nical character of thought that it shall be made up of abstractly formulated principles. On the contrary, the aim of science should be to show the meaning of familiar things, not to construct a kingdom for itself in which, if familiar things are admitted, they are obscured under an impenetrable disguise of artificial expression. If sociology is to be of any influence among practical men, it must be able to put its wisdom about things that interest ordinary men in a form which men of affairs will see to be true to life. That form will frequently be the one in which not theorists but men of affairs themselves view the facts concerned. These men are then the most authoritative sociologists. No subject which pertains to men’s pursuits is beneath the notice of sociology, provided it can be treated so that its relation to involved pursuits becomes more evident.
While the sociological staff of The University of Chicago will be the responsible editors of the Journal, the contributors will be men and women who are gathering the materials of social philosophy from the most diverse sources. The contents will vary from discussions of methodology to treatment of plans for social amelioration and to descriptions of minute social groups, or of specially significant social conditions, processes or functions. The Journal will be the “organ” of the editors in no other sense than of any other responsible sociologists who may desire to present their thought in its pages. The platform of the Journal will be simply that it is possible to so far increase our present intelligence about social utilities that there may be much more effective combination for the promotion of the general welfare than has thus far been organized; and accordingly help will be sought of anyone who can assist in defining the aims or in discovering the means of more rational associated effort.
In treating of specific proposals for social amelioration the aim will be to explain them in their relation not to immediate ends, but to the most remote results that can be anticipated. They will be estimated not by their value as palliatives, not with
