Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

the newspapers every day devote more than half their space to them. One would suppose that people would learn some time that fires, and railroad accidents, and mine disasters, and boiler explosions, and robberies, and defalcations, and murders, as well as elopements, liaisons in high life, seductions, and rape, were normal social phenomena after reading of every one of these and a hundred similar events every day throughout the course of a lifetime. But this enormous mass of evidence has no effect whatever in dispelling the popular illusion that such events are extraordinary, and the octogenarian whose eyesight will permit still pores over the daily news, as it is called, with the same interest as when he was a youth. There is nothing new in news except a difference in the names. The events are the same. It is this that Schopenhauer meant when he said that history furnishes nothing new, but only the continual repetition of the same thing under new names. And this is meant when we speak of generalization."

This is certainly a search for a unitary principle which is more than what is ordinarily called generalization. Is not this analogous to an individual manifesting himself in various ways, but always remaining a unity, or viewing an individual from various aspects? And when the person feels this individuality and unity in the whole of societary phenomena, is it not just as I perceive myself as a family self, or as a college self, and all the time I feel the general unity over, above, and through it all? Is not Mr. Ward's society, which is a unity, a large individual which the finite person appreciates in the same way as my self of this moment appreciates my individuality, so that, after all, the subject-object experience is but transcended so that the two are felt as one? Mr. Ward calls this the discovery of law in history; but, as a matter of fact, is it not more than this, though he does not admit it? Does it not have implications that he would hardly like to admit ?

When the sociologist holds the theory of a biological organism as the analogue of society as a whole, has he not so far forth departed from a strictly empirical point of view, and gone beyond his own descriptive experience or the experience of others? When he argues for a view of society as a whole as an organism, he no longer confines himself to individuals and institutions; and his form of argument is not one that can be called strictly scientific induction, but rests on rather vague analogies, so that it rests

40 Ibid., p. 55.

on probability rather than on demonstration; and its test of certitude is no longer a purely factual one, but one that rests on rational probability. This is all the more the case when M. René Worms, in his Organisme et société, argues that in the world of social facts the individual is not the only real; for the individual is an aggregation of cells and still has reality; and so he argues that the social organism is an individual and has reality. Now, this is essentially a metaphysical discussion and involves a metaphysical method. Mr. Spencer holds that the elements in a biological organism are concrete, but those of the social organism are discrete. But M. Worms holds that the continuity of the elements in the biological organism has less of continuity than have the elements of the social organism; since, when the biological elements are separated, the organism perishes; but when the elements of social structure are separated, they tend to be reunited, as e. g., the unification of Italy. In comparison, the spaces between the cells of the biological organism are no farther separated than the individuals in the social organism. He says finally that society is a supra-organism which possesses all the characteristics of the individual organism, and more than that. This point helps to give the foregoing discussion a more general application, as it shows that the metaphysical side is not confined to a particular sort of sociological investigation, since we have shown that the more psychological type of sociologists, like Professor Giddings, Mr. Ward, and others, are involved in metaphysical conceptions, and here we see that the biological sociologists are also involved in them. All these theories, especially those resting on individual and collective will or social will, etc., are supra-scientific in that they seek the inner meaning and ultimate nature of societary phenomena rather than tracing merely causal relationships.

So our conclusion thus far might be roughly stated by saying that the two disciplines are directly related in that the causality and evolution in sociology are different from that involved in the physical sciences, and so require different treatment. They are related more particularly since, in order to understand the units and the interaction in social phenomena, we are directly led into

the metaphysical method and point of view, viz., that of appreciation.

Metaphysics has for its province the nature, meaning and final meaning of the content of experience. But, taking the very broad view of sociology which the investigation seems to warrant, someone may say that the outcome of our argument is a taking away of the distinction between sociology and metaphysics, and hopelessly mixing up the two. To this we reply that the objector fails to distinguish between all the data of experience, viewed under one aspect or from one point of view, on the one hand, and the whole of experience, on the other hand. For, it seems to me, the whole of experience, and all the data of experience (meaning by "data" the groundwork of experience), are not necessarily identical. On the basis of this distinction we can accept the very wide view of sociology, and admit that the basic facts of sociology are: nature, individuals, and the modes of association between individuals; and can further demand that there is involved a metaphysical investigation as to the three facts mentioned. And we could even, if it be necessary, admit that these three factors mentioned are all the data of experience, without surrendering our position that metaphysics and not sociology is the ultimate source of our explanation; for these are all the data of experience viewed under one aspect, from one point of view, viz., the sociological. But the metaphysical investigation at the outset, or during the sociological, in no wise exhausts the province of metaphysics. For metaphysics deals not only with the nature and meaning, but also with the final meaning, of what exists; and so the metaphysical investigation in the sociological considers simply the nature and meaning of these data, whereas the final meaning can be determined only at the end of the sociological investigation; and not necessarily then, for even with this broadest view of sociology it embodies all the data of experience only under one aspect, namely, the sociological; and to get the final meaning, which is the further problem of metaphysics at this point, it must consider all the data of experience, not only under this aspect, but under every possible aspect that experience can suggest. What is meant here is this: The particular sciences take a selected body of

phenomena, some particular portion of experience, and try to find the laws of its behavior. Metaphysics, on the contrary, may not select in this way. It has the problem of taking all the phenomena in experience, and not merely getting the law of their behavior, but getting that law into terms of some unitary principle which shall be adequate, not alone for each of the selected groups of phenomena individually, but also for any possible combination of groups as well as all the possible groups taken together. So the metaphysical investigation all along the line, and the admission of the extreme breadth of sociology, in no wise weaken the necessity of the demand for a metaphysical investigation at the end of the sociological; and not only at the end of this latter, but at the end of all the other possible aspects; nor does it weaken the necessity for a distinction between the two.

But the objector, who might be a thinker holding to the narrower view of the field of sociology, might say that this broad field of investigation which we are speaking about is not sociology at all. We in turn ask: What is it then, if it is not sociology? It certainly is not metaphysics, nor is it either chemistry, physics, or biology, psychology, or any other science which has any recognized status. Its field, and the data from which it starts, are certainly the data of what he calls sociology; only that here we do not restrict ourselves to arbitrary limits, but take the natural limits.

PHILIP H. FOGEL.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY.

[To be concluded.]

EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH.

I. BEFORE THÉ WAR.

[ocr errors]

IN dealing with southern education, an adequate conception can be gained only after first making an examination of the industrial organization of the South. This is owing to the now generally recognized fact that systems of education are outgrowths of and dependent upon the economic environment in which they originate and develop. The educational, like the political, institution may be designated a superstructure" in that it has at all times reflected and been a product of the particular economic conditions existing in a given social stage, being shaped to meet the demands of the industrial and commercial organization of that period. This interpretation of the place in society occupied by the educational institution puts the source of all improvement and development of education in the industrial life. While the economic organization is thus the basic factor in determining the curriculum of the school, it exerts an influence in yet another direction. Through the financial support which it affords or withholds it is the source of existence of the educational system. Upon the sum appropriated from the social income for educational purposes depend the number and equipment of the school buildings, the efficiency of the teaching force, and the length of the school year. In other words, it determines both the quality and the quantity of education.

In considering education in the South, the period taken for review necessarily cannot be brief, if we are to trace the surviving influences of earlier industrial forms and their resulting institutions. Without this attention to the developmental side, the method of action and body of thought that characterize the South will not be seen in their true perspective, and the educational situation becomes an unsolvable problem. The object of this paper, therefore, will be, while tracing briefly the economic evolution of the South, to point out the accompanying growth and modifications of education.

« AnteriorContinuar »