Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/310

 298 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

details, or groups of details, or systems of details, as means of interpreting the process? Thus, from the sociological point of view, either a group of economic facts, or the economic system of an age or a civilization, or the economic theory of a culture epoch, is each in its way merely a term in the whole proposition which sociology is trying to formulate. The human interest is in know- ing the human whole. The sociologists have broken into the goodly fellowship of the social scientists, and have thus far found themselves frankly unwelcome guests. They have a mission, however, which will not always be unrecognized. Their part in the whole work of knowing the human reality is to counteract the tendency of specialists to follow centrifugal impulses so far that social science will split into fragments which cannot be reorgan- ized into a unified body of knowledge. Sociology stands first for the co-ordinating stage in the knowing process. Recognition of its legitimacy and its necessity is merely a question of time.

To recapitulate : the sociologists are attempting to show that salvation of the social sciences from sterility must be worked out, not by microscopic description and analysis of details alone, but by such correlation and generalization of particulars that the \ whole social process will be intelligible. The limits of this paper restrict discussion to that phase of sociological theory in which intellectual apprehension is uppermost. From the human stand- , point no science is an end in itself. The proximate end of all i science is organization into action. The ultimate interest of the sociologists, therefore, is in turning knowledge of the social pro- cess into more intelligent promotion of the process.

ALBION W. SMALL.

THE UNIVERSITY or CHICAGO.