NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 263
effective. And it is here that I differ from Professor Durkheim, who appears to think that the laws of sociology are to be got only by generalizations from the specialisms, for whose reports in consequence they have to wait, as we have to wait for the milk before we can skim off the cream. I contend, on the contrary, that just as the laws of psychology, although bound up with physiological processes, and in their action affected by them, require a separate method for their discovery, viz., that of introspection ; so sociology, although not to be separated from the specialisms dealing with human evolution, draws its laws from other quarters, viz., from psychological penetration, from insight into the world of today, and the relation of its institutions to the human mind. For example, the effect of slavery on the mind and character of both master and slave is to be determined by direct penetration and insight into the condition of slavery as it exists around us. Once discovered, it can be reduced to a definite law which will hold good for any time or place in the world's history, and so belongs to sociology as a science ; but whether, and to what extent, at any given time or place slavery would work beneficially or the reverse in comparison with alternative organiza- tions of society is a question of the collateral conditions, and must wait for its solution until the reports of the specialisms dealing with the details of the country or period in question are sent in. While, therefore, I agree with Pro- fessor Durkheim that sociology must keep in touch with all the facts disinterred by the historical specialisms ethics, psychology, politics, political economy, anthropology, folk-lore, social statistics, etc. ; while I also agree that these specialisms have now found the right road on their own account, viz., the method of history, comparative study, and evolution, as distinct from the old theological or metaphysical methods, I disagree with him in his belief that sociology has to wait for the specialisms to come up, and then to extract its laws from them by skimming them off as generalizations. On the contrary, I hold that the laws of sociology have to be determined in the first instance quite apart from the historical specialisms, viz., by general insight and penetration into social life around us, by philosophical speculation in a word, and then projected into the specialisms ; the entire process being first the discovery of the laws in a crude general way, then these laws to be carried with us as a lamp wherewith to ransack and illuminate the garret of the specialisms ; the new facts discovered forming an ever-increasing aureole of lesser laws surrounding the major ones, and giving a more delicate scientific shading to their original bareness and crudity, and so on.
And this leads us to ask : What are the elements which these laws of sociology, when discovered, are supposed to connect and weave into a unity ? The answer is : Certain great general factors which are common to every age and condition of the world, and which, like the x, y, and z's of algebra, resume them and sum them up such as religion, government, philosophy, science, physical conditions, material and social conditions, and the like. And the first problem of sociology is to determine what these are both in number and character, neither lumping together those that have a separate sphere of operation, nor separating those that can be handled as one. (I may say in passing that I have myself been in the habit of using all of those just mentioned.) When these factors are deter- mined, we then have to find the laws of their connection and how they act and interact on each other ; and this, as I have said, cannot be got arithmetically, as it were, by generalizations from the concrete facts supplied by the specialisms, but only by direct penetration and psychological insight, as in a calculus, where cer- tain abstract factors have to be determined as functions of others, varying directly or indirectly with them, and united with them by certain laws. If then we ask how sociology stands at the present time in reference to all this, we may say that there are some half-a-dozen competing systems in the field which differ from each other either in the number of factors with which they operate, the way in which these factors are connected, or in both ; but as to which, if any, of these is the true system, has scarcely yet been debated, much less settled. Buckle, for example, operates with two factors, viz., physical science and physical geography, or practically with one only, physical science ; making the progress not only of knowledge, but of civilization in general, depend entirely on this, and wiping out at a stroke religion, government, philosophy, and literature, as mere obstructions ;
