Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/645

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 629

of stating results in sociology by means of biological terms. That method does not make nor wish to make the subject- matter biological, any more than the graphic method of present- ing statistics makes the subject-matter geographical. To be sure, Lilienfeld, Spencer, Schaeffle, and a numerous host who have lighted their tapers from these flames, have sometimes appeared to carry symbolism into realism. They have some- times seemed to treat society as though it were the last term in the zoological series. Whatever faults of this sort may be on record, they do not lie along the trunk line of advance from Comte to securely scientific sociology. They are excursions which call for very little attention at present. Apart from the men, if there are any such, who actually think that society is a big animal, the investigators who have use for biological figures in connection with societary relationships no more convert their subject-matter into biology, by using organic metaphors, than use of Arabic notation in astronomy would convert the subject- matter into Semitic philology. The term " biological sociology " implies what is not and never has been true of that which is most essential in the method to which it applies. The assump- tion of the critics is that behind all use of the biological terms there is a supposition contrary to fact ; namely, that society is a zoological species. The truth is that the method thus mis- understood does not assume that human associations are any- thing at all except a plexus of relationships formed by the mingling together of many human beings. The method starts with the perception that has coined the sociological axiom : "All men are functions of each other." Setting out with this per- ception of the complexity of associations between men, these particular sociologists, as we have said above, cast about for rela- tionships of equal or like complexity. They found none appar- ently more similar in that respect than those between parts of animal organisms. Scientific study of animal organisms has progressed relatively farther than scientific study of human associations. It serves to spur the imagination and to sharpen

Professor Patten has disposed of certain real errors, but his blows are delivered chiefly at straw men, so far as the epithet " biologic " is concerned.