Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/487

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY 473

simple combinations ; but the very attempt to construct a social science assumes the reign of law in human life as well as in animal life. Many of our best teachers of politics and ethics introduce their students to Aristotle, Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Machiavelli, and Burke, a pedagogic procedure which would involve loss of time and mental confusion if there were not at least relatively permanent social forces. Judge Hughes pictures to us a modern English undergraduate who is moved to tears by reading Helen's lament over Hector in the closing lines of the Iliad. Sophocles has interpreted the deep foundations of law in human nature in language which is as modern as Hooker or Browning. These are facts which are no more legitimately used in explanatory than in regulative science.

VI. DIVISION OF LABOR IN SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY.

A division of labor might be formed on the basis of the characteristic or predominant desire or interest. Thus, there might be a social technology of the health desire the social system of public sanitation ; the wealth desire the industrial and commercial system; the beauty desire the organization of communities for art culture; the knowledge desire the educa- tional system ; the sociability desire the organization for fel- lowship ; the Tightness desire the organization of social control, ethical direction, religion. But I have not been able, thus far, to make it work in detail. Perhaps someone will suc- ceed better with it. In accordance with the principles herewith presented the writer has, for several years, given courses on rural and urban sociology, the domestic institution, and charities, naturally giving far more detailed attention to some subjects than to others.

It may be taken for granted that social technology will make progress only by some kind of specialization. Only by minute division of labor have the sciences of chemistry, physics, biology, politics, and economics achieved their triumphs. This remains true even after we have properly chastised the miserable, petty, and useless following blind alleys which has wasted many stu- dent lives. Specialization, on the basis of generous culture, is a