Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/606

 $86 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

observation. It is that the progress of sociological evolution leads us to consider social phenomena as less and less immut- able, fixed, absolute, and unmodifiable. Biology, and especially psychology, prepare us to recognize, not merely the simultane- ous characteristics of social phenomena, but also the successive and variable characteristics; biology has laid the foundation of "social transformism." Order, which was at first conceived by the old writers as immobile both in social science and in biology, was recognized later as an evolutional successive order; psy- chology, with its phenomena, which are so very mobile although they are subordinated to the nervous systems which have them- selves been evolved from the simple cell to the most complex organs, acts in the same manner upon the old conceptions both of organic and of social life. Statics retained its logical and historical precedence over dynamics, but the latter became the characteristic of organic and collective life to such a degree that statics was thrown in the shade by the more recent schools. However, sociology will always remain subordinated to the natural inorganic order, in which constancy and fixity are relatively predominant, especially in the phenomena belonging to the mathematical and physical sciences. On the other hand, the progress of dynamic science will only increase the impor- tance of statics, by showing that evolution itself is a continued equilibration.

If concrete sociology is chiefly concerned with the qualita- tive laws of particular societies, laws deduced from the histori- cal description of the societies, if therefore it accords more importance to variable conditions abstract sociology, in its turn, by eliminating the variable conditions, leads us back to the consideration of the constant laws of societies, but with the higher conception that there is a static order in dynamic evolu- tion. In reality, the social order, more than all other orders, is evolutional ; and social evolution, as well as all other evolu- tion, is ordered ; the difference is only in the intensity of the evolution and the degree of organization.

However, it is necessary never to lose sight of the fact that a sociological law is virtually constant and necessary only so