Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/786

 766 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

the psychologist is not the worst of our task. There remains the harder problem of coming to terms with the special social sciences, such as economics, jurisprudence, and politics.

Sociology, as I have described it, does not meekly sidle in among the established sciences dealing with the various aspects of social life. It does not content itself with clearing and tilling some neglected tract. It has, indeed, reclaimed certain stretches of wilderness and made them its own. With this modest role, however, it is not satisfied. It aspires to nothing less than the suzerainty of the special social sciences. It expects them to surrender their autonomy and become dependencies, nay even provinces, of sociology. The claim is bold, and we may be sure the workers in long-cultivated fields will resist such pretensions, unless there are the best of reasons for founding a single com- prehensive science of social phenomena.

Such a reason is certainly not furnished by "the unity of the social aggregate." As we have seen, there is no well-defined social aggregate. The nation is the nearest to it, but the actual distinctness and oneness of the nation is a historical incident due to past wars. Every step in the peaceful assimilation of peoples brings us nearer the time when the globe will be enmeshed in an unending plexus of interpenetrating free asso- ciations, no one of which will arrogate to itself the title of "society."

Nor is a good reason furnished by that constant reciprocal action between socii which is expressed in the "social organ- ism" concept. As division of labor, exchange, and competition, these interactions have long formed part of the stock in trade of economics. As communication, they are the staple of linguistics. As party activity and civic co-operation, they have been set forth by the science of politics. Wherefore, then, a new science to teach that "no man liveth unto himself"?

Some would justify a unitary treatment of society by making one species of social phenomena the cause of all the rest. How- ever varied the aspects of social life, if there is but one causal center, one fountain head of change, there can be but one science. To Loria's eye all the non-economic factors running through the