Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/323

 THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY 309

but rather as to their purely material (sachlich) significance, as to economy and technique, as to art and science, as to legal norms and the products of the emotional life. These three points of view constantly entangle one another. The methodological ne- cessity of keeping them separate is ever and again crossed by the difficulty of setting each in a series independent of the others, and by desire for a composite picture of reality which shall harmonize all the views. Moreover, it can never be determined once for all how deeply the one of these views interpenetrates the other, founding and founded by in turn. Hence, with all possible clear- ness and definiteness of principle in the proposing of problems, ambiguity is unavoidable. It will appear that the handling of particular cases belongs now in one category now in another; and even within its proper category it may never be securely set off from treatment according to the procedure more peculiar to another. I hope, however, that the method of the sociology which I am here commending will emerge more surely, and even perhaps more clearly, from exposition of its concrete problems than from this abstract introduction. In things of the mind, indeed, it is not infrequent — in case of the most general and profound problems it is rather of general occurrence — that the portions which, in the use of unavoidable analogy we must call the foundation, are less secure than the superstructure erected upon it. Scientific procedure too, especially in fields not pre- viously opened up, can scarcely dispense with a certain amount of instinctive performance, the motives and norms of which can only subsequently arrive at completely clear consciousness and con- ceptual criticism. And little as scientific labor may ever be com- pletely satisfied upon a basis of vague instinctive treatment of details, yet science would be condemned to sterility if, in presence of new tasks, a completely formulated methodology were the condition of taking the first step.

Within the range of problems marked off by discrimination of the forms of associative reciprocity from the total phenomena of society, portions of the researches thus offered already lie quantitatively, so to speak, outside of the tasks which would other- wise be recognized as sociological. If, for example, we now for