Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/846

 WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER

A. G. KELLER Yale University

As one contemplates the close of a long, full, and many-sided life of usefulness, like that of William Graham Sumner, he feels powerless to reduce his crowding impressions to order. To attain the perspective of such a life demands much reflection and study; for no living man has accompanied Sumner through the several phases of his intellectual evolution, so as to be able to afford an intimate survey of the paths he traveled and the labors he wrought. Hence in any brief preliminary notice of his passing one can scarcely do more than to take some phase of his career and seek to give an idea of its beginning and its salient features. In a sense this task seems easier from the point of view of the sociologist than from that of the economist or political scientist, for it would seem at first sight that the sociologist needs consider only the last period of Professor Sumner's life and work. But, looked at more understandingly, the career of the man we mourn was that of a sociologist throughout. His was not the type of mind that could remain contented within the bonds of any special subdivision of the social sciences. He felt too keenly the complexity of societal life, and the multiplicity of factors entering into its evolution to stop in his studies short of the effort to develop a "science of society." And so, in a sense, the endeavor to treat of Sumner the sociologist is the attempt to deal with the general case.

This cannot be done in this time and place, but it is possible in a few words to indicate in outline some of the aspects of Sumner's career most interesting to sociologists. As a young man he was captivated by Herbert Spencer and felt that here at last was an intellectual emancipation and a satisfaction not before experienced. Filled with the zeal of the truth-disseminator, he prevailed at length against conservative opposition and

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