ety and its possibilities involves compré¬
hension of present human activities in the
IDYIXG SOCIETY.
same orderly arrangement in which it has
been found necessary to group historical
facts for purposes of intelligence. In
order to be wise about the tasks which
living men have to perform we must take
into account the facts of the physical en¬
vironment in which we live, our inherited
and acquired physical and mental traits,
the peculiarities of our industrial organiza¬
tion, and of our technical resources, the
written and unwritten laws of government,
and of society as distinguished from govern¬
ment, the ideals of advantage and happi¬
ness which are dominant, and the codes of
conduct which are potent.
Recognition of this necessity accounts
for the industry that has been displayed in
recent years by students of society in ex¬
amining conditions which had previously
attracted little notice. To know society it
has become necessary to know neglected
and despised elements of society, and
obscure and apparently insignificant re¬
lations within society. Hence the attention
to the defective, dependent, and delinquent
classes, which has been so noticeable that
many have mistaken this attention for the
whole business of sociology. Hence the
study, notably in Germany, France, and
England, of the physical conditions of
factories and of operatives' dwellings.
No facts that have a part in determin¬
ing the direction or the results of human
efforts to attain the ends of life may be
omitted henceforth when men attempt to
plan philosophically for the improvement of
parts or the whole of society. The social
factors that have had most consideration in
the past, nationalities, governments, armies,
laws, may not disappear from view ; but the
quality of life must become more important
than its quantity, and the fortunes of
individuals, as limited by institutions, must
become relatively more interesting than the
mass movements of nations.
It is for reasons just hinted at that the
so-called "labor problem" has occupied so
much of the attention of social theorists
that it in turn has been mistaken by many
for the peculiar province of sociology. Its
relation to social philosophv in general will
METHODS OF STUDYEXC, SOCIETY.
illustrate the connection between sociology
and all the tasks of present society.
Sociology, in so far as it is scientific and
authoritative at all, discovers or rediscovers
laws of social ethics, very much as physiol¬
ogy sanctions the ethics of individual hy¬
giene. Labor problems are not altogether
entanglements between bad men ; they are
complications among men, both employers
and employees, who are partially in the
dark about the real relations of the interests
in controversy. Sociology is not likely to
be of much use as arbiter in a given case,
but sociology cannot fail to be of large
service in removing the misconceptions out
of which the controversies arise.
During the summer of 1894, for example,
circumstances brought two phases of social
doctrine into collision in a peculiar way in
the United States. On the one hand, men
with very little exact knowledge of business
attempted to schoolmaster the organizers of
industry, and to prescribe a moral code to
which business should conform. ■ On the
other hand, men who questioned the
authority of this code, or of some of its
precepts, angrily denounced the would-be
teachers and reformers. Good men actually
ridiculed the idea that ethical principles can
have any bearing upon industrial practices.
The function of sociology in the premises
is to show that both these kinds of men are
seriously wrong. On the one side, the fault
is not in desiring the control of business by
ethical principles, but in premature assump¬
tion of superior knowledge of ethical prin¬
ciples. On the other side, the fault is in
rousing opposition to ethical principles, as
such, instead of demanding proper creden¬
tials for the alleged ethical principles.
It must be admitted that the sociologists
themselves are not yet clear about the
ethical phases of sociology, and they conse¬
quently do not yet furnish the guidance to
be desired in arriving at such distinctions.
Sociology has the means of enlightenment,
however, about the ethics of social relations.
and its mission is therefore evident. Just
at present the foremost task of sociology is
to buttress men's confidence in the majesty
of moral law, especially because it is neces¬
sary to impeach so many incompetent inter¬
preters of the law.
The industrial questions of the day are
so many challenges to modern men to find
out just what is moral under our new con¬
ditions. The railroad, the factory, the
wage system, the trust, the lobby, the over¬
crowded city, as we know them to-day, are
comparatively new things. They contain
and make complications which our political
and commercial and religious traditions do
not simplify. There is no doubt that
honesty, and truthfulness, and justice, and
mercy, and humanity, and fraternity belong
in these new conditions, and ought to con¬
trol them ; but it is no wonder that men in
the midst of this complexity have little con¬
fidence in the ability of theorists to decide
the precise form in which these eternal
virtues should appear in their own particular
difficulties. In spite of unfortunate em¬
barrassments from the unintelligent zeal of
ignorant champions of righteousness, the
world's need of righteousness as its organi¬
zing principle becomes more apparent with
each generation of human experience. The
obvious function of sociology is to bear a
large part in establishing the authority of
righteousness in social relations.
It would have been easy to schedule a
long list of claims for the social sciences on
account of their services in the past. It
accords better with the spirit of sociology
to speak of the tasks which it is under¬
taking for the future. The account of
society with sociology is hardly opened.
The ledger of coming generations must
declare whether sociology shall have worthily
fulfilled its purpose of rendering such faith¬
ful report of social facts and possibilities,
that men may co-operate more intelligently
than in the past to secure national prog¬
ress.
THE RELATION OF SOCIOLOGY TO ECONOMICS.
The task imposed bv the subject of this paper is the fixing
of an equation between two undetermined and variable factors.
The alternatives presented are : ( i ) discussion of nomenclature ;
(?) discussion of the ultimate purpose of social knowledge and
of the consequent relations between divisions of labor in accu¬
mulating and organizing social knowledge. Assuming the libertó¬
te use the terms "Economics" and "Sociolog}-" in the sense in
which the writer is accustomed to emplov them, this paper will
follow, in the main, the second course.
The postulates which sanction attempts to gather knowledge
of social relations are : ( i ) that association of human beings is
inevitable; (2) that knowledge of social relations is the condi¬
tion of so adjusting individual behavior to the requirements of
association that the interests involved will be most completely
subserved. In other words knowledge of social facts and rela¬
tions has telic value in the pursuit of human happiness. This telic
value resides not merely' in revelation of tendencies within which
men are powerless. Its desirability consists not in forewarning
men of what they have to expect from the operation of inexorable
cosmic energies which it is comfortable to understand for the
sake of intelligent resignation to fate. In that case there would
be no more virtue in knowledge of social forces than in informa¬
tion about encroachments of the sea upon the land of the earth's
surface, or about the rate at which the sun is losing its heat.
Social knowledge is worth getting as an indication of what asso¬
ciated men ma^' do to increase their happiness.
It is perhaps superfluous to acknowledge the utilitarian pur¬
pose and the useful service of that specific inquir)- into one
series of social relations which dates the beginning of its scien¬
tific stage from the work of Adam Smith. Desire to know and
'Read at the recent meeting of the American Economic Association in New York.
The subject was assigned by the committee on programme.
l6g
JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
so to control conditions precedent to human happiness has been
conspicuously and continuously the spur to economic inquiry.
Society is not likely to overestimate the labors of the economists
in expounding relations within their peculiar field of investiga¬
tion. The preliminary remark is, therefore, in order, that the
writer of this paper has no sympathy with the men who con¬
sciously.or unconsciously make the term "Sociology" stand for
an effort to supersede or to discredit economic science. If, .as
this paper assumes, there is demand for division of labor corre¬
sponding with the distinguishing names — economics and soci¬
ology— it is because there are stages in the accumulation and
interpretation of knowledge about society which call for dif¬
ferentiated methods and complementary processes. Economics
and sociology are not to be regarded, however, as rival disci¬
plines, but as interdependent portions of social science. The
presumption that there is special call for arbitration and
conciliation between economics and sociology rests primarily
upon failure to perceive that after economic phenomena are
nterpreted, only one of many elements in social reactions is
thereby approximately explained.
There is an easily distinguishable field of inquiry about the
inclusion of which within the scope of economics there is prac¬
tically no question. It is inquiry concerning the correlations of phe-
nomena. connected with wealth, m so far as the desire for wealth is the
determining, or at least the differentiating factor in those phenomena.
This paper takes for granted that there is a legitimate and neces¬
sary science (or group of sciences) of such phenomena, and that
its proper designation is Economics. The scope of the science
(or sciences) of Economics becomes debatable as soon as conclu¬
sions transgress the limits of abstraction and involve judgments
upon the relation of economic phenomena to the remaining sum
of human pursuits and interests. The conventional term "Polit¬
ical Economy" not less than the narrower and more special
phrases "applied economics," "social economics," "the art of
economics," "practical economics," etc., implies what need not
be argued, viz., that abstract economics alone is as inadequate
SOCIOLOGY AND 'ECONOMICS.
171
to the task of directing social cooperation as is abstract physics
alone to solve the problems which confront the navigator or the
military engineer.
At the same time the men who devote themselves to the
study of economic phenomena will, in the majority of cases, have
impulse, if not even genius, to think out plans of social proce¬
dure. Hence it has come that, especially since the younger
Mill, the tendency has grown almost universal to combine with
abstract economics investigation of actual conditions ; the aim
being invention or criticism of social policies and programmes.
When this concrete work is undertaken, the question neces¬
sarily presents itself—not what is the relative capacity of the
economists and of other men to fit themselves for judgments
upon principles of social procedure, but, what measure of sanction
can be derived from abstract economics alone for decisions upon
programmes which involve the total of human interests ?
Two views upon the question are imaginable: (i) that
abstract economics supplies all the insight into social relations
necessary as a qualification for guiding social procedure; (2)
that it does not supply all the necessary insight.
If we adopt the former view, we are compelled to believe
that every relation of individuals to institutions is a phenome¬
non, explicable, and formulable in terms of economic exchange.
The relation of the individual to family, community, school,
church, state is wholly a relation turning upon wealth, disguised
sometimes under the form of other, but actually derived interests.
Bernard of Clairvaux and Lord Byron, Washington and Benedict
Arnold, Napoleon and Thoreau are simply variations of the
economic man. Coliseum and Catacombs, Inquisition and
Reformation, modern science and modern philanthrophy are
solely phenomena of economics. Let me not be understood to
imply that any economist has ever avowed precisely this view.
I am not aware that a theorist has been known to state his case
in just this form. The other alternative then remains, viz., that
social phenomena include more than economic phenomena, and
social interpretation involves more than economic interpretation.
JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
It would be difficult to name a recent economic treatise
which does not tacitly, at least, admit that the operation of
economic formulae is subject to modifications in practice, which
must be reckoned upon when economic theories are applied.
This concession, however, falls very far short of the necessities
of the case. It by no means necessarily connotes belief or
admission on the part of the economist that the same exact,
specialized, scientific processes are necessary in determining the
modifications to which the economic formula is subject, which
are demanded in derivation of the formula itself. It would not
be difficult to collect economic arguments which evidently
assume with confidence that the economic inquiry must be scien¬
tific, while the modifying judgments may be supplied by the
economist as a man of common sense !
A layman may be permitted to divide economists roughly,
according to superficial characteristics, into the mathematical and
the sentimental schools. It has long been evident that while the
sentimental economists have tended to minimize the significance
of economic science, the mathematical economists have tended to
overlook both the necessity and the difficulty of precise knowl¬
edge of extra-economic phenomena and laws. They have fre¬
quently appeared to believe that if an economist is scientific in
the treatment of his own proper problems, the knowledge needed
for combination with economic abstractions, if they are to pass
into social programmes, will be added to him by unconscious
absorption.
In a December review is a remark which affords an illustra¬
tive suggestion. The language is this: "The whole develop¬
ment of the nineteenth century has tended to emphasize the
importance of a clear understanding of the workings of the
social organism on the part of the intelligent public We
might almost state in one sentence the whole purpose of eco¬
nomic study by saying that it is to enable the public to foresee
the consequences of economic legislation."' The propositions
are not quoted as evidence that their author takes a view differ-
■ Journal of Political Economy, December 1894, p. 107.
SOCIOLOGY AAL) ECONOMICS.
173
ent from that here proposed ; but the language gives occasion
for the qualification, from our standpoint, that there is no such
thing as " economic legislation " pure and simple. The effects
of legislation cannot, therefore, be discovered merely through
perfection of the economic lens.
Currency laws, for example, probably approach the concep¬
tion "economic legislation" as nearly as any legal enactments
that can be cited ; yet the monetary policy of nations, even when
dictated by evidently sound statesmanship, must often vary from
the requirements of abstract monetary science from considera¬
tion of a score of conditions in which economic elements are sub¬
ordinate. Prevision of consequences to follow legislation that is
primarily economic depends upon judgment of conditions which
involve the economic element in every variety of proportions,
from a maximum down to a minimum ratio. The fact that the
attitude assumed last summer by the labor organizations toward
the Interstate Commerce Law was so unexpected illustrates the
inadequacy of all our processes of social forecast, but especially
the impotence of attempted prevision along the line of economic
sequence alone. Recent occurrences in the American bond
market may also be referred to without further comment.
Just at this point sociology finds its primary function. That
function corresponds with the fact that human life is an equation
of more than one unknown quantity. Computing the value of
the economic factor in the equation is but one of several pre¬
liminary processes, each of which consists in similar computation
■of the significance of a meaning term in the equation. Interpre¬
tation of actual social forces depends upon ability to find the
significance of each of these factors and to combine them into a
symmetrical, even if only an algebraic, formulation of the whole.
Sociology is accordingly the natural successor, heir and
assign of the worthy but ineffective " Philosophy of History."
The aim of the philosophers of history was precisely the initial
object of sociology, viz., a conspectus of the correlation of
the forces that have given_human society its present character.
The cardinal reason for failure to derive a credible philosophy
174
JOURNAL OF POLI'ñCAL ECONOMY.
of history was that the attempts were made before the necessary
material or method for positive philosophy was available. The
philosophies of history have consequently been, in large part,
generalizations of assumptions rather than of facts. Scientific
methodology in ascertaining the facts which contain the process
of social development is still in the formative stage.- It is a
desideratum, not an accepted and authoritative mode of proce¬
dure. Yet development of criticism in the various departments
of inquiry from which the material of social philosophy must be
drawn has made more scientific generalization desirable, and in a
measure practicable. Sociology is, therefore, the philosophical
correlative of the perfected criticism recently applied to various
groups and series of social phenomena.
It is plain that the philosophy here contemplated is situated
midway between investigation of particular aspects of social fact,
with the resulting bodies of arranged knowledge composing the
special social sciences; and on the other hand "social art,"
"practical civics," "the art of social control," or whatever we
may call the programme of action which our philosophy sanc¬
tions.
We may point out again, in passing, that to one who takes
this view of sociology it is anomalous to select economics and
sociology for the invidious prominence of juxtaposition. Sociol¬
ogy is a step in generalization, the motive of which is to supple¬
ment researches into the different objective and subjective rela¬
tions that condition human action, by attempting to organize the
results of such preliminary researches. Of these relations there
are those which the various physical and vital sciences explore.
There is especially that branch of vital science which deals with
man as "the highest zoological type." Then there are the vari¬
ously classified inquiries which attempt to explain man's actions
as an individual and as an element in social combinations —
ethnology, history, demography, comparative politics, comparative
economics, etc. Then there is psychology, in its various divisions,
from experimental laboratory psychology to ethnic psychology.
Finally, but relatively more instructive than all, there are the
SOCIOLOGY AXD ECONOMICS.
175
actual contemporary activities of society which must be inter¬
preted first as outgrowths of previous human activity, and then
retro-actively as the most reliable clue to explanations of the
interrelations of similar activities in the past.
It will be seen that the function of Sociology as thus
explained is, so far, not research in the exact sense at all, but
resort to the sources from which results of special research are
to be expected. Whatever may be true of sociologists, sociology
is not properly to be credited with the discovery of primary facts.
