SOCIOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTION LINES 64 1
but have lacked definite questions to ask our sphinx specific questions, the answers to which would contribute toward the solution of the general problem. Sociologists have been like a party of men in the night, groping in the dark about the walls of a mansion which they desire to enter, but unable to find its doors and windows, getting vague notions of its mass and out- line, but unable to enter and take possession of its apartments. Definite problems are the doors and windows, and even while unsolved they are full of promise, as barred doors give more hope of entrance than blank walls. Adoption of the view here pre- sented surrounds us with many manageable problems. As soon as we realize that it is our task to discover the ways in which men affect each other, so that men become what they are, we realize that the unfolding of every human personality is a subdivision of our theme. To understand the social molding of one common life from the cracfle to the grave would be one of the greatest possible contributions to sociology. According to this view, every human act, every human experience, has a natural history, and has its roots in the interplay with other lives. Not only is the development of an individuality a sociological problem, but it ramifies into many sociological problems. A trivial act may be as well worth studying as a revolution. Here lies one broad distinction between the principle of dramatic interest which guides the historian in the selection of Jiis facts, and that which guides the selection of the sociologist. For the sociologist does not study any fact in order to understand that fact, but in order to understand the process from which such a fact arises, from which such facts have arisen in the past, and from which such facts will arise in the future. To this end the facts that are of themselves most insignificant may best repay investigation. The spoonful of water which the chemist gets by the union of hydro- gen and oxygen is of no value, but to understand the composition of that spoonful of water is to understand the composition of the water of the five oceans. It is said that in all June no two leaves are quite alike; certainly no two human experiences are. This does not dismay the botanist, and should not the sociologist. Every human experience arises after a manner akin to the rise of countless other human experiences. It is the methods of the
