EXACT METHODS IN SOCIOLOGY. 147 



progress toward scientific consistency and rigor of method. Muck 

 babble about social ills and possible reforms still masquerades as 

 social science. A great deal of loose thinking and slipshod inves- 

 tigation is paraded as expert opinion on questions of social wel- 

 fare. But no one who has seriously followed the efforts of scien- 

 tifically trained minds to discover the natural laws of social evo- 

 lution is in any danger of confounding the results thus far 

 obtained with the chatter over every passing fad. In the more 

 serious work itself there is found a vigorous and hopeful disagree- 

 ment of opinion upon all unsettled questions. But the fact of real 

 significance is that the disputation has become intensive. The 

 debate no longer ranges over a wide field. A selective process 

 has eliminated one after another the more loose and vague con- 

 ceptions of the science, the irrelevant issues, and the superficial 

 analogies. There has been a progressive concentration of atten- 

 tion upon a group of closely related and fundamental problems. 



The sociology of August Comte was little more than a highly 

 intelligent and quickening talk about social order and progress. 

 It convinced thoughtful men that there is a social order to be 

 studied in a scientific spirit and by scientific methods, and that 

 social progress conforms to laws that may be discovered. Mr. 

 Spencer narrowed the field of sociological inquiry and gave pre- 

 cision of statement to all social problems by bringing them within 

 the formulas of universal evolution. He still further narrowed 

 the field by demonstrating the close relationship of social phe- 

 nomena to the phenomena of organic evolution and by seizing upon 

 certain psychological facts as chief factors in social causation. All 

 fruitful later work in social interpretation has been a further con- 

 centration of investigation upon the psychic factors. While ad- 

 mitting that social as well as mental phenomena are subsumed 

 under biological phenomena, and that the parallelism of social 

 organization to biotic organization is real, the younger students 

 of sociology have developed the science as an offshoot of psychol- 

 ogy, and have dropped the biological analogy as unfruitful for 

 purposes of research. The pioneer in this movement was Dr. 

 Lester F. Ward, whose masterly analysis of the psychic factors of 

 social phenomena gave the right direction for all time to socio- 

 logical inquiry, and whose emphasis of the importance of reason 

 and volition in the social process, although it has not yet received 

 the attention that it merits, is destined to be fruitful in coming 

 years. 



To the further study of the psychological foundations of so- 

 ciety practically all the valuable work on fundamental social 

 problems has been given during the past ten years. Tarde has 