That work has to be done before sociology is possible. Sociol¬
ogy is, however, acquiring the merit of contending that the
necessity of combining facts from these sources must have
scientific recognition, and that consequently social programmes
based on premises narrower than this synthesis, whether they
be predicated on moral postulates alone on the one hand, or on
mathematics alone on the other hand, must be rejected as
unscientific.
The perception from which sociology takes its departure may¬
be described in a somewhat different way. The desires which
impel men to action are of numerous orders, which cannot be
reduced to terms of a common concrete unit. These desires are
related to each other, since they are directed towards objects
for which undivided personalities strive. At the same time they
are distinct, and viewed abstractly the corresponding satisfac¬
tions are ends in themselves. Thus men desire unimpeded exer¬
cise of physical capability ; they desire those psychic inter¬
changes which occur in companionship with fellow beings ; they
desire satisfaction of curiosity ; they desire aesthetic enjoyment ;
they desire that adjustment to condition which insures the state
of complaisance that we call peace of conscience. Each of these
desires is as truly a part of normal men as the desire for wealth.
Now the fact that wealth, in some minimum proportion, is essen¬
tial to the emergence and development and satisfaction of these
partially economic desires, does not change the complementary
fact that the satisfaction of these desires depends upon other
conditions than the possession of wealth ; conditions which can-
176
JOCNXAL OF POLITICAL F.COXOMY
not be understood without investigation as rigid as that to which
economic relations must be subjected. Indeed, from the socio-
logieal standpoint, tacit assumption that economic science can
be made the sufficient basis of a doctrine of human happiness, is
comparable with an assumption that a general theory of prices
can be deduced solely from the formula of diminishing returns
in the extractive industries. To state the comparison directly,
sociology recognizes the constant presence of the economic
element in the problem of human happiness ; but it discovers
that as the immanent qualities of human nature unfold, while the
absolute value of the economic element in welfare increases, its
ratio to the sum of other elements consciously involved in
happiness tends to diminish, somewhat as the phenomena of
diminishing returns in agriculture lose their relative significance
the farther the processes of manufacture carry transformation
of the raw material.
The sociologist accordingly endorses, so far as the desidera¬
tum of social knowledge is concerned, Jane Carlyle's dictum ;
"The great bad is mixing things." The present campaign of
sociology, as distinguished from eeonomics, is for a clearing up of
the confusion which is content with contemplation of man in two
aspects: ( i ) economic man, (2) the undivided remainder of man.
Far from depreciating the abstraction which has created the eco¬
nomic man, sociology tends to the conclusion that similar
abstraction must create the physiological man, the social man
(in the special sense), the intellectual man, the aesthetic man, the
ethical man. The social unit postulated in our reasoning will be
one part scientific concept and several parts empirical concept
until these abstractions are derived and recombined into a svn-
thetic, scientific concept of the real man.
From this point of view attention may again be called to the
correlation, rather than the contrast between economics and soci¬
ology. Evident demand for analytical observation of man in
the qualitatively distinct phases of his desire and endeavor,
emphasizes the declaration that sociology is in no sense a rival of
economics, any more than of physiology or of psychology. On
SOCIOLOGY AXn ECOXOMICS.
177
the contrary, sociology can have no reliable material to organize
until economics, among the other antecedent sciences, has per¬
formed at least preliminary portions of its work.
It would not be pertinent to discuss in this paper the special
contributions to knowledge of man and of society which antece¬
dent sciences ought to furnish. In such discussion criticism of
existing division of labor upon the material of social knowledge
would be unavoidable, and such criticism is among the most
important present tasks of social scientists. It will be sufficient
to repeat that the facts from which knowledge of real man must
be abstracted are in man's physical structure, and in his physical
environment ; in his actions from the birth of the race ; and
especially in his contemporary activities. Until antecedent inves¬
tigation has gathered and grouped the facts from these sources,
so that they may be further organized, theories about man are
either generalizations of guesses as to matters of fact, or they
are deductions from metaphysical assumptions, or they are invo¬
lutions of the errors of both. Without implying any judgment
of the scheme of classification, or any estimate of the accuracy
of facts tabulated in Spencer's sociological charts, it is safe
to assert that Spencer's proposed comprehensive survey of human
conditions, acts and institutions, past and present, under cate¬
gories permitting perception of permanently significant relations,
was a sagacious proclamation of the programme which must
furnish the material for valid generalization about society. The
exhibit of this material, whether actual or prospective, was appro¬
priately named Descriptive Sociology.
It must be admitted that the social sciences are not yet so
distinctly methodized that the function of sociology is beyond
dispute. The fact that the material for social philosophy is as
yet comparatively meager has led some men to start from the
sociological point of departure, but to take their scientific posi¬
tion in a part of the field of inquirv which belongs of right to
other workers. Hence a confusion of distinctions, since the
materials of these special divisions of social knowledge have
not yet been fully exploited. Many men who call themselves
178
JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
sociologists are at present mixing with the business of specialists
in widely different lines of inquiry.
The sociologists would do well to confess this frankly. The
only legitimate tasks at present open to social scientists are
either old ones, subdivisions of old ones, or the task which
becomes new with every considerable enlargement of knowledge ;
viz., that of organizing ascertained facts into a scientific basis for
renewed special research on the one hand, and for the inven¬
tion of social programmes on the other. The examinations of
parts and phases of society thus far pursued have not resulted in
knowledge sufficient for the sub-structure of an art of social
cooperation that can establish a scientific character. Sociologists,
perceiving the need of such building material, are making new
demands upon the antecedent sciences. They are even plunging
into the work of those sciences, and attempting to fix the name
sociology upon the particular branch of investigation to which
they confine their attention. Digressing for a moment for refer¬
ence to terminology, I venture to observe that the conclusions
of an amateur in anthropology or psychology or economics
derive no respectability among masters in those sciences because
arrived at under the name sociology. It is of course possible,
by agreement, to make the term sociology generic for all the
disciplines that contribute to knowledge of society, or identical
with the phrase used in this paper with that meaning—viz.,
" the social sciences." If the term sociology is used with a specific
meaning—then it must either be immediately concerned with
special phenomena, or with the ge7teralization of special phenom¬
ena. If the former, it is one of the antecedent procedures tribu¬
tary to social interpretation in general, and there appears no
better reason for forcing the name sociology upon established
sciences when recruits enter their ranks, than for calling horti¬
culture transcendental philosophy when Emerson works in his
garden. If by sociology is meant the work of assimilating
the knowledge of society derived from different researches,
there should be careful discrimination between sociological use
of data furnished by special inquiries, and attempts by sociol-
SOCIOLOGY AXD ECONOMICS.
179
ogists to improve upon the work of specialists in their own
fields.
It should be observed further, that sociology as here under¬
stood, being philosophy constructed by synthesis of scientifically
ascertained knowledge of society, must of necessity be largely
descriptive and realistic, rather than abstract and ideal. By way
of concession to our mental limitations, we are obliged to analyze
objects of knowledge into unreality before we; can think them
integrally. Absurdly enough we are disposed to fall into the
fallacy that our processes cease to be scientific when we proceed
to think the analyzed elements back toward verisimilitude. This
mental trait opposes a serious obstacle to recognition of the value
of social synthesis which thinks together into a representation of
actual society the abstractions into which society has been artificial-
ized for intellectual convenience. A recent criticism of concrete
social philosophy constructed on the proposed lines asserts : " In
the grouping of facts here set forth, regard has not always been had
to the essential principles of classification. Instead of gathering
social facts into homogeneous groups, according as they illus¬
trate certain clearly defined relations, such as economical or
political relations, the purpose here seems to have been to make
such groups of facts as, when presented, would describe particu¬
lar institutions or 'social aggregates.' Under this method, the
phenomena brought together iñ any given group are not neces¬
sarily of the same kind, and the groups thus constituted are con¬
sequently of no special importance for logical purposes. They
are such groups as arise from that form of analysis which is
involved in a description of any given social institution. The
method here involved does not lead us far towards general scien¬
tific truth, but furthers minute description. It gives us a picture
of society with all its details clearly visible, but it does not reveal
the laws which underlie its being."'
That which is here asserted to be the fault and the failure of
the synthetic method of social exposition which this paper recom¬
mends is precisely the merit claimed for such synthesis. If there
'Journal of Political Economy, December 1894, pp. 28-29.
i8o
JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
is anything more deplorable in science than the "great bad" of
"mixing things," it is the great worse of abstraction so persist¬
ent that things are kept apart which ought to mix. Logical cat¬
egories are arbitrary in so far as we fail to reset them in their
actual articulations with the other logical categories abstracted
from the same real objects. It is only by synthesis of logically
constructed groups of phenomena with other similar groups that
we are able to understand the concrete facts which hold and hide
these phenomena in combinations.
A geologist's account of a fossil or a rock formation, for exam¬
ple, might be criticised in precisely the language just cited. The
report would be successful however, not in proportion as it used
the object in question as an occasion for emphasizing the classi¬
fications of physics, chemistry, biology, climatology, etc., but in
proportion as it exhibited the precise conjunction, in this particu¬
lar object, of influences which would not be intelligible if they
had not previously been abstracted, criticised and classified bv
special sciences.
The object of science is not reached when it has divided up
reality into portions which the mind can deal with separately ;
but rather when abstraction has proceeded so far that, by its
assistance, the components of reality can be thought in their
actual relations. The phenomena of a society can only be
thought as they are, when they are thought in groups within which
the facts of one logical category overlap and interlace those of
many others. This is but repetition of the main contentions of
this paper, viz., that knowledge of society is conditioned, ( i ) upon
development of the rudimentary sciences of special social phe¬
nomena; (2) upon synthesis of the social sciences in description
of concrete phases of human association.
The philosophy which is the sociological desideratum is
interpretation of the relations borne to each other by the distinct
phases of human capability discoverable in human actions ; and
the only thinkable means to such interpretation is comparison of
recombined analytical conclusions with the concrete reality
society, to see if the thought so constructed corresponds with
SOCIOLOGY AND ECONOMICS.
l8l
the object. If there is not such correspondence, both the accepted
data and the processes of synthesis must be reconsidered for dis¬
covery of the error.
With the acquisition of systematized knowledge about indi¬
vidual and social facts, coordinated in "sciences," and synthe¬
sized in descriptive philosophy, the opportunity for sociology
proper begins. Presuming that the special sciences have con¬
tributed all they can bring to the interpretation of societ}^ the
peculiar obligation remains to make this knowledge available for
guidance in social cooperation. By this it is not meant that
sociology may become a collection of principles covering the
whole area of conduct, and capable of being drawn out into
deductions, worthy to control every choice of action. It is
assumed rather that the sum of available knowledge about the
facts of human relations, if properly organized, will contain all
the specific indications obtainable anywhere about possibilities of
human improvement, and about methods and means of utilizing
those possibilities. This amounts to the expectation that the
classified material of social knowledge which we name col¬
lectively descriptive sociology, will constitute the material of
social philosophy that shall contain implicitly two elements of
general knowledge : ( i ) demonstration of more particulars in
which men are destined by their nature to realize the vague con¬
ception, "happiness;" (2) indication of more precise adaptations
of means to ends in the attainment of happiness.
These specifications describe sociology in its three chief
aspects. In the first place, it is a body of arranged facts ; or,
more precisely, it is based upon a body of arranged facts. But
interest in all the classes of facts contained in social phenomena
long ago caused a certain division of the labor of investigating
them ; and, apart from the process of synthesis there remains in
this field nothing but readjustment of the divisions, and refine¬
ment and further application of the method. This w6rk is log¬
ically antecedent to sociology, although, as a matter of fact,
there must be perpetual reciprocity between the logically ante¬
cedent collection and analysis and the logically subsequent
182 JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY.
synthesis. The work of organizing special knowledge of social
facts into an articulated exhibit of the structure and functions of
actual society is not within the proper scope of the special investi¬
gations. It is indicated, however, as the next logical stage in
the assimilation of knowledge ; and sociology accordingly under¬
takes a part of social science supplementary to the divisions of
labor previously provided for, a part in which sociology is
entirely dependent upon antecedent research ; and in the first
instance the function of the sociologist as related to that of the
antecedent investigators is analogous to that of the physical
geographer in relation to the fundamental physical sciences.
In the second place, sociology confronts the phenomena of
waste from maladjustment of individual and social effort. The
quality and quantity of happiness which men enjoy do not cor¬
respond with the evident capacity of men for happiness ; and the
endeavor to gain happiness is not directed by large intelligence
of the elements involved in human happiness, or of the conditions
upon which their attainment depends. The concrete facts of
human life need to be interpreted with reference to their con¬
tained implications as to the kinds and combinations of satisfac¬
tion which human qualities and conditions indicate as their cor¬
relates. Systematized knowledge of positively determined human
potencies and conditions is the only authoritative source and
criterion of concrete social ideals, and of precise ethical precepts.
The only visible way out of the immemorial contention between
moral systems deduced from the arbitrarily constructed con¬
cept "goodness," on the one hand, and the arbitrarily constructed
concept "happiness," on the other hand, is through scientific cor¬
relation of the qualities of human beings and the consequences
of human action, in which correlation happiness and goodness
meet. The task of determining this immanent ideal, and of con¬
struing it in its application to particular social conditions, fills a
distinct section of sociology.
In the third place, scientifically determined social facts and
relations, real and potential, contain the only credible informa¬
tion about means available for realizing indicated social improve-
SOCIOLOGY AND ECONOMICS.
183
ment. The section of sociology about which there seems to be
least controversy among sociologists themselves, is that final por¬
tion to which the work of Prqfessor Lester F. Ward has probably
given the permanent designation " dynamic sociology." Whether
the boundaries of that division of sociology are to be equally
permanent is perhaps questionable ; but the ultimate function of
sociology as I conceive it, is to discover the principles of coop¬
eration by application of which human society may adopt the
most effective means of securing happiness. Here, as before,
sociology is a combining and correlating procedure. There is
implicitly, at least, a technical art correlative with each special
social science. The vital sciences, for example, may discover the
most effective means of guarding against contagious diseases, of
preventing propagation of the unfit, of breeding from the best
human stock ; economic science may discover the most effective
means of creating public revenues, or of organizing general
industries with a view to the maximum of production ; political
science may elaborate the technique of administration may
perfect theories of constitutional changes ; pedagogic science may
develop the methodology of education ; ethical science may sys¬
tematize the laws of possible control of men by moral suasion ;
but neither of these sciences, as such, has the purpose, the point
of view, or the power to derive a philosophy of life which shall
provide for the cooperation of these and like technical means, to
procure a rationally proportional maximum of the collective
ends of life.
Such a comprehensive philosophy, of some sort or other,
which men always will have in their sub-consciousness, can be
derived only from apñori principles or prejudices, on the one hand,
or, on the other hand, from such synthesis of social knowledge
as this paper has suggested. For example, the fundamental
technical as well as theoretical question of the relation of the
state, on the one hand, and of government, on the other, to
radical human desires, will not be approached scientifically until
it is investigated from the outlook of the scientific organization
of social knowledge here recommended.
JOURNAL OF POLITICAL ECONOMY
A readjustment of the boundaries of the sciences of social
fact is taking place, whether scholars approve the reorganization
or not. Whether or not the subdivisions of sociology which this
paper suggests become conventional, is to the writer of little
consequence. The perception which I am most concerned to
sharpen is that our power to combine intelligently for the con¬
quest of happiness depends ( i ) upon precise knowledge of the
actual elements of social fact, as it has been and is, both in the
process of becoming and in the products that already appear ;
(2) upon intelligent conception of the possibilities of human
realization, as indicated by the potencies patent in human action ;
(3) of the dynamic agencies within human reach for the
achievement of composite happiness.
