SUGGESTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 



501 



LINES OF SOCIOLOGICAL ENQUIRY. 



The lines of sociological work are parallel to those 

 in biology: 



(A) 



Dynamics. 



(C) Inquiring into the growth of 

 society in whole or in part. 



(D) Inquiring into the factors of social 

 evolution (variation, selection, 

 etc.), or into the factors in the 

 evolution of any particular form 

 or function of society. 



Comparable to Gen- 

 eology (Embryol- 

 ogy, Palaeontology, 

 etc.)- 



Comparable to Eti- 

 ology, but it need 

 not be separated as 

 a special depart- 

 ment as it must be 

 our way of looking 

 at the whole. 



It may be of service to illustrate this classifica- 

 tion by means of some representative examples. 

 These are indicative of some of the steps of nine- 

 teenth-century sociological work, but it should be 

 noted (1) that many of the best pieces of work tra- 

 verse the whole field, and that even when an investi- 

 gator refrains from enquiring into the historical or 

 evolutionary aspect, he usually brings some evolu- 

 tionist ideas into his morphology; (2) that, as be- 

 fore said, the lines separating sociological enquiry 

 from anthropology, psychology, and history (in the 

 narrow sense) are artificial lines of convenience ; and 

 (3) that the great bulk of sociological work (we do 

 not refer to sociological ideas') is subsequent to Her- 

 bert Spencer's finely conceived introduction to the 



