Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/367

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 355

of metaphysics, and the data upon which it is based ; then to ask ourselves the same question with reference to sociology. With that before us, we are ready to pass to an attempt to establish a relationship between the two disciplines, in reference both to the content involved and the point of view taken by the knowing sub- ject in his relation to that content.

Metaphysics deals with what is or exists. It starts from experience, since in any investigation we must start with what is nearest and best known to us. Its problem, then, is to attempt to find out the nature, meaning, and, more specifically, the final significance of reality. These are considerations which from the standpoint of science do not emerge ; for science is content simply with taking the phenomena themselves. Metaphysics, however, when it looks into the nature of reality, seeks to find out the form that reality takes, whether it be material, conscious, and so on. But this is merely one part of the metaphysical problem. Science tries to get a generalized law of the behavior of things, but it does not concern itself with the question of how and why this law of behavior came to be what it is. Metaphysics takes up the search at this point and seeks some inner principle from which this law of behavior springs. This is the search for the meaning of reality; that is, e. g., certain actions of an individual are under- stood only when we know what sort of a man he is, of what sort the character is which regulates those actions. When we inquire into the final significance of reality, we try to get, not alone the spring of all things, but also their final goal reduced to unity; in other words, to understand reality in the light of some all- comprehending unity.

Does experience give us reality ? is the first question ; and an examination will lead to the conclusion that we are confronted by a contradiction if we hold that behind phenomena there is a reality which is entirely simple and unrelated ; for such a simple, unrelated reality could give itself no manifestation, and therefore there would be no phenomena. If the real cannot be simple and unrelated, then we must hold that the real must be thought of as internally complex; and not only that, but that it is of its very nature to manifest itself in phenomena, and so become the con-