NOTES AND ABSTRACTS 265
and Progress, the second in the first volume of my History of Intellectual Develop- ment, to be continued in the second volume, and the third in the third volume of that work.
And if, in conclusion, I may be permitted to say a word in reference to the tasks that lie before a young sociological society, it would be this : that just as when Darwin announced his law of evolution, botanists, geologists, palaeontologists, and zoologists with one accord laid down for a while their hammers and scalpels, their microscopes and lenses, to take part in the fray until it was once for all settled whether the law of natural selection and its corollaries was the law under which they were in future to work ; so before the specialisms connected with the evolution of man and his civilization can become fruitful and effective, they must pause for a time and give themselves up to determining under what system of sociology they are to work ; whether under one or another of those I have mentioned, or under none of them, but under some other more true and com- plete which has yet to see the light. Until this is done, the specialisms of history, psychology, ethics, religion, political economy, etc., must one and all continue to wander in the dark, wasting much of their time, and laboriously losing their way.
FROM H. OSMAN NEWLAND, FELLOW OF THE ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
The introduction of this subject should sound the depths of the Sociological Society and determine its capacity to harmonize, adjust, and systematize the con- flicting schools or modes of thought which are represented in its heterogeneous membership. If these papers be representative, the society will not be found wanting either in its theoretical or practical work.
The day has passed when a Comte or a Spencer could aspire to be the alpha and the omega of sociology, and the day is passing, let us hope, when the specialists can interpret the complex phenomena of society in the terms of their own specialisms, when the abstract idealist can make of sociology a new creed, and when practical statesmen can disregard both the technical specialist and the idealist. The time has arrived, in short, for the creation of a new class of specialist the sociologist per se which shall combine something of the old scientist, something of the idealist, and something of the practical statesman, but without claiming genetic relationship to any one of these classes.
The new sociologist will have to recognize that it is impossible to study human society in the seclusion of solitude. He must be ready, like the practical statesman, to devise expedients to meet present emergencies, while he scrutinizes the past, which the practical man too often despises, and evolves ideals for the future, which the practical man is content to leave to posterity. As a practical man the new sociologist will, however, be likely to fall more easily into the pitfalls and prejudices which everywhere surround him, unless he possess the culture of the specialist. In short, he will have to preserve in the midst of the crowd the independence of solitude. Can such a class be evolved? Undoubtedly. Hitherto discussion and dissemination of the conflicting ideas of the specialists, the idealists, and the practical statesmen have been unorganized. Now, not these ideas alone, but their exponents, are organized upon a common basis. Compromise must take place, and the new sociology be evolved therefrom.
FROM PROFESSOR J. CHAPMAN, PROFESSOK OF ECONOMICS, THE VICTORIA UNIVERSITY,
MANCHESTER.
The papers seem to me satisfactory.
FROM J. H. HARLF.Y, M.A.
The relation of philosophy to sociology seems a priori to the relation of the whole to the part ; but of late sociology has become almost convertible with philosophy. At an earlier date the philosopher was " the spectator of all time and existence," and philosophy laid bare the methodology of the absolute thought ; but so soon as that is given up it becomes apparent that knowledge must be limited to the world of humanity, though " value judgments " in the sense of Ritschl may claim the authority of emotion to go somewhat beyond reasoned knowledge. In this sense it becomes important to have a general science of sociology which shall
