Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/828

 8l2 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Or we may reverse the formula for purposes of prediction, and it will amount to this : Given the terms,

?^' ?^' ?C' ?Z>' fE' IF' , and the product will be a certain social condition to be symbol- ized very roughly by the expression :

{A^ B' C Z>* E' F')N . a .b.

On the other hand, it must be urged that inability to reach accuracy about the forces concerned in social reactions does not bar the way to studies which presuppose results at this point. We may take up further problems of qualitative measurement, while elementary problems, both of description and of measure- ment, are still in process of solution. For instance, suppose we reach the decision, hinted at above, that in all human associations we are dealing with fundamental human interests, which manifest themselves in desires, that in turn operate in accordance with variations of irritability, suggestibility, habit, imitation, inven- tion, sympathy, and antipathy. There are a thousand problems about the actual quality of these forces, and about their relations to each other. Yet we may proceed to study the facts of modern democracy, for example, as they present themselves to our observation, and as they emerge in course of our experi- ments with control. We may study them in all their physical, industrial, aesthetic, scientific, moral, legal, and political phases, without waiting for the more intimate problems to be solved. Indeed, these antipodes of sociological study will both balance and stimulate each other. Each set of problems will be the more intelligently treated because of consciousness that neither set of problems will be settled until the results can be correlated with the results of the other set. We are estopped from dog- matic snap judgments about the social conditions in which we pursue our immediate daily interests, by consideration of the more precise elements of human activity and motive that are under investigation by students of another type.

Furthermore, we are not debarred from immediate social ambition, nor from practical endeavor to make society better, by the fact that sociological theories are only in the making. Physi- cians practiced fumigation of infected places, and with a certain