Page:Challenge of Facts and Other Essays.djvu/438

Rh as subject to the same point of view and modes of thought as natural and other sciences.

Then there are the sentimentalists, who are the largest class and who make the easiest work of social questions. In the study of the individual organism we know that normal physiology presents the greatest difficulties and is the essential basis for a correct study of diseases and remedies. We also know that popular knowledge of physiology is meager in the extreme, while popular notions attach almost entirely to diseases and to remedies. The same is true of society. The study of the structure and functions of the organs of society is long and difficult, and we have, as yet, accomplished very little towards it. We can hope to accomplish much only by a long study of history and a careful examination of institutions. I venture to say that no study except the highest mathematics has ever yet made such demands on the human mind as are made by sociology. We cannot make an experiment in sociology because we cannot dispose of the time, that is, of the lives of a body of men and women. We have to carry in mind a great number of variables, to weigh their value, and to deduce their resultant, although for many of them we can find no unit of measurement or comparison, and although we have no notation to help us. I think that we shall have to adopt some of these methods of the other sciences sooner or later, but at present I see no means of advancing sociology save by the cultivation of a trained judgment through the careful study of sociological phenomena and sequences.

Under these circumstances the student of sociology as a science will necessarily feel great timidity about all generalizations. There are so many more things that he does not know than there are which he does know,