Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/553

 REVIEWS 533

it — but it purposes rather the investigation of the conformity to law of the societary life. Indeed, sociology is the result of those single inquiries which have concerned themselves with social relationships from time immemorial, just as natural science is the result of experi- ences and observations which have through all time been accumulated. It is manifest that such a sociology cannot be a complete structure of knowledge, because only upon its foundation will regulated investiga- tion of social relationships arise ; but thereby sociology is only fol- lowing the same course of development which is common to all the sciences. For the auxiliary sciences advance hand in hand with the fundamental science, and the corresponding systems of the same do not arise until general investigation has reached considerable propor- tions. Only from a philosophy widened through sociological knowl- edge can ethics and aesthetics, free from objection, arise, and the phi- losophy of law, political science, and political economy be able really to become sciences."

The second subdivision of the first part is devoted to the method of sociological investigation. In it Ratzenhofer points out that the independence of sociology is not to be denied on the ground that it has not from the beginning had a perfect method, and, at present, has not yet such a method ; even the exact science of astronomy has had the same fate. Sociology must endeavor to get nearer the truth, while it more and more excludes the errors (of speculative construction). Natural science, which points out with its method the way of empirical investigation, may at present not yet exempt sociology from further using to a certain degree the crutches of speculative knowledge. "Since the natural sciences" — Ratzenhofer remarks (p. lo) — "at least in regard to their relation to social phenomena, proceed utterly uncon- scious of purpose, speculative knowledge must for a long time yet be the touchstone for the validity of many mediated facts. We meet here the old experience that the psychical sciences can only thrive when induction and deduction supplement each other, and when a judicious use of speculation is not denied them. It would be easy to show that at present many sciences, or special branches of knowledge demeaning themselves as science, prolong their life through the denial of this mixed method, that they go astray into fields of investigation which are without interest through overvaluation of induction, or have fallen into trivial hair-splitting through overvaluation of deduction. To the natural sciences there remains always with their investiga- tions an indissoluble residue which is reserved to speculation ; but