THE SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY.
III. THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIOLOGY.
Certain readers who might write with authority on this sub- ject will conclude that much in the present chapter is without justification. Beginners will doubtless decide that more of it is without meaning. The attempt will be made to deserve a reversal of both judgments before the series closes. It seems necessary, however, to present some general introductory propositions that are necessarily vague. They must be repeated and amplified in subsequent chapters as the argument proceeds. Even in the present chapter the device of slightly varied repetition will be liberally used.
Chapters i and ii have made our first theorem as superfluous as it is trite, viz.: Sociology is not concerned with an isolated seg- ment of subject-matter ; it is concerned with the same subject-matter that furnishes material for all the other sciences which study men in aggregates, rather than as mere individuals.^ A cardinal desidera- tum of social science is that the apparent gap between the separate parts of study shall be closed, and that in the last con- structions of all the social scientists the divisions of labor shall be integrated into one labor. It is not at all necessary to the dignity of that part of social science to which the name "sociology" will be specifically applied in these papers, that it be represented as anything more than a connecting link between other forms of knowledge about society. What it is more than that will appear soon enough, if the simpler notion is once entertained. On the other hand, it is not to be understood that sociology is merely a mechanical device to join living sciences together. It is a living member in a body of science. It is not a mere set of
' Schaeffle states that he is merely expanding the thought which he tried to express in his first edition (1875), when he describes general sociology as "eine Philosophie der besonderen Socialwissenschaften, soweit solche beim heutigen Stande der einzelnen gesellschaftswissensehaftlichen Disciplinen iiberhaupt schon versucht werden kann." {Bau und Leben, 2d ed., Vol. I, p. I.)
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