Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/551

 REVIEWS 531

degree) inherent in these attempts : viz., they seek to explain society merely from the nature of the individual, while the real question per- tains to society itself. Therefore the purpose of Quetelet, and of all statistics, to comprehend society in 'human averages' has failed. Society is no phenomenon of averages, but an effect of all individual phenomena in which the conformity to law of the reciprocal relation- ships of men is fulfilled. So the result was that sociology in general did not meet with that belief in its scientific mission which acts as a spur to all investigation. It was denied with especial vehemence that sociological knowledge is possible as a part of philosophy. People believed that they could exhaust the subject-mattei of sociology with the descriptive special sciences, like ethnology or demography. Without connection, full of contradiction, and unconscious of purpose, a series of special sciences now concerned themselves with the reciprocal rela- tionships of men. Jurisprudence, upon a historic foundation, stands impotent in the face of social needs ; the political sciences, which never had a sure foundation, lose their authority ; the special sciences, like ethnology, culture-history, and others, dispense with all guidance and put forth wild sprigs on the tree of science. Statistics believes that it can derive the conformity of social affairs to law from inadequate numer- ical material, and overlooks the fact that the most essential qualities in the social life are practically intangible. History does homage to a fantastic view of the reciprocal relationships among men; sciences like medical jurisprudence, criminal anthropology, psychiatry, which ought to proceed purely experimentally, become whole schools (Lombroso, Benedikt, etc., etc.), with corrupting theorems concerning the moral nature of men ; for even ethics can find in philosophy hitherto no reliable foundation. So the development of all the special sciences which discuss the reciprocal relationships of men is just at present in a crisis. This crisis rests chiefly upon the circumstance that natural science has thrust back speculative philosophy in every direction, while the judgment of social relationships cannot dispense with philosoph- ical discussion. However, all the adversities which sociological think- ers like Schaffle, Gumplowicz, and others have experienced cannot check the human endeavor to bring the great world process of social evolution under universally valid propositions. And so will these attempts necessarily lead to sociology becoming a science so soon as the necessary preliminary conditions for it are found."

It is notorious that those who decades ago claimed for sociology an independent place as a science, alongside of the psychical sciences,