Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/503

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 483

The possibility of constructing a general, abstract sociology remains a most important problem ; it is one of the principal points upon which we shall have to throw light, by the very fact of our new endeavor, although failure of our effort can never be invoked against the possibility of a more happy result in the future. This failure should be attributed only to the incapacity of the author, and in every case partial failure will be inevitable on account of the insufficient elaboration of the particular social sciences, and especially because of the incomplete development of the unitary, world-wide organization, which, by itself, is destined to facilitate the establishment of sociological monism in the collective consciousness. So, nearly all our efforts will bear especially upon the method to follow in order to succeed in the organization of an abstract sociology, rather than upon a more or less complete realization of this organization.

Thus, by a process both natural and logical, concrete and descriptive sociology is transformed into an abstract philosophy whose laws, more and more reduced to unity, will be the co-ordinated expression of relations common to all societies from the smallest and simplest to the largest and most complex, without regard to their variable conditions in the present, the past, and the future, except from the point of view of the constancy and regular order of these variations themselves.

If the conclusions of the different schools which admit only historical laws were well founded, positive philosophy itself would be condemned and decapitated, for this would admit that there does not exist an abstract philosophy of the social sciences, which are, therefore, different in this respect from the other sciences ; in a word, there would not be any sociology except that of a discriptive and historical character. It seems to me that this narrow point of view must be abandoned ; it was itself a simple, temporary, and relatively necessary reaction against the old absolute and metaphysical conception of so-called natu- ral laws and orders of societies. This justified reaction has served to show that these laws and these orders, far from being complete and immutable, are in constant evolution. It is now necessary to make another step by recognizing that the divers