Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/629

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 609

qualitative arrangement of organs which are united to each other for the use of a whole. It is necessary to add that the averages may vary widely in different epochs and civilizations. The aver- age man, even from the point of height, does not exist unless the average is taken of one population. When the average is taken of all the heights at a given time and at a definite age, the larger number will not correspond to this average. In sociology, the constant, and especially the variable, conditions are so nu- merous and complex that they largely escape from the calculation of probabilities and the theory of averages.

It is somewhat interesting to note that Gumplowicz, while making a criticism of Quetelet a criticism which was in part justified really fell into a similar error. In La lutte des races he wrote :

When Siissmilch, in 1742, imagined "a divine order in the vicissitudes of mankind" the statisticians began to observe the regularity of the movements of masses. However, in their observations, they took as a unity the first mass of population, politically bounded, which presented itself to their minds : the inhabitants of a city or of a state. These are not natural social units. Here is certainly the principal reason why the statisticians have not suc- ceeded, in spite of their researches, in discovering universal laws. It is true that, for some time, statistics has manifested a tendency to specialize its observations, that is to say, to seek after the natural elements of these politi- cal bodies with a view to subjecting them to examination. It is because of this tendency that there has been a departure from political statistics to what is called ethnographical statistics (Wappaiis, Czornig, Adolf Ficker), Quetelet did not contribute to this progress. Giving his attention only to society, a vague and nebulous notion, he arrives at the average man. This average man is a result of calculation, but of nothing else. In fact, it is not upon a society realistically considered that Quetelet founds his observations, but upon political bodies, such as cities and states. He is thus able to arrive only at chimerical laws governing the average man. These are not laws. Modern ethnographic statistics itself is only transitory. It prepares the way for a statistics which will take for its subject also the true ethnic or social units, and will succeed in this way in the establishment of true laws of the life and movement of the masses (an end which can be attained only in this way).

Unhappily, the author recognizes that his ethnic unity is not an idea of natural science, but is only a historical idea. Conse- quently, the criticism he makes upon Quetelet for looking only at states rebounds upon himself. In reality, states, as well as