THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY 633
On the other hand, it may be said with equal truth that there are today no philosophers of any influence who are not in the last analysis monists. However vigorously they may insist upon the phenomenal distinction between the spiritual and the psychical, they assume sooner or later that underneath the duality of appearance there is an inscrutable unity of reality. It is accord- ingly a mark of inferior rather than of superior insight to char- acterize philosophers as monistic or dualistic. Practically all philosophy today is monistic in its ontological presumption ; it is dualistic or pluralistic in its analytical methods and in its classi- fication of phenomena. In the case of the sociologists the epi- thet is of very doubtful utility in any instance.' It is certainly so in the case of the men named by Barth in this group. Ward makes the physical element, which must be taken account of by the sociologist, so prominent in the scale that he has more than once been denounced as a materialist. On the other hand, his distinctive effort has been to get for the psychic factors in social reactions due recognition and adequate formulation. If we use the term "dualistic" as a mark of commendation, it is appro- priate to this group. The men named deserve praise for their efforts to show that a psychic as well as a physical phase of the underlying unity is wrought into, and must be recognized in, the social complexity.
More precisely, the significance of Ward is historically this : He first published (1883) when the influence of Herbert Spencer was probably at its height. In sociology that influence amounted to obscuration of the psychic element, and exaggeration of the physical factors concerned in shaping social combinations. What- ever be the fair estimate of Spencer's total influence upon soci- ology, it certainly operated for a time to concentrate attention upon the mechanical and vital elements in social combina- tions, and to obscure the psychic elements which are in excess of the physical. While the Spencerian influence was upper- most, the tendency was to regard social progress as a sort of mechanically determined redistribution of energy which
■ Particularly as it is a tenn without meaning unless it bears the tag of the par- ticular doctrine from whose viewpoint the fault is alleged.
