Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/90

 74 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

before it can yield its highest value for educational purposes. The usual method of investigation has been to select some one phase of the life process, some one activity or relation, and trace it from its genesis in race history to its maturity at the present time. This method has its value from the standpoint of results and is a necessary stage in the evolution of a completed method. The life process is a unity, which, like any other, must be analyzed, the attention being focused successively upon its different elements, in order that the significance of the whole may be realized. But unless the unity as such be kept in mind, with the purpose it is to serve as a means to further insight, there is danger of getting lost in the analysis. Thus far the emphasis in anthropological investigation has been placed on tracing the different elements in the life process one by one, from their genesis to their present state, to the neglect of the return move- ment, the placing these elements in their true relation to each other and to the ethnic periods. Hence the elements in question have been suspended in a vacuum, and have not been serviceable, since they lacked relations. For educational purposes a cross section of any one ethnic period showing all the life activities in their relations would serve a better purpose than a longitudinal section showing one activity during many. The plan pursued isolates the facts by separating them from their many relations, and thus destroys their value. The method suggested would group the available facts of a given period and, by placing them in their natural setting, would give them a double significance. The work done thus far has been the first stage in a complete method, but the second must follow closely upon the first, both for the sake of the science itself as well as for those to which it is tributary. The same criticism may be made on much of the work in child-study. The study of many children with reference to a single characteristic, isolated from its setting in heredity and environment, is the first stage in a complete method. The study of all the characteristics of one period in child life, in their natural relations, is its necessary completion. The child-study movement is doing much to make a future history of childhood from the anthropological standpoint possible, but, like anthro-