Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/19

 THE RELATION OP SOCIOLOGY TO PHILOSOPHY. 3 3. Sociology, as contrasted with those branches of Philo- sophy proper which deal in any way with the facts ol society, pretends to the width and impartiality of a natural science. The laws of aggregation and of the behaviour of aggregates as such, though restricted by limitation to social aggregates, under whatever definition of the term " social " commends itself to the investigator, are the problems with which it deals. It has no primary reason for taking a greater interest in the Greek city or the nation of modern Europe than in the varied and unfamiliar phases of savage or bar- barian life. It does not confine its investigations to the State or the civic society, but wherever two or three are gathered together there is a problem such as may be pro- posed to sociological analysis. The employment of compari- son between human society and relations found to exist in groups of the lower animals is, as we might expect, vigorously defended by Comte, and in the hands of Mr. Herbert Spencer has formed the bulk of sociological inquiry. So far, indeed, as impartiality or neutrality is really observed we have no right to impute to Sociology as such the tendency to ex- plain what are commonly held to be the higher forms of life by reducing them to the level of those which are commonly held to be the lower. But some result of the kind has undoubtedly characterised the social science so far as it has hitherto been developed ; and the reason is not far to seek. An impartial science dealing with very general forms of behaviour we might take chemistry as an example will give a more complete account of objects in which those forms of behaviour are presented per se than of those in which they assume complications subservient to some further type of unity. Chemistry can say something of all material substances ; but it can say less, in proportion, of those which have biological significance. And so the most general treat- ment of the laws of grouping of living creatures has more in proportion to say of groupings in which no very complex self-realisation of the human mind is manifested than of those which involve all the functions of the human spirit at its best. And thus, quite apart from any set purpose of dragging down what pass as the higher manifestations of humanity, it results ip so facto that an account is given of them in terms which, while adequate to certain simpler phenomena, are not adequate to them. One can hardly get over Mr. Herbert Spencer's characterisation of a human society as a local variety of the species, a description which appears to disregard all the elements by which it is made social and human.