Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/630

 6l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

The recogfnition of this fact wauld do much to solve some of the apparent problems of sociology and would obviate many a heated discussion.

Carl Kelsey, The University of Pennsylvania

Unfortunately I was unable to hear all of Dr. EUwood's paper and I rise to speak merely because of one sentence whose acceptance or rejection is a matter of some importance. Dr. Ellwood has traced the beginnings of our social institutions to the instincts and has intimated that all sociologists admit the validity of his derivation. Personally I am inclined to sharply disagree. I do not know what instincts are and believe that no one else does. I am coming steadily to the opinion that, in the main, the word instinct is the recourse of bafHed thinking. In other words, that it is a term to cover ignorance and really explains nothing. We might just as well say we do not know. It may be retorted that if this is true the development of sociology as a science must wait until firmer biological and psychological bases are established. This may be true but that does not justify the use of this method by sociologists. If necessary, it is better to wait than to deceive ourselves by pseudo-explanations.

Professor Ellwood

I find myself in the happy situation of agreeing with nearly all the remarks of the preceding speakers, except those of Professor Kelsey. Of course, in a paper like the one I have just presented which attempts to outline a whole system of psychological sociology, it is not possible to do more than present the salient points. Necessarily, therefore, I left out many qualifications which I should like to have introduced into the paper had space permitted. Many of these qualifications have been very happily presented by those who have discussed the paper; and I accept nearly all of them, if I understand them, with the exception of the criticisms offered by Professor Kelsey. Professor Ross's remarks, for example, were dis- tinctly supplementary to the point of view which I presented in my paper, as he himself recognized. Communication for its own sake is in no way inconsistent with the functional explanation of communication that I gave in the paper. It is a rule that all processes in nature tend to overflow, as it were, the limits of their utility. Thus, while communication originates in the needs of a common life-process and exists for the sake of perfecting that process, yet a good deal of communication may possibly exist in human society which has no reference to the life-process ; that is, it appar- ently exists for its own sake. The same is true of conflict. While con- flict originally arose either as a struggle between competitive groups or as a result of certain disharmonies of association within groups, yet certain indi-