Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/650

 634 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

thought could neither accelerate nor retard. Against this tend- ency Ward, a most energetic monist, opened a crusade. He undertook to show that mind can control the conditions of human life to such an extent that it is possible to inaugurate a new and better era of progress. According to Ward there is a difference between the progress of the past and the progress to be antici- pated when mind shall have applied itself to the problem, so great that we may speak of the latter as artificial progress and the former as accidental progress.

At the time of its publication (1890) Mackenzie's book, An Introduction to Social Philosophy, was the ablest survey that had been made of the whole field properly so designated. Nothing that has since appeared has made the book obsolete, although the strategic points in sociological inquiry have shifted greatly, and have become in many respects more salient since he wrote. It is a mistake on Earth's part to represent Mackenzie as the exponent of any particular type of sociology. He did most successfully what he attempted. In his preface he says :

Little, if anything, of what is now published can be claimed as original .... It is scarcely necessary to add that this work is not intended as a systematic treatise on the subject with which it deals, but only as a slight contribution to the discussion of it. It is, indeed, not so much a book as an indication of the lines on which a book might be written. The only merit which I can hope it may be found to possess is that it has brought into close relation to each other a number of questions which are usually, at least in England, treated in a more disconnected way. (P. viii.)

Mackenzie's work has been appraised by the sociologists generally at a higher valuation than the author's modest esti- mate claims. It not only furnished a conspectus of relationships which had frequently been confused or ignored, but by so doing it promoted systematic sociological inquiry. It thus deserves a high place among the factors that have developed sociological method. It tried to make real the subject-matter of sociological inquiry, and to indicate in large outline the manner in which approach must be made to knowledge of this reality. This is plain from the author's own summary.' Professor Mackenzie carefully guards against calling himself a sociologist at all.

' First edition, pp. 369 sq.