In view of the relation which we have in dicated between political science and sociology, it is equally astonishing and unfortunate that for nearly a generation legal institutions were left almost wholly outside the range of Amer ican sociologists' vision. No one without legal training could venture successfully into the field thus neglected, and for a long time sociological methods found no favor with American legal scholars. The situation has notably changed since Roscoe Pound, now Dean of Harvard Law School, became the leading attorney in this country for an attitude toward legal construc tion precisely opposite to that of Savigny in his controversy with Thibaut in 1814. This factor has already had such influence with law facul ties, and among social scientists in general, that quite possibly the most important sociolog ical advances in the next generation will pro ceed from the basis of legal study. Consult Pound, 'The Scope and Purpose of Sociological Jurisprudence,' 23 Harvard Law Review, 591, 25 Harvard Law Review, 140-489;
To recapitulate: Although the earlier so cial scientists never confessed it in quite this way, it is easy to see now that all of them, including the sociologists, who indulged at all in speculations about the larger aims of science treated the aggregate of human events, past and present, like a collection of structural elements; and they a -umed that the task of social sci ence, their own part of it in partkular, was to organize all the miscellaneous events which have filled the career of mankind from the beginning up to the present into a schematic combination, in which each occurrence would have its appropriate place, and in which the relation of each occurrence to every other oc currence would be evident.
We may frankly admit that sociology would not have been born when it was, and its early history would not have been what it was, if this conception of scientific possibility had not stimulated a few men to risk the attempt to realize this conception, which men before them in other branches of science had dismally failed to vindicate. At the same time, we must insist upon the truth that, in this respect, the sociolo gists were merely experimenting with a chimera which had over and over again lured social scientists of all the older types.
But just as the more objective historians of the latest half century have fortified themselves against suspicions of identity with the so-called• philosophers of history, so the sociologists of to-day are more or less consciously and ex plicitly repudiating the conception just indicated, which they or their immediate predecessors un blushingly published a generation ago. The totality of human experience is too big, too complicated, too unexplorable, to be exhibited by the human mind as a complete and inclusive system of articulated parts, with each event throughout the length and breadth of human ex perience visibly bearing its actual relation to all the other events. The thought of such compre hension as something within the reach of human intelligence can no longer be entertained by a responsible mind. Our ideal at present is discovery of typical, qualitative relationships of antecedent and consequent, of cause and effect, of harmony and disharmony, of stability and instability, of constructiveness and destructive ness, in as many different types of human groups as possible. We entertain hopes of
reaching certain quantitative expressions of the same relations, but about these we are much less sanguine. This is on the purely scientific side, antecedent to whatever we may feel au thorized to undertake on the side of social control or social art.
We understand that there are enormous dif ferences in the feasibility of this ideal, depend ent for instance upon the remoteness or near ness in space or time, or upon the simplicity or complexity of the group immediately in question. We believe that from generation to generation men may, and with progressive use of available means for accumulating knowledge of human conditions they will become more sophisticated and competent to control their situation in the interest of increasing develop ment of human capacities. Within recent years the advances of social science in general, and of sociology in particular, have manifested increas ing deference to the conception set forth in this review. Indeed, no account of sociology would be authentic unless it were an exposition of it as a multitude of mental processes con verging toward and operating in accordance with substantially this description.
Bibliography.— Addams, Jane, 'Democracy and Social Ethics' (New York 1902) ; id., 'Newer Ideals of Peace) (ib. 1907); id., 'The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets); id., 'Twenty Years at Hull House' (ib. 1910) ; id., 'A New Conscience and an Ancient
(ib. 1911); Barth, Paul,