Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/196

 1 84 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

it demanded that it shall be limited by a socialization in the com- mon interest, and how may men succeed in bringing individualiza- tion and socialism that is, individual weal and common weal into harmony? One requires no profound insight into recip- rocal human relationships to recognize that this problem is in causal relationship with the question of the political organization of society, with the total of legal development, and with positive ethics ; that is, with the norms of conduct derived from the essen- tial interests of human beings. When, however, we take into consideration the nature of man that is, his native talents there is at once presented (6) the tremendous race-problem, which may be presented in the form of the following questions:

a) Is the origin of the human race such that it can be regarded as a unity? What social and ethical consequences follow from the answer to this question ?

b) What value has the race-concept for social evolution in general, and in particular in given times and places?

c) What differences of value are to be attributed to the pure races, which have developed the permanent forms of racial mix- tures through in-and-in breeding, and what values are to be assigned to the mixed races with fluctuating traits?

d) What consequences for social development follow from the fact of race-difference, and of the variety of inherited talents (Anlagen), as products of biological development, of history, of locality, of environment, and of prevailing ideas?

This race-problem, over which fierce struggle is raging loday in Europe, will not be solved from the single standpoint of eth- nology, or anthropology, or geography, or biology, because the race itself is not a product of biological evolution, or of geo- graphical conditions, or of anthropological classification. Its social significance can be made out only on the basis of all those factors with which all the special sciences are concerned, from whose subject-matter sociology attempts to organize its syn- theses. This Congress is sitting in a part of the world, and in a federation of states, whose future centers about the solution of the race-problem. Sociology can regard the amalgamation of the races that are in contact merely as an ideal. The mere com-