Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/377

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 365

exclusively in an internal manner, but that, just as soon as you have social force manifesting itself, its effect is different qualita- tively from the cause, in that an increment has been added from the inner store of the unit itself, viz., the self which is acted upon. This is nothing more than the psychological doctrine of apper- ception. Now, it can be asked : Does this not violate conserva- tion of energy strictly interpreted? Moreover, the same social force does not produce the same social effect in every social unit. True, in the long run, it is found that individuals affected by practically the same environment will probably react in the same general tvay. Does not this difference of individual reactions indicate that to understand sociological reactions we cannot con- fine ourselves exclusively to the mechanical methods of physical science? The present writer does not propose to hold that soci- ology is a philosophy; but what is maintained here is that sociology, while being, in the general significance of the term, a science, is in reality a teleological science, or one that needs teleological methods, or the method of philosophy, to supplement the mechanical so that higher synthesis may be reached.

In reference to the causation involved in societary phenomena, Mr. Bosanquet points out that social causation, and the bringing of social facts under law and rational coherence, are very different from natural causation. In the former case it is largely motived cause.

The distinction between determination by law and determination by the presentation of law, and the relation of a conscious motive embodied in a political order to the facts and modes of behavior existing in natural sur- roundings and economic arrangements, are stated with perfect balance and clearness by Plato and Aristotle. Many one-sided constructions of social causation might never have been attempted had due attention been paid to their ideas."

It seems to me that a reading of, and a little reflection upon, Schopenhauer would bring about the same result. 18

"Mind, N. S., Vol 6, p. 7.

u World as Will and Idea, trans, by HALOANE AND KEMP, Books II and III ; Ueber die vierfache Wursel des Satzes vom sureichenden Grunde, 3d ed., chaps.

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