Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/596

584 is the German Inner Mission. This term covers the work of many independent voluntary associations of members of the "Evangelical" state church on behalf of the dependent, the feeble and the anti-social elements of society. But there is a strong tendencv to extend the meaning of the term to include forms of church work in wider and higher fields. It is the purpose of this paper to outline the essential social forces which brought this movement into being and gave it direction during the opening years of this century. These same causes are at work, in other forms, in America, and we are beginning to see similar results. They must be studied from a social standpoint, since economic, political, educational, ecclesiastical, customary and other elements are blended and cooperant.

Comte wrote : "If we desire to familiarize ourselves with this historical method, we must employ it first upon the past, by endeavoring to deduce everv well-known historical situation from the whole series of its antecedents." No single phenomenon of societv can be explained without taking into account all the forces of society, antecedent and coexistent. It may be difficult to be certain that we have found all these forces, and difficult to measure their relative importance and causal energy. But to recite a series of facts without any attempt to estimate the causes is waste of time. If we are to learn anything of practical value we must seek these causes. For, as Comte says again: "We must have learned to predict the past, so to speak, before we can predict the future; because the first use of the observed relations among fulfilled facts is to teach us by the anterior succession what the future succession will be."

The causes at work in the "Inner Mission" were distinctly and characteristically human and spiritual. The soil and climate, the physical environment, have not greatly changed. The economic improvements were, indeed, causes of social effort, but they were also effects of spiritual conceptions, of national aspirations, of higher ideals of what man may be and ought to become.