sity of earning their daily bread by practical labor, so that they may keep on pushing upward in the attempt to reach the pinnacle of human achievement. We ought not in this day and age of the world to be complaining about the expense of giving a few choice men a little food and clothing while they are trying to master for their own generation what the generations before have accomplished. Woe be to our civilization the moment it concludes, and acts upon its conclusion, that men are now studying too long, and that they ought to begin earning their living earlier! Our universities get a chance at but an infinitesimal part of humanity anyway-just a handful of persons who, speaking generally, have the power to deal with complex things of an intellectual character. These need to be encouraged to keep on in their course; the natural tendency is to stop, for the road is steep and rocky. We need not fear that too many people will follow the difficult path; the chief source of danger is in the likelihood that too few of them will have strength and courage enough to scale the heights.

Of course, if they should all give their whole time to Hebrew, or Greek, or metaphysics, or philology, they would soon be a drug in the market; and this may account for the situation in Germany. But we need have no fear of such a catastrophe here. Science in all its ramifications, and history in its relation to present problems of government, and medicine and law and commerce and engineering - in brief, everything that concerns the progress of mankind—is too much in fashion in the universities of our country to admit of the development of a class of learned paupers. It is true, without doubt, that a man may become possessed of vast learning and not employ it for the good of his kind; but, taking the thing as a whole, the educated man in all times and places has served the community that begot him. If his service in the sum has not been as great as it should be, and if in individual cases nothing at all has been given, the defect must be due to the method of the teacher, who has either taught useless stuff, or who, while filling the heads of his students, has forgotten their hearts. He has left the springs of conduct untouched; he has not fired them

with the thoughts and aspirations of the race which are embodied in its literature and institutions and art. But this defect suggests the need of more, not less, education; it requires for correction a longer, rather than a shorter, period of training; it makes it imperative to add to the college course instead of subtracting from it.

M. V. O'SHEA. THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN.

MOOT POINTS IN SOCIOLOGY.

I. THE SCOPE AND TASK OF SOCIOLOGY.

So the subject matter of sociology is the social aggregate ! But what is meant by the social aggregate ? Where does it begin, where end? Is it humanity, the race, the nation, the community, the class, or the voluntary association? “Study the social organism," they bid us, but nowhere do we perceive a social body complete in itself, with head and members, periphery and viscera. We see extending everywhere a web of human beings, woven now close, now loose; binding men together sometimes with many threads, sometimes with few; uniting them at times directly, oftener indirectly, through other men, or through centers of attachment such as common interests, ideals, or institutions. Where in this continuous tissue shall we find a social cadaver to dissect ?

In another quarter it is held that sociology is concerned only with the action of human groups on one another — social phenomena — and the influence of the group on its individual members-psycho-social phenomena. According to Gumplowicz and Bauer, not social wholes, but the hundred interlacing groups into which men combine, are the proper subject of study. This, no doubt, is an enticing conception, for it excuses us from showing how groups form and how a group-type or a group-will arises out of the play of mind on mind. It is not clear, however, that the sociologist may ignore the genesis of the group any more than the biologist may ignore the genesis of the organism. Then, too, quite aside from the group, there are man-to-man relations, which are well worth studying. How the social mystery begins to clear when we have made out such typical relations as those between model and imitator, apostle and disciple, leader and follower, or between two dissentients, two consentients, two competitors, or two persons with common interests! Yet such a couple is not a group any more than a

binary star is a solar system, or a molecule of two atoms a body.

Most helpful is Simmel's notion that the true matter of sociology is not the groups themselves, but the modes or forms of association into groups.

In bodies the most diverse a church or a guild, a trust or an art league—may be found identical modes of union. Despite their infinite variety of purpose, the groupings of men reduce to a few principles of association. Among such "forms" are equality, superiority and subordination, division of labor, imitation and opposition, secrecy, and hierarchy. To work out the various relations in which associates may stand to one another, and to discover what happens to groups in consequence of the more or less of each relation, is the task of the sociologist.

Nevertheless, I prefer to consider this attractive area, not the domain of sociology, but only one of its provinces, viz., that of social morphology. The partialness of a conception which focuses our gaze on the human interactions themselves is well brought out by comparing it with another conception which rivets attention on the results or products of these interactions. For Dr. Ward the subject-matter of sociology consists in human achievement. How do languages, sciences, and arts come into being? How does the coral reef of civilization rise ? This is certainly one of the most fascinating and practical of studies, but, as Dr. Ward distinctly states, it does not cover all the ground. I should place his superb book, as (say) Vol. III, in a complete treatise on sociology. For how can you draw a firm line between those modes of human interaction which yield a permanent product, and those which leave behind them no lasting result ?

Mobs and panics, public opinion and social suggestion, are certainly worthy of study, albeit they contribute nothing to the sum of human achievement.

A widening circle of thinkers make sociology equivalent to the science of association. They would have it deal with the conditions, motives, modes, phases, and products of association, whether animal or human. Here is, indeed, a virgin field to till, and to it we all gladly retire when our neighbors stigmatize us

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as poachers and claim-jumpers. But who contents himself with this territory? Professor Giddings so conceives sociology, yet he tells us a few pages farther on that it is concerned with “the constant elements in history." All sociologists are keen in their ambition to find out the springs of human progress, to lay bare the prime causes of social transformations, to trace the influence of environment on the character of population, and to correlate the various phenomena of social life. Yet none of these properly belong among the problems of association.

Social psychology, social morphology, social mechanics — all of them are, it seems to me, but convenient segments of a science, the subject-matter of which is social phenomena. I say “phenomena" in preference even to "activities,” because it embraces beliefs and feelings as well as actions.

But," it will be urged, "what phenomena are social? People yawn, sleep, mope, plan. Is this sort of thing social just because they are neighbors ? The solitary ape behaves in the same way.” This query cannot be better answered than in the words of Tarde: "What a man does without having learned from the example of another person, walking, crying, eating, mating, is purely vital; while walking with a certain step, singing a song, preferring at table one's national dishes and partaking of them in a well-bred way, courting a woman after the manner of the time, are social."

If the social is not the vital, neither is it the individual psychic. So we might add as supplement to Tarde: “When one fears the dark, delights in color, craves a mate, or draws an inference from his own observations, that is merely psychic. But when one dreads heresy, delights in 'good form,' craves the feminine type of his time, or embraces the dogmas of his people, that is social.”

But we cannot go with Tarde when he says: “The social is the imitated.” Psychologists recognize that one idea calls up another in virtue of contrast as well as in virtue of resemblance. Likewise a person's behavior may be determined in way of opposition as well as in way of imitation. “Contrary” children are controlled by telling them just the opposite of what you wish