Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/177

 THE SOCIOLOGISTS' POINT OF VIEW 163

distinctness from the process of getting less generalized results should be beyond question.

With the case of revolutions as a sample it would not take long to make a catalogue of like questions which present a whole schedule of new scientific problems. These are not ingenious riddles, of no value except for amusement. They are inquiries after constant and general modes of social influence. We shall not understand inside social facts until we have asked all possible questions, and have made out the truth about these social forces. For instance, we are concerned to generalize knowledge on such fundamental questions as these : What are the laws of the inter- play of influences that produce different types of society, such as the militant, the industrial, the individualistic, the collectivis- tic ? What influences make stationary and what fluctuating social conditions ? What conditions tend to perpetuate domi- nant industrialism, what to foster idealism ? What social condi- tions tend to make the type of persons comprising the society more complete and symmetrical ? What tends to the contrary result ? According to what principles do the different classes of human desires come to have varying proportions of influence in society ? What are the forms in which human associations arrange themselves, and what are the laws of reaction between these mere forms and the psychical forces which produce them r Are there discoverable principles that express the laws of the influence of individuals upon institutions, and, conversely, of institutions upon individuals?

These are not questions which seem to be connected with living human interests. Answers to them seem, moreover, beyond the reach of the human mind. Certain people find it hard to believe that if answers could be found they would have any bearing upon human pursuits. To the sociologist, however, these questions have an importance like that which the physicist finds in primary problems of mechanical action. Men first laboriously invented the lever, the wedge, the wheel and axle, the pulley, the screw, and the inclined plane. For centuries they used them without thinking much beyond or about them.