Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/649

 SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 633

emotional phenomena, in so far as such phenomena are accessible to the methods of observation and inference.

If Dr. Fogel succeeds, as he believes he does, in convicting any sociologist of holding " that the only sort of really causal energy in social phenomena is purely physical energy," 10 may not this merely indicate, either that this particular sociologist has not set forth clearly the relation of sociology to metaphysical concepts, or possibly that Dr. Fogel has not so perfectly apprehended the soci- ologist's position as to avoid misunderstanding ? Misunderstanding would be invited, or perhaps a misconception might be evinced, by a sociologist who should say that physical forces and social forces are one. But, on the other hand, might not the expressions, which are said to imply this, in reality mean precisely what the metaphysical monist means when he asserts that there is but one causal energy in all the universe, whose operations appear both in physical and psychic phenomena? If so, then sociologist and metaphysician will agree that the sociologist has not to recognize any causal energy other than that which is operative in the physi- cal world. As the biologist no longer makes reference to a " vital force," so the sociologist need make no reference to a social force. (This requires to be read in the light of what was said in sec. v.) The notion of a purely scientific sociology that has been here set forth is not open to this line of attack by the objector who would insist upon the admission of metaphysical elements into sociology. For we hold that sociology does not need to teach anything about any causal energy whatever, but only about phenomena and the conditioning relations among them, and no phenomena, as phe- nomena, are metaphysical elements, neither are relations among phenomena. That psychic phenomena are true phenomena has been maintained. That they are like other phenomena in that each psychic phenomenon is conditioned by other phenomena, and a condition of other phenomena, we shall endeavor to maintain in a later section.

Dr. Fogel argues, with special elaboration, that " consciousness of kind " involves appreciation. Let us admit it ; what we deny is that appreciation involves anything more metaphysical than


 * Loc. cit., p. 502.