Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/128

 1 1 6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

ment of the other. These two approaches are just opposite sides of a hill that has to be traversed on the way to sociology. It is true that the large generalizations of individual thinkers repre- sentative of the two schools often get themselves expressed in formulae which suggest hopeless antinomies. It is true in sociol- ogy, as in philosophy, that everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. But it is equally true that everyone, by taking suf- ficient pains, may be both. The Hegelian formula of subjective sociology "man is the product of spirit" has its theological version in, " man is the work of God," and its poetic form, " an honest man's the noblest work of God." It is easy to turn the argument around, as Feuerbach and many other objective sociol- ogists have done, and demonstrate the conclusion that God is a product of man in which the humorist sees a scientific justifica- tion for saying : " an honest god's the noblest work of man."

There is no reason why we should not utilize all these time- saving and illuminating formulae, provided we try quantitatively to determine the proportion of truth they contain; or, in other words, provided that we recognize the experience which any sociological formula summarizes is partial, incomplete, and rele- vant to a more or less arbitrary point of view. The real harm comes from using such provisional formulae to justify lower as against higher personal desires, and narrow individual as against larger social action. It was Feuerbach also who said, "man is what he eats;" which, within increasingly definable limits, is a true and useful sociological generalization. And it is none the less so because that pathological variety of applied sociologist, the gourmand, may use it to justify him in seeking God where he would most like to find him in a pudding-bowl.

In Condorcet's Sketch the historical line of approach to soci- ology unites with the utopist line of approach. It is not, of course, merely that the two phases are put together in one book the historic constituting the first part, and the utopist the second. It is not merely that a continuous line of human development is demonstrated as evolving from the past through the present into the future. This had been done at least as far back as the fifth century A. D. in the DC Civitate of St. Augustine; and in a