EXACT METHODS IN SOCIOLOGY. 153 



utilitj and scientific interest, tlie appropriation for tliem would 

 have been denied in Congress without an instant's hesitation. 

 They have been included because of the political deference given 

 to class feeling and to various forms of religious and educational 

 prejudice. 



Thus there is seen to be a remarkable interdependence of sta- 

 tistical method and psychological analysis in the development of 

 sociological research. Analysis and method have converged upon 

 the same postulates, and it is apparently by the development of 

 methods frankly founded upon these postulates that our socio- 

 logical knowledge is to be further increased. 



It would be a great mistake, however, to assume that socio- 

 logical knowledge is to be increased only by the further collec- 

 tion and interpretation of numerical data. Careful monographic 

 description and historical research must continue to be important 

 sources of both information and hypothesis. The great defects of 

 monographic work, both descriptive and historical, are, first, a cer- 

 tain lack of pre'cision, attributable to the large part played in 

 investigation by the individual judgment of the student (the lack 

 of objective tests by which his subjective impressions may be crit- 

 ically examined); second, a certain incompleteness, attributable 

 to a failure to separate each inquiry into all its scientific sub- 

 divisions and to attempt to obtain desired data under each subdi- 

 vision, as is done in statistical investigation where, in every table, 

 as many topics as there are scientific subdivisions of the general 

 subject are represented by columns, and an entry of some kind is 

 made in every column. 



I wish now to point out the possibility of giving greater pre- 

 cision to monographic work in sociology by the introduction of 

 quasi-statistical methods — methods that are essentially quantita- 

 tive in an algebraic sense, though they are not numerical. 



Social phenomena have the interesting characteristic that small 

 forces, while never lost in that composition of forces which deter- 

 mines the ultimate equilibrium of the social system, often count 

 for absolutely nothing in the practical affairs of a given genera- 

 tion. If, for example, Mr. Bryan and a Democratic Congress had 

 been elected in 1896, the practical consequences for the United 

 States would have been much the same whether the Democratic 

 plurality had been one hundred thousand, half a million, or two 

 or three millions. This is but one example of a large class of 

 facts. Social phenomena are more often than not determined by 

 a mere matter of more or less, rather than by the exact amount 

 or degree of more or less. The determination is algebraic rather 

 than arithmetical. Is the element under investigation a positive 



