sociology and natural causation, but there is also a distinction to be made between the various kinds of evolution-cosmic, organic, and social or mental (the latter including the social). The difference between the integration of matter and the dissipation of motion, on the one hand, and adaptation to environment, on the other, is sufficiently great to warrant no further comment. The difference between organic and social evolution is not so obvious, although of prime importance. Mr. Ward expresses the distinction in a formula to this effect: "the environment transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment; " 19 meaning that in organic evolution the animal is passive, while man reacts on his environment so rigorously as to change it, so that in the interaction of the two there is a constant spiral dialectic. Man reacts upon his environment, and by his reaction. changes it; it, in turn, in its changed form reacts upon him, bringing about, not alone a change in him, but also a reaction by him; so that, through every action of man, it is in so far changed, and so presents an ever richer and more complex front. Professor Venn, in somewhat different connection and under different circumstances, brings out practically the same point when he says that when the objects under observation are conscious individuals, any conclusion which predicts future occurrences on the basis of generalizations of past experience will be invalidated just so soon as it is published, since by that fact of publication it affects those individuals on the basis of which it was made.20 The reason for this would be that just as soon as the conclusion is made and falls into the hands of some individual whose actions it discusses, that very consciousness of the uniformity of actions in one direction or another will add another ingredient to the causal antecedents of that action. If it tells the individual that a fact that he has never nine out of ten men do a certain thingbefore known-it may lead him, by reason of his desire to do the conventional thing, to perform that action; when before seeing the statement he would have been inclined to do the opposite. Or, if he be an individual of the "contrary" type, he may refrain

Empirical Logic, pp. 575 ff.

from that action simply because the majority of men perform it. This is directly in line with the contention above (pp. 361 ff.) to the effect that social process reacts upon and effects changes in the social matter. Furthermore, social evolution is spiritual evolution; and we must note another difference between spiritual evolution, on the one hand, and cosmic and organic evolution, on the other, on the ground that the latter two proceed by slow and gradual accretions, with only slight variations arising for natural selection to work upon. But spiritual evolution proceeds by leaps and jumps, as history very conclusively shows, in so far that social progress cannot be accounted for without considering the prophets and geniuses who were the great forerunners of epochmaking movements, and then the slow approximation to their standards on the part of the mass of the people; and, therefore, not alone must the formula for social evolution take these facts into account, but it shows also that when we attack the problem of social evolution we must come to it armed with more than the evolutionary formula current in natural science, if we wish to explain anything in the societary world.

The position just taken that every individual's reaction changes the environment brings with it another point. Examine the principle which M. Tarde puts central in all societary phenomena― the principle of imitation-and it must be conceived of in internal, and not in external, terms in order to make it valid. Mr. Bosanquet says:

Imitation is a bald and partial rendering of that complex reciprocal reference which constitutes social co-operation. To say that imitation is characteristic of society is like saying that repetition is the soul of design.” Imitation cannot be made a solely external process; for its nature will not permit it. To make it such would be almost like a man holding a hammer on a rivet and another striking it, and then calling that process imitation.22 In societary processes this contact must be stated in inner terms. What is meant by this will be somewhat explained in the next paragraph but one.

"Mind, N. S., Vol. VI, p. 7.

22 For a further consideration of this, see Part II, the discussion of Imitation.

Professor Giddings says:

[By consciousness of kind] I mean a state of consciousness in which any being, whether high or low in the scale of life, recognizes another conscious being as of like kind with itself."

It is about the subjective principle, he believes, that all social phenomena involving volition, and so motives, arrange themselves. Does not this bear a striking resemblance to that conscious reciprocal relationship between the self and its "other" which Hegel so forcibly pointed out in his Logik? 24 In fact, this ejective other-consciousness is recognized by present-day psychology as a necessary stage in the development of the selfnotion.

