Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/163

 ORIGIN AND USE OF THE WORD "SOCIOLOGY" 149

and yet there are universities in which the word "biology" is not yet officially recognized. And "biology," it has to be remem- bered, had more than a generation's start of "sociology" as a piece of technical nomenclature. It is therefore not surprising that what Huxley said of "biology" in 1876 should be widely applicable to "sociology" still: "There are, I believe, some per- sons who imagine that the term 'biology' is a new-fangled designation, a neologism in short." Incidentally it is worth noting that Huxley in that same address in 1876 spoke of soci- ology as a "constituted science." By this he did not, of course, mean that our knowledge of social phenomena was scientifically organized. He merely meant that to the needed work of organ- ization a group of trained investigators was pledged to contribute co-operatively that, in short, a system of organized study was being built up.

One important factor in the ultimate establishment of the word "sociology" was, of course, Spencer's adoption of it. His book The Study of Sociology won recognition in almost every civi- lized country during the two decades between 1870 and 1890. The first volume of the Principles of Sociology appeared in 1876 and the last in 1896. Though comparatively neglected by British universities, the work has been extensively studied in German and still more in American universities. In France, too, Spencer's influence has tended to the dissemination both of the idea and the word ; for he is there considered as the chief con- tinuator of the philosophical and scientific work of Comte a continuation in some respects the more emphatic and convincing by Spencer's repudiation of discipleship and total rejection of the political and religious deductions made by Comte in his later years from his sociological and philosophical system.

In the last decade of the nineteenth century there was a very considerable development of interests and studies specifically sociological. It was a time of growth characterized by the cus- tomary symptoms both of expansion of studies and of co-ordi- nation of them the establishment of chairs, lectureships, and institutions; the multiplication of literature (much of it, to be sure, calling itself sociological with little justification), and the