Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/325

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REVIEWS 311

while to understand Schaffle, it is likely that he will presently get from Americans the attention that he deserves. To this end it is to be hoped that an English translation of the new edition will soon appear. The most striking change in treatment in this second edition is in withdrawal of physiological analogies and terminology. To such extent has this been carried that it will doubtless be hailed as an admission of former error by many who have made Schaffle the target of their ridicule. On the contrary, the author himself says that he has not changed his general conception of sociology in the slightest during the twenty years since he published his first edition. I predict that Bau und Ltben will be a second time epoch-making. It first, along with Lilienfeld's Gedankcn ubcr die Socialwissenschaft dcr Zukunft, compelled attention to organic analogies. It will now teach what Schaffle and his friends have incessantly asserted, viz., that the tracing of these analogies is not the essence of sociology, but merely the most vivid method of pre- senting the phenomena of society in such form that the actual prob- lems of sociology will appear. The analogies and terms suggested by them are tools of research and report, not solutions of problems. More than this, it will be seen before long that the men who have been accused of trying to found sociology on biology, because they have made more or less use of Schaffle's method of physiological expression, have really been more consistent in leaving biology to its proper sphere than many of their critics who have been scandalized by alleged attempts to make society a zoological species. The metaphors emphasize obvi- ous analogies between social relations and physiological relations. They are used as spurs to scientific curiosity, so as to facilitate dis- covery of the limits of analogy, and thus of the distinctively social phenomena. Is this more dangerous than assumption of immature, unsanctioned, and even discredited biological conclusions as safe premises for sociological deductions? A large amount of pseudo- biology has been exploited of late by sociological prudes who credit themselves with prodigious virtue for straining out the gnat of organic metaphor while they swallow whole caravans of condemned biological camels. Men of Schaffle's school have been more willing than many of their critics to wait until biologists have been agreed among them- selves about biological facts. The critics have often not only tried to graft sociology upon what they supposed to be biology, but they h.i\i- tried to sprout that biology out of their own unfertilized brain believe that candid study of this new edition of Bau und Leben will do