FAILURE OF PRACTICAL SOCIOLOGY 15 



legist is concerned, are manifested successively by Bo0 k i 

 humanity, or some portion of humanity, as a whole. Cha P ter * 

 They are not referred to individuals or small classes. 

 No question is asked as to what particular savage 

 may rightly claim priority in the invention of metal 

 implements, or whether flint or bronze were the 

 subjects of any prehistoric monopoly. Those races 

 amongst which the use of the metals became general 

 are regarded as a single body, which had made this 

 advance collectively. They are, indeed, as we shall 

 again have occasion to observe, habitually described 

 under the common name of Man. But let us turn but the practi . 

 to such phenomena as the antagonism between in- ^t^^f 03 ^ 

 dividualists and collectivists, and the case is wholly which k has 



ITT T 11 i -i dealt unsuc- 



dinerent. It is true that here also, as in the case cessfuiiy, arise 

 i i i ut f the c 



we have just been considering, our attention is flkt between 



called to a portion of the human race, namely, the 

 Western or progressive nations, which we may, for 

 certain purposes, regard as a single aggregate ; but 

 it is fixed, not on the phenomena which this ag- 

 gregate exhibits as a whole, but on those exhibited 

 by unlike and conflicting parts of it the part which 

 sympathises with individualists on the one hand, 

 and the part which sympathises with collectivists 

 on the other. 



Thus the subject-matter of sociology, regarded 

 as a speculative science, consists of those points 

 in which the members of any given social aggre- 

 gate resemble one another. The subject - matter 

 of sociology, regarded as a practical science, 

 consists of those points in which the members, or 



