Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/792

 778 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

miserable death, could I have acted in a manner more truly altruistic in motive or better calculated to accomplish my good purposes? When I realized that the flies became helpless I ceased to pull their wings oflf and liberated them without mutilation. The original mutilation itself was in reality sympathetic and on the basis of my knowledge at that time, rational; it appeared cruel and instincive.

It is to be regretted, therefore, that Professor Williams has not indicated more specifically in this paper the methods he has employed to avoid mis- interpretation of motive.

That Professor Williams is right in emphasizing the importance of dis- covering the exact part played by feeling in social activity, no one will deny. His interesting suggestion moreover that there are three fundamental moods — the forceful, the expansive, and the agitative — that there is regularity in the occurrence of these moods and that this regularity or oscillation, as he terms it, is correlated with oscillation in the environment is an hypothesis that certainly cannot be rejected as unworthy of careful testing.

This hypothesis, however, together with the theory that these three moods modify cognition and therefore vitally affect the impulsive or the rational character of social action can be tested, it seems to me, by the purely observational method. If the environment really does modify moods with a certain degree of regularity, if it does affect the impulsive or rational character of social action with regularity then tabulation of the reactions to the regularly recurring stimuli of the environment and the application of the usual statistical methods will bring out correlation. It is obvious that the difficulty of eliminating the irregularities in mood pro- duced by such complex stimuli as even relatively simple weather conditions is not inconsiderable. When one reflects that effects of occupations, length of the working-day, type of amusements, and a hundred other social stimuli all complicate the question the difficulty of Professor Williams' task may to some extent be realized. It is evidently wise to begin the verification of his hypotheses by study of relatively simple social conditions and not as yet to employ them in the explanation of complex social relations.

Whether at the present time it is advisable for the sociologist to do more than apply the purely observational method to social facts, whether he should now undertake to separate the exact roles of instinct and feeling in both individual and social action — as Professor Williams seems to have attempted, is, it seems to me, questionable. The genetic psychologists have recently undertaken the task of studying instincts by the experimental method and we may expect, very soon, from such men as Thorndike, Yerkes, Hobhouse, and their school, a much more careful analysis of in- stinct than has yet been made. Until the analysis is made, however, this sociologist might perhaps profit by the proverbial advice given to the shoe- maker.