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shown that this standard is determined partly by the necessities for food, clothing, and shelter and partly by the ideals, that is the traditions, beliefs, education, and ambitions of the families. These latter things are chiefly the psychic factors, but when the income is small these ideals are not able to find much expression in the standard of living that the class maintains. My question is not whether the psychic factors are more important than the economical factors in determining the standard of living, but whether the standard of living can be accounted for only in terms of psychic forces. It seems to me that such a thing as a standard of living for a class is determined chiefly by the economical and psychic factors together with perhaps several others as physical environment, etc.

DR. RUDOLPH M. BINDER, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

There are two classes of students in sociology-those who intend to devote two or three years to this subject, and may wish to specialize in it; and those who can give it but little time in one year. The former need and should receive as strict a scientific training as sociology is able to give. The latter-and their number is legion-need inspiration, contact with living problems and reform movements. In their case strict scientific methods are not applicable, and a general acquaintance with sociological principles is all that can be required. This class of students should nevertheless be encouraged, both because they will make better workers in their own fields through this elementary knowledge of sociology, and because some at least will find this study sufficiently profitable to pursue it farther.

PROFESSOR CARL KELSEY, THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

I am tremendously interested in the general trend of thought evidenced by the papers read this morning. It seems to me that we have spent altogether too much time in trying to justify our own existence and in marking out division lines between the older subjects and our own. The field of human knowledge is, after all, one and the different sciences represent but different viewpoints from which the field is studied. I believe that the future of sociological teaching is bright if we can restrict ourselves to the study of concrete problems, problems not in the sense of pathology alone but with clear recognition that all social phenomena, whether of advance or decay, involve problems. It is our business to study these and I can only hope that in our presentation to the classes we may in some measure adopt the magnificent and tremendous logic which characterizes the work of our honored Nestor, Professor Ward.

PROFESSOR JERome Dowd of THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA

Resolved, That the chair appoint a committee of ten, including the president of the Sociological Society, to make a report to the next meeting of the society, consisting of: First, a statement of the subject-matter of first courses now given in the colleges of the country; and, second, a suggestion of the subject-matter for a fundamental course to serve as a guide to sociological teachers and as a basis for advanced work.

In support of the motion Professor Dowd said:

There are two reasons for this motion: First, in taking rank as a science and in attaining to that dignity and respect which the importance of the subject and the wide interest in it demand, it seems to me desirable that sociology should standardize its fundamental courses in the same way that the fundamental courses of other sciences are standardized. For illustration, when a student takes Chemistry 1, Physics 1, Biology 1, Economics 1, or Law 1, such course stands for a definite subject-matter, and enables the student to find an easy adjustment in going from one institution to another, and it forms a solid basis for advanced work.

Second, I believe that the concrete statement of the subject-matter of a fundamental course would harmonize and crystallize our views as to the scope and field of sociology to an extent that no amount of theoretical discussion could possibly do.

The resolution was adopted, and the following committee was appointed.1

1910.

For names of committee, see American Journal of Sociology, January,

SOCIOLOGY AND THE STATE

LESTER F. WARD

Brown University

I

Sociology must be something very bad because it is so much like vice. Most of those who hated it at first sight now embrace it and the rest are either in the enduring or the pitying stage.

As in the case of nearly all other sciences sociology was at first attacked and called a "pseudo-science." The sociologist is perfectly familiar with this, and it has ceased to trouble him. He has been hearing it from Lorenz Stein, Dilthey, Maurice Block, Bernheim, Lehmann, Treitschke, Martini, Van der Rest, and Leslie Stephen. They all say the same things, nothing more and nothing new. Some pains were taken at first to show that there were vast fields which no other science has ever touched or can touch without becoming sociology. But the need of sociology was so great and so keenly felt that there ceased to be any call to defend it. The people of all countries actually demanded the new science. None of the other sciences held out any hope of furnishing a theoretical and scientific basis for the study of the social problems of the day. Political economy had become a sort of quietism, and bade the people hush and cease to disturb the established order. But the people would not hush, and the unrest grew. Economics then vaulted over to the Austrian theory of value, which is a sociological principle, and then pretended that it had always been the "master science." Political science floundered about among a thousand fine-spun and wholly improbable theories of the state. It was both politically and socially hopeless.

