Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/179

 THE SOCIOLOGISTS' POINT OF VIEW 165

force, as in "imitation," "social supremacy," "consciousness of kind," raises first the question, What is the force behind the manifestation ? and then the question, What role has this force played in the past, and what role does it play in the present ? All study of what has been and of what now is in society falls within one or the other of these divisions of inquiry, or it is a combination of them.

What inferences should be drawn from this survey of social study, as the field would present itself to a naive mind equipped with right methodological principles, and unspoiled by conven- tions and prejudice? In the first place, the inference that preten- tious generalizations about laws of social progress or social order must be regarded with grave suspicion, until the facts of human experience have been much more thoroughly canvassed than they are likely to be for generations to come. In the second place, that in preparation either for practical judgments upon immediate social conditions, or for larger philosophical generalizations of more typical conditions, it is worth while to acquire breadth and poise of judgment by the largest possible familiarity with what is known about social cause and effect in the past, and about reciprocal social influences in the present. In the third place, there is no likelihood that anybody will reach any central fact from which by deduction we can answer in detail, from general to special, the questions involved in the inquiry, What are the inside facts of society? There is accordingly no short cut or royal road to a comprehensive sociology. The sociological problem is in the first stage a collection of minor problem^, either historical or contemporary. The people who will make permanent contributions to the development of social philosophy are those who will have patience to select distinct problems, and work upon them until the last available evidence is collected, and the results arc in shape to be organized into the whole body of social explanation. There is no special kind of fact which deserves to be called sociological par excellence in distinction from historical, or ethnological, or economic, or political, or demographic facts. There are uses of the facts, correlations of