Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/18

 6 placed for effecting change in social conditions are as independent of the schools as they are of the seasons. Some scholars are still of the opinion that sociology is not only without form and void, but that it must forever remain so, because nothing in the nature of things sanctions it; and the name is therefore merely a device to give new theorists a place. These critics know little about the deep currents of present popular thought. It is a very callow sociologist who imagines that he and his colaborers are inventing the subject-matter of a new science. They are trying to perfect means of answering obtrusive questions about society which the ordinary man is proposing every hour. They are not creating but merely representing popular curiosity. Life is so much more real to the people than to the schools that the people are no sooner possessed of some of the tools of thought, and some means of observation, than they proceed to grapple with more vital questions than the scholars had raised. Hence social philosophies, popular in source, partial in content, but potent in political effect, get vogue before scholars know the terms of the conditions which these rule-of-thumb philosophies claim to explain. The doctrines of professional sociologists are attempts to substitute revised second thought for the hasty first thoughts composing the popular sociologies in which busy men outside the schools utter their impressions.

V. The facts thus sketched constitute a strenuous demand for authentic social philosophy. Are men on the whole sane, or hysterical, or possibly paranoiac, in their attitude toward real and possible social conditions? Are the postulates of our social introspection valid or invalid? Have we learned all that can be known about the antecedents of present conditions, about the standards by which these conditions should be judged, about the type of future conditions toward which it is rational to aim, about the means at the disposal of man for the creation of a different social order? Unless they have a monopoly of such fundamental and circumstantial and comprehensive social philosophy, accredited by every pertinent scientific sanction, many men exercising the