Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/819

 MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY 789

tory of the same society, it is idle to cite a trait common to all societies and to all times. When Comte and Lacombe name ennui as one of the causes of social progress, they confuse cause with condition. Similarly Comte's demonstration that a greater longev- ity would injuriously strengthen the conservative forces in soci- ety does not warrant us in listing the brevity of life among the causes of social variation.

In fact, a fixed trait, whether of race or of locality, cannot figure as cause of a social transformation. Geography, to be sure, acquaints us with the framework within which social changes occur, and by which they are molded and limited. But the physical environment, while it may inhibit variative tenden- cies, cannot initiate them. Natural waterways and an indented coast may favor progress, but they cannot produce it. Soil and climate account for the enduring lineaments, but not for the metamorphoses of peoples. Unlikeness of surroundings may cause differences between societies, but it cannot bring about differences between successive epochs in the same society, unless in the meantime the people has migrated. Still, to the eye of the geologist, the environment is not quite stable. Elevation, subsidence, desiccation, the silting up of streams or ports, the shifting of river beds, the formation of pestilential marshes, or changes in flora and fauna, may cause disturbance in the social equilibrium, and should therefore find a place in the theory of social dynamics.

Eighteenth-century thought, regarding the forward move- ment of society as the direct consequence of the march of the human intellect, did not feel the need of exploring or setting forth the causes of social changes. Of late sociologists, swing- ing to the other extreme, have looked upon the stationary state as the normal condition of men owing to the inertia of the human mind. Now, while in the end all causal chains carry us back to the nature of man or of his environment, I showed in the first paper of this series 1 that the immediate reference of a social form to human nature is the mark of a crude social philosophy. We

'AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. VIII, p. 769.