818 SOCIAL STRUCTURE 



even the most unimportant symbol. The laws of social relationship 

 are like those of the universal mechanism, to be discovered only 

 from a survey of all the phenomena. All absorption in a special 

 group of phenomena brings with it the danger of running into anti- 

 thesis with the laws which govern the whole; this, in other words, 

 means danger of giving a false interpretation to the special. The 

 Ptolemaic conception of the universe remains the perpetual warning 

 of the dangers of a too narrow point of view. 



It was Comte who first recognized this truth. His positivism com- 

 pares the facts of reflection, of sense-perception, and of social 

 evolution, so that the synthesis may be an induction from an ade- 

 quate series of experiences. We know that Comte 's work did not 

 succeed, because, on the one hand, he did not have the compre- 

 hensive knowledge of the objective phenomena of social life, and 

 because, on the other hand, he had not sufficiently investigated 

 man, the unit of these reciprocal relationships. Kant's influence 

 was, however, by no means without effect. His positive method 

 won the conviction of investigators more and more as the method 

 by which it is necessary to reach a scientific comprehension of the 

 content of human relationships. This perception came into natural 

 correlation with the products of special investigation. On the basis 

 of the scientifically ascertained facts, of the natural laws, and of 

 logic, search is now made for the social laws. Interpreted by the 

 conceptions of positive monism they merge with the laws of nature 

 and of reasoning into a unified doctrinal structure. Sociological 

 knowledge is thus not, as hostile scholars allege, a dialectically 

 woven web, but a product of the same intellectual process which 

 every special science applies when it conducts research in its pecul- 

 iar territory. The difference between this specializing minute labor 

 and sociology consists merely in the fact that the latter does not 

 test its material with reference to the particular, but with reference to 

 the universal. As in the case of every subject and object, there must 

 go along with this testing of all phenomena with reference to their 

 sociological content, investigation of man with reference to his social 

 nature. This social psychology is implied in the positive method. 

 It involves search on the one side for the social ego, and on the other 

 side for the reaction of the life-conditions upon the ego. Because 

 this social psychology teaches what social demands this ego has, and 

 the investigation of the social facts teaches how these demands may 

 be satisfied, we arrive at sociology as the science of reciprocal human 

 relations. In the field of social psychology America possesses in 

 Lester F. Ward, and in research among social facts the world pos- 

 sesses in Herbert Spencer, a thinker who has opened new scientific 

 paths. The problem is simply to combine the true tendencies in 

 sociological knowledge, and to develop them into a real synthesis. 



