138 The Special Sociological Errors 



theory of slow and actual causes, that is, when it 

 rejects the cataclysmic theory. The methodical 

 study and classification of social facts by means 

 of statistics, the new social psychology which is 

 arising, the systematic observation of the action of 

 social forces in the every-day Hfe about us, indi- 

 cate that sociology is now passing from the meta- 

 physical stage into the phase of a positive science. 

 It is not difficult to understand why the cataclys- 

 mic theory should have been adopted at first in 

 sociology. The social sciences have gone to history 

 for much of their data, and until recent years 

 much of history has been a catalogue of battles, 

 conveying the impression that the "fifteen deci- 

 sive battles" of the world have been the cause of 

 the progress of civilization. Wars have been the 

 great dramatic events of history, impressing them- 

 selves upon the popular imagination like floods 

 and earthquakes, while the daily events of pro- 

 ductive labour and social contact, the gradual 

 accumulation of inventions, the slow extension 

 of the bounds of human knowledge by explora- 

 tion and discovery have not made this same 

 dramatic appeal. Monuments have been erected 

 to commemorate great wars and battles, because 

 of the fact that they were out of the ordinary, 

 and historians, finding very little to bear witness 

 to the true history of civilization, have been com- 

 pelled to take these mgnuments as the chief data 

 of the past. The same process can be observed 

 in the modem newspaper, where the accidents, 



