260 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
this view from the two papers with which this discussion was initiated. These papers appear to me to fail admirable as they are in many respects in one particular. They fail to distinguish the conditions of a science of sociology from that science itself. They lay stress upon two services which may be rendered by what they call the study of sociology. One of these services is to enrich the separate social sciences. And I notice that Professor Durkheim in his paper lays it down flatly that it is necessary that sociology become a body of particular sciences. If so, there is no science of sociology. It is quite true that one of the great services which can be rendered by a study of social phenomena will be that it will assist in improving the organization of the separate specialisms. It will give a stimulus or direction to study in those separate sciences, and in that way there will be a distinct service conveyed, and progress in those separate sciences is certainly a most important condition for the growth of sociology so important that we shall have a clear correlation of the sciences which are directly contributory to sociology. I do not quite agree that it is necessary to delegate to sociology the systematization of all the sciences. I still think that that belongs to philosophy. Admitting that sociology will contribute to the formation of two important conditions for the study of sociology itself, these conditions are not sociology. We require to recognize that sociology, not as it is recognized in a somewhat perfunctory way in these papers, but we want to know that is the body of that solidarity. We may not be in the position to claim that sociology can become at an early date an exact science, but the difference between that admis- sion and the admission that there is no such thing as laws in social phenomena which is the position taken by one who has addressed you is a very far step indeed. I think we must admit that there is even now, with our imperfect knowl- edge, sufficient acquaintance with the nature and movements of social phenomena, something which we may call laws. It is open to anybody to question these laws and say they do not rank as laws, but that must always be a question of degree ; and those of us who believe that there do exist now several solid and substantial hypotheses which bring an amount of explanation to bear on phenomena, entitle sociology to rank as a science.
One other point : Besides the insistence on the sociological units there is also a great need for the development of a more stable and fitting terminology. How far from psychology and biology, and how far from the lower sciences, are we going to draw it? It is one of the greatest difficulties we have to face in starting on a new science that we are compelled to use instruments of language which are, in the nature of the case, not adapted to the new study instruments which have performed service in other sciences, and which we have to transfer until we have either broadened and altered them, or until we have cast them aside in favor of a better kind of terminology which must be created ab initio.
These appear to me to be the great needs not recognized in the papers.
MR. L. T. HOBHOUSE.
I would not rise at all at this late hour, if it were not that I wished to say a little more on behalf of the two papers which deserve rather more cordial recog- nition than they have received from the greater part of the speakers to whom we have listened. I think it has hardly been realized sufficiently that those papers refer to the position of sociology at the present moment. I do not think that they endeavor to lay down an ideal of what sociology is to be in the future, but to state what it is at the present juncture of affairs. It is very easy to say that sociology must be a body of truth which is an illumination, a social science ; but does this body of truth at present exist? It is easy to say that there are certain workable hypotheses, but we should be very sorry if we had to identify ourselves with hypotheses of any particular school. It is a question which is not always easy to answer, " What do you mean by ' sociology ' ? " without going at once into very disputed methods. I think the papers endeavor to give a simple and clear answer to that question. They endeavor .to say what sociology is at the present moment, in what form it exists, in what sense it is a realized science and not a future science ; not merely a hypothesis, but what actual realized scientific matter
