Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/836

 822 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

APPLICATIONS. I.

Sociology. At its debut sociology commended itself chiefly by its skill in accounting for institutions, i. e. t those fixed arrange- ments that prevail among the changing members of society. Mr. Spencer, for example, took for his task the exploration of six great groups of institutions. But the question, "What induces the individual to enter into and abide by these arrangements ? " was not raised. The early writers, betrayed by the organism analogy, did not inquire how grasping, self-assertive individuals are brought to hold together in these social organs and achieve these smooth cooperations. Their unavowed postulate was that all men, save a few aggressive, hell-fire wretches, are naturally fit for cooperation. But this is like accounting for the solar system without universal gravitation.

The truth just coming into focus, that all groups and organs constantly exercise manifold cohesive pressures and attractions upon their units, is a discovery of the first order, and cannot fail to influence the future of social science. From the explanation of the institution sociologists are likely to press on to explain the genesis of the social man who makes the institution possible. Certainly the delicate, almost transparent, network of sugges- tion, belief, ideal, and valuation, in which the individual is caught as a fly in a kind of beneficent gossamer web, is just the tangle to challenge the utmost insight and ingenuity of the student of society.

II.

The philosophy of history. There are "historical materialists," such as Loria, Labriola, and Brooks Adams, who insist, in the words of Karl Marx, that "the method of production deter- mines the social, political, and spiritual life-processes in general." The rise and vicissitudes of states, codes, legal principles, reli- gions, systems of philosophy, moral theories, and even schools of art, they would trace to economic causes. For example,