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 114 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

It must accordingly be understood that this outline is not a pro- gramme which the author would advise all members of society to adopt as their introduction to right thinking about society. It is not presumed that citizens in general must do without the kinds of opin- ions which they require for practical purposes, unless they consent to plod through the following survey of social science and its divisions of labor. That is no more the case than mastery of the science of astrophysics is necessary before one can become an able-bodied sea- man. The method to be outlined is rather the programme which must be followed in order to make the most comprehensive organiza- tion of knowledge about society that our present insight permits. Such a method is to be judged on its merits as an organization of knowledge and of research, not by the criterion of its immediate avail- ability for popular programme making.

The "social problem " is, first and foremost, the problem of knowing society, both actually and potentially. What to do about improving society at any particular point depends upon assumed knowledge about the facts of social structure and social forces. To a certain extent we have such knowledge. We want and need more. To get it is the most difficult task that science has yet proposed. It involves organization and adaptation of all extant knowledge about people, and of all known methods of getting more knowledge. The " social problem " is not an abstract problem. // is the problem of thinking the whole human reality as a whole. It demands such correlations of all special inquiries into human facts that each will complete and be completed by the rest.

This contribution to the methodology of the social problem begins with certain elements of general methodology as represented by Wundt's Methodenlehre. That work is used, however, very much as the Roman nobles of the Middle Ages used the Colosseum ; viz., as a quarry for material which is put to uses quite different from those that the author intended. At the same time, the attempt is made to inter- pret Wundt and to advertise the desirability of much more extended use of his work than can be made in this course. This intention is more fully carried out in the lectures upon the syllabus than in the printed notes themselves. These latter contain careful translations of considerable portions of the Methodenlehre. They include free trans- lations, paraphrases, and adaptations of other portions. They depart from Wundt's programme very early, however, and attack the problem of sociological method from a direction quite different from his angle