Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/814

794 whatever is sound and true in the tradition-wealth of each people. In his thought social organization was an art rather than a science. Though many of the legislative remedies he advocated may seem to us peculiarly trivial and inapplicable, yet we must remember that he regarded laws as merely aids to right development, and for the most part sought to ingraft upon existing French legislation only such special features as had been found helpful elsewhere. By changing the laws of inheritance, or giving more power to the fathers of families, one can not bring again the reign of primitive simplicity. For, despite Le Play's denial, we are not in all respects "the same that our fathers have been." Even though it were admitted that the moral law change not, yet the means of procuring daily bread do surely change, and that continually, and in some measure "invention" must be used in social science to find the proper way of fitting society to the changed and changing situation.

But, in spite of all defects, two special merits belong to Le Play's work in social science. The first is, that he insisted on studying concrete, not abstract "society"; he employed the statistical method. It has been said, to be sure, that "figures always lie"; and certainly charts and diagrams, and brace-synopses that profess to set forth social facts, either past or present, should be accepted with profoundest caution. They are things to be used as Spencer uses them in his "Descriptive Sociology," not as being in themselves final results, but only as a means that may help us in reaching results more nearly final. Social facts are too intangible to make it possible to bottle and label them, once for all, as one may chemicals. The per cent "lost in analysis" is always too large to allow the results to be taken as final. But, after all this has been acknowledged, there remain manifest advantages from even "approximate determinations." Though the methods are not perfect, they are the best that social science has, the only ones that make continuous progress possible. The great mass of work done or inspired by Le Play has already been of use to many students not of his school. Laspeyres has classified and compared his "budgets" with valuable results, and the omnivorous German statisticians have, of course, made use of them.

But, aside from right method and patient accumulation of social data, Le Play should, in the second place, be remembered as one who dared to question the seductive finalities of what claims to be economic orthodoxy; who, in turning from the study of abstractions to the study of men,"refound" the need of insisting always upon not only the social and sociologic, but also upon the economic importance of morality and regard for fellow-man.