Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/220

208 This is what I meant when I said "sociology is the science of social ideals." The context makes it plain, of course, that the proposition referred to a second stage in sociological procedure, and was in no sense a proposed definition of sociology. I am free to confess, as admitted in the note at the beginning of this paper, that I am not now satisfied with my own statements in that connection. I am more secure of my ground, but see more clearly that I failed to define it. I not only believe with Professor Ward that sociology should aim "at the organization of happiness," but I contend that scientific conceptions of what the conditions of happiness would be are necessarily involved in the pursuit of this aim. It seems to me very anomalous that a thinker who has been so bold and original and persistent in maintaining that the only conceivable end of life is happiness, should flinch from scientific criticism of the concept happiness, and from scientific calculation of the conditions of happiness.

My contention is that if we should make such advances in statical interpretation that we could accurately formulate the equilibrium of the societies which have transmitted civilization in every epoch from the beginning to the present, we should, in consequence, be in possession of means, first for generalizations of statical laws; second, for generalizations of certain dynamic laws, i.e., of the derivation of status from status; and third, for positing certain approximate conditions of more complete happiness, or of more nearly stable social equilibrium. I contend, further, that a doctrine of the "organization of happiness" which does not posit some relatively definite conception of the social status toward which the application of the doctrine would tend, essentially resembles the other exhibitions of social hysterics by agitators who want "change" without a practical plan for a single concrete improvement. I therefore hold that it is the business of the sociologist, or of a division of the sociologists, to use descriptive material not merely as the zoölogist reconstructs extinct types from fragmentary remains, to represent the statical order of