Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/363

 A SOCIOLOGICAL VIEW OF SOVEREIGNTY 349

by "substitution," to use the term proposed by Tarde. Thus, while empirical thinking tends only to results, learns only by experience, and makes progress only through the crude logic of post hoc, reflective thinking searches for underlying causes and general principles, learns by criticism, and improves upon the past by the logic of propter hoc.

It is not diiificult to locate the emergence of the reflective form of thinking in social history. We should first notice that it is not so different in kind from empirical thinking as the psychologist's distinction would seem to indicate. The differ- ence consists, not in the nature of the process, but in the con- scious search for hidden similarities, instead of the imitative acceptance of traditions and the empirical grasp of the first observed similarities that mere contiguity offers. This the Greeks called " thinking" /fr if, and "thinking" was the original name for philosophy. It did not require a new brain capacity, but came suddenly upon the breakdown of narrow tribal and local control, and the rise of commerce and money in the place of agriculture and barter. The introduction of money itself was a process of analysis and abstraction whereby the quality, value, was extracted from commodities and given an exact measurement and a preeminence over the concrete commodities themselves. These events threw individuals upon their own resources. They were compelled to think in order to survive. Thinking began in the economic field and then expanded elsewhere. Thales was first a merchant, then a philosopher. Sudden riches were acquired, and men of low origin became more powerful than kings descended from gods. This provoked political thinking. Class contests and civil wars arose, after the rulers had been found to be without divine sanctions. Merchants and politicians, like Solon, became political philosophers, and attempted to discover the hidden laws, not only of nature, but also of society and gov- ernment. These political philosophers soon got a hearing from the disorganized multitudes and their political leaders. Pericles espoused Anaxagoras with his view that reason determined the mass." Traditional government was shattered and must be

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