Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/162

 148 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

as a separate department of scientific studies. The word "soci- ology" he sanctioned by frequent use in the final book of his Logic that "On the Logic of the Moral Sciences," perhaps the least studied and most valuable of all the parts of the famous treatise. Writing in 1843, Mil1 said:

If the endeavors now making in all the more cultivated nations, and beginning to be made even in England (usually the last to enter into the gen- eral movement of the European mind), for the construction of a philosophy of history, shall be directed and controlled by those views of the nature of sociological evidence which I have (very briefly and imperfectly) attempted to characterize, they cannot fail to give birth to a sociological system widely removed from the vague and conjectural character of all former attempts, and worthy to take its place, at last, among the sciences. When this time shall come, no important branch of human affairs will be any longer aban- doned to empiricism and unscientific surmise.

Anticipating the practical effects of sociological study on statesmanship, Mill said:

By its aid we may hereafter succeed, not only in looking far forward into the future history of the human race, but in determining what artificial means may be used, and to what extent, to accelerate the natural progress in so far as it is beneficial ; to compensate for whatever may be its inherent incon- veniences or disadvantages ; and to guard against the dangers or accidents to which our species is exposed from the necessary incidents of its progression. Such practical instructions, founded on the highest branch of speculative sociology, will form the noblest and more beneficial portion of the political art. That of this science and art even the foundations are but beginning to be laid is sufficiently evident. But the superior minds are fairly turning themselves toward that object.

For a long time the word "sociology" made little headway, and this notwithstanding Mill's sanction and usage of it, and the rapid acquisition and long maintenance by his Logic, of classic rank throughout the western world ; carrying as it did the new term into quarters notably in Germany and America where the Positive Philosophy did not penetrate. It was not, in fact, till more than half a century had passed that the word could be said to be accepted as part of the international vocabulary of the learned world. In this, to be sure, it followed the general ten- dency of ideas to outstrip words. No one, for instance, today denies the legitimacy of general studies in the natural sciences,