Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/692

 676 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

to lay stress on this contrast the contrast between valuation on the one side, and description and explanation on the other.

If we efface the distinction between the sociological and the ethical points of view, we are led either to regard the results of development as such as ideally right, or to suppose that the ideally right as such must have an existence. In the first place, sociology masters ethics ; in the second, ethics masters sociology.

But this contrast can be acknowledged and maintained without forgetting how intimately sociology and ethics are connected. Soci- ology leads us on to ethics by the application of the comparative method. The comparison of social forms or social states naturally leads us to characterize some as higher, others as " lower." This is a valuation ; hence a certain standard is necessarily presupposed. We call a form of society higher than another, if it more than this other makes it possible to attain two ends at once, namely, the free and rich development of individual peculiarities and differences, and the realization of unity and totality in social life. From a sociologi- cal point of view, a society is the higher, the more different forms and directions it manifests, if at the same time the society as such increases in solidarity and concentration. In sociology, as in biology, the standard is this: the intimate connection of differentiation and concentration.

This has led to a comparison between society and an organism, and great scientific profit has been expected from this comparison.

This analogy is certainly of great importance ; there is a simi- larity in the standard presupposed, when we call organisms higher or lower. And we may call societies higher and lower. Every science whose objects present both unity and multiplicity must in its comparisons make use of such a standard as sociology and biology exhibit. So is it, for instance, also with psychology. We call a personal life " high " if it exhibits at once a richness of endeavor, emotion, and ideas, and a firm and concentrated character ; we call it " low " if it is poor and incoherent. The task of biology, psychology, and sociology is only description and explanation of facts. Compari- son and comparative methods are here only methodological means. If comparison presupposes a standard, and if a standard can be con- structed as an ideal, so that beings or species are called " higher " or " lower " according to their relation to an ideal end, this teleological manner of view is only a working hypothesis. We shall understand organic, psychical, and social life better, if we ask what a perfect form of life should presuppose.