SUCCESS OF SPECULATIVE SOCIOLOGY 13 



places in the very forefront of his elaborate work 

 is professedly merely a summary of conclusions Cha P ter 1 

 already arrived at ; and the manner in which he 

 states these conclusions is itself evidence that 

 sociologists, when dealing with certain classes of 

 social phenomena, have given us something more 

 than "surveys" and "suggestive hints" Social 

 science, in fact, cannot be properly called a failure 

 except when it ceases to deal with the larger u has failed 

 phenomena of society, which show themselves only 

 in the long course of ages, and descending to the 

 problems of a particular age and civilisation, en- 

 deavours to deduce, from the general principles it 

 has established, propositions minute enough to be 

 applicable to our immediate conduct and expecta- 

 tions. As practical inquirers, therefore, the real 

 question before us is not why social science has 

 failed, where physical science has succeeded, but 

 why social science has succeeded like physical science 

 in one direction, and, unlike physical science, failed 

 so signally in another. If we concentrate our 

 attention on the subject in this way, and thus 

 realise with precision the nature of the failure we 

 desire to explain, we shall find that the explanation 

 of it is not only far simpler than might have been 

 supposed, but also that the remedy for it is far more 

 obvious and more easy. 



It has been said that sociology has succeeded in NOW the 

 dealing with those social phenomena which extend 

 themselves through vast periods of time, and has 

 failed in dealing with those whose interest and 



