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 112 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

scientific functions of guessing, and I cordially acknowledge the service which Professor Giddings has performed by his guesses. My conten- tion against his method is that it conceals from himself, and necessarily therefore all the more from his less skilled readers, the hypothetical character of the support upon which the alleged principles rest. He does not satisfy his own condition (idem, p. xvii) : "The one impera- tive obligation resting on the scientific writer is to use language that will clearly reveal to the reader how much of the study in hand is still in the guesswork stage, how much of it is in the deductive stage, and how much of it has arrived at verification." To be strictly perspicuous the title of his larger work should have been " Hypotheses about Social- ization." The same material organized in accordance with such a title would have had scientific dignity which does not belong to it in its pres- ent form. The radical vice of the method, then, is haste to abbreviate the process of collecting, criticising, and organizing evidence, and eagerness to get conjectures accepted as principles while there is justification merely for suppositions. The whole subject of social evo- lution is so nebulous that I for one do not expect to be convinced that principles of social evolution, in the sense in which Professor Giddings thinks of them, will ever be made out. In the present condition of the evidence, at any rate, all that it seems reasonable to hope for with reference to the earlier modifications of associated men is clearer dis- crimination of social forces, their qualitative differences, and the forms in which they work. It is an orgy of the imagination to regard results of that sort as anything more than formal principles. In so much there may be no credible hint about the relative dynamic value of the forces. Professor Giddings has really raised some most searching questions which the special sciences of society must answer. Putting speculative answers to these questions in the form of a coherent system may or may not increase the probability that the answers are in accordance with reality. In any case Professor Giddings has at most marked out work for specialists who should gather and canvass more evidence. Until that work can be done, a philosophy of social evolution in its elementary stages, which is substantially what Professor Giddings is after, is mostly guesswork, and treatment which obscures this fact is a methodological mistake.

On the other hand it seems to me that Professor Giddings' propo- sitions will do much to promote analysis of social status, of social structure and functions in general, and finally of contemporary social