Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/306

 292 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

At the basis of this error is a misunderstood but nevertheless very significant fact. The perception that in his whole nature, and in all its expressions, man is determined by the fact that he lives in reciprocal relationship with other men, must inevitably lead to a new way of thinking in all so-called psychical sciences. It is no longer possible to explain the historical facts in the broadest sense of the word, the contents of culture, the types of industry, the norms of morality, by reference solely to the individ- ual, his understanding, and his interests. Still less is it possible, if this sort of explanation fails, to find recourse in meta- physical or magical causes. With reference to speech, for ex- ample, we no longer confront the alternative that it was either

the universe as remains in view from the new point of interest. This primary perception refutes Professor Simmel's contention in this way: Conceding for the sake of argument that some division of knowledge has already taken ac- count of every type of phenomenon in which association occurs, or which occurs in association (a concession which I would by no means make, except provisionally), there remains, a priori, the same demand for a science which shall generalize the phenomena of association as there would be, after the science of physics had generalized all its phenomena, for a science that should generalize all those relations of the same substances which do not come within the purview of physics, which are, however, involved in all physical occur- rences — namely, the relations which are signified by the term chemistry. There is a point of view which looks out upon the processes of association in general and seeks to analyze human experience in terms of these associational pro- cesses. In so far as this purpose is realized, something new is brought into being in the same sense in which the physicist's universe and his science of the universe is added to by the chemist, and the chemist's by the biologist's, and the biologist's by the psychologist's.

Simmel's figure — "dumping into a big pot" — is unfortunate, as it seems to accuse his fellow-sociologists of something of which they are not guilty. There may have been sociologists whose conception of a feasible method might fairly be described in these terms, but I am unable to name one. So far as I am aware, all the sociologists who have looked forward to a reconstruction of the social sciences have had in mind, vaguely perhaps, but in an essentially valid way, some new analysis and synthesis of the phenomena of association, which, if successful, would have resulted in something as distinct from the results of previous social sciences as chemistry is from physics or economics from eth- nology. Nobody understands all this better than Simmel, as we shall be re- minded later. It is a curious commentary upon the exigencies of a conventional situation that he finds it necessary to take recourse in a kind of special plead- ing which does more to discredit his fellow-sociologists than to establish his own position. We shall see presently that this dimiping-in-the-pot argument fails after all to arrive at the conclusion intended.