and society as the only reality.29 On the other hand, it might be fairly asserted that the thoroughgoing individualists of the English school saw only persons, and thought of society itself as the abstraction. With Comte the family, not the individual, was the unit of the social organism. Spencer, in spite of occasional aberrations in favor of the family, represented the individual as corresponding to the cell in the animal body. Spencer's political views made him adhere to a conventional individualism not always congruous with the biological analogy. His influence told, therefore, in favor of the older idea of the individual as a reflecting, calculating unit, consciously co-operating in society for his own ends, and nicely weighing his own interests against those of his fellows. All the political philosophy of Rousseau, mediated through the French Revolution, chimed with this theory of the individual. Oddly enough, the "great-man" doctrine of Carlyle aroused Spencer to the defense of his biological conception of social evolution. In demonstrating the continuity of this process and vindicating the uniformity of causation, Spencer was obliged to explain the "great man' as a product of his age and social group—a theory which did not always jump with the implications of his political creed. Before this discussion was dropped, William James,30 Fiske,81 and Grant Allen 32 had been drawn into the lists. The latter in his Psychology dealt with the “social self" in a suggestive and enlightening way.33 This was the first of a series of studies by various scholars which have radically modified the concepts of the individual and of personality. The same problem was also partially involved in the attempt of Mackenzie to abstract the organic idea from the biological sociology.34 One of the elements of this organic idea is "an intrinsic relation between the part and the whole," i. e., the person and society.

20 BARTH, loc. cit., p. 55.

30 JAMES,

"Great Men, Great Thoughts and the Environment," Atlantic Monthly, October, 1880.

31 FISKE, "Sociology and Hero Worship," ibid., January, 1881.

32 ALLEN,

"The Genesis of Genius," ibid., March, 1881.

33 JAMES, Psychology (New York, 1890), Vol. I, pp. 291-95.

34 MACKENZIE, Introduction to Social Philosophy (New York, 1890), pp. 127–82.

The essential idea in "intrinsic" is that each gets its meaning from the other. The individual can be understood only in relation to his group, and the latter has no meaning apart from the persons who compose it. In this view not only society but the individual is an abstraction from a complex unity which includes both.35 This general thesis has been developed by several social psychologists, notably Baldwin and Cooley. The former explains the growth of personality as a process of give-and-take with the social group. This makes for a uniformity which is prevented from becoming identity because of the inventions or particularizations of individuals. Society grows by the generalizing or imitating of these particularizations.38 The process as a whole closely corresponds with Tarde's, but the latter's psychological analysis of the social person is far less keen and detailed. This view of the individual as at once a social product and a social factor is a rational and scientific mean between the old individualism which made the person almost independent of his group, and the socialistic fatalism which represents the individual as merely the outcome of social forces over which he has no control.37

The danger that the new social psychology might overemphasize uniforming tendencies and neglect the forces which individuate the members of a group has not been realized. Of late the tendency has been rather to investigate the facts and causes of individual differences. The influence of sex,38 race, disposition, and occupation has been studied. Patten explains English evolution in terms of four types dominant at different periods-the clingers, sensualists, stalwarts, and mugwumps. Giddings classifies character into four categories- the forceful, convivial, 35 COOLEY, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York, 1902), chap. i. 30 BALDWIN, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development (New York, 1897), pp. 7-9, 455-65.

39

87 A clear statement as to the transition from the old to the new theory of the individual may be found in PROFESSOR ORMOND's article "The Social Individual," Psychological Review, January, 1901.

38 THOMAS, "On a Difference in the Metabolism of the Sexes," AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, July, 1897; March, 1898.

30

PATTEN, The Development of English Thought (New York, 1899), pp. 23–32.

austere, and rationally conscientious. 40 Ratzenhofer regards only congenital differences which he assorts into nine subdivisions of three great classes - the normal, abnormal, and defective.41 The differentiating influence of social institutions and occupations has been analyzed in a suggestive way by many investigators and students. While most of these essays are merely tentative, they are full of promise. The individual as today conceived by sociologists is a far cry from the abstraction who with inalienable rights, a preternatural rationality, and an unhampered will stalked out of the "social contract" into the nineteenth century.

The influence of physical environment on social organization and activity has long been a mooted question. The contrast between materialism and idealism is as old as the Politics and the Republic. Is man the creature of contour, soil, and climate; or is he the master of his fate? The Physiocrats and Montesquieu gave materialism an impetus which brought it well into the century. Comte's interest in the subjective phase of social evolution diverted his attention largely from the objective. The rapid development of natural science toward the middle of the century again brought to the fore the naturalistic interpretation of social and individual differences. Buckle, Guyot, and Draper pushed this view to an extreme which seemed to make the continuity of natural forces from beginning to end not only complete, but relatively direct. Buckle, for example, represented the "aspect of nature" as stamping its effect upon a people in an immediate and easily perceptible way.42 The careful researches and inductions of geographers like Ratzel and Ripley, and the contributions of the Le Play school in France, have led a reaction against the theories of the direct influence of nature on society. Le Play and his followers insist that environmental influence is mediated in an indirect and complex way through a long hierarchy of conditions, activities, and institutions, beginning with place and ending with the rank of the society in the scale of civilization. Vignes 40 GIDDINGS, Inductive Sociology (New York, 1901), pp. 82 f.

41 RATZENHOFER, Die sociologische Erkenntniss, pp. 260-71.

42

"BUCKLE, History of Civilization in England, 2d ed. (New York, 1863), Vol. I, pp. 85 f.

states the main thesis of the school to be that nature determines work and reward, which in turn mold the society and differentiate its population.43 Demolins in recent volumes has illustrated the Le Play theories concretely as applied to the creation of different local types in France, and as explaining the leading racial groups of the world. A similar tendency is observable in the United States, where scientists like Shaler and Brigham, historians like Hart and Turner, geographers like Ripley and Miss Semple, and sociologists like Giddings, have been at work upon the problem of environmental influence. The general tendency away from the idea of immediate effects toward the theories of influence exerted indirectly through social institutions is attributable largely to the increasingly important part which sociology is playing, not only as a science, but as a social philosophy which affects all the social sciences.

The idea of social progress was fundamental with all the philosophers of history. Whether spiral as with Vico, or rectilinear as with Condorcet, the path of human advancement, was not to be missed. DeGreef has traced the historical origin and development of this idea which was a part of the heritage of the nineteenth century from the past. 45 Rousseau's "back to nature" and the golden age of primitive innocence left this optimistic dream intact. Comte by his division of sociology into static and dynamic provided a new term for progress which he regarded as conditioned by the intellectual movement generalized in the law of the three stages. With the prevalence of positivism all differences of opinion—“intellectual anarchy"—would perforce disappear and complete harmony would reign in a final static order. The idea of evolution as illustrated by social changes is the great central concept of nineteenth-century sociology. It is everywhere dominant, and every problem has been stated or restated in terms of the developmental doctrine. But evolution and progress are

43 VIGNES, La science sociale, d'après les principes de Le Play (Paris, 1897), pp. 57-63.

DEMOLINS, Les Français d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1898); Comment la route crée le type social (Paris, 1901).

45 DEGREEF, Le transformisme social (Paris, 1893).

by no means synonyms. Spencer naturally discovered in his law of evolution certain criteria which were sometimes assumed to be those of advance. Heterogeneity, coherence, definiteness, were often set up as tests-however abstract and difficult to apply — of social advancement. But Spencer really relied upon his two social types of militarism and industrialism with their characteristic status and contract. Here was an infallible criterion. Whatever tended toward military autocracy portended retrogression, while movement toward industrial liberty and free contract was to be reckoned progressive. Ward represents the Comtean theory that intellectual control is the guiding dynamic agency. Telesis -purposeful social action—is contrasted with genesis—unconscious, natural social growth-and likened to the calculated course of an ocean liner as compared with the drifting of an iceberg. 46 With Ward the diffusion of accurate knowledge is an automatic means of progress. Giddings, admitting that the problem is philosophic, rather than scientific, sees three progressive stages in social evolution: (1) political centralization; (2) criticism and freedom; (3) industrial and ethical development.47 By these he would test the degree of advancement and the trend of a given people or society.

In an address delivered in 1892 Mr. A. J. Balfour examined the popular belief in progress, taking up successively the arguments from biology, the increase of knowledge, and the elevation of ethics. His conclusion was that there are no rational or strictly scientific grounds for predicting progress, and that it is futile to raise the question. 48 While sociologists as a class would hardly take this view—while, as a matter of fact, they expect their researches to have social utility- their present interest may be said to turn, not so much to large philosophic generalizations concerning vast secular movements, as to the more definite scientific study of concrete social phenomena. They are concerned rather with the laws of change than with the formulation of 46 WARD, Pure Sociology (New York, 1903), pp. 463, 465.

47 GIDDINGS, Principles of Sociology, pp. 299 f.

48 BALFOUR, "A Fragment on Progress," Essays and Addresses (Edinburgh, 1893).