METAPHYSICAL ELEMENTS IN SOCIOLOGY $21
that demanded by our Fourth Conception of Being, our fellows furnish us with the constantly needed supplement to our own fragmentary meanings.*"
Our fellows, he would think, have value for us, since they fill out our partially fulfilled meanings; i. e., we appeal to them, since we have a need for the fulfilment of those meanings, with the result that the reality of others with whom we come in contact is asserted on the basis of a judgment of value, or an appreciative judgment.
Professor Giddings says :
All knowledge proceeds through comparison of the unknown with the known. This is simply one form of the method of least effort. In the opening chapter of this book it was shown that classification enables us to extend our knowledge to a degree that would be utterly impossible if we had no other means of dealing with new experiences but that of carrying every detail con- sciously in mind. Classification, then, is one of the methods that follow from the law of least effort.
And this is the procedure that is followed when individuals interpret one
another in terms of themselves Discovering that certain of their
acquaintances in certain particulars are very like themselves; .... that yet others are but little like themselves, save in those human qualities that mark the entire species of mankind, they quickly form mental classes that are based upon these degrees of resemblance. This interpretation of others in terms of one's self may be called ejective interpretation. The word " eject " means a mental image of another which is derived largely from one's experiences of one's self. [In such a process, in the child for example] the child has mentally thrown himself into the perceived object, and he understands it because he has done so.
Thus, all interpretation of our fellow-beings is ejective. It proceeds through a comparison of themselves and ourselves in which the various points of resemblance and of difference are observed and classified. Ejective inter- pretation is the intellectual element in the consciousness of kind, which, therefore, is so far simply a consequence of the law that mental activity follows the line of least effort.* 4
In this rather lengthy quotation it is seen that Professor Giddings apparently recognizes the fact that by conforming closely to the demand of some sociologists, that classification is the method, and the only method, for sociological investigation, his sociology would altogether lack any real explanation and interpretation of
"The World and the Individual, ad Sen, p. 172.
- Elements of Sociology, pp. 341 S.
