Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/328

314 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY social sciences are at present so far from philosophic concentration according to empirically constructive methods, they are to such extent still subordinate to speculation, that similar and unified treatment of the material of all the special sciences is at present impossible. This by no means precludes attempting a preliminary unified survey of the whole, as an impulse to more complete and symmetrical attainment of the end. This is undertaken in the first or general part of the work." Nor does Schaffle regard himself as estopped from attempting further, in the special part, to show the position within the whole which belongs to the phenomena appropriate to each particular science. More than this, he attempts to draw somewhat in detail the specifications of those groups of phenomena (economic and administrative) with which he is technically familiar. He thus proposes a method of cooperation by which specialists may combine to construct their analyses of abstracted portions of social reality into an objectively true representation of the totality of social activities. At the same time he furnishes a salutary object lesson to those provincials who are devoted to a fraction of social knowledge, and proclaim for that fraction exclusive right to the name sociology.

The contrast between Schaffle's method and the speculative method should be emphasized in this connection. Schaffle would have the phenomena of individual psychology expounded by psychologists, the phenomena of ethnic development by the ethnologists, the phenomena of ethical tradition by specialists in comparative ethics, the phenomena of artistic development by experts in aesthetic history and philosophy, the phenomena of religion by investigators of comparative religion, etc. Whatever be the classifications of social activities finally adopted, it will be the business of some sociologists to work out the problems of actual interrelation between the forces abstracted from the concrete whole in consideration of these distinguishable elements of reality. The speculative method assumes the general equation, and proceeds to deduce from it facts and formulas of special phenomena which investigators in these fields can neither observe nor verify.

It is customary with a certain order of critics to say of Schaffle: "After all he has only described social phenomena." These wise folks would have science interpret phenomena without first describing them. To their minds a beginning of setting social facts in order, in their real relations, is an achievement of so mean merit that it may be passed over with contempt in the haste for final results. All the maturer sciences