Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/848

 834 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Parts of it were written over seven times, or even more. Respecting the general treatise he used to say somewhat de- spondingly that its completion meant less to him because it was only one of five or six books which he was ready to write if he had the strength. But the sense of emancipation which he felt when the Folkways was finally completed was so great, and the reaction from the toil spent upon it was so strong that he scarcely touched the partially written general treatise again. Several topics originally designed to go into the Folkways were treated in the Forum, in the Yale Review, and in the presidential address recently printed in this Journal; but the man was tired out with his lifetime of incredible mental toil, and could not arouse himself to do any more. So he "settled down to loaf." His last months before his collapse in New York were spent in a very restful and happy way; he was deeply touched by the truly magnificent ovation attending his induction as a Yale doctor of laws at the Commencement of June, 1909, and by the stream of grateful and affectionate letters that flowed to him all the following summer. He joked on that Commencement occa- sion, to the delight of all concerned, about his "walking the plank" and "joining Carnegie's kindergarten," and after his retirement used to speak in most enthusiastic terms about the joys of the emeritus, instancing late breakfasts as one of the chief of these.

I have wandered from the subject of Sumner as a sociologist ; but most of us know of his views along that line, and a full treatment of his place in the science cannot now be written. Briefly, he was of the school of Spencer; his great initial inspira- tion came from the Study of Sociology. With Spencer he reckoned Lippert as an influence of the highest significance in his sociological thinking; and at one time he added Ratzenhofer to these two, but later, I think, was inclined to rate him less highly, and to believe that Spencer and Lippert were the domi- nant influences upon his own work. Sumner hated metaphysics and everything connected with it, and took little stock in psy- chology; he always stated, rather truculently at times, that his work rested upon ethnography and history. He never took to