816 SOCIAL STRUCTURE 



the hands of speculative theorists. Plato and Aristotle were socio- 

 logists whose dialectical system maintained influence down to the 

 time of Hegel. Because this thought, however, acquired little in- 

 fluence over the reciprocal relationships of men, there was at last 

 a turning of research toward social phenomena in order to derive 

 theorems from experience in this field. As a matter of course, it 

 was necessary that the total phenomena of human relationships 

 should first of all be separated into special departments of research. 

 Certain such special departments had already been for a long time 

 the subject-matter of investigation. This is true of history con- 

 sidered as chronological exhibition of social evolution, with especial 

 reference to the political and cultural struggle for existence among 

 peoples. A further notable department of specialization is investi- 

 gation of economic phenomena, introduced in its modern form by 

 Adam Smith. Gradually specialization took possession of all the 

 important phenomena of social life, such as religion, customs, law, 

 civilization, etc. ; and still further the real causes of these phenomena, 

 such as place of abode, climate, race, the statistical elements of 

 social phenomena, etc.; so that to-day we have a mass of material 

 from such investigation which it is well-nigh impossible to survey. 

 Nevertheless, through these special investigations a science of 

 the reciprocal relationships of human beings in general was merely 

 made possible. At first they veiled the nature and the method of 

 sociology. The very research which produced the building-materials 

 of sociology assumed a hostile relationship toward that science. 

 In order to understand this, we must observe that in the modes of 

 thinking that have come into control since the eighteenth century, 

 so far as social phenomena are concerned, there has been modifica- 

 tion by a thought-movement more powerful than specialization 

 itself. It has revolutionized everything that was ancient in science; 

 it has subjected everything else to its method. I refer, of course, 

 to the awakening and the exact development of the natural sciences. 

 These have found all virtue in specialization, in the singular, in 

 investigation of the microcosm, based upon mathematical certainties. 

 Although it cannot be denied that the trendendous successes of the 

 natural sciences are attributable to this method, yet it is not to be 

 reconciled with our present realistic spirit that such one-sidedness, 

 although it may be easily understood, should persist in ascribing 

 all virtue to this method, and should forget that the whole of human 

 progress has not been produced by it, but rather through the inte- 

 gration of ideas, through the intellectual control of the microcosm, 

 through the formation of general ideas. How could Darwin have 

 gone through his biological career if there had not been in his mind 

 from the beginning the vital conception, the intuitive conviction, 

 of the unity of origin of all organisms? Preceding all special labor 



