THE PROBLEM OF SOCIOLOGY 305
We are today accustomed to confront every science with this alternative: Is it devoted to the discovery of timelessly valid laws, or does it attempt to exhibit and explain historically actual occurrences? This alternative does not exclude innumerable in- tennediary phenomena, and accordingly the problem-conception here defined is not from the start affected by the necessity of the decision of the question. This object, abstracted from reality, may be viewed from the one side with reference to its conformi- ties to laws, which, residing purely in the actual structure of the elements, maintain an indifferent attitude toward their realiza- tion in time and space. They apply indeed whether the historical actualities present them in force once or a thousand times. On the other hand, every form of association may be regarded with reference to their occurrence in a there and then, i. e., with refer- ence to their historical development within definite groups. De- terminations of this latter character would be, so to speak, the historical end. In the former case it would be derivation of in- ductive material for the discovery of timeless uniformities. With reference to competition, for example, we meet it in countless varieties in the most varied connections : in politics and in eco- nomic management, in the history of religion and of art, etc. The point is to determine from these facts what competition means as a pure form of human behavior, under what circum- stances it comes into existence, how it develops, what modifica- tions it undergoes through the peculiar character of its object, through what contemporary formal and- material delimitations of a society it is intensified or the reverse, how competition between individuals differs from that between groups — in short, what sort of relationship between persons competition is, inasmuch as it may involve all sorts of contents, yet by the likeness of its appear- ance along with great variety of contents it proves that it belongs to a sphere governed by its own laws, a sphere which may with propriety be abstracted from other spheres. The similar elements in complex phenomena are thus raised into prominence as by a cross-section. The dissimilar elements, in this case the interests which constitute the content of the relation, are reciprocally paralyzed. We have to deal in a corresponding way with all the
