122 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
scendent spirit. And that is why I rather object to this six-syllabled word " sociological." And I think if any good is to be done, there must be a spirit which is quite apart from the cold, calculating, scientific spirit, and takes account of the fact that man is an infinite being, environed by mystery, and the child of God.
B \the secretary) : I think all the members of the society will join with me in regretting Mr. Bran ford is not here, because we cannot ask him any questions. It is a highly specialized paper. It is not sufficiently broad and controversial for a good debate to follow.
I wish to refer to three points :
One is : Under the subsection of the writers who have an evolutionary and progressive tendency he mentions Plato and Augustine. Now, Augustine is an example of the reactionary tendency ; there is nothing progressive ; he is a regular Christian Father.
Secondly, it is not quite clear from the paper what value the life of Condorcet has in a paper which deals with " The Founders of Sociology." We have little else but the life of Condorcet, as if he were the one person we were indebted to. I expected to hear a great deal of the life of Spencer, of Comte, of Schopenhauer ; for everyone reads Schopenhauer nowadays which must have had a tremendous influence in the formation of people's ideas.
Thirdly, I think the scientific people of today are making the world, and in a hundred years' time they will have all the power in their own hands. The religious people will be relegated to the back seat.
C : In some respects I do not know that I am altogether sorry that Mr. Branford is not here, because I should not have liked to say anything that might have hurt his feelings, and as he is not here, I am at liberty to give vent to my own. We had a paper read which purported to deal with " The Founders of Sociology."' I think the chairman had to read for half an hour a vague disquisi- tion as to our being sociologists before we got a mention of any of them, and then he read a long list of eminent men in every branch of thought and claimed them as sociologists. There are men I should class as sociologists in a truer sense than many of those mentioned. I do not know why Moses was not a great soci- ologist, taking the traditional account as true. King David was another. He was one of the first men to take a census, and he was treated most unfairly by Jehovah for having done so. He was given the choice of several punishments, and he chose that which fell on his people instead of on himself.
I see Mr. Branford has M.A. after his name. If that is the kind of science that enables a man to get a university degree, it does not speak highly for uni- versities. I never heard a paper that professes to deal with a scientific subject dealt with in such an unscientific manner.
The science of sociology is perhaps of too wide an extent to be dealt with by any one individual. I think it is more properly a name for a number of sciences, and it is more profitable to study social matters in their various aspects. We can study economics, ethics, politics, man, from various aspects, but to group all these together and form one comprehensive science I am afraid won't take us very far. Not even Herbert Spencer is able to grapple with human nature in that wholesale way. We must specialize.
A previous speaker has said that sociologists have not been the great reformers. It is perfectly true. They have not been the men who have carried into effect the great reforms. But I think they have contributed indirectly to all the great reforms that have ever taken place, while they have not had the executive powers. I should like to say that our practical reformers have not been men of science, for there is not any reform which does not carry out almost as much harm as good. It is carried on, not on its own merits, but because of the gener- ous emotions in the breasts of the people, carried against the face of reason, which generally leads it to dash its head against a wall. All sorts of reform are based on a very inadequate study of the question. I hardly know any great reform that has not been based on a scientific study of a question, and this is what we want when a practical reformer comes along and feels that he can arouse public opinion to carry out a reform. He should know what he is doing, and have the facts ind
