Part 26 (1/2)

READING REFERENCES

ELLWOOD: _Sociology in Its Psychological Aspects_, pages 352-381.

NEARING AND WATSON: _Economics_, pages 443-493.

BLACKMAR AND GILLIN: _Outlines of Sociology_, pages 373-392.

DEALEY: _Sociology_, pages 351-361.

SKELTON: _Socialism_, pages 16-61.

CARNEGIE: _Problems of To-day_, pages 121-139.

CHAPTER XLVIII

THE SCIENCE OF SOCIOLOGY

384. =Sociology vs. Social Philosophy.=--Sociology is one of the recent sciences. It had to wait for the scientific method of exact investigation and the scientific principle of forming conclusions upon abundant data. Naturally, theories of society were held long before any science came into existence, but they were of value only as philosophizing. Some of these theories were published and attracted the attention of thoughtful persons, but they did not affect social life. Some of them developed into philosophies of history, based on the preconceived ideas of their authors. Now and then in the first part of the nineteenth century certain social experiments were made in the form of co-operative communities, which it was fondly hoped would become practical methods for a better social order, but they almost uniformly failed because they were artificial rather than of natural growth, and because they were based on principles that public opinion had not yet sanctioned. The story of the predecessors of modern sociology naturally is preliminary to the history of sociology itself.

385. =Philosophers and Prophets.=--Two cla.s.ses of men in ancient time worked on the problems of society, one from the practical standpoint, the other from the philosophic. One group of names includes the great statesmen and lawgivers, like Moses, who laid the foundations of the Hebrew nation and gave it the nucleus of a legal system; Solon and Lycurgus, traditional lawgivers of Athens and Sparta, and several of the earlier kings and later emperors of Rome. The other group is composed of men who thought much about human life and disseminated their opinions by writing and teaching. For the most part they were idealistic philosophers, but their influence was far-reaching in time.

In the list belong Plato, who in his _Republic_ outlined an ideal society that was the prototype of later fanciful commonwealths; Aristotle, who made a real contribution to political science in his _Politics_; Cicero, who himself partic.i.p.ated actively in government and wrote out his theories or spoke them in public, and Augustine, who gave his conception of a Christian state in the _City of G.o.d_.

During the period when ancient ways were giving place to modern, and a transition was taking place in the realm of ideas, Thomas More, in his _Utopia_, and Campanella in his _City of the Sun_, published their conceptions of an ideal state, while Machiavelli took society as it was, and in his _Prince_ suggested how it might be governed better.

These are all evidences that there was dissatisfaction with existing systems, but no unanimity of opinion as to possible improvements.

Later theories were no more satisfactory. The French Revolutionary philosophers, especially Rousseau, with his theory of voluntary social contract, and the Utopian dreamers who followed, were longing for justice and political efficiency, but their theories seem crude and visionary from the point of view of the social science of the present day.

386. =Experimenting with Society.=--Robert Owen in England and Fourier and Saint-Simon in France were prophets of an ideal order which they tried to establish. Believing that all men were intended to be happy, and that happiness depended on a reorganization of the social environment in which property should be socialized, at least in part, they organized volunteers into model communities, expecting that their success would attract men everywhere to imitate the new organization.

The arrangement of industry was planned in detail, a co-operative system was organized that would keep every man busy at useful labor without working him too hard, would take away the profits of the middleman by a well-planned system of distribution, and would allow liberty in social relations as far as consistent with the general good, but would subordinate the individual to the community. Certain of the Utopians thought that it would be necessary for the state to determine the minutiae of daily life, and for a few directors to prescribe activities, and they introduced a uniformity in dress, food, and houses that savored of the old-fas.h.i.+oned orphan asylum. These features, together with the failure to understand that social inst.i.tutions could not be made to order, and that human nature was not of such quality as to make an ideal commonwealth at once actual, soon wrecked these utopian schemes and brought to an end the first period of socialistic experiments.

387. =Biological Sociologists.=--Not a few writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before sociology was born, recognized the need and the possibility of a true science of society. Scholars were studying and writing upon other sciences that are related to sociology--biology, history, economics, and politics. Scientific information about the various races of mankind was acc.u.mulating. At length Auguste Comte, a Frenchman, found a place for sociology among the sciences and declared it to be the highest of them all. In 1842 he completed the publication of the _Positive Philosophy_, in which he maintained that human society is an organism similar to biological organisms, and that its activities can be systematized and generalizations be deduced therefrom for the formation of a true science. In his _Descriptive Sociology_ and later works Herbert Spencer in England amplified the theory of Comte and arranged a ma.s.s of facts as evidence of its truth. He put too much emphasis on biological resemblances in the opinion of present-day sociologists, but his emphasis on inductive study and his generalizations from biology were important contributions to the development of the new science.

388. =Psychological Sociologists.=--Comte and Spencer were followed by other biological sociologists whose names are well known to students of the science. Interest was aroused in Great Britain, on the continent of Europe, and in America. Students were influenced by conclusions that were being reached in biology, in economics, and in other allied departments of thought, but the one science which became most prominent to the minds of sociologists was psychology. Ward's _Dynamic Sociology_, published in 1883, marked an epoch, because it called special attention to the psychic factors that enter into social life. After him it became increasingly clear that the true social forces were psychic, though physical conditions affected social progress. A younger school of sociologists has come into existence, and the science is being developed on that basis. More than one individual thinker has made his special contribution, and there is still a variety of opinion on details, but the general principles of the science are being worked out in substantial agreement. It is not to be expected that such a complex and comprehensive science could be completed in its short history of approximately half a century, or that it can ever be made exact, like mathematics or the natural sciences, but there is every reason to expect the development of a body of cla.s.sified facts that will be of inestimable value in attacking social problems, and of principles that will serve as a guide through the labyrinth of social life. The value of any science is not in the perfection of its system, but in the practical application which can be made of it to human progress.

389. =Relation of Sociology to the Natural Sciences.=--Sociology has relations to an outer circle of general sciences and to an inner circle of social sciences. It is itself but one of the social sciences, though it is regarded as chief among them. Man looks out upon the universe, of which he is but an atom, and asks questions.

Astronomy brings to him the findings of its telescopes and spectrum a.n.a.lyses. Geology explains the transformations that have taken place in the earth on which he lives. Physics and chemistry a.n.a.lyze its substance and reveal the laws of nature. Biology opens up the field of life. Psychology investigates the structure and functions of the human mind, and shows that all activity is at base mental. At last the new sociology discloses human life in all its complex relations.h.i.+ps, the function of the social mind, and the channels through which it works.