Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/729

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 713

He seeks, for one thing, to get a better notion of the social order as a living whole, and of the relation of particular functions to this whole. He finds the main interest of popular thought to be social discussion of a somewhat confused sort. All kinds of theories and claims are vehemently urged, and one would wish to see at least the outline, if possible, of a rational adjustment of these conflicting ideas. To give this in the largest way is perhaps the function of philosophy, but the student wishes to define and enrich his philosophy by a somewhat detailed study of the actual working of human life.

He wishes in particular to make out his own relation to the system, to find out what the energy and aspiration he feels within him may mean in terms of the general life, to get a material out of which he may form ideals of his own career. I will give for what it may be worth the statement sometimes made by students that this is the first subject that they have taken up that seems to have anything to do with the individual.

Again he wishes very earnestly to find out what is right with reference to the less fortunate members of society, and how he can help to make this right prevail. A variety of causes are working together to reanimate the sentiment of human brotherhood and to give it hands and feet in the conduct of life. This movement the student feels, and he desires to be actively and intelligently in it.

Such aims as these are aims of culture ; they look not to a private or tech- nical advantage, but to a larger membership in the life of the race ; they are distinctly humanities, and it is as such that they appeal to the youth of our time. The decline of culture is like the decline of religion ; that is to say, it does not exist, it only appears to exist to those whose eyes are so fixed upon old forms that they do not see that the spirit which is disappearing from these has made for itself new ones.

I wish to add a word as to how sociology may most effectively be made a means of culture. One of the great drawbacks to the traditional culture studies is the difficulty of keeping up an interest when one passes from the atmosphere of an institution of learning into a world which has lost almost all conscious rela- tion to them. Greek, for instance, would be a great thing if we did anything with it, but it is notorious that scarcely anyone does, and the reason is largely in the fact that there is no emulation or sympathy outside of the colleges to give it that social reality without which a thing can hardly seem real to the individual.

The truth is that a culture study should be one that is bound up on one side with the actual interests of men, and, on the other, leads those interests out to a universal scope. Sociology, at the present time, is such a study. It is rooted in real interests, social, political, industrial, philanthropic, which no system of cul- ture can ignore without becoming futile, and yet it aims to make these things the doorway to the most spacious apartments of the human mind.

Understanding, then, that culture consists in finding the ideal in the practical, and vice versa, let the student, while at the university, extend to the utmost his general view of human affairs in their historical, psychological, economic, and other aspects ; let him try to get a rational view of things as a whole ; but let him not fail at the same time to take up the investigation of some particular practical question which he is likely to have an opportunity to pursue after he leaves. It is precisely because it affords so many such questions of living interest, because it offers, in the world at large, such constant incitement to find the ideal in the practical, that sociology is culture. Public opinion, leadership, social classes, competition, combination, the great institutions of religion, government, and the family, poverty, crime, race problems, the mixture of nationalities by migration, overcrowding, slums, saloons, popular amusements, the exploitation of women and children in industry facts of this sort, and the questions growing out of them, are to be found in every city, village, and rural township in the country. They are full of human interest and open, to one who approaches them with preparation and in a right spirit, the richest opportunities to take part in the higher life of the race.

The proof that this is real culture is to know people who, protected from narrowness and fanaticism by a broad training, are giving a part of their energy to disinterested social activity. That they commonly get breadth of view, a