Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/147

 NOTES AND ABSTRA CTS 1 3 5

Steinmetz, etc.; comparative religion and folklore, as studied by Tylor, Robertson Smith, Frazer, Nutt, Hartland, etc.; comparative psychology, as established by Lazarus, Steinthal, and their successors; social statistics, as continued by the successors of Quetelet; social geography, as studied by Ratzel.

Thus the specialization of which sociology has need, in order to become a truly positive science, is already a well-established movement, but one very imperfectly organized. To aid in the perfecting of this organization is the task that lies immediately to the hand of the sociologist. Among the more con- spicuous of existing imperfections may be mentioned ( i ) the want of a sufficiently wide and effective recognition of the interdependence and unity of all social phenomena, as a necessary working hypothesis; (2) the tendency of the specialists to multiply entities needlessly {like the "judicial conscience" of Post), and satisfy themselves with facile explanations and naive simplicist formulae; (3) the tendency to interpret all social phenomena in terms of one specialism (as in the " economic," or the " religious interpretation of history "); (4) the tendency of contiguous specialisms unconsciously to overlap (like religion and jurisprudence, social geography and demography, etc.); (5) the tendency of specialisms to move at random without adequate conception of a definite purpose, and hence not only to waste effort, but also to leave important areas of the sociological field uncultivated.

What the sociologist specially needs to do in correction of these imper- fections is to interpenetrate the diverse technical studies more fully with the sociological conception of unity. It is true that these specialisms are themselves spontaneously moving toward this directing idea (i. e., are acquiring the soci- ological orientation), but with slow and halting steps. To work toward accentu- ating the movement and making it more conscious, more precise, is the urgent problem of sociology. It is only through the systematization of the several social sciences that the Comtist conception will cease to be a philosophical aspiration, and become a reality. For the unity of the social kingdom cannot hope to find an adequate expression in a few general and philosophical formula: detached from the facts and the detail of specialist research. An adequate soci- ology can have for its organ only a body of sciences distinct, but animated by the sentiment of their solidarity. And it may be predicted that these sciences once organized will return with accumulated interest to philosophy what they have borrowed from it.

II.

The urgent problems that confront the general sociologist at the present iuncture are methodological and historical. Most pressing is the systematization of the several sociological specialisms. For on the adequacy of the organization of the extant body of knowledge depends the effective co-operation of the differ- ent groups of specialists; and on it also depends the doctrinal unification from which may be derived general precepts for the guidance of social action.

By sociological specialisms is meant the researches of investigators who specialize on some particular aspect of human phenomena such as the historical, the political, the economic, the ethical, the psychological, the anthropological, etc. These specialisms have, for the most part, grown up as independent autonomous studies, without the self-discipline that comes from an adequate consciousness of their own historical evolution and of their own methodological apparatus. Hence it is that they have been, and are, without the controlling and unifying influence of a common ideal. Such unificatory principles as have hitherto been most readily available are survivals of a pre-evolutionary culture, and therefore inoperative for the synthesis of evolutionary science.

The deficiency of order and systematization in the interrelations of the several sociological specialisms is to be taken as a reflex of a corresponding deficiency of order and system in the interrelations of the different departments of practical life economic, political, educational, ethical, etc. But it does not follow that the organization of the several sociological specialisms into an ade- quate working system should not precede the reorganization of practical life and