60 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
sociologists, though rarely physical scientists, are dealing with a subject-matter which is in part that of physical science. They are sure to carry preconceptions of the physical relations involved into their descriptions and interpretations of association. Progress toward authoritative sociology must consequently involve inces- sant reference of crude physical conceptions to competent scien- tific review, and consequent reorganization of sociological theory whenever it rests upon untenable scientific assumptions.
3. The individual assumption. In order to an adequate theory of human associations there is need of intimate acquaintance with the human individual, the actual person concerned in association, the germ plasm of the whole affair. This is to be insisted upon for its own sake, but also incidentally for the reason that certain critics of present tendencies in sociology insist that the sociolo- gists are entirely on the wrong track, since they start by leaving individuals out of the account. These critics assert that the sociologist cares only about societies, but that the things which he thinks he knows about societies are necessarily wrong, because we cannot know societies without understanding the persons who compose the societies.
The criticism seriously misinterprets the sociologists. Instead of ignoring the individual, nobody has seen more clearly than the sociologists that we must stop taking a fictitious individual for granted, or, still worse, assuming that it is unnecessary to take a real individual into the account at all. Nobody has more strenu- ously insisted that we must analyze human personality to the utmost limit in order to posit the real actor in association. The sociologists have therefore quite as often erred in the direction opposite to that alleged by these critics. They have invaded psychological and pedagogical territory, and usually without equipment to do respectable work. They have been tempted to this sort of foray by encountering in their own proper work the need of more knowledge of the individual than is available. It is true the sociologists think that, when division of labor is fully organized, study of the individual, as such, will fall to others. But the social fact and the social process will never be understood till we have better knowledge of the individual element in the fact
