Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/388

 376 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

assumed ideal unity, efforts are made to approximate it. This is essentially a philosophical procedure.

Mr. Bosanquet says :

The point of view taken by M. Bernes (Revue de metaphysique et de morale, March, 1895) seems to recognize a double tendency in the body of science, such that the purely speculative or, in our language, the indifferent nature of mathematics finds its complement at the other extreme of the series in what for him is the practical spirit of sociology; the intermediate group of the natural sciences being, as I understand him, the chief meeting- ground of these two tendencies, neither of which can be wholly absent in any scientific endeavor. It is a detail of terminology that M. Bernes's phrase "practical" seems to me to approach in actual significance the philosophical expression " speculative." It means, as I read him, not the spirit of an art devoted to immediate action, but rather the spirit of a philosophy which divines, through the will no less than through the intellect, the impulse and the indications of a partially unrealized unity in the world which demands realization."

Mr. Bosanquet here adds that, if sociology admits the validity of such an impulse, and applies itself to the discovery of laws and forces which shall be capable of doing justice to this treatment, then a greater part of the distinction between it and philosophy will be done away.

After saying that the role of mere observer of facts is always a humble one, and that the really living element in the sciences is what the mind puts into the observation and which is not the object of observation, Mr. Mackenzie says :

And if this is the case even with regard to those sciences which are directed most entirely to phenomena that are capable of being externally per- ceived, it must hold to a much greater extent when the object is not any collection of facts, but rather a stream of tendency and aspiration. And when to this is added that we who observe the stream are ourselves a portion of it. and that our modifications of it may become a factor in the modification of its course, it becomes clear that a purely empirical study of society, however useful and even indispensable it may be as an adjunct to other inquiries, cannot of itself be made a satisfactory basis for a philosophy of life."

When he uses the term "philosophy of life," he seems to mean about the same thing that Messrs. Ward, Giddings, and Small mean when they talk of sociology meaning an explanation of societary phenomena.

"Mind, N. S. F Vol. VI, p. 4- " Op. cit., p. 13.