Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/524

 508 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

animal consciousness is an entirely unnecessary one, and therefore it does not militate against our position that consciousness of kind involves the self. Mr. Lester Ward's definition of " sociology " 19 also clearly takes the position that the province of sociology is human society. This would lead us, then, to the conclusion that the consensus of opinion would have sociology deal only with human individuals. Not only this, but a consciousness of kind which shall be a real principle of sociological explanation and interpretation, one which shall be adequate for the data to be considered, is one which will involve self-consciousness as an essential moment.

It will now be our problem, having achieved the notion of the self as necessary in consciousness of kind, to see whether there is any element of appreciation involved in it. When the application of the categories of exact science to certain given facts does not prove fruitful, when there is some uniqueness about them that remains unexplained, the only inference left us is that they belong to some field farther advanced than the one to which belong the categories which we are using. This uniqueness is sometimes an indefinable feeling, which, however, is as authoritative as it is indefinable. Now, applying this general consideration to this par- ticular case, if the self can be shown to have a certain uniqueness about it, to be of such a sort that the categories of scientific description, generalization, and causal reference will not fully reach it, then we can rightly say that there is an appreciative moment contained in it. It will therefore be necessary to bring testimony that the self possesses this attribute of uniqueness, and then to point out that the ordinary categories of description are inadequate to it, if they be applied unsupplemented.

Professor James, in his example of Peter and Paul, says that upon waking, Peter

remembers his own states, whilst he only conceives Paul's. Remembrance is like direct feeling; its object is suffused with a warmth to which no object of mere conception ever attains. 10

By way of slight digression, might it not here be suggested that a consciousness of kind which shall be an adequate sociological

" Pure Sociology, p. 4. " Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, p. 39.