THE PRESENT STATUS OF SOCIOLOGY IN GERMANY.
I.
THE official guardians of science in Germany have not yet brought themselves to grant sociology equal rights with other sciences. It is well known that sociology is not native to Ger- man soil. It was imported in the first instance from France and then from England. It is, consequently, to the present day regarded as an alien. Official recognition is so far refused that in Professor Conrad's Staatswortcrbuch the article "Sociology" is entirely lacking. German professors of philosophy and politi- cal science ignore sociology entirely, and whatever is done within this territory, either on the continent or on the other side of the channel, is hardly taken seriously here. On account of a fatal association of ideas the German professor joins sociology so closely with the names of Comte and Spencer that he is obliged to repudiate it utterly, by as much as he denies to the theories of these thinkers the rank of science.
While rejection of sociology may be partially accounted for by its alien birth, and jealousy about admitting it to equality with "autochthonous" sciences, nevertheless the admission cannot be avoided that the fault is to be charged in very large measure to sociology itself, because of the form which it has assumed. At the present day, when specialization is carried to the minutest detail, if a science is to maintain its existence, it must in the first place be able sharply to define its territory, and thus, in a certain measure, demonstrate its right to exist. In fact, sociology, as represented by Comte and Spencer, claims to be nothing less than universal science. In that case, what is not included in sociology? With the exception of a few special branches of natural science, sociology would include every department of human investigation which has anything to do with the psychical sciences. In this case sociology is merely
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