Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/545

 METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY 529

This clearly implies ejective interpretation which, we have concluded, is appreciative. It would, furthermore, very clearly bear out the above contention that imitation is only the process through which social phenomena become diffused, and would point out that imitation is only the appreciatively descriptive process whereby an appreciative content belonging to one individual is transferred to another individual, or, to state it more accurately, a process whereby a similar content is aroused. Again, just as in consciousness of kind we did not contend that the appreciative ingredient in consciousness of kind is the whole process, so here we do not assert that all imitation involves the appreciative moment, but we would assert its presence in any imitation where there is any meaning involved, where the imitator gains a fuller knowledge of himself and of others by means of the process.

Finally, does not the whole foregoing discussion enable us to suggest that Professor Giddings has stated a very fundamental truth one which will lie at the basis of future sociology when he holds that the causation involved in sociological explanation is more than merely physical causation, and also more than merely psychical causation ; but that it is something which contains both a new product, something unique, viz., what he calls socio- logical causation? The relation of this sociological to physical and psychical causation is, he says, analogous to the relation of protoplasm to the chemical elements of carbon, nitrogen, etc., which are elements in its make-up, but which are transcended in the new product. Then, too, we bave seen that a sociology, if it would be adequate, must contain an element of appreciation to supplement description. This conclusion raises sociology to a distinctive and, in a limited sense, exclusive position in the hier- archy of knowledge above that of the physical sciences. The fact, however, that description still retains such a high degree of importance in it shows that sociology cannot be fused with a metaphysics. The result is that we must assign to sociology a position mediating between the physical sciences and metaphysics. This is in no wise an impossible position, since the world of description and the world of appreciation are not incommensurate,