Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/429

410 I should think there was nothing that was better worth work than to get into the minds of the young men some notions that were sound in regard to such fundamental matters. Then in regard to this matter of divorce and the way in which it is acting upon the American people; it is a question that ramifies through the whole society and even the most dithyrambic of our orators have never gone beyond the truth of the importance of this matter to the American people.

My opinion in regard to this is that the way to build a science of sociology is to build it on the same fundamental methods that have proved so powerful in the other sciences — I mean the more or less exact sciences. We cannot pretend that we can ever make an exact science of sociology. We ought not to try. We haven't got the information, and I don't know that we ever can get it in the accurate, positive shape in which it is ascertained in the exact sciences. We are all the time dealing more or less with propositions that under certain circumstances will have to be modified. They are valuable, they are important, but more knowledge, more information, may force us to modify them. That will not do any harm. There have been sciences that have had a long and useful life, although they remained in that form. I don't think that is a fundamental difficulty, but it is one that we want to overcome so far as we can. We ought to be truly scientific so far as possible. We ought to use positive and well-tested methods and we ought not to trust any others. The methods that we use ought to be such as would be regarded as valid at any time and anywhere, on any subject.

Now if the young men are to be trained in this, you have got to bring them up to it by a study of a positive character that deals with facts and information. We