Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/655

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 639

in practice either of two things : First, the reading of the inter- preter's personal equation into the thing in question. In this case it deserves no further notice. Second, an image of the thing as it is in its essence, in all its qualities and dimensions and rela- tions. In this case "subjective interpretation" is without question the goal to be reached, but it ought to be equally self- evident that it cannot meanwhile be the method by which it is reached.

Sociology, as it appears in its confused literature up to date, is one in the implicit or explicit purpose to make out the details of relationships involved in human associations, and to recon- struct them in thought in such a way that each element will be credited with its true value within the whole. This is the psy- chological universal. But there is no plenary indulgence in favor of sociology to dispense with the purgatory of all the neces- sary logical stages between the specific and the universal. Sociology has escaped the provincialism of less ambitious social sciences in proportion as it has kept ultimate universals in view. Hypothetical universals serve the same uses and lend them- selves to the same abuses in sociology as elsewhere. Nothing is added to their authority by the title " subjective interpreta- tion." The phrase is merely a name for the same reconstruc- tive synthesis which every philosopher, from the Sophists down, has aimed to achieve. It stands for the mind's effort to repre- sent details of a whole in their adjustments to each other within the whole. Mental organization of parts into wholes, or analysis of wholes into parts, is a constant reaction between the objective and the subjective.' The history of thought teems with examples of the dangers of giving excessive credit to the subjective element. It usually results in reading into objective reality undue proportions of premature impression about reality. All formation of concepts is " subjective interpretation." All descriptive analysis, all classification, all explanation is " sub- jective interpretation " in the only sense admissible in science.'

■ The terms are at this point relative to the consciousness of the individual organizer.

' Viz., the second above, mediated by progressive correction of the first.