Whether our work is one of the complementary analytical
processes, or one of the supplementary synthetic processes, we
need to work in intelligent cooperation, in order to approach the
common end, knowledge of the meaning of life, and achieve¬
ment of life's largest abundance.
Albion W. Small.
University of Chicago.
THE PSYCHOLOGIC BASIS OF SOCIAL
ECONOMICS.
THE PSYCHOLOGIC BASIS OF SOCIAL
ECONOMICS.
The object of this paper is to emphasize the distinction
between that system of political economy which is based upon
the actions of the human animal and that system which is
based upon the actions of the rational man. The former is
the prevailing system of the schools as taught under varying
aspects by the Physiocrats, Adam Smith, Ricardo and
Malthus. Its underlying principles are set forth in the
writings of Herbert Spencer, and constitute the warp of
modem individualism. The latter has, from time to time,
been dimly foreshadowed by certain writers, but has never
taken any scientific form except in a little known work by
the present writer.
Auguste Comte recognized the influence of mind in society
and placed psychology where it belongs in his hierarchy of
the sciences, but he refused to give it the rank of a science
distinct from biology, and classed it as a department of that
science, calling it ' ' transcendental biology. ' ' Nevertheless, in
his discussions he gave considerable weight to it, laying
stress on the elements of prevision and the control of social
phenomena. Spencer, on the contrary, while he treated psy¬
chology at length, and assigned it the same position that
Comte did, failed to make it the basis of either his sociology or
his ethics, both of which, in his system, rest directly upon
biology. His psychology, therefore, which, indeed, was
written before his biology and largely from the standpoint of
metaphysics, stands isolated and useless in his system of
synthetic philosophy.
The question is whether the phenomena of social, political
and industrial life rest primarily upon or grow chiefly out
of the facts and laws of biology or those of psychology^.
It became early fashionable in the name of science to treat
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PSYCHOI.OGIC Basis of Social Economics.
73
the uniformity and invariability of natural phenomena dis¬
played in the astronomical and physical world as extending
also to animal life, including the operations of economic
forces in society. The correctness of this view, considered
in the abstract, cannot be questioned, but the economists of
that time did not sufficiently understand the nature of suck
comphcated phenomena to make them the basis of a politicat
or industrial science. The time has scarcely come as yet
when we can do more than carefully feel our way along this;
obscure path, but the flood of light which modem science
since Darwin, has shed upon the whole domain of biology
has not only pointed out the erroneous character of the pre¬
vailing mode of reasoning, but has shown at least one, and
this the most fundamental source of the error which pervades
it. This consists in practically ignoring the existence of a
rational faculty in man, which, while it does not render his
actions any less subject to tme natural laws, so enormously
complicates them that they can no longer be brought withia
the simple formulas that suffice in the calculus of mere animal-
motives.
While the subject, as thus outlined, is primarily a psycho¬
logic one, viz. : that of determining the true rôle that mind
has played in the industrial history of the race, the question
at issue is essentially an economic one. There are twa
distinct kinds of economics, biological economics and
psychological economics—the economics of life and the econ¬
omics of mind. That is to say, thère are two kinds of econ¬
omy which it is of the first importance sharply to contrast, the
economy that prevails in the animal world, in the domain of
life, in organic nature generally, and the economy that
prevails in the human sphere, in the realm of mind, in the
domain of reason.
Every one is now familiar with the general nature of ani¬
mal economics. It is the siuvival of the fittest in the struggle
for existence. It is the mere physics of life. Just as in the
physical world and the great clash of mechanical forces the
superior overcome the inferior, and what we see is the result-
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74 Annals op the American Academy.
ant product of the struggle, so in the great struggle of life
the forms that exist are such and only such as were able to
survive the ordeal. But in biology the forces are the various
tendencies to grow and develop, including animal appetites,
wants and desires. These are ever seeking satisfaction, and
only their relative feebleness can prevent them from attain¬
ing it.
It was formerly supposed that organic nature was economi¬
cal of its energies. The facts early observed that every organ
is adapted to some function, and that every creature is fitted
for the place it inhabits and the life it leads, were supposed
to indicate a state of perfect harmony in the entire machinery
of nature involving the maximum economy. Such misinter¬
pretations were widely inculcated by optimistic writers and
came at length to permeate the thought of mankind. The
political economists seized upon them and made them the
basis of their systems and even the great philosophers were
and continue to be affected by them. Still, nothing is now
better known than that the great biologic law, instead of
being economical, is extremely wasteful of energy. It is
indeed true that everything that is made by nature is adapted
to some function or use. This follows from the genetic
method of evolution. Everything that exists is pushed into
existence by a vis a tergo. Nature only works through effi¬
cient causes. The universal life force is perpetually creating
new organs and new forms, and these must be adapted to
their environment, otherwise they cannot even be brought
into being. But this adaptation need only reach the mini¬
mum stage. If it is sufficient to insure continuance the end
is attained, though higher degrees are always being aimed
at. The means, however, through which the world is kept
peopled with life are far from being the most economical
conceivable. They often seem to be the least economical
conceivable. They are just such as all the circumstances of
each case combine to produce. The cost of accomplishing a
given end is wholly immaterial from a purely biological stand¬
point. The extravagance of nature has long been perceived
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Psychologic Basis of Social Economics. 75
■even by political economists, but they have failed to see that
its admission was fatal to their physiocracy. Malthus showed
that but for premature deaths population would increase
beyond all bounds, and he also foreshadowed Darwin's law
of natural selection by proving that this mortality was really
caused by competition and the struggle for existence. We
now know that in the animal and vegetable world but for
this wholesale destruction of those that have been born any
one species would soon overrun the earth. The cost of
bringing forth one of the unfortunate beings that are destined
to perish at some early period in its history is as great as
that of bringing forth one that is to reach maturity and con¬
tribute to the perpetuation of the species. Consider then the
enormous waste involved in this method over a method which
should only bring forth the number necessary to maintain
the species at its maximum or desired limit, and should
preserve all that came into being until they had accomplished
their mission. In oviparous creatures the destruction begins
with the eggs, and to meet this, these are often produced in
prodigious numbers. The sturgeon is not an abundant fish
and yet the female spawns a hundred thousand ova. If all
these could live, one pair would stock all the rivers of America.
The number of eggs spawned by a single eel sounds too fabu¬
lous to be believed, while in the lower invertebrate world
the figures grow still more astounding, as, for example, that
a tape-worm should possess a billion ova. In the vegetable
kingdom we encounter the same class of facts. Burst a puff-
ball and the air is filled with smoke, but each element of
that cloud consists of a minute spore ready to germinate if
by the rarest chance it shall find a suitable habitat. Some
one has been to the trouble to determine the number of spores
yielded by a plant of the common mold, and reached the
incredible figures of three billions, two hundred millions.
But even among higher plants the same prodigality is seen.
A large chestnut tree in June probably contains a ton of
pollen and many pines are equally laden with it, destined to
be blown by the winds and floated hundreds of miles in the
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76 Annate of the American Academy,
upper atmosphere. There are also many plants, like the
orchid and the broomrape, which bear myriads of minute
seeds, not one in many thousand of which ever has an oppor¬
tunity to germinate. These are only a few examples. Every¬
where in nature the vital energy is squandered in the most
prodigal manner. The amount expended on any one species
would, if economized, carry on half the activity of the ani¬
mal or vegetable world.
No one, so far as I am aware, has attempted to formulate
the true law of biologic economics. Much has been said of
the law of parsimony, which is only a very subordinate one,
sometimes called into exercise, but of the great law of prodi¬
gality, which is universal, no adequate definition has as yet
been offered. As the law of life in organic nature does not
essentially differ from the law of force in inorganic nature,
it may, for the sake of brevity, be designated as the law of
nature, with which it is important to contrast the psychologic
method or the law of mind.
The complete law of nature is capable of being divided
into two parts or members. We have seen that it is always
directed toward some useful end, and that from its very
nature as a genetic process it is incapable of producing any
necessarily useless thing. Its products must, therefore, all
possess a possible or potential value. This part of the law
may, therefore, be expressed by the formula that every
creation of organic nature has within it the possibility of
success. Thus far the biologic law is economical. But, as we
have seen, only the minutest fraction of that which is created
becomes an adual success. The second member of the
definition must therefore be framed to express this truth.
The principle that underlies it may be called the necessity for
certainty, or the paramount importance of certainty. It might
also be called the multiplication of chances. There seems to
be no limit in nature to the degree of energy that may be
put forth in the direction of securing certainty. The chances
of survival will be multiplied a thousand times in order that
certainty may be made a thousand times certain. The
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Psychologic Basis of Social Economics. 77
second member of the law, therefore, is that in order to
secure certainty the chances may be indefinitely multiplied.
The entire law may then be thus formulated : All energy
expended by organic 7iature results in potential utility, and actual
utility is secured through the multiplication of efforts.
The first member of this law may be characterized by the
term practical. The second member may in like manner be
called prodigal. Nature is, therefore, at once the most practi¬
cal and the most prodigal of all economists : practical in that
she never makes anything which has not the elements of
utility, prodigal in that she spares no expense in accomplish¬
ing even the smallest results. Again, nature may be said to
be engaged in creating every conceivable form. Every one
is familiar with the wonderful variety in the actual forms of
vegetable and animal life. But these, innmnerable as they
are, only represent nature's successes. Intermediate between
them there must be imagined an infinite number of failures
—conceivable forms in the production of which the organic
energy has expended itself in vain—a vastly greater expend¬
iture than that required to create all that exists. More¬
over, among the successful forms there are all degrees
of success. There are the vigorous and robust forms,
rejoicing in a full measure of vitality and marching for¬
ward toward the possession of the earth. Then there are the
weak and languishing forms, which the former class is
gradually crowding out of existence. Between these there
are all the intermediate grades. But the successful are only
temporarily so. Like human empires they have their rise and
fall, and the path of natural history, like that of human
history, is strewn with the remains of fallen dynasties and
the ruins of extinct races.
If the expenditure of energy be designated the cost, then
it may be said to be a characteristic of the law of nature to
exaggerate the cost of any given result. The most eco¬
nomical way in which a river can flow is in a straight line
from its source to its mouth. But even if one were to begin
in this way it would, as a result of this principle, soon
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78 Annals of the American Academy.
^become crooked and then more and more crooked, until at
length the actual distance traversed by every drop of water
would be at least double that of a straight line. This physi¬
cal law, which has been called the rhythm of motion, is carried
into- the organic world. The tendency is everywhere ta
exaggerate the irregularities of normal development. This
goes on until it frequently results in abnormalities so great
that they bring about their own extinction. Such were
doubtless the strange dragons that, as paleontology tells us,
inhabited the world during a certain geological period, while
the more recent mastodon and mammoth and those wingless
birds of the Southern Hemisphere, furnish other illustrations.
In the vegetable kingdom the coal flora is full of examples.
Many living plants, either through parasitism, as the
Rafflesia, which consists almost exclusively of a gigantie
flower, or through extreme specialization, as in the orchids
and yuccas, many of which are dependent upon a single
species of insect which alone has organs adapted to fertilize
their flowers, further exemplify this law. Such monstrosities
inevitably perish with the slightest alteration in their mate¬
rial surroundings. The progress of organic development has
thus been to a large extent the successive creation of types
that have contained within themselves the elements of their
own extinction. New ones, of course, have succeeded them,
adapted for the time being to their environment, but destined
in turn to outgrow their conditions and perish from the same
cause.
In this sketch of natural or biologic economics its genetic
character has been thus far chiefly left out of view, in virtue of
which, effects are always j ust equal to causes and never greater.
The organic force is applied directly to the object to be
transformed, and the forms to be created are molded inta
the required shape by an infinite number of minute impacts,
the sum of which is represented by the transformation accom¬
plished. No advantage is taken of any mechanical principle
whereby the effect is made to exceed the energy expended.
Natiural selection has, indeed, evolved structures that embody
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psychotogic Basis of Sociai< Economics. 79
to some extent such principles. Sharp teeth and claws like
edged tools represent the inclined plane, and it may some¬
times be carried as far as to imitate the screw, as in the appli¬
ances which some seeds possess for boring spirally into
the earth. Again, there is no doubt that the manner in
which muscles are attached often affords a true leverage and
greatly increases the effectiveness of muscular action. But
aside from these curious cases in which natural selection
seems to imitate rational design, effect throughout organic
and inorganic nature is exactly equal to cause, and the result
produced by living beings is proportioned to the effort put
forth. No animal, for example, is ever seen to make use of
any external appliance, not even to the extent of wielding a
weapon, such as a club or a stone, which is not a part of its
own organic structure. The beaver, indeed, builds dams
by felling trees, but its tools are its teeth and no further
advantage is taken than that which results from their
sharpness and the way the muscles are attached to the jaws.
All the warfare of animals is waged with tooth and nail,
with horn and hoof, with beak and spur, and fang and sting—
always with organic, never with mechanical weapons. And
whatever work is done bji- animals is always done with tools
that nature has provided through a long course of develop¬
ment, none of which takes advantage of an3'- principle of
physics further than as already stated.
Over against this method of nature or biological economy,
let us now set the method of rational man, or psychological
economy. The most patent distinction which at once
strikes the mind is that the latter is teleological instead of
genetic, and deals with final instead of efficient causes. This
means that while organic forms are merely pushed into
existence by the pelting of atoms from behind, ancf thus
become fortuitous or literally chance products, human
creations are conceived in advance by the rational and fore¬
seeing mind, designed with skill for definite ends and
.wrought with the aid of a variety of mechanical principles
by which the energy expended is out of all proportion to,
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8o Annate of thk American Academy.
and always less than, the result accomplished. It is in
rational man, therefore, that the first application of anything
worthy of the name of economy is made. Nature has no
economy. Only through foresight and design can anything
be done economically. If nature produces nothing that
may not possibly prove useful, man produces nothing that
will not probably be useful. But nature creates many
thousand actual failures to one actual success, while man,
though he often fails through ignorance, is ever approaching
a stage at which every effort shall succeed. His rivers,
(canals, mill-races,irrigation trenches, etc.,) are straight, or
as nearly so as true economy of construction requires, and
Professor Schiaparelli has based his belief that the planet
Mars is inhabited by rational beings, upon the supposed dis¬
covery of great water-ways passing across its disk in right
lines.
Nature's way of sowing seed is to leave it to the wind,
the water, the birds and animals. The greater part falls in
a mass close to the parent plant, and is shaded out or
crowded to death by its own abundance. Only the few
seeds that chance to be transported by one agency or another
to some favorable spot, and have the further good fortune to
be covered up can sprout. The most of these even never
attain maturity, and only the most highly favored hve to
continue the race. To meet this enormous waste, corre¬
spondingly enormous quantities of seed are produced. Such
is nature's economy. How different that of a rational
being ! He prepares the ground, clearing it of vegetable
competitors, then he carefully plants the seeds at the proper
intervals so that they shall not choke one another, and after
they have sprouted he keeps off their enemies, whether
vegetáble or animal, supplies water if needed, even supplies
the lacking chemical constituents of the soil if he knows
what they are, and thus secures, as nearly as possible, the
vigorous growth and sure fruition of every seed planted.
Such is the economy of mind.
