Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/176

 162 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

England, Russia, and America, enfranchising artisans, serfs, and slaves.

Surveying such a group of realities we come to see that among associated men there are innumerable changes similar in form, dissimilar in substance, and as yet unaccounted for in cause and operation. We simply suspect at the outset that there are certain kinds and numbers of influences operating in all associations to bring about these like, yet unlike, results. It may seem rash and Utopian to propose an effort to make these forces intelligible, yet this is precisely what the sociologists demand. They claim that knowledge about society is merely stray glimpses shot into scattering incidents of human life, it is abortive pedantry, it is dallying with stray fragments of infor- mation, unless it is so organized that the largest truth present in the incidents is evident. This enlightening organization of knowledge is not history, at least in the primary sense, but it is dependent on history. The process which the sociologist calls for at this point is to the historian's task somewhat as the public prosecutor's is to that of the various detectives who work up evidence on a case. One man traces out a series of facts about the personal habits of the accused ; another follows out his business transactions ; another his private speculations ; another his political schemes ; another certain exceptional and special acts which have a possible connection with the case. All this Detective work may have been guided by a theory about the case, but at last, at any rate, the attorney takes these different sorts of evidence and weaves them into a coherent, self-consistent setting for the particular act in question. This combining work is a process quite distinct from that of collecting and sifting the evidence.

So with the explanation of social phenomena. They are the point of intersection of many factors which we need to know, first, in general, as typical and constant social forces. Then they must be known in particular, as they emerge in the special case under consideration. The process of deriving these insights into social forces in general is so independent and peculiar that its