Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/502

 488 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

existence. A third variety of thinkers are relatively indifferent to both these questions, and they ask rather : "What are the visible indications about the ways in which men will associate in the future?" This is the question that rallies the men who are trying to make the things which are seen disclose those that are unseen. It is the question of the seer, the idealist, the constructive philosopher. To him past and present are nothing except as they contain and reveal the future. Still another variety of men take for granted all the answers to these ques- tions that seem to them worth considering, and their question is : "What is the thing to do here and now, in order to make the better future that is to be?" This is the query of the men who want to be more than mere scholars. They want to accomplish something. They want to organize rational movements for making life yield increasing proportions of its possibilities.

The fact that these lines of cleavage exist between men who deal with sociology calls for attention to several things that have caused much confusion. In the first place, men of these dif- ferent varieties have expressed or implied descriptions of the scope of sociology which perhaps seem irreconcilable. The truth is that they have merely emphasized, and in some cases overemphasized, the particular phase of the vast reaches of sociology which is peculiarly interesting to themselves. They have very naturally placed special stress upon their own division of labor, and they have incidentally slurred over the other divisions of labor. It by no means follows that these men would explicitly eliminate or disparage these other portions of science, nor that the final answer to the different types of question will contain anything irreconcilable. The fact, however, that men have actually pursued these different inquiries under the name of sociology accounts for the wide divergencies between treatises and monographs that have used this title. In one case we find plain anthropology or ethnology ; in another, simply old- fashioned philosophy of history, with little except its arrogation of a new name to redeem it from the condemnation under which the older thinking rests ; in other cases we have had political or economic or ethical philosophy; and again we have had the