Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/755

Rh of facts required to reason from, and the more difficult the task of drawing correct conclusions from the facts. When we come to sociology the number of details is so immense that it is no wonder many declare them wholly unmanageable. I confess that to proceed according to the method chiefly in vogue of attacking the concrete phenomena presented by local and restricted areas and accumulating a heterogeneous mass of details, the case would be hopeless. The only prospect of success lies in a classification of the materials. This classification of sociological data amounts in the end to the classification of all the subsciences that range themselves under the general science of sociology. In calling this paper the "Data of Sociology" I have no idea of attempting an enumeration of the data of sociology. All I hope to do is to indicate how we can proceed to gather and investigate the data. To attempt to give details would be like taking a shovelful of earth from the side of a mountain. But if the details can be classified into first large and then smaller, and then still smaller groups, some of these groups may finally be so far reduced as to offer some hope that they may be investigated. This series of papers being devoted wholly to the philosophy of sociology, does not contemplate the consideration of any even of the smaller groups of sociological data, and the only justification for a chapter on the data of sociology is just this effort so to organize the different classes of data that it may be clearly seen what the concrete facts are from which the laws of associative action are to be deduced.

Let us begin with the most general and proceed analytically toward the more and more special. In fact it will be well to begin entirely outside of sociology proper and consider first, on the basis of the classification attempted in the first paper, and in the light of all that has been said in the four subsequent papers, the dependence of sociology upon the other less complex and more general sciences. These simpler sciences may themselves be regarded as constituting a part of the data of sociology. Some knowledge of them is essential to any adequate comprehension of the full scope and meaning of sociology. It may have a discouraging