Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/19

 A DECADE OF SOCIOLOGY 3

but there has been a marked increase in actual co-operation. A decade ago the isolation of sociologists from each other was piti- fully amateurish. Comte, and LePlay, and Lilienfeld, and Spen- cer, and Schaffle, and Ward had been first free-lances, then stand- ard bearers of groups that were more conscious of differences than of common interests. Younger men had meanwhile caught the scent and were following more or less independent trails. In the retrospect, in comparison with their present attitude, the sociologists of ten years ago seem to have been much more engaged in getting their own personal credentials accepted than in coming into touch with their peers for mutual support in united effort. Meanwhile each of them has learned that others besides himself have promising clues and are reaching results. They are less ready to cry a piece of work up or down because it makes for or against their own preconception of society. They are more ready to accept from any source, for what it is worth, any sort of critical study of social relations. The literature of the subject, in whatever country produced, shows respectful attention to more different types of investigation than it did ten years ago. There have been notable additions to our biblio- graphical apparatus. The Institut International de Sociologie has been remarkably successful in promoting interchange between sociologists of different countries. The Sociological Society of London is good evidence of like progress within a narrower area; and a promising movement is on foot to form a similar society in the United States.

In the third place, there is evident increase of the sociological public. We cannot tell whether there is increase or decrease in the number of people who use the term " sociology " as the name for their belief in an occult art of compounding social cure-alls. Not confusing any of these with genuine students of society, we have no trouble in detecting an enlargement of the circle in which there is intelligent interest in the facts and the laws of social cause and effect. Ten years ago we spoke of the present as "the era of sociology." 1 We used the phrase with the mean- ing that more people than ever before are thinking about their

1 American Journal of Sociology, Vol. I, p. i.