Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/641

 SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 625

alike to all normal observers under like conditions, but the knowl- edge gained by " appreciation " is peculiar to the individual, essen- tially private and incommunicable.

The aim of this section is to show that all the phenomena treated by sociology are accessible to purely scientific methods, and that it is entirely unnecessary to the purposes of sociology that light should be shed on these phenomena by any metaphysical doctrine.

The question whether the category of causality applies to social phenomena will meet us in a later section, and therefore may be treated lightly here. And we will defer to the latter part of this section the inquiry whether the teleological nature of sociology, its dealing with valuations and ideals, requires that scientific method shall at least be supplemented by a " philosophic method." For the present clearness will be promoted by confining our attention to the question whether any of the phenomena essen- tial to sociology are inaccessible to observation and description, and whether the necessary appreciation of human experience- values is at all dependent upon any metaphysical doctrine of their ultimate reality, whether such appreciation deals with anything but phenomena as distinguished from the metaphysical realities that may be conceived to underlie phenomena, or requires any " other mode of approach " than observation and the logical pro- cesses familiar to pure science. By answering in the negative this whole group of questions we shall maintain that it only pro- duces confusion of thought to speak of "metaphysical elements in sociology."

We should have expected it of a metaphysician that he would hold that all sciences equally, and all explanation, rest back finally upon metaphysical conceptions, and also that he would avoid even implying a contrast between scientific and metaphysical methods, and claim rather that metaphysics does but push the scientific methods and no others to yield their last drop of implication about the realities that are beyond phenomena.

Let us set out by re-emphasizing the importance to sociology of emotions and motives, of the affective phase of human experi-