Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/37



Rh separate departments or sciences. Reverting to a former illustration, we may regard sociology as one of the great natural orders of cosmical phenomena under which we may range the next most general departments as so many genera, each with its appropriate species. That is, the classification of the sciences may be made strictly synoptical. When this is done it will be possible for philosophers, like good systematists, to avoid making their ordinal characters include any properly generic ones, or their generic characters include any that are only specific.

Thus understood, sociology is freed from the unnecessary embarrassment of having hanging about it in more or less disorder a burden of complicated details in a great variety of attitudes which make it next to impossible to secure due attention to the fundamental principles of so vast a science. These details are classified and assigned each to its proper place (genus or species) and the field is cleared for the calm contemplation of the central problem of determining the facts, the law and the principles of human association.

I would not have it inferred from the high systematic rank thus given to sociology that the logical order in which the entire scheme is to be taken up and studied or taught is to begin with the highest or ordinal principles and end with the lowest or specific ones. Quite the contrary. Sociology is an advanced study, the last and latest in the entire curriculum. It should perhaps be mainly postgraduate. It involves high powers of generalization, and what is more, it absolutely requires a broad basis of induction. It is largely a philosophy, and in these days philosophy no longer rests on assumptions but on facts. To understand the laws of society the mind must be in possession of a large body of knowledge. This knowledge should not be picked up here and there at random, but should be instilled in a methodical way. It should be fed to the mind with an intelligent purpose in view, and that purpose should be the preparation of the mind for ultimately entering the last and most difficult as well as most important field of human thought, that of sociology. Therefore history, political economy, and the