When at last a science of both human origins and human welfare rose on the horizon it was immediately welcomed as that which had been so long looked for. Launched by Comte and fathered by John Stuart Mill, it moved, though at first slowly.

Accepted by Herbert Spencer and recognized by several strong continental writers, it got on its feet during the last decade of the nineteenth century, and before the beginning of the twentieth century it had become the most popular of all the sciences. It began to be taught in one after another of the higher institutions of learning, and at the present time it seems there are about four hundred such in the United States alone in which sociology forms a part of the curriculum.1 Something analogous to this is true in other countries but I cannot quote any recent statistics.2

Perhaps the surest index of the growth of sociology and of the hold it has taken of all enlightened nations is the number of sociological societies that have sprung into existence during the period under consideration. Inaugurated by the formation of the International Institute of Sociology in 1893, followed by the Sociological Society of Paris in 1895, the movement spread to Brussels where the Belgian Sociological Society was founded in 1899, transformed into the Belgian Institute of Sociology in 1901, between which dates in 1900 there was founded at Budapest the Hungarian Society of Sociology. A Laboratory of Sociology was established at Palermo in 1901 and an Institute of Sociology at Madrid in the same year. In 1903 England fell into line and the Sociological Society of London was born. Our own American Sociological Society arose in 1905. Austria awoke in 1907 and produced the Soziologische Gesellschaft at Vienna, and on the occasion of the retirement of Professor Gumplowicz from his chair in the University of Gratz in 1908 a sociological society was founded there in his honor. That same year saw the rise of two more sociological societies in Hungary, viz., at Nagyvarad and at Györ, and it was also in 1908 that the Institute of Sociology was founded at Catania. Finally, during the present year of 1909 the contagion reached Germany, and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie was in1 Amer. Journ. Sociol., Vol. XV, September, 1909, p. 165.

An idea of the extent of this movement in 1900 may be gained from the report of the Congress for Instruction in the Social Sciences at the Paris Exposition of 1900. I condensed it for the U. S. Bureau of Education in chap. xxviii of the Report of the Bureau for the year 1899-1900, pp. 14581564; since published in full in book form.

augurated at Berlin on January 3. It was also in January of this year that the sociological Society of Birmingham was founded. Such is a bare enumeration, perhaps incomplete, of this movement for the scientific study of society.

The teaching of sociology in the great universities and its discussion before these learned bodies are paralleled by the activity of the press, both through the establishment of special organs devoted to it and through the writing of books on the subject by able authors in all countries. Any attempt to enumerate these would carry me far beyond the limits of this paper.

What are we to conclude from all this? Is the whole world, then, insane and chasing an ignis fatuus, a pseudo-science? I would be the last to fall back upon the old doctrines of vox populi and quod ubique, quod ab omnibus, as proofs of anything. Many grave errors have been long popular and well-nigh universal. But have any of the sciences had to be abandoned as false? Yes, they say, and point to alchemy. But alchemy was rather an art. There is a sort of social alchemy, and sociology is the social chemistry whose mission it is to supplant it. Society is a domain of natural phenomena, and there must be a science to deal with it. There was no such science till sociology came. It is not the same as the science of man (anthropology); it is not the same as the science of wealth (economics); it is not the same as the science of government and the state (political science). In a certain sense these all belong to sociology, or fall under it, as furnishing its data. They are special social sciences, and there are many more, but they do not, separately or together, constitute sociology. Sociology has been called the synthesis of all the special social sciences. It is that, but it is more. It gathers material from fields not included in any recognized science, but its great work is the co-ordination of all social facts, and the elaboration of a reasoned and systematized body of knowledge relating to social origins, social processes, social development, and social causation.

Notwithstanding the recruits that sociology is constantly receiving from all sides and the general silencing of adverse criticism by the logic of events, there ever and anon arises a new voice from some quarter reiterating the old cry that sociology is

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