THE PROBLEMS OF SOCIOLOGY 817 



in astronomy and geology stands, in the form given to it by Kant 

 and Laplace, the idea of creation. While the specializing science 

 of to-day pushes the significance of the fundamental ideas, the prin- 

 ciples, the system, into the background, they would surely have 

 undermined the vital conditions of sociology, whose aim is to dis- 

 cover correlation on the largest scale, if it were possible to arrest 

 the course of development of human understanding. From suspicion 

 of the dialectic philosophy men had become accustomed to accuse 

 all fundamental ideas of being merely invalid inductions. This was 

 entirely unjust; for, as all psychological analysis teaches, while 

 they may be erroneous, they are, however, always syntheses of 

 individual experiences; that is, the product of induction. It must 

 be further observed that every piece of minute scientific work, in 

 so far as it is not stimulated by the purpose of mere invention for 

 capitalistic use, must lend itself at last to a generalizing synthesis, 

 if all research is not to remain purposeless. This appears in the case 

 of all public arrangements of the state and of society. 



One must, like myself, live in the atmosphere dominated by the 

 traditions of learned Germany, in order to have an idea of the bitter 

 struggle which the special sciences have waged against sociology. 

 Nevertheless this struggle, in spite of outbreaks of hatred toward 

 the founders of sociology, as, for example, against Gumplowicz, 

 has already turned in their favor. The book-market is swamped 

 with bulky works which try to assume the appearance of sociological 

 intelligence, and the designation "sociology" is applied to the most 

 incongruous fields of thought. 



Since now in all generalization induction is an inevitable con- 

 dition, and every specialization must terminate with a synthesis, 

 the problem before us seems simply to be to provide, as a basis for 

 the synthesis that shall control social life, an induction which is not 

 liable to error. 



From time immemorial men have sought to reach theorems of 

 universal validity. Even specializing science has not been able to 

 avoid this demand. We have consequently a vast literature in 

 which specialists, from their own peculiar one-sided standpoint, 

 have sought to arrive at a synthesis covering social evolution. 

 Starting with historical, economic, statistical, juridical, philological, 

 biological, anthropological, geographical, or other similar stand- 

 points, they attempt to detect the fundamental principles of social 

 relationships. These attempts are of course futile, because socio- 

 logy cannot be derived inductively from a single one of these nu- 

 merous fields of knowledge. It must be derived from them all. If 

 one of these scientific factors is omitted, or is not taken into the 

 reckoning at its full value, the sociological calculation is on that 

 account as vicious as if in a mathematical formula one should omit 



