Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/640

 624 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

upon it is the more dependent, the more special it becomes. It is in the same degree more modifiable. For teleological theory this consideration is cardinal. It is useless to apply effort to the unchangeable. Effort is practical in proportion as it is applied to the changeable. Hence the desirability of find- ing out the degrees of generality among societary phenomena as a basis for programs of ameliorative action.

De Greef regards inattention to the foregoing principle as the reason for poverty of results in sociology since Comte. Society is not simplicity, but extreme complexity. Comte wanted society to be regarded as a whole. He wanted explanation of its parts to proceed from explanation of the whole, instead of pro- cedure from the parts to the whole. He did not encourage study of the isolated parts. Referring possibly to Comte's fourfold division of societary evolution in the modern world — namely, the industrial, the aesthetic, the scientific, and the philosophical' — De Greef seems to have attributed to Comte a classification which cannot be found in the Positive Philosophy. At all events, he argues that Comte did not draw the obvious practical con- clusion from subdivisions of the phenomena.'' De Greef's motive, then, is desire to furnish a scale of societary activity that will show decreasing orders of generality, increasing orders of com- plexity, and consequently relative susceptibility of artificial modification.

De Greef's point of departure is selection of a psychical factor — contract — to mark the division line between the physi- cal and the social. Upon the basis of conclusion that Spencer's criteria of distinction between the physical and the social are merely quantitative and mechanical instead of qualitative (i. e., the greater distance between the elements and the distribution of consciousness among the elements), De Greef claims that neither Comte nor Spencer has adduced adequate reasons for separating sociology from biology. 3 Throughout De Greef's work the differentiating factor of human volition is insisted upon as marking a separate body of phenomena.

^Pos. Phi!., Vol. VI, pp. 51, 53, 54. 56- ' Introduction, Vol. I, p. 228. ^Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 19-23.