SOCIOLOGY first two volumes of the Billiotheca Fratrum mm, consist of theological tracts, ex- positions of Scripture, and polemical treatises, with ;i great number of letters. Many of his unpublished letters are in the library of Siena. Thouirh Socinus was the founder of a schoo in theology, his influence was rather negative than positive. He denied the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the devil, the na- tive and total depravity of man, the vicarious atonement, and the eternity of punishment. His theory was that Christ was a man divinely commissioned, who had no existence before he was conceived by the Virgin Mary ; that hu- man sin was the imitation of Adam's sin, and that human salvation was the imitation and adoption of Christ's virtue ; that the Bible was to be interpreted by human reason, and that its metaphors were not to be taken literally. The name Socinian, which is often given to those who hold Unitarian opinions as a term of re- proach, was for a century the honorable de- signation of a powerful and numerous religious body in Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania. It was only the union of the secular and eccle- siastical force during the reigns of Sigismund III. and his successor that succeeded in break- ing up and dispersing the Socinian party in Poland ; and the Racovian catechism (so called from its place of publication, Rak6w in Po- land), compiled mainly from the writings of Socinus, is still the text book of faith and worship in many Hungarian and Transylva- nian churches. The opinions of Socinus are professed still by many churches in Holland, Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. His life was written by the Pole Przypcovitis, and by the Rev. Joshua Toul- min (8vo, London, 1777). SOCIOLOGY, the science which treats of the actions of men living together in society, and of the institutions thus created. Its scope em- braces the whole history of man from the ori- gin of language to the latest development of modern civilization. As a constructive sci- ence it is of very recent birth. In a looser sense, as consisting of general speculations upon social affairs, it is almost as old as so- r'u-ty itself. Plato, doubtless founding on le- gendary ideas about the relation between the microcosm and the macrocosm, discovered the parallelism between the parts of a society and the faculties of the human mind ; he also phil- osophically explained the rise of division of labor m a society. Aristotle classified politics constructed a framework for speculations on government, and stated two of the three sources the origin of society: instinctive gregari- lusness and experience of utility. The later k historians of Rome indulged in some ar- itrary theories about the influence of climate
- following the lead of Plato, tried to
'Ii-h an erroneous parallelism between a ociety and the human body; but his concep- the state, the Leviathan, as an organ- ism, a living whole made up of related parts was a real sociological advance. Pascal devel- oped this idea ; he regarded the whole succes- sion of human beings as a single individual man, whose youth is the world's antiquity, whose years are the world's generations, whose maturity is the world's prime; he thus for- mally enunciated the idea of progress, so vital to sociology. Vico held that it might be shown that peoples the most widely separated in place and time had followed nearly the same course in the development of their lan- guages and political condition. About the middle of the 18th century, the French eco- nomic sect of the physiocrats maintained that there are natural laws of society which give it a direction of its own, irrespective of legis- lative interference. Turgot even earlier had discovered that all epochs of history are fast- ened together by a sequence of causes and effects, and had concluded that there is an ordered movement of advance in societies. Herder, in his Ideen zur Philosophic der Ge- schichte der Menschheit (1784), considers hu- manity as an individual tending through many vicissitudes to perfection, which it reaches in another world. Of the many socialist schemes which sprang up after the French revolution, that of Saint-Simon alone has any scientific value ; and all that was true in his somewhat unscientific speculations has been incorpora- ted by Saint-Simon's secretary and disciple Auguste Comte in his positive philosophy. Comte first subjected the whole course of his- tory to a careful analysis, so as to throw new light on the development of society. He first fully apprehended the relations of biology or the science of man to sociology; first clearly stated the diminishing influence of physical surroundings on societies; first gave its entire weight to the increasing influence of social circumstances, both on the society in which we live and on that which has gone before us. Oomte was consequently the first to lay down he lines, although they are rude and imperfect,
- >n which a scheme of society as it will be may
be constructed. His sociology, however, bears the marks of the incomplete erudition and backward science of the time. When, in the hands of the Thierrys, Guizot, Villemain, and many others, history had taken a new depar- ture, Comte profited by the movement. But ihe studies of these distinguished writers were
- oo closely confined to the political and intel-
.ectual aspects of society, and Comte followed them in their exclusiveness. Coming in the wake of the great modern scientific move- nent, Herbert Spencer has attempted to change
- he face of sociology. Taking up the analogy
Between society and man, erroneously treated )y Plato and Hobbes, Pascal and Turgot, Spencer has converted it into a series of gen- eralizations exhibiting a correspondence be- ween individual organisms and societies, and of these he has made the basis of his new sci- ence. He describes each community as a so- cial organism, which has structures and func-
