THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY.
II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD (continued).
Recapitul.\ting our argument, we may say that all the stu- dents of society who properly belong in the gild of philoso- phers of history have virtually undertaken to interpret human life as too exclusively a function of some single influence, about which they have formed a priori conceptions. They have done their best to arrange all the knowledge about human life within their reach so that it would tally with this hypothesis of prevail- ing influence. Their method has exhibited only a minimum of positiveness or objectivity. In spite of this long-distance communication with reality the philosophers of history have bequeathed to present social science a perception of a complex problem, which may be stated in this form: "Given the fact of these influences, which are evidently real in some degree of force in human affairs ; to discover when, how, in what propor- tions, under what conditions, and with what additional influences these factors operate in human associations."
While the philosophers of history have been shaping study of society in such fashion that students of society must inevi- tably propose their problem at last in the above form, dissatis- faction with the method of gaining knowledge has been growing. A few men have been moved by a feeling rather than by a clear perception that there has been defective realism or objectivity in the treatment of human experience. They have virtually said to themselves: "Let us plan methods of research by which we may know actual facts, to take the place of the irre- sponsible fancies with which social philosophers have been con- tent to speculate." One outcome of this movement is modern sociology.
The implication is not intended that the sociologists have invariably been more scientific than the philosophers of history. On the contrary, they have been, as a rule, equally and some- times more unscientific. They have, however, undertaken more
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