Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/317

 REVIEWS 303

elements in the book rather as pedagogical devices. The contradic- tions pointed out in his formal methodology stamp that part of his work as too immature to be taken seriously until revised. Books II, and III, however, represent a creditable effort to do what has been growing more and more visibly necessary since Bastian began to accu- mulate ethnographic material, viz., to arrange facts gathered and criticised by anthropology, ethnology, folk-psychology, and history, under categories in which their significance will appear.

More specific criticism of this really valuable part of the work must be postponed. The material which he handles is but a minute fraction of the evidence which has been and which must be collected and arranged. The sort of work which Giddings has done with positive data will go far to strengthen an intelligent demand for prosecution of like work, wherever data can be found, until a basis for induction is gained. I venture the observations, however, that Professor Gid- dings might have profited by consulting his colleagues in biology about the latest indications of experiments upon the irritability of animals; 1 he would have inspired more confidence in the safety of his generalizations if he had drawn, his inferences from a larger number of observations; 2 he would have simplified the

sociology is a synthetic science. Vid. again, inter alia, pp. 399 and 419, where he adopts both the language and the ideas of " the organic conception" which he has been so anxious to discredit. Perhaps the most amusing example is his severity (p. 26 et passim) toward those who assume anything about social laws previous to the performance of inductive processes. The primary and secondary problems of sociology must be worked through before the sociologist will be qualified to deal with " those final questions that have so often been placed at the very beginning of sociological exposition." Here seems to be logical austerity which signally distinguishes Giddings from his fellows. But what does it amount to in practice ? Chief among the reprehensible prematurities to which he alludes is the assumption referred to in the well-worn formula "society is an organism." That assumption, at its lowest terms, is that there is a coordinating nexus of some sort between the different parts and processes of social order and pro^r? -ings denies to others the privilege of

making this innocent assumption, without which it would be senseless to begin to look for social laws at all. Giddings himself however not only starts with the assumption of a coordinating nexus of some sort, but he still further assumes that he knows precisely what that nexus is, viz : the consciousness of kind. According to his own claim, deductive use of this assumption is the distinctive merit of his book. This is the most ingenuous case of the mote and the beam that I remember to have encountered.

/.p. 1 07.

Pp. 233, 234. This extends an observation of a single set of " mixed bloods " to the whole n