Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/590

 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

(horde, gens, class) and can live as a conscious being only in them ; that /// this uwy the material bases of these combinations determine his ideal consciousness, and their progressive devel- opment exhibits the advancing principle of progress in human- ity" (p. 446). Notice particularly this "in this way," and mark the fallacy. This is precisely the question involved ; whether the material conditions have a temporal and logical priority or not. If the former is asserted, we have materialism, bare and raw and unproved, as it has occurred very often in the history of philosophy. It is precisely the same thought when one says, "Stimuli of such and such character upon the brain substance are or produce thought," as when it is said that the material bases and movements of society beget its ideas and ideals. If we have once reached the correct perception that in the former case there can be no assertion of a causal nexus, because it cannot be discovered and proved,* we have thereby removed the ground for the subsequent assertion, and the old sciolism about the "social animal" can no longer be of the least assistance.

The only reconciliation to be reached, and the only logic- ally admissible alternative, is a sort of parallelism. This is again the path over which psychology has gone. That certain stimuli of the brain substance produce movements contempora- neous with thought, that these movements and the thought per- haps stand in functional relationship with each other, may be asserted with perfect logical propriety ; likewise that certain correlations of the material conditions of society appear con- temporaneously with given psychical conditions. This relation is to be asserted, however, only hypothetically and as a proposed principle of interpretation. Such an application of the theory would be not only a serviceable methodological guide, but its content would have actual justification and positive foundation. That historical materialism is merely a serviceable methodo- logical view point dawns upon its champions from time to time. But even in these moments of illumination they overdo the matter in another way. Thus Mehring says : " Historical mate- rialism is no closed and final system of truth, it is only the