A close analysis shows that the fundamental distinction
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Psychologic Basis of Social Economics. 8i
between the animal and the human method is that the envi¬
ronment transforms the animal, while man transforms the
environment. This proposition holds literally almost without
exception from whatever standpoint it be contemplated. It
is, indeed, the full expression of the fact above stated that
the tools of animals are organic while those of man are
mechanical. But if we contrast these two methods from
our present standpoint, which is that of economics, we see
at once the immense superiority of the human over the
animal method. First consider the economy of time. It
has taken a much longer time to develop any one of the
organic appliances of animals, whether for war or industry,
than is represented by the entire period during which man
has possessed any arts, even the simplest. Look next at
the matter of efl&ciency. Not one of these organic appliances
has sufficed to enable the species possessing it to migrate
far from the region to which it was originally adapted.
Man, on the other hand, without acquiring any new organic
adaptations, has, by the invention of tools, by providing
himself clothing and shelter, by artificial devices for captur¬
ing prey, and by other ways of transforming his environ¬
ment, placed himself in position to occupy the whole earth
from the Equator to the Arctic Circle, and to become the
only animal that is not restricted in its habitat.
The sum total of human arts constitutes man's material
civilization, and it is this that chiefiy distinguishes him from
the rest of nature. But the arts are the exclusive product
of mind. They are the means through which intelligence
utilizes the materials and forces of nature. And as all
economics rests primarily on production it seems to follow
that a science of economics must have a psychological basis.
In fact, the economics of mind and the economics of life
are not merely different, but the direct opposites of each
other. The psychologic law strives to reverse the biologic
law. The biologic law is that of the survival of structures
best adapted to the environment. Those structures that
yield most readily to changes in the environment persist.
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82 AnnaivS of thf American Academy.
It has therefore been aptly called the "survival of the
plastic." The environment never changes to conform to
the structures, but always the reverse, and the only organic
progress possible is that which accrues through improve¬
ments in structure tending to enable organic beings to cope
with sterner and ever harder conditions. In any and every
case it is the environment that works the changes and the
organism that undergoes them.
But the most important factor in the environment of any
species is its organic environment. The hardest pressure
that is brought to bear upon it comes from other living things
in the midst of which it lives. Any slight advantage which
one species may gain from a favorable change of structure
causes it to multiply and expand, and unless strenuously re¬
sisted, ultimately to acquire a complete monopoly of all things
that are needed for its support. Any other species that
consumes the same elements must, unless equally vigorous,
soon be crowded out. This is the true meaning of the sur¬
vival of the fittest. It is essentially a process of competition.
The economics of nature consist, therefore, essentially in the
operation of the law of competition in its purest form. The
prevailing idea, however, that it is the fittest possible that
survive in this struggle is wholly false. The effect of com¬
petition is to prevent any form from attaining its maximum
development, and to maintain a certain comparatively low
level for all forms that succeed in surviving. This is made
clear by the fact that wherever competition is wholly removed,
as through the agency of man in the interest of any one
form, that form immediately begins to make great strides and
soon outstrips all those that depend upon competition.
Such has been the case with all the cereals and fruit
trees ; it is the case with domestic cattle and sheep, with
horses, dogs and all the forms of life that man has excepted
from the biologic law and subjected to the law of mind,
and both the agricultural and the pastoral stages of society
rest upon the successful resistance which rational man has
offered to the law of nature in these departments. So that
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Psychologic Basis of Social Economics. 83
■we have now to add to the waste ^of competition its influence
in preventing the really fittest from surviving.
One important fact has thus far been kept out of view for
final treatment in this place. Man, it is true, is a rational
being, but he is also still an animal. Notwithstanding the
important conquests over nature that have been recounted,
he is still very far from being master of the field. The
difficulty is that mind itself was developed under the
influence of the ptirely egoistic law. That extraordinary brain
development, which so exclusively characterizes man, was
acquired through the primary principle of advantage. Brain
does not differ in this respect from horns or teeth or claws.
In the great struggle which the human animal went through
to gain his supremacy, it was brain that finally enabled him
to succeed, and under the biologic law of selection, where
superior sagacity meant fitness to survive, the human brain
was gradually built up, cell upon cell, until the fully
developed hemispheres were literally laid over the primary
ganglia and the cranial walls enlarged to receive them. The
brain of man was thus originally an engine of competition.
It was a mere servant of the will. It was only in virtue of
its peculiar character, by which it was capable of perceiving,
that the direct animal method was not the most successful
one, even in the bare struggle for existence, that it so early
began, in the interest of pure egoism, to antagonize that
method and to adopt the opposite indirect method of design,
foresight, calculation and co-operation.
The law of mind as it operates in society as an aid to
competition and in the interest of the individual is essentially
immoral. It rests primarily on the principle of deception.
It is an extension to other human beings of the method
applied to the animal world by which the latter was subjected
to man. This method was that of the ambush and the
snare. Its ruling principle was cunning. Its object was to
deceive, circumvent, ensnare and capture. Eow animal
cunning was succeeded by more refined kinds of cunning.
The most important of these go by the names business
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84 Annai^ of thf American Academy.
shrewdness, strategy and diplomacy, none of which differ
from ordinary cunning in anything but the degree of adroit¬
ness by which the victim is outwitted. In this way social
hfe is completely honeycombed with deception.
The competition which we see in the social and industrial
world—competition aided and modified by reason and
intelligence—while it does not differ in either its principle
or its purpose from the competition among animals and
plants, differs considerably in its methods and in its effects.
We see in it the same soulless struggle, the same intense
egoism, the same tendency to exaggerate existing inequalities,
the same sacrifice of the weaker to the stronger, and the
same rage of the latter to possess and monopohze the earth.
But, in addition to all this, the opposite principle is also in
active operation. This is the law of mind making for a
true economy of energy. This economy, however, is a
purely individual economy and not a social or political
economy. That is, it only benefits the individual, not
society nor the state. The effort in each case is solely to
benefit self. No account is taken of the benefit or injury of
others. Usually the individual knows that it will injure
others, and, therefore, in order to prevent them from check¬
mating him he resorts to one or the other of the methods
of deception above enumerated. But oftentimes no thought
is given to its effect on society, the state or other individuals.
It has been so strongly maintained that competition results
in a real economy that it is worth while to consider this for
a moment. The prevailing impression is that if permitted
to operate freel}' it will necessarily keep down prices. There
is no greater mistake made by economists. It tends to raise
prices to their highest hmit. It does this by the waste it
occasions, and the price must be made to cover this waste.
In the retail trade of all kinds of commodities the waste is
enormous. The number engaged in it is many times greater
than is necessary. This is because society has put a stigma
upon productive labor, and trade is one of the principal ways
of hviug by one's wits. Each seller must devise some
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Psychologic Basis of Social Economics. 85
means to induce buyers to buy of him instead of his rivals.
One of the principal ways of doing this is that of making
his goods known to those likely to want them. From pure
inertia they will buy what is brought to them before they
will go after it, or they will go to a place they know of
rather than hunt another. Hence, every possible means is
resorted to by each dealer to advertise his business. News¬
paper advertising is the most familiar way, but it is by no
means the only one. Costly as it is, it probably costs less
than other modes. Among these, display takes a high rank
—large French glass show windows, illuminated at night,
even after the hour of closing, with gas or electric lights.
Add to this the necessity for locating on principal streets
and paying high rentals. Posters and running agents,
delivery wagons emblazoned with great letters, ' ' opening ' '
invitations sent to thousands, and a variety of other devices,
all very expensive, are well known to all. For houses that
can afford it all this is supplemented by the traveling
salesman or drummer whose ubiquitous presence greets us
on every railroad car and at every country hotel. Think of
the enormous expense involved in this ! There is a latent
impression that it is in some way necessary. Yet such is
not the case. All these varied modes of making known
particular firms and particular goods are wholly unnecessary
to society at large. Only so much is wanted and only so
much will be bought. If it tends to cause more to be bought
than is wanted it does harm. It is only a supposed necessity
to each dealer to cause his goods to be bought instead of those
of another dealer. But the consumer must pay for all this
expensive rivalry. Pass by any first-class restaurant, even
at the customary hour for meals, and you will see perhaps
two or three persons eating in a hall that would comfortably
seat fifty, in rear of which there will be ten to twenty
waiters in dress coats and white gloves waiting for another
guest to drop in, if perchance one should. No wonder that
at such a place one must pay a dollar for a beefsteak that
costs fifteen or twenty cents in the market. It is because
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86 Annai,s of the American Academy.
the business is so greatly overdone, each competing to
attract more than the others. It is the same with the drug
business, the cigar business, the confectionery business and
a g^eat number of other businesses.
All these are illustrations of competition under the law of
mind. They are the devices of cunning persons to live
without work or by some agreeable form of work, and society
is regularly called upon to support them by paying in the
added prices of all commodities all that the business will
bear. This quality of business shrewdness, the modified
form of animal cunning, resting primarily upon the principle
of deception, is manifest in all forms of advertising. The
chief object of an advertisement is to deceive the public and
cause the belief that things are better or cheaper than the}'^
are. So well is this understood that there is no law to punish
the most flagrant falsehood expressed in the form of an adver¬
tisement, and if the dupes and victims of this form of lying
remonstrate, that great principle of the common law of
England, caveat emptor^ is laughingly brought forward as the
all-suflBcient answer.
These illustrations are drawn from one of the few depart¬
ments in which permanent or at all prolonged competition
is possible in society. In nearly all other departments the
effect of intelligence is very different. It is mind alone that
perceives that competition is wasteful, and, therefore, in the
interest of the very success that competition seeks, it proceeds
to antagonize it and to substitute art, science, and co-opera¬
tion. By the aid of these, the success of those who use them
is increased many hundred fold. Competition in society,
therefore, tends to defeat itself. It cannot endure. It is at
best only a transition stage. On the one hand, the compe¬
tition between individuals soon takes the form of competition
between machines. On the other hand it takes the form of
competition between corporations. The former tendency is
temporarily injurious but permanently beneficial. The latter
is permanently injurious and becomes a serious menace to
society. Still, it is not an unmixed evil, since it prevents the
[478]
Psychologic Basis of Social Economics. 87
waste of competition. Even the retail industries above
referred to are coming within this law. The small houses
are being swallowed up by large ones and great universal
stores are growing up in all large cities. They result in
monopoly but they do not increase prices, and the quality
of the goods sold is far more reliable.
The social phenomenon which conforms most nearly to the
pattern set in the animal world, and which is most under the
influence of the law of nature and least under that of the law
of mind, is human labor. Wholly unskilled labor has rarely
gone beyond the stage of pure competition. In the olden
time skilled labor made a step forward in the formation of
guilds, but the era of machinery swept these away. At the
time when the founders of the present system of political
economy were writing, labor of nearly every kind was almost
exclusively competitive. It is only within a few decades
that it has begun to fall under the influence of intelligence,
and to employ the simplest of all rational devices, that of
co-operation. Capital, on the other hand, being naturally in
the hands of the most sagacious members of society, has
always combined and co-operated and used all the other arts
of overcoming competition. The chief difference between
the employers and the employed, until recently, has been
that the former have used the rational method while the latter
have used the natural method. But such is the power of the
rational method and its superiority over the method of nature
that competing labor stood no chance in the struggle with
combining capital, and it was possible, to a great extent, to
enforce the iron law of wages as formulated by Ricardo.
And when, in recent times, labor at last began in a small way
to call to its aid the psychologic economy of co-operation the
step was so unexpected and seemed so strange that it was
looked upon as a crime against society, and many still so
regard it. Indeed, all the laws of modern nations are framed
on the assumption that capital naturally combines while
labor naturally competes, and attempts on the part of labor
to combine against capital are usually suppressed by the
[479]
88 Annals of the American Academy.
armed force of the state, while capital is protected by the
military and civil authority of the state against such assumed
unlawful attempts. The enormous odds against which labor
struggles in its efforts to adopt and apply the economics of
mind will greatly retard the progress of industrial reform,
which aims to place labor on an equal footing with capital
in this respect.
The evil that results from the competition of corporations
lies in the fact that, as in most competition among rational
beings, it is only a brief transition stage to be quickly
followed bj- further combination. Just as competition among
individuals results in corporations, so competition between
corporations results in combinations of corporations. A
common form of these compound corporations is that which
is known as a trust. This process of compound co-operation
does not stop until all engaged in a given industry are
embraced in a single combination and the whole product of
that industry is controlled by it. This gives it absolute
control over the price of the commodity produced, limited
only by the maximum that can be charged without dimin¬
ishing the profits. Thus, for example, all the petroleum
produced by a country may fall under the control of a
single trust, and in order to secure for the members of that
trust the maximum return for the petroleum, its price will
be placed at the highest figure that consumers of petroleum
will pay rather than return to candles or resort to gas or elec¬
tricity. All monopolies rest on the same principle, and they
are as common in the industries of transportation and ex¬
change as in those of production. The railroad, telegraph and
express systems fully illustrate the law, as does also the
mercantile business of every country, in all of which com¬
petition is short, heated and fitful, and the result is always
the same—the swallowing up the small industries by the
g^eat ones in ever-widening cycles.
Thus it comes about that nearly everywhere in human
society the law of mind profoundly modifies the phenomena
of industrial life and produces an entirely different class of
[480]
Psychologic Basis op Social Economics. 89
results from what would be produced by the operation of
the unimpeded law of natural competition. Whether the
competition be continued for a time, or whether it be con¬
verted into a competition of corporations, or whether,
finally, it resolve itself into complete monopoly, in any and
all cases an enormous artificial difference will be produced
between the cost of production and the price to the consumer,
and the latter will be pushed up to the maximum limit
attainable without affecting profits. In the first case this
artificial difference is mostly wasted in aggressive competi¬
tion, its only benefit to any one being that of doubling or
trebling the number of persons who are enabled to live
without productive labor. In the other cases, and especially
the last, this difference goes to enrich the managers of trusts
and to multiply millionaires.
All this is so widely different from what we see everywhere
in nature below the level of man's rational faculty that it
requires the application of an entirely different set of prin¬
ciples from those which can be applied to irrational life.
There competition is pure. It continues as long as the
weaker can survive it, and when these at last go to the wall
and the better adapted structures survive and triumph, it is
the triumph of physical superiority, and the strong and the
robust alone are left to replenish the earth. But when mind
enters into the contest all genuine competition is crushed out,
and while it is still, in a certain sense, the strong that succeed,
it is strength which comes from superior cunning, necessarily
coupled with stunted moral qualities, intense egoism, and
undeveloped sympathies, and always aided more or less by
the mere accident of position. In no proper sense can it be
said that this class is the fittest to survive in society.
Free competition as it exists in nature would be preferable
to the present industrial state, if the tendencies of the latter
are to be indefinitely exaggerated, and although it is not
the boon that many suppose, it is still one of the great
desiderata for which society should strive. How can it be
secured? Herein lies a great social paradox. Competition
[481]
90 Annai^ of the American Academy.
is growing more and more feeble and ephemeral; com¬
bination is growing more and more powerful and permanent.
And this is the result of the most complete laissez faire
policy. The paradox, therefore, is that free competition can
only be secured through regulation. The co-operative tendencies
of the rule of mind which destroy competition can only be over¬
come by that higher form of co-operation which is able to stay
the lower form and set the forces of nature free once more.
As was stated at the outset, the object of this paper is to
show that any system of economics dealing with rational
man must rest upon a psychologic and not upon a biologic
basis. It may seem strange, in the light of all that has been
said, that there should be any need of calling attention to
this truth. And so it would be were it not that, in full view of
all these facts, the only, system of social economics that we
possess, the only social philosophy, other than the one early
referred to, that has been promulgated, completely ignores
them and treats the human animal only as an animal. Not
the economic writers alone, but the philosophers as well, per¬
sistently cling to the law of nature and ignore the law of mind.
The old biological economics, culminating in the law of
Malthus, has broken down. Its leading tenets have proved
false in practice, and in many cases truth demands that
the propositions be reversed.
