Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/283

 REVIEWS 269

that the functions of nutrition, reproduction, and co-ordination (rela- tion) furnish categories for a proper classification. Into the first of these he reads all economic phenomena ; into the second "which is singularly amplified in social life" love, marriage, education, family relations, etc. The third function is made to include moral, religious, intellectual, and aesthetic facts. This whole treatment affords an admirable illustration of the futility of mixing terms and confusing ideas. From all this elaborate analysis emerges an enumeration of social facts which differs only in unessential details from De Greef's hierarchy.

On the other hand, the chapters dealing with "The Correlation of Social Facts" and "The Evolution of Society" bring out clearly and effectively the truth that society is a unity to be studied in many aspects, no one of which dominates the whole, and that social change and progress are far from being interchangeable terms.

Part III treats of " The Social Sciences." A somewhat trite dis- cussion of science and art is followed by an equally barren attempt to correlate dynamic and static with anatomy and physiolgy. Then comes a discrimination between descriptive and comparative social sciences, which in turn yields to an enumeration of true social sciences as distinguished from certain pretended sciences. Statistics, ethnology, and history are included in the latter category, the first as an instru- ment of all sciences, the other two as dealing in a different way with materials already assigned to or appropriated by other sciences.

The final question is as to the character of sociology itself. M. Worms avoids the pitfalls of definiteness and finality with much ingenuity. There can be no single social science except in the same sense that biology includes all the sciences of the organic world. Hence the function of sociology is synthetic; it unifies the special social sciences. Moreover, it is scientific in its spirit and method, although it lacks phenomena peculiarly its own. Its function, however, is a philosophic one. Perhaps, therefore, it would be best to describe sociology as the philosophy of the social sciences. Thus the volume ends.

On the whole, the book adds little or nothing to existing con- ceptions or terminology. It serves however, to bring out in bold relief the difference between organizing concrete material and simply making phrases about it.

GEORGE E. VINCENT.