Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/670

 656 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

must he be disheartened thereby. If there is any branch of science which is in need of the very keenest and most cautious of scientific research, it is the science of society. And this leads me to say that a man could well spend a lifetime in developing the sociological aspects of legendary material similar to that of Homer. The Eddas, the Kalevala, the Vedic hymns, the Zend- Avesta, the Old Testament — all of these are quoted by sociolo- gists, and often, I suspect, uncritically. They furnish, for reasons I have mentioned, the best of fields for the beginner, who is too often under the impression that his salvation and that of the science lie in the speediest possible issuance to a panting public of grandiose sociological theories bearing the unmistakable stamp of his master-mind. Let such budding geniuses be shut up, as Carlyle would have all verdant youths, under a barrel, with a copy of one of these examples of an ancient people's self- revelation, and a grain of common-sense withal, and the status of sociology, and of the world at large, would speedily become a less unendurable one.