Their desire for amusement after a monotonous day in the field is legitimate and should be gratified, and the experiment of the Young Women's Christian Association would seem to indicate that wholesome entertainments would be appreciated by the majority. It would be unreasonable to expect such a company to settle down to quiet at dark, satisfied with only the work. Human beings are not so constructed, for frequently the longest days of monotonous toil seem to demand nights of exciting pleasThe factory girl in the city will dance till daylight after a hard day's work and feel that only with such relaxation is life worth living. How much more, then, will such people as gather in a hop yard, with the spirit of an outing upon them, need to be amused. If nothing better be provided, the saloon and dance hall will satisfy the craving. ure. The chief needs of the hop fields, then, as I observed them, are better organization and more wholesome recreation. The one could be cared for by the owner, the other by some outside group interested in social welfare, and I earnestly hope that both these needs will be met in the near future. As the hop season returns I shall want to journey out to Oregon and don the calico frock and apron, with the picker's stout gloves and neck-kerchief, to sleep again on the bed of straw and rise in the dawn to help harvest the blossoms, and even to endure again the cruel weariness it implies, to enjoy the true democracy of the motley crowd, and to watch the future realization of betterment efforts. Long live the Oregon hop pickers! THE PRETENSIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 1 PROFESSOR HENRY JONES FORD Much is heard in these times of sociology. The proverbial "man in the street," who is supposed to notice nothing apart from his business and sporting interests, save what in some way jostles him and thus intrudes on his attention, has heard of sociology as a science that understands all about society and its make-up, and that is thus able to say what is the correct thing. Even the vaudeville hall has heard of it, as a sociological treatise supplied the phrase "trial marriage," used as a refrain in the topical song, "No Wedding Bells for Me," with which all the music-halls resounded until it wore itself out. Those who do not stand in a merely impressionist attitude to life, and who attribute to scholarship the duty of acting as a conservator of mental and moral values, have also heard of sociology, and are puzzled by it. They find it appearing as a sponsor for schemes of revolutionizing the family, the home, and the state, and they feel both perturbed at the prospect and perplexed by the difficulty they have in reconciling such projects with the respect they feel for science. Disturbance of this character is augmented by a belief that sociology is a new science which is derived from Darwinism, and which hence possesses the authority belonging to a doctrine generally accepted as applying to all forms of life and to all institutions arising from the modes of life. An impression has been made to the effect that scientific grounds have been established for the opinion that marriage, family life, society, and government are mere accidental cohesions which may now be superseded by more rational arrangements upon principles expounded by sociology. Pretensions of this character are certainly made in the name of sociology, and it therefore becomes a matter of public importance to inquire what this new science is and what basis it has for its claim of authority. I Sociology has no connection with Darwinism except by an imputed affiliation, which on examination is found to possess no better 1 Republished from The Nation by permission of author and editor. warrant than the tendency toward syncretism that always appears when a great scientific or philosophical system dominates the country of thought. There is, then, a strong propensity on the part of system-builders to bring their own possessions within the shelter of its massive parapets and bastions. In this way sociology has been annexed to Darwinism, but it does not belong there. The term was invented by Auguste Comte to designate those branches of "organic physics" which deal with human society. The volume of his Philosophie positive that introduced the word "sociology” was published in 1839-twenty years before the publication of the Origin of Species. J. S. Mill, who was much influenced by Comte's speculations, started the use of the term in England, employing it in his own writings as early as 1843. Harriet Martineau's translation of Comte's works was published in 1853. She had great expectations of Comte's system, believing that in it students would find "at least a resting-place for their thought-a rallying-point of their scattered speculations-and probably an immovable basis for their intellectual and moral convictions." Both resting-place and rallying-point are still to seek. Professors Albion W. Small and George E. Vincent of the University of Chicago, in their manual for the study of sociology, expressly warn students not "to regard Comte as an authority in sociology." They remark that "all that is of permanent value in the six volumes of Positive Philosophy, and in the four later volumes entitled System of Positive Polity, might be reported in a few paragraphs. Darwin made no use of Comte's terminology, but this of itself is not significant, since he wrote strictly as a naturalist and never made the slightest attempt to formulate a system of philosophy. It is significant, however, that the term sociology has never commended itself to Darwinists, even when considering implications of the master's views on the origin and nature the origin and nature of humanity. Haeckel, whose systematic exposition was followed by Darwin himself with lively interest, took a survey of the field claimed by sociology, but he proposed an entirely different terminology, which will be found in Table I of his Evolution of Man (1874). It may be doubted whether the use of the word sociology as a term designating social science would have survived the impact of Darwinism if Herbert Spencer had not adopted it, which he did as early as 1859. In his Autobiography he referred to his borrowings from Comte rather regretfully: Save in the adoption of the word "altruism," which I have defended, and in the adoption of his word "sociology" because there was no other available word (for both which adoptions I have been blamed), the only indebtedness I recognize is the indebtedness of antagonism. Darwin's Descent of Man was published in 1871, but his views as to the particular causation of the human species do not appear to have had any effect whatever on Spencer's preconceived ideas of social science. Spencer's Study of Sociology was published serially in England and in the United States in 1872, and in book form in 1873. It makes only a passing allusion to Darwin, and then only with respect to his services in demonstrating the indefinite modifiability of species, elsewhere mentioned as "one of the cardinal truths. which biology yields to sociology." Spencer's system was always expounded independently of Darwin's views. It was Spencer's labors that brought sociology into vogue, but he seems to have shared the fate of Comte in that his system is now regarded as defective and inadequate. Small and Vincent inform the student that "Spencer's sociology ends precisely where sociology proper should begin." II What, then, is sociology? It is impossible to say, save that it deals with social phenomena; but this affords no definition, as the same may be said of history, politics, statistics, and other sciences gathering their data from observation of mankind. In his Pure Sociology Professor Lester F. Ward mentions twelve definitions of sociology already in existence, and then he proceeds to add another of his own. What claim has any body of knowledge to rank as a science whose students have yet to arrive at some agreement as to what it is or as to how it is to be defined? Sociology has not yet established any claim to be accepted as a science. Leslie Stephen, in his presidential address at the annual meeting of the Social and Political Education League, London, March, 1892, thus summarized the situation: "It may be stated that there is no science of sociology properly scientific-merely a heap of vague empirical observations, too flimsy to be useful in strict logical inference." The situation has not improved since then. Writing in 1902, Professor Ward said: I do not claim that sociology has as yet been established as a science. I only maintain that it is in process of establishment, and this by the same method by which all other sciences are established. Every independent thinker has his system. The lastest official bulletin is probably that issued by Professor Small. In an article contributed to the American Journal of Sociology, July, 1908, he says: Whether or not there is, or ever shall be, a science of sociology, there is and will hardly cease to be something which, for lack of a better name, we may call the sociological movement. This movement clearly vindicates the sociologists. This, of course, suggests the query, What, then, is the sociological movement? What vision has it of fresh fields of knowledge that suggests the need of a new science to garner the results of research? We are told that the movement is fundamentally "a declaration of faith that the closest approach to ultimate organization of knowledge which finite intelligence can ever reach must be a formulation of the relations of all alleged knowledge to the central process of human experience." But has not that been the object of philosophy ever since it originated in ancient Greece? At any rate, it is clear that this movement, this faith, on its own showing, has no right to rank as a science or to set up any claim of authority. III Accepting for the present the plea of confession and avoidance that is offered by the exponents of sociology when its scientific pretensions are challenged, let us consider it as a movement. this respect, too, on its own showing, it is quite bewildered. It does not know whence it starts, or whither it is going. J. H. W. Stuckenberg, in his Sociology, the Science of Human Society (1903), has to admit that the very nature of the subject which sociology proposes to treat is yet to be settled. He remarks that "society is the new world which is still waiting for its Columbus;" and, again, that "the nature of society is the profound problem whose solution is the key to all other solutions." Darwin has offered a solution of this problem, namely, that human society was evolved from brute society by stresses resulting from the group incident of natural selection, so that human society was shaped by the life of the community precisely as bee nature has been shaped by the life of the hive, certain distinctive organs and capacities being developed in the individual, not primarily for individual advantage, but for the advantage of the community. Thus Darwin's theory coincides with Aristotle's doctrine that man is born a political animal. In any period before the formation of society, the human species did not exist, but at the most only simian species |