Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/303

 REVIEWS 289

author's own are least likely to maintain a permanent place in sociology. The book is bound however to provoke criticism that will clarify thought, and much improvement upon our present knowledge and sys- tem will result. It is a distinct service to have furnished the occasion for this needed critical work. Professor Giddings has had the courage of his convictions, and has submitted to the judgment of his peers the best proposal for correlation of social facts which he has been able to develop. He has thus, at all events, helped to advertise the need of a system of social interpretation. He has also stimulated interest in the invention of an adequate system. I am sure, however, that he will be among the first to outgrow satisfaction with the appearance of system which the present proposals contain.

As Professor Giddings is a thinker with whom one cannot disagree without serious risk of being found wrong, and as I most emphatically disagree with him at many cardinal points, I want to make it very plain in the beginning that radical difference of position is in spite of very high respect for his work in the past, and belief that he will presently improve upon the book now before us.

The volume consists of three easily distinguishable divisions: first, prolegomena upon methodology, Book I ; second, arrangement of a body of evidence, Books II-III ; third, general interpretation, Book IV. Without attempting to analyze the second and third of these divisions in detail, I shall discuss the book as a whole with reference to the outline of method in the first division. In a word my estimate of the entire system contained in the work is that it is an impossible combination of contradictions. There is apparent unity, but it is mechanical. That a real system may grow out of this first attempt, structural principles must be observed which will introduce corre- spondence in the place of essential incompatibilities.

The first of these anomalies in Giddings' scheme is that it is an entangling alliance between the art of pedagogy and the science of sociology. It is betrayed in such language as this: 1

The sociology of the working sociologist, and of the university, will be a defi- nite and concrete body of knowledge that can be presented in the class and be worked over in the seminariuni. These last conditions are crucial for the existence of the science; for when sociology has as distinct a place in the working programme of the university as has political economy or psy- chology, its scientific claims will be beyond cavil. Hut that willbeonly when

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