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reason is in a true sense a social product. Conversely society is by no means merely the product of the individual mind. The solemnity with which variations of this perception have been heralded as newly found correctives of errors in sociological doctrine, is like nothing so much as the pompousness of a precocious chicken cackling over a nest egg which she mistakes for her own production. SchafHe has been so inconsiderate as to have made commonplace for twenty years some of the most pretentious recent original contributions to psychological sociology. Second, the men who are most interested in developing general sociology are most intelligent and efficient in encouraging further development of the special sciences. Third, instead of being a superfluity, a general philosophy of society is proved to be necessary by the undeniable provincialism of each of the special social sciences, in default of the general philosophy in which they might find correla- tion.
Social observation must be guided, according to Schaffle, under two categories, "one which considers the social body and its func- tions apart from the facts of continuous change, growth, and decay, and accordingly attempts to gain a general morphology, physiology, and psychology of society." To be sure the author at this point drops into biological metaphor, but he means simply the forms and processes displayed in continuous human association. With these metaphors he imports nothing into the facts which is not recognized, for example, by Dr. Simmel in his societary geometry or crystallography, and by Dr. Ross in his analysis of social control. The second category is that of development, which considers the social body and its functions in the process of evolution, both past and future, and which founds a doctrine of social evolution.
Both conceptions modify Schaffle's procedure, not only in the gen- eral part (Vol. I), but also in the special analysis of divisions of social life in Volume II. The general portion of the work is accordingly divided into two main divisions ; first, a general analysis of existing social structure; second, an historical analysis of the most significant phenomena of social evolution. In the special part of the work each chief division of social phenomena is considered in this double aspect, so far as the author's knowledge perm
The explanation contained in the section already quoted concludes substantially as follows : " Obviously sociology cannot succeed com- pletely in the first attempt. The treasures of the separate and special
