or even with correct reference to material and biography, so long as heterogeneity reigns in its premises.

At this moment the sciences of the state have reached such a turning point. That the state is the unitary organism of the total life of the people, and therewith that the science which embraces and interprets it is in antithesis with the science of the individual life, has been clear and recognized since human relationships have been grasped in their nature and have been logically expounded. Public law and private law; public finance and private thrift; civic history and description of life; have for thousands of years been regarded as distinct areas of thought and knowledge. It would accordingly be wholly superfluous to rehearse here the long familiar conceptions in order to be clear to oneself and to one's readers about the boundary lines of political science on this side. The case is different with a differentiation between the life of the state and the life of society, and with precise definition of conceptions and determination of boundaries between the respective sciences. Only now has this become possible, and consequently it has become a demand. Only quite lately have we arrived at a definite recognition that the life which men lead in common by no means has its existence in the state alone; but that intermediate between the sphere of the single personality and the organic unity of the life of the people there are many life circles which likewise have communitary objects as their aim, which do not originate from or through the state, even if they are already present in it, and are of the highest significance for weal or woe. These two circles of thoughts and doctrines, which for more than two thousand years have appeared to be similar, or at most as part and whole, have now shown themselves as essentially different, and must also be treated separately, so that henceforth they may exist side by side as dissociated but equally privileged divisions of human knowledge.2

This is one of the cases in which life has brought science into movement. The fact of the various orders of life circles was in existence ever since human beings were together. There was need only of clear vision for recognition and discrimination. But this was precisely the lack. Science remained blind, although, from Plato on, the communitary reality aside from the state was often sensed and vaguely mentioned, and particularly a number of peculiar and eccentric minds now treated this relationship with artistic playfulness, again in wrathful paradox in the attempt to make it tell against the existing conditions. These writings appeared to be equally beneath the notice of serious scholars and of intelligent statesmen. They passed merely as diversions in moments of leisure. At last the word Society was uttered; at first by visionaries and their followers; then gradually also upon the rostrum, in the

'What was the supposed nature of the supposed intermediacy? Was it spatial, or logical, or conceptional in some other sense? One may labor in vain to decide precisely what picture the vague figure of speech suggested to the writer's mind.

This figure of spatial side-by-sideness, or graduated up-and-downness, instead of functional togetherness of sciences, still gums up the imaginations of most scholars.

public house and in the secret assemblies of conspirators; it was borne aloft as a banner in frightful street battles. Then eyes suddenly opened. The whole indifference was converted into measureless alarm, so that now the formerly quite unknown word acted as a head of Medusa, which petrified the accustomed habits of freedom and the demands of the cultured and the moderate, and in a land otherwise not content with a reasonable measure of liberty, made possible an otherwise incomprehensible reign of lawlessness. It was not long before the seething in the market place and in the hovel had produced a numerous literature. A part of it was intended only to spread and incite wild revolutionary schemes, if not redistribution of goods by robbery. Other writings undertook the intelligent and not merely admissible but urgently necessary task of dismissing the conception of that existence which is distinguishable from the state and from the individual spheres of life-the needs, the present and the future of Society. Thus through word and deed a quite new object of consciousness, volition and thought came into existence. What at first appeared to be wholly vague and even nonsensical gradually acquired form and relative sanction, and it stood out with increasing definiteness in its contrasts with the related but still the different. Yet not all the promoters of political science have been able to make up their minds to admit the legitimacy of this new modelling of things. Many, however, of those who are actually entitled to a vote are agreed as to the necessity of the separation between State and Society, and consequently they concede the necessity of a separation of their scientific preserves and systems.

While, therefore, singularly enough, until the most recent times insight and will passed by unsympathetically, a new and great task is now presented. The science of society must be established and developed. Particularly its boundaries with respect to political science are to be determined. This has, moreover, not merely significance for society, but almost equally for the state and the science of it. In fact this new science will make it possible to eliminate from the old irrelevancies with which it has thus far been burdened; in fact a whole series of practical questions will now for the first time find their correct solution.

It might appear as though it would be sufficient for the purpose of this work-which proposes only contributions to the history of the political and not also of the social sciences-to take merely general notice of this change in the treatment of the political sciences, so that a secure staking out of the region to be traversed may be possible, and a standpoint gained for evaluating many hitherto necessarily confused doctrines. More precise consideration shows, however, that in the present condition of the new discipline a bare application of its results cannot so out of hand occur. Rather must, in the first place, its own sort of investigations be undertaken, and points of attachment must be gained upon its own responsibility.

So far, this was precisely the task which the early American sociologists set for themselves. It is impossible to tell precisely how far their content for the term "Society" differed from that of men like von Mohl.

Up to the present, indeed, even those who recognize the necessity of the new science are by no means settled in their views about it. If a secure basis for delimitation and judgment is to be gained, the promoters of the new science must make their own way and drive down the boundary stakes as they go along. Only in that event can one be secure against being diverted into byways by leaders who are not agreed among themselves.

For going so far afield compensation will be found also in the fact that, in the course of the investigations about the societary questions, opinions and writings will be discovered which in many ways refer to the political sciences, and facilitate later judgment of the same.

