Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/173

 ORIGIN AND USE OF THE WORD "SOCIOLOGY" 159

bility, then one of two things is likely to happen : on the one hand, ideals of social life are apt to be so vague and shadowy as to seem hopelessly remote, with a consequent perfunctoriness and, it may be, hypocrisy in the attempt to organize means toward their realization ; or, on the other hand, they are apt to be mere generalized social appetites in fact, no ideals at all, or at best very crude ones, mere nostrums compounded out of prejudice and abstraction, and conceived in such disregard of the real tendencies and possibilities of human nature and society that any attempt to apply them to social regeneration necessarily ends in disillusionment and reaction. In this direction doubtless is to be sought an explanation of a certain popular confusion of sociology with socialism ; for the mind of the multitude has no nice discrimination in the matter of nomenclature, and is ever ready to identify theory either with propagandism or with illu- sion, or with both at once.

The great want then of popular sociology is a foundation of precise, systematic knowledge, and a relevant scheme of evolu- tionary ideals. Whence is to come the means of diffusing the spirit of humanistic science through the social community ? How far is a general education capable of doing this ? The ques- tions noted above as constituting the elements of the popular social catechism belong also, it will be observed, themselves to definite groups of specialist studies. Some of them are the ele- mental inquiries and starting-point of the sciences of economics, ethics, and psychology. Others are fundamental to important branches of biology, physics, and aesthetics. The popular social catechism, in short, is, in a sense, itself the basis of the social sciences, and, moreover, its range touches the whole field of the encyclopaedia of the sciences.

How, then, does the mode of questioning adopted by the scientific investigator of social phenomena differ from that of the ordinary man ? In a great many ways ; but one point only calls for notice here. The aim of the pure scientist is to construct a moving panorama depicting the drama of social evolution as it proceeds through its various scenes and acts. In fact, the chief concern of the scientist is to get a good place from which to