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372 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
must serve the religious leader before he can most wisely judge the matter. And let us not forget that statistics are to the student of social affairs what the microscope is to the biologist. They are only a tool of the scientific student. Statistics simply bring social phenomena where they can be seen and valued. When this has been done established social principles often enable the stu- dent to go beyond the conclusions of the mere statistician. The examination of meager data is sometimes quite sufficient to justify a wide prediction. All the material sciences proceed on the assumption that in certain departments of investigation general laws can be predicted from the facts found in a few specimens, or at least a working-hypothesis may be taken to be verified by later or more enlarged studies.
This well-known scientific principle has guided this inquiry as it has some other investigations, which its author has made, extended statistics confirming earlier predictions. The exami- nation of a very few cases disclosed a certain uniformity appar- ently due to a psychological principle analagous to that of the physiologist, who has discovered that in case of ordinary use the muscle recovers from fatigue in two to four hours but when the action is carried so far that exhaustion has occurred the recovery to the natural tone is the work of weeks or months of rest. The psychologists seek to recognize a similar law touch- ing the effect of great mental excitement. Of course the princi- ple of evolution and the solidarity of all life suggested that the same law might be found in the field of sociology. Aside from a recognition of the practical value of the results of the re- search the present investigation is an attempt to bring together enough of the facts to justify some scientific conclusions and to stimulate further study by others in a field much in need of scientific treatment.
The data are all drawn from New England and chiefly from the last three quarters of the nineteenth century simply because no other can be readily obtained. It would be helpful if we could have gone over churches in the West or gone back to the revivals of Finney in Western New York and elsewhere, or followed Nettleton to the South, or Miller and Burchard beyond New
