Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/309

 REVIEWS 295

wholly distinct from the consciousness of kind, though in fact they are derived from it. 1

This is revelation indeed ! How it resolves the chaos of human contradictions ! The good Samaritan and the slum lassie are products of the social principle in the rough. When the "parent form" of the principle of association is sufficiently integrated and differentiated it gives us the battle-field and the torture-chamber and the slave-pen and the sweat-shop !

If we try the other alternative, and assume that Giddings means on the whole to make " social " phenomena exclude economic phenomena, the tax upon our credulity is not removed. Are we to think of " social " phenomena as embracing all the phenomena of association except the economic, or are social phenomena supposed to constitute one of several series of phenomena coordinate or parallel with, or ante- cedent or subsequent to the economic ? Or are the " social " repre- sented in Giddings' thought as in some other way related to economic phenomena? In above quotations from pages 18 and 27 Giddings uses terms as though at least four series of activities, one of which is the "social," are to be distinguished among the phenomena of "asso- ciation." The whole programme of the book, however, is an attempt to cover the total reality resolved into these series by a generalization which in its present form can be plausibly asserted of only one series at most. This fallacy is an incident of the conflict throughout the book between the dialectic and the positive method, of which more presently. In detecting the fallacy we discover too that Giddings has not distinctly delimited his problem. He has not isolated the subject- matter of his enquiry. He is not sure whether he is in search of the law that governs choices within the series " social " (in the restricted sense), or the law that governs choices which correlate all the series which societary activities include. 1

The book, then, does not even make a consistent exhibit of the sociological problem. Much less does it " combine the principles of sociology in a coherent theory." 3 I am nevertheless inclined to believe that Professor Giddings is on the trail of something in this connection which will prove a distinct contribution to sociology after it is hunted down. 4 What we need, however, is not an a priori dogma about the part which "consciousness of kind," or recognition of

1 I'. 22. 'Preface, ;

Referring to last par. of p. 20. $02.