Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/737

 THE AMERICAN

JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

VOLUME XI MAY, IQC)6 NUMBER 6

SCIENCE AND CITIZENSHIP 1

VICTOR V. BRANFORD, M. A. Honorary Secretary of the London Sociological Society

I. An eminent sociologist has recently spoken of the "bank- ruptcy of science as to any choice of ideals of life," and we are told that "sociology, no more than mechanics or chemistry, has any policy." That doubtless is the prevalent view in these reactionary time when apostasis from science is almost a fashion. The ob- ject of this paper is to maintain the contrary view. The logic of its argument may be open to revision ; but the normal principle from which it starts will not be gainsaid. It is embodied in the well- established maxim : "If a lion gets in your path, kick it." There are those who believe that the way out of the present tangle of sectionalisms is to be found, not by turning back, but by pressing on. If science cannot direct us, we must direct science. All life is growth, and science understood as a spiritual phase of racial life, a mood of humanity, may, like other spiritual growths, be trained and guided, within limits. Here as elsewhere the essen- tial condition of guidance is the presence of an ideal and moral impulse toward it. It is the contention of this paper that the ideals of science, always implicit, are now actually in process of being explicitly formulated, and that these ideals give promise of a policy of civic development. And once to see and feel this move- ment of science is to participate in it, to forward and to direct it.

! A popular lecture given to the Manchester Sociological Society, Nov. 13, 1905.

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