Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/819

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 803

main difference between what would follow and what now occurs in the field open to such reflection would be that no particular way of looking at the facts would be able to claim precedence over other ways. No "science" would be able to say: "This is my preserve, no one else has any right here." We should pres- ently have the same social sciences that we have now, with the difference that no long familiarity with the forms of one of the sciences would give it a prestige that would obscure its relative subordination to all the other sciences. Among the ways of looking at the common subject-matter would be one which would enlist certain minds more intensively than the more spe- cific forms of treatment. It would be the way which takes note, in the first place, of general characteristics manifested in all association, and which attempts to find the unity underlying the unspeakable diversity in the relations of these characteristics to each other, and in the relations of all specific and particular actions to their universals.

This, minus the fictitious historical assumption, marks the exact situation of the philosophical sociologists. They see that the impulse, quality, and tendency of the energy put forth in asso- ciation is not necessarily indicated by the obvious and familiar groupings of persons and classifications of activities in the special social sciences. They see that the life-problem of every man is a question of his total function as a man. It cannot be summarily solved in terms of political or economic units. They see accord- ingly that the activities which associated men perform are conse- quences and accidents, on the one hand of the energies of the men associating, and, on the other, of their twofold environment. The sociologists, therefore, say that they are bound to know something over and above and beyond men in the different specific groups which first arrest reflective attention — their fami- lies, their trades, their classes, their unions, their nations, etc. The sociologists are bound to get acquainted with the com- mon traits of men that produce these groups and in turn are affected by them. All this is part of the sociological purpose to penetrate beyond our present insight into knowledge of what is more and less essential, more and less fundamental, more and