As will appear presently, we even include under the term "assumptions" the very aspect of reality which sociology investigates, viz., human associations. It would be pure pedantry to indulge in dialectic proof that human associations exist. We accordingly number them in this preliminary statement with the other aspects of reality which sociology must take for granted. The conduct of sociology toward the considerations thus assumed must sometimes be active calculation, and sometimes merely a holding itself responsible for adjustment to these remoter considerations whenever it is in order to complete the fragmentary sociological knowing by merging it into the completest possible knowing. By using the term "assumptions" we do not imply that we take the realities thus referred to in a hypothetical or speculative sense. The contrary is rather the case. In order that sociology may have scope for itself, within which attention is focussed in a peculiar way, outside of which attention is focussed in other ways, we assume the reality of certain objects of attention, our own among the rest. We proceed to assert our responsibility for placing our subject-matter at last in its real relations with these other objects of attention. We are then free to pursue our particular inquiries. We shall thus not seem to be asserting an impossible independence of the containing and controlling reality to which our presumptive knowledge must at last render its account.
The assumptions to which it is necessary to refer are accordingly five, viz.: first, the philosophical assumption; second, the cosmic assumption; third, the individual assumption; fourth, the associational assumption; fifth, the teleological assumption.[1]
- ↑ Höffding (History of Modern Philosophy, English trans., Macmillan & Co., 1900, Vol. I, Introduction, p. xiv) says that philosophical investigation centers in four main problems, viz.: (1) the problem of knowledge (the logical problem); (2) the problem of existence (the cosmological problem); (3) the problem of the estimation of worth (the ethico-religious problem); (4) the problem of consciousness (the psychological problem). The place of the sociological section of general philosophy may be indicated in terms of this scheme by saying that sociology presupposes all of (1) and everything in (2), except that portion of the cosmos which is composed of men associating. Even this latter sociology assumes as a fact, as we have said above. This assumption is the starting-point of sociology. Sociology accordingly accepts responsibility for investigation of associations as such, and elaborates material to furnish a
