THE SELECTION OF FACTS. 19 



still better is that facts which occur frequently appear 

 to us simple just because we are accustomed to 

 them. 



But where is the simple fact ? Scientists have tried 

 to find it in the two extremes, in the infinitely great 

 and in the infinitely small. The astronomer has found 

 it because the distances of the stars are immense, so 

 great that each of them appears only as a point and 

 qualitative differences disappear, and because a point 

 is simpler than a body which has shape and qualities. 

 The physicist, on the other hand, has sought the 

 elementary phenomenon in an imaginary division of 

 bodies into infinitely small atoms, because the con- 

 ditions of the problem, which undergo slow and con- 

 tinuous variations as we pass from one point of the 

 body to another, may be regarded as constant within 

 each of these little atoms. Similarly the biologist has 

 been led instinctively to regard the cell as more interest- 

 ing than the whole animal, and the event has proved 

 him right, since cells belonging to the most diverse 

 organisms have greater resemblances, for those who can 

 recognize them, than the organisms themselves. The 

 sociologist is in a more embarrassing position. The 

 elements, which for him are men, are too dissimilar, too 

 variable, too capricious, in a word, too complex them- 

 ^ selves. Furthermore, history does not repeat itself; 

 how, then, is he to select the interesting fact, the fact 

 which is repeated ? Method is precisely the selection 

 of facts, and accordingly our first care must be to 

 devise a method. Many have been devised because 

 none holds the field undisputed. Nearly every socio- 

 logical thesis proposes a new method, which, however, 

 ^its author is very careful not to apply, so that sociology 



