Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/214

202 any comprehensive scale. The work thus far done is descriptive and that only. The loudest demand of sociology today is for the addition of description to description so that, with equally accurate observations of the various elements entering into social combinations, an intelligent view of their correlation is possible. I do not forget that there have been expositions of various political constitutions, at various periods; that there have been analyses of popular life in certain eras; that there have been accounts of the economic systems of various times and nations; of the ecclesiastical structure; of the controlling ideas, etc. Each of these sections of societary description has attempted to exhibit the relations of part to part within the particular division of phenomena described. In so far they have been essays in social statics, and inestimably valuable. As samples of statical explanations of the given society in its totality however they have fallen as far short of satisfying the demands of sociological method as a carpenter's account of the structure of a house would fail to fill out the concepts of physics, or as a sailor's account of Defender's last trial would be lacking as an exposition of the science of navigation.

Many men in various social sciences have done splendid work in the statics of their particular section of social reality, but as yet their contributions to general sociology should be rated rather as descriptions of elements than as properly statical results. We have as yet no single civilization so described that all its chief elements can be located. In no civilization can we demonstrate scientifically how the elements coexist and combine and cooperate, how they correct and complement and counter-balance each other. We are still in the describing stage. We no sooner get one element of the social combination, say the industrial, pretty well explained, so that we think we are ready to study its adjustments with the other elements, then we find that we have hardly studied these other elements at all, and our first observations under this latest impulse raise questions that demand more observation of the industrial element. We have done a lot of more or less brilliant guessing about statics and