THE STUDY OF SOCIOLOGY. 



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nets, but will even tend to make tbe conceptions of products wrong. 

 The analytical habit of mind has to be supplemented by the syn- 

 thetical habit of mind. Seen in its proper place, analysis has for its 

 chief function to prepare the way for synthesis ; and, to keep a due 

 mental balance, there must be not only a recognition of the truth that 

 synthesis is the end to which analysis is the means, but there must also 

 be a practice of synthesis along with a practice of analysis. 



All the Concrete Sciences familiarize the mind with certain cardinal 

 conceptions which the Abstract and Abstract-Concrete Sciences do not 

 yield the conceptions of continuity, complexity, and contingency. 

 The simplest of the Concrete Sciences, Astronomy and Geology, yield 

 the idea of continuity with great distinctness. I do not mean con- 

 tinuity of existence merely; I mean continuity of causation: the un- 

 ceasing production of effect the never-ending work of every force. 

 On the mind of the astronomer there is vividly impressed the idea that 

 any one planet which has been by so much swerved out of its course 

 by another planet, or by a combination of others, will through all fu- 

 ture time follow a route different from that it would have followed but 

 for the perturbation ; and he recognizes its reaction upon the pei'turb- 

 ing planet or planets, as similarly having effects which, while ever 

 being complicated and ever slowly diffused, will never be lost during 

 the immeasurable periods to come. So, too, the geologist sees in each 

 change wrought on the earth's crust, by igneous or aqueous action, a 

 new factor that goes on perpetually modifying all subsequent changes. 

 An upheaved portion of sea-bottom alters the courses of ocean-cur- 

 rents, modifies the climates of adjacent lands, affects their rainfalls 

 and prevailing winds, their denudations and the deposits round their 

 coasts, their floras and faunas; and these effects severally become 

 causes that act unceasingly in ever-multiplying ways. Always there 

 is traceable the persistent working of each force, and the progressive 

 complication of the results through succeeding geologic epochs. 



These conceptions, not yielded at all by the Abstract and Abstract- 

 Concrete Sciences, and yielded by the inorganic Concrete Sciences in 

 ways which, though unquestionable, do not arrest attention, are yielded 

 in clear and striking ways by the organic Concrete Sciences the sci- 

 ences that deal with living things. Every organism, if we choose to 

 read the lessons it gives us, shows continuity of causation and com- 

 plexity of causation. The ordinary facts of inheritance illustrate con- 

 tinuity of causation very conspicuously where varieties so distinct as 

 negro and white are united, and where traces of the negro come out 

 generation after generation ; and still better among domestic animals, 

 where traits of remote ancestry show the persistent working of causes 

 which date far back. Organic phenomena make us familiar with com- 

 plexity of causation, both by showing the cooperation of many ante- 

 cedents to each consequent, and by snowing the multiplicity of results 

 which each influence works out. If we observe how a given weight 



