Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/640

 624 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

accentuated consciousness in one succession of localized experi- ence. As breathing- the air in my room I breathe of the air that surrounds the planet, so in living my life I share in the life of the universe, and in knowing myself I know both God and all men; and this direct knowledge is " appreciation." Thus " we, seem- ingly isolated and momentary beings, do share in the organic life of the one Self." 4 My friend " is real to me by virtue of our organic unity in the one Self." 5 The appreciations of the one spirit "are indeed his own, for he is alone, and there is none beside him. Yet in them we all share, for that fact is what binds us together." 6 "A and B are in their actual and appreciable relations, by virtue of the part they both play, in the inner self- consciousness of the organic and inclusive self." 7

We are told that certain essential spiritual realities, with which sociology must deal, can be known only by this method of appre- ciation. Says Dr. Fogel: "When we get to the real study of social phenomena and want to get the inner springs of sociality, we must go to appreciation," for the essential objects of such study " are beyond the sphere of description." 8

Acordingly, these essential realities, which are revealed by "appreciation," are said to be inaccessible to the methods of unmetaphysical science because those methods can deal only with what is " describdble" "permanent," and "public." 9 And the appreciable realities are not " describable," because they do not appear in the categories of description, such as space, time, simi- larity, difference, and causality. Especially they are not caused, in the scientific sense; their only cause is "justification" to self- consciousness. Their categories are categories of interest, worth, and purpose, and such categories do not make description possible. They are not "permanent," because appreciation is a fleeting experience that cannot be recalled at will, and remembered in terms of unchanging and universally valid categories of experi- ence, as can the objects which science successfully handles. Nor are they " public " in the sense, essential to science, of being open


 * Royce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, p. 407. * Ibid., p. 409.

'Ibid., p. 4 1 a. * Loc. cit., p. 374.

T Ibid., p. 413. Royce, op. cit., pp. 383-92.