Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/261

 THE CLAIMS OF SOCIOLOGY 247

apparent to common observation and ordinary experience that all human institutions are forms of companionship among indi- viduals. This is the major premise of sociological dialectic. With that granted the rest follows by strict logfical inference. It is historically evident that institutions vary greatly in time and space. Every age has its own pattern. Every country, every people, and indeed almost every community, in every age, has its own pattern. Therefore social phenomena are very com- plex. And yet since they all apparently result from individual activities, the problem of establishing sociology as a science resolves itself into the determination of categories of individual volition. The task is difficult — yea, stupendous; and yet it is well worthy of all the labor that can be bestowed upon it; because it means nothing less than attainment by humanity of the power to control the destinies of humanity. Such is the high source of the moral enthusiasm which sustains the sociol- ogists in their futile labors and makes them patient of the present confusion that allows quacks and charlatans to figure as sociologists with as good a right as any. Hence Professor Ell- wood feels justified in saying that "he who opposes sociology as such is unconsciously an enemy of mankind."

But what if the major premise that has been mentioned is invalid? What if, in assuming that institutions may be con- strued as forms of human companionship, the sociologists are deceived by appearances, the truth being, as is so generally the case with scientific truth, that the reality is very different from the appearance, so that sociology is as much astray as a system of astronomy would be if based upon the apparent fact that the earth is flat. This is a point which, apparently, it does not occur to the sociologists to consider. Even if they touch upon it, they seem to be oblivious to its importance, although it is really vital. A good instance of this appears in Stuckenberg's Sociol- ogy — The Science of Human Society. He correctly declares that the essential concept of sociology is "the genesis of society from individuals."^ Society is the genus, and "of this genus all existing societies are species or differentiations. Thus under

»P. iv.