Darwin modestly confesses that he derived his original
conception of natural selection from the reading of Malthus
on population. But he did not perhaps himself perceive
that in applying the law of Malthus to the animal world he
was introducing it into the only field in which it holds true.
Yet such is the case, and for the reason that has already been
given, viz. : that the advent with man of the thinking,
knowing, foreseeing, calculating, designing, inventing and
constructing faculty, which is wanting in lower creatures,
repealed the biologic law or law of nature and enacted in its
stead the psychologic law—the law of mind.
Tester F. Ward.
Washington, D.C.
[482]
Sociology in Schools and Colleges
Its Feasibility and Probable Results
BY
PROFESSOR H. H. POWERS
Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
Reprmted from the Report of the Twenty-second Atmual Session of the
National Conference of Charities and Correction
SOCIOLOGY IN SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES:
ITS FEASIBILITY AND PROBABLE RESULTS.
BY
PROFESSOR H. H. POWERS,
Smith College, Northampton, Mass.
My subject can be more exactly stated in the form of a question.
Is it possible to teach sociology in schools lower than the university;
and, if we do so, will it do more good than harm ? I distinctly ex¬
clude the university from this discussion, because to include it would
greatly change and enlarge the problem. The distinction between
the college and the university has, however, never been clearly
drawn ; and lawless American usage has, unfortunately, done much
to confuse it. Many so-called universities are quite without claim to
the title, while some colleges have attained to no small degree of
the university character. Not to be misled by names, I will adopt
a distinction which is convenient for my purpose, and for which
I claim no farther validity. The university is an institution whose
chief functions are : first, to give technical instruction to those about
to enter the higher professions; and, second, to further scientific
investigation. The instructor is supposed to be an investigator, and
4
to have time allowed him for investigation. He is, or should be, of
a different type of mind from the college professor,— more creative,
with greater power of observation and original inference.
The function of the college is quite distinct. It aims at general
instruction in existing knowledge as a means of culture. Its func¬
tionaries must be, first of all, teachers, with large power to master
and in turn to transmit what has been elsewhere discovered and
formulated. The simple amount of teaching required of them is
sufficient to prevent extensive investigation, quite apart from special
aptitudes. They are not necessarily inferior men ; but they are,
or ought to be, different men. I repeat that this distinction hardly
applies to existing institutions in America. Our colleges do more or
less university work, and sometimes grant their professors univer¬
sity privileges ; while all our universities have a collegiate depart¬
ment which absorbs too large a part of their energies. My distinc¬
tion is, therefore, one of predominant function, which will probably
become more distinctive as time goes on.
It may at first seem strange that I have grouped together colleges,
academies, seminaries, and high schools ; but in the sense just
noted the classification is plainly natural. These lesser schools are
colleges in miniature,— schools in which to teach and learn, not to
investigate, or train men for special professions. They differ only
in degree from the college, both in theory and fact.
There can be no question as to the place of sociology in the uni¬
versity. The phenomena of society certainly deserve in\ estigation ;
and, in so far as special professions are based on a knowledge of
these phenomena, appropriate training should be provided. In fact,
under other and less appropriate names, this work has long been
partially carried on. But it does not follow as a matter of course
that sociology should be taught in colleges and high schools. The
vast majority of subjects claiming university attention can ne\er
claim more than this, such as most languages, li\ ing or dead, the
more highly specialized sciences, and those affecting conduct re¬
motely or not at all. Does sociology belong in this list, or in the
much smaller list chosen for instruction with a view to general
culture or membership in advanced society ?
This brings us to the question. What is sociology ? ^^'ithout enter¬
ing upon the recent discussion on this subject, I will merely explain
that I use the term in its most comprehensive sense, as the science
5
of human association. Among the innumerable phenomena thus
included, there are, first of all, certain principles or laws which
underlie every phase of association, be it church or corporation or
family or State. These principles which practical people dimly per¬
ceive, and intuitively obey as the condition of their success, it is the
first task of sociology to analyze, formulate, and make the subject
of conscious knowledge. This study of " social elements and first
principles" which Professor Giddings has called "sociology," I will
call "general sociology," to designate its fundamental character.
Coming now to certain special forms of association, we have a
group of sciences already familiar. Association in industry gives
us economics ; in government, politics ; in the church, ecclesiastics,
etc. These together we may for convenience call special sociology.
There is still another group of studies more or less bound up with
the others, and difficult to characterize. They involve questions of
practical procedure, of reforms to be secured, and the means for
bringing them about. Growing out of economics, we have the
tariff question, building and loan association movements, the sweat¬
ing problem, etc. ; out of politics, civil service and municipal re¬
form, problems of pauperism, etc. The phenomena involved in
these smaller departments of social activity are essentially economic,
political, etc., and are all susceptible of as exact and dispassionate
analysis as any social phenomena ; but, as a matter of fact, they
have been subjected to a mixed process, which gives these studies a
peculiar character. To many people they seem pre-eminently prac¬
tical, while others disparage them as unscientific,— two sadly abusejd
terms. In discussions of the tariff, civil service reform, etc.,
there is usually more of advocacy than of inquiry ; and this is com¬
bined with much cutting of Gordian knots which science has failed
to untie. It is this phase of the science which especially commends
itself to many, and which, in its application to social evils, is the
popular idea of sociology. It is easy to pass extreme judgment on
this semi- or pseudo-science. To the dispassionate investigator it
must seem unsatisfactory, while to those who are smarting under
social evils it has the great advantage of getting somewhere quick.
The social physician must often, in urgent cases, prescribe a
remedy, while as yet an exhaustive diagnosis is not possible ; but it
is this very necessity which keeps social medicine from being scien¬
tific. This, however, does not justify the supercilious attitude which
6
scientists ha\e often assumed toward these useful efforts. Men
had to digest food and even cure indigestion before there were any
physiologists to tell them how, and society has to do many difficult
things which as yet the sociologist has not explained. These
studies, therefore, piece out the fragmentary results of science with
shrewd guesses and intuitive wisdom, and furnish to social proced¬
ure a basis to stand on,— a most important service. They are in no
invidious sense unscientific, but rather pre-scientific ; for they all
grow out of the fact that sociology constantly has orders ahead
for more science than it can furnish. Without insisting here on
any very fundamental distinction, we may conveniently designate
these numerous studies of mixed character by the term Applied
Sociology.
Before we are ready to inquire intelligently what place should be
given to sociology in a scheme of general education, we must ask
what services are to be expected of a science that is to do duty in
this position of special honor. Apparently, all such services are re¬
ducible to two.
The first is the development of the mind. Those who have no
conception of the laws and the need of mental development have so
often thought of education as mere stuffing that educators have
inevitably been driven to extreme opposition, and have extolled the
disciplinary value of studies as though that were the only thing of
importance. That it is of importance is now conceded ; but there is
still much disagreement as to the kind of discipline which different
studies furnish, and the relative value of each particular kind. I
think, however, that one or two things more are now fairly conceded.
First, discipline is an attribute, not of specific subjects, but of hon¬
est study and skilful teaching. The fact most seriously affecting
the relative value of different subjects is their maturity of develop¬
ment and their social backing. Beyond this each subject has its
peculiar flavor, about the relative merits of which it is as idle to dis¬
cuss as about the perfume of flowers or the taste of fruits. " De
gustibus nil disputandum."
Second, education gives us knowledge. Much as the value of
facts has been exaggerated to the neglect of faculties, it will not do
to ignore their importance, or to be indifferent to the nature of the
facts which we use to exercise minds upon. Here it cannot for a
moment be denied that subjects differ widely. Dead languages and
7
barbaric languages and occult sciences may be valuable subjects to
study simply because, as a means of discipline, many things are
worth studying that are not worth knowing. But, undeniably, some
things are not only worth studying, but worth knowing, too. Some
knowledge distinctly conditions human conduct, and other knowl¬
edge does not. Other things being equal, it is better for us to de¬
velop our wits on the former than on the latter.
We need not trouble ourselves as to whether sociology will provide
mental discipline or not. Aside from the general claim already men¬
tioned, it is peculiar in the variety of its subject-matter, the range of
difficulty which its problems present with relations from the simplest
to the most complex, its appeal to observation, and its free use of
both inductive and deductive methods. But, waiving all special
claims in this quarter, I come to the important questions involved.
Would instruction in sociology be useful to high-school and college
students, and to society through them ? and, second, would such in¬
struction be feasible ?
Assumptions are dangerously easy in such an inquiry. Like most
questions, this has two sides. It is only one phase of a larger ques¬
tion on which men are by no means agreed. This is a point in the
fundamental philosophy of society.
There are those who claim that a society, to be natural, must be
unconscious of its own functions. Spontaneous combinations, tacit
agreements, unconscious adjustments,— these alone are natural and
felicitous. Society, therefore, requires nothing so much as to be let
alone, and can in no way lose so much as by becoming self-conscious
and introspective. Interference is sacrilege.
To others nothing seems so fitting or natural as this tendency of
society toward consciousness. They regard all unconscious arrange¬
ments as imperfect and provisional, waiting for the fulness of time to
come when man shall enter into his birthright, and human intelli¬
gence shall make beneficent what nature only tries to make tolerable.
To such there is no necessary morality in so-called natural adjust¬
ments. Acquiescence is superstition.
Now it is both the inevitable result and the avowed purpose of
sociology to produce this very social consciousness. It can hardly
be profitable, therefore, if this is a mistake. A few take middle
ground, it is true, favoring a knowledge of social processes, but dep¬
recating interference ; but this is, of all positions, the most untenable.
8
The very fact of consciousness makes action of the unconscious type
impossible. There is no such thing as consciousness and non-inter¬
ference, for consciousness is itself an interference. When the som¬
nambulist wakes up, his previous performances become impossible.
A general study of sociology would paralyze the old spontaneous
social activities. There is plainly no alternatif but to leave society
in self-ignorance or to acquiesce in its reconstruction. Our attitude
toward sociology must plainly depend on our social philosophy,
though here as elsewhere we may claim our sacred privilege of in¬
consistency.
I cannot now discuss the claims of these two philosophies ; and,
fortunately, I do not need to. The logic of events sometimes dis¬
penses with much logic of the other kind. Society has not waited to
learn our preferences, but has chosen for weal or for woe the Delphic
motto for its own. Self-consciousness, self-criticism, and the most
audacious projects of self-improvement have lost all novelty to us.
Moreover, consciousness with all its consequences is a malady that
is self-propagating. Men have begun with a will to doctor society,
and their ardor is on the increase. Now this may all be wrong.
Perhaps they might better let it alone, but I hardly think any hope
they will. If so, there hardly seems to be room for two opinions as
to the place of sociology. A knowledge of social structure is neces¬
sary to those who practise social surgery, for those who hope for no
good from such efforts will agree with Spencer that they have infinite
possibilities of mischief. Sociology, then, becomes necessary in self-
defence. And, if the other party are right, if there are no harmonies
until man makes them, no perfection till he dreams it, plans it, shapes
it, how overwhelming becomes the demand for this same study !
The next question is. Who should be the depositories of this
knowledge ? The answer is plainly. Those who are engaged in the
task of social reconstruction. In our day and country that is pretty
much everybody. Of course there is an elite of intelligence in this
as in all things. There never has been and never can be a complete
democracy, but there is plainly an increasing one. The devices
which the fathers provided against democracy have availed little.
We are no longer guided by wise men. A\'e are guided by wise men's
wisdom after we have reviewed it, and decided that it is wisdom.
An increasing proportion of our people are fairly independent in
their thought and vigorous in their assertion of their convictions.
9
These men, common human men, without their knowledge or con¬
sent, come into the world charged with the awful responsibility of
managing interests compared with which the tasks of the old gods
of Olympus were but as children's play.
It is trite to say that these men never see a university, most of
them not even a college. Few enough will learn so much of society
as is taught in the high school. The provision made for such study
is in strange contrast with the extent of the emergency, and is ex¬
plainable only by the suddenness with which the emergency has
been thrust upon us. It takes time for such adjustments. There
is virtually no instruction in any line of social science in any school
below the college in our country. In the colleges the omissions are
as conspicuous as the recognition. I will merely illustrate. Eco¬
nomics is most often taught, but usually only in the last year of the
course, and often as an appendage to history,— an arrangement
even less adequate than the now forgotten scheme of making
physics and chemistry an appendage to the department of mathe¬
matics. But economics enjoys an enviable pre-eminence over kin¬
dred subjects. It seems incredible that in a democracy colleges
should so generally think politics an unnecessary subject of instruc¬
tion, and that schools supported by the State should not mention the
art or the duties of citizenship. Dishonest and bungling political ac¬
tion is an inevitable result. There is scarcely a mention of the sub¬
jects which interest this Conference. So important a social institution
as the family is seldom mentioned, even in colleges, though appar¬
ently there is no general surfeit of intelligence or practical wisdom
on the subject. And in all these matters, so profoundly concerning
human welfare, change is impending or in progress : the spell of
tradition is broken. Delphic and Hebrew oracles no longer settle
questions of social procedure ; and society stands like Pharaoh, be¬
wildered with his dream of things to come, waiting for a Joseph to
put meaning into mystery, and, in anticipation of what shall be, to
reorganize the helpless State.
But all this means simply that there is need, perhaps absolute
need, of greater intelligence and social wisdom with a view to the
conscious direction of society. Unfortunately, the necessary is not
always the possible. Numberless organisms and species have per¬
ished for lack of conditions indispensable to their existence and
progress. Especially when conditions change rapidly is the failure
lO
to meet requirements frequent and disastrous. The wrecks that are
strewn along the course of the survival of the fittest are a constant
reminder that no individual or class is insured against failure. The
question, therefore, whether modern society, as it hurls itself headlong
and heedless into new conditions, will find what it needs, is to be
answered, not by a deduction from our optimism, but by an inquiry
into facts. This brings us to our final question,— How far is the
sociological instruction, which seems so necessary, feasible under
existing conditions ?
My answer must be somewhat less encouraging than I could wish.
Our schools labor under great limitations, which can only slowly dis¬
appear.
First of all, the teachers are usually not specialists, either bv tem¬
perament or training ; nor can they be to any large extent. .\s a
result, we are obliged to secure specialization through text-books ;
and these must be such as will pretty much teach themselves, at
least at first.
The American Economic Association at its last meeting discussed
the question of teaching economics in the public schools ; and, in
response to the inevitable question, Where will you find a suitable
text-book ? a prominent member gave it as his opinion that no text¬
book was needed,— teachers should be employed who were so famil¬
iar with the subject that they could teach it entirely by discussion.
In other words, we should adopt the method of Socrates and Plato,
and provide Plato and Socrates for the work. The suggestion was
amazingly naive. If the Association had been asked to furnish not
twenty thousand, but twenty teachers competent to do the work in
this way, it could not have done so ; and, w ith all possible encour¬
agement and effort for a generation, it could not have supplied one
twentieth of the schools with such teachers as this. It is easy to
use up an hour in rambling talk with a class on such subjects ; but
without a text-book to lead a class in an orderly discussion, and
bring it to something, is a very difficult thing. Whatever might or
should be, no science has been or is disseminated without being
first embodied in available text-books. A shrewd and observing bi¬
ologist recently remarked that there was now to be a comparative
lull in biological investigation, that for a decade or two the great
biologists would vie with each other in writing text-books. The sci¬
ence had reached the text-book stage, having much that was ready
11
for general dissemination and requiring a larger hold on public sym¬
pathy as a basis for future operations. This illustrates the principle
[ have mentioned. Unfortunately, the production of good text¬
books is impossible until a vast amount of investigation, formulation,
and sifting has been done,— a process which sometimes seems to be
needlessly deliberate and to quite set at naught the needs of practi¬
cal instruction.
