SOCIOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY 43 
so great, the process is difficult and the results more or less un- 
certain. Under the comparative method, according to Comte, 
we have comparison between society and animal groups, between 
co-existing states of society and between consecutive stages in 
social growth. A combination of this last and of the method 
derived from biology has given rise to the historical method,! 
where the purpose is not merely to deduce general laws from 
specific historical events but to discover the “ filiation ” in suc- 
cessive events. ‘Two other forms of the inductive method have 
come to have increasing vogue since Comte’s time, the statistical 
method and what might well be termed the “‘ inverse historical ”’ 
method, i. e., the analysis of current events with the purpose of 
finding a clue to the interpretation of the past.? 
In this chapter we will consider Quételet because of his develop- 
ment of the statistical method and his use of it in studying social 
phenomena, Lilienfeld as representative of the analogical school 
and De Greef as representative of those whose social philosophy is 
based largely on the method of logical classification, and in the 
following chapter consider Darwin and his successors as repre- 
sentatives of the inductive method. 
Lampert A. J. QUETELET (1796-1874) 
The Statistical Method 
Such a large place has the statistical method ° played in all the 
social sciences during the past half century that some place needs 
to be given it, and especially to its use in connection with the 
doctrine of adaptation as a theory of social progress, for it is an 
instrument of first importance in diagnosing social pathology or 
mal-adaptation, as it is also in measuring social growth and 
adaptation. 
According to Quételet, statistics, as a science, dates back no 
longer than 1820,‘ but M. Block shows that in its essential fea- 
1 Logic, ch. X. 
2 Carver, Sociology and Social Progress, p. 64. 
3 King, Elements of Statistical Methods, ch. I. 
4M. Block, Traité de Statistique, p. 48; Hankins, ‘‘Quételet,” Columbia Unio. 
Studies, xxxi, pp. 37 ff. 
