Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/159

 METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 143

that certain crude mechanical conceptions of social forces, or cer- tain interpretations of society as material for zoological classifica- tion and clinical dissection, have not merely persisted, but have monopolized sociological theory until less than half a dozen years ago. The error consists, second, in claiming for certain very recent and quite commonplace assertions of psychic force in society the merit of originality ; and in crediting them accordingly with the service of rescuing sociology from barren materialism. This is as if Rip Van Winkle should be regarded as author of all the changes that were going forward while he was asleep.

It is true that there remain even now a few sociological theorists who are trying to breathe the breath of life into mechanical or bio- logical literalism proposed as a version of society. It is also true that these conceptions lost their prestige more than twenty years ago. Many sociologists still use biological metaphors as tools of investiga- tion and as means of expression. Other writers have been unable to understand that most of the men who employ this biological language long ago eliminated from their own use of the terms all mechanical and biological literalism. This obtuseness has produced persistent confusion of figurative language with ideas foreign to the users of the language. The fact is that almost invariably, during the last two decades at least, the men who have employed these physiological terms have been perfectly clear in their own minds about the subordination of these physical terms to the service of expressing chiefly psychical relations. They have not thought it worth while to guard them- selves enough to make misinterpretation impossible on the part of critics predisposed to misconception. Consequently there has been a chance to win victories over straw men by correcting alleged errors which had real existence only in the case of rare and unimportant theorists. In making the most of this opportunity, men who seem sincere in the belief that they are communicating to the world the boon of a fresh discovery, have, over and over again, within the past two or three years announced, with most Quixotic gravity, that psychi- cal factors are the determining elements in social reactions !

All this might be passed over without comment if it did not imply misinterpretation of nearly all (and surely of the best) that has been written on sociology for the last twenty years, together with much that is still older. It is hard to see how this misinterpretation can be other than conscious falsification in some instances. Nobody who presumes to write about sociology deserves forgiveness if he is so ignorant of