Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/193

 THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIOLOGY l8l

research in its peculiar territory. The difference between this specializing minute labor and sociology consists merely in the fact that the latter does not test its material with reference to the particular, but with reference to the universal. As in the case of every subject and object, there must go along with this testing of all phenomena with reference to their sociological content, inves- tigation of man with reference to his social nature. This social psychology is implied in the positive method. It involves search on the one side for the social ego, and on the other side for the reaction of the life-conditions upon the ego. Because this social psychology teaches what social demands this ego has, and the investigation of the social facts teaches how these demands may be satisfied, we arrive at sociology as the science of reciprocal human relations. In the field of social psychology America pos- sesses in Lester F. Ward, and in research among social facts the world possesses in Herbert Spencer, a thinker who has opened new scientific paths. The problem is simply to combine the true tendencies in sociological knowledge, and to develop them into a real synthesis.

As this introductory discussion has shown, sociology is a philosophical discipline, not on a basis of pure reasoning merely, but rather on the basis of all the real and intellectual facts correlated by the causality of all phenomena. Social life can be scientifically understood only on the basis of the monistic view of the world ; that is, in the light of a philosophy which subordinates all phenomena to a unifying principle. It is the inevitable conse- quence of positivism, which sets over against the ego as fact the facts of the external world, that it rests on the same epistemo- logical foundation on which rest all other empirical facts. Without this positive monism a sociological regularity is impos- sible, and I assert without reserve that it is the source of all scientific knowledge whatsoever. This monism alone permits us to understand all existence without omission, in complete logical correlation, as a product of evolving regularity (Gesetzmassig- keit). The most important precondition for the success of socio- logical science is recognition of this monism, and subsumption