Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/36

 24 while economics belongs within the great field of sociology, there should be no confusion or overlapping in speaking of these sciences or in teaching them, so that nothing that clearly belongs to economics should be treated as sociology. While in so complex a field of phenomena it may be difficult in practice to draw the distinction thus definitely and always maintain it, this should be the constant aim and ideal both of the teacher and the social philosopher. If this is done there will be no such thing possible as a conflict between them, or of the cultivators of one of these sciences encroaching upon the domain of the other. In some of the simpler sciences this complete separation of the superior from the subordinate fields is less difficult. In astronomy, for example it is easy. Who ever heard of a geologist complaining that the astronomers were encroaching upon his domain? With the degree of complexity, however, the clearness of these distinctions diminishes in the maze of special details, until when the field of social action is reached it requires a skilled pilot to keep the thought-laden craft safely within the true channel of logical consistency. Yet the course exists as definitely in the one case as in the other, and it must be found and followed before the present confusion can be cleared up. It has been my purpose thus far simply to indicate that course and to show what I conceive the science of sociology to be as distinguished from all those special sciences which, indeed, fall within its general purview, but which are entitled to be cultivated, and have been cultivated, as sciences. I have taken economics as an example because it seems to be most prone to overflow into the broader field, and because it is out of this department that sociologists are now being chiefly recruited. But there are many other sciences or branches of learning that occupy practically the some relative position. It is here that history stands, while ethnology, ethnography and demography, with other attendant branches of anthropology, bear so strongly upon the great science of man in the social state that it is difficult to prevent them from forcing their way into it. And each of these has its specialized phenomena to be set aside and cultivated as