Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/801

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 785

alike in full course of modification by the action of each upon the other. The individual of today is being modified by his con- tacts with other individuals, and by his contacts with today's institutions. Tomorrow's individuals will not be wholly the causes or the effects of tomorrow's institutions. Each is both cause and effect of the other.

With reference to this social y«^/, or soc'isX process y as we may name it according to the special aspect of it which we have in mind, certain general considerations may be urged, partly by way of repetition and partly in advance upon the position we have now reached.

Perhaps there is no phrase which is used with more vagueness of meaning than the phrase "the social point of view," or "the sociological point of view." Everybody who is intelligent today supposes himself to be first "scientific" and second "sociologi- cal" in his mental attitude. We need not now discuss what is involved in the "scientific" attitude, but under this title, the "social fact," we may note some of the marks of the sociological attitude toward the world. The use of this appears in the con- sideration just dwelt upon that the sociologists are trying to focal- ize within one field of vision all the activities that are going on among people, so that men and women who get the benefit of this outlook may see their own lives in their actual relation to all the lives around them. The sociological outlook is a position chosen for the deliberate purpose of placing each of us in his relations to all the rest, so that the meaning of each one's part in the complicated whole may appear.

Most people are more familiar with political economy than with sociology — or they think they are. Now political economy does an essential part of the work of mapping out relations between different human actions, viz., those actions that have for their primary and decisive aim the gaining of wealth. But the work of political economy, as compared with the demand which sociology discovers, may be likened to the work which an ordi- nary railroad map does in showing up the features of a country. When we look, for instance, at a map issued by either of the railroads that have terminals in Chicago, we are able to learn from