PRESENT POSITION OF SOCIOLOGY. 811 



are, unfortunately, not recent. They may be found in somewhat 

 different form, but substantially the same in principle, in VEssai 

 coeducation nationale, published by Le Chalotais in 1763. The 

 paper furnishes a programme of studies and education which, if put 

 into execution, would, I believe, constitute a long advance over the 

 present conditions. At a later period Condorcet was occupied with 

 the subject. At the close of the nineteenth century the name of 

 Jean Mace, which I have already cited, should be held among those 

 of men who have tried to infuse sound and just views concerning 

 the pedagogy of mathematics. Another man, from whom I have 

 borrowed a considerable part of the examples I have cited, is 

 Edouard Lucas, who, in his Recreations mathematiques, of which one 

 volume was published during his lifetime and two others after his 

 death, and in his lectures before the Conservatoire des Arts et 

 Metiers, strove to develop views concerning the primary mathe- 

 matical education of childhood views which did not differ, except 

 in form, from those which I have presented. Translated for the 

 Popular Science Monthly from the Revue Scientifique. 



PRESENT POSITION OF SOCIOLOGY. 



BY F. SPENCEK BALDWIN. 



THE present condition of sociological thought is confused, if not 

 chaotic. It needs only a brief examination of the writings of pro- 

 fessed sociologists to discover the want of agreement among them. 

 There is no consensus of opinion regarding either the scope and 

 method of the new science, so called, or its fundamental laws and 

 principles. The name sociology stands for no definite body of sys- 

 tematic knowledge. It is applied to an inchoate mass of speculation, 

 often vague and conflicting, which represents the thought of various 

 thinkers about social phenomena. 



A few years ago a student of sociology in Chicago wrote to " all 

 the teachers of sociology in the United States, and to others known 

 to be deeply interested in the subject and entitled to express an 

 opinion," asking them to answer a number of pertinent questions re- 

 garding the nature and function of the " science." * About forty 

 replied; of these, three discreetly pleaded knowledge insufficient to 

 entitle them to an opinion. Comparison of the views expressed in 

 the remaining twenty-seven replies led the investigator to conclude 

 that the science is in a more or less undefined and tentative position. 



* Present Condition of Sociology in the United States. Ira W. Howarth. Annals of 

 the American Academy, September, 1894. 



