794 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



whatever is sound and true in the tradition-wealth of each people. In 

 his thought social organization was an art rather than a science. 

 Though many of the legislative remedies he advocated may seem to 

 us peculiarly trivial and inapplicable, yet we must remember that he 

 regarded laws as merely aids to right development, and for the most 

 part sought to ingraft upon existing French legislation only such 

 special features as had been found helpful elsewhere. By changing 

 the laws of inheritance, or giving more power to the fathers of fami- 

 lies, one can not bring again the reign of primitive simplicity. For, 

 despite Le Play's denial, we are not in all respects " the same that our 

 fathers have been." Even though it were admitted that the moral 

 law change not, yet the means of procuring daily bread do surely 

 change, and that continually, and in some measure "invention" must 

 be used in social science to find the proper way of fitting society to 

 the changed and changing situation. 



But, in spite of all defects, two special merits belong to Le Play's 

 work in social science. The first is, that he insisted on studying con- 

 crete, not abstract ' society " ; he employed the statistical method. 

 It has been said, to be sure, that " figures always lie " ; and certainly 

 charts and diagrams, and brace-synopses that profess to set forth social 

 facts, either past or present, should be accepted with profoundest cau- 

 tion. They are things to be used as Spencer uses them in his "De- 

 scriptive Sociology," not as being in themselves final results, but only 

 as a means that may help us in reaching results more nearly final. 

 Social facts are too intangible to make it possible to bottle and label 

 them, once for all, as one may chemicals. The per cent "lost in analy- 

 sis " is always too large to allow the results to be taken as final. But, 

 after all this has been acknowledged, there remain manifest advan- 

 tages from even " approximate determinations." Though the methods 

 are not perfect, they are the best that social science has, the only ones 

 that make continuous progress possible. The great mass of work done 

 or inspired by Le Play has already been of use to many students not 

 of his school. Laspeyres has classified and compared his " budgets " 

 with valuable results, and the omnivorous German statisticians have, 

 of course, made use of them. 



But, aside from right method and patient accumulation of social 

 data, Le Play should, in the second place, be remembered as one who 

 dared to question the seductive finalities of what claims to be eco- 

 nomic orthodoxy ; who, in turning from the study of abstractions to 

 the study of men, "refound" the need of insisting always upon not 

 only the social and sociologic, but also upon the economic importance 

 of morality and regard for fellow-man. 



