Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/24

 lO THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

There are economists in American universities who do every- thing in their power to prevent their graduate students from tak- ing any of the sociological courses.

A review copy of an American book on the methodology of sociology was sent to the American Historical Review. The editor returned it to the publishers with the comment, "No doubt the book will be useful to the sociologists, but it contains noth- ing of interest to historians." The book was nevertheless treated respectfully by European journals of all the social sciences. Its main argument was almost as directly a thesis in the metho- dology of history as of sociology. It is either valid or invalid. The American editor's statement was either defamation of the character of historians in this country, or, in denying their inter- est in open questions of methodology it was an official confession of the provincialism against which the sociological movement is a protest.

In contrast with these crudities, we may point to the fact that Wundt, to whom all the psychologists in the world listen with respect, if not always with assent, in his Methodenlehre gave sociology essentially the relation to other divisions of science which the sociologists have claimed. The only escape from the same conclusion is to plead the baby act, and to stop short with one's own can of preserves instead of following out the corre- lations of activities.

In the more concrete divisions of science, while Schaffle undoubtedly sacrificed some of his prestige as an economist by writing a sociology which the Germans have never understood, Schmoller, who is outranked by none of the economists, seems to have fitted naturally into the position of president of the Institut Internationale de Sociologie. A reason for this may be found in the preface to the first of the two volumes published last year by eminent economists in celebration of Professor Schmoller's seventieth birthday. The preface has the signatures, "Geibel, Lexis, von Philippovich, Schumacher, Sering, Wagner." It contains this passage :

No one who goes through the following monographs can escape the impression that the development of German economic theory in the nine-