94 MICHAEL A. LANE 



himself individually. And as America is the true cradle of 

 sociolog}', so we may rationally expect that here the baby 

 will grow up into the matured and strong science. 



In his great work, Political Science and Constitutional 

 Law, Prof. John W. Burgess of Columbia university, mod- 

 estly calls attention to the interesting fact that he had been 

 compelled to originate a new terminology in order clearly to 

 set forth the ideas he had elaborated concerning the natural 

 causes that underlie the evolution of government. The work 

 in question has been variously criticized, but so far as I know 

 there is no single work that could take its place were it once 

 eliminated from our American libraries. Professor Burgees 

 writes as a lawyer, and perhaps there are those who mil look 

 askance at our classification of him here with American sociol- 

 ogists, but I fancy there is no American sociologist but will 

 agree that Political Science and Constitutional Law is par 

 excellence a sociological work which can be separated from 

 the science of sociology no more than the work of Harvey 

 or of Boyle can be separated from physiology or chemistry. 



I doubt gravely whether any British or continental 

 authority can wholly appreciate the long step forward which 

 Professor Burgess has taken, and what I say here of Burgess 

 may be repeated of a few well known American scholars in 

 political economy. We all know that Plato could not imagine 

 a state of society without slaves; and this broad fact will 

 doubtless assist us in understanding the more modern fact 

 that the European economist, historian, and sociologist are 

 unquestionably the product of their environment, quite as 

 much as Plato was of his own. 



In surveying the broad stream of political progress in 

 America, Burgess was deeply impressed with a succession of 

 singular facts which were taken into account nowhere in the 

 previously written literature of his subject. Here was a mass 

 of facts, or more properly speaking, a continuous movement 

 or procession of social facts, unclassified, unnamed, and in a 

 word, wholly unrecognized as yet, in any methodical or 

 scientific way. And why? Simply because the facts which 

 Burgess saw were new. Now, facts, or new perceptions of 

 famihar facts, require a new terminology the very moment 



