Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/599

 THE PRESENT STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN GERMANY 585

laws in the present state of the historical sciences is a prepara- tion for more exact research. Such is and has been the case with all sciences. " Metaphysics " first furnishes general theorems and principles, which do not touch the individual case but rather, as preliminary combinations of the typical phenomena, orient and promote research. The historiography of our time is in this stage of preparation, and "historical laws "are its metaphysic, from which science is called to proceed toward greater exact- ness. In this sense Simmel understands the generally current principle that the formulation of laws is the task of the philos- ophy of history.

I must admit that I neither feel the same objections to "his- torical laws "which Simmel raises, nor am I entirely satisfied with the result at which his investigations arrive. In the first place I cannot see that historical laws are in so much worse plight than natural laws. All uncertainty which attaches itself to historical laws is also the lot of natural laws, yes of all causality. The only escape from the confusion of Hume's theory of knowledge is after all Kant's idea that we import causality into things. We are entitled to the conclusion post hoc ergo propter hoc. Now every law reduces finally to a causal relation. This is so according to Simmel's definition, which regards a law as a "formula in accordance with which the appearance of certain facts necessarily that is always and everywhere has the appearance of certain other facts for a consequence" (p. 34). This is simply another way of express- ing the demonstration that A and B stand to each other in a causal connection.

The parenthetic "always and everywhere" should by no means frighten us, because it always presupposes that the cause operates freely without any interference whatever. The physical law of the "free fall, for example, is merely an abstraction, because it applies only under the supposition of a vacuum, which we have really never observed. Every natural law reckons with obstructions and interferences and must consequently be formu- lated with many "i! Historical laws are similar abstraction-