Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/765

Rh gists to teach how this most important of all psychic attributes arose, the sociological course may limit itself to the study of its products and to tracing it down through history to where it finally ushered in the age of machinery. Involved in this is the whole history of human industry, and political economy is itself only a special department of this wider field of research.

This is the place to point out the grounds that exist for the claims of the historical school of political economy. We have seen that the data of sociology are, properly understood, essentially historical. Sociology, to become a true science, must rest on facts. It must consist of a body of truth, i. e., of broad principles derived from an accurate coōrdination of known facts. But from the nature of the case these facts must be furnished by the activities of human beings. These activities, taken in a broad sense, constitute human history, and as soon as we can divest ourselves of the idea that history is limited to a narrative of the doings of a few men whom events chance to bring to the surface at long intervals, it will become apparent that the entire industrial activity of the world belongs to history. But in such a vast field it is very important to find some mode of simplifying phenomena. It is necessary to seize upon certain natural keys to the whole system. If a few of the principal strands upon which it is all woven can be discovered and kept distinct the whole web may be seen to much greater advantage. There are many of these, and each student may choose his method. No better system has ever been proposed than that of regarding events as products of ideas and classifying ideas. This is the true psychic method and recognizes sociology as directly resting upon psychology. It is found that the progress of intelligence produces regular and necessary changes in human ideas. In the primordial blank condition of the mind the anthropomorphic mode of interpretation is the only one; inanimate objects are animated and animals are endowed with intelligence. Fetish- ism prevails. In the next stage intelligence and will are disembodied and ascribed to immaterial or spiritual beings. Polythe-