between social activities themselves.16 Must we add that being less variable they are to the same extent less important in explaining the variations or specific concrete manifestations of social activity, and especially that by being not only less variable by nature but less modifiable by human effort they are less important objects of study with reference to the possible applications of sociological knowledge? At any rate we must say that reference of social activities to the "social force" does not constitute a proper idea of sociological explanation and that sociology abandoning quasi-explanation by reference to socalled forces must adopt the method of other sciences and account for its realities in terms of conditioning phenomena and relations between phenomena. If its explanations should become complete enough to justify prophecy, its forecast would be framed like this: given a population whose psychophysical organisms have such and such recognized tendencies, set in the midst of such and such a material environment, supplied in part by nature and in part by the labor of man, and in such and such a social environment, consisting of the already prevalent activities, then such and such further activities will on the whole thereafter prevail, and if given modifications are now introduced into their physical or social environment such and such changes in the prevalent activities will ensue.

No amount of reference of social activities to feelings can constitute a scientific explanation of them, or open the way to the desired practical applications. "L'application est la pierre de touche de toute doctrine." Rather, in given physical and social environment, men of given organic predispositions will in general and on the whole respond with certain feelings, which are a part of the activity to be explained by science and to be induced or repressed by social practice, and not the causes antecedent to social activity.

"That which we call social psychology is mostly a study of this conditioning of social activities by each other.

DISCUSSION
JEROME DOWD

Complete social assimilation cannot take place without racial amalgamation. Races that do not intermarry do not mingle freely socially, and without the stimulus of free social life complete assimilation or socialization is impossible.

One race acquires the thoughts, emotions, and habits of another by imitation, of which I distinguish two kinds. The first is personal, i.e., one individual assimilates the emotions, thoughts, and habits of another by more or less long contact and association. This kind is the more important. We all know from experience that we do not imitate the emotions, thoughts, and habits of another particular individual as a result of casual meeting. We may meet momentarily with an individual of very elevated character or very base character and be influenced scarcely at all, whereas we know that an extended association with such person will have a profound molding influence upon us in spite of all of our efforts to resist.

The second process or kind of imitation is social, i.e., we imitate the emotions, thoughts, and habits of the multitude. The impressions communicated are all momentary, but they come with the combined suggestibility of so many individuals that they are difficult to resist. I would not deny the thesis of Tarde that all imitations are primarily those of a single individual copying after another, but in what I call social imitation the thing momentarily suggested for imitation by one individual is followed immediately by the same suggestion from a multitude, so that the force of the suggestion is social rather than personal. The most striking fact about social imitation is the rapidity and ease of its movement. The response to suggestion is prompt and takes place spontaneously.

Now, this distinction between personal and social imitation has a vital bearing upon the possibility of racial assimilation. For example, in our own country an ostracized race or one which does not intermarry with the native is cut off from our social life and must find its intimacies within its own group. Thus it is excluded from any close and prolonged contact with individual natives. Personal imitation is therefore so restricted that the avenues to higher culture are obstructed or closed. It is a matter of common observation that the acquisition of higher culture of any individual comes through personal imitation. The finer emotions, ideas, and habits are not often found in the street nor in concerted movements of the masses-but are hid away in the domestic circle or otherwise not apprehended except through intimate personal association. If they are sometimes revealed in the action of the crowd their influence is apt to be lost for lack of a personal example to reinforce them.

The elevation of one individual to a higher moral plane depends upon the assimilation through long personal association of the finer emotions, ideas, and conduct of another. On the other hand, an ostracized race or one which does not intermarry with the native often is extraordinarily susceptible to social imitation. In matters of fashion, food, industrial technique, and in ideas and habits which intrude themselves upon the public, the power of suggestion is great and the imitation rapid and complete. But unfortunately social imitation alone does not enhance personality, but on the contrary, unless restrained by personal imitation, either results in the degeneration of the ostracized race or leaves it on the same moral level. To dress and eat in the fashion, to catch on to native industrial methods and technique, to patronize American public amusements, and to acquire something of the current knowledge of the time does not carry a race very far in the direction of assimilation.

The American Negro under slavery, especially the domestic slaves, developed in some respects a very high degree of morals. They had opportunity to be molded by emotions, ideas, and habits of their masters and mistresses because of the close and prolonged association with them. As a result, the superiority of the ante-bellum Negro to the Negro of today in a moral sense and rectitude has become proverbial.

A fact of very great importance is that wherever personal imitations are excluded by failure of one race to mingle freely with another, the excluded race is all the more susceptible to social imitation. It takes on an exaggerated and intensified interest in the suggestions of the crowd and on account of the inferiority and often demoralizing character of such suggestions it is made worse instead of better by the contact. I believe that the principles I am laying down explain the almost universal phenomenon of the degeneracy and dying out of inferior races in contact with the superior-a phenomenon which we observe in Africa, India, and Polynesia where the Caucasian has come in contact with the native population. These principles also explain the moral retrogression of the Negro in America since emancipation, the backward trend of many of our Indian population, and the moral peculiarities of the Jew.

Where a lower or weaker race succumbs in competition with a stronger one it is not because the weaker race is physically inferior or has any natural mental incapacity to assimilate, but because of the sociological law that races of marked unlikeness do not intermarry and freely associate with each other. But for the barrier of this sociological law the other difficulties of assimilation might be overcome.

Furthermore, the considerations above presented have an important significance for the future of the American type and character. The immigrants we have been receiving for the past two decades have a tendency on account of differences of language and traditions to form isolated masses.

Their unlikeness to us precludes free associations and therefore they are not being assimilated to the American type to the extent of the immigrants received prior to 1890. As the foreign element increases by immigration and multiplication the process of assimilation to the American type will cease and the reverse process set in of an assimilation of the native to the gradually evolving foreign type. The amalgamation between the foreign elements themselves will be more rapid than between those elements and the natives, for the reason that unlikenesses between the foreigners are less marked than the unlikenesses between the foreigners and the natives.

In the meantime the arrested process of assimilation to the American type will have injurious consequences for the foreign elements, since being in a measure socially isolated they will be greatly susceptible to the vicious social imitations and little accessible to the more elevating personal imitations. This condition of things will make the problem of moral progress in America somewhat difficult and discouraging for the present century.

There are three tentative laws which seem to follow from this distinction between personal and social imitations: (1) That social democracy is the only condition of complete assimilation of the higher culture; (2) That races on a high but different culture level may assimilate each other's culture to the advantage of both, but a complete assimilation of the highest of the two races will be impossible without intermarriage; (3) That a high and a low culture race without intermarriage cannot come in contact without injury to the latter because the social imitations will take on an excessive development and result in physical and moral disintegration.

CARL E. PARRY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

This paper of Professor Hayes falls, of course, in the field of methodology. Work in that field, I think, springs from a common desire we have, and one we share with other scientists, to assure ourselves that we are on the right road, to get some short cut to professional self-confidence. I am not sure I should think much of a scientist who never had any doubt of himself, or any doubt of his science. It is close to the very impulse that leads him to study deeply, and to weigh carefully, while he woos the scientific ideal. And I believe it is worth while for one to have as good a knowledge as possible of methods, so as to be able to discriminate between those likely, and those not so likely, to be scientifically fruitful.

There is surely no better way to learn good method than to come into close personal and professional contact with a master in the science, one studying conscientiously the concrete facts of society. By this means method is learned unconsciously, and one has the chance to equip himself to contribute to his science, which, after all, is the only satisfactory way to add to his professional self-confidence.

In my own limited experience, I am afraid I never got much help from

the methodology put forth as methodology by sociologists. I have drawn more, however, from that put forth by the philosophers. I am told by friends of mine who teach philosophy that the methodology of science really falls in the field of metaphysics, specifically in the field of inductive logic, in which John Stuart Mill's treatise of that name is the great classic. Workers in that field, with whom I have studied and held discussions, show such a mastery of it, and such a familiarity with all its terms and concepts, that I am ashamed to submit any amateur effort of my own in competition with them. In philosophic language, for instance, the attack on the social-forces error, presented by Professor Hayes, would seem to be merely calling attention to a moment in our scientific progress; namely, that as hypothesis the theory that there is a distinct social force has served its time, just as any hypothesis in any science-such as the theory of vital force in biology— serves its time, and that it is now ready to be supplanted by a better hypothesis, one recognizing more consciously the complexity of the phenomena. This is a thesis with which I think few will disagree; in fact, I think most of the actual workers with concrete facts have discarded the theory of a distinct social force already, and are attempting to explain their phenomena on the assumption that no one condition sets all the others in motion, but that the conditions mutually determine one another. I think an examination of their work would show this, but if it be desirable to reach the same conclusion by some other route the one by way of inductive logic would seem to have the most legitimate claim.

It is my own conviction that it is a real advantage for a sociologist to have his attention directed away from methodology. I am afraid the pursuit of it tends to unfit a man for good observation of the concrete facts of the social life about him. I have no desire to be personal, but I may say that I looked in vain in Professor Hayes's paper for a single fact, relating to the society around him, that he had observed himself. Just such observation is the first business of a sociologist, if he aspires to be a scientist, and absorption in methodology turns a man away from it; it cultivates just exactly the habit of mind manifested in Professor Hayes's paper. This is one of the main reasons, to my way of thinking, why sociologists who dabble in methodology do it at their peril, and why, in spite of my clandestine liking for it, I commonly avoid long draughts of it myself.

Finally, I may say that next to working under the eye of a master, and to keeping in more or less close touch with men versed in the metaphysics of science, I have gotten most help on method from workers in a fellow social science-namely, history. It was my good fortune, in my graduate days, to be able to take a short course in history under the direction of a man proficient in the so-called historical method. All semester we studied together a single Latin document, relating to a single mediaeval citypatiently, carefully, and most painstakingly. It was most inspiring to see