Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/321

 THE PROBLEM OP SOCIOLOGY 307

demanded, even if the actual constellations did not permit com- pletion of that inductive process which crystallizes the like ele- ments in unlike phenomena; just as the geometrical abstraction of the spatial form of a body would be justified, even if the body thus formed occurred as a matter of fact only once in the world. That this involves a difficulty in procedure is inevitable. Suppose, for instance, the fact before us is that toward the end of the Middle Ages certain heads of guilds, on account of the extension of trade relations, were forced to new means of obtaining ma- terials, to the appointment of associates (Gesellen), to new means for attracting customers, which were inconsistent with the older guild principles. More particularly, suppose we have in mind the ancient guild tradition that every master should have the same living (Nahrung) as the others, and that the masters now sought to place themselves outside the previous narrow unity. Respect- ing the purely sociological form, abstracted from the special con- tent, this signifies that expansion of the circle with which the individual is connected by his actions goes hand in hand with a more pronounced expression of the individual peculiarity, with a greater freedom and reciprocal differentiation of the individuals. Now, so far as I am able to see, there is no certainly effective method of wringing its sociological meaning from that complex fact realized through its content. We confront in this case the questions. What purely sociological configurations are contained in the historical occurrence? What special reactions of indi- viduals are involved, in abstraction from the permanent interests and impulses in the individual, and from the conditions of a purely objective sort? These questions are not only answerable in various ways in a given case, but the historical facts which guarantee the actuality of the defined sociological forms must be cited in their totality, and the means are lacking for making instructive the decomposition of this totality into the stuff-factor and the formally sociological factor; and under some circum- stances the means are lacking for carrying out this analysis. The case is like proof of a geometrical theorem by means of the un- avoidable casualness and crudeness of a figure drawn for the purpose. The mathematician, however, can now reckon that the