CIVILIZATION-WARD AND DIBTZGEN I73 



chemistry from the superstitions of alchemy. 

 Ward is therefore on soHd ground when he 

 maintains that "the indispensable foundation 

 of all economic and social science" consists 

 in the fact that "all human activities and all 

 social phenomena are rigidly subject to nat- 

 ural law." It is just the difficulty of discern- 

 ing uniform laws amidst the highly complex 

 phenomena of society that delays the proper 

 development of sociology, although, as we 

 have seen, this difficulty is materially aug- 

 mented by the class interests at stake. 



Again, just as biology was hindered in its 

 growth by the doctrine of special creations 

 and, still earlier, Copernican astronomy was 

 checked by the geocentric theory, so now the 

 progress of sociology is restrained by the doc- 

 trine of divine providence. Believers in divine 

 providence are well represented by the Hin- 

 doo who in his lesson on English composition 

 spoke of his father as having "died according 

 to the caprice of God which passeth all under- 

 standing." 



It is precisely because "caprice" can not be 

 understood and cannot therefore, be made the 

 basis of prevision, that it can not be admitted 

 into the domam of science. Science, as Star- 

 cke well said, is founded on "faith in the uni- 

 versality of causation." If the activities of men 



