Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/824

 8o8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

of problems that look to more knowledge about association. Within the field thus described the work of all the social sciences falls.

For instance, general sociology names, among other associa- tions, that of superior races with inferior races. Extant knowl- edge, such as it is, furnishes a few more or less credible generalizations about the laws of interrelation in case of such association. But suppose we wish to take up, as a serious scien- tific problem, the status of the colored race in the United States. Our general sociology will furnish the landmarks. It will help us place that particular association among all the other associ- ations that compose the life of the world, and of our particular country at this moment. But we want to know, for example, wherein the assumed inferiority and superiority of the two races consists. Is it physiological ? Is it psychical ? Is it both ? Is it accidental or essential ? What is the prospect that the dis- tinguishing differences can be made to disappear ? What is likely to occur as this association of two unlike races continues ? These questions propose problems that no abstract reasoning can solve. They take us into the realm of one social science and one physical science after another. Physiology must give its testi- mony. Ethnological investigation is needed. History must yield new information. Psychology must add discoveries. Political science must contribute its evidence. Political economy must furnish elements of the solution. All these and many more phases of the facts in question must then at last be organized into a representation of the whole situation.

Or, suppose we are studying the past, present, and future of the association which we see at this moment between a prole- tariat and a propertied class in this country. To what extent is it actual ? Whence comes it ? Whither tends it ? What may we do about it ? Here as before we have a group of real prob- lems which are not the preserve of any conventional science. It involves history, statistics, demography, and, indeed, every other science that deals with real men. All our conclusions, whether scientific or popular, about such real conditions, imply as their logical antecedents the methods of discovery appropriate to these