Sociology made its appearance as an Ameri can pursuit in 1883. For several decades Ameri can sociologists consecrated far more ingenuity and passion to propaganda of the conception that sociology is, was and ever shall be an in dependent science, than to search into its actual origins, and to analysis of its necessary inter relations. In this the earlier sociologists ex hibited their intellectual consanguinity with most of their scholastic predecessors and con temporaries. Like so many other zealots for the advancement of knowledge, they proclaimed themselves the high priests of an independent cult, to which independent cult, however, as they often declared in the same breath, all other scientific cults must one day become subordinate. Even now this earlier misconcep tion survives among social scientists, sociologists not excepted. In order therefore to indicate the historical relations between so much of our technique as we have thus far developed and the other techniques for investigating human experience, we must present sociology as it evolved with and out of the totality of 19th century social science.
Until now the thoughts of the vast majority of men about human experience, past or present, have been mostly nebulous, mystical, Irresponsible. People in general, even including those who passed as scholars, have been con tent to accept versions of human experience without inquiring closely into the credibility or the sufficiency of the evidence in support of the versions, or into the conclusiveness of the inferences drawn from the evidence. On or about 1800 a movement began to be manifest among European scholars which, like most movements that later prove to be momentous, probably did not at once disclose a large frac tion of its significance to many of its promoters. The date 1800 is selected for symbolic conveni ence. It is at the centre of events which fall within a zone occupying 25 years on either side. From the present outlook the meaning of the movement is more evident than it could have been to the men whose gradual coming-to consciousness was the making of the movement. We embrace its entire sweep, in all dimensions, from 1800 until now, in the formula: It was a drive toward objectivity. For the purposes of this sketch we may define the term "objectivity' as requisition that nothing shall be allowed to pass as knowledge until in every conceivable respect it literally reflects reality. Previous to 1800, except within relatively immediate ranges of experience, that which passed as social science, under whatever name, as a rule pitiably failed to satisfy this standard. Before one third of the 19th century had passed, European scholars in each of the then conventional di visions of social science had betrayed prophetic discontent with the existing state of knowledge in their fields, and with the current methods of search for more knowledge. They had begun to make out ways and means of making knowl edge within their respective fields both more ample and more accurate. In the light of our experience meanwhile, we are accredited by the facts when we say that this discontent and this resolve presently amounted to a concerted drive toward objectivity in social science. Historians, economists, professors of jurisprudence were not discontented with precisely the same things in their respective divisions of labor, nor with precisely the same things which were regretted in one another's fields. They did not propose identical means of removing the obstructions of which they were conscious. We may anticipate the most obvious conclusions which our survey will impress, however, by pointing out that, in effect if not in professed program, the detached, provincial, unco-or dinated, uncorrelated scholarship in the social science of the year 1800 has become the com paratively organic scholarship of to-day. By
organic, in this connection, we mean reciprocally reinforcing. There were counter-marches here and there durinq. the 19th century, toward such specialism and isolation in research as would have threatened to reverse the movement toward objectivity, These counter-marches were not simultaneous in all countries nor in all sciences; and they did not long continue their drift toward earlier sterility. On the contrary, in spite of all the caste spirit among scholars, social science in its various divisions has become more and more interpenetrating. Since 1800 there has been on the whole an accelerated process of reciprocal assimilation of ideas between all the different departments of knowledge within the range of social science, not to speak of reciprocal modifications be tween physical and social science.
Priority of mention, as promoters of the drive toward objectivity, belongs to the his torians. While consciousness of the past as having been, and as having had some sort of meaning for the present, had been a factor time out of mind in the thinking of both learned and unlearned, that which was accepted as history previous to 1800 was often more imaginative than authentic. Soon after 1800, the work of devising means of discriminating between false and true, between adequate and inadequate evidence, and so between trustworthy and un trustworthy reconstructions of the past, was in full swing. The technique by which the his torians began to discredit previous credulity soon became known as "critical' methods, or as ("historical criticism." In his account of a type of historical or quasi-historical' thinking which critical history has been trying to displace, Robert Flint schedules certain conditions, phys ical as well as mental, without which adequate historical interpretation is impossible Philosophy of History in France and Germany,' 1st ed., 1874. Introduction). The conditions named are, first, a certain actual world-unity, such as was realized by the Roman Empire; second, a certain consciousness of spiritual unity, such as was introduced by Christianity; third, the idea of progress; fourth, the idea of freedom. It is somewhat more obvious, on the one hand that modern sociology is inconceivable in the absence of certain additional ideas to which the early 19th century historians gave currency, and on the other hand that the failure of these historians to make the most intensive use of these ideas operated as a challenge to certain thinkers to develop the suggestions until they became tools of the technique called sociology. Thus the conception of continuity in human institutions (Savigny, Roman law in the Middle Ages) ; the conception of the multiplicity of factors operating in historical combination and sequence (Eichhorn, German civic and legal history) ; the necessity of sub jetting alleged historical evidence to the sever est scrutiny (Niebuhr, early Roman history) ; the value of documentation as a basis for his torical opinion (Ranke, ecclesiastical and political archives, principally of the Ref ormation and post-Reformation periods). Whether the sociologists have made more or less use, better or worse use of these ideas than the historians did is aside from the present point. The sociologists took over from the historians these ideas and others of more particular types, and employed them in distinc tive ways. As the historians developed critical methods to higher and higher degrees of pre cision, sociologists became aware that the same methods, or equally penetrating methods, must be used for them by historians, or by them selves, whenever the tasks which the sociologists undertook required historical research.