NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 269
in a century and will certainly continue to do so, on condition that it remains self-contained and does not abandon the study of facts and texts, and above all that it does not place itself at the service of any system whatever. Philosophy will come later, when the specialist sciences have progressed further. It will profit from their work and will produce synthesis. It will indicate if the evolution of human society is subjected to constant laws, and in what measure. At the present moment this question seems to me premature, and I fear it will only trouble and disconcert researches that are being made on all sides and which ought to be accomplished independently.
FROM PROFESSOR J. H. MUIRHEAD, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, THE UNIVERSITY
OF BIRMINGHAM.
I find myself in agreement with Professor Durkheim's very able analysis of the disadvantages resulting from the absence in the minds of workers in particular fields of what he calls " the sociological conception of unity." But I could have wished that he had made it clearer what this conception is which is to give birth to the " sentiment of their solidarity." The value of Mr. Branford's paper seems to me to lie in his suggestions on this head. He seems to regard the historical and analytic work of sociology as secondary in importance, and the science to be concerned " ultimately and supremely with ideals." This statement raises the whole problem, for if this is so, the unity that both writers desire must be looked for in some common agreement as to what is meant by an ideal ; how it is pos- sible ; how it operates ; whence it derives its contents questions of psychology, individual and social, and of general philosophy. In this view I entirely agree ; but it involves the paradox that the more fully we recognize it, the more difficult we shall find it to treat society as continuous with nature in the sense assumed by Professor Durkheim in his opening sentences. Comte, it will be remembered, denied the possibility of a psychology in the modern sense, and it was only natural that he should assimilate sociology with the natural, or physical, sciences. There is, of course, no harm in defining sociology as the aggregate of sciences which treat of social phenomena from whatever point of view commends itself to the specialist ; but both papers seem to seek for some more unified conception of it, and the direction in which Mr. Branford's seems to point is doubtless the right one : the utilization of the results of these sciences in constructing a reasoned account of contemporary civilization, and in working out ideals of more ordered development for the future. Professor Durkheim's own admirable monograph on The Division of Social Labour is an example that occurs to me of how this may be effected. So soon as a considerable body of work of this philosophical kind has accumulated, it cannot fail to react on the labors of specialists in particular fields, part of whose aim will then be to render their work available for such co-ordination ; and in this way the solidarity Professor Durkheim seeks will be gradually achieved.
FROM DR. J. S. TAYLER, AUTHOR OF " TEMPERAMENTS : A STUDY IN SOCIAL
EVOLUTION."
There is one point I should like briefly to allude to, and that is the need for determining the relative importance of the many different social sciences as sources for supplying information for sociological investigation. All such sciences are not of equal relative value in this matter ; some cover largely the same ground as sociology does, deal with the same facts, often grouping them into wide generalizations which differ only in aspect and outlook, but not in principle, from like generalizations in our main subject ; others only touch the boundaries of the work we have in hand.
If we do not treat the more important contributing sciences more fully than the less important, we shall lose sight of the greater issues which have to be con- sidered to make our work scientific. We can easily give our investigations a predominantly industrial, medical, legal, philosophical, or moral coloring, without desiring to do so, if we merely let our studies be guided by the views that the majority of us hold as a result of our daily habits and occupations. In proportion
