THE AMERICAN SOCIOLOGIST 93 



the principal one of which lies in the fact that sociology is, 

 in a way, a science which finds its richest fields and its most 

 numerous cultivators here in America. The richest and 

 strongest growths in art or in science are always found upon 

 the soils in which the seed first sprouted. For science cannot 

 be learned out of books any more than art can be mastered 

 in the same way. This truth finds its vindication in the fact 

 that our physicists, physiologists, anatomists, pathologists and 

 chemists, go abroad for their finishing touches. The sciences 

 named have been born and have grown up in Europe. All 

 the new methods of research — or virtually all — have been 

 originated in Europe, and in Europe alone can the student 

 find the masters, or the men who have had the advantage of 

 working with the masters, and in this way have perpetuated 

 the methods of the masters or improved upon them. Art 

 and science are thus handed down from generation to 

 generation, and with every new generation new and better 

 methods originate, and wider knowledge and capacity ensue. 



Now here in America sciences, for the most part, are only 

 transplanted. Our work has been more in the way of imita- 

 tion than of origination, and such origination as we have been 

 able to make has been largely of an utilitarian kind. Scien- 

 tific research — with a few notable exceptions, such as in as- 

 tronomy — has the stamp of utility upon its forehead. It is 

 essentially Baconian. It is founded upon the practical bear- 

 ings of society rather than upon pure intellectualism. And 

 even in the case of astronomy and physics our work has been 

 of a corollary nature rather than of a kind comparable with 

 the great achievements of European scholars in times past 

 and present. And the immediate outlook for the develop- 

 ment of really prime research is not particularly bright. 



In sociology, however, we have a very different story to 

 tell. A noted European sociologist, not very long ago, re- 

 marked to me that in America alone there existed an inti- 

 m.ately associated body of thinkers who were capable of re- 

 ceiving and appreciating any considerable theory of social 

 life and laws; that here alone was the soil from which would 

 grow up a scientific method whereby man would l^e led to 

 know himself socially as in Europe he had been led to know 



