THE FOUNDERS OF SOCIOLOGY 109
that may conveniently be singled out is that currently associated with the utopists. The characteristic of this variety of sociolo- gist is not his emphasis on observation or on reasoning, but rather on the part played in life by the emotions. Here the pioneer names commonly set down are Plato and Augustine already cited as characteristic examples of another school Campanella, More, Harrington ; and perhaps to these we may add Condorcet and St. Simon.
Although they are not conventionally classed among the founders of sociology, yet are there not strong giounds for including the great statesmen and ecclesiastical organizers, the constructive philanthropists and the educationists? If it is appropriate to include these more practical types, then our list of founders would have to be extended so as to include men like Charlemagne and Richelieu, Cromwell and Washington; men like St. Benedict and Hildebrand, St. Francis and Loyola; men like St. Bernardin and William Penn; men like Pestalozzi and W. von Humboldt.
It is not contended that this scheme of classification is any- thing more than a somewhat arbitrary convention for tracing one's ways through the inadequately explored history of the science of sociology. It shows, however, with sufficient vivid- ness the great diversity of type of mind that has gone to the building even of the incomplete foundations of the science of sociology. It would be a hopeless task in the short space of this paper to enter upon a comparison of all these numerous and varied types with a view to discovering what is, as it were, essen- tial to the sociological habit of mind and the social propensity. Numerous and divergent as may be the approaches to sociology, yet can we not find one great exemplar in whom, for his own times, they can all be said to unite ? In answer to this question, the names that will at once suggest themselves to most of us will be those of Comte and of Spencer. But Spencer is happily still with us, 1 and it is too soon to indicate and evaluate his position in the history of sociology. From a study of Comte as the supreme type of the sociologist we could not fail to learn
1 This was written in October, 1903.
