NEW SERIES. No. 21.] [JANUARY, 1897. MIND A QUARTERLY REVIEW OF PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. I. THE RELATION OF SOCIOLOGY TO PHILOSOPHY. BY B. BOSANQUET. . Nothing could be more startling primd facie to the philosophical student than the proposition that the science of society is a creation of strictly modern thought ; of thought, that is, not merely recent in time, but determined by distinctively modern conditions and owning no continuity with the central tradition of European philosophy. Yet this was undoubtedly the view of Auguste Comte; it was implied by Mill in the sixth book of the Logic ; and the same stand- point reveals itself in the independence and isolation which Sociology, or la Science Sociale, maintains to-day as against Plato and Aristotle on the one hand and their modern repre- sentatives e.g., Spinoza and Hegel on the other. It is not my intention, in the following observations, to challenge the claims of Sociology to an origin and existence independent of Ethical or Social Philosophy ; my purpose is rather to suggest an analogy in accordance with which this independence may be justified on the basis of a definite rela- tion between the two types of theory. Certain traits of parallelism and even of convergence will, however, neces- sarily disclose themselves as between lines of investigation so closely akin. And each, it will appear probable, may have something to learn from the other. . What is the essence of the new science, as Comte repeatedly and emphatically calls it, which he regarded as Social Physics, and for which he invented the name of
