CONCEPTS AND METHODS OF SOCIOLOGY 799 



upon it by the establishment of a statistical journal, Biometrica. 

 It is not too much to claim that the possibilities of this now in- 

 dispensable method of all the sciences were first demonstrated in 

 the epoch-making social studies of Jacques Quetelet, and that its 

 employment in sociology has been out of all proportion to its em- 

 ployment elsewhere. As developed in recent years by the Dane, 

 Westergaard; by Germans like Steinhauser, Lexis, and Meyer; by 

 Italians, like Bodio; by Frenchmen, like Lavasseur and Dumont; by 

 Englishmen, like Charles Booth, E. B. Tylor, Galton, Bowley, and 

 Karl Pearson; by Americans, like Weber, Norton, Mayo-Smith, 

 Cattell, Thorndike, and Boas, it has become, and will continue to 

 be, the chiefly important method of sociology; and assuredly, in 

 the course of time, it will bring our knowledge of society up to 

 standards of thoroughness and precision comparable to the results 

 attained by any natural science. 



