NA TURF. 



49 



THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1896. 



SOCIOLOGY. 

 The Principles of Sociology ; an Analysis of the Pheno- 

 mena of Association and of Social Organisation. By 

 Franklin Henry Giddings, M.A., Professor of Sociology 

 in Columbia University in the City of New York. 

 Pp. xvi + 476. (New York and London : Macmillan 

 and Co., 1896.) 



WITH extensive learning and a good deal of original 

 speculation, Prof. Giddings has written a very 

 useful general introduction to sociology. The scope and 

 nature of this recently established science are not yet 

 well understood, and hitherto it has been difficult to refer 

 to any one book from which they could be learnt ; for 

 Comte is out of date ; Mr. Spencer's great work is still 

 incomplete, though already rather terrifying in its pro- 

 portions ; and the greater part of the information obtain- 

 able on the subject must be sought in innumerable mono- 

 graphs on primitive law, marriage, religion, art, in 

 volumes, essays, and the journals of learned societies. 

 In the present volume, however, the most interesting 

 lines of sociological mquiry are indicated, and the best 

 ascertained results are collected, critically e.xamined, and 

 scientifically arranged within a moderate compass. 



The preliminary discussions of the province of sociology 

 and its logical methods of research, attest the care with 

 which the author has prepared for his task by studying 

 the physical sciences. Some passages in chapter iii., on 

 method, may perhaps be considered fanciful, but they do 

 not prevent his coming to sound conclusions. 



The second book is descriptive and classificatory, deal- 

 ing with the facts of population, its growth, diffusion, and 

 localisation ; with the social mind, its traditions and 

 standards (there is no mysticism about it) ; with social 

 composition according to tribes and nations, and social 

 constitution or organisation for government, industry, &c. 



Then follows an investigation of the history of society ; 

 the place of man's origin, the origin of races, and of the 

 great groups of ideas that constitute law, art, religion, 

 &c. ; the growth of the tribe in its metronymic and 

 patronymic forms, and finally of civilised peoples. 



The fourth and last book formulates the ultimate causes 

 and laws of social evolution, as objectively a conflict of 

 physical forces tending to equilibrium, and subjectively 

 the production of personality and of forms of association 

 that partly result from and partly determine the characters 

 of human beings. 



The treatment throughout is scientific : it is well pro- 

 portioned, and fully illustrated from history and anthro- 

 pology. If fault must be found, it may perhaps be said 

 that there are some needless pages in Book iii. chapter ii., 

 where Prof. Giddings tries to frame hypotheses as to the 

 birthplace of our race and the origin of races ; inquiries 

 which, in tlie present state of our knowledge, can only 

 lead to a submerging of the halfpennyworth of fact by 

 floods of speculation. And the first chapter of Book iv., 

 on the physical interpretation of the social process, should 

 be much expanded and illustrated. .\s it stands, it is 

 intelligible only to trained readers. 

 NO. 1386, VOL. 54] 



There are also, of course, in so comprehensive a work, 

 a good many disputable positions, two of which may be 

 selected for special comment. In Hook iii. chapter iv., on 

 demogenic association, Prof Giddings distinguishes three 

 stages in the growth of civilised societies: (l) the Mili- 

 tary-Religious, (2) the Liberal-Legal, (3) the Economic- 

 Ethical. Noticing previous attempts to demarcate such 

 epochs of progress, he complains that Hegel's doctrine 

 of successive steps in the acquisition of freedom or self- 

 realisation, and Comte's " law of the three states," are 

 alike one-sidedly subjective, and fail to give any account 

 of the structural changes of society. Mr. Spencer, again, 

 recognises only two stages, the military and industrial, 

 corresponding on the whole to (i) and (3) of the author's 

 own divisions. But this criticism rests upon an over- 

 sight with regard to Comte. Turning to Comte's chap- 

 ters on sociology, it will be seen that the indication of 

 the military and industrial stages of society is due to 

 him. He regards them as naturally coinciding respec- 

 tively with the theological and positive stages of ex- 

 planation ; and, further, he indicates an intermediate 

 phase of social organisation similar to Prof. Giddings' 

 (2), the Liberal-Legal, and naturally coinciding with the 

 age of metaphysical e.xplanation. This intermediate 

 stage, however, in both organisation and explanation, he 

 treats as essentially transitional and as wanting the re- 

 lative stability of militarism and industrialism. How 

 comparatively unimportant it is in universal history 

 (though important to us who have not yet escaped from 

 it), may be seen at p. 301 of this work, where its extent 

 in modern history is indicated as dating from the 

 Renaissance : 500 years ! Merely a list of revolutions ! 

 Mr. Spencer seems to be fully justified in not giving to 

 this unstable period the rank of those forms of culture 

 of which one endured, and the other may endure, for 

 thousands of generations. As for Comte, he has been 

 adulated and repudiated enough, and would now gain 

 much by getting bare justice. 



Again, in his first chapter. Prof Giddings, after ob- 

 serving that sociology, having for its object phenomena 

 which, on the one hand, may be viewed as a redistribu- 

 tion of matter and motion, and, on the other, as effects 

 of knowledge and volition, must seek its explanations 

 in the co-operation of physical and psychical causes, 

 according to laws subjective and objective, coinciding 

 and verifying one another, goes on to say that he accepts 

 Mr. Spencer's objective interpretation of the social pro- 

 cess, as, a " formal evolution through the equilibration 

 of energy," but that an adequate conception of the pro- 

 cess on the subjective side is still wanting. He then 

 offers to supply the want thus : — 



" The original and elementary subjective fact in society 

 is the consciousness of kind. By this term I mean a state 

 of consciousness in which any being, whether low or 

 high in the scale of life, recognises another conscious 

 being as of like kind with itself" (p. 17.) 



But surely this cannot be the fact he is in quest of ; 

 for the " consciousness of kind " is mainly a fact of per- 

 ception ; whereas what he needs is something corre- 

 sponding to the physical energy that moulds societies 

 considered objectively, and this subjectively can only be 

 a fact of volition. The fact that is wanted, moreover, 

 must not only correspond with the physical cause of the 



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