Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/818

802 clumsy figure we may say literally that the sociologist has the task of formulating man in his associational self-assertions. The psychologist has the task of formulating man in the mechanism of his self-assertions.

As was said above, our ability to look out over the field of human association, and to reproduce it in thought, however imperfectly, is due, in large part, to the conventional social sciences. The supposition now to be proposed, for the sake of varied statement of our main proposition, is accordingly strained as well as extravagant, but it will serve a certain purpose. Let us suppose that all human activities had occurred precisely as we observe them, with the exception of the activities which may be called collectively the social sciences. Suppose that men had associated precisely as we know them to have associated, with the one modification that they did no systematic thinking about association. We should have then industry, government, society, but we should have no political economy, political science, history, social philosophy. We should have at most records, chronicles of bare events, with no conventional classifications and interpretations of the events. Suppose that at this moment the process of social self-examination begins. Association becomes introspective. Certain men begin to feel scientific and philosophic curiosity about the human activities, some of which they see, and more of which they know by record. The