economic facts upon other social activities, the sociologist may come to comprehend the real type to which they belong, the radical law of their correlation and of their evolution, and he may be able in his turn to teach the economist.
We come therefore to inquire, after recognizing the services of economic science to general sociology, what services this latter science may render to the former? These services appear to us to be of two kinds. In the first place the influence of sociology seems to us fitted to lead to improvement in the method of inquiry in economic science. In the second place the facts examined by the sociologist appear to us to be of a nature to throw a peculiar light upon many of the phenomena which the economist observes.
Let us notice, in the first place, the action of the sociological spirit upon economic method. It is fundamental to sociology to desire to embrace all societies in all times and in all places. It attaches great importance to social origins, to questions pertaining to the primitive form of the family and of property. It examines the negroes of Africa, the savages of Oceanica, the red races, the Turanian or Semitic tribes, the ancient Aryan gentes, with as much interest and profit as the most refined modern civilizations. Economic science, on the contrary, seems to have confined itself somewhat too exclusively, up to date, to the study of facts which occur within the great societies among which we live. We may and we must hope that the influence of the sociological spirit will lead to correction of this narrowness of view, to an interest in economic phenomena in all races and in all environments, to the conception that there are other forms of production, circulation and distribution of wealth than those which we see every day. This will apparently be a great advantage to science, for, in the first place, these inferior civilizations deserve to be known not less than others; a fact, wherever it occurs and however humble it may be, is always a fact and has a claim to be taken into account in every scientific synthesis which purports to be complete. Still further, in order to comprehend
