Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/663

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 647

of the knowledge needed to construct a rational basis for the conduct of life."

Few scholars are ready to accept the foregoing analysis. This is partly cause and partly effect of rejecting the term " sociology " in the proposed sense ; or worse, of denying the existence of the thing for which the name is proposed. It is contended by many that everything here outlined is implied in traditional divisions of knowledge, and is actually provided for by them. In one sense it is, but the same thing is true over and over again of every por- tion of our knowledge. If we were to refuse license to new forms of reflection upon perceptive material simply because, either in fact or by implication, it had been in consciousness before, we should directly reduce thought to the idiot's reaction upon sensations.

The essential question is : Do all these things need to be done by somebody, and under some designation or other ? Is the social fact encountered in all its dimensions if it is less com- prehensively conceived ? Can a less intensive and extensive examination of the social reality arrive at the body of knowl- edge of which we are beginning to perceive the need ? Can all this be realized and not be one at last ? If the correct answer were given to these questions, and if all thought about society were correlated accordingly, sociology and sociologists might be read out of separate existence, so far as a name goes, and the indicated scientific and philosophic processes might go on as before. The names are nonessentials. Complete conception of societary relationships, and corresponding investigation and arrangement of facts about those relationships, are the essentials upon which the sociological methodologist insists.

Albion W. Small. The University of Chicago.

[To be continued.^

'Allowing for the physical bias noted above (p. 633), Spencer seems to have had nearly this conception in mind when he said: "That which is really needed is a systematic study of natural causation as displayed among beings socially aggregated" (Social Statics and Man vs. the State, Am. ed. of 1892, p. 355).