To the first but brief reference need be made. We shall speak a little more fully of the second. The third we must discuss at considerable length. The fourth has been treated above sufficiently for the present.[1] It will be unnecessary at this stage of the argument to discuss the fifth at all. It is sufficient to indicate that the sociology to be outlined connotes a teleological assumption,[2] and to promise proportionate attention to that division of the subject in later papers of this series. It is perhaps needless to add that these assumptions are not scheduled as logically coordinate. Our reference to Höffding would estop such appraisal. For certain sociological purposes, however, it is convenient to treat them as though they were equally ultimate and independent.
1. The philosophical assumption.—When we undertake to get a philosophical account of the relations of anything there is no stopping-place till we get back to the last metaphysical conceptions which it is possible for us to entertain. If sociological theory is to arrive at completeness of form, it must consequently square with some comprehensive setting. This does not mean that sociology is metaphysics. Neither does it mean that in the present condition of philosophy and sociology there is any visible consensus among sociologists about the philosophical setting of their systems. Precisely the contrary is the fact. All sorts of philosophical assumptions are adopted by sociologists, together with equally diverse theories about things intermediate between metaphysical generalizations and social combinations. The point is that every system of sociology needs for completeness some sustaining conceptions of the whole frame of things. These conceptions have to be borrowed from or foisted upon some scheme of general philosophy.
For instance, every sociologist is bound to assume something about the origin and modifications of the visible world, that shall be his theory corresponding to theological creationism on the one
- ↑ Vol. V, pp. 784 sq.
- ↑ Cf. below, p. 65.
content for (3) to the extent of its concern with relations between man and man. Throughout its work sociology again presupposes and is dependent upon (4), in so far as the mechanism of sentient adjustments must be considered. (Cf. above, Vol. V, p. 802, note, and below, passim.)