A second difficulty in the way of sociology in our schools is the
conservatism of society, enforced by the disagreeable consequences
which attend half-knowledge. The chief of these is a kind of awk¬
wardness, even at times an arrest of action, due to an unwonted con¬
sciousness. Awkwardness is born of consciousness. The individ¬
ual blunders and suffers in the conscious doing of things which
before he knew about them went off smoothly enough. As Myron
Reed once put it, " When a boy has got seventy-five cents' worth of
cheap physiology, he feels so fearfully and wonderfully made that he
can't get over a fence." Something of this same result is noticed in
those who become conscious of relations between themselves and
society, which they had not realized ; and the same thing is noticed
regarding society as this consciousness becomes general. It is best
illustrated and most keenly felt in the case of women, especially
young women, as they encounter in a meaningful way some phase of
the all-pervasive relation of sex. There is embarrassment and dis¬
comfort, for the victim and for others ; and the repugnance makes
itself felt as a vigorous protest. For younger pupils the protest is
particularly strong ; for the kitten-like unconsciousness of youth is
prized not only for its beauty, but as a safeguard to morals. It can¬
not be denied that this difficulty is a real one. It is unfortunate
that our only opportunity to teach the great majority of men in such
matters is during their extreme youth, when their immaturity pre¬
vents the best results. But it is easy to exaggerate these difficulties.
Discomfort is not dangerous, if not too prolonged ; and most of the
annoying accompaniments of this study are purely transitional.
Embarrassment, awkwardness, and discomfort in the individual and
in society are merely a prelude to a new equilibrium, more stable
than the first. But, when all is said, there will remain a limit to the
amount which can be offered to students in our schools. Until more
years of the average man's life are devoted to education, some most
important things must be omitted ; and sociology will be one of the
sufferers.
12
In curious contrast with the objection just noted is the one urged
by certain radicals in the name of sociology itself. They are dissat¬
isfied with the work now being done because it seems to discourage
reform.
A knowledge of the magnitude and complexity of the causes of
social phenomena tends to disparage panaceas and all hasty efforts
for social improvement. However much we may believe in the con¬
trol of social evolution by reason and human effort, a study of
society cannot but convince us that changes must be slow, to be
either wholesome or permanent, and that effort spent on merely
proximate causes is ineffectual. These conclusions are not agree¬
able to those who organize crusades. It is one of the painful inci¬
dents of science that the student is so often called upon to part
company with the reformer. The fervid appeals and enthusiastic
championship by which he seeks to enlist men into a grand reform¬
ing mob grate harshly on the ears of one who sees the difficulties of
bettering society, while the other sees only its desirability. After a
few vain attempts to inoculate a little science into these reformers
while they are charging at double quick, the student is apt to give
up the attempt, and to seem henceforth unfriendly to reform. As
bearing on our problem, I may mention temperance education.
There has been a wide-spread and successful demand that instruc¬
tion should be given in the schools as to the effect of alcohol on the
system. I think it not hazardous to assume that, had that instruc¬
tion been rigorously confined to what was known and scientifically
demonstrated on the subject, the temperance people would have
esteemed it of doubtful value.
Here, again, the conflict is a real one, and the objection not un¬
founded. Science does unnerve much wholesome activity. A
young woman recently told me that she had intended to devote her
life to work for the poor, but that, after studying the problem of char¬
ity in my class, she had about given up the plan. It is needless to
say that her conclusion was not a legitimate inference from my
lectures, but it was a typical transition result. Of course, it may be
said, on the other side, that reform without science is vain, that
many philanthropic schemes need to be discouraged, and that the
whole process is simply a clearing of the ground of tares, in order
that wheat may grow. Unfortunately, some wheat is pretty sure to
be plucked up with the tares. Plainly, we have but one way out of
13
the difficulty. Science must sooner or later have free course, and ac¬
complish her work, whatever that be. But for the present there is
a conflict between the stern necessity of doing something and the
difficulty of knowing what to do.
This aversion to sociology joins with a perversion of it which
comes from a different source. 1 refer to the general desire for
rules of thumb. The practical man wants hard-and-fast rules of
procedure. This demand is more dangerous than open opposition.
Nothing so discredits a science as to transform its principles into
concrete rules of action, assumed to be of general application. To
affirm that a thing should always be done m a particular way
encounters the difficulty that, owing to complicating circumstances, it
should often be done in some other way. It is one thing to say that
a principle is of universal application. It is quite another thing to
insist upon an undeviating mode of procedure. The elevation of the
principles enunciated by Ricardo — principles in themain correct,
though incomplete — into uncompromising rules of action discredited
economics in England for half a century. Principles seem so com¬
plicated, vague, and difficult, rules so simple, plain, and easy. The
reverse is the fact. Principles are the elements, rules the endlessly
complex compounds into which principles enter in ever-varying pro¬
portions. Education consists not in memorizing rules, always of
local and temporary application at best, but in learning principles
and mastering the art of rule-manufacture. This confusing of rules
and principles is the bane of all our education. Not long ago my
boy manifested a growing dislike and incapacity for mathematics.
Being unwilling to believe that the difficulty was congenital or
hereditary, I examined into the matter ; and, finding where he was, I
propounded an example to him,—" How many eggs could you buy
for fifteen cents at twenty cents a dozen ? " He promptly replied,
" Fifteen times twenty " ; and, when I reproved him rather sharply for
so thoughtless a reply, he protested, "Why, papa, teacher says,
whenever it says- 'how many,' we are to multiply." Here was a rule
devised to help over some page of examples without reference to the
danger of its farther application. It was an educational atrocity.
But such atrocities can be far more easily perpetrated in sociology
than in mathematics, the danger of detection being less.
In view of these limitations, how far can sociology now be taught
in our schools General sociology hardly at all as yet. It has great
14
possibilities, but, so far, not much more. The schools can only teach
that which is fairly known and formulated, and so stated that it is
accessible to untechnical teachers and students. Until sociology
reaches the text-book stage of development, it must remain essentially
a university study. But I see no reason to believe that sociology
will be permanently incomprehensible to immature minds. I share
the conviction that these laws of social growth and structure will
prove to be of vast scope and importance, but I confidently look for
the time when these great principles which are now the inspiration
of a few shall be a commonplace of popular knowledge and an in¬
stinct of practical judgment.
Special sociology is more mature, though unequally so in its
different branches ; and even economics, by far the most advanced
of all, can hardly be said to be ready for rapid and successful dis¬
semination. It is approaching the text-book stage, however; and
the next great economic achievement will perhaps be in that line.
In all these branches, however, the schools are simply waiting on
the university. The difficulties are not inherent in the subject, but
incident to its incomplete development.
The recognition of sociology in our schools is hindered by serious,
but not insuperable, obstacles. That it stands in a more vital rela¬
tion to human welfare than those studies which have long had
greater prominence is in itself a guarantee that these obstacles will
be increasingly overcome, and that this crown of all the sciences, in
which man's highest interests culminate, will eventually be accorded
the largest place in those schools whose purpose is to fit men broadly
for life. Nothing less than this superlati\ e recognition will be ade¬
quate. In the progress which I gladly note there is a tendency to
abandon the old scheme of squeezing history and economics into
a single chair not large enough for either, and to give each of these
subjects equal recognition with a score of others. But equality is
not equity ; uniformity is not proportion. I dislike to come into con¬
flict with the established order. There is so much of wisdom in
custom that custom easily passes current for wisdom. But it is
indisputable that the traditional curriculum is not the result of a
careful estimate and recognition of human interests, each in the
measure of its importance ; nor will it become so by any rule of
departmental equality. Some things must increase, and others
decrease, if there is to be symmetry in this counterpart of man's
needs.
15
I hope I have not seemed to underestimate the difficulties of
extensive instruction in sociology, or to exaggerate its importance.
I wish, most of all, to emphasize the fact that society is rapidly
becoming conscious of its own processes, and, as an inevitable result,
is taking these processes under voluntary control. That this con¬
trol may be beneficent or even endurable, it must be not only
conscious and voluntary, but mtelligent. \^'hether we can secure
a knowledge of the structure and development of society sufficiently
thorough and general for this purpose remains to be seen ; but of
one thing I think we may have no doubt ; society, with its present
self-conscious tendencies, will retrograde or perish if we do not.
IV.
^ocíolog^.
INSTRUCTION IN SOCIOLOGY IN INSTITUTIONS
OF LEARNING.
BY DANIEL FULCOMER, ACTING CHAIRMAN,
LECTURER IN SOCIAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
About two months ago I wrote all the college presidents of the
United States, intending to present my results at a different gather¬
ing from this, and on a broader subject, embracing not only " In¬
struction in Sociology," but in all the other social sciences, such as
history and economics. Upon President Finley's request to read a
paper at this conference, a second circular letter was sent out and
this paper was prepared with reference only to sociology in the strict
sense and to the related studies in charities and correction in which
the Conference is especially interested. My material naturally falls
under the following heads : (i) statistics of this year's courses and
students in sociology and philanthropy ; (2) the growth of these
studies during the last ten years; (3) a description of the best
courses thus far developed ; (4) a consensus of opinion as to defini¬
tion, methods of teaching, etc.; and (5) the importance of these
subjects, as testified to, not only by educators, but by the demands
shown among students for them. It is possible that we shall be led
to see in sociology a rival of the classics and physical sciences for
the chief place of honor in an ideal education.
Number of Institutions Teaching Sociology.
From the four hundred and twenty-two colleges and universities
written to, one hundred and forty-six replies were received. Of this
number, twenty-nine have regular courses in sociology, using the
word in the looser sense to include charities and correction, while
twenty-four have sociology proper, defining the term as the study of
society. In other words, one-fifth of all the colleges reporting
teach what they call sociology, while one-sixth have sociology
strictly speaking. These figures do not include the institutions that
give instruction in charities and correction or the science of society
incidentally to ethics, economics, etc. Of this sort there are six
more in sociology and twenty in charities and correction, some of
which give quite extended instruction in these subjects. As regards
the subjects of chief importance to this Conference, regular courses
in charities and correction arc reported by seventeen institutions ;
that is, by twelve per cent, of all the institutions reporting.
The fourteen leading women's colleges, as classified by the Bureau
of Education, were written to also ; but their replies are used only in
the synopses of opinion that follow, not in the statistics of students
and courses. It must be said, in passing, that they have had some
of the best sociological work of the United States, one of the strong¬
est men in the country undoubtedly being Professor Giddings, who
goes this year from Bryn Mawr to Columbia College. Five of the
eight women's colleges reporting have courses in sociology, some
of them being well equipped ; while four have courses in charities
and correction.
One-half, or eleven, of the colleges reporting courses in sociology
give the number of students, which ranges from eight to two hundred
and fifty in each course, or an average of fifty. The number of stu¬
dents in courses in charities and correction ranges from eight to
one hundred and nineteen, with an average of forty-three.
An Historical Sketch.
That there has been an increase of remarkable rapidity in socio¬
logical instruction within the last few years will be seen by compar¬
ing these figures with the courses of study in one hundred and one
colleges and universities printed by the United States Bureau of
Education five years ago. In that year only six of the institutions
reporting had courses in sociology; that is, one-sixteenth of the
total number, as compared with one-sixth at the present time. The
institutions then teaching sociology were Yale, Williams, Cornell,
Trinity, Tulane, and the University , of Pennsylvania. Harvard
3
offered the same course as now, " Ethics of Social Reform," it being
claimed that this was the earliest course in the country devoted to
charities and correction.
From the fact that this was the only course in this subject in
1889 out of one hundred and one institutions, the report that forty-
five courses were found three years previously in one hundred and
three institutions, as made to the American Social Science Associa¬
tion, seems very questionable. My second circular letter was ad¬
dressed particularly to these institutions, and I failed to find more
than eight or ten which had either now or in the past the courses in
question. The University of the State of Missouri replied, " More
of this work, I fear, was reported on paper than was done in actual
fact;" while President Green writes, "The subjects mentioned in
the enclosed circular have never been taught in Cumberland Uni¬
versity."
The evidence is clear at least as regards sociology proper. The
first course entitled to that name dates back less than ten years ; the
number of courses has been quadrupled in the last five years, and
has been perhaps doubled in the year just passed; while, as regards
the immediate future, at least seven institutions have written me that
they are planning to introduce the study soon.
The rapid increase of courses in sociology which we have found
is not confined to America. The continent also which produced
a Comte, a Spencer, a Schäffie, and a De Greef, is awakening to
the supreme importance of this work in the university. The univer¬
sities of Brussels, Paris, Berlin, Munich, Freiburg, Heidelberg, and
many others, gave courses last year in sociology proper; while an¬
thropology, so closely related to it, has for many years held a most
honorable position abroad.
Charities and Correction.
As regards the history of courses in charities and correction
alone, Mrs. Talbot wrote in 1886 in connection with the statistics
already mentioned as follows : " These three topics — crime, vice,
and charities — receive far less attention in our colleges and uni¬
versities than the other topics of our schedule [economics, etc.].
The fact is due, doubtless, to the unformulated character of this de¬
partment of social science. It is still in a state of empiricism, and
4
no fundamental principles have been as yet reached, or, at least,
generally recognized and adopted as such."
Professor Peabody sends an interesting history of his course in
charities and other social questions at Harvard. He says, " The
teaching of ethics applied to social questions was begun by me
in this university in 1880 in the Divinity School." The figures
given for each year show an increase from seven students in
1881-82 to forty-eight in 1885-86, one hundred in 1888-89,
hundred and thirty-three in 1892-93. This year's attendance is
one hundred and nineteen. The number of hours per week has
increased from one to three. He continues, "The present consti¬
tution of this course under our elective system is as follows : —
Graduate students 7
Divinity " ... 20
Senior " . . . . • • SS
Junior " . . . . 24
Sophomore "... ... 2
Special " . . . . . . 8
Scientific " • • 3
119
" There is a Students' Department Library of about four hundred
and fifty volumes to which each member of the class has a key. A
Paine fellowship of $500 is designed for students of these subjects.
Two Paine prizes are offered at $100 each, one for a special re¬
search in some problem of charity, and one for a practical study of
some aspect of the labor question."
Some Courses Described.
No adequate conception will be had of the importance sociology
has reached in this country or its probable future without describing
in some detail the vast variety of work going on in the Department
of Social Science and Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
There are already several times as many courses given there as at
any other university in the world. There are in this department
ten professors and instructors who teach in no other; namely,
Small, Henderson, Bemis, Talbot, Starr, West, Thomas, Zeublin,
Gentles, and Fulcomer. Of these, two give mainly University Ex-
s
tension lectures, one spending nearly his entire time outside of the
city of Chicago. There are thirty-one courses of study given by
these professors. Those in pure sociology are -. —
22. The Methodology and Bibliography of Social Science.
23. Seminar. The Psychology, Ethics, and Sociology of Socialism.
24. The Province of Sociology, and its Relation to the Special Social Sciences.
25. Social Psychology.
26. The Organic Functions of the State and of Government.
27. Problems of Social Statics.
28. Problems of Social Dynamics
29. The Sociology of the New Testament.
30. The Historical Sociologies.
31. The Elements of Sociology.
The courses of most importance to this conference are, among
others given by Professor Henderson, the following ; —
16. Social Treatment of Dependents and Defectives.— Lectures, discussions,
visits to institutions, reports. Second Term, Autumn Quarter.
