Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/668

 652 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

sociology. It is unusually instructive, since the author subjects all branches of sociology, which have developed so luxuriantly in all directions, to a severely objective critical estimate, in which not merely his precise and temperate judgment with reference to present sociology appears, but his own standpoint is brought to light with the utmost clearness.

The monograph might have been entitled The Triumph of Soci- ology, for Ward shows how all the various traditional moral and political sciences, which have thus far developed independently, are really in the air, because they lack the firm foundation of sociology. To be sure, sociology did not come into existence as science until it made itself an integration or synthesis of the whole body of the social sciences. Now that it is in existence, the social sciences that developed earlier cannot function normally and rationally without its regulating support ; they must receive their guiding principles from sociology. Ward shows this in brilliant fashion in his Contemporary Sociology. The monograph is the more significant since it is less a program for a science that is still to be hoped for, than a resume by a sociologist who, standing at the summit of his own achievements, casts a retro- spective view over the route which he has traversed. Ward really shows what he himself has accomplished for sociology, for, in fact, when we review his numerous sociological works, we see that he has explored all these fields of possible or real social science. It is thus only a species of report upon his own method of work, when he says, in Contemporary Sociology, with reference to biology, anthropology, and psychology : " Sociology is not exactly a structure built of these materials. It is rather a generalization from them all. It abstracts from each all that is common, and forms a sort of head, to which they constitute, as it were, the body and limbs. In short, sociology is an integration or synthesis of the whole body of social sciences." *

This definition of sociology applies pre-eminently to Ward's latest work, Pure Sociology. An " applied " sociology is announced to fol- low this " pure " sociology in a short time. It should be awaited with interest, for the practical American crops out in Ward, in the fact that he cannot think of a science, even the most abstract, without application. Ward is not willing to entertain the idea of a " pure " science as an end in itself. His Applied Sociology will accordingly show us how we are to emerge from the "stone age" of political science, and how we are to cease being " savages." The genius that

American Journal of Sociology, Vol. VII, p. 635.