CONSTITUTIONAL LAW 565 



i 



aid of sociology. 1 It is true that even sociologists are agreed in 

 determining the characters of the method they are applying to social 

 facts; they are only asserting that social phenomena are identical 

 with the natural or even less bound to their form. An inflexible 

 relation of causality, gathered from a severe determinism, in 

 relation to which science respecting it is essentially positive, and 

 determines with observation and investigation the laws of phenom- 

 ena. " Science studied," said Spencer, " the increasing, the develop- 

 ment, the structure, and the functions of the social aggregate, for 

 the reason that it is a result of the mutual action of the men." Some 

 writers are making a natural history of human societies, determining 

 and classifying genders and kinds, describing the anatomy of their 

 organs, analyzing the physiology of their functions, tracing the 

 curves of their evolution. 3 Others again are studying social facts 

 and looking for the laws which are mechanically governing them, 

 with a greater objectivity, following more scrupulously the traces of 

 this experimental method, going back to Aristotle, perfected by 

 Galileo, and which led to the most important discoveries of modern 

 science. 4 Metaphysical sociologists like A. Comte, anthropologists 

 like Letourneau, psychologists like Espinas, historians like Spencer, 

 have already demonstrated what is the worth of the method, until 

 it is limiting itself to observation. Not one of them is offering us 

 a sure conclusion; they are agreeing neither on the substratum of 

 science, nor on its end, nor on the essence of social facts, nor on any 

 political application. Conservation or progress, liberty or authority, 

 individualism or socialism, such a method has for every one a 

 solution, but there is no sure and positive conclusion. Until it is 

 handling of past and of present, the collection of facts is important, 

 observation complete, but when we are looking for the secret of the 

 future, when we will remove the criterions of the constitutional law 

 and of its development we perceive the absolute impotency of it, 

 which is giving us middle types existing everywhere, providing 

 solutions which are not finding applications. 



To correct this impotency of the sociological method, the com- 

 parative method is lending its aid. After the detailed observation 

 of social facts, their comparison is necessary, which Montesquieu 

 was already opposing to the dogmatism of Rousseau, investigating 



1 Balecki, Staafsobligatorische organisation der Politischen Gesellschaft; La- 

 tourneau, L' Evolution positive dans les races humaines ; Espinas, Les socictes 

 animales; Spencer, H., Social Science and Sociology; De Roberty, La sociologie; 

 Fouillee, La science sociale contemporaine. 



2 Social Science, pp. 5, et seq. 



3 Espinas, Les societes animales; Schaffle, Ban und LebendesSocialen Korpers; 

 De Lilienfeld, La societe humaine consideree comme un organisme vivant; E. 

 Perrier, Les colonies animales; Bourdier, Vie des socictes. 



4 Fouillee, Balecki, op. cit.; De Greef, Les lois sociologiqv.es; Duguet, Le droit 

 constitutional et la sociologie. 



