Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/535

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 515

laws, at first concrete, then abstract, which are applicable to all social types, past, present, and even future, including that grand social type which is in course of formation, the cosmopolitan type. Thus, disregarding successively the accessory variations in order that we may better consider only the constant aspect of societies, including even the constant aspect of the variations themselves, we shall be able to conclude, for example, that the constant genetic function is the preservation and development of the individual by the species and of the species by the indi- vidual, with the least possible waste of energy. Moreover, so far as concerns the distribution of wealth, and its special organ, commerce, we shall show that, in spite of all historical variations, its constant function is and will be to lead utilities to the point where they are necessary, with the greatest economy. Contrary to an imperfect view of the case, the commercial function appears accordingly to be as eternal as that of the entire social life of which it is a particular agent.

An attempt like that of Herbert Spencer or that of Auguste Comte to found a social philosophy or sociology without prelimi- nary preparation in statistics, that is to say, in what may he called molecular sociology, or an attempt like that of Ad. Quetelet, with statistics alone, is an undertaking which has been upheld only because sociology is the last-born of the abstract sciences. Unless we deny the unity of scientific method and the exist- ence of social science itself, it is necessary that sociology be brought under this inflexible and necessary discipline.

Does this mean that those who wish to treat of general and abstract sociology must necessarily devote themselves to all the preparatory statistical and historical studies? No ; the lives of many generations, much less the life of an individual, would not be sufficient for this. But general abstract sociology can and must constitute itself a scientific specialty, the specialty of abstract generalizations, but on the express condition, as in the case of all the other scientific specialties, that the specialty in general sociology utilize in the most conscientious and methodi- cal manner the reports and materials roughhewn by statistics and fashioned by the historians of the divers social institutions