SOCIETY FOR CRUELTY PREVENTION 5427 



SOCIOLOGY 



The first social settlement was founded by 

 men of Oxford University, in London, in 1884. 

 It was the outgrowth of the work begun in 

 Whitechapel, a crowded district in East Lon- 

 don, by Arnold Toynbee, and is known as 

 Toynbee Hall. In 1887 Dr. Stanton Coit estab- 

 lished the neighborhood Guild in New York, 

 which grew later into the University Settle- 

 ment. In 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Gates 

 Starr of Chicago opened Hull House, now one 

 of the best-known social centers in the United 

 States. Since that time settlements and settle- 

 ment methods have become common in cities, 

 especially in the United States. M.A.H. 



Consult Addams' Twenty Years at Hull House; 

 Colt's Neighborhood Guilds. 



Related Subjects. The reader is referred to 

 the following articles in these volumes : 



Addams, Jane Hull House 



Community Interests Tenement 



SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF 

 CRUELTY TO ANIMALS. See CRUELTY TO 

 ANIMALS, SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF. 



SOCI'ETY ISLANDS, or TAHITI ARCHI- 

 PELAGO, tah'hete ark i pel' a go, a group of 

 islands in the South Pacific, forming a colony 

 of the French Republic. The islands were offi- 

 cially annexed in 1880. They lie directly east 

 of Australia, about midway between that con- 

 tinent and South America, and about 1,000 

 miles south of the equator (see colored map, 

 with the article OCEANIA). There are two well- 

 defined divisions of the archipelago the Lee- 

 ward and Windward groups. As the largest of 

 the islands, Tahiti (in the Windward group), 

 is 600 square miles in area, and the total area 

 of the archipelago is about 650 square miles, it 

 will be seen that the rest of the islands are of 

 very limited extent. The total population is 

 estimated to be 15,000; nearly 12,000 of the 

 inhabitants live in Tahiti. The natives are a 

 fine type of Polynesians. 



The group's highest peak (7,000 feet) is on 

 Tahiti, but all of the islands are volcanic and 

 mountainous, with coral reefs along their shores. 

 At the extreme north in Tahiti is Point Venus, 

 from which astronomers view the transit of 

 Venus. Bananas, cocoanuts, sugar, the vanilla 

 plant and fruits grow in abundance in the fer- 

 tile soil, but only a small proportion of the 

 tillable land is cultivated. Copra, mother-of- 

 pearl, vanilla, cocoanuts and oranges are ex- 

 ported. Papeete, the chief town and the capi- 

 tal of the French establishments in Oceania, 

 is situated on Tahiti and has a population of 



about 3,600. This town has a cathedral, a 

 higher primary school and a normal school, 

 and there are several mission schools in vari- 

 ous parts of the archipelago. There is regu- 

 lar steamboat service between Papeete and San 

 Francisco, New Zealand and Australia. 



SOCIETY OF JESUS. See JESUITS. 



SOCIOLOGY, soshiol'oji, the study of the 

 human race, including its history, evolution 

 and future, the laws which govern its develop- 

 ment and the place of the individual in rela- 

 tion to society. The scope of sociology is 

 boundless. History, ethnology, civics, econom- 

 ics, anthropology, ethics, psychology, philoso- 

 phy, and, above all, biology all the sciences 

 which treat of human beings and the condi- 

 tions under which they live are related to 

 and contribute to sociology. This science rests 

 on the assumption that all human experience 

 depends on three things: the physical condi- 

 tions under which life is maintained, the rela- 

 tion of the individual to other individuals and 

 to society, and the types of association in which 

 individuals influence each other. Before it can 

 begin its research, sociology must have data 

 on all these subjects, and so it goes for its sta- 

 tistics to the other social sciences. With the 

 data which he gathers from every source, the 

 sociologist endeavors to fix the laws of the re- 

 actions between nature and human beings, both 

 as individuals and in the group; he is study- 

 ing the evolution of human personality, the 

 processes which result in types of individuals 

 and of associates, types which act on each 

 other in an endless cycle of cause and effect. 



Other sciences physics, chemistry, mathe- 

 matics rest on unchanging, invariable laws. 

 They are exact; they never change from age 

 to age : given certain conditions, certain results 

 are inevitable. Auguste Comte, when he first 

 formulated sociology and gave it its name, held 

 that it, too, might be an exact and invariable 

 science; but not to-day, and probably not for 

 thousands of years to come, can the laws which 

 govern human experience be standardized. 

 Biology, the study of all life, is the great 

 foundation for the study of human life, and 

 biology is even now in an unfinished state. 

 Fundamental truths of biology still remain 

 mysteries. The -laws which govern the vital 

 germ in every form of life, which determine 

 color, form and sex, and, in higher planes of 

 life, disposition and character, still evade the 

 most ardent seeker. Theories and hypotheses 

 abound. We seem, little by little, to be 'com- 

 ing nearer the truth. Perhaps, philosophers 



