METHODOLOGY OF THE SOCIAL PROBLEM 239
German language ; or, narrower still, the history of low German, or of the high German, or even of the dialect of a given region. While, then, the sub- divisions so derived may be regarded as parts of philology in the broadest sense, they are, of course, not less special fields of history. Besides these historical species, there are other kinds of historical science with more direct historical pedigree ; thus, derived from political philosophy and jurispru- dence, we have constitutional history, history of law, economic history, and history of economic theory. These divisions, which are concerned rather with the conditions out of which historical occurrences were derived than with the events themselves, have been subsumed in recent usage, with history of art and literature, under the still more comprehensive term Culturgeschickte, history of civilization, and this has been put over against political history. In this way our own century, particularly, has developed a host of special psychical sciences. To such an extent is this true that our age perhaps ought to be known, not as the era of physical science, but as the era of psy- chical science. In general the physical sciences are pursuing the paths marked out for them in the seventeenth century. The psychical sciences, on the other hand, since the comparative method has been adopted, and since the historical treatment of problems has been applied to all sorts of material of psychical interest, have undergone such thorough renovation that its present import is measureless {i. e., the significance of the changes which these psychical sciences have undergone is too great to be comprehended).
This mushroom growth of the psychical sciences has made it virtually inevitable that the logical organization and coordination of their multiplying disciplines should be far behind that of the natural sciences. The chief responsibility for this condition of affairs — besides the relatively recent development of the last mentioned comparative and historical specialties — must be borne by two circumstances.
First, the interlacing of these different subjects is vastly more manifold than in the case of the natural sciences. To such an extent is this the case that there is little agreement in any of these departments as to where the one science ends and the other begins. More than this, it is doubted if fixed boundaries can ever be drawn between many of the chief of these sciences — e. g., philology and history, political and cultus-history, or even between social philosophy and history.
Second, there is up to date, for the psychical sciences, no such funda- mental discipline as mechanics for the natural sciences. Mechanics is funda- mental not merely in furnishing the universally applicable presuppositions by means of which all physical, chemical, and biological problems are to be solved, for there is still room for differences of conception and opinion about some of these fundamental notions ; but, still more, mechanics furnishes the method by means of which the special problems had to be treated.
Within the psychical sciences we are far from recognition of a funda- mental science of a parallel sort. If we were to collect opinions today among
