Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/277

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content the term has when it is a meaning factor, is a question that few readers will be able to answer.

Trouble of similar sort is found with the terms "sociology " and "sociological." They have been used so liberally that clearness has been sacrificed. For instance, on p. iv, the author proposes his general question in the words :".... By what sociological methods must we proceed, etc.?" But on p. 58 he begins to discuss "socio- logical types," and describes a sociological type as one of four species of "types of personality," or of "social organization." Evidently the term "sociological" has distinct intention and extension for the two uses. " Sociological " apparently means something like " progressive " in some cases; in others, "superior" {vide pp. 58, 62, 84, etc.).

Again, the terms " social " and " sociological " are made antithetical in some parts of the discussion {vide table of contents and p. 16), while they appear to have no antithetical force in other passages. This still further confuses concepts. Besides this, the terms "social" and "sociological" are sometimes used as formal and sometimes as qualita- tive categories. Uncertainty about the content of propositions is inevitable, and the reader's patience is correspondingly overtaxed. If the thought is precise, justice both to author and reader demands more precise expression.

There is, also, a lack of traceable coherence between propositions, in the earlier chapters particularly; and this makes it impossible, in many cases, to decide just what idea the author intends to convey. An occasional illustration would have enabled the reader to settle upon that one of alternative interpretations of abstract statements which was in the writer's mind. In the absence of such clues the meaning is doubtful. A paragraph, and then a chapter, and then another, made up of these vague and unintegrated propositions presents a problem too intricate for solution.

Perhaps the most obvious case of inexact and inconsistent use of terms is the following. The first sentence of the preface declares :

The social process in its logical character is here regarded as the process of the selective survival of types of personality.

The first sentence of chap. I reads :

This book is a theoretical attempt to introduce orderly arrangement into the study of the phenomena of social life by the rigid application of a single logical hypothesis — the selective survival of sociological types.

As a matter of course, we assume, then, that " types of personality "