Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/869

 NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 849

sociologically public vengeance differs from private vengeance, but psychologically they are identical. Public vengeance passes through the same phases of development as private vengeance. It is first a right, and then becomes obligatory. It passes through the phase of retaliation or compensation. Prevention of a repetition of an offense was accomplished by depriving the offender of the means of repeating it, as by cutting off the hand, etc.; or by public humiliation. Public vengeance, like private vengeance, is replaced by composition. Amends are paid to the society, or to its representative, the king. The state is the injured party. Yet there are some crimes which provoke an implacable reaction on the part of si-ciety.

2. Patriarchal punishments. — The most natural process of development makes an autocrat of the head of the family. Among savages the patriarch is the chief of the tribe ; all the others are chiefly his children, grandchildren, and wives. Later appear adopted and conquered members. The father had the right to judge and to punish. Every transgression was an offense against him. Later this reaction, which was purely instinctive, was considered as the e.xecution of the will of the gods. The administration of patriarchal justice was the beginning or model of the despotic juris- diction of the chief of the tribe. The supreme power becomes an unlimited authority. The punishments inflicted by a despot emanate from a social reaction. In the first phase of human development the chief is the executor of the general will ; if he for- gets it, he is assassinated or exiled. In the modern state it is ultimately the general interest which decides. A people has not only the government that it deserves, but also the governmental form that the majority wishes to have.

3. The sacred factor. — At the epoch when the crime constitutes an offense against deity, the reaction contains a religious element, but does not lose its essence. The malefactor may be sacrificed by any member of the community ; or the commu- nity as a whole may rise against him to testify before the gods to their displeasure in his act ; or certain men may be set apart as the avengers, viz., the priests. Human sacrifice is identified with punishment by death. When a people has the custom of making periodic sacrifices, criminals are used for the purpose. Besides the priests, there exist everywhere secret societies, bound up with religious ceremonial, whose purpose is to execute the sacred reaction.

The reaction of the state is a natural consequence of the primitive reaction of the people. In the punishment inflicted by the state we see a social reaction, which long ago was transferred under some form to a monarch, who, m turn, gave over the execu- tion to judges. Then appeared the idea of the state, and the judicial attributes of the sovereign have largely disappeared. Though punishments are inflicted in his name, society itself is the source of the reaction. — JuLiusz Macarewicz, "Evolution de la peine," in Archives d' Anthropologie criminelle, March, 1 898.

Questions upon the Method of Sociology. — Every science ought to con- form to the rules upon which the existence of scientific thought depends in its essence ; but besides there are special rules which are the consequence of the aim and subject- matter which characterize the science itself. The method of a science cannot be constructed a priori; it does not precede the science itself, it follows it. Method is always the result of a practice, of an experience of ways leading to incontestable conclusions. The four methods of empirical research formulated by John Stuart Mill are only abstract formularies of diverse inductive conclusions. The inductive sciences had long practiced these methods instinctively. Sociology must conform to these methodic rules. It will never become a science if social phenomena are of too com- plex a nature to observe and analyze them exactly. When the physical sciences began their conquests, many felt overwhelmed by the variety of phenomena and regarded with skepticism the possibility of reaching valid results. The varied and complex character of phenomena is never an obstacle for science ; it can hinder only the application in practice of its results. The physicist cannot predict where each stone of a tumbling house will fall, the complexity of the determining forces being too great for observation and combination. He lets alone such too complex phenomena, limiting himself to observing elementary facts in which the forces are placed under determinable conditions.

Sociology must take the same course. Although the practical and useful end