8 B. BOSANQUET I RELATION OF SOCIOLOGY TO PHILOSOPHY. reciprocal reference, but not imitation ; and this doing of different things, as parts in a single plan, is the type of social co-operation. The whole idea of function, of structure and organisation in short, of true identity in difference seems to be absent where such a suggestion is made. It seems probable that Sociology has arrived at these conceptions by re-traversing on its own account the track which leads from the apparent individual mind to the real identity of the universal self; a track long familiar to philosophy, but one on which " social science" par excellence is only now arriving at the earliest halting-places. The same observation might be made with regard to the "Consciousness of Kind," 1 which appears to be a faint and generalised counterpart of that recognition of oneself in another, to which Hegel long ago gave an explicit rank in the development of self-conscious- ness, thus laying down the place of social relations in the growth of mind. And in conclusion, while welcoming the unity of science as proclaimed by Comte and the conception of a probable influence of Sociology on scientific method as suggested by M. Bernes, one is amazed to find any such conception announced (as Comte more especially announces it) to be new in principle. We seem to have forgotten that for Plato, e.g., Laws, 967 E, it was an essential principle that politics was a science ; that political forms corresponded to types of mind ; that the central light of all science, including the mathematical science, was the idea of the good, and that no one who had not mastered the connexion that runs through the order of the universe, and its bearing on society and institutions, was fit, in his view, to be a ruler of men. It hardly seems possible that, at the point which has now been attained, a distinction between Sociologists and Philo- sophers can any more justify itself than a distinction between Philosophers and Psychologists. It does not follow that the retention of a more general analysis and a more indifferent point of view may not be of service in the actual treatment of the sciences in question. We have seen that such a general analysis is a valuable solvent of distinctions which impede the perception of continuity ; but while re- taining for this purpose the modern and naturalistic spirit of his science, the true Sociologist, like every great Psycho- logist, will recognise, indirectly if not directly, the grades of value and of reality, the logical and ideal structure, which belong to certain cases and complications of the very general laws with which he primarily deals. 1 Giddings' Principles of Sociology.
