Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/281

 SOCIOLOGY AND THE EPIC.

WRITERS on sociology and investigators in kindred fields often make allusion to Homer or other of the natural epics to support their theses. There is no doubt as to the value of these poetical documents of the past as affording well-nigh indispen- sable material for the student of the history of civilization. But, unfortunately, selections are too often made in an uncritical spirit ; context is lost to view, and isolated passages or phrases are interpreted under bias. This brings the whole science of society into disrepute with philologists and others. A few cases of this sense-distortion discredit many valuable and laboriously attained results in perhaps entirely different fields of sociological research.

This uncritical citation is unworthy of the notable scientists who occasionally are found to be at fault, but it is, in a certain sense, natural enough, especially when a man is gathering material from so many and so diverse sources. The gain to sociology would be great if the workers on the grand scale could have at their service separate monographs which would under- take impartially to gather and systematize the sociological material in such documents as the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, the Eddas, the Hebrew Scriptures, the Kalevala, the Nibelungen Lied, the Homeric poems, and the like.

It is here intended briefly to outline some of the character istics of the Iliad and Odyssey which render their evidence as to the civilization they portray especially reliable.

In the first place, the record in question is wonderfully free from bias. Epics in general evince the sympathetic treatment which a man accords to the civilization of his own people. They contain none of the subjective or "ethnocentric" elements which so often dictate the attitude and vitiate the evidence of an observer who himself belongs to a more advanced culture-stage. Homer presents no exception to this general characteristic of the epic ; there can scarcely exist a doubt in the mind of one

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