266 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
rigidly scrutinize the implications of the special sciences included under that name. Durkheim, however, seems to leave the special sciences spreading all over the field of the general sciences without suggesting some general principle which gives them all their due place and limits their relation to the whole.
FROM HON. BERTRAND RUSSELL, AUTHOR OF " PRINCIPLES OF MATHEMATICS," ETC.
The only point on which I distinctly disagree is the statement that " a con- trolling science of sociology is, as Comte shows, a necessary postulate of science itself." To my mind, this view involves a confounding of origin and validity.
FROM PROFESSOR A. S. PRINGLE-PATTISON, PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND METAPHYSICS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.
So far as I can see, I should have no difficulty in subscribing to all that is said in the first paper. The inclusion of human phenomena within the unity of nature means, I presume, simply the establishment of laws in social phenomena, and is not intended to obscure important differences that may exist between human phenomena and other phenomena of nature.
The second paper is probably more severely condensed and difficult to follow. The sixth paragraph in particular remains, after repeated reading, very obscure to me. But if I understand the rest of the paper aright, it seems to me quite correct, though I should not favor the adoption of the " generalized statement " in the last paragraph as a " definition " of sociology. I do not know whether that is intended, but for such a purpose something less highly generalized would seem to me more suitable.
FROM RIGHT HON. JAMES BRYCE, M.P.
Though unable to agree with the ascription of a very high value to what Comte did for sociological inquiries, and still less able to concur in Durkheim's estimate of Spencer's work for he seems to me to have contributed little beyond formulas I am quite at one with Mr. Branford's contention that it is of great consequence to have an endeavor now made to map out the whole field covered by the various sciences that deal with man's activities as a moral and intellectual being, so as to show the relation of sociology in its widest meaning, to the biological sciences on one side and to history on the other, which, indeed (as Mr. Branford observes), may in a sense be deemed a branch of sociology, or sociology studied by one method. Such a mapping out may well be fruitful and suggestive, for it would set in a clear light the interdependence of the several branches of sociology, indicating how each may profit by the development of the others, and if it be abstract in one sense, it is eminently practical in another.
FROM DR. J. II. ItRIDGES.
Mr. Durkheim admits that to Comte is due the establishment of the idea of extending natural law to human societies. But he thinks that Comte's actual constructive work was characterized " by general views and a certain indifference for factual detail and the researches of specialists," and that he set the example of seeking the laws of social evolution " by speculative rather than by observational methods." During the last half-century there has been, Professor Durkheim maintains with perfect justice, a revolutionary change in many special branches of research. This change consists in the introduction of the historical and the comparative method in application to the evolution of institutions. The problem before us is to incorporate these renovated specialisms into the science of soci- ology ; to arrest the threatened isolation of general sociology from these important branches of research which are rising everywhere so vigorously, and which threaten to overlap each other, and, so to speak, to crowd each other out.
If in the few remarks that follow I speak principally of Comte, it is not as a matter of literary interest, not because as an avowed disciple of Comte I wish to take every possible opportunity of thrusting his name forward, but in order to call attention to a special section of his work on Positive Philosophy which appears to me to throw light on the problem proposed for our consideration by Professor Durkheim. I am referring to chap. 48 of his work, entitled
