Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/183

 THE SOCIOLOGISTS: POINT OF VIEW 169

scholars who think that learning loses caste if it lends itself to any human use. These worthies should be humored as patiently as may be, and not taken too seriously. They do not materially weaken the general truth that present sociology frankly proposes the improvement of society as its final purpose. It would not require much argument to show that this purpose must evidently encounter distinct problems after all questions of fact have been answered. The great service and merit of the sociologists thus far has been in contending for correlation and integration of knowledge, and in pointing out that time will be saved in the end by making sure of our evidence. This is, however, a matter of method. After all available knowledge of society shall have been set in order the real task of the sociologists will begin. In addition to the genetic and the static interpretation of ascer- tained facts, there is another division of inquiry hinted at above, which had hardly been entered until certain sociologists began to explore it. Of all the facts with which social science has to do the most significant and potential are the facts about the feelings and judgments that actuate living men. Stripped of all conventionality, and reduced to most simple expression, the most practical question for students of society today is : What do living people think good for themselves, and what justification is there in the nature of things for these judgments ? The power that estops or enforces all other social influence is the judgment that living men have accepted about what is desirable. What- ever may have been the prevalent form of moral philosophy, effective moral standards have always been the algebraic sum of concrete judgments about the things convenient for the persons judging. Not only this, but the nature of moral mechanics is such that when action is necessary no other test of what is good for men is possible. No effort for human improvement is rational which aims to effect impinx vim-nt in human action of a sort not recognizable as good by the persons concerned. In so far, then, as we regard human conditions as dependent upon t he- volitions of the persons within these conditions, we arc forced back to the judgments of those persons respecting desirable