Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/178

 164 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Then a few people began to be more comprehensive in their thinking. They tried to detect and define the elements of force that operated in these primitive machines. They tried to make general formulas of their actions, and gradually there evolved from simple practical mechanics the modern type of physicists, who in turn make possible the development of more skilled and resourceful mechanics. Precisely parallel is the programme of the sociologists. Men have been going through the motions of association for untold centuries, but have thought comparatively little about those motions, the forces that sustain them, or the results that they produce. The type of thinkers has now appeared that will try to define and generalize these social forces, their forms of actions, and their products. Their purpose is to make society so intelligent about itself that it can presently direct its acts toward more rational aims, and can organize indi- vidual effort for more effective cooperation.

It has no doubt appeared in the foregoing that two general questions about the facts of society are inextricably involved with each other, viz.: first, how did social arrangements come to be as they are ? Second, how does it come about that social arrangements stay as they are ? The latter question seems to assume what is not true, but there is a phase of reality corre- sponding with the assumption. The former question sums up all the inquiries that belong to history in the broadest sense, as Herbert Spencer has outlined the business of history. Dr. Lester F. Ward has supplied a better phrase, when he groups all these facts and interpretations under the head "social genesis." The latter question sets in motion all the investigations which the sociologist would group under the general title of "social statics." Professor Ward has also clearly shown that the gen- eral truths formulated by genetic and statical interpretation of social facts may be grouped together under the term "social mechanics." Kach of these groups of inquiries casts light on the other, and it is probable that progress toward final results will be by means of parallel advances toward settlement of the two sorts of questions. Thus each manifestation of a social