Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/422

 4o8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

a psychologist of humanity, and Ratzenhofer a philosopher of its development sub specie aeternitatis, Gumplowicz, who remained true to the subject of social groups and, therefore, limited the direction of his studies most carefully, Gumplowicz was the first great scholar who conceived of the events which seem to form the essence of the origin and development of the state as taking place with strictest precision and the most systematic exactness. His chief merit, therefore, is doubtless to be found in the power- ful influence which he exerted upon the political sciences. In his works he threw light on the essential basis of these sciences from the standpoint of sociology and its wealth of material gathered in the last few years, and he subjected them to a sharp criticism and careful investigation. Great changes are never brought about by the efforts of a single individual; even the greatest individuals can serve only as guides to further individual and collective labor. It was the imperishable merit of Gumplowicz to have been one of the first of European savants to attempt a liberation of the political sciences from the misty regions of the "juristic state" ("Rechtsstaat") — a juristical speculation par ex- cellence, possessing from the very first its special scholastic style. To the brilliant studies of this great scholar who considered the "state" as a world in itself, capable of being analyzed, investi- gated, and determined almost exclusively within its own limits and by its own parts, and who brought to his studies a compre- hensive sociological basis, this "state" revealed itself as a single link in the chain of social phenomena.

Ludwig Gumplowicz was born on March 9, 1838, in Krakau, the child of a prominent Polish family of Jewish origin. He studied in 1858-61 in the universities of Krakau and Vienna. Already in i860 he began his journalistic career, and from 1869- 74 he edited his own magazine Kraj (the Country) which had been founded by Prince Sapicka. In 1875 — ^t the age of thirty- seven — he entered the University of Graz as lecturer in the science of administration ("Verwaltungslehre") and Austrian admin- istrative law, was professor extraordinary at the same university in 1882, ordinary professor in 1893, and resigned in 1908, after thirty years' academic activity. His first sociological work was