Sociology [pp. 303-323]

THE PRINCET 0N RE VIEW.
nation to which human society takes its various forms, and"
social institutions grow and change. Its practical utility consists in deriving the rules of right social living from the facts
and laws which prevail by nature in the constitution and functions of society. It must, without doubt, come into collision
with all other theories of right living which are founded on
authority, tradition, arbitrary invention, or poetic imagination.
Sociology is perhaps the most complicated of all the sciences, yet there is no domain of human interest the details of
which are treated ordinarily with greater facility. Various religions have various theories of social living, which they offer
as authoritative and final. It has never, so far as I know, been
asserted by anybody that a man of religious faith (in any
religion) could not study sociology or recognize the existence
of any such science; but it is incontestably plain that a man
who accepts the dogmas about social living which are imposed
by the authority of any religion must regard the subject of
right social living as settled and closed, and he cannot enter on
any investigation the first groundwork of which would be doubt
of the authority which he recognizes as final. Hence social
problems and social phenomena present no difficulty to him
who has only to cite an authority or obey a prescription.
Then again the novelists set forth "views" about social matters. To write and read novels is perhaps the most royal road
to teaching and learning which has ever been devised. The proceeding of the novelists is kaleidoscopic. They turn the same
old bits of colored glass over and over again into new combinations. There is no limit, no sequence, no bond of consistency.
The romance-writing social philosopher always proves his case
just as a man always wins who plays chess with himself.
Then again the utopians and socialists make easy work of
the complicated phenomena with which sociology has to deal.
These persons, vexed with the intricacies of social problems,
and revolting against the facts of the social order, take upon
themselves the task of inventing a new and better world.
man of scientific training finds his attention arrested, in some group of phenomena, by those sequences, relations, and recurrences which he has learned to note
as signs of action of law, he seeks to discover the law. If it exists, he finds it..
What other proof of its existence could there be?
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