Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/607

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 587

long as the conditions of the phenomenon studied are constant. This constancy is therefore relative in concrete sociology in proportion as one considers the more special, and therefore the more variable, conditions and relationships. When, in the first two parts of the Introduction to Sociology, we touched upon the study of abstract science especially from the point of view of method, and without the rash, and at this time premature, pre- tention of organizing an integral and perfect sociology, we found ourselves in the presence of a world both considerable and mysterious, on account of its size and because of the com- plexity of its materials and of their combinations. This world appeared to us unfathomable and hopelessly intricate. From the point of view of mass and magnitude, it extended from the smallest societies to that universal society of which we have a vague idea. The phenomena which were manifested in this mass appeared to be infinite in quantity and indefinable in quality. They were intangled in a medley of discouraging complexity, of extraordinary variety.

General scientific development is confronted historically by the same difficulties that face each of us in his individual educa- tion. Social science has advanced in accordance with the laws of the individual mind. It began with purely empirical and superficial observations, with the examination of simple special cases. It has advanced only step by step to positive synthesis, to abstractions. Moreover, it has always begun by seeking, by means of that which it already knows, to explain that which it does not understand as yet, or that which it perhaps may never understand.

It is thus, for example, that the social order was conceived as providential, as resulting from a commandment, from a fiat of a superior, analagous to what was customary in ancient societies in the chase, in war, and in the other successive forms of rudimen- tary activity. It was only very recently that the social order lost this primitive significance of commandment and was conceived as natural, but invariable, in the same manner as inorganic mat- ter, of which there was already a more exact knowledge. This new theoretical conception corresponded also to practical social