Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/375

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 363

description by its purpose. While the latter differentiates modi- fications of feeling in order to connect them causally with corre- sponding differences in sensation and ideal content, and com- municates them only indirectly through these connections, the former discriminates their meanings, and communicates these differences in terms of projected ideals which are common to the consciousness with which the individual communicates. 10 This would, of course, place a strong appreciative element at the heart of such a science, and involve it in a considerable debt to meta- physics. Professor Royce thinks that our perception of the reality of another self is in no wise gotten by description, since we can- not describe what it is that gives us the sense of reality with reference to his ideals, his aims, etc. The answer that he gives to the question of how we get the sense of the reality which we attribute to a friend, the genuine external existence that we attribute to the appreciation of the existence of our fellows, is that " all this is unintelligible except in so far as we recognize that we seemingly isolated and momentary beings do share in the organic life of one Self." n There is, however, a genuine " com- munion of spirits," and upon this is founded description.

An objector may protest against the term "matter" used above. But this will not alter the situation; for analyze that matter into whatever you will, whether it be vortices of motion or what not; by the very nature of your investigation you are cut out from calling them mind, and consequently they are still describable, and so cannot be the subject of appreciation, with the result that the difference in method or, in other words, between the appreciative and the descriptive points of view is still unresolved.

Or, looking at the question from another side, we have seen that these individuals which are the social units are, in the last analysis, conscious wills. Now, a sociology working on the basis of physical causation would say that these wills, and con- sequently the societary phenomena resulting from them, are

"This is taken from a personal letter to the present writer. " Spirit of Modern Philosophy, pp. 405-8.