Decembee 16, 1898.] 



SCIENCE. 



875 



phenomena bears to another is made subser- 

 vient to the purpose of reaching a synthetical 

 interpretation of the cosmical phenomena, what 

 the Germans would term 'Weltanschauung.' 

 The highest unification of knowledge embodied 

 in a conception of the universal evolution is, 

 indeed, the specific problem of philosophy. 

 There cannot be, therefore, the ' philosophy ' of 

 a detached fragment of reality. We have on 

 the one side the sciences, among which is soci- 

 ology, and on the other side, philosophy, which 

 includes and supersedes them all. 



For these reasons we should like to have the 

 designation of ' Social Philosophy ' dropped 

 from the first part of Dr. Ward's book, which, 

 from beginning to end, ought to be considered 

 as a contribution to 'Social Science.' This 

 would practically leave the book unchanged, 

 but would have the inestimable advantage of 

 eliminating any possibility of confusion arising 

 from the misleading notion of ' Social Philoso- 

 phy.' 



But, apart from this unhappy denomination, 

 we find the contents of Part 1st of Dr. Ward's 

 book extremely interesting. He examines in 

 detail the position which Sociology bears to Cos- 

 mology, to Biology, to Anthropology, to Psy- 

 chology and to the special social sciences. The 

 well-known competence of Dr. Ward as a natural 

 scientist gives a particular value to this review 

 of the different groups of phenomena from 

 which social fact is differentiated. In Chapter 

 VI. Dr. Ward discusses the important question 

 of the position which Sociology bears to the 

 special social sciences. Dr. Ward's view is 

 identical to that of Professor Giddings, whose 

 admirable chapter on the ' Pi'ovince of Sociol- 

 ogy,' in his earlier work, has done more than 

 anything else towards the clear demarcation of 

 the place of Sociology among the sciences. Ac- 

 cording to this theory, Dr. Ward conceives 

 Sociology as the synthesis of the partial results 

 attained through the distinct investigations of 

 the special social sciences. " No one of these 

 (sciences) nor all of them together can be said 

 to form Sociology, but Sociology is the synthesis 

 of them all. It is impossible to perform this 

 synthesis without a clear conception of the ele- 

 ments entering into it. These, therefore, con- 

 stitute the data for the process. The special 



social sciences, then, are not themselves the 

 science of Sociology, but they constitute the data 

 of Sociology" (p. 166). 



In the second part of his work. Dr. Ward 

 takes up the discussion of the laws of society. 

 He reproduces his well-known conception of 

 the ' psychic ' character of the social forces. The 

 most important chapters are the Vlllth : The 

 Mechanics of Society ; the Xth : Social Genesis, 

 and the Xlth : Individual Telesis, in which the 

 fundamental lines of the theory are set forth 

 with great clearness. The root of Dr. Ward's 

 doctrine is the assumption that ' the social 

 forces are psychic' "They have their seat in 

 the mental constitution of the individual com- 

 ponents of society " (p. 164). Dr. Ward does 

 not mean the thinking faculty only, as it is un- 

 derstood by the popular conception of the mind, 

 but both the affective side of the mind and the 

 perceptive, and rather the former than the latter. 

 Feeling is the true foundation of social life. It is 

 the ' dynamic agent,' that which impels and that 

 which moves, the nisua of nature transferred from 

 the physical to the psychic world (p. 167). It 

 exerts its power through the myriad forms of 

 appetitive desire constituting impulses or im- 

 pelling forces and motives or moving forces, all 

 of which may be embodied under the general 

 term will (p. 175). Social progress is either 

 genetic or telic. Progress below the human 

 plane is altogether genetic and is called devel- 

 opment. In the early human stages it is mainly 

 genetic, but begins to be telic. In the latest 

 stages it is chiefly telic. The transition from 

 genetic to telic progress is wholly due and ex- 

 actly proportional to the development of the 

 intellectual faculty. The intellectual method 

 is essentially telic. The intellect was developed 

 as an aid to the will for the sole purpose of se- 

 curing the more complete satisfaction of desire. 

 It enables man to obtain by an indirect method 

 what he could not obtain by a direct method 

 (p. 179). The moment we rise to the social 

 sphere we encounter the telic aspect of the sub- 

 ject. It is still development or evolution, but a 

 new principle, radically different from the ge- 

 netic, has now been introduced, and in all the 

 higher forms of social progress it assumes the 

 leading role (p. 179, 180). It is the faculty of 

 mind which enables man to pursue ends which it 



