Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/654

 638 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

action of the efficient social forces. Regardless of debatable details of applications and conclusions, Ward's central idea is unassailable.

D. Assumption of psychological miiversals. — All thinking strives toward a final stage in which the object may be represented, not as it seems to any partial perception, but as it is in reality. Many sociologists have been so eager for their science to reach this degree of maturity that they have entertained the idea of a method capable of conducting directly to the desired end. Zeal for discovery of universals has prompted some of the best work, and has betrayed into some of the most serious mistakes, in sociology. Nothing more sharply distinguishes the sociolo- gists, as a class, from the specialists whose fragmentary programs promise nothing conclusive, than the explicit aim of sociology to reach knowledge which shall have a setting for all details of fact about human associations, in a complete view of human associations as a whole. Demand for the universal is thus the very reason for the existence of sociology, and it is perhaps small wonder that men who are able keenly to feel the demand are allured by the notion of a method peculiarly related to the supply.

It is in this connection that it is most just to speak of the fourth writer, whom Barth dismisses with a brief reference in his group of "the dualistic sociologists." All that has been said above about the inappropriateness of the phrase is applicable to Professor Giddings. It would be superfluous to volunteer any additional disclaimers in his behalf. He is a monist and a dualist in precisely the same sense in which all modern thinkers are both and neither.

Professor Giddings deserves recognition for earnest cham- pionship of an element in method without which the other elements are abortive. His mistake, however, seems to consist in the assumption that the intellectual end toward which all valid methods converge may be anticipated and made a means for securing the end. The cabalistic sign of this potent method is the phrase " subjective interpretation."' This phrase may mean

' Prin. of Social., pp. 1 1 and 36.