17. Criminology.— Criminal anthropology and social treatment of crime. lect¬
ures, visits of inspection, study of living cases, reports. Winter Quarter.
18. Seminar.— This will continue throughout the year, and will cover topics
relating to all organization for promoting social welfare. Individual needs and
tastes of students will be considered, fmt a system of research atid analysis will con¬
trol the work for the year.
The seminar methods of work are of most value to specialists.
There are no lectures or text-books, but each student puts the entire,
year on some subject worthy of publication, such as an investiga¬
tion of the charities or the missions of the city. Much practical
work is required in all these courses. This year, for instance, the
most of the students have been visitors in charity work, have as¬
sisted Mr. Wines, and have taken censuses of the unemployed sleep¬
ing in the City Hall and of " Randall's Army."
Consensus ok Views on Sociology.— Definition.
To return to the letters on sociology sent by me, among the ques¬
tions asked were the following : —
" What is your definition of sociology [as used distinctively from
the other social sciences] ? " " How is it related to political econ¬
omy, moral philosophy, etc. ? "
6
The main reason for asking these questions was to be sure that
the figures given me really referred to sociology, and that the term
was not used in the inaccurate way which is very common. It was
by no means supposed that the average definition would be the true
one. What sociology is cannot be learned from the president of a
Tennessee college, who said that "under ethics and economics,
most of the substance of sociology is already taught," or from the
Iowa president, who, when asked to name his text-books on charities
and correction, the family, anthropology, and ethnology, answered,
"The Bible." It is to the few specialists in the country that we look
for definitions of any value. Among these we find at least two
radically different views, the old and the new, which are intimated
in President Finley's answer : "I am disposed to give ' sociology '
the larger scope, considering it as the science of man in society, and
not the science of dependency and delinquency, of the pauper and
the criminal in ' society.' " Although the older English and Ameri¬
can workers in charities and in other social reforms had reduced the
term sociology from the broad meaning given to it by its inventor.
Comte, as the science of society, to the science of abnormal soci¬
ety, the later specialists do not fall into this error. Professor Pea-
body, of Harvard, who has for many years been the most prominent
instructor in social reforms, says : " Sociology is a much larger sub¬
ject than the practical problems of charity and reform. If it can be
taught at all, it may be taught quite apart from these. It is the
philosophy of social evolution.'" Professor Henderson, the author
of the best work on charities and correction, defines sociology in
the larger sense as " the study which seeks to co-ordinate the proc¬
esses and the results of the special social sciences. It aims to con¬
sider society as an organic unity ; to study its movement as a whole,
its purpose, the conditions of progress. It aims to show the legiti¬
mate place and dignity of each department of social investigation by
considering it as a vital part of a vast and uniform movement of
thought." One of the foremost professors of sociology, Giddings,
of Columbia College, says : " Sociology is not an inclusive, it is the
fundamental social science. It studies the elements that make up
society . . . and the simplest forms in which they are combined or
organized, (i) by composition (family, clan, tribe, nation), (2) by
constitution ; that is, involuntary organizations for co-operation or
division of labor." The most agree in calling it " a comprehensive
7
science, including politics, economics, etc." Others call it " a sci¬
ence of sciences" ; " the study of the social nexus that underlies the
various phenomena that are included in the various departments of
social science ; " " it is the philosophy of all" ; "it treats of the evo¬
lution of society in its broadest sense."
Relation of Charities to Sociologv.
In answer to the question how charities and correction are "re¬
lated to sociology, ethics, economics," etc., all the replies make a dis¬
tinction between them. The general view is expressed by Professor
Henderson, who says : " General sociology treats society in its
normal light, social pathology studies morbid conditions, remedies,
etc." Many regard these studies as "applications of the principles
of ethics."
The general answer to the questions " Should they be taught sep¬
arately from sociology ? " and "before or after the latter?" is ex¬
pressed by Professor Peabody, who says : " These social questions
should be dealt with late in liberal education. They presuppose
both ethics and economics. In my own course a student is advised
to take both before coming to me, and must have taken one or the
other." Professor Commons, of Indiana University, alone, would
place them before, but says : " The organic nature of society should
be constantly prominent."
Of the eighteen answers to the question, " Would you put sociol¬
ogy before or after political economy, ethics, etc.? Year?" two-
thirds say " After," two " Before," and three make the same distinc¬
tion as Professor Giddings, who says: "Logically, sociology precedes
political economy ; , . . . yet in the educational scheme political econ¬
omy should be taught first, at least for the present." Professor Hen¬
derson says : " I would have a ' sketch ' course in the Sophomore
year of college and in the last year of Normal School work, and
then ethics, economics, political science. In graduate work the sub¬
ject can be taught again in its deeper and wider forms."
The opinion as to the best year for teaching these subjects is
best indicated by the statistics received. Of the twenty-six institu¬
tions teaching sociology proper in 1894, sixteen designate the year.
Nine of the sixteen put it in the Senior year. The Junior year
comes next, with only two institutions. Courses in charities and
8
correction also are found for the most part in the Senior year, both
in 1886 and in 1894.
The Importance of Sociologv.
Question 20 asked: "Would you advise or require sociology as
a part of a general education, defining it broadly as the study of
society taken as a whole ? Why ? " Of the twenty-four who an¬
swered, not one replied in the negative, more than one-half expressed
themselves strongly in its favor, and three would require it even as
a common school study. The replies of the eleven presidents in
this number are of interest, they being no doubt more impartial than
those in charge of special departments. Six of these earnestly ad¬
vise the study of sociology. One, the president of a Catholic institu¬
tion, thinks it should be reserved for the university, and not the
college period. The severest denunciation is that of the president
of the University of Vermont, who says : " In my judgment, the so-
called ' sociology ' taught in our colleges, preached in our pulpits,
and disseminated in our periodicals, is crude, semi-communistic, and
harmful ; and, until a new race of strong thinkers take hold of the
subject in a new spirit, we shall make no real progress in either so¬
cial science or social life." But the edge of his criticism is taken
off when it becomes known that his institution was one of the earli¬
est (1886) to give instruction in charities and correction " as a de¬
partment of sociology."
Professors who teach economics are thought in some quarters
to be critical of the new science ; but the nine who answered this
question all favor it, although one thinks the time has not yet
arrived for it, and says, "Yes, when the universities have turned
out a force of educators competent to direct the work, so that it
will not fritter away in worthless study." A few would go as far
in the opposite direction as Professor Commons, who says, " I
should like to see history, economics, and sociology given equal
place with language and science from the beginning of high school
through to the Senior year of college." This energetic young pro¬
fessor is on a committee of the Teachers' Association of his State
to investigate and promote the study of sociology and related sub¬
jects in the high schools. Professor Henderson takes the broad
view that is gaining ground on the continent when he says ; " I
would advise that teachers be prepared to treat all the studies of
9
the primary and secondary schools in the sociologie spirit, but that
text-books on sociology should not come in till the Sophomore year
in college. In connection with all studies children and youth
should be led gradually, as they are able, to take their place as
members of the community. This begins in the kindergarten, and
ends only with life."
Reasons for its Study.
A classification of the reasons assigned for the study discovers
the following : —
(1) It is a practical preparation for life. Professor Thomas, of
Baltimore, says : " I advise that sociology be made a part of every
student's education. ... No one is prepared for life who is ignorant
of the laws that govern the social organism of which he is an inte¬
gral part." The president of the University of Wyoming also would
require it for the reason that " the rising generation will not be able
to correctly solve the problems now arising in society and govern¬
ment without this educational training." This reason is the most
common one given.
(2) " The culture possibilities of sociology, together with its im¬
mense practical importance, warrant the fullest attention to it."
(Professor Powers, of Smith College.)
(3.) ■' The problems of sociology that are now agitating our civili¬
zation must not only be mastered by the leaders of the social reform,
but they must be understood by everyday, honest, middle classes be¬
fore any healthy and permanent solution can be obtained." (Presi¬
dent Wagner, of Morgan College.) '• Americans must soon meet
anarchism, communism, and a score of wild theoriès of land, goods,
and government." (Professor Ford, of Elmira College.)
(4) "Sociology is a help to economics and ethics." (Professor
Weaver, De Pauw University.)
(5.) The professor-prophet of sociology, Herron, of Iowa College,
must be put in a class by himself,— the ethico-religious. He an¬
swers : " Because man is a social being, because society is man,
because the knowledge of how to live an associated life and
how to express that life in actual human relations is the chief end
of man, and, if one's creed be called in question, the only way to
glorify God."
10
The Time Necessary for It.
The question, " How much time should be given to it.'" brought
out answers ranging from " Very little at present " to " So much as
possible." The average amount suggested is about six months.
The following expresses the minimum requirement : ' I think that
at least three months should be given to the study of sociology
in all our undergraduate institutions. Of course, much more time
should be given in post-graduate work." (President Johnson, Uni¬
versity of Wyoming.) The number of months actually given to these
studies in the institutions reporting to me this year averages as fol¬
lows : sociology, five months, twenty-two institutions reporting ;
charities and correction, five months, fourteen institutions reporting.
The length of the courses in the latter ranges from one and one-half
to nine months, and of those in sociology front one and one-half
months in some institutions to a total of forty-nine and one-half in
the University of Chicago.
" What other studies could best be cut down to make room for it? '
The answer is, " The ancient languages " four times as frequently
as any other. Among the other studies named are economics, his¬
tory, and mathematics. " Any subject pursued for a longer time
than two years may well have a term taken from it rather than have
a student graduate with no training in sociology," says Professor
Freer, of Mt. Vernon, Iowa. Professor Herron would cut down
mathematics or even omit biology. He says : " We can get through
life without knowing much about beasts and snakes and toads, but it
is becoming quite necessary that we know something about man."
Several would solve the problem, not by cutting down anything, but
by making sociology elective.
Importance of Instruction in Charities.
The answers to the question, "What place should these subjects
[charities and correction] have in education ? " were all in favor of
them. Although some said; "It depends on the institution," or
" They are of changing importance," more called them " very impor¬
tant," and "an essential part of a liberal education." President
Mosher says, " I can think of but few subjects that I think would
11
be of greater practical importance to our country than these would
be if they could be taught by the laboratory method." Professor
Commons would put them " along with the elements of political
economy in high schools." Their need to specialists is admirably
represented by Professor Henderson, who says : " Every man or
woman who intends to engage in the work of charity should study
the scientific principles and methods of charity. Those who expect
to deal with criminals or to write and speak on prison reform and
prevention of crime and vice should give some systematic study to
this subject. We have arranged to give double time to those who
wish to specialize at this point."
The answers of Professor Small, as given below, tersely cover the
main points of the investigation, and may be taken as representing
the high-water mark of sociological thought.
Definition.— " Sociology is the philosophy of human welfare. As
such, it must be the synthesis of all the particular social sciences."
" Would you advise it ... as part of a general education ? "
Answer.— "Yes, in general, in the descriptive parts to prepare
the way for history, political economy, political science, and ethics."
" How much time should be given to it ? "
Answer.— "Last half of Sophomore year and first half of Junior.
I would have a half-year at the end of the Senior year devoted to
philosophical sociology after a study of the special social sciences."
" What other studies could best be cut down ? "
Answer.— " Latin, Greek, and mathematics."
"What place have charities and correction in education t "
Answer.— " Co-ordinate with political economy for general stu¬
dents."
" How are they related to sociology ? "
Answer.— "As pathology to physiology."
" Should they be taught before or after the latter ? "
Answer.— "After or contemporary."
Students demand these Courses.
We have seen the importance of sociology demonstrated both from
the united testimony of educators and from the rapidity of its adop¬
tion into colleges and universities. If any further evidence is neces¬
sary, it is forthcoming from the student's side. So far as statistics
1 2
can be brought to this inquiry, sociology is shown to have airead)-
reached the first rank in popularity. The only place in which a fair
comparison can be made is in the Graduate School of the University
of Chicago, where this department is put upon an equality with all
others, and where students are free to elect it. The two hundred
and thirty-two graduate students attending in the autumn quarter of
1893 would give an average of eight or nine to each department,
while the Department of Social Science had twenty. More students
have chosen it for their specialty — that is, their major work —
than have gone into any other study with the exception of English
and history, each of which excel it by only one student. The theo¬
logical students who have chosen courses outside of their specialties
are almost exclusively in social science, there being twenty-two
in this department, but only four in all other departments com¬
bined.
The showing for this department as to the number of professors
and courses given during that quarter is much the same. Sociology
had eight courses, as compared with an average of six in other de¬
partments, and five professors as compared with an average of three
and one-half. During the year there were thirty courses in this
department, while the other humanities offered only the following :
political economy, nineteen ; political science, sixteen ; history, forty-
eight; philosophy, fifteen; comparative religion, four; and ethics,
three.
Hardly any of the courses in social science can be taken by
Juniors and Seniors ; but the fact that sixty-six per cent, of them
in this one quarter have elected the humanities, or the studies of
man, of which social science is the culmination, makes the argument
complete.
If we turn to courses in charities and correction alone, we find
these also among the most popular courses in the institution. The
attendance on them is more than twice that of the average course.
Conclusion-.
This paper has been all of fact, none of theory. There are many
questions that remain to be discussed ; but they must be left to
other speakers, and, indeed, in part to future years. What is the
relation of charities and correction to sociology ? \^'hat preparation
'J
is necessary for work in this field ? Are the needs properly met by
training schools and by other existing institutions ? What changes,
if any, will the systematic study of society make in the related fields
of economics, ethics, education, or government ?
In view of the difficulty and the importance of the task, he is a
fool who presumes to answer with authority. Were it not that I
have something more to suggest than others have said, I should not
add my opinion to theirs.
But the best of my prevision for the present is this : that education
will some day be considered the most important function of society,
and the study of mankind the most important part of education ;
that the college education of the future is not to centre around the
ancient languages nor the physical sciences, but the humanities ;
that they will be the key-note of the public school as well as of the
college ; that all questions affecting man, as charities and correction,
will be seen to depend upon a broad and scientific conception of the
whole ; that the evils done in the name of charity will largely disap¬
pear with increasing knowledge of that most complex of all studies,
— the science of mankind ; that the curing of dependency and crime
will be subordinated in large part to its prevention ; and that the
need for specialists will be seen in all divisions of social labor as
well as now in industry and commerce.
4
STATISTICS OF INSTRUCTION IN SOCIOLOGY.
Including Charities and Correction.
Explanation of marks used: —
Course i,— Punishment and Reform of Criminals.
Course a,— Prevention of Vice (intemperance, prostitution, vagrancy, etc.).
Course 3,— Public and Private Charities (care of the poor, insane, blind, idiotic, deaf>mute, found*
lings, orphans, etc.).
Course 4,— Sociology (in the strict sense).
Marks in **College Krar" columns: —
1,2, 3, and 4,— Freshman, Sophomore, etc., year. x,— Year not stated.
5,—Post-graduate. —,— Not taught.
6,— Law school. blank,— Unknown.
7,— Medical school. ^ (^.^■),— Freshman and Senior years,
a,— Preparatory department. 1-4 (^.^.),— Freshman to Senior year.
i,— Taught incidentally. p,— School of Political Science.
^ — Senior or Junior year.
Statb.
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
District of Columbia
(( It It
Florida
Geor|^a
Illinois
1886
Namb op Institution.
Little Rock University
University of the Pacific . . .
California College
Leland Stanford, Jr., University
Santa Clara College ....
University of Southern California
University of Colorado . . .
Trinity College .
Yale University
Howard University . . . .
Columbian University . . .
John B. Stetson University .
Florida Conference College
Atlanta University . . .
Emory College .
Clark University . .
Redding College
Illinois Wesleyan University
Carthage College . .
University of Chicago . .
Course 23
U
" 27
" 14
:: ^3
" 26
18
1-3
4
*-3
2-3
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
4
3-5
3-5
5
5
5
5
3-5
5
S
3-S
1894-
Months.
3
9
3
9
%
3
>5
Eureka College . . . .
North-western University
Swing Colleg;e ... *
Norlhern Illinois College .
German-English College
Knox College ....
" (1895) .
Lake Forest University
Illinois College . .
McKendree College
Monmouth College . ,
North-western College
Chaddock College .
Shurtleff College . .
University of Illinois
(( « ((
Westfield College . !
Wheaton College
Indiana University
Franklin College .
De Pauw University
<< i< «(
Hanover College . .
Hartsville College . .
Butler University
Earlham College . . .
German-English College
Amity College . • .
Des Moines College
Drake University . .
Parsons College . . .
Upper Iowa University
Iowa College
Lenox College . . , .
State University of Iowa .
Iowa Wesleyan Universit}'
Cornell College . .
Oskaloosa College . . .
Central University of Iowa
Tabor College
Western College . . .
University of Kansas . .
St. Marv^s College ....
Kansas Wesleyan University
Washburn College . . .
Berea College
Center College of Kentucky
Ogden College . . . .
Kentucky Military Institute .
Georgetown College . . .
St. Mary*s College . . .
Louisiana State University .
16
Louisiana {eoftíinuéd)
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts.
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Nebraska
Name of Institution.
Centenary College of Louisiana
Keatchie College
Leland University • , • •
New Orleans University . .
Tulane University of Louisiana
Bowdoin College . . .
n «
Colby University
St. John's College . . .
Johns Hopkins University
<( (i ((
Morgan College . .
Rock Hill College
Amherst College ....
Boston University . . .
Harvard University
French Protestant College
Tufts College . . .
Williams College
Clark University ....
College of the Holy Cross
Alma College •, • . • • •
University of Michigan
K it <t
Battle Creek College
Benzonia College .
Hillsdale College
Western Michigan College
University of Minnesota .
Dr. Martin Luther College
Carleton College . .
Parker College . .
St. Vincent's College . . . ^
University of the State of Missouri
Central College
Pritchett School Institute
Harris College . . .
Western College . . .
William Jewell College
Missouri Valley College
Park College . . . .
Washit^ton University
Drury College
Stewartsville College
Tarkio College . . .
Central Wesleyan College
Doane College
17
1886.
Nebraska {continued)
Name of Institution.
Cotner University
Creighton College . .
University of Nevada
Dartmouth College . .
Rutgers College . .
College of New Jersey
Alfred University
Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn
Chautauqua College
«( M
Hamilton College
Elmira College . .
Colgate University .
Cornell University
College of the City of New York
Columbia College . . . .
University of Rochester
Union University . .
Syracuse University
Davidson College . . .
University of North Dakota
Buchtel College ....
Mount Union College . .
Ohio University , . .
Baldwin University .
St. Xavier College . .
University of Cincinnati .
Capital University . .
Ohio State University . . .
Ohio Wesleyan University
Ï-3
4
3
4
1-3
1-2
3
1-3
ii 3
3-4
Kenyon College .
Hiram College
Marietta College .
Franklin College
Rio Grande College
Urbana University .
Wilberforce University
University of Woosier
Paciñc University
Willamette University
Western University of Pennsylvania
Lebanon Valley College
Geneva College ....
Lafayette College ...
Haverford College ....
Franklin and Marshall College .
Central Penn^lvania College
Westminster College
University of Pennsylvania .
Swarthmore Collpge . .
Was' ineton and Jefferson College
Brown University
1-3
4
4
4
1-3
4
3
1-3
lö
State.
Rhode Island {ccnid)
South Carolina
South Dakota .
<< tt
Tennessee .
Texas
it
Vermont
ii
Vii^nia
Washington
Wisconsin
Wyoming
Nam8 of Institution.
Brown University
College of Charleston • .
Presbyterian College of So.
Allen University ....
University of South Carolina
Furman University . .
Pierre University . . .
University of South Dakota
U. S. Grant University
Carolina
Knoxville College . .
University of Tennessee .
Cumberland University
Maryville College ...
Christian Brothers* College . .
Central Tennessee College
Fisk University
University of the South
South-western University . .
Add-Ran Christian University .
University of Vermont
<1 ({ «
Middlebury College
Randolph-Macon College
Hampjden-Sidney College . .
Washington and Lee University
Roanoke College ....
Colfax College
Whitman College
Beloit College
Milton College ....
University of Wisconsin
Ripon College ......
Seminary of St. Francis of Sales
University of Wyoming . .
1-3
1-2
2-3
1-3
2-3
3
1-3
2-3
1886
1894.
Months.
stu-
C liege Year
College Year
u
>
'6
V
k.
0
ha .
M
(j
v
u
'3
o*
4;
•"fi ö
B V
a -o
■Í
1
\%
6
80
%
3
80
14
3
15
6
VA
-
3
i
6
i
1
i
i
4
4
X
-■
X
5
i
6
4
-
-
i
COLLEGES FOR WOMEN. FOURTEEN WERE WRITTEN.
Women's College of Baltimore
(( H it it
Radcliffe College
Smith College
Wellesley College
Wells College .
Elmira College
« ((
Vassar College
Bryn Mawr College
_ _ -
1-3
3
4
30
4
3
6
30
4
X
10
4
1
Va
2V2
3
Va
3
25
4 1
Va
2^
1-3
X
4 ;
3
5
1 i Va
2-3 X
4
3S
4 ,
4
8
10
lEnclosed in Circular Letter to All Colleges.]
SOCIOLOGY.
SCHEDULE NO. i.
- State and town or city.
Institution.
Name of officermaking report.
Please answer at least Columns 1. and IL, underscoring the subjects taught. In ñlHng out
Column IV., denote the preparatory department by **p," post-graduate by "g," Freshman year
by ** If" Sophomore year by **2" etc.
I. * II. III. IV. V
Give Text-book in ;
No. of Months. 1 , ,
In what
No. of
Students.
Required.
Eleclive. ^
1. Political ecuuumy
2. Economic movements (the labor question,
socialism, etc.)
3. Political science (theory of government,
etc.) . . .
4. Law (international, etc.)
5. History
6. Education (theory, social significance, etc.)
7. Charities and correction (defectives,
. crime, intemperance, etc.) . .
8. The family ; divorce . . .
9. Anthropology and ethnology . .
10. Statistics
11. The industrial and fine arts (as a soda
study)
12. Any other social science
13. Sociology, as different from each of the
above (perhaps inclusive of all) . .
14. What is your deñnition of sociology as used in Question 13
15. How is it related to political economy, moral philosophy, etc. ?
16. When was it first taught in your institution ? What changes since, in professors, books, etc. ?
17. If you do not have it now, is its introduction proposed or decided upon?
18. What institution gave the first course in sociology to your knowledge?
ig. Can you give the address of any educator favoring its introduction into the public schools ?
20. Would you advise or require sociology as a part of a general education, defining it broadly
as the study of society taken as a whole? Why?
21. If so, how much time should be given to it?
22. What other studies could be best cut down to make room for it ?
23. Would you put it before or after political economy, ethics, etc. ? Year ?
To Daniel Fulcomer, University 0/ Chicago.
[Second Circular Letter.]
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO.
April 16, 1894.
Dear 5"/r,— Your institution was reported in 1886 to be giving instruction in the subjects named
below. As I am toread a paper on College and University Instruction in Charities and Correction
at the May meeting of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, I should like to report
just what you are doing now. Will you kindly indicate this in the following schedule? If you can
also answer the appended questions, your contribution will be especially gratifying.
Underscore the Subjects taught.
In what
Year?
No. of months.
Required. , Elective.
No. of
Students.
1. Punishment and reform of criminals . .
2. Prevention of vice (intemperance, prosti¬
tution. vagrancy, etc.).
3. Public and private ^ charities (care of the
poor, insane, blind, idiotic, deaf-mute,
foundlings, orphans, etc.) .
4. What place should these subjects have in education ? Why ?
5. How are they related to sociology, ethics, economics, etc. ?
6. Should they be taught before or after the latter ?
7. Should they be taught separately from sociology ?
8. When were they first taught in your institution? What changes since, in professors, books, etc.
Very respectfully yours, Daniel Fulcomer.
85
Ä CHÄRX
DEVISED TO ACCOMPANY
LECTURES ON SOCIAL SCIENCE
UNDER THE AUSPICES OF
WESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE,
(UNIVERSITY EXTENSION)
BY
DANIEL FULCOMER, A. M,
PROFESSOR OF SOCIAL SCIENCE, WESTERN MICHIGAN COLLEGE,
GRAND RAPIDS.
I. The Need of Social Science.
What is it?
Its methods.
II. Social Aims and Their Realization.
Ethics.
Education.
III. Sociology Applied to Government.
Origin of Government.
Theory of Government.
The Evolution of a Cosmocracy, or World-Government.
IV. Social Reforms.
Criminology.
Temperance.
The Indian Question.
Charities.
V. Industrial Problems.
The Labor Question.
An Ethical School of Political Economy.
Natural Monopolies.
Socialism.
Nationalism.
Copyright, 1893, by Daniel Fulcomer.
CONTRIBUTING TO SOCIAL SCIENCE.
ABSTRACT. CONCRKTE.
BIOLOGY.
Philos
ophy.
Logic.
Mathe-
matics.
Physio.s
and
Chemistry.
Geology.
"
Physical
Geogra'y
Botany
Zoology.
Physiol¬
ogy and
Hygiene
Psychol-
ogy.
«S-
it tí'
m'
ittí-
iri-
49"
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t'"
ja^
jm-
i'tí
ir¿r
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w
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jtiV
tití-
tí-tí'
«e-
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ty
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ití •- ■
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49-
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49"
49"
49"
49"
«ff-
m'
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t3r-
»
49-
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49"
anthropology.
Ethics (Excluding Private Ethics.)
SOCIAL SCIENCE.
(AS A SCIENCE.)
(AS AN ART.)
Past. Present.
ARCHAICS (Anthro|iolog))| History. Statistics.
Theory.
Future.
Applied Sociology.
History of Edu¬
cation.
Statistics of Ed¬
ucation.
Theory of Education.
EUlTCATlOtV.
(Ethology.)
Polyandry.
Polygamy.
Exogamy, etc.
H. of Marriage.
S. of Divorce.
FAMILY.
Marriage.
Children.
Customs.
CKBKMONIKM.
Etiquette.
Ancestor
Worship.
Mythology.
Shamanism.
H. of Religions.
S. ol Denomiuations.
Agnosticism.
.Spiritualism.
Deism.
Christianity, etc
KELIMIOW.
Spiritism.
Theology.
The Church.
Matriarchal.
Patriarchal, etc.
Political Hist.
Constitut'l Hist.
H. of Cases.
"Cosmocracy,"
etc.
POLiITlCM.
Ciovernineiit.
Legislation.
Adjudication.
Administration.
H. of Political
Economy.
Economic Sta.
"Ethical School
of Polit. Econ."
Co-operation.
Political Kconomy
Production.
Distribution.
Exchange.
Consumption.
Am. 'Ethnology'
H. of Crime.
H. of Socialism.
"Modal Keforms."
Italian School. Criminology.
Nationalism. Socialism, etc.
Anarchism, etc. Indian (Question.
Temperance.
Charities, etc.
Hunting.
Grazing, etc.
Pottery, etc.
¡
1 H. of Inventions
S. of Railroads,
etc.
INDUSTRIAL LIFE.
Agriculture. —
Commerce.
Trades, Professions.
Useful Arts.
Tatooing.
H. of Art.
F1!¥K ARTS.
RepresentatiTc Arts.
(Painting, etc.)
Music.
Poetry, etc.
Picture Writing
Sign Language
Legends.
H. of Literature
I.AKeUA«£.
Linguistics.
Phiiology.
H. of Science.
[ NCIKKCE.
[ (Knowledge.)
Netü Victos in Social Science.
Sociology.
[extbacts.]
•• Archaics is suggested as a much
needed name for the science of social ori¬
gins [Gr. arche, origin], not of antiquities,
merely, as Arch:nology (limited also to the
antiquities of art); but as found in primi¬
tive man of the present as well as of nre
historic times. ".Vntbropology" and "Eth¬
nology" ar»now wrongly applied to this
sub-division.
"Cosinocrai y designates the world-gov¬
ernment towards which all government ap-
¡ii'uvs U) 1:0 ii.nding, as eeen-hr uiTrc».s~of~-
gentes, of towns, and of states, in commer¬
cial unions and in international law.
Education, in its widest, sense, is the ulti¬
mate means of realizing all social aims. It
is the life-long, voluntary moditication of
the individual. A new science of educa¬
tion is possible through a study of the his¬
tory, not of schools only, but of all that
has modified character.
Applied Sociology is the field that now
most needs attention. The work of the
great sociologists, Spencer and Comte,, has
aided rather than hindered the ¡¡resent
dangerohs unsettlement in morals, politics
and religion—a result largely of half-knowl¬
edge, of new truths, but no new systems
competent to replace the old. The work of
Spencer and his assistants in Sociology has
been mainly anthropological, a study of
savage races. The man is needed who can
JgjY down rnlpRof action in ai' •oivhni. i- >v = th •
the laws of development of the social or¬
ganism thus far ascertainable ; who will
add the genius of invention to a mastery of
the past as now known, and to an under¬
standing of the present, sympathetic as
well as statistical ; who will engraft rather
than uproot ; who, though he may have the
boldness of a viking and the vision of a
seer, will yet retain a practical appreciation
and loving compassion for the painful steps
that men must take before they reach
their goal.—Daniel Fulcomer.
Feeling that our readers would be inter
ested in the following chart on Social Sci¬
ence, we obtained permission to publish it.
Prof. Fulcomer has made this subject a
specialty in his college and past work. So¬
ciology is a new science, one to which no
one has as yet devoted their whole, or cvqn
the best part of a life.
It is the purpose of Prof. Fulcomer to
make this science the subject of his life
work. He resigned the presidency of the
Indiana Normal University to accept the
chilirof .Sociul'Sefeöce in \v< SLcrn Ziticiiigai
College that he might give the subject hie
undivided attention.
Prof. Fulcomer is a graduate of Western
College, Iowa, and has taken post graduate
and theological courses at Harvard and
Clark Universities, being elected to a fel¬
lowship in psychology in Clark University.
He has been a pupil of such men ae
Franz Boas, Ph. P.. Docent in Anthropoid
ogy, Clark University, without doubt the
ablest professor of Anthropologj' in .Ameri¬
ca : Prof. F. G. Peabody, the first professor
of Social Science at Harvard University j
G. Stanley Hall, Ph. P., LP. P., president
and professor of Psychology at Clark Uni¬
versity.
Prof. Fiilcc nier has been a contributor.to
leading political, education and news jour-,'
nals, and was some years ago editor of TA«.]
Inter-hl'ilio, a prominent western daily.
Through the columns of The Inter-Idahn
work in irrigation. _
-Asa teacher, he is earnest, hard-workinga
succeeds in getting his pupils to do a great^
deal of research work, and to be independ¬
ent thinkers.
As a speaker, he is pleasing in manner,
ciear, concise, exact in language, forcible
in expression, rich in thought.
We have enjoyed with intense interest
his course of lectures on Sociology, and
take pleasure in announcing to our readers
that w'e shall be able to publish a number
of articles from hispen.—The "Interroqa-
tor," Feb., 189.3.