Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/174

 160 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

them. Thus we should ask the same manner of questions that have produced, besides logic and rhetoric and psychology, polit- ical and juridical and economic and ethical science.

If we review this hypothetical course of study we see that we have thus started without conventional restrictions, but led on by discoveries in the facts themselves we have gradually separated the things worth knowing about the facts into divi- sions closely corresponding with the departments of knowledge that have come into existence experimentally.

Not referring at present to any further divisions of knowl- edge, but supposing for the sake of argument that the above named cover the whole territory, would the examination thus outlined finish up the list of questions which our minds would propose ? As a matter of fact very few persons have ever felt the need of going beyond some one or two of these divisions of inquiry. In pursuing knowledge within one of these territories most men find occupation difficult enough, and so, either from lack of curiosity or from inability to satisfy curiosity within their special field, they never feel impelled to pursue inquiries further. Occasionally a man has placed himself outside the group of facts which he knew best, and has tried to put them into intel- ligible relation with other facts which he knew. Cases in point are the so-called philosophies of history. From various theo- logical, philosophical, or scientific grounds their authors have tried to find a nexus between seemingly chaotic events.

Let us suppose ourselves to have reached the point in social inquiry where we are eager to combine the results of historical research about many different kinds of facts into a clear revela- tion about general social influences. We have not thereby created a demand for knowledge of distinctively new subject- matter. We have discovered our need of further organization of what is known about the old subject-matter. This demand will surely call for additions to the things known, and also for new processes in organizing this increasing knowledge. In these new processes new questions will be proposed, and they will reach out after entirely new answers.