Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/860

 840 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Mill's views. It was the study of Comte that led him to place great emphasis on the new sciences of ethology and sociology, which fact Professor Patten regrets in the following words : " The fact is that Mill's diversion from the natural trend of his development by Comte so weakened the credit of social studies that they have not yet recov- ered, nor can they recover their standing until the crude analogies derived from physical science are discarded. The bias of physical study hinders everyone who goes from physical to social science. The method of social science must be determined from its own problems.'" Mill tried to establish a general law of causation by simple enumera- tion for the social sciences. Patten declares that no law of causation is needed to establish the position of social science, and then proceeds to give us his own social theory, with which we are all familiar — that the laws of pleasure and pain are the laws of social science, that the field of pleasure and pain is the field of social science.

With Darwin we have the completion of one epoch and the begin- ning of a new one. Darwin's argument may be divided into two parts — the economic, which may be summed up as the economy of food and its effect on the organism, and the biologic, which may be stated as the mutability of species and the idea of common ancestors. His four propositions are (i) the limitations of food supply, (2) the rapid increase of each species, (3) variability of descendants, and (4) evolution through pressure of numbers.

From the beginning of the nineteenth century we notice a change in the ideals of activity, of pleasure, and of God. The poets and the Oxford movement had much to do with this transformation. Through the poet nature became an animated personality — God was seen in everything. The Oxford movement created the ideal of a united church and gave an impetus to the service of praise that has influenced all denominations.

In the last chapter Dr. Patten sums up the conclusions of his study and offers a few predictions. He tells us that the cause of development during the three epochs in English history just reviewed was the opposition between communal and home interests and pleas- ures, and that the great result has been the reconciliation of religion and economics. The stock ideals of the race were religious, they have 710W become economic. Religious concepts have become utilitarian. The capitalistic tendency which leads men to put confidence in remote results develops faith in the unseen. In English civilization, the local

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