Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/191

 THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIOLOGY 179

Kant and Laplace, the idea of creation. While the specializing science of today pushes the significance of the fundamental ideas, the principles, the system, into the background, they would surely have undermined the vital conditions of sociology, whose aim is to discover correlation on the largest scale, if it were possible to arrest the course of development of human understanding. From suspicion of the dialectic philosophy men had become accustomed to accuse all fundamental ideas of being merely invalid inductions. This was entirely unjust; for, as all psychological analysis teaches, while they may be erroneous, they are, however, always syntheses of individual experience ; that is, the product of induc- tion. It must be further observed that every piece of minute scientific work, in so far as it is not stimulated by the purpose of mere invention for capitalistic use, must lend itself at last to a generalizing synthesis, if all research is not to remain purposeless. This appears in the case of all public arrangements of the state and of society.

One must, like myself, live in the atmosphere dominated by the traditions of learned Germany, in order to have an idea of the bitter struggle which the special sciences have waged against sociology. Nevertheless this struggle, in spite of outbreaks of hatred toward the founders of sociology as, for example, against Gumplowicz has already turned in their favor. The book-market is swamped with bulky works, which try to assume the appearance of sociological intelligence, and the designation " sociology " is applied to the most incongruous fields of thought.

Since now in all generalization induction is an inevitable con- dition, and every specialization must terminate with a synthesis, the problem before us seems simply to be to provide, as a basis for the synthesis that shall control social life, an induction which is not liable to error.

From time immemorial men have sought to reach theorems of universal validity. Even specializing science has not been able to avoid this demand. We have consequently a vast literature in which specialists, from their own peculiar one-sided standpoint, have sought to arrive at a synthesis covering social evolution. Starting with historical, economic, statistical, juridical, philo-