NOTES AND ABSTRACTS
An Open Letter from John K. Ingram, formerly professor of political econ- omy, Trinity College, Dublin, to the secretary of the Sociological Society of London, on the papers of Professor Durkheim and Mr. Branford, entitled " On the Relation of Sociology to the Social Sciences and to Philosophy " (published in this Journal, Vol. X, p. 134) :
DEAR SIR : I have carefully read more than once the two papers you have been good enough to send me, and in accordance with your desire, I proceed to state, as fully as my other occupations will permit, my views on the subject of which they treat.
I do not recognize the multiple " social sciences " spoken of in the papers. There is, in my view, only one abstract sociology, which deals with the constitu- tion, the working, and the evolution of society in all their aspects. (There are, of course, studies of different actual societies, but these are foreign to the present question.) The only philosophical division of abstract sociology, as distinguished from those dictated merely by convenience, is into social statics and social dynamics. The " social sciences " enumerated in the papers are, for the most part, in reality only chapters of general sociology. Thus, the abstract study of economics is a part of sociology. Anthropology is only the first section of dynamical sociology. The study of the nature and development of religion is an element the most important element of general sociology. Statistics is not a branch of science at all ; it is a congeries of observations ancillary to several sciences. Education is not a science, but an art, borrowing materials from several sciences. So also is jurisprudence. " Social geography " must, from the nature of it, be concrete. Morals, indeed, is a true science one of the seven rightly enumerated by Comte distinct from sociology, though closely akin to it, being the theory of individual human nature. The attempt to set up a number of " social sciences " can only tend to encourage pedantry and idle research, in a province where broad principles are not only the one thing needful, but are alone accessible.
Sociology cannot be built up out of the " several sciences ; " like biology, it is radically synthetic ; and as in the latter we start from the general notion of the organism and analyze it afterwards, still referring everything to its unity, so we must in sociology set out from collective humanity and its fundamental attributes, and study all sociological phenomena in the light of the social consensus.
To me this endless trituration of social inquiry, and separation of the workers into distinct specialisms, appear to overlook the real meaning and end of sociology, which is to establish on scientific bases a non-theological religion. It is positivism, as a foundation, first of social renovation, and then of permanent social guidance, that seems to me to supply the explanation of historical tendencies in the past, and to point to the goal of future effort. The notion of the construction or development of sociology by the joint work of theologists and positivists I regard as chimerical. We cannot shirk the previous decision as to the reality or non- existence of a supernatural interference in human affairs. The attempt to do so will break down. The world has come up to this question and must face it, while, if I understand the case aright, the Sociological Society proposes to evade it.
What is now, in my judgment, most wanted is a real study of Comte, who, though his fame has been irresistibly rising and spreading, is more talked of than understood, and is not as yet at all adequately appreciated. Some would, set him aside as pre-evolutionary, the fact being that, so far as social evolution is con- cerned, he has done immensely more than anyone else, and at an earlier date. I have endeavored to expound his principles, with which my own essentially coincide, in several publications, to which especially to Human Nature and
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