SUGGESTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 515 



tematisation or standardising of sympathy. Although 

 this seems to us to avoid the difficulty of account- 

 ing for the distinctively ethical quality of " thinking 

 the ought/^ it sets forth admirably the pre-human 

 expressions of sympathy at many different levels. 



Prof. F. H. Giddings in more than one book has 

 elaborated the thesis that like-mindedness, i.e., like- 

 responsiveness to given stimuli, with correlated simi- 

 larity in cerebral structure, is the basis of social 

 organisation. Sympathetic like-mindedness results 

 in impulsive social action ; formal like-mindedness is 

 expressed in tradition and in conformity to existing 

 social standards; rational like-mindedness leads to 

 the development of a public opinion which becomes 

 an intelligent guide to progress. 



To sum up, the three categories of interpretation. 

 Environment, Function, and Kinship — Lieu, Tra- 

 vail, Famille — seem sufficient for a descriptive ac- 

 count of societary forms, hut must not he regarded 

 in a merely physical way. Each is rich in psychical 

 meaning. The physical and psychical lines of ad- 

 vance are parallel, and the outcome is an integration 

 of persons. 



CLASSIFICATION OF THE GENERAL FACTORS OF SOCIAL 

 EVOLUTION. 



Our knowledge of the factors in social evolution is 

 still vague partly because of the intrinsic complexity 

 of the problem, and partly because of our ignorance 

 of the early prehistoric stages. It is unsatisfactory 

 to use the past as the interpretative key to the pres- 

 ent, if we have previously invented many of the fea- 

 tures of that past. It is unsatisfactory to adopt 

 biological conclusions as if they must hold good in 

 society, and this is the more precarious since some 



