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 METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 385

a relatively fair indication of the breadth of view which certain groups of historians have taken. If we draw similar lines connecting other phenomena or institutions in the different strata of human experience, as from G^° to G, etc., they will fairly indicate the breadth of view taken by other historians. There has thus far been no adequate pro- gramme for covering the ground of human experience in such a way that knowledge necessary for large generalizations is accessible." A substantially similar claim is to be made with reference to each of the other search- sciences of society.

This claim must be tested in the case of history by critical analyses of the tasks which representative historians propose, and by classifica- tion of the results which they obtain. This test should answer the following questions :

1. Does the author make distinct provision for treating all the institutions shown by the De Greef schedule to be concerned ?

2. In so far as the author contemplates treatment of all, or any, of these divisions of activity, does he apparently give them propor- tional attention ?

3. Does the author give evidence of such exhaustive examination of these institutions separately that his conclusions are credible about the actual balance of influence that shaped events in the period treated ?

4. What explanations apparently account for deficiencies under above heads ?

5. What further discrepancies between historical programmes and the demands of sociological method does the author illustrate ?

PART V. THE LOGIC OF SOCIOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.

THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY.

It is not the present purpose to make a definition of sociology that shall precisely differentiate it from the other kinds of dealing with the social problem which we have discussed. Nor are we now concerned with the chronological relations of the sociologists' invasion of the field of social inquiry, but rather with its logical significance.

■ On the function of history from the psychologists' point of view, vide MiJN- STERBERG, in Atlantic Monthly, '^■i.y, 1898, pp. 605 and 611.