vii. Before considering, in conclusion, the relation of Sociology

as influenced by the above-mentioned sources and points of view, to social philosophy proper, it will be well to devote a few words to emphasising the way in which these “sources” ought to be regarded.

Every “source” of sociological science is at once a category, or point of view, and also a certain group of actual social conditions. This relation is effectively illustrated by the study of any social {48} unity which is such as to invite a thorough conspectus of its life from top to bottom of the social growth and underlying conditions. I repeat that the history and life of ancient Greece, a singularly complete working model of society on a very small scale, analysed with remarkable thoroughness, and individual throughout, is the prerogative example of such a treatment; but next to this, or in addition to it, a thoroughly careful study of local history, life, and conditions, in a limited region, [1] with which we are familiar from top to toe, is an essential propaedeutic to true social theory. To focus a number of groups of fact, and coordinate the points of view which they substantiate, into the conception of a living being, with its individual character and spiritual utterance, needs more than a merely literary or statistical study. But by making this effort we shall learn, as no economic charts or general scientific works can teach us, what a social life is, and in what sense it is true that all partial facts and experiences within it demand ultimate coordination in the category of mind. It is not meant that consciousness can make the weather hold up, but it is meant that no fact has a true social bearing except in as far as, sooner or later, it comes to form part of the world which a being capable of sociality and therefore intelligent, presents to himself as his theatre of action.

[1] Cf. Professor Geddes’ idea of a “Regional Survey,” with which visitors to his delightful “Summer School” become acquainted.

3. Thus it may seem that by mere force of facts a necessary solution has been arrived at, and that psychological sociology must be one and the same science with social philosophy.

{49} But this is not quite the case. Up to the present time these two sciences continue to approach their object-matter, as it were, from different ends, and whether the two views will ultimately amalgamate is perhaps mainly a problem of the personal division of labour. But a question of principle, with reference to the true nature of psychology, is indirectly involved. Only there seems no reason why two kinds of psychology should not exist.

Psychology, as at present conceived by its best working representatives, is a positive, though not a physical science. “For (the psychologist) the crude superstitions of Australian aborigines have as much interest and value as the developed and accurate knowledge of a Newton or a Faraday.” [1] Its aim is “the establishment of continuity among observed facts, by interpolating among them intermediate links which elude observation.” [2] If not a “physical” science, then, it is, in a common sense of the term, a “natural” science. It has the impartiality, and uses the watchwords--law, process, genesis--which belong to a natural science. And like every impartial science, to which process and genesis are watchwords, it tends to explain the higher by the lower. This springs from no malice aforethought, but from the conditions of the case. The lower is simpler, and usually comes first in time. It is naturally dwelt upon, as that into which it is hoped to resolve the more complex, and the explanation which is more adequate for the simple, is less adequate for the complex. No difference of higher {50} and lower is recognised by the impartial science, and its ideal, as a science, is inevitably the expression of the complex in terms of the simple; while, as far as genesis in time is insisted on, the bias towards temporal causation is pretty sure to operate by attaching a quasi-causal significance to the earlier phases.

[1] Stout, _Analytic Psychology_, Introduction.

[2] _Ib_. From a logical point of view this idea of explanation seems seriously defective. See Bradley’s _Principles of Logic_, p. 491.

In all these characteristics psychology is at one with sociology. And, therefore, though it is a gain that other points of view should be resolved into the point of view of mind, yet the positive bias of sociology is not transcended simply by this resolution.

Philosophy starts, we have said, as it were, from the other end. It is critical throughout; it desires to establish degrees of value, degrees of reality, degrees of completeness and coherence. Its purpose might be termed “Ethical,” but for the extreme narrowness of the meaning of that term. Society, for it, is an achievement or utterance of human nature--of course not divorced from nature in general--having a certain degree of solidity, so to speak; that is to say, being able, up to a certain point, to endure the tests and answer the questionings which are suggested by the scrutiny of human life from the point of view of value and completeness. Is the social life the best, or the only life for a human soul? In what way through society, and in what characteristics of society, does the soul lay hold upon its truest self, or become, in short, the most that it has in it to be? How does the social life at its best compare with the life of art, of knowledge, or of religion, and can the same principle be shown to be active in all of them? And what have {51} they in common, or peculiar to each, which has an imperative claim on the mind of man?

Now it was hinted above that there might be two kinds of psychology, or two tendencies within it. And if psychology were to be impelled, as it has been more than once in the past, by the recognition that where there is more of its object--of mind--its interest is greater and the rank of its object-matter is higher, then there would not be much to choose between the temper of psychology and that of philosophy. And as sociology has found itself driven forward into the territory of social “logic,” a name which at once suggests a critical and philosophical science, it may well be that sociological psychology will not remain wholly “positive” and impartial, but will assume, as in the hands of Professor Giddings, for example, it seems inclined to, at least a teleological attitude, testing social phenomena by the quantity and quality of life which they display.

But, at any rate, the points of view of sociology, and of social philosophy as above described, will continue to supplement each other. Philosophy gives a significance to sociology; sociology vitalises philosophy. The idea of mind is deepened and extended by the unity and continuity which sociological analysis, throughout all its many-sided sources, vindicates for the principle of growth and order down to the roots and in all the fibres of the world. Every natural resource and condition must be thought of as drawing forth or constituting some new element in the mind which is the universal focus; just as every shape and colour of the trees in the landscape or every note of a melody finds its {52} definite and individual response in the contemplative consciousness. The error lies, not in identifying the mind and the environment, but in first uncritically separating them, and then substituting not merely the one for the other, but wretched fragments of the one for the whole in which alone either can be complete.

Philosophy, on the other hand, in treating of society, has to deal with the problems which arise out of the nature of a whole and its parts, the relation of the individual to the universal, and the transformation by which the particular self is lost, to be found again in a more individual, and yet more universal form. In all these respects its view is what might be called teleological; that is to say, it recognises a difference of level or of degree in the completeness and reality of life, and endeavours to point out when and how, and how far by social aid, the human soul attains the most and best that it has in it to become. As long as these two points of view are clearly recognised, it is a matter of the mere personal division of labour whether they are brought to bear by the same thinkers and within the same treatises.

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