PART III. 



SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM. 



CHAPTER XIII. 



STERILITY OF SOCIOLOGY. 



One of the strangest facts in the history of 

 scientific thought in the igth century is that 

 though the profound scientific revolution 

 caused by Darwinism and Spencerian evolution 

 has renewed with fresh youth all parts of 

 physical, biological and even psychological 

 sciences, when it reached the domain of 

 the social sciences it only ruffled super- 

 ficially the water of the tranquil and orthodox 

 lake of the social science par excellence . 

 political economy. 



We had, it is true, on the initiative of 

 Auguste Comte whose name has been a 

 little obscured by those of Darwin and Spencer 

 but who was certainly one of the grandest and 

 most vitalising spirits of our epoch the 

 creation of a new science, sociology, which 

 ought to have been, together with the natural 

 history of human societies, the glorious crown 

 of the new scientific edifice built by the 

 experimental method. 



I do not deny that sociology in the domain 

 of pure descriptive anatomy of the social 

 organism-has introduced grand and fructifying 

 novelties into contemporary science, even 



