Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/588

 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

do not deserve a place in this schedule as means in some measure to both classes of ends, does not appear. Whatever our estimate of them otherwise, they certainly have been as distinct factors, for weal or woe, in fixing the course of civilization as either of the others.

Another of the humors which Ward's most appreciative friends occasionally detect in his work is the delicious lapse in the passage (pp. 37-41) from the strictly objective, non-valuing attitude that he prescribes for himself and for "pure sociology" in general (p. 4 ). He passes into edifying discourse, and points the faint-hearted and the suspicious to a way for sociology to escape pessimism when observing the " paltry littleness " of individual acts and motives. We must fix our gaze rather on the worthy and the grand in the sum total! Good and wholesome doctrine, but what has become of the severity of our " pure sociology" when it allows itself to be seduced into valuations at all ? !

At the close of this chapter Ward betrays doubt whether his " achievement " and the " origin and spontaneous development of society "actually cover each other. His instinct is evidently closer to the truth than his schematology.

Chap, iv, "Methodology," is not the sort of thing that is due from Ward under this title. It bears too plain marks of accommoda- tion to the summer student. It wanders among side issues style, pedagogy, vagaries of scientists, etc. (pp. 45, 46). There is discussion of the need of method, but no real contribution to method.

The most important methodological content in the chapter is its expansion of the proposition ( p. 48 ) : " In the complex sciences the qual- ity of exactness is only perceptible in their higher generalizations." This is said to be "a different thing from the truth that in the complex sciences safe conclusions can only be drawn from wide inductions" (ibid.). If it is a different thing, it becomes important to find out what it means, and then if it is true. To show what he means Ward cites the economists as in fault because they try to discover "truth of too low an order to be established in sociology" (p. 49). Explanation of the proper procedure starts with the formula: "The method of sociology is generalization" (p. 49). The proposition is correct, so far as it goes, but I am not satisfied with the author's explanation of its meaning. "The illusion of the near" (pp. 49, 50) is a happy phrase for an obvious fact, but its relation to logical generalization is hardly as cardinal as the argument at this point would make out. The special case exploited is good padding for a popular lecture, but it is emphasized unduly as an illustration, and fails as a substitute for