238 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
expression, a method called statistics began to be applied. Thus there began to be tabulated facts about the ages of the population, marriages, births, deaths, occupations, crimes, arrests, punishments, conditions of dwellings, and so forth. All this is intended to be material for a science of population (dem- ography), which some of its representatives regard as the inclasive science of society. This science again stands in close relationship with history, since the mental traits of peoples and the conditions of society rest on historical development, and at the same time are determining factors in this develop- ment. Consequently history and social science came to assume the form of parallel, closely related general sciences, each of which includes a number of minor special sciences, the separation of which has been dictated by con- siderations of practical convenience. Among these the clearest are philology, as distinct from history, and economics and jurisprudence, as distinguished from general social philosophy.
An analogous process of division occurred in philology. In the Alexan- drian period its interest was wholly in the literary monuments of ancient Greece. During the Renaissance the view was broadened to include not merely the Roman literature of earlier times, but, through the influence of the Old Testament, Semitic culture in general began to be taken into account. At the same time the art of antiquity began to be studied by the side of its languages and literature. There consequently begins an extension of philo- logical pursuits in two directions : first, the philology of separate languages and literatures ; second, comparative philology, which has given the impulse to a number of related sciences — comparative mythology, jurisprudence religion, etc. In all these there is, of course, inevitable reciprocal reference between each and history. It is to be remarked in this connection that the comparative element has relatively larger scope in those cases in which the psychical products concerned are most spontaneous and unreflected, /. e., in a certain sense natural products, e. g., in the case of language, myths, customs, and, to a certain extent, law.
On the other hand, the more distinctly historical (genetic) treatment pre- vails in proportion as the objects concerned are of arbitrary and even indi- vidual origin — as in the case of art and works of literature. Hence, we have history of art and of literature, but no science of comparative art or comparative literature. In the former cases we have comparative philology and the history of language, comparative mythology and the history of mythology, etc.
The nature of the researches involves, moreover, the more general char- acter of the comparative sciences, since they concern themselves with a wide territory, if not with all the psychical products of their class, while the his- torical sciences may confine themselves to the narrower examination of a series, or even a series within a series. For instance, the history of the Indo- Germanic languages is one of the widest fields that can be covered by a his- torical language science. On the other hand, we have the history- of the
