Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/536

 5l6 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

and of the particular societies. The division of scientific labor forces itself on each generation, and even among the successive generations ; in reality, this division of labor, whose negative aspect is most apparent, represents a continued, affective co-opera- tion and collaboration, a single collective work, from the social point of view ; it has always existed ; the problem is merely to render the work more methodical and coherent by an appro- priate organization.

Such is the course that we have followed up to the present time, and that we expect to pursue considering, however, our individual effort, which has been especially facilitated by the whole of the anterior work, as only a very small contribution to the general contribution. After having studied in the second part of the Introduction to Sociology the social functions and organs by themselves, from the point of view of their structure and functioning, we now have to advance to new syntheses, those of the structure and the life of the ensemble of societies, consider- ing first their structure. We have to investigate the general abstract laws of this structure, that is to say, the laws common to all civilizations at all times and in all places.

Let us recall, then, that this general, abstract structure is based upon knowledge of concrete social structures, including knowledge of their institutions or special organs, and that in both cases the materials are furnished by elementary statis- tics.

This is why, in conformity to this method, I have for a long time carried on numerous statistical studies, and have given many lectures (some of which have been published) upon cer- tain great civilizations, particularly ancient Peru and Mexico, Egypt, India, China, Iran, Persia, and ancient Greece; this is why I have delivered and published many lectures upon advanced political economy and upon the detailed history of social economy. In short, my readers, and especially my pupils, have been the spectators, and at times the collaborators, of my pre- paratory studies and the critics of my method. This method advances continually from the simple to the complex, from the general to the special, from the concrete to the abstract; thus