37 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Professor Giddings says:
[By consciousness of kind] I mean a state of consciousness in which any being, whether high or low in the scale of life, recognizes another conscious being as of like kind with itself."
It is about the subjective principle, he believes, that all social phenomena involving volition, and so motives, arrange them- selves. Does not this bear a striking resemblance to that con- scious reciprocal relationship between the self and its "other" which Hegel so forcibly pointed out in his Logikf 24 In fact, this ejective other-consciousness is recognized by present-day psychology as a necessary stage in the development of the self- notion.
When Professor Small says that "subjective interpretation 25 may mean either of two things " one of which is : " the reading of the interpreter's personal equation into the thing in question, and that in this sense it deserves no further notice" 26 I am inclined to take issue with him, and for this reason : our problem is to explain social phenomena ; consequently we cannot rest with mere description. If we cannot rest with description, we must study these phenomena more in their internal nature by reducing them to their elements. In the present case these elements are, in the first place, conscious selves, and then their interactions upon each other and upon their environment ; the most important factor in societary phenomena, however, being the interaction of these selves upon each other. Now, when we deal with such con- scious phenomena involving interacting wills, we can no longer assume the external, independent attitude. For the experiences which are the immediate antecedents and causes of these particular phenomena are to be found in the subjective experience of the individuals involved. But I, as an investigator, cannot get at those causes directly, since, by reason of each of us being indi- viduals, I cannot have his experiences transferred to me, nor mine to him. Therefore, the only way for me to get at those
"Principles of Sociology, p. 17. "Mind, N. S., Vol VI, p. 8.
- In his Elements of Sociology, PROFESSOR GIDDINGS uses the term " eject-
ive interpretation " in place of the present term, " subjective interpretation." " AMERICAN JOURNAL or SOCIOLOGY, Vol. V, p. 639.
