Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/271

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 259

and sociology drawing lessons from history may be considered in one respect as the same thing as sociology. The practical lessons were all obtained from the completed and thorough observation of the facts of history, whether as handed down to us from authentic sources, or as observed by ourselves or by contem- poraries at the present day.

Now I will venture, after these few introductory remarks, to read some short observations which I have already transmitted to the secretary of the Sociological Society.

It seems to me that, assuming the unity and systematization of the various specialisms spoken of in the first paper as the task most immediately incumbent on sociologists, and the solution of " the problem of pure sociology," the problem spoken of in the second paper as being " to describe, to explain, and to forecast the evolution of human occupation," in the wide sense there given to this word, can be attained only by founding sociology as a whole, and the various special sciences which it includes, upon physiological psychology, which is the youngest or latest to take its place among the positive sciences, not by including phy- siological psychology as one of the specialisms embraced by sociology, conceived as constituted by a purpose of its own. Sociology as a science is rather a specialism under physiological psychology than the latter a specialism under it. I mean that only by basing it on physiological psychology can it acquire a scientific character, the character of a positive science.

The reason for this view, briefly stated, is this : All branches of human occupation or endeavor consist of some mode or modes of consciousness, as well as of some mode or modes of physiological energy ; they are describable as what they are only by terms of consciousness. Now, it is physiological psychology which specially studies the laws of this connection between physio- logical energy and consciousness. It is a positive science, though as yet in its infancy, standing at and covering the meeting-point of the purely physical, including physiological, sciences and those which are commonly taken as purely mental or psychical, as, for instance, those of logic, ethics, and aesthetics, with their subdivisions or dependencies. The ultimate scientific explanation of all branches of human endeavor must therefore, in my opinion, be sought in physio- logical psychology. This, of course, I need hardly remark, postpones to a remote period the foundation of sociology if it claims the strict rank of science.

But if sociology is, on these grounds, not per se a science, neither is it, nor indeed any positive science, or even system of sciences, a philosophy. It is not generalizing, organizing, unifying, or systematizing that makes science philosophical, or gives it a philosophical character. What, then, constitutes the difference? I should answer: A total change in the point of view. In philosophy we make consciousness, awareness, thinking, knowing, experience, as distinguished from the things thought of, known, experienced, or of which we are conscious or aware, our object of study. They, the former, it is of which all knowledge consists ; they are our only evidence for anything whatever, for existence of any and every kind, including their own. And we are driven forward to this philosophical line of inquiry simply by adopting the experiential metliod, so called, and not altogether unfairly called the English method ; for we have not pushed that method to its limits until we analyze experience itself in its character of experience, and that without making any assumptions to begin with, not even that of a conscious being, as its bearer or experiencing subject, the nature and existence of which must be learned, like everything else, from the content of consciousness or experience iteslf. This evidential character of consciousness is that which gives philosophy the widest possible scope among all the branches of human inquiry.

MR. J. A. HOBSON.

I shall expect, in attending these meetings of the Sociological Society for some time to come, to hear gentlemen who will get up and deny that there is such a thing as sociology. That has been done this afternoon ; I expect it will be done again ; and I am bound to say that it seems to me that some support is given to