Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/497

 THE SCOPE OF SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY 483

The complete mastery of this subject cannot be compassed without deriving data from the fields of many specialists in the fields of biology, economics, jurisprudence, administration, ethics, psychiatry. The statistical investigation alone is an enormous task.

The end. No progress can be expected unless the commu- nity foresees with clearness what it wants to accomplish. Nor is it sufficient to agree that we desire to promote the virtue of temperance. Ancient systems of ethics have admitted self- control among the cardinal qualities of good character, and there is no controversy over this vague claim. But the moment we attempt to define the conduct of the temperate man in society we are compelled to collect evidence, for we are met with radi- cal differences of opinion, and many communities are divided. This controversy among the people is mainly due to conflict of medical authority. There can be no final agreement as to social aims until the physicians find common ground, until the experts can tell us how much alcohol can be imbibed without danger, and with advantage to health, under the various conditions of age, sex, financial ability, climate, occupation. An unsettled problem in medicine and physiology is unsettled in social ethics.

We can count on sufficient agreement for a basis of commu- nity action in respect to excess and certain manifestly improper and injurious uses of alcoholic beverages ; and we can make plans with hope of success so far as authority has reached a conclusion. Individuals may have for themselves a more austere, perhaps a higher ideal, but they cannot hope to make this a social aim in the present conflict of expert opinion.

Causal conditions. Intemperance, defined as an excessive and improper use of alcoholic drinks by large classes of the community, is the phenomenon to be explained. We have to do with a social custom and its effects.

The procedure of the Committee of Fifty is an illustration of the influence of sociology in modern methods of attacking a social problem, and its investigations are both theoretical and practical, in the sense of the words used in this paper. They