Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/26

 12 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

While these propositions by no means show that there is no function left for sociologists, even in Germany, they present, to anyone who is acquainted with English and American economic thinking first, a contrast which of itself would be sufficient to vindicate the sociological volunteers in this country, and second, they illustrate very clearly why the demand for a distinct soci- ological methodology has been less acute in Germany than in the English-speaking countries. There has never been as wooden fencing off of the different divisions of sociological labor from one another in Grermany as is orthodox today in England and America.

Turning to the historians, the parochialism of Anglo-Saxon scholars might be shown by contrast, if space permitted analysis of the attitude toward the subject shown by the best-known French historical methodologist, Seignobos, in his monograph. La methode historique appliquee aux sciences sociales. The same contrast appears in the leadmg German writer on historical methodology. In his latest edition Bemheim defines history as follows :

Historical science is the science which investigates and exhibits the temporally and spatially delimited facts of the development of mankind in their (singular as well as typical and collective) activities as social beings, in the correlation of psycho-physical causality.*

If English and American historians were far enough ad- vanced to adopt such a declaration — with heart as well as with lips, and with decent insight into all that it involves — we could hardly wonder if some of the more faint-hearted sociologists should infer that their occupation was gone.

As to the political scientists, it would be easy to maintain the thesis that, from Montesquieu in France, and von Osse in Germany, the continental predecessors of present political theo- rists have, on the whole, considering the state of knowledge in

' "Die Geschichtswissetischaft ist die Wissenschaft, welche die zeitlich und raumlich bestimmten Tatsachen der Entwicklung der Menschen in ihren (singu- laren wie typischen und kollektiven) Betatigungen als soziale Wesen im Zu- sammenhange psycho-physischer Kausalitat erforscht und darstellt." — Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichts-philosophie fiinfte und sechste Auflage (1908), p. 9.