Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/205

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY igi

as the scientific classification of plants and animals founded on the minute evidences of relationship in cells and organs super- sedes the classification based on broad superficial characteristics, so every step toward a true science of society removes us farther from those groupings of social facts which appeal to the tyro. It is better to look for the common features of crowds or gentes, or secret societies, or mining camps, than to compare nations. It is better to draw parallels between systems of kinship or tenures of land, than between civilizations. Still better is it from the inspection of many cases of the same kind to arrive at general conceptions or laws concerning imitation or discussion or compromise.

What would have been the fate of economics if it had conceived itself as Comparative Industry, if it had contented itself with drawing parallels between national economies ? Economics has become a true science because within the same national economy it has found hundreds of commodities, of establishments, of mar- kets, of prices, of bargains, of individual acts of saving, or invest- ment, or readjustment. Sociology, likewise, in order to arrive at universals, must penetrate from the mass to the molecule. It must select some simple relation or interaction and pursue it through all the infinite variety of its manifestations. From detecting vague and superficial analogies among a small number of complex wholes it must pass to the discovery of true and deep-lying resemblances among a large number of simple ele- mentary facts.

The contrasts that first attract the notice of students of society are no less ambitious and sweeping than we have found the resemblances to be. St. Augustine makes the history of humanity turn on the antithesis of the Pre-Christian and the Post-Christian epochs, Bossuet on the contrast of the Chosen People with the heathen peoples, Cousin on the opposition of the Finite and the Infinite. Among the crude attempts at the differentiation of social phenomena are Hegel's balancing of Orient against Occi- dent, Kenan's opposition of Semite and Aryan, St. Simon's alter- nation of organic with critical periods in the life of society, Buckle's broad contrast of the Asian with the European environ-