In the following section (pp. 72-88) von Mohl reviews and characterizes the attitude of the political scientists up to date toward the facts which he distinguishes as societary,' and in the third section (pp. 88-101), he elaborates his own conception of the concept "Society." For the present purpose it is enough to state that his analysis consists virtually in the enumeration of sample groups, peculiarities of which he briefly suggests, which are either partly or wholly outside the range of political science. Thus: (1) Stände (vocational); (2) Gemeinden (parishes) as something more than administrative areas; (3) economic associations (laborers, promoters, capitalists); (4) nobility; (5) clergy; (6) artisans; (7) peasants; (8) land owners; (9) castes; (10) races; (11) creedal groups; (12) the educated strata versus the uneducated; (13) the family, etc.

With the foregoing indication of von Mohl's outlook, we may dismiss him from consideration. The essential point is that a group of German political scientists at the middle of the nineteenth century came into view of societary problems, in terms which correspond essentially with American formulation of sociological problems today. That is, they assumed that there are phenomena of many human groups besides the state and subdivisions of the state which must be investigated, and that a distinct science is needed for the investigation. We need not wonder that the further proposals, by such men as Ahrens and von Mohl, for the organization of the needed science were unworkable. Our present knowledge of developments in the line of these suggestions does not enable us to trace the sequence between von Mohl and Kohler. It is to be On p. 77 von Mohl casually mentions Comte. I had overlooked this fact when I made a statement to the contrary. Encyc. Amer., title "Sociology," p. 212.

hoped that followers of Deans Pound and Wigmore in this country will write this chapter in the history of methodology.'

Meanwhile, for more reasons than one, it is memorable that Heinrich von Treitschke took it upon himself to extirpate the Ahrens-von Mohl heresy. In 1859 he published a monograph entitled Gesellschaftswissenschaft, ein Kritischer Versuch. It was an argument to the effect that political science was amply able to deal scientifically with all groups in human society, and that a new science for that purpose would consequently be superfluous. Instead of silencing forever the claims of the innovators, Treitschke's opposition served to keep alive the spark which had been kindled. Whether a direct connection can be made out between these midcentury sociologists and those who succeeded in winning a place in the sun, is one of the questions which must remain for the present unsettled.

SECTION XIX. THE EMERGENCE OF SOCIOLOGY IN THE

UNITED STATES

ABSTRACT

The "drive toward objectivity" of which the previous sections have exhibited incidents initiated the American sociological movement, not by foisting formulas upon passively receptive minds, but by generating a critical spirit, by means of the entire tradition of social science methodology, both toward that methodology itself and toward tried and untried proposals of social programs. The immediate antecedents of American sociology were the Verein für Socialpolitik and its offspring, the American Economic Association. Until now American sociology has covered only the necessary rudimentary period of determining working categories. The place of Lester F. Ward in the movement is indicated. The modicum of identical ideas among the beginners is described. The sociologists had to take their turn in learning that objective reality, not antecedent definition, eventually molds science. An appropriate title for a sympathetic story of the American sociological movement up to the present time would be Up from Amateurism.

We have thus followed the growth of a tradition of objectivity. It did not so much precipitate dogmas as it enlarged and clarified consciousness of the complexity of human relations. It stimulated awareness of the many-sidedness of the requirements, if there is A note on p. 750 of Small's "Fifty Years of Sociology in the United States," American Journal of Sociology, XXI (1916), is so worded as to convey the impression that von Mohl, like Treitschke, opposed those who demanded a new science of society. Just before the note was written I had given in a lecture substantially the same account of von Mohl's relation to sociology which appears in this chapter. The blunder is therefore without excuse.

I

to be competent research into these relations. It induced keenness of discrimination between mere fictionizing and opinionizing about the human lot, and discovery of actual correlations of cause and effect. It produced among the most teachable learners a deep humility of conviction that the human mind had been mostly meandering in the field of social discovery, and that serious research was due to begin.

All that has been said in this survey thus far might be compressed into the single sentence which has been repeated in various versions, viz., Sociology has a venerable genealogy. Sociology was not like Topsy, not even like Minerva, born in complete maturity from a single creative brain. Sociology is a branch of the great trunk of social science. Social science itself has been developing into increasingly definite self-consciousness, and consequently into increasingly adequate self-expression. Sociology is merely one of the latest articulations of this completer self-expression by the great body of students of human experience.

This outline has doubtless provoked the questions, perhaps it has encouraged the corresponding attitude-What of it? What does any body care? Why is it worth while to dig up the record of all these people who are no more to us than we to them?

This is the answer: Whatever we may construct as a logical statement of what ought to be true, it is true that we cannot be as intelligent as we might be about the present problems or the present processes of any science, unless, among other things, we have joined company with the people who have at length differentiated the processes; in other words, unless we have acquired our sense of the present condition of that branch of knowledge in part by the historical approach, i.e., our sense of the present condition is not a sense at all, it is a numbness, without this historical approach. We do not fully take in the problems as problems, unless to a certain extent we have put ourselves back into the state of mind of people before our time who were pioneering through blind trails that opened at last upon the problems of our own time, and were experimenting with devices for dealing with pioneering difficulties.

A secondary reason was also referred to in the introduction, viz., that this historical approach enables us to reduce the amount of