Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/144

 CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. II. SOCIOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY.

is not a "chance world," but a world of law. Both science and philosophy teach that every fact and every phenomenon is indissolubly linked to every other and that change is the result of some antecedent change and the occasion of some subsequent change. Any conceivable fact or thing may therefore be regarded as a term in a series which is infinite in both directions. In science this is called the law of causation; in philosophy it is called the law of the sufficient reason.

A feeble and imperfect recognition of this law has led many minds to a very erroneous conclusion, a conclusion which is, if possible, worse in its practical effect upon human thought and action than would have been the belief in a purely chance world. It has led to a false idea of the relation of man to the universe. Indeed it is responsible for the two false theories which have most retarded the true progress of mankind, viz., optimism and pessimism.

Man is correctly to be regarded as simply one of terms in the great cosmical series, the product of antecedent causes and the cause of subsequent effects, and until he is so understood the true relation either of man to the universe or of sociology to cosmology cannot be correctly known. Man's place in the organic series will be the subject of the next paper. The more general question only of his relation to the world at large can be considered here. The first important fact to be noted is that to his slowly developing intellect the universe has ever been a great enigma. To solve this enigma has been the universal problem of the human mind. But man has been put into possession of no key to this solution and has attacked the problem wildly and at random, utterly unqualified to make the least impression upon it. The book of nature which was open to him was but a