METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 1 29
generalization of the unintelligent sort are actual elements of knowledge given in positive experience, i. e., elementary data. Thus in zoology the notion prevailed for a long time that each organic species is a primitive organic form. The cants famiiiaris a.nd iht feiis domestka -wtxt held to be actual objects, but no one thought of admitting that the ruminants or the vertebrates as such have or ever had existence (i. e., the easy common abstraction was made into a concrete reality, while the more remote abstrac- tion of really the same nature was devoid of reality).
I must again call attention in this connection to the abstraction "sover- eignty," to which, in the same way, real existence has been attributed by the process of crystallization of abstractions into concrete existences. In close relation to above, logically, is our treatment of the concept "law;" /. e., we conceive of law as metaphysical necessity or as physical necessity, perhaps in the latter case deriving the attribute from law as generalized physical order. But we forthwith treat the concept " law " as though it actually carried its attribute of necessity into its workings, when its essential nature is only that of human command. As a result we have the whole brood of impotent social philosophizings which posit law as a self-enforcing potency. The methodological fault goes back to the rudimentary generalizing abstraction. In close interdependence with abstraction is the naming of phenomena. Nomination is a product of isolation. The name of an object, whether pro- duced in the ordinary course of language development or invented for scien- tific purposes, always stands for a single, though composite peculiarity (as in the case of " tree " above). A generalization is now closely associated with the naming. The name, originated in connection with a single object, is forth- with carried over to all the objects having the same peculiarity, and the name thus binds those objects together in a genus or species. It comes to pass, then, that nomination, besides being the product of isolating abstraction, is in consequence of that fact the most important coadjutor of generalizing abstraction. The natural sequence or correlation of isolation and generaliza- tion appears in the natural history of names as just sketched. It must be noticed here that names are accordingly both friends and foes of science. They bring advantages. They contain almost equal disadvantages. A name which has come into such common use that all traces of its original arbitrary assignment to objects are lost carries with it enormous authority; ^. ^., the name "virtue." We accept it as though it were the name of a concrete entity, whose attributes have been accurately ascertained. We forget that it was once the name of one kind of action, as for instance, among the Romans, "valor." That action had a certain evident utility. All actions believed to have a similar utility came to have the same name. But in scientifically appraising the concept " virtue " we have to ask, " Is that judgment of utility valid ? Is that utility general or special ? Do all the acts now subsumed under the term 'virtue' actually serve that utility?" Unless we get clear answers to these questions, it is quite possible that we are permitting the
