Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/693

 COMPARATIVE STUDY OF ASSOCIATION 673

upon it by physics, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology. At this stage of the proceedings it becomes greatly desirable to find some mark which will keep one's conception of psychology from incontinently swallowing the conception one may have formed of any one of the other sciences mentioned. It seems to the writer that such a mark is found in that aspect of "point of view" before referred to.' While the psychologist, as such, must consider the same aspect of the complex of phenomena as does the physiologist, for example, and from the same standpoint also [iti so far as is implied in seeing as clearly as does the physiologist the hand clasp as the functioning of certain bodily structures), it yet remains true that while so seeing it he sees it as centripetal to a different focus of attention from that toward which the physiolo- gist orients it. The psychologist sees it as centripetal to the one focal point of attention called "consciousness," and he sees it as centrifugal to all else. It is in this point of most intense atten- tion, in this focusing of the facts, in this direction of greatest stress, that we find a characteristic upon which to base a distinc- tion which will serve to differentiate the sciences from each other at times when classifications based upon certain other grounds fail to remain valid.

And with this distinction in mind we may say of the psychol- ogist that he may consider anything in the heavens above or in the earth beneath, and so long as he considers it with reference to the structure and function of consciousness, no man may say him nay, or justly complain that he invades the "fields" of the other sciences.

We return now to the sociologist, who has been purposely left out of account for a time. In his consideration of the hand clasp his attention's focal point will be upon the associating of the persons whose hands so meet, as expressed, or as set up, in the hand clasp. It is in whatever the hand clasp has to tell him of this that the sociologist is interested. But in order to be able to understand what the hand clasp has to tell him — in order to understand its language, if the figure may be allowed — he must

'Of course, it must not be inferred from this that the writer is seeking to advance this as a panacea for taxonomic ills.