Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/136

 122 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

lated in Social Control, believes the following to be true : Social order is stable in proportion as the power of each to resist exceeds his power to aggress, and his will to resist exceeds his will to aggress.

Although some set up a law for any constant relation dis- covered between facts, the usage of the long established sci- ences restricts the term "law" to the relation between facts of variation. The relation between one set of unvarying facts and another set is expressed in a generalization. Of valuable formulae of this kind the progress of sociology furnishes numerous exam- ples. There is Buckle's thesis, that intellectual progress rather than moral progress is the driving force of civilization. Recall Spencer's conclusion that the kind of activities (militant or industrial] pre- dominant in a society determine the type of military or industrial organization, the principles of law, the spirit of religious and ethical ideals, and the status of the weak. Ratzenhofer sets up the propo- sition that conquest and subjection entail necessarily the passage from the tribal to the civil organization. Tiele avers that the influence of general development manifests itself later in religion than in any other department of human life. Dr. Ward has made it clear that social structures are the products of the interaction of unlike social forces, and sets us right as to method with the principle that in the complex sciences the quality of exactness is perceptible only in their higher generalizations. De Greef is convinced that the more general social phenomena determine in a general way the more special social phenomena. Tarde has demonstrated that imitations are refracted by their media, and that imitation is unilateral before it is reciprocal.

Such are the principal formulae contributed by sociology to the common stock of scientific truth. When these have been criticised, broken up and recast half a dozen times, we shall begin to possess a stable body of doctrine. The exhibit cer- tainly ought to reassure all sociologists. " The lips of the morn- ing are reddening." Shafts of light pierce the jungle in many directions. Every year sees new roads and clearings, and the time draws near when the whole region will lie open to the day.

The question sometimes arises as to whether a certain law is to be counted to sociology or to economics, politics, or jurispru-