Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/278

 26o THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and "sociological types " are equivalent and interchangeable. On any other hypothesis the propositions quoted would be at variance with each other. They would be of different degrees of exactness, though not necessarily irreconcilable. It is most natural to understand them as identical. Attempting to get exact conceptions from these terms upon this assumption, we read on until, at p. 58, the author deliberately tells us that :

A sociological type is either a potentially normal type of personality or a

theoretically superior type of social organization It is one of four

terms in the typological series.

That is, "sociological type," instead of being equivalent to "type of personality," stands for a species, while the supposed equivalent stands for the genus containing the species. No wonder that our attempt to get precise notions from the author's language has given us the impression of a wild-goose chase. After we have detected this variability of terms in a few instances, the temptation is strong to charge all further vagueness to similar shiftings of verbal usage which have escaped detection.

But the faults of style are of less importance than the faults of method. The former are individual. The latter are common to a considerable number of sociologists. Some of them, too, are making important contributions to sociology, in spite of the faulty method. I believe the present author is entitled to some of this credit, in spite of the vagaries to be noted.

For illustration of the tendency which the author exemplifies I select the following (pp. 59-60) :

By whatever name it be known, this constructive anticipation of the nor- mally potential type ^ is real to both logic and to life which science observes ; .... because the process of scientific thinking is none other than this process — the application of past experience to the new conditions that arise by the projection of the observed order of events into the future. The social spirit speculates on what had better be done next. The social process answers this question by giving, in the sociological type, the next term poten- tially normal enough to meet the anticipated requisites of survival. Devel- opment arises from this very act of realization.

Thus the author confidently and dogmatically propounds a theory in serene disregard of the most obvious facts which confront anyone who approaches social changes from the other point of view, viz., first, observation and grouping of phenomena ; second, inquiry as to what

' The italics in this case are the author's.