Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 3.djvu/879

 XOTES AND ABSTRACTS 865

conviction among Americans that no persons of negro descent shall become constitu- ent members of the social body.

Therefore, "before we can'begin to study the negro intelligently, we must realize definitely that not only is he affected by all the varying social forces that act on any nation at his stage of advancement, but that in addition to these there is reacting upon him the mighty power of a peculiar and unusual social environment which affects to some extent every other social force." The negro must be studied as a social group and this in his peculiar social environment. W. E. B. DuBois, Annals of the Ameri- can Academy, January, 1898.

The Tendencies and the Actual State of Sociology. Sociology is working a radical renovation of the philosophical and juridical sciences. It has availed itself of the progress made in historic, philological, economic, and natural sciences, transform- ing them and itself, organizing them and itself. It may be objected that a science in process of formation cannot be a useful guide. Whoever reads all the works of con- temporary sociologists will note many defects, such as the heaping up of details of little or no importance, the harping on a few strings, vague generalities, reasoning by anal- ogy, etc. There is a naturalistic tendency to indentify biology and zoology with sociology. There is an ethnological tendency which has done good service, but has generalized too arbitrarily. The psychological tendency has prevailed in Germany especially. With a broad basis of truth it wanders off to an indefinite distance from the facts it has to explain ; it also makes grave errors by exaggerating the share of mental forces in social phenomena. Suchone-sidedness is the common fault of sociolo- gists. For instance, Combes de Leslrade, Coulanges, and recently Kidd regard reli- gion as the pedestal of the social edifice, while Marx, Loria, de Greef, Asturaro, and Labriola see only economic production. The interdependence of causes is not sufficiently recognized. There is crying need for a liberal school or college of sociology, which shall teach more critical methods, proper use of synthesis, which shall weigh and com- pare the results of different sciences and cautiously and impartially organize and unify sociology. FRANCESCO COSENTINI, "Le tendenze e lo stato attuale della sociologia. Esigenza di un metodo critico," La Scienza Sociale, January-February, 1898.

Advanced School of Social Science. Sociology, though newly named, has long been cultivated in Italy, so that the ground was already prepared and thinkers predisposed to modern investigations in this line. Broad as this scientific movement has been in Italy, it has not escaped the defects of contemporaneous sociology. One- sided views, over-fondness for systematizing, hasty syntheses, forced analogies, reason- ing about vague generalities, show the uncertainty and rudimentary state of the new science. This uncertainty appears to increase from the divergent views of psycholo- gists, ethnologists, and biologists, of optimists and pessimists, of spiritualists and materialists, according to the greater importance given to the religious, or the ethnic, or the juridic, or the economic factor in social evolution. In such chaos sociology needs critical direction. It should take account of the different characters of the social phenomenon, not presuppose universal identity. It should profit by the results of single social sciences and should systematize these results without being swayed by preconceptions or partisan feeling. Thus only is a unified science of human society possible. It is proposed to establish such a school at Milan. Its character is to be purely scientific, free from partisan politics. Every tendency and branch of sociology is to be taught freely, not as propaganda, but with scientific criteria and methods. Every theory which starts from an objective examination of social phenomena may contribute some truth. The school is to offer to young men of secondary schools and universities a complement to their scholastic studies and to serve for the education of citizens, giving clear explanations of social movements, of historic causes, and of the juences of various social theories. The instruction under the head of general sociology will be in general sociology, philosophy of history, history of social theories, history of social institutions, history of civilization ; under the head of auxiliary social sciences will be palethnology, anthropology, ethnology, demography, statistics, politi- cal economy, philosophy of law, criminal sociology, political science, science of reli-