Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/632

 6l8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

term "instinct" and his questioning the instinctive origin of society. I spoke of the instinctive origin of socety; I did not claim that instinct goes far to explain modern social organization ; only that it was a proper psychological statement of primitive social organization. If sociologists are not yet awake to the importance of instinct in explaining social origins and also as a factor even in present society, it is high time that they were becoming so. Professor Kelsey says that the term instinct is no explanation, means nothing. No one claims that it is a final explanation. When we have referred anything in society to an instinct or a native impulse, then it is the duty of the psycholo- gist to explain the origin of that instinct. If the sociologist must explain everything to its final terms then he will land in physics and even in meta- physics. The psychological sociologist has performed his task when he has traced any phenomenon in society back to an original psychical element in the individual. The biological sociologist may, of course, go farther. In any case, the sociologist cannot reject the conception of instinct and in- stinctive reaction without rejecting all modern psychology. Professor Kel- sey*s position seems, therefore, to me to negative the right of the sociologist to explain processes in psychological terms, and, to my mind, that means to negative scientific sociology itself.