130 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
elusion that sociology is the science of the social process, that is, of the whole system of relations between social phenomena. The dis- cussion of the difference between history and sociology (pp. 81 f.) expresses the substance of my reasons for preferring the later to the earlier formula.
Again, the author sometimes says very severe things, which are not quite consistent with his own professions of faith in a slightly different connection. For instance, he says (p. 71) :
That bizarre forerunner of sociology, the philosophy of history, assumed that the experiences of a particular society Sicily or Poland, for example are but parts of a single mighty process. 1 The life of humanity or at least of occidental humanity can be brought under a single formula, etc., etc.
But on p. 14 Professor Ross had summed up the superiority of sociology to older social philosophy in the assertion that institutions are now "studied rather as different aspects of one social evolu- tion!" If it is a virtue for the sociologists to think of all social phenomena as a part of one process, why was it a vice for the philosophers of history to do the same thing? Is not the difference in the nature of the processes posited in the two cases, rather than in a contrast between assuming and not assuming one process ?
It seems to me that Professor Ross has not fully considered the case in the short passage on the science of religion (pp. 16, 17). The argument of the book as a whole tends to the conclusion that the science of religion must ultimately become a chapter in sociology. But in this passage the author distinctly disavows this conclusion. Was it not in the interest of religion, rather than the science of reli- gion, that he was moved to make the disclaimer? No division of conduct can be merely a chapter of a pure science ; but I see no escape from the conclusion that sciences of abstracted portions of conduct must correlate themselves at last with the science of conduct in general.
One of the most searching chapters in the book is that on " Social Laws." It provokes a great many questions which must be threshed out in due time; but they cannot be referred to with advantage within our present limits. Has the author been happy, however, in formulating his first count against the philosophers (p. 42) ? Have they taught us to be too "objective," or not objective enough? Is not the proper indictment brought in the later term "exteriority"
1 Italics mine.
