SUGGESTIONS OF SOCIOLOGY. 501 



LINES OF SOCIOLOGICAL ENQUIRY. 



The lines of sociological work are parallel to those 

 in biology: 



(A) "SS-O-* to Mor- 

 Statics. 



Dynamics. 



I Comparable to Gen- 



(C) Inquiring into the growth of I eology (Embryol- 

 eociety in whole or in part. ( ogy, Palaeontology, 



J etc.)' 



"] Comparable to 

 (D) Inquiring into the factors of social ology, but it need 

 evolution (variation, selection, | not be separated as 

 etc.), or into the factors in the } a special depart- 



evolution of any particular form 

 or function of society. 



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 



