his ancestors, a temple to his god, or a palace for himself. This may not have been worth doing, for it was done at the cost of despotism and oppression, and these are odious. Nevertheless something was done; something was saved from the universal process of dissipation. We may have our opinion as to which alternative we prefer. If this had not been done, the life history of that tribe would probably have continued, as it had been for ages before, to be written in these brief terms: They were born, they bred and died, generation after generation in endless succession. Human life under such conditions is not worth much; but if at the cost of despotism, oppression, and injustice something else is added to their achievements, it may have been worth while after all. This view is no defense of despotism in itself, especially under conditions in which there are other agencies for the accumulation and storing of surplus energy. Slavery, religious fear, aristocracy, these have all doubtless been agencies for the accomplishment of the same purpose; and though they are all equally odious in themselves, they may have been means of saving the race from a worse alternative. However, when the conception of social justice had reached a point where it could distinguish between individual rights and guarantee to each individual the results of his own labor, instead of placing him at the mercy of those members of his tribe who were most gluttonous or the most rapid breeders, despotism, aristocracy, slavery, paternalism of all kinds ceased to be necessary for the accomplishment of this result, namely, the storing of surplus energy, and they therefore have no longer any justification for their existence.

The political and legal factors have been divided into two heads: (1) the problem as dealt with, How may the governor or ruler win and retain the power of ruling; (2) how far and under what conditions ought that power to be exercised. Under the first head in Machiavelli's chapters and in the admirable paraphrase by the writer who goes under the name of Henry Champernowne are discussed the arts and devices by which the ruler or the would-be ruler may obtain his power. Under the second head are discussed the questions of state interference, the limits

to the rightful authority of the state over the individual. This distinction is not usually made, and the compiler gives as his reasons the belief that the essential differences between democracy and autocracy are not so great as are popularly imagined. It is a pure fiction that under a democracy the people rule themselves. They are governed by rulers as truly as they are in an autocracy. But there is this very important difference, — important enough, it would seem, to make even the most pessimistic highly pleased with the results of democracy, that in a democracy the people who are governed have constitutional methods of giving or withholding their consent, whereas in an autocracy their only method of withholding consent is revolution. We in America are as truly governed by our leaders as are the inhabitants of Russia or Turkey, but we have the incalculable advantage of being able legally, through regularly constituted channels, to express our assent or dissent to the acts of our governors; whereas the citizens of the other countries named have no means except through the administration of poison or the use of the dynamite bomb. Holding this view of democracy, it seemed to the compiler that the first problem of the student of government is to find out how rulers or governors manage to secure their power. He also recognizes that in democratic countries the boss is a factor to be reckoned with as truly as the monarch is in a monarchical country. In fact, they are very much alike; they are apt to be the same kind of men, though we may thank our stars that our bosses have not become hereditary.

Throughout the work the compiler has avoided over-emphasis upon the organic concept of society. This is a concept which is so familiar that the labored attempts of writers in recent years to perfect the analogy between society and an organism seem wasted energy. The old fable of the "belly and the members " and St. Paul's argument beginning, "For as the body is one and hath many members," etc. (First Epistle to the Corinthians xii. 12-28), show clearly enough that the comparison between society and an organism has been familiar for a long time.

PART I THE NATURE, SCOPE, AND

METHOD OF SOCIOLOGY

II

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POSITIVE METHOD IN ITS APPLICATION TO SOCIAL PHENOMENA1

In every science conceptions which relate to method are inseparable from those which relate to the doctrine under consideration. The method has to be so varied in its application, and so largely modified by the complexity and special nature of the phenomena, in each case, that any general notions of method would be too indefinite for actual use. If, therefore, we have not separated the method from the doctrine in the simpler department of science, much less should we think of doing so when treating of the complex phenomena of social life, to say nothing of the great feature of this last case, its want of positivity. In the formation of a new science the general spirit of it must be seized before its particular parts can be investigated; that is, we must have some notion of the doctrine before examining the method, and then the method cannot be estimated in any other way than by its use. Thus, I have not to offer a logical exposition of method in social physics before proceeding to the science itself; but I must follow the same plan here as in the case of the anterior sciences, ascertaining its general spirit, and what are the collective resources proper to it. Though these subjects may be said to belong to the science itself, we may consider them as belonging to the method, as they are absolutely necessary to direct our understandings in the pursuit of this difficult study.

1 From The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, translated by Harriet Martineau, Vol. II, chap. iii, London and New York, 1853.

In the higher order of sciences in those which are the simplest and most advanced-the philosophical definition of each was almost sufficient to characterize their condition and general resources, to which no doubt could attach. But the case is otherwise with a recent and extremely complex study, the very nature of which has to be settled by laborious discussions, which are happily needless in regard to the preceding sciences. In treating of biology we found it necessary to dwell upon preparatory explanations which would have seemed puerile in any of the foregoing departments, because the chief bases of a science. about which there were still so many disputes must be indisputably settled before it could take rank in the positive series. It is evident that the same process is even more needful, and must be more laborious, in the case of the science of social development, which has hitherto had no character of positivity at all, and which some of the ablest minds of our time sentence never to have any. We must not be surprised then if, after applying here the simplest and most radical ideas of positive philosophy, such as would indeed appear trivial in their formal application to the more advanced sciences, the result would appear to many, even among the enlightened, to constitute too bold an innovation, though the conditions may be no more than the barest equivalent of those which are admitted in every other

case.

INFANTILE STATE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

If we look with a philosophical eye upon the present state of social science, we cannot but recognize in it the combination of all the features of that theologico-metaphysical infancy which all the other sciences have had to pass through. The present condition of political science revives before our eyes the analogy of what astrology was to astronomy, alchemy to chemistry, and the search for the universal panacea to the system of medical studies. We may, for our present purpose, consider the theological and metaphysical polities together, the second being only a modification of the first in its relation to social science. Their attributes are the same, consisting, in regard to method, in the preponderance

of imagination over observation; and, in regard to doctrine, in the exclusive investigation of absolute ideas; the result of both of which is an inevitable tendency to exercise an arbitrary and indefinite action over phenomena which are not regarded as subject to invariable natural laws. In short, the general spirit of all speculation at that stage is at once ideal in its course, absolute in its conception, and arbitrary in its application; and these are unquestionably the prevailing characteristics of social speculation at present, regarded from any point of view whatever. If we reverse all the three aspects, we shall have precisely the spirit which must actuate the formation of positive sociology, and which must afterwards direct its continuous development. The scientific spirit is radically distinguished from the theological and metaphysical by the steady subordination of the imagination to observation; and though the positive philosophy offers the vastest and richest field to human imagination, it restricts it to discovering and perfecting the coördination of observed facts, and the means of effecting new researches; and it is this habit of subjecting scientific conceptions to the facts whose connection has to be disclosed, which it is above all things necessary to introduce into social researches; for the observations hitherto made have been vague and ill-circumscribed, so as to afford no adequate foundation for scientific reasoning; and they are usually modified themselves at the pleasure of an imagination stimulated by the most fluctuating passions. From their complexity and their closer connection with human passions, political speculations must be detained longer than any others in this deplorable philosophical condition in which they are still involved, while simpler and less stimulating sciences have successively obtained emancipation; but we must remember that all other kinds of scientific conception have gone through the same stage, from which they have issued with the more difficulty and delay exactly in proportion to their complexity and special nature. It is, indeed, only in our own day that the more complex have issued from that condition at all, as we saw to be the case with the intellectual and moral phenomena of individual life, which are still studied in a way almost as anti-scientific as political phenomena