When Professor Small says that "subjective interpretation 25 may mean either of two things"-one of which is: "the reading of the interpreter's personal equation into the thing in question, and that in this sense it deserves no further notice" 26 -I am inclined to take issue with him, and for this reason: our problem is to explain social phenomena; consequently we cannot rest with mere description. If we cannot rest with description, we must study these phenomena more in their internal nature by reducing them to their elements. In the present case these elements are, in the first place, conscious selves, and then their interactions upon each other and upon their environment; the most important factor in societary phenomena, however, being the interaction of these selves upon each other. Now, when we deal with such conscious phenomena involving interacting wills, we can no longer assume the external, independent attitude. For the experiences which are the immediate antecedents and causes of these particular phenomena are to be found in the subjective experience of the individuals involved. But I, as an investigator, cannot get at those causes directly, since, by reason of each of us being individuals, I cannot have his experiences transferred to me, nor mine to him. Therefore, the only way for me to get at those 24 Mind, N. S., Vol VI, p. 8.

28 Principles of Sociology, p. 17.

25 In his Elements of Sociology, PROFESSOR GIDDINGS uses the term "ejective interpretation" in place of the present term, subjective interpretation." "AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. V, p. 639.

experiences, and to be able to get any causal explanation at all, is to examine my own consciousness when it has led to similar actions, and conclude that his inner experience leading to those actions was similar to my own.

There is another way of getting at that experience which was the cause of the given phenomena. The subject of these actions tells me why he acted thus; what it was that influenced his will into just that volitional discharge. But just as soon as he tells me, he has put his experience into words which are merely media of exchange or coin of the realm of inner, subjective experience, and so those words are translated back into inner subjective experience by me (into appreciatively descriptive, and not scientific, terms),27 so that, whichever way it is looked at, that notion of appreciative interpretation, or understanding others by reading my own experience into them, is indispensable. Consequently, to get at societary fact it is a necessary preliminary that the subject connect himself vitally with the world of his investigation, so that he feels himself as part of that world, as having fellowship with it. And here we are beyond doubt in the world of appreciation, and so in the preserves of metaphysics. Furthermore, Professor Small seems to put an unfair interpretation on Professor Giddings's statement when he calls this reading in of subjective experience the reading in of the personal equation, since the term 'personal equation" has acquired a bad meaning, owing to its standing for a lack of scientific exactness. Now, this meaning of the term is entirely inapplicable to Professor Giddings's term subjective interpretation."

66

The discussion which has gone before may be utilized in advancing another point, which has no doubt become clear by this time, viz., that the interaction between individuals which furnishes the phenomena for sociology is in reality an internal interaction, and not simply external contact, such as is treated by physical science, and such as is required by physical causation. It was pointed out above that the causation involved in sociology is of a different sort from that involved in natural causation; that there is an internal element present. The formula for social evolution "For a characterization of appreciatively descriptive terms see p. 356.

was found to be vastly different from that for cosmic evolution. We saw that, in order to understand the causes of social phenomena by going to individuals, we were required to get into terms of fellowship with the object of our investigation, so that the interaction from that point of view is found to be internal. The conception that all interaction is and must be internal has been current in philosophy since Lotze.28 Professor Giddings realizes the necessity of such a conception when he says:

I have never thought or spoken of mere contact, whether hostile or friendly, as constituting association or a society. It is association if, and only if, accompanied by a consciousness on the part of each of the creatures implicated that the creatures with which it comes in contact are like itself." This involves a recognition, though not necessarily conscious, of certain appreciatively descriptive terms as descriptive symbols whereby appreciative experiences are characterized, and only after such recognition can these terms be used.

Professor Small says: "The social fact is the incessant relation between three chief factors: nature, individuals, and institutions or modes of association between individuals." 80 Now, what is this more or less than the field of metaphysics? Metaphysics investigates the nature, meaning, and final meaning of nature, individuals, and the modes of association between individuals. Now, if the social fact is the "incessant relation" between these three, then, in order to understand that relation-and to understand that relation is the problem of sociology-we must first understand what the inner nature of those three is; for interaction that is external is a conception that, as Lotze has pointed out, involves all sorts of difficulties; leaving internal interaction as the only tenable alternative. But since sociology deals with interaction, and interaction demands the knowledge of the inner nature of the things interacting, then this interaction, which is the object of sociological investigation, cannot be understood unless we have first investigated the inner nature of the things interacting, and which from our starting-point are: nature and individuals. 28 LOTZE, Metaphysic, Book I.

"Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. V,

p. 750.

30AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Vol. V, p. 788.