Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/369

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 357

naturalistic mechanism can give no meaning at all, for it can give only an infinite multiplicity of related, inert atoms which are both centerless and aimless. 2 Therefore, teleology and real meaning in the world of objective experience are gotten only through appreciation. Appreciation grasps unities, not particulars. An idealized and greatly extended example of this is given by Pro- fessor Royce when he speaks of a community of spiritual beings " who were so aware of their comon relation to the true Self that their life together was one of intimate spiritual communion, so that the experience of each was an open book for all of them." 3 In such a suppositious environment the most intimate experience of any one of the individuals would be immediately, or at will, the experience of any other individual, without using any medium of communication ; this would apply, not only to present, but also to past experience as well.

The next question is to fix our starting-point from the side of sociology. We must first ask ourselves what constitutes society. Different answers have been given to this question; and whether society is or is not an organism, or some other thing, does not concern us here. What we want now is the notion " society " reduced to its simplest terms. Society implies human individuals interacting. This interaction of human individuals demands the more elementary conception of conscious wills, on the one hand, and an environment both physical and psychical, on the other. Now, the province of sociology is to study the phe- nomena resulting from the interaction of these conscious wills both on each other and on the environment. It must try to get at the influences which bring about these phenomena, and not merely describe them through generalization for that would be only a shorthand register of events but, as far as possible, to interpret them as a whole. Since societary phenomena are very complex, sociology is confronted with a problem of great intricacy, as it must seek to arrive at some unitary view of society. This com- plexity seems to make it necessary to make sociology superior to various subsidiary and special social sciences whose province it is

"WARD, Naturalism and Agnosticism, Vol. II, pp. 134 ff. 1 Spirit of Modern Philosophy, pp